Faithbase

Hello and welcome to another edition of thinking about the Bible and yesterday we talked about Matthew 2 and I'm gonna revisit that Matthew 2 verses 1 and 2 now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king behold wise men or Magi from the east came Jerusalem and they were asking about where Jesus was dropping down to verse 3 when Herod the king heard this he was troubled in all Jerusalem with him then he gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together inquired of them where the Christ was to be born and then he called the wise men verse 7 and so forth now who are these wise men who are these Magi well the most likely explanation is that they were you could say descendants of those who served under Daniel in the days of Nebuchadnezzar and later Cyrus and Daniel as you recall was elevated to position of chief of the astrologers and wise men and soothsayers and and not that Daniel by any means endorsed that those kinds of pagan behaviors in fact what would have happened was that Daniel would have expressed the truth of Yahwehism that is the worship of Yahweh and the truth of God's law and those prophecies and things that he made would have been embraced by his underlings to one degree or another so the by the time that Jesus was born the Magi had through the changes of empires and so forth had remained as a particular cast of people who were held in high esteem throughout the ancient world they were known to arrive when a king was to be installed or to be inaugurated or his reign was to be inaugurated they were as I said held in high esteem and given free passage you might say from one land to the other so their arrival in Jerusalem would certainly as we read would have stirred Herod and all of Jerusalem with him because it wasn't just simply we're out for a trip on a pass and by this was something that was very important this was something that was heralding a change of empire you might say a change of kingdoms so when we read about the Magi we don't the scripture doesn't give us really any information but part of our problem is that we don't have the same cultural mindset and we don't know or think about I should say what would have been on the minds of many people who read this in the first century they would have said okay the Magi those are the people who were originally under the headship of Daniel hundreds of years ago so when we read about the Magi we can keep in mind that these were people that were used by God even though they were from a pagan pagan culture they were used by God to herald the coming of Jesus the Christ Jesus the king of the universe the king of all of kings and came there to Jerusalem and as we mentioned yesterday probably arrived in Bethlehem around December 25th and presented their gifts to the king so let's be like that too let's be wise and let's be unafraid to express the truth of Jesus Christ and his kingdom this Christmas season