Intro
I haven’t seen them for a long time, but about this time of year when I was a kid, we would see ads on TV that informed immigrants that they had to fill out certain forms to register with the government. Which wouldn’t have been that memorable, except that they didn’t call them immigrants. Does anybody else remember those ads? Do you remember what they called them? Aliens. I did not know at that time, that the definition of an “alien” is just “a resident foreigner.” When I thought alien, I thought, ALIEN!
So when the ad said that
It’s not hard to figure out how a word which meant “resident immigrant” came to be more commonly understood as “extra-terrestrial.” Especially in days when travel was difficult and expensive, you wouldn’t often see someone who was not from your village, your tribe, your race. They may as well have been from another planet!
Today we read about the coming of the wise men, or Magi, from the East. They came from a place that was about as different from little Bethlehem as Mars would be. And seeing them arrive in the humble home of Joseph, Mary and Jesus would have been just about as weird as seeing a spacecraft drop down on our front yard.
Magi were aliens to the Jews. The word “magi” comes from the word “magoi” in Greek, from which we get the word “magic.” The word has a couple of meanings, but one of them refers to a caste of high priests in Persia or thereabouts. They obviously were men who watched the stars to determine the course of human events.
It is likely that they also specialized in the interpretation of dreams, like we see Joseph doing in the book of Genesis and Daniel doing in the book of Daniel. We don’t know if they were kings, exactly, but, as with Joseph and Daniel, they would have been highly respected men in the court of the King and were believed to have special magical powers which enabled them to do their work.
It may sound surprising, but throughout history people have often drawn a very fine line between magic and religion. The connecting point between the two is that they each offer a way to relate to supernatural powers.
When I’m talking about this kind of magic, I don’t mean sleight of hand tricks and that kind of thing, but the actions of people who believe they are tapping into supernatural power.
The difference between magic and religion is that someone who practices magic or dabbles in the occult is trying to gain power over the supernatural. There is a sense there’s this supernatural power that’s just out there. It’s “up for grabs” and whoever knows how to get their hands on it can get do so and use it as they please.
Religion – and in particular, our Christian faith – believes that there is one God, who holds all the power and our job is to learn how to relate to Him in the way He has chosen. We are here to serve God; God is not here to serve us. God is the one in control; We cannot control Him. Attempts to control forces in the supernatural realm are doomed to eventual failure, because even if they somehow are made to “work,” they do so only by tapping into a spiritual being who is inferior to the all-powerful God of the Universe.
So here they were, these three wise men from the east. I said it was very likely, although not definite, these men were from Persia, which is located around modern-day Iran. Have you heard anybody speak about Persia lately? Probably not in everyday conversation or in USA Today, but we talked about Persia quite a bit when we talked about Nehemiah.
That’s where the people of Israel were in exile, and where Nehemiah had served as cup-bearer to the king about 4 or 5 hundred years earlier. So what does that have to do with anything? Well, how do you think these wise men had gotten to know the Jews?
Why would they think, when they saw the star indicating a great king of the Jews was to be born, that they should go to see him and to worship him? How did they know that the God of the Jews was not just the God of the Jews, but a God who loves all and all peoples? That was NOT a concept common to those times.
They thought, “You have your gods who rule over you; we have our gods over here who rule over us.” But these wise men knew that the King of the Jews was worthy of trekking over 1000 miles to bring precious gifts, to him, to honor Him and to worship Him. How did they know to do that? Because there were still Jews in Persia
Yes, Jerusalem and the nation of Israel was repopulated, but that doesn’t mean that every single Jew left Persia. Some had stayed there, and their descendents were still there 500 years later, living lives that were such lights that somehow even these high ranking magi knew about him.
The magi were not the kind of people the Jews would have expected God to reveal Himself to. First of all, they weren’t Jews. Second, they were magicians, in contact with some supernatural power that wasn’t God. The Jews were forbidden to mess with such things. On top of that, they were pagan priests, for heaven’s sake! God would never reveal Himself to them!
Yet God DID reveal Himself to them. And he did so in ways that “God’s people” would never have seen. They were forbidden from the magic that was blended in with the astrology these men practiced.
Throughout the NT, one of the things about Jesus that most offended the religious Jews was that he didn’t differentiate between Jews and Gentiles. Or even between good people and bad people
He had a whole different set of criteria for looking at people. And it wasn’t based on what the religious folks thought it was. God reveals Himself to all kinds of people – and often the least likely are the most open.
Why did these men come to Jesus? We don’t know, but if these men knew, probably others did, too. And if they had learned about the Messiah from Jews in Persia, then it seems logical to think that they would have told their Jewish friends this wonderful news.
But we don’t read anything about Persian Jews coming with the Magi to worship Jesus. They just couldn’t believe that God could speak to “those people.” But he did. And they listened. And they came to Jesus.
If you had been around at this time Jesus was born and somebody had lined up 100 people from all different backgrounds and walks of life. The good, the bad and the ugly. Then you asked some good, religious Jews to vote on which people would be most likely to receive a revelation from God about the Messiah. Who would they pick? Probably the good, religious Jews: people just like themselves. Or REALLY good, religious Jews . People they saw as like themselves, only better: Priests, Pharisees, Scribes and Levites.
You can bet they wouldn’t choose any aliens! They wouldn’t choose pagan priests who practiced astrology. They wouldn’t choose any shepherds, either, but that’s another story! But God didn’t choose the High Priest, or the Pharisees or the Scribes. He didn’t reveal himself to the good religious Jews on that holy night of nights.
Why is that? Because God doesn’t like religious people? No. Because the religious people weren’t listening.
The Magi received God’s revelation because they were looking for it, they were listening for it. And because God knew that when they heard it, they would respond in faith. God reveals Himself to all kinds of people – and often the least likely are the most open.
Do you know that there is a difference between coming to Jesus and coming to church? That doesn’t mean that if you come to Jesus, it doesn’t matter if you go to church. Coming to Jesus and not coming to church is like taking up smoking when you’re nine. It stunts your growth; And it has a tendency to put you in an early grave.
Not getting the fellowship and the teaching and the opportunities for service in a local church will result in stunted spiritual growth. It also can mean a premature death to our faith. When we stop coming to church, we start to drift from God.
But that doesn’t mean that coming to church is a substitute for coming to Jesus. There is no eternal value in coming to church without coming to Jesus. The only advantage to coming to church before you’ve come to Jesus is that it puts you in a place where you’re hearing about Jesus and thinking about him, at least a little bit of that hour a week, and maybe you will eventually come to Jesus
But faithful church attendance in itself – without first giving our lives to Christ – doesn’t score us any brownie points with God. The Magi didn’t go to church – or synagogue. In fact, they were deeply entrenched in their pagan beliefs.
But God reached into that foreign land, used the very pagan practice of astrology to reveal to them that the King of kings was to be born into the world. And they responded with faith. They came to Jesus. They trekked 1000 miles to find him. They offered him precious gifts. And they worshipped him.
No longer were they magicians trying to control the forces of nature, they were transformed into worshippers of God who acknowledged His greatness and laid their lives at his feet. God reveals Himself to all kinds of people – and often the least likely are the most open.
What if I were to line up 100 people who were all very different: corporate CEO’s, homeless people, preachers, winos, doctors, hookers, missionaries, prison inmates. Then I asked you to pick out the ones to whom God might reveal Himself. Who would you pick? What would you base your decision on?
Who dresses well?
Who looks good, who smells good?
Would you pick folks who are a lot like you?
Probably you’d be right on some of them and wrong on lots of them. Because God doesn’t speak to people because they deserve it. He speaks to people who will listen.
Conclusion
Outside our doors, in our neighborhoods and workplaces and maybe even in this church, there are folks who need to come to Jesus. Even now, God is whispering in their ears, saying “Come and worship; Come and worship; Worship Christ, the new-born King!”
They may be the folks we least expect, but they’re the ones who are listening. God is at work all around us – revealing Himself to all kinds of people. It is our job first, to come to Jesus ourselves, and second, to watch for God’s work in others, that God may grant us the joy of seeing them come to Him as well.
