The Magi - The Dilemma Of Another Way Series

NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

ENGAGE

Most of you have probably seen this meme which ponders what would have happened had there been three wise women rather than three wise men.

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Or perhaps you’ve seen this more recent one.

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Of all the people associated with the birth of Jesus, there is little doubt that the wise men, or more accurately the magi, are the most misunderstood. But at the same time, the truths that we can glean from their encounter with Jesus demonstrates a truth that is actually very clear.

TENSION

This morning we’ll finish our Christmas series titled ”The Christmas Dilemma” by looking at the account of the magi In Matthew chapter 2. And in that account we’re going to find that they dealt with the same dilemma that every one of us face in our lives – the dilemma of “another way”. Like us, these magi had their own plans for their lives, but then they met Jesus and that encounter brought them face to face with another way. And that required them to make a choice. Were they going to follow their own plans or would they choose another way – one that was presented to them by God?

That is a choice that all of us are faced with as well – both in terms of the overall direction of our lives as well as in the moment-by-moment decisions that we make every day. So let’s see what we can learn from these magi about how to handle the dilemma of another way.

TRUTH

I’m going to approach this message a little differently this morning. Because there is so much misinformation about these magi, I’m going to begin with some important background information before we read the passage this morning.

A lot of what we believe about the magi is based on our Christmas traditions rather than on the Bible and what we can know historically.

For instance, the song “We Three Kings of Orient Are”, which we will be singing tomorrow night by the way, contains a lot of misleading information just in the first line of the song:

• It’s very unlikely that there were only three of them

• They weren’t kings

• And they probably weren’t from the Orient, at least not what we would consider the Orient to be today.

And pretty much every nativity set we see today has the three magi worshiping the baby Jesus in the manger, often right beside the shepherds, while their camels wait just outside the stable. However, as we’ll see from this morning’s passage, the magi didn’t arrive while Jesus was still lying in a manger and the shepherds had long returned to their fields by the time they arrived. So if you’re going to put up a nativity set and include the magi, you need to at least make sure they are on the other side of the room.

So who were these men? You’ll notice that I have been referring to them as magi, not as kings or even as wise men. If you’re using the ESV translation, you’ll see there is a footnote that indicates that the term “wise men” is actually the Greek word magi (or more accurately magoi), which describes a known group of people within the Medio-Persian culture. Interestingly they held a position within that culture that had a lot of striking parallels to the function the Levites served within the commonwealth of Israel.

In the Bible, we first meet this group in the book of Daniel. When King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has a dream, he calls in his “wise men”, which includes those who are identified as magicians in most of our English translations. But in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the word that is used there is the same word magoi that we find in Matthew.

After Daniel interprets the dream, he is put in charge of these magi and he remains in that position even after the Medes and Persians conquer Babylon. And knowing what we know about Daniel, it’s hard to imagine that he didn’t continually teach these men about his God and about the prophecies of a future king who would come to save his people.

These magi were a combination of astronomers, who studied the science of the stars and other celestial bodies, and astrologers, who tried to assign mystic powers to their movements. And they rose to a place of tremendous power and influence in the Medio-Persian culture. Their teaching became know as “the laws of the Medes and the Persians”, a phrase that is used in both Daniel and Esther. They eventually came to be considered as “kingmakers” since any prospective Persian king had to first master their scientific and religious knowledge and practices and be approved by the magi before taking the throne. Even at the time of Jesus’ birth they still maintained that kind of influence in the region of Parthia, which was at the eastern border of the Roman Empire in what is modern day Iran.