“Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, 2 “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.” 3 When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 Gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for this is what has been written by the prophet: 6 ‘AND YOU, BETHLEHEM, LAND OF JUDAH, ARE BY NO MEANS LEAST AMONG THE LEADERS OF JUDAH; FOR OUT OF YOU SHALL COME FORTH A RULER WHO WILL SHEPHERD MY PEOPLE ISRAEL.’ ” 7 Then Herod secretly called the magi and determined from them the exact time the star appeared. 8 And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the Child; and when you have found Him, report to me, so that I too may come and worship Him.” 9 After hearing the king, they went their way; and the star, which they had seen in the east, went on before them until it came and stood over the place where the Child was. 10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. 11 After coming into the house they saw the Child with Mary His mother; and they fell to the ground and worshiped Him. Then, opening their treasures, they presented to Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 And having been warned by God in a dream not to return to Herod, the magi left for their own country by another way.”
Any sincere student looking at history and at ancient mythology and fiction literature, both classic and contemporary would have to agree with the assessment that in all of recorded history one common thread connecting all of mankind is that he has looked and longed for the coming of a champion.
There have been and still are various movements in society of people with their heads buried in the sand who hold that mankind is on the way up, that mankind is getting better, that mankind is evolving into something superior, that in the end we will solve all our own problems and graduate to a higher plane.
Realists however know that this simply is not the case. And every time in history someone has made some bold declaration that the human race has learned its lesson and things are getting better, shortly thereafter there is a major war and men have rushed to slaughter one another once more.
One example that comes to mind is the fact that World War I was referred to as ‘the war to end all wars’. None of us living today has to have it pointed out to us how far off base that assertion was.
The world is a mess, it is a mess that has been growing without check since the Fall in the Garden, and thinking, intelligent men and women all over the world are well aware that mankind is in trouble and is not any more likely to find an answer to the dilemma now than in any past generation.
The world needs a champion. The world needs a savior. So it invents mythological gods; it invents superheroes; it seeks an impersonal redeemer in medicine and technology and philosophy… but every time the world thinks it has found what it needs, that in which we have placed our hope disappoints and we are left to begin the search over again.
Science has failed us, philosophy has failed us, religion has failed us, technology continues to give us nothing more substantial than enhanced toys or more deadly weapons, and there is no lasting escape even in fantasy.
What is the reason for this endless cycle of futility and dashed hopes? It is because the true Light came to the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it. Men rejected the Light, for their deeds were evil.
And no one, no one, seeks for the Light by their own initiative for the Light exposes them as they are, and they do not want a redeemer who requires accountability; they want a rescuer, a fire extinguisher, a deliverer who will set them on their feet, ensure peace and safety, and let them go to continue in their own way, even though that way is the very problem from which they have sought deliverance.
WISEMEN DON’T SEEK HIM
We’ve all seen them, haven’t we? Every year around Christmastime the pithy, catchy little statements go up on the church signs and on Christmas cards and sometimes even bumper stickers, and one of the most popular reads, “Wise men still seek Him”.
Well, all of you know how I feel about t-shirt evangelism, so I’ll try not to rant. But the truth is that wise men do not seek Him. They would be proven wise if they did, but the Bible says that no one seeks for God (Romans 3:11),
Now here is where someone says, ‘Well, wise men in the Bible were seeking for him, so the little pithy Christmas thing just means that if people are wise they will seek Him also’.
And I would reply, ‘Please be quiet while I’m preaching’.
Not really. I would answer that while the visitors from the east were right in seeking Him, they were not necessarily seeking Him for the right reason; at least, not for the one reason for which He must be found.
Let me explain that statement in detail and this will be our main focus today.
These men from the east, who are called magi, kings, wise men, were right in coming to find the Child in that they were drawn by God. Now this does not necessarily mean they were worshipers of the one true God.
It means that they saw a star in the east and being astrologers they apparently had some information that this star signified the birth of royalty, so they set out with gifts to find this royal child and pay him homage.
Listen to what commentator William Barclay recorded on this topic.
“It may seem to us extraordinary that those men should set out from the East to find a king, but the strange thing is that, just about the time Jesus was born, there was in the world a strange feeling of expectation of the coming of a king. Even the Roman historians knew about this. Not so very much later than this Suetonius could write, ‘There had spread over all the Orient an old and established belief, that it was fated at that time for men coming from Judea to rule the world’ (Suetonius: Life of Vespasian, 4:5) Tacitus tells of the same belief that ‘there was a firm persuasion… that at this very time the East was to grow powerful, and rulers coming from Judea were to acquire universal empire’ (Tacitus: Histories, 5:13) The Jews had the belief that ‘about that time one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth’ (Josephus: Wars of the Jews, 6:5,4). … Almost the same time as Jesus was born we find Augustus the Roman Emperor, being hailed as the Savior of the World, and Virgil, the Roman poet, writing his Fourth Eclogue, which is known as the Messianic Eclogue, about the golden days to come.” The Gospel of Matthew, W.Barclay, The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1975
What we can understand from this, being believers in God’s Word and understanding how He works, is that God was by all these means heralding to the world the entrance of His Son, the Prince of Peace. Royalty was born, and even if His own chosen people did not recognize Him when He came, and even if men were to eventually despise and reject Him, yet the Father saw to it that His coming was not entirely quiet, was not in the shadows, but that pockets of civilization everywhere would know that something significant had transpired and the world was not going to be the same any more.
You may remember that when Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey’s colt at the beginning of His Passion Week, when the Jewish leaders told Him to tell the people to stop shouting His praises He responded that if the people remained silent the rocks themselves would cry out.
Then during his arrest and crucifixion when His own people ran and hid and did not defend Him, God brought forth statements of truth and faith from Gentiles and thieves so that even in His rejection He was declared. Pilate’s wife was given a dream that upset her and she tried to warn her husband to stay out of the situation, calling Jesus ‘this righteous man’. The thief on the cross next to Jesus declared Him innocent and declared Him to be a king by virtue of the request he made to be remembered when Jesus came in His kingdom. Pilate himself had a plaque put over the head of Jesus declaring Him to be King of the Jews. Finally, a Roman soldier, witnessing Jesus on the cross, was constrained to declare, “Truly, this was the Son of God’.
So here, at the time of His birth, the Father proudly foretells and then heralds His coming into the world.
So these men from the East, and tradition says there were three, probably because of the specific mention of three gifts, but there may have been more in this kingly entourage, … these men were right in coming; they were right in seeking and they were right in paying homage to this holy Child of Bethlehem.
In my statement earlier I said that they were right in seeking Him, but they did not necessarily seek Him for the right reason. I want to tell you what I mean by the second part of that statement.
First let me get something said to avoid a possible misconception in this account. Yes, God would have to have been the One who put the star in place which the magi followed.
There has been a great deal of pointless speculation about exactly what they were seeing; some say it was an alignment of planets, others a comet and so forth. But God is the Creator, God is in control of the universe and no one else, God sent His Son and God led these men to His Son by a star that they followed. That’s all I have to know…that’s all we have to know.
Secondly, God spoke to these men in a dream after they had found Jesus, and warned them not to go back to Herod.
The point I’m going for is this. Neither the guiding star nor the dream from God is any indication that they were worshipers of the God of the Jews, nor that they sought the Child because they were looking for the long-awaited Messiah.
The only thing we know is that they for some reason had expectations of a king to be born in Judea and the star was their sign that this event had transpired, and they wanted to visit and honor this child king and give him gifts. We know that God the Father protected His Son by revealing to the magi that Herod’s intentions were not good, so they left by a circuitous route to avoid him.
And here is why I labor to make this point.
While the magi were drawn there by God, and while they were right in going, all evidence that is given to us pertaining to their motivation indicates that they sought this child king for the very same reason that the world has and still does seek a hero.
Why would they go so far? Why would they carry expensive gifts? Think about it. If there are rumors all over the civilized world that prophesies from various cultures are about to be fulfilled in tandem and those prophesies all pertain to a powerful ruler who is going to come out of Judea and govern the world, is there no time like the present to make friends with him and his family?
Even if their motives had no such personal interest in mind, even if they were there for absolutely noble and honorable reasons, to pay homage to one whose future is projected to be great, even so, they were only seeking an earthly king. They were there to honor human royalty.
SEEKING FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS
The fact is, everyone in the picture who was looking for Jesus was looking for the wrong reasons because they did not really understand who He was, or they partly understood and were alarmed that their authority and power might be threatened, as in the case of Herod and probably many Pharisees.
The fact is, throughout the course of His earthly walk and ministry no one truly understood who He was nor did they seek Him out for the right reason.
The fact is, to this very day not one has sought Him for the right reason until they were drawn by the Holy Spirit of God and given spiritual light and life from above.
I want to be clear on this point today for two reasons. One is that, as evangelical Christians with a duty to be sensitive and open to any opportunity to speak to people about their need of a Savior and the way to be saved, we need to understand that there are many ways people search for answers but there is only one type of seeking that finds the one answer that will help them.
Secondly, we as Christians need to be aware that there is a sort of seeking of Him that we, even as those born from above and part of the family of God ought to be doing constantly as pertains to our spiritual walk and our personal relationship with Him.
Let’s talk first about what I’ll call ‘sincere searchers’. These are people who are not yet saved. They have not met Jesus. They have not heard and appropriated to themselves the gospel message in saving faith. But they are searching for something. They are searching for answers; they may even be searching for a Personal God.
I single them out because until a person comes to a place of meeting this description there will be little chance of reaching them with the truth. The people who shut you out as soon as you begin to talk, or who in some way send a clear message that they would be hostile to your message and they don’t want you to attempt to bring it to them in any way can only be prayed for and left alone until perhaps God begins to draw them into a place of realizing they do have some need that is not being met in their present life-style or by the strength of their own will and effort. When that happens they become ‘sincere searchers’.
Now that is still a long way off from seeking for God. A sincere searcher can be simply looking for any philosophical foundation that will help them make sense of their life and the world they live in. Therefore sincere searchers often end up seeped in New Age practices, one of the cult religions, or practicing some form of Yoga, or deceived into the idiocy of Scientology.
But these are the folks you may be able to begin to reach, if they will sit and reason with you at all.
Just remember that sincere searchers are like the men from the East who came looking for the Child. They may come and go in sincerity but never find what they need because they did not know what they truly sought.
You must tell them that they need more than a hero and they need more than a guru. They need more than a teacher and more than a wise leader. They most certainly need more than a comforting philosophical base or a religious system.
Praying for the help and life-giving breath of the Holy Spirit as we approach them, they must be brought to see that they need a Savior, not from the world but from themselves, and that there is One who, since men do not know how to properly seek Him, came to seek them.
He said “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke k19:10), and in Him all their needs for time and eternity are fully met.
SEEKING FOR THE RIGHT REASONS
It is Biblical doctrine that men and women do not seek for God until and unless God draws them. It was Jesus Himself who said this, in John 6:44
“No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.”
This is one example we find in Scripture of the Sovereign Providence of God coupled with the responsibility and accountability of man.
We find that God predestined His Elect to be conformed to the image of His Son, but holds men accountable for responding to the Gospel message in the obedience of faith.
Here too, on the issue of seeking Him, there are numerous invitations and exhortations in both the Old and New Testaments to seek God; to pursue Him. Yet the other side of this coin of mystery is the assertion of Paul that man does not seek God, and from Jesus that no one can come to Him unless drawn by the Father.
So a man on one side of the debating table says, “Well the Bible says no one seeks for God and even Jesus says I can’t come to Him unless the Father draws me, so how can I be held accountable?”, and the reply comes from the other side of the table, “By virtue of your involvement in this debate and your hearing of the truth you are hereby drawn by the Father. You must choose, and as a free moral agent you are held to account for your decision.”
And Christians, if those without God and without His Spirit are accountable for their decision to seek Him or to spurn Him, how much more we, who do have His Spirit and are called to come closer and go deeper; to seek Him daily and follow where He leads?
Let’s remind ourselves that the Bible is written for believers. It contains the truth that makes a man ‘wise unto salvation’, that is, it tells us why we must be saved and how we can be saved. But largely, the Bible is given to those who believe so they might have God’s own Word to lead them in faith and practice.
So the admonitions of Scripture to seek Him and to follow and to believe His Word and obey His commands are all for the believer and for the good of the believer.
Even as Spirit-filled believers in Christ we are often like the magi from the East who generally follow some vague understanding, knowing we’re headed in the right direction but not really certain why or aware of a significant purpose.
We get caught up in our religion and in the calisthenics of it but we forget that we serve a Person; that we are not our own but are bought with a price; that we exist for His glory.
So because of our Adamic nature we turn inward and seek our own selfish interests and go away virtually unaware of the blessed Presence we have been in and having missed both being blessed and the opportunity to bless.
“Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self... Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.” C. S. Lewis - Mere Christianity
The magi sought the fulfillment of vague, heathen prophesies so they might pay homage to a future powerful ruler. The shepherds went seeking for the babe heralded by angels, sleeping in a manger.
Those who became His Apostles first followed thinking to be the beginning of the army that would expel Rome from their nation’s borders.
Even with two thousand years of the preaching of the good news of Jesus Christ echoing around the world through every media available, people still seek Him for the wrong reasons, if they seek Him at all.
But Christians, you have the greatest privilege by virtue of your spiritual birth and adoption into a heavenly Kingdom, to seek Him daily for all the right reasons. You need no idol, you need no hero, you need no champion, you need no earthly king. You need no earthly purpose to fulfill you, no worldly wealth to sustain you; you have no need of a star to guide you or a heavenly chorus to invite you.
Francis Thompson poetically attributes words to the Savior, saying, “I am the One whom you have always sought in all of your furious searches for security, well-being and wholeness. You find all you want and need when you walk with Me” “The Hound of Heaven”, Francis Thompson, interpreted by Gordon MacDonald 1859/1997
You were incapable of seeking Him so He sought and found you, and now invites you daily to look away from self and this world and seek His face, and to your eternal benefit and His eternal glory, as you seek Him you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.
