Dennis Tuuri

# Reformation Covenant Church Sermon Transcript
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Matthew 2:1-12. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Matthew 2, beginning at verse one.

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 was born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.

And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. So they said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet: ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judea, are not the least among the rulers of Judah. For out of you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’”

Then Herod, when he had secretly called the wise men, determined from them what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the young child. And when you have found him, bring back word to me that I may come and worship him also.”

When they heard the king, they departed. And behold, the star which they had seen in the east went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy.

And when they had come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother and fell down and worshiped him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Then being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed for their own country another way.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this your holy Scripture. We thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit who inspired these Scriptures. And we pray now, Lord God, that your Spirit would open these Scriptures to our understanding. Open our ears, Lord God, that we may hear your word and have our lives transformed by the powerful work of the Lord Jesus Christ and the ministration of the Holy Ghost. In Christ’s name we ask this. Amen.

Please be seated. Children who need nursery attention may be dismissed along with the workers.

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Well, if you think we’re rushing the season just a bit by singing the songs we sung today—which would normally be sung, if they’re sung in worship at all, on the Sunday closest to just before Christmas—we’re rushing the season even more than that because we’re going to talk about Epiphany a little bit by way of introduction to the text.

When we sang in the opening hymn of praise about going to Bethlehem, it’s because our text today is the traveling of the magi to Bethlehem and the biblical text concerning that. This is normally celebrated—that is, the trip of the magi to see the Savior and pay him homage—at a feast known as Epiphany. The twelve days of Christmas is the twelve days following Christmas, leading up to, in the calendar of the church, Epiphany.

Epiphany means an appearance or manifestation, and the word is found a couple of times in different forms in Titus 2:11-13:

“For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.”

May God, during this time of our worship cycle as we look at a series of Advent messages and as we look today at a message that is usually addressed in Epiphany, grant that we would deny ungodliness and worldly lust. And may he grant that we would live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, in the context and having understanding that our Savior has appeared and shall appear again in the rhythm of the church year.

Epiphany is the season that follows directly after Christmas. The Epiphany date is January 6th, as I said, and the cycle moves from Epiphany through several weeks until the season of Lent. So that’s kind of a portion of the church year the church has historically used to celebrate Epiphany.

Now Epiphany was also called theophany, the appearance of God; the feast of the manifestation; the feast of lights, Christ appearing as light; and the feast of the appearing Christ.

Now, as you know from the early centuries of the church, there was a development of the eastern church and the western church. The eastern church—we usually think of them as the eastern orthodox churches. The western church was the Roman church, which then went through the Reformation. And these two branches of Christendom had a different emphasis as to what Epiphany was.

In the eastern branch of the church, then and now, Epiphany was the celebration of the baptism of our Savior, with the appearing of the Holy Ghost descending upon him at his baptism. So that was their stress. In the western church, and particularly after December 25th was set apart as the commemoration of the birth of the Savior, Epiphany was primarily concerned with our text today—the appearing of the magi of Christ. But really it’s the appearing of Christ to the Gentiles that’s portrayed at Epiphany.

Jesus manifests himself, first, in terms of the light that guides the wise men, the magi, to him, and then he manifests himself to them as they give him homage and worship. And so it is typical that Epiphany will have a missionary emphasis, because it’s that part of the text of the early life of our Savior that demonstrates that the gospel goes to all the nations. All the nations of the earth, as prophesied in Isaiah 60, go up to give gifts to Christ—in the context, or by way of example, in these wise men who come from the east.

And so in the providence of God—we didn’t plan it this way, but in the providence of God—we have kind of an Epiphany message today. And we have, in the context of our meal together, the visionary presentation by Pastor Chris W., Elder Chris W., of his trip to India. So that fits right in with the message of Epiphany.

Now, by way of review where we’re going with this series of messages: we’re looking at the Gospel of Matthew in this season of Advent and Epiphany. And we’re looking at it in terms of a set of bookends as we move in from the end of the book. In other words, we began by looking at the very first portion of Matthew and the very concluding portion of Matthew, and we saw there a pedigree of the royal descent of our Savior, tracing him back to Abraham and David, showing he was of the Davidic line—he is Messiah, he’s pedigreed that way—in the first portion of Matthew. And at the end of Matthew we have the great commission of that pedigreed Messiah to go out to his disciples to disciple the world.

So we have the pedigree and then the commission as the bookends of Matthew. Then as we go in the next section in from the beginning and the end, we saw a common theme there as well. We saw his incarnation in the Holy Ghost, bringing about the conception—the immaculate conception of our Savior—in Mary’s womb in the last half of the first chapter of Matthew, the incarnation. And corresponding to that, just in from the great commission, is Christ’s resurrection.

In both accounts, we had Marys involved, didn’t we? Mary conceives here, and then two other Marys at the conclusion of the book go to the tomb, not thinking to see him resurrected, and yet he is raised from the dead. So we have Marys. We’ve got angelic intervention with Joseph in the last half of chapter 1 of Matthew, and angelic interpretation to the Marys at the tomb, at the last section—the correlary section—at the concluding portions of Matthew, first half of chapter 28.

And then we also have the Savior being incarnated, conceived in Mary, being portrayed in the text from Matthew. His pedigree moves to his incarnation and his resurrection. In his resurrected form, he then appears to the two Marys in the context of that. So we have incarnation and resurrection. He was incarnated that he might be resurrected and raised up as a new humanity.

Remember we spoke of the importance of seeing the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is all over the nativity account of our Savior. Everywhere you turn, you’ll notice—as you do the play practices today, as you see the Christmas play—the Holy Spirit is mentioned repeatedly. He is at work by way of imagery in Matthew 1 with a new creation, a new humanity as it were.

Not creating the Son of God—the Son of God is not created; he is eternal. But in terms of having the humanity of Jesus Christ, Christ become incarnate in Mary—that is the particular work of the Holy Spirit. And we said it’s the same sort of work in us. We also have a supernatural recreation, as it were. As the new humanity was recreated in Christ, a new genesis as it were, the same thing happens to us when we’re born again, the work of the Holy Spirit. And that has great implications.

Now our text today will show the great implications it has. Again, by way of emphasis: the Epiphany to the whole world. But in a way, we’ve already seen that prefigured, have we not, in the genealogies of Christ?

Remember those—the women that are mentioned in the genealogy of Christ leading up to Mary. There were four women: three with names, one unnamed. And those women were all Gentile women. We had Tamar, we had Rahab, we had Ruth, and we also had the wife of the Hittite. Now, she was not a Gentile woman, but she’s identified—Bathsheba—not by name, but by being the wife of a Hittite.

So we’ve got a Hittite going on there. We’ve got a Moabite woman. We’ve got a Canaanite woman. We have Gentiles pictured as part of the pedigree line of Christ, to indicate that one of the huge themes of Matthew is the inclusion of the Gentile world into the full possession of salvation through Christ.

His gospel will now, as we have at the great commission, permeate the whole earth. George Schaeffer was saying a nice picture of that is when Miller Paint or one of these paint companies—they got this globe and they say we cover the earth. And this paint goes out beautiful colored paint on the earth. Well, the gospel of the Savior goes out and colorizes, brings beauty, maturation, glory to the world. And that’s what the book of Matthew is all about, and in a very striking way that’s what’s portrayed for us today in this account that’s so familiar to us and yet perhaps we haven’t meditated on all the aspects of it.

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So let’s turn to the account itself, and we see this account basically as a series of very dramatic contrasts.

First of all, you may not notice this, and you probably wouldn’t be able to say this apart from the third point—the contrasting characters of the magi and Herod and the rest of Jerusalem on the other side. But you see indicators of that first in the contrasting time frames or time references that are given to us in the opening sentences of this particular section of Scripture.

We are told that “now after Jesus was born”—that’s a time reference. “In Bethlehem of Judea”—that’s a geographic reference. “In the days of Herod the king”—that’s another time reference. “Behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem”—another geographic reference. So we have a couple of geographic and time references in the opening verse and a half of this text.

And what I want us to see there is really there’s some contrast being portrayed. One time reference is that it is indeed after Jesus was born. And our time reference as a Christian world does that same thing, right? We measure time in relationship to being after Jesus was born—anno Domini, in the year of our Lord. It’s by way of rough calculation 1,998 years after Jesus was born. So it’s a time reference to Jesus’s birth, which will become—which will totally change the way time is measured for the rest of history. And we’re measuring time today according to the way—after Jesus was born.

The other time reference given in the text, though, is “in the days of Herod the king.” So you see a positive time reference and then a way that time is marked by looking at the days of Herod the king, the king of Israel—that is in contrast to the time reference to our Savior. And we have the same thing today. Maybe not “in the days of Herod the king,” but now we’re talking about the Common Era as opposed to anno Domini. We have the Common Era.

There’s an attempt on the part of the fallen or the pagan culture to suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness, relative to time references, and to change it into something like “the days of Herod the king.” So we have this contrast portrayed for us.

We also have the contrast portrayed for us of Bethlehem on the one hand, being portrayed here in terms of where Jesus was born, and then Jerusalem on the other hand. Now, Bethlehem was almost a suburb of Jerusalem—maybe five to ten miles to the south—a little town, a country town as it were. And Jerusalem’s the big city. But what we’ll see portrayed here is that those rulers in the big city are bad guys. They have forgotten all about Messiah except when it comes to challenging their political authority. And then all they want to do is kill him.

That’s what Jerusalem is. One of the great pictures of the book of Matthew is how the Jews have completely fallen away from belief in Yahweh in terms of its actual application as seen in the coming of Messiah. And in contrast to that, in Bethlehem, we’re going to see the magi there—the Gentile world—who don’t have the Scriptures, don’t have the covenants of promise directly linked to them, and yet they come and worship Christ.

Tremendous contrast in time reference and also a contrast by way of geography. This contrast finds its most marked form, however, in the text in the contrast between the magi on the one hand and Herod, the chief priests, and scribes and all of Jerusalem on the other.

So we’re going to spend most of our time talking about this contrast and then the related prophecies that come up in the context of the text itself.

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Okay, so we’re on point three on your outline: contrasting characters.

And first of all, we want to talk about the magi and their particular background. Now, we’re going to sing “We Three Kings” as the offertory in a way of remembering the lesson of the magi. We don’t know that there were three of them. We don’t really know they were kings. And the traditional designation of what the gifts were may not be quite the whole story either. But that’s okay, because it’s a way to remember the traveling of the wise men to Bethlehem, and it’s an important device we can use to train our children and ourselves to think correctly.

The text doesn’t say there’s three of them. There were three sets of gifts. So some tradition has said there’s three of them. Tradition has actually given them names—Casper, Melchior, and Balthazar—but we don’t know that for sure. And tradition has called them kings. Now, this last point—that they’re called kings in the song and in tradition—we’ll talk about here because it is significant. There’s really not a lot of significance in terms of how many there were.

Magi is the root term of our word magic or magical, which comes right from magi. And so there’s this connection to magic. There’s a song by Van Morrison. It’s a beautiful song, and one of the lines in it is “This is the day of the great magician who turned the water into wine”—a reference to our Savior. And it may be offensive to some to hear that. But recognize here that the magi are portrayed in a very positive light in this text. They’re the foil as opposed to the evil Herod.

They’re the ones who—we’ll see this, I’m getting a little ahead of myself—what they end up doing is involving themselves in a threefold repetition of homage or worship of Christ for emphasis. Threefold. And they bring out of their treasures. They bow down before him. They kiss the Son, lest he be angry and they perish in the way when his wrath has kindled but a little.

These magi are good guys. That’s what I’m trying to say here. They’re not portrayed as bad guys or somehow just sort of happened on this information as an interesting novelty of history. No, the whole point is the Gentile world is represented in these men, and they’re pictured in a good way.

Why is that? Well, it may interest you to know that Daniel was also a magi. In fact, he was the chief magi, the great magician, we can say, in Babylon. If you turn to Daniel 2:48, we read there of this truth. You remember the magi—the wise guys, the wise men—they couldn’t figure out the dream. But in verse 48 of Daniel chapter 2:

“Then the king promoted Daniel and gave him many great gifts. And made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief administrator over all the wise men of Babylon.”

The wise men of Babylon were the same wise men who originally were Persian or Medo-Persian in that empire. The wise men were originally apparently a priestly caste, and they continued. When, you know, Babylon takes over the Persian Empire—Babylon comes next—and the wise men are seen continuing on in this designation in history, even by the time when Nebuchadnezzar invades the promised land.

We read, and we won’t turn there, but in Jeremiah 39:3, when Nebuchadnezzar attacks and conquers Judah, he is accompanied by a guy whose name is given as Nergal-Sharezer. He was the Rab-Mag, the Rab-Mag, and that means “chief of the magi” or “chief of the Babylonian magi.” So the magi are very active in the affairs of the king and the affairs of these empires.

These magi were originally a priestly caste. When some of them were not involved in actual seats of authority and power in the context of an empire, they would tend to devolve into these kinds of magic act routines that we associate with magic, and hence the association to magic. But in the original sense of understanding, these were men who had a tremendous store of actual knowledge of various disciplines, including astronomy—a correct understanding of the stars and their significance, as we see positively portrayed to us here in this account from the Gospel of Matthew.

These men were trained in various ways. These men are, as I said, present in the book of Daniel as among the highest ranking officials in Babylon, and Daniel becomes the great magician, the great magi as it were, in the context of that.

Furthermore, we read from some historians that no Persian was ever able to become king without mastering the scientific and religious disciplines of the magi and then being approved and crowned by the magi. And this group also largely controlled judicial appointments. In Esther 1, there’s a reference apparently to that.

So these men, these magi, had a tremendous store of knowledge of science, agriculture, mathematics, history, as well as the forces, as it were, of nature. They had tremendous religious and political influence. And you could see them at least as kingmakers, if not kings directly, because of what I’ve just said.

History records that these men were the kingmakers. A king had to come through their training and authority in order to be appointed into rule in Persia and probably in Babylon as well. So when Daniel is brought to the chief civil office, he’s also appointed head over this priestly caste of magi or wise men.

So they weren’t just an odd group of guys. Now, here in the text before us, the magi have knowledge of the coming of the Savior. An interesting historical point is that there were lots of rumors at the time of our Savior’s advent that something big was coming on. I’ll read from two different Roman historians.

The first said: “There had spread over all the orient an old and established belief at that time that it was fated at that time for men coming from Judea to rule the world.”

Another Roman historian wrote this: “There was a firm persuasion that at this very time the east was to grow powerful and rulers coming from Judea were to acquire a universal empire.”

Now, why is that true? Why did they know that? I think one possible explanation for that is that these magi, who had maintained their kingmaking authority from Persia into Babylon into the particular region to the east of the promised land—these magi were still around. And these magi had been ruled over hundreds of years before under Daniel, and they knew the prophecies of Daniel.

He would have trained them in them. They knew that Daniel’s prophecies indicated that the time was now come for Messiah to come. So these magi—rather than being pictured as some sort of weird magicians, guys who were doing weird stuff—I think were portrayed for us, with the correct understanding of history, as kings of a sort who learned this understanding that brought them to Jerusalem at this time. Both the appearance of the star as well as their understanding that this was the time for Messiah to come, from the prophecies of the Hebrew canon at that time.

We’ll look at the prophecy of the star from Balaam’s prophecy in Numbers, and they could, as we said, make a correlation to Daniel and with his time references. They knew this was the time when the king of the Jews—who would have a universal reign—was to come.

So these magi are portrayed for us as kingmakers at least, and you could actually call them kings because the magi were the group from which kings would come. A king would come, go through their training and everything, become one of them, and then be appointed by them as king. So that’s why they’re called kings in the tradition of the church. They really were kingmakers and may have been actual kings who came up through that training of the magi.

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So these are the magi. The text tells us of their response to Christ’s birth. And if we look back to Matthew chapter 2, in verses 2 and 11, we see a threefold repetition of their homage to the Savior.

Verse 2: What are these kingmaker guys—trained by Daniel, trained in the Old Testament, in other words, Gentile God-fearing religious and civil authorities? What do they say? They come to Jerusalem and they say in verse 2:

“Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him.”

“Worship” means to adore, to bow down, to prostrate oneself.

Again, in verse 8, let’s read verse 8. Herod sent them to Bethlehem and said:

“Go and search carefully for the young child, and when you have found him, bring back word to me that I may come and worship him also.”

So the indication from Herod is that they’re going, and they’re going to worship him when they find him. They hear the king, and they depart. And behold, the star they had seen in the east went before them until it came and stood over where the young child was. And when they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy.

Their response to the direction and providence of God in this star is to rejoice with exceedingly great joy—a threefold emphasis of what kind of joy they had. These were not men who just casually had an occasional interest in these sorts of things. These were guys who were exceedingly great and greatly joyous as God confirmed to them the direction in which they would find the King of Kings.

And then in verse 11:

“When they had come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother and fell down and worshiped him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”

Now notice it says “house” and not “manger.” Notice also it says “young child” and not “baby.” And this indicates to us that the wise men do not come to the stable. This is probably anywhere from several months to a year later after Christ’s birth that the wise men actually come to Bethlehem. He’s not a baby anymore. He’s a young child. They’re no longer in a manger. Now they’re in a house.

A third indication is that if Mary and Joseph had received these kinds of gifts before the circumcision of our Savior and his presentation forty days later in the temple in Jerusalem—which they had to do and is recorded for us in Luke—then they would have offered a richer offering than they offered as recorded for us there in that text. They offered a poor man’s offering because they were poor. That was before becoming enriched by the magi’s gifts.

So anyway, this all takes place several months to as much as a year or so after Jesus is born. But the significant thing is that when they go into the house, what is their response to Christ? They worship him. They fall down before him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. They fall down. They kiss his feet, genuflect before him. And then they open up their treasures and give of their treasures.

Gold, frankincense, and myrrh honoring the Savior. So these magi—these God-fearing Gentile kingmakers and kings—knowing the prophecies from the Old Testament, the Old Testament canon at that time, knowing from Daniel’s instruction that the time was to come, they come forward in full belief to what they had been instructed by way of generational instruction from Daniel: that this was now the king of the Jews and would reign universally over all men.

The response of the magi is pictured as an appropriate response for us to see and to imitate as well. The treasure of their hearts was to find and worship Messiah. And so they gave of their physical or monetary treasures because that was an indication that the treasure of their heart was to worship Christ.

Now, we’ll talk about this in a couple of minutes—that this prefigures the adoration of Christ by the Gentiles, as we’ve mentioned before. We’ll see that when we get to the prophecies.

Notice also that as they leave Bethlehem, they are warned in a dream by God not to go back to Herod. Now you remember last week Joseph had a dream in which an angel appeared to him to give him instruction about marrying Mary. So the magi here are seen as correlary to Joseph. They’re of that status to receive a dream from God, and intervention that they not return the same way they came. Another indication that they are pictured for us here in a totally positive light.

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Okay, so that’s the good guys. The bad guys are Herod and the chief priests and scribes. Okay, so let’s talk about a contrasting character to the magi, which is Herod.

What’s his background? Well, you boys and girls, have you ever seen that cartoon of Robin Hood where you’ve got Prince John, and King Richard is away, and Prince John is a pretender to the throne? People don’t like him, and you’re all just waiting for the rightful king to come. Well, that’s kind of a little picture of what’s going on here.

Herod was a pretender to the throne. Herod descended from Esau or Edom. He was an Edomite, an Idumean—an Edomite king. One of the proverbial opponents to God’s people in terms of their moving toward the promised land in the Old Testament. One of the line that were seen as outcast and not able to participate in these kinds of roles and functions.

So how did Herod, an Edomite king, get to rule in Jerusalem? Well, it was the Roman Empire. He had been trained in Rome, and he came favorably under the eye of Octavian, Augustus Caesar, as well as Mark Anthony. And so those Roman rulers had the Roman Senate appoint him king over what was known as Judea—all of Palestine. So he’s really a pretender to the throne. He’s not of the correct lineage and background. And he represents Rome’s face, the appearance of Rome, the manifestation of Roman control in Jerusalem.

And for that reason, he wasn’t really a very favored sort of fellow. However, he did have certain historic traits. History records for us that he did have what some would call good traits. He had a love for architecture and he actually advanced architectural reforms as well as cultural reforms in the context of Jerusalem and in all of Palestine. He built theaters, he built racetracks, he built structures to provide entertainment for the people. He, of course, rebuilt the temple—Herod’s temple—in terms of it being a very beautiful temple, reconstructed that.

He also revived Samaria, rebuilt that. He built a beautiful port city called Caesarea in honor of Caesar Augustus. And in general he was really interested in architecture and cultural advancement. He also oversaw the construction of the impregnable fortress of Masada, which we know in what, AD 74 or something—it’s the story where all the Jews killed themselves rather than be conquered by the Romans. But it was an impregnable fortress, and Herod built that also.

So he had these kinds of cultural, civilizational, architectural sorts of things going for him. But the counterbalance of that, in terms of his background, was he was a very wicked, ordinary, evil guy. He was incredibly paranoid and suspicious. He had nine or ten wives and killed at least one or two of them. He killed three of his own sons who he thought challenged him for the throne.

He, of course, the great abomination that he did, will be recorded for us later on, when we see the end result of him knowing about Christ being born in Bethlehem—he participates in what the church has called the slaughter of the innocents. He sends word and he kills every child at Bethlehem, ages two and under. That’s the kind of guy he was. Wicked, mean, nasty, powerful, a brute of a man, in spite of all this cultural and civilization building sort of stuff that he does.

When he was on his deathbed, he was tormented with diseases toward the end of his life. And from his deathbed, he knew that no one would mourn him. So what he did was he gathered up some of the leading popular religious and civil figures in Jerusalem that the people really loved. He gathered them up and imprisoned them. Basically, when he died, he had them killed so that mourning would happen in Jerusalem at his death. I mean, that’s how wicked this fellow was.

Now, on your outline I’ve got the word Lamech, because remember Lamech and his line was the same sort of thing. They built the cultural—remember the Enoch factor. His son, the bad Enoch, not the good Enoch, is the one who built cities and cultural culture and civilization. Well, Herod’s really a picture of those—the opening degeneration of the ungodly line, the full manifestation of it.

And here we have an Edomite, tyrannical, miserable, evil king, yet doing cultural and civil things that the people probably liked. You know, enough bread and circuses, blowing in my ear, and I’ll follow you anywhere. That’s kind of the idea, and Jerusalem seemed to follow him anywhere. That’s the kind of guy we have.

It may well be that Daniel 11 is a reference to Herod in the prophecies of Daniel. I have it on your outline because there is the willful king portrayed in Daniel 11. And in verse 44, it says:

“Tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him. Therefore, he shall go forth with great fury to destroy and utterly to take away many.”

And that’s just what happens with Herod. His response is not the magi’s response. What’s his response, now—this contrasting character to the magi?

Well, his response is also kind of a threefold repetition. He involves himself in a fearful agitation. He hears the words “Christ is born”—at least the magi say so—and he becomes troubled, agitated, anxious. And all Jerusalem with him.

His first response is not, “Oh, this is great. The king has come now. Now the true king is here, and I can learn how I should reign better.” No, he is troubled and agitated.

Secondly, he falls into conspiratorial sorts of ways. Look at the text again. Verse 3:

“When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born.”

Now, what was he doing? Was he just being a good host to the magi? Oh, you want to know? Well, I’ll help you find out. I don’t think so. Because Matthew here uses a word for “gathering together” the chief priests and scribes that he’s going to use repeatedly throughout his gospel. He gathers together. Different groups of people gather together six, seven, eight times in Matthew’s gospel.

And what happens from now on is they’re gathering together—it’s part of the conspiracy or plot to destroy the Savior. That’s why they gather together. So we can read into this, knowing Herod’s character, what Herod ends up doing, and knowing how Matthew uses this phrase “to gather the chief priests and scribes,” we can assume here that what Herod is doing is he’s moving from agitation to a hardening of heart to actually plot and conspire against Messiah by finding out where he is born so he can go and kill him.

So he moves from agitation and fear to conspiracy. And he also engages then in outright deceit as he moves his plan to kill Messiah. We read in verse 8:

“He tells the magi, ‘Yeah, go and carefully search, and I want to worship this guy, and when you find out where he is, come back and tell me, because I want to worship him.’”

Flat out lie. What he wants to do is worship himself, worship the devil, and kill Jesus.

And when that doesn’t work out—when God has the wise men go back another way and God sends Jesus down to Egypt for safety—then Herod gets all upset and kills all the babies in Bethlehem, two years and under.

So he is involved in this threefold progression. In contrast to the magi, who go through worshiping, worshiping, bowing down and worshiping, giving gifts, Herod goes through a process of being fearful and agitated, forming conspiracies, and then taking steps to affect the end of the conspiracy, which is to kill Messiah.

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Okay, so we have these great contrasting characters. And there’s a third set of people: the chief priests and scribes.

The chief priests and scribes here are the religious and civil leaders of Jerusalem or Israel at this time. They are, for the most part, nearly all Sadducees. They’re liberals, and their response to Christ’s birth—you know, they’re part of this conspiracy. He brings them into it, but at first, and this is portrayed in the other gospel accounts as well, for the most part, they’re basically uninterested at first.

I mean, it’s pretty interesting, isn’t it, that first of all, the news has to come to Jerusalem from Gentile kings a long way away? And then when they do send them off, they say, “Oh, okay. He’s supposed to be in Bethlehem.” But none of the religious or civil rulers of Israel in Jerusalem accompany the wise men to go see the Savior. They don’t do it.

See, Herod is interested. He’s forming a plot. But the chief priests and scribes, they don’t feel threatened because they don’t believe any of this stuff. They’re the liberal church. They’re the United Methodist Church down the street. That’s the kind of thing they were. They didn’t believe much of what the Scriptures taught. They didn’t believe in the resurrection. They didn’t believe in heaven and hell, that kind of stuff. They were basically—it was irrelevant to them what was going on. “Oh, these religious guys are talking again.”

You know, it may sound a little bit odd, but Herod at least knew—Herod at least knew that there would be a threat to his throne from this king. Now, maybe it’s just his paranoia at work, you know, that he understands this could be a real threat of people believing Messiah. Or it could be he really did believe the Scriptures, but not in terms of submission to them, but in terms of rebellion against them.

The demons, you know, know too. But they don’t worship God. They tremble. They are fearful and agitated, but they fail to submit themselves to God.

One of the commentators I was reading—I think it was R.J. Rushdoony—said that at least Herod knew what a lot of churchmen don’t know: that a king has appeared on the scene and that king will reign and will reverse and effect changes to religious and civil reign from now on.

You see, the religious leaders of today—many of them are like the religious leaders, the Pharisees or the Sadducees rather, who don’t care about any of it because it’s irrelevant to them.

Well, okay. So that’s another contrasting group.

So you have these tremendous contrasts portrayed for us. Here’s the Jewish people. Yeah, they got an Edomite king, but a lot of those scribes and chief priests are Jewish guys. They got those texts, but they don’t dust them off until the king makes them look something up for them. They don’t care.

Great hub of hubbub going on for the people who understand—from the magi who understand from Daniel—that the time has come now for Messiah to come and a Judean ruler to rule all the world. But they don’t believe any of that stuff. Jerusalem has apostatized from the faith. It has fallen away. It is now in opposition to Christ. The leadership is now saying, “All Jerusalem is also troubled by the news.”

Now, it could be they were just troubled because Herod was a mean and nasty guy and he was going to go into one of his fits of rage again. But, you know, I don’t think you have a culture that has that kind of apostasy at the upper levels without apostasy existing at the lower levels.

We have a country where a president’s being impeached and still has a 60% approval rating in spite of everything he’s done. You know, countries get the rulers they deserve by and large. Now, it’s not true always, but, you know, typically rulers represent the people. Okay?

And so all Jerusalem doesn’t really want much to do with our Savior. It’s interesting that a correlary to this is when Jesus comes in the triumphal entry at the end of the book—comes as king—all the city is abuzz about him then too. “Who is this guy?” And they’re paying hypocritical homage to show that Jesus is king, but they’re calling “Crucify him, crucify him” by the end of the week.

So the whole nation of Israel is, not every last person, but as a covenantal group, in apostasy and in rebellion to God. The vineyard owner has sent his son, and they’re going to kill him.

Tremendous contrast. Matthew Henry says this:

“As the queen of the south, so the wise men of the east will rise up in judgment against the men of that generation and of this one too.”

Matthew Henry wrote, and we could say the same thing to us today: “A Christian nation who does not recognize the kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ and the implications to submit and give Him our treasures will be condemned, for they came from a far country to worship Christ while the Jews, his kinsmen, would not stir a step, would not go to the next town to bid him welcome.”

Tremendous set of contrasts.

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Now there are other elements to this story we want to touch on before we conclude. There is these great contrast portrayed for us of time references, geography, and main characters. But two other very important elements of this story are the prophecies that are indicated here and their meaning, and then also the gifts and what a consideration of those gifts and their biblical meaning mean as well.

Now remember the analogy I have is that you hum a few bars, a couple of notes of the tune, and it brings the whole tune back to you. Now, we don’t know this for sure, but most commentators agree that the reason why the wise men knew that Jesus was coming, that this star was the one they knew of from the prophecy of Balaam from Numbers 24:17-19.

Now, really, the magi order goes back to that time frame and long before. And Balaam was kind of connected in a way with the magi to a certain extent because he’s kind of one of these guys that could work stuff and make stuff happen. And Balaam is called out by Balak. Remember the reference? Balak, the Moabite king, wants the children of Israel cursed. He brings out this wise guy to do it. And Balaam, instead of prophesying curse to Israel, prophesies blessing. “There’s no enchantment against Israel. There’s no divination against Jacob. We don’t need to worry about Friday the 13th.” Very clearly pictured for us in these texts.

But the particular reference in Numbers 24—could you turn there, please, to verse 17?

Numbers 24:17-19:

“I see him, but not now. I behold him, but not near. A star shall come out of Jacob. A scepter shall rise out of Israel and shatter the brow of Moab and destroy all the sons of Sheth. And Edom shall be a possession. Seir also, his enemies, shall be a possession while Israel does valiantly. Out of Jacob one shall have dominion and destroy the remnants of the city.”

Now, if we bring to mind this text when we read the account of the magi and Herod as the contrasting characters, we recognize that the one whom the magi are coming to worship is the one that is prophesied by Balaam. “A star shall come out of Jacob. A scepter shall rise out of Israel and shatter the brow of Moab”—the king that wanted Balaam to curse Israel’s people. And it also says that “Edom shall be a possession.”

The Edomite king Herod is Christ’s possession. He will break him in pieces with a rod of iron. That’s what Christ will do. That’s what the account wants us to think of as we ponder Numbers 24 in the context of an Edomite king and the star leading the Gentiles from the east, the kingmakers, to give him homage and worship.

It also says in verse 19: “Out of Jacob one shall have dominion and destroy the remnants of the city.”

The account of Epiphany is a missionary emphasis in many churches properly because the one who is celebrated at the western tradition of Epiphany—the appearance of Christ to the Gentile kings—is the one who shall have dominion over all the world and who shall indeed destroy the remnants of the city of man. That is, all cities arrayed in opposition to the one whose star has risen.

All cities will be destroyed by this one. All cities in opposition, all things that can be shaken, all kingdoms, empires, the city of men shall be shaken and removed out of the way that the kingdom of God, the city of God, the establishment of God, might remain firm.

Herod is a picture of pagan man building cities and cultures but building them with a vile set of moral characteristics and in opposition to the King of Kings. And Numbers tells us that star is not just a cute little Christmas decoration. It’s the picture to everybody that the great shaking has begun and that Herod and his cultural achievements will find…