The Star of Bethlehem

Hello, and welcome to the Kalamazoo church of Christ podcast.

Thank you so much for listening.

We're startup church.

We just planted in September, 2020 and at the Kalamazoo church, we believe that Christianity is done best when it is done together.

And so if you live in the Kalamazoo area, we would love to connect, be it coming to a Sunday service, one of our small groups, or even just grabbing coffee with a member to learn more.

You can visit Kalamazoo.church in order to do that.

We pray that you are inspired by what you hear today.

Merry Christmas.

Welcome to the Kalamazoo church of Christ.

People are wondering if I was going to wear the Santa hat today.

So there you have it.

I'm going to take it off because it's a little distracting here.

But today is a little bit special because it is Christmas Eve, 2023.

Today's message is both Christmas themed and space themed.

We're all take a look at the star of Bethlehem.

This lesson has two parts.

First, I'm going to show you how God precisely, meticulously designed our planet.

This uniqueness allows for intelligent life to exist on earth.

You'll also see that God's design allows for humans to make scientific discovery.

And then from this discovery in part two, we can see Jesus's mark in all of it.

And it is amazing.

My hope is that you will be in awe of God's power and forethought.

And ultimately, this will encourage you, us, to seek him and know him more deeply.

First, let's go to Psalm 19.

I'm going to read verses one through four.

It says, the heavens proclaim the glory of God.

The skies display his craftsmanship.

Day after day, they continue to speak.

Night after night, they make him known.

They speak without a word or sound.

Their voice is never heard, yet their message has gone throughout the earth and their words to all the world.

God has made a home in the heavens for the sun.

Notice these words that the heavens and skies do.

We will explore how the heavens proclaim the glory of God and how the skies display his craftsmanship.

They speak, but their voice is not heard.

Their message is loud and impactful.

I'm going to help us see their message more clearly today.

Part one is the privileged planet.

In part one, we will review some of the factors that allow for complex intelligent life versus simple life forms like bacteria or protozoa.

God has designed the universe in such a way that humans can also make scientific discovery and we'll look at that too.

The first part is based on a movie that you can watch for free on YouTube.

Just type in the privileged planet.

I encourage you to watch it if you're interested in this topic.

It's an hour and 30 minutes long.

My challenge is I'm going to condense all of that into less than 10 minutes.

Now let's go back to Psalm 19 in verse 4.

It talks about the sun.

God has made a home in the heavens for the sun.

For us to survive, we need the sun.

And it can't just be any star.

It has to be the right size and the right type of star.

So what we have is called a spectral type G2 main sequence star.

It's a certain size and temperature and brightness because all of that affects something called the habitable zone.

We nickname this habitable zone the Goldilocks zone because it's not too hot.

It's not too cold.

It's just right.

If Earth was 5% closer, it would be too hot, 900 degrees Fahrenheit like Venus and we couldn't live on it.

Or if it was 20% further away, we'd have cycles of ice and cold, ice and cold, just like on Mars and it would be uninhabitable.

We have the right temperature for liquid water.

If it was too hot, it would evaporate.

If it's too cold, it would freeze.

We also have an atmosphere with the right combination of gases.

The atmosphere is made up of oxygen and nitrogen.

Our atmosphere measures less than 1% of the Earth's diameter, which is super thin like the skin of an apple.

It's a mix of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide.

That combination not only allows for liquid water, but it also provides protection from the sun's radiation.

We also need to live on a terrestrial planet, which has a rocky, compact surface.

The Earth's crust ranges 4-30 miles, which is paper thin in comparison to the whole Earth.

There are dozens of plates that are in constant motion, that's plate tectonics.

This is necessary to regulate the Earth's temperature.

The Earth's core is made up of liquid iron.

This flowing liquid iron makes the magnetic field around the Earth.

Yes, it's great for compasses, but that magnetic field also shields us from the destructive solar winds.

If we didn't have this magnetic field, we'd be wiped out because the solar winds would strip away our atmosphere.

We have a relatively large moon.

It's a quarter of the size of the Earth.

This size moon is needed to stabilize the Earth's rotation on its axis.

It is at a constant 23.5 degree tilt.

This gives us our moderate seasons and also helps to regulate the Earth's surface temperature.

Earlier we talked about the Goldilocks zone in our solar system.

Similarly, our location in our galaxy matters.

There's a Goldilocks zone in our Milky Way galaxy.

If we lived in the center of our galaxy, then there exists explosions and stars forming and crashing into each other.

There's also, in the center of it, this massive black hole that eats up stars and sucks everything in.

It has this incredible strong gravitational pull.

If we were located in the center of the universe, it would be far too dangerous for us to survive.

Now on the flip side, if we lived at the outer edge of our galaxy, well there's much less gravity there.

So there's not the abundance of iron, magnesium, silicone, and oxygen that our Earth is made up of.

So you can see here that there is a Goldilocks zone in our Milky Way galaxy.

Inside of the spiral arms, there's supernova explosions and too much galactic dust that we couldn't see much beyond that dust.

Location, location, location, right?

It's key, just like in real estate, right?

See that bright star there?

That is our solar system.

We are located in the habitable zone of our galaxy, and in between two spiral arms, which has much less dust, and that allows us to observe other galaxies out in the universe and to see beyond our own galaxy.

This location between the arms also allows us to see the spiral arm of our own galaxy in the night sky.

If you've ever seen it, it's just beautiful.

And we can see the makeup of our own galaxy, and we see that it's a spiral disk galaxy that we live in.

Now it's pretty amazing that we can observe that.

Albert Einstein said, The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.

God didn't have to make it so we could understand and comprehend the universe for our survival.

But he allows mankind to have intelligence and curiosity to discover the math and the science and to make logical sense of it.

He wants us to discover his incredibly precise design.

It's almost like he's showing off and he's proud of how awesome he made the universe.

Our God is an awesome God.

One awesome design of God's is the total solar eclipse.

Earlier we talked about having the right size sun and the right size moon.

Even though our sun is 400 times bigger than our moon, it's also 400 times further away.

If the moon was too large, then it would cover the sun in the corona completely.

If the moon was too small, it wouldn't cover enough of the sun for us to see the corona.

Now the corona is important.

The corona is that light around the sun during a total solar eclipse, as you see here.

So both the sun and the moon must be the same apparent size in our sky.

Which it is, and that's amazing.

During a total solar eclipse, it allows us to see what's called the flash spectrum when the sun is viewed through a prism during the eclipse.

Now studying this flash spectrum allows us to study the makeup of the sun and how its light is produced in the sun's atmosphere.

I'll throw this out there.

The next total solar eclipse is going to be on April 8th of 2024.

And you can go, you can travel as close as Indiana to see it.

So it's a pretty great experience.

My family's going to go.

So if you're wanting to go, please let me know.

It's going to be a good time.

Let's keep going.

Other factors that allow life.

We have large planets in our solar system.

There's Jupiter and Saturn and they act as bodyguards and you know they'll suck up comets that are trying to hit us.

Gravity strength is the right amount.

If the strength of gravity was 1% stronger, anything larger than the size of a pea would be crushed because it distorts the space-time continuum.

I mean it's crazy stuff.

The speed of light has to be the right speed.

The weight of neutrons and protons and electrons have to be right.

Nuclear force that holds the atoms together, that also has to be right.

We are privileged.

God designed the factors that allow complex and intelligent life to be the same factors that allow for scientific discovery.

In Romans 1.20, For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

This scripture means more to me now after learning about this science.

People are without excuse.

The creation testifies to God.

It says that he is clearly seen from the creation.

There is a verse from the Old Testament, Job 38.33. Do you know the laws of the universe?

Can you use them to regulate the earth?

To regulate the earth's temperature, plate tectonics, the magnetic field, and the tilt.

It's so cool.

God is so powerful.

With this background, we're going to start moving into part 2.

Let's read a scripture in Genesis 1.

Now we're going to pick this up on the fourth day of creation.

And God said, Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times and days and years.

God made the stars to do what?

To serve as signs and mark sacred times.

We will see how they mark important times in Jesus' life, his conception, his birth, and his death.

In part 2, we will look at the star of Bethlehem and the birth of Christ.

Rick Larson made this movie.

You can also find this free on YouTube.

This is his work.

If this topic interests you, I encourage you to watch it.

Again, I'm going to condense about 60 minutes of content into about 10 minutes.

Please turn your Bibles to Matthew 2.

We're going to spend most of our time there.

First, I'm going to give you some background.

Johannes Kepler discovered the laws of planetary motion.

He figured out the math.

This math is very accurate.

Kepler started to look for the star of Bethlehem, but he could not find it because he looked in the wrong years.

There was some misinformation about when Herod died.

We know from Scripture that King Herod tried to kill baby Jesus.

Kepler was trying to look for the star in 5 and 6 BC and couldn't find anything.

But now, there's new information that came out recently, just in 1996, about Herod's death.

Now, we will look in 2 and 3 BC.

This math has been put into software.

I have a program called Starry Night on my laptop.

If you want to mess around with it, it's pretty cool.

Let me know.

This math makes the universe operate like a giant clock.

With this software, you can rewind or fast forward to any date and see exactly what the sky looks like.

And you can also ask it to show you the sky from any location on the earth.

So with that, we will start to look for the star of Bethlehem.

But first, we have to look for clues in Scripture.

So, Matthew 2, let's start in verse 1.

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem, in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews?

We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.

In the ESV, there is a footnote for rose, meaning rising in the east, just like our sun rises in the east.

This talks about the Magi, the wise men.

They came from the east.

There was an eastern school of Magi started in Babylon, which is today called Iraq.

It was basically a school of respected, intelligent scientists.

We will see nine total clues about the star from Matthew 2.

Now, there's four clues right here in these two verses.

We see that it talks about a birth.

We see it talks about the Jewish nation.

We also see kingship, and it's also rising in the east.

Now, that's important because not all stars rise, like pulsars don't rise and shooting stars don't.

This is Jupiter in the night sky in September of 3 BC, and we're looking 60 miles south of Baghdad, Iraq.

There's a red tail here, so you can see its path better.

Jupiter is rising in the east.

It looks like one star, but let's zoom in, and you can see that there's another star.

The two are so close together that it looks like one really bright star to the naked eye.

Jupiter is called the king planet because it's the largest of our planets, and Regulus is the king star, and that's where we get our word regal.

Meaning king.

Now, let's go back to Matthew 2.

In verse 3, it reads, King Herod was deeply disturbed when he heard this, as was everyone in Jerusalem.

He called a meeting of the leading priests and teachers of religious law and asked, where is the Messiah supposed to be born?

Here's clue number five.

Herod was deeply disturbed.

He had to ask and learn about the star.

This is a clue of what the star was not, because if it had been a comet, it would have been the talk of the town.

Comets were thought to be omens of doom.

If it had been a nova, an exploding star, it would have been recorded in Chinese records.

Novas are recorded, and so are comets.

Now, let's keep reading in Matthew.

In verse 5, In Bethlehem in Judea, they said, For this is what the prophet wrote.

And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are not least among the ruling cities of Judah.

For a ruler will come from you who will be the shepherd for my people Israel.

This is the prophecy about Jesus.

And Herod didn't want another king to rise up against him.

So that's why he tried to kill baby Jesus.

In verse 7, it continues, Then Herod called for a private meeting with the wise men, and he learned from them the time when the star first appeared.

Then he told them, Go to Bethlehem and search carefully for the child.

And when you find him, come back and tell me so that I can go worship him too.

Again, Herod had to learn about the star from the wise men.

He wanted to know where the child was.

And we know that he had some bad intentions.

The Magi gives us clue number 6.

They talk about when the star first appeared.

It had to be the brightest star.

The star had to be significant enough for the Magi to pack up their bags and go for a journey that would take weeks.

We continue in verse 9.

The Bible reads, After this interview, the wise men went their way, and the star they had seen in the east guided them to Bethlehem.

It went ahead of them and stopped over the place where the child was.

Here we see three more clues.

Clue number 7.

The star went ahead of them from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, which is due south five miles.

It had been in the southern part of the sky.

Clue number 8.

The star is described as stopped over Bethlehem.

So how does a star stop?

Clue number 9.

The star endured over time.

It was in the east as they traveled to Jerusalem, and then the south as they journeyed to Bethlehem.

So for contrast, like shooting stars don't endure over time.

You might know that they're just asteroids that burn up as they enter our atmosphere.

So the question is, how can a star stop?

The answer is retrograde motion.

We are viewing the stars from a moving platform, which is the earth.

When you are observing from a moving platform, the object that is moving may appear to be stopped.

For example, when you're driving on the highway, if you're going the same speed, the other car looks like it's not moving at all.

Or if you speed up and pass that car, the other car looks like it's going backwards when we know it's not.

It's just going slower.

There's a tail here for Jupiter again.

And you can see that it gets very close to Regulus, that it seems like one bright star.

And then it turns around and makes a second approach.

And then it turns around and makes a third, which is very rare.

So you have king planet, king star.

And if you stretch it, you can say that Jupiter is forming a halo around Regulus.

In case you're wondering, we're zipping through several weeks of time.

So sometimes you'll see the sun and the moon zip by occasionally.

But where do you get the Jewish nation from the stars?

Let me ask.

What is the tribe that Jesus came from?

It's Judah.

And what animal figure is associated with Judah?

A lion.

Jesus is called the Lion of Judah.

Now, could something be happening in the constellation Leo, the lion?

Well, yes.

The constellations are turned on here.

And you can see that the king planet, Jupiter, is crowning the king star Regulus inside the constellation Leo, the lion.

It's truly magnificent what God did in the sky.

Please turn to Revelations 12.

Now, while all this is going on at night, something else is happening in the daytime.

Revelation 12, 1 through 2 says, A great sign appeared in the heaven.

A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and a crown of 12 stars on her head.

She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.

John is writing about a sign in the sky.

He writes this towards the end of his life to a Christian audience to remind them of what happened in the past.

Let's break down some points here.

Now, who is the woman giving birth?

Well, that's Mary, the virgin.

And she's clothed with the sun, with the moon at her feet.

There is the constellation Virgo, the virgin.

Clothed with the sun.

And the moon rising at her feet.

This is what John is writing about in Revelation.

The moon is a barely crescent moon.

You can barely see it here because it's daytime.

But this is a new moon in September, which marked the Jewish New Year Rosh Hashanah, meaning a new life.

This is believed to be when the angel appeared to Mary and Joseph and Mary conceived.

A new moon of the new year, marking the new life of the new king.

Logically, it would make sense that if this is when Mary conceived, then something should be happening about nine months later, right?

So it's September now.

Let's fast forward and go to June 17th of 2 BC.

On June 17th, 2 BC, two bodies come extremely crazy close together.

One is Jupiter, the king planet, and the other is the brightest object in the night sky besides the moon.

Can anyone guess what that is?

Well, it's Venus, the mother planet.

The king planet and the mother planet come intimately close together.

And what do you get?

Baby Jesus.

Wow, I mean, God is so poetic and beautiful.

The symbolism is tremendous.

Now this image is really zoomed in.

Jupiter and Venus get so close that the naked eye views them as one bright star.

Now notice that they don't overlap each other so they don't block each other's light.

Both of their lights shine together as one.

This was the brightest star that those people have ever seen to mark the birth of Jesus.

With that, the Magi see this and they take off from Babylon to Jerusalem to see and worship their new king.

Now here's Jupiter again in the southern sky and it stops and reverses course.

This clip shows the dates of its movements over a week's time.

Here we are spitting out dates and then it stops on December 25th of 2 BC over the town of Bethlehem and reverses course.

What's significant about December 25th?

Could that be the date that the Magi reached Jesus and gave gifts to the new king?

Could that be the first Christmas?

I think that's very possible.

Please turn to Acts 2.

Now we're going to transition to discussing the cross and crucifixion of Jesus.

In Acts 2, 19 reads, I will show wonders in the heavens above and the signs on the earth below.

Blood and fire and billows of smoke.

The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood.

Before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.

And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Here Peter is preaching a sermon to a large group of people.

He quotes from Joel the prophet.

Peter is talking about, this is about 50 days after Jesus died during Pentecost.

He's reminding these people, you've seen these signs on the day Christ died.

You were there.

It happened as the prophet Joel predicted.

The sun did turn to darkness for three hours when Jesus hung on the cross.

And Joel also talks about a blood moon.

Well, first of all, what is a blood moon?

It's a lunar eclipse.

Here's a photo of a moon in eclipse when it travels into the earth's shadow.

So the next question is, was there a blood moon on the day of the cross?

Well, first of all, we need to know what day to look in, right?

So here's some things we know from the Bible.

When did Jesus die?

Well, it had to be on a Friday, which is preparation day.

You can reference Luke 23, 54.

It had to be just before the Passover feast, John 13, 1.

It had to be the 14th day of the first month, which is Nisan.

Which occurs either in March or April, because, you know, it's the lunar calendar.

But we use a calendar based on the sun and a solar calendar.

And that's a command from Leviticus 23, 5.

It had to be during Pilate's rule.

And from history, we know that Pilate ruled from 26 AD to 36 AD.

And you can reference Matthew 27, verse 2.

Matthew 27:2

And it also has to be at least 33 years after his birth.

So that would put us 31 AD or after.

You can reference Luke 3, 23 in the book of John.

The date that fits is April 3, 33 AD.

This is the date that most people agree that Jesus died.

So was there a blood moon on April 3, 33 AD?

Well, yes, there was.

So here we're looking at April 3, 33 AD on the date that Jesus died.

There is a blood moon.

And then again, it's at the foot of the constellation Virgo, the virgin.

Now remember at the conception of Christ, it was a new moon and a new life.

Now it's a full moon for a life fully lived.

And it's in eclipse because he shed blood for us on the cross.

Now the moon went into eclipse at the time Jesus died at 3 PM.

But that was daytime.

So you couldn't see it yet until it rose from the horizon at night.

In summary, God has made a planet that supports complex life.

Those same factors allow for scientific discovery.

The universe is like a giant clock that is very precise.

When God spoke the universe into existence, he had it planned out the day the angel would appear to Mary to conceive Jesus.

The day Jesus would be born in a manger.

The day he would be the Passover sacrificial lamb on the cross.

Why would God do all of this for you?

What does this mean for you?

He wants us to seek him and love him.

Even though we haven't seen him yet with our physical eyes.

We have no excuse because of the magnificent and amazing universe that he created for us.

So that we could seek him and perhaps find him.

Let's pray.

Glorious, poetic, loving father in heaven.

We praise you today for making the universe and the earth amazing.

We thank you for the meticulous planning to bring Jesus to us.

To walk this earth and to die for our sins.

You allow us a way to seek you and find you and to know you.

I pray for the faith of all those listening to this message today.

That you prompt us to seek you more closely in your word and to obey your commands.

Please guard us from the devil's schemes.

And draw near to us as we celebrate the birth of Christ this Christmas season.

In Jesus's name we pray.

Amen.

Thank you so much for listening to the Kalamazoo Church of Christ podcast.

If you're in the Kalamazoo area, we'd love to get connected.

Please go to kalamazoo.church and fill in your information to come to a Sunday service or any other event that we have going on.

In any case, you'll be hearing from us next week.