Fools And Wise Men, Part 2

Matthew 2:7‑12

     Take your Bible and let's look at the second chapter of Matthew, Matthew chapter two. What a great time we're having in the Book of Matthew. The indication of your response by your being here with such anticipation is really a joy to my heart. This is just ... in fact this Book is goin' get better and better and better as we go because we'll build a deeper and deeper backlog of its understanding that'll enrich every passage, it's just a tremendous, tremendous Book. It's really the, the kickoff of the whole New Testament and aptly placed by the Holy Spirit at the very beginning of the New Testament.

     The theme of the New Testament as you well know is Jesus Christ; He is the theme of the New Testament. Particularly, is He the object of these four Gospels as they are known, that begin the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Each of these Gospels, each of these evangelist writers portrays Jesus Christ in a unique way. Although they all four cover His life, they cover it in very, very unique styles and from a very, very unique perspective.

     In Matthew, He is the sovereign who comes to reign and rule. In Mark, He is the servant who comes to serve and to suffer. In Luke, He is the Son of man who comes to share and sympathize. In John, He is the Son of God who comes to reveal and redeem. And each one of the evangelists approaches the person of Jesus Christ in a very special way. And there's a wonderful blending as you note as I went through that, in Matthew He's the sovereign, in Mark He's the servant, notice the ultimate contrast, He is the sovereign, He is the servant, two extremes. And then you come to that same kind of extreme contrast in the last two, in Luke He is the Son of man, and in John the Son of God, two absolute opposites. Man and God, sovereign and servant. And so the dimensions of Jesus Christ fill in all the space between those two, in both cases. The sovereign God and the servant man, and everything in between that fills up all that He is. This is the principle behind the diversity in the four Gospels.

     We know that Matthew presents Jesus Christ as King, as sovereign. Everything in Matthew focuses on His majesty, on His sovereignty, on His great personage, as the Ruler the one who has the right to reign, the Messiah, the anointed one, the promised King. In fact the opening sentence of Matthew gives you the key, remember it, in 1:1? "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham. And naturally David was the great king, David was the one who fostered the royal line. And so Matthew at the very beginning emphasizes that Jesus Christ comes from David, He comes originating in Abraham as it were in terms of the Jewish race, and coming through the line of David which is His right to reign and rule. And so the beginning of this Gospel is unique to Matthew, no other Gospel begins this way. Matthew begins this way because Matthew presents Him as King, and so Matthew traces the Lord's lineage from Abraham through the royal line of David.

     Now I just told you that Mark presents Him as servant, and because Mark presents Him as servant Mark has no genealogy at all, because the lineage of a servant is irrelevant. So there is no genealogy at all in Mark. And Luke presents Him as the Son of man, and since Luke presents Him as the Son of man, Luke takes His genealogy all the way back and starts with Adam. Because Luke wants us to know that He is a man from the loins of the first man, Adam. And John, the fourth Gospel who presents Christ as the Son of God by‑passes all human genealogy and simply says, "In the beginning was God, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." And so he goes immediately back to eternity past and establishes the eternal es­sence of Christ. And you see that each of the Gospels in line with its emphasis matches its genealogy. And so we see in Matthew, He is the Messiah King, He is the anointed sovereign, and thus He has come to us through the line of David.

     Now we have traced chapter one and seen that the royal line comes through David and down through Joseph and Mary and Jesus is born, and He is born with the right to reign. If the Jews had been having a king in that day Jesus Christ would have been by birth King of Israel. He had that lineage and that is the emphasis of chapter one, Matthew establishing that He is King, and we pointed out every de­tail right down to the virgin birth, in every single detail there is the thrust that He has the right to reign on the throne of David.

     Now having established that He is a King by lineage, then in chapter two Matthew re‑emphasizes that He is a King in terms of the fact that certain people paid Him homage as a King. If He's a King, Matthew is saying to us, it ought to be evident by His genealogy. He has to be the child of kings, if He is a King it ought to be evident by the way people respond to Him, and so in chapter two Matthew tells us the story of certain wise men who came to proclaim that Jesus was indeed a King, and to bow at His feet and worship Him as King. Now that again is part of Matthew's emphasis. He is King by virtue of His genealogy, He is King by virtue of the royal majesty that was displayed, and accepted and honored and revealed by the work and the effort of these wise men coming and bringing certain gifts.

     Now what did we learn about the wise men? There are some fascinating things we need to know about them, and we've covered them, we're not going to go into it again I'll just very briefly remind you of some things. You'll notice that in verse 1 of chapter 2 it says, there were some wise men who came from the east. The word wise men is an untranslatable word, it's the word Magi, M‑a‑g‑i. It is simply as a designation of a hereditary priesthood tribe from mog... among the people known as the Medes.

     The Medes were a large group of people, among them there were various tribes and one of the tribes was the Magi tribe and it was a hereditary priesthood. These were very high ranking official priest type people among the Medes, much as the Levites were the priests among the Jews. They rose by virtue of their wisdom, by virtue of some occultic powers, by virtue of some astrological and astronomical ability that they had, they rose to places of being the advisors to the kings and the courts of Babylon, Persia and Media. So they were high ranking, they became so high ranking in fact, that no king ever took the throne of the Persian or Parthian Empire that wasn't trained in their laws, known as the laws of the Medes and the Persians, and no king ever took place that was not approved by them.

     So they were as we saw the official king makers of the great empire to the east of Israel. It was their business to recognize and to coronate kings. They had been in the courts of kings for years and years and years, even centuries. And they were the official king makers of the east. And how significant it is that these official eastern king makers find their way to Bethlehem, indeed to honor the one who is born, the Lord Jesus Christ and to honor Him as King. And so Matthew is making his point again, He is King by virtue of lineage, He is King by virtue of recognition. And interestingly enough it is recognition on the part of Gentiles rather than Jews, official king makers from the east.

     And I might add this note, to remind you. You say, where did they get the information about Him? And I told you that 586 B.C. some 500 hundred plus years before Christ was born, Israel was taken into captivity in Babylon, remember? Israel was led away captive to Babylon, to this part of the world, and when they were there they told these people, these Babylonians and these Medes and these Persians who were all mixed into that area, they told them about the King that was going to be born.

     And in fact there was one of those Jews who rose to a place of great prominence, who was he? Daniel. Daniel, it says in Daniel 5:11 became the chief of the Magi, and no doubt this great prophet of God told them about the coming King, so they were ready for this, they were looking and through the centuries waiting for this great individual to arrive on the scene, and they had passed down this information and when the time came they were ready to see Him as King, to recognize it.

     Now we added another note that I just would remind you of. There were two great powers in the world at the time. The power in the east was this emerging Persian or as it was called then the Parthian Empire. That was kind of the emerging power in a sense, although at one time they were the great power in the world, they were sort of trying to reassert themselves, and the great power in the west was whom? Was Rome, and Rome for all intents and purposes really dominated everything. So in the west, west of the land of Israel all that great European continent and elsewhere even including Israel ‑‑ and eastern of that, the Romans dominated. But the east was always fomenting, always wanting to have rebellions, always starting little wars here and there, and so there was this great hostility between the west and the east. Consequently, the eastern empire was looking for a king, they had a king called Phraortes the Fourth who was deposed because he was inept, and they were looking for a king, they were searching for a king.

     And these wise men then when they came were these Magi really felt maybe this is the monarch we've been looking for, maybe this is the one who can take the reins and be the invincible King we need and lead us against the Roman opposition, and we can gain back the world we once conquered. There was a time when the Babylonians and the Medo‑Persians ruled the world. And so they were looking for a king.

     And beyond that I believe these Magi also were looking for more than a king, I think that they were real God fearers, and I think they saw not just the politics of it, but I think they saw the religion in it, I think they were recognizing that this was an unusual act of God to bring about His anointed King, the one prophesied in the Old Testament. So I think as well as political ends I think they had spiritual ends in their minds as well. And so they came when they knew the King was going to be born, when God revealed it to them by the marvelous shining of the shekinah glory in the sky in the east, and they put that together obviously with the scriptures they had been taught by Daniel and the other Jews, and they immediately packed up and they went to Jerusalem believing that here was perhaps the political king they'd awaited, and no doubt the spiritual ruler that Daniel and the other Jews had talked about for so many centuries.

     And so they came to Jerusalem. A group of official Persian king makers looking for a new king. And that is really what Matthew wants you to see, Jesus Christ is King, and these Oriental king makers whose business it was to recognize kings knew it. And in a real sense these people were the first fruits of the Gentiles to come to Christ. And by the way, the Jewish world didn't seem to recognize what was go­ing on at all, and that fits the scripture because it says, "He cameunto his own and his own (what?) received him not."

     Now with that as the stage we look at the five acts in the drama played out in verses 1 to 12. Let's look at them. We saw first of all the arrival, and we'll review for a minute. We saw the arrival in verses 1 and 2, "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod, the king, behold, there came Magi from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen his astēr and you remember I told you that means His blazing forth, really His shekinah His glory, "in the east, and are come to worship him."    Now they knew He was a King and they came to worship Him as a King. That is Matthew's great testimony, here is the non Jewish world, the greatest officials in the Orient, the king makers of the world, and they see that He's a King. Can you imagine the devastation that Matthew's Gospel caused in the Jewish world when it was finally penned around A.D. 50, and they har...started reading this stuff? That the one that they had crucified was in fact recognized by the official king makers of the east as a King, as the King God had promised. Matthew really writes a devastating word to the remaining people who already have done away with Jesus Christ, by the time he writes this Gospel and says to them, and He was a King, He was the King.

     And so historians tell us that when they arrived it wasn't just three fel­la's comin' into town on some old camels, like the Christmas cards, we don't know how many there were uh, some estimates as many as twelve and even more, but I wouldn't even bother a guess cause the Bible doesn't say, but there were a group of these official king makers who rode into town with their peaked con­ical ha ... hats stickin' way up in the air with the big flaps that came all the way down below their chin, and they had wild flowing robes and they were riding Persian steeds, and historians tell us they were accompanied by the crack troops of the Persian army, and when they arrived in the little town of Jerusalem they were news, believe me. They were news. It was a formidable group. They had seen the sign of the Son of man and they had come to worship Him.

     To worship means...literally proskuneō means to stoop to kiss. It was a word that spoke about the way you paid homage to a monarch, you stooped down and you kissed his foot. The word proskuneō finally came to mean any internal attitude of adoration or worship to someone great­er than yourself. They came to worship. By the way, an interesting thing the word proskuneō, means to kiss the feet of or to stoop to kiss, or to kiss reverently. When the New Testament uses that word, it is always used of something truly or something supposedly divine, it is a word that is only fit for deity, it is only fit for deity. You remem­ber when John tried to worship the angel in Revelation and the angel said, get up don't proskuneō me, proskuneō God. He's the only one worthy of such worship.

     Kittel, who has written such a, a marvelous series of word studies on the great incomparable work says, "the proskunasis is proskuneō of the wise men is truly an offering to the ruler of the universe." End quote. It was a word reserved for deity, and when they came I believe they not only saw Him in verse 2 as a King of the Jews politically but they saw Him as the ruler of the world, which means they saw more than humanity, they saw deity.

     And there was a term, Matthew used it here, that is used in the scripture only when it is to be offered to a god, whether wittingly or unwittingly it is in fact a god the word is reserved for gods. In fact Matthew reinforces the use of this word later on as we'll see in Matthew 4, in the expression of Satan because Satan asks Christ if Christ would please bow down and proskuneō him, and Christ refuses and says, that is for God and God alone. I believe the Magi recognized the King but beyond the politics it seems fair to me to say they probably recognized God and they came to worship more than a King, they came to worship the anointed one that God had sent, the one fulfilling the Old Testament prophecies, none other than the supernatural Lord Jesus Christ!

     So the arrival. Then we saw the agitation in verse 3, "When Herod, the king, had heard these things, he was troubled," well, we understand that, "and all Jerusalem with him." He was the current king, and these guys arrive in town and say, where is the new King of the Jews? And his first reaction is huh!? What new King? And when they came with all of their regalia, and he knew they were official Persian king makers he could just see them finding this individual, crowning this individual King, this individual rising to take the throne of the Parthian Empire, and then sweeping back across the west to fight the war right on the territory of Israel and they becoming the victims.

     And Herod who was an Edomite, an Idumean who had been given his job by the Roman government because he had clawed and scratched and plotted and killed and murdered and slaughtered to get his way to some political power was panicky because he felt he was going to loose his job, even though he was seventy years old and already nearly sick unto death. But he was afraid, his jealousy, his suspicion and his fear agitated him, he was troubled, the word means agitated he was really shaking. And all Jerusalem was with him, and I told you last time the reason Jerusalem was so shaken was because they knew if he was mad they were going to suffer. You remember I told you what he planned for his death? He said, nobody will mourn when I die so collect all the finest people in the land of Israel, all the finest people rather, in the city of Jerusalem, get them all together and the moment I die kill them all, so that there'll be mourning in this city when I die. That's the kind of man he was. And so they were panicky cause they knew if he was upset they would pay consequences, and indeed they did because it wasn't long after this that he got all the babies under two years of age in Bethlehem and the surrounding area and murdered all of them. They had a right to be troubled. So Herod was agitated.