Wise Men

Matthew 2, starting in verse 1, reads like this.

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 a 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 chiefs, priests, and scribes of the people, inquired of them where this Christ was to be born.

They told him in Bethlehem of Judea, for it is written by the prophet, and you, O Bethlehem, and 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.

And then Herod summoned the wise men secretly, and he ascertained from them at 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 this child was.

And 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 they worshipped him.

And 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.

This is the word of the Lord.

Seated.

Good evening and Merry Christmas.

Thank you for joining us this evening.

My name is James Rathburn.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

It is a joy to gather together with you this Christmas Eve.

Thanks for uh packing in here as you are.

Good job.

You look like sardines, which I love and eat for breakfast many mornings, and my family hates that.

Thanks uh for uh joining us.

Uh let's pray, and then we'll move into, I call it breakfast.

Let's pray and then we'll move into our uh text for the day.

Holy Father, what a joy to get to gather together on this side of the story of Christmas.

That we don't look forward to the coming of the first coming of Christ, Lord, but we look back on it.

We know that it has happened.

The Lord Jesus Christ has come.

He has stood in our place.

He was born as a man, he suffered and died, and he has risen and sits at the right hand of the Father, Lord, now reigning in the heavens.

We look forward to his return when he makes all things new.

We praise you that we get to remember this unthinkably good story and celebrate it together this evening.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Now, the wise men coming from the east to give gifts to the newborn king.

Isn't it one of the best parts of the Christmas story?

Don't you love the wise men part?

We get all this story of a little Jerusalem thing happening and angels visiting, and that's all wonderful too.

But when you make a nativity scene, you gotta have the wise men in it, because it's this mysterious thing.

These men coming from the east after they see a star.

The what we have of them in scripture is pretty limited, but their sort of legend has grown.

We say that there's three of them.

The scriptures don't say that there's three of them, but they have three gifts, you know.

So the the frankincense and the gold and the myrrh.

And if you ever traveled a long way and you and you've carried more than one thing, it's terrible.

You know?

And if you travel and there's more of you, then why didn't that other person bring a gift?

There's plenty of time to stop along the way.

So three wise men's probably not that far of a stretch to think that there are three of them.

They've sort of become kings.

We just sang a song, We Three Kings of Orient.

So we don't know that they were kings, uh, but they certainly bring kingly gifts, you know, gold.

That's uh that's a king type of thing.

Frankincense.

Have you ever seen a king without frankincense?

I have not no king I want to see.

Doesn't have frankincense or myrrh.

But there's so we three kings, there's there's three of them.

There's kings, they're from the Far East.

It's like they're like Indiana Jones characters, you know, there's wonderful, mysterious, sort of magical, mythical sort of characters.

And then, of course, part of their story is that star.

The star in the heavens that they spot from a faraway land to come and seek out the newborn king.

Now it's this wonderful, it's almost like a fairy tale, this type of story.

But what I hope you can see this evening, what I hope you get a glimpse of, is that this story is not that far off.

This story is there's one sense in which this story can be so ordinary that a story like this might have already happened in your life.

And it might be the very same sort of shape of story in which the Lord has called you to himself.

Because this is what the Lord has done from the beginning.

He's drawn people to himself, so that they might be restored to him in true worship.

We'll see how the Lord does that for the wise men.

And I hope you'll see that story may be yours.

And if that story isn't yours, perhaps tonight, perhaps this Christmas Eve, it it might be.

It begins in Matthew 2, 1 through 2.

It says, 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.

Wise men, it translates this word.

You might have heard them called the Magi.

It's a very strange word.

It's a sort of a comprehensive term.

Wise men is actually a pretty good translation, I think, to call them wise men, but it's a tough thing to pin down.

There's something like they're like scholars, they're philosophers, they're astrologers that map the stars, and they uh they're they're like the scientists of their day.

They're the learned men of their day.

And they're the ones who had spent time mapping the heavens and noticing strange things and mapping the movement of the stars onto the events of the world.

Sort of a mysterious thing.

Now, they arrive in Jerusalem because they share, they had seen the star, which was assigned to them that the king of the Jews had been born.

Now, how is it that these men from the east, not in Jerusalem, would be considerate of the birth of the king of the Jews?

And why is it that they would have been tracking the heavens in search of a star which would be assigned to them of the birth of the king of the Jews?

There's a couple of uh we could we could wonder at a couple of things we aren't told exactly, but perhaps they had become familiar with someone in the legacy of Daniel.

Daniel who had risen to the highest station under the king of Babylon.

Perhaps they had come from Babylon.

And because of the influence of someone like Daniel or many of the other exiled Jews who had lived in the East, perhaps they had encountered the scriptures and learned these sorts of things.

Likewise, we have stories, for example, in Numbers 24, when Baloch, this king, desires to curse the Israelites, he calls for himself a local prophet, and he asks the prophet to pronounce a curse over the Israelites, and he curses, uh, he seeks to curse them, and the prophet that he finds is Balaam.

But the Lord takes hold of Balaam, this Gentile prophet, and he is only able to pronounce blessing on the people of Israel.

And so we see this Gentile prophet, and one of the blessings that he uh places on the people of Israel is he says, there will be a star that comes out of Jacob, and there will be a scepter that rises out of Israel.

And so that among this Gentile prophet, there's this news of a star rising out of Israel.

Perhaps the wise men had enough acquaintance with the scriptures that they had to had remembered that sort of prophecy.

Perhaps they had encountered some Jews in exile, and in when they were in the East, they knew these.

And these were the most learned men.

And so they likely gathered the most ancient texts they could find, and they would gather these and they would they would assess the stars, and then they would see this star means the king has been born.

But that's weird, isn't it?

We don't often look to the stars in order to judge our lives.

In fact, if we hear that people are looking to the stars to judge their lives, then we take them aside and we say, You gotta quit talking about this out loud and in front of people.

You're making them look weird.

I know it it is strange.

It's a strange thing when we have our scientific hats on, but as somebody who spends a lot of time among the laptop class and coffee shops, I hear people talk about their relational problems, and I can tell you that consulting the stars is a sufficient reason to break up with someone.

In our own modern culture today, it's a sufficient reason.

And so we know there's some sort of intuition that the heavens, looking to the heavens, must tell us something about the way things ought to be on earth.

This is a deeply human, it's an almost ordinary intuition.

Do you remember that scene in The Lion King, which is a wonderful movie if you haven't seen The Lion King?

It's a great movie.

It came out some years ago.

And there's this scene where Timone and Poomba and Simba, the original three wise men, are consulting the stars, and they look up, and Pumba asks Timone, Well, have you ever wondered what those spots of light in the uh night sky are?

And Tone says, wondered, I know what they are, which is very like Timone, which you'd know if you've seen the movie.

It's a wonderful movie.

And Timon says, I know what those spots of light are.

They're fireflies that flew too close to the sky and they got stuck in that big bluish-black thing, which is funny.

The real funny part, which you guys will see soon when I tell it to you, is when Pumba says, I always thought they were giant balls of flaming gas billions of miles away.

And we all laugh, it's a laugh line because we uh we all we're like, yes, of course, I know what stars are.

There'd, and then Timone says, everything's about gas with you, Pumba.

But they're they're millions of miles away, giant balls of flaming gas.

You know, we know what they are.

That has nothing to do with what our lives are like.

There's no meaning to be discerned from that sort of a thing, unless you're some ancient magician or something from some far-off strange land in some sort of fairy tale story.

But there's this other uh thing that hasn't been turned into a movie.

It's a great book called the uh series of books, The Chronicles of Narnia, and one of those books, in The Voyage of the Don Treader, there's one of my favorite lines that C.S.

Lewis says in this book.

And in the voyage of the Don Treader, they happen to, the children in the in the story happen to meet a star.

And they're talking with a star.

And we know that stars talk because we've all seen it's a wonderful life.

And they so they're talking with a star, and they realize, oh, how strange to be talking with a star.

And Eustace says, uh, in our world, a star is a huge ball of flaming gas, is what Eustace says to the star that they're talking to, because they're in Narnia, you know.

And so in our world, which is here, where we are, you can see it from here, right here, we say uh a star is just a huge ball of flaming gas.

And then the star replies to them and says, Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what a star is made of.

Isn't that a good line?

Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what a star is made of.

You know, what are they getting at?

Why is that, why does that capture our imaginations and feel so wonderful on a magical Christmas Eve night?

It's because what they're showing us is that the ability to describe what something is is not the same as being able to know what something means.

And here's the great question of the stars.

They're the best part of camping by far.

The best part of camping is the stars.

And when you go out and you look at the stars, you do you look up and you say, wow, these millions of miles away, balls of gas, how wonderful and incredible.

But there's another question in your heart.

And the other question in your heart is, what does it mean?

What does it mean that I'm standing here and I can see this wonder and this glory?

It's like a question that's thrust upon you.

And one answer to the question is it doesn't mean anything.

They're just balls of gas, it doesn't mean anything.

But it's an insufficient answer because you know it's it the question is thrust upon you in too strong of a way.

You know that that's just to say that they're just giant balls of flaming gas is just to say what they're made of.

It's not what it is.

It's not what it is.

In Psalm 19, verse 1, it says, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Psalms 19:1

You know, you look up at the stars in the night sky, and it's a question that's thrust upon you.

What does it mean?

Because there's a declaration being made.

There's a declaration of glory, there's a proclamation of handiwork.

You can describe what they're made of, but what they mean is somebody made something of unspeakable glory.

And I can see it from here.

It means something.

In Genesis 1, verse 14, at the creation of the stars, it says, And God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons, for days and years.

Genesis 1:14

The stars in the sky are for signs.

They're to be interpreted and known.

I think much of this has been lost, this interpretation has been lost.

Do not think that you're finding it in the newspaper.

Not that you're finding it in the newspaper, because we don't have newspapers.

But wherever you go to find your horoscope, I'm saying those are probably that's probably I don't think that they have the wisdom of the wise men.

That's what I'm saying.

But there is a meaning there.

There is a meaning there.

What's foolish about it is the uh mode of interpretation.

What's not foolish about it is the compulsion to interpret the glory of the heavens.

Because they are there for signs and they are there for seasons.

Now, the stars that they uh it uh some folks say, I think we can pin down just exactly the star that they were looking at.

And here's an interesting little tidbit on what that may have been.

If you would rewind the astrological, you know, motions of the spheres of the heavens, like you do I've only you can do that when you go to one of those, what are those things on college campuses with the domes and you'd sit there.

Planetarium.

You'd think I would have looked up that word before having a whole thing on it.

When you go to a planetarium, they like rewind to different times of the year and you can see the movement.

So if you do that sort of a thing, then at about four BC, which is about the time that Jesus would have been born, there's an a conjunction of two planets, Jupiter and Saturn.

Have you heard of these planets?

They're very famous.

Jupiter and Saturn.

And to ancient peoples, Saturn represented the West.

Saturn was a Western thing.

And Jupiter represented royalty.

And there was a time at around 4 BC where Saturn and Jupiter conjoined so that the two planets look like one planet.

And if you look at shiny planets up in the sky, they look like stars.

Do you know what the word planet is?

It's Greek, do you know what it's Greek for?

Wander.

Do you know that?

Planetes.

There you go.

You can impress your friends it means wander.

Because they're the wandering stars.

That's what they are.

Everything else fits this perfect pattern.

But then there's these wanderers.

And these two wanderers can join in the heavens.

And they can join, and they it's one is the sign of the West, and one says there's the sign of the king.

Now, does Saturn, the planet, does that mean the West?

Does Jupiter, the planet, does that mean king?

Is that the is that what those things mean?

I don't know.

Would you know?

Maybe.

Maybe.

The stars, they're what are they for?

They're for signs, they're for seasons.

So they saw something and they interpreted it rightly.

It was what did they get?

I want to pin down what they got, the wise men.

They get a glimmer, a glimmer of hope.

That there is a promised king.

And it is a glimmer of hope which captures their imagination because the promises of this promised king arriving, here's what they sound like.

There's a promised king who is coming, who is finally going to make all things new.

There's a promised king who is coming who will be able to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.

There is a promised king who is coming, who is proclaimed in the heavens, and he will be able to make it on earth as it is in heaven.

And their hearts saw a glimmer of that hope.

What if your heart saw a glimmer of that hope?

How far would you travel in order to see if that might be realized?

They were able to travel very far.

And so they arrive in Jerusalem and they say, We've seen the star.

And they're likely expecting, Great, yeah, there's loads of you coming.

We've all seen the star.

This is all this is a wonderful time.

Our scriptures point to it, but that's not exactly what they receive in Jerusalem, though.

In Matthew 2, verses 2 through 4, it says, When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.

Matthew 2:2–4

And assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born.

So Herod gets this news of the wise men wandering around.

Herod was one of those guys who has many spies, and his spies were those types of people who had many eyes.

And so they hear of these wise men coming, and the news makes its way up to Herod the king.

And the news is there's a new king being born in Jerusalem.

There's a new king being born over here.

Herod hears that and he thinks, that's not the best news.

I kind of like the current king.

He was more of a current king type of a guy than a new king type of a guy.

And so his heart was troubled as he hears of some replacement king.

And all of Jerusalem was troubled with him.

Why was all of Jerusalem troubled?

Because Herod was troubled.

And Herod is the type of person who you will find out shortly after the text we're looking at today, who will do things like kill all of the newborn boys under two years old in Bethlehem and the surrounding region.

He's that type of a guy.

And so Herod is troubled, and all of Jerusalem becomes troubled with him.

But he is clever.

And he pulls together all of the scribes of the people and he inquires of them, where do the scriptures say that the Christ is to be born?

And they search the scriptures, or perhaps they knew it rather quickly, and they arrive at Micah 5, chapter uh Micah chapter 5, verse 2, and they share with him in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet.

Micah 5:2

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.

So he hears this news: the king is to be born in Bethlehem, just as the prophet Micah had foretold.

And so he gathers together the wise men, and he has a secret meeting with the wise men, a secret meeting with the king.

It's all very cloak and dagger, and it'd be an interesting event for the wise men.

They meet with King Herod, and he sends them to Bethlehem, and he says to them, 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.

Whereas I imagined him saying it, bring me word that I too may worship the boy.

And they did something like this.

And then the wise men said, I guess that's the way kings talk around here.

It doesn't seem that suspicious to me.

And so they went to the boy, because he has no intention of worshiping this newborn king.

But he shares with them to go to Bethlehem.

And so here's what the wise men received.

Remember, they had just had a glimmer, and they shared about this glimmer of meaning that they had.

They shared about this glimmer, and what they're initially met with is trouble.

There's trouble when they share about the initial glimmer, but then they receive the key that they needed, the key that unlocks the meaning of the star.

It's the scriptures, the word of God, the word of God applied to the meaning of the star, and now they know it.

Now they have it.

And so they're headed to Bethlehem.

In verses 9 and 10, it says, After listening to the king, They went on their way, and behold, the star that they had seen when it rose 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.

Look at what happened.

They had the glimmer, the glimmer of hope, and it's the same star, it's the same star that they had been following this whole time.

Now they're headed towards Bethlehem.

And what do they see?

The star is described, it is explained, the meaning is found within the scriptures.

So now they have the scriptures, and with the scriptures, they look up into the same star, and what is their response?

They are rejoicing exceedingly with great joy.

The Bible is a very spare sort of book.

You know, it doesn't describe things with a lot of words often.

But here we get this description.

They rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.

Why was that?

Because this literal glimmer of meaning, now they have the full expression of it.

There is a king, there is a word that describes the meaning of the star.

It's settling right over the place where we had hoped it would.

The stars were proclaiming the glory of the Messiah.

And then in verse 11, and going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him.

Then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.

They go into the child, they go into the house, they see the child with his mother Mary, and they pour out their gifts to the to the boy, to the young boy king, who they know who he is.

They see the meaning from the scriptures, and they give him this glory of their gifts, gifts worthy of a king, and they bow down in worship to this boy.

Imagine the store the conversation that would have taken place in that home that night.

That they would have heard, you know, we followed the star from a long way off, and then we heard the explanation of him in the scriptures.

Have there been anything, is there anything peculiar about this boy that might make you think?

And then Mary says, I can think of one thing that's a bit strange about him.

Yeah, I'm a virgin mother, have you ever heard of such a thing?

We had a couple of folks tell us about it as well.

I had some dreams, Joseph said.

Gabriel, it was explained by this angel to us from the heavens.

There was a lot to share about the boy.

And so they pour their lives out in worship to the newborn king, rejoicing, a joy that is exceeding.

Isn't it like a fairy tale?

You know, isn't that the way all of our modern, that's the way our modern fairy tales begin.

When you wish upon a star.

Does it make it doesn't even make a difference who you are?

You could be a king in the Far East with limited access to the scriptures, to the true meaning of things, and you set your eyes on the heavens and you catch this glimmer.

This glimmer.

It feels like a story that's very far off, that's very mysterious and very strange.

But what I want to propose to you is this is the ordinary story of coming to see the Lord Jesus Christ.

Because here's how it goes.

This is the way the story goes.

You catch a glimmer of something in your life, and it's like it forces a question on you.

Maybe it was the birth of your child, and you saw the birth of your child, and you thought, there's more to this world than I thought there was.

There's more, we're more than just stuff.

The stars in the heavens are more than just balls of burning gas.

They're proclaiming a meaning.

There is a depth of glory and meaning here.

Maybe it was a glimmer that took the form of a longing.

And you realize there's this sort of longing in your heart.

You realize that there's a sense of homelessness no matter where you are, no matter where you've gone, no matter where you happen to find yourself, you realize there's this in it there's this there's this longing within you for a true meaning, an eternal glory.

You recognize it in the way that things have certain have just gone wrong, there's a there's within you this sense that there's a way things ought to be.

There's a way things should be, should reveal themselves to be, and they don't.

And then that glimmer, it it what happens is there's this glimmer, and then somehow, maybe it's through a Christian friend, maybe it's through wandering into the church, maybe it's through picking up your Bible for the first time in ages.

And you start to look through it, and all of a sudden, that glimmer gets described by the scriptures.

And you see that what that scriptures and what the glimmer were leading you to this whole time was the person of Jesus Christ.

And it becomes this like this: your your world crashes together.

As you see, there is a meaning to this world, because that glimmer that was placed there was placed there in the beginning by the one who was leading me to himself.

And when he led me to himself, what did he ask of me?

He he asked of the fullness of my worship would be laid down to him.

Because who has he revealed himself to be as he called us to himself by his word and by the world that proclaims his glory?

He calls us, he shows himself to be the savior of mankind.

He is the one who is the home that we've been longing for.

He is the one who is the meaning that has been calling out to us.

He is the one who is able to offer the forgiveness of our sins.

He is the one that came to fall under the sword that we deserve to fall under, so that we might be reconciled to God forever, so that the meaning of the heavens, and you know they're meaningful, might crash into the earth, into your very life when you come to see Jesus Christ is the promised King.

This has happened.

It has plainly happened.

It is easy to look at the world and see Jesus.

I'm going to make a bold claim, but that's the way conversations work.

You make hot takes.

You ever been a part of a conversation and you want it to be a fun one?

Then you make hot takes.

Now it's now it's a fun conversation.

You know, now we're working.

It is plain and obvious that Jesus is God.

Just look.

Just look.

Look at you all here today in Denver.

This is much further away than the Far East was to Jerusalem.

And how strange.

We're gathered here today.

You dressed up your kids, you've been wrangling them for the past however too long I've been going.

Because you know it can't be ignored.

It's the only explanation, it's the only thing that makes sense of it all.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

It seems too good to be true.

It seems like you're allowing yourself to enter into a fairy tale, but it is the fairy tale that is true.

He has come.

The king has arrived.

All that is bad will be undone.

All that is your sin can be atoned for, has been atoned for in him.

What if you knew that news was true?

What would you offer to him if you knew that king was there?

You would offer him the best worship you could.

If you had myrrh, you'd give him your myrrh.

If you had frankincense, you'd say, Hey, buddy, you gotta smell this.

It's yours.

Keep it.

If you had gold, you'd take it off and you'd give it to him and say, This belongs to you.

It's the least I could offer.

Because when I was wandering away from you, you came and found me and drew me to yourself that I might live in glory eternally with you in the heavens.

The heavens declare your glory, the skies proclaim your handiwork.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

He has come.

He offers salvation for free for you at great cost to himself.

Let us praise him today, in 2025, in Denver.

Let us give him our worship.

It belongs to him.

Christ is King.

Let's pray.

Lord, you have come.

It is plain.

Lord, we hear the scriptures, the heavens declare it.

The wonders of the world you have placed us in.

The only description of it is that there is a meaning within it.

Why is there meaning within it?

Because it was made by your words.

It is upheld by your word.

And the word has taken on flesh and dwelt among us.

You have made to us known the fullness of the Father's love.

You have gone to the cross.

You have borne our sins and transgressions.

You have lavished us with glory and grace.

We praise you, Lord Jesus.

May you be blessed in our worship this evening.

In Jesus' name, amen.