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Text: Matthew 2:1-10
God’s describes them as wise
- Wise men is not an official title, it is how God described an entourage of people looking for the King of the Jews.
- Don’t know how many there were.
- Don’t know exactly where they came from.
- The description is simply that they were wise men who came from the east. They are the first Gentiles who would come to the Light: Isaiah 42:6
- The world is troubled by the active pursuit of Jesus Christ
- Herod…troubled…and all Jerusalem… (2:3)
- Religion is no threat to the world. The world is religious. It’s full of idolatry, worship of gods and devils. But Jesus Christ is the threat.
Seeking the Lord is understanding
- The star will guide the wise men. Now was the star only visible to the wise men? No. But no one else was paying attention.
- Proverbs 28:5 Evil men understand not judgment: but they that seek the LORD understand all things.
- Seeking the Lord will put things in their context.
- Seeking the Lord gives the interpretation.
- Daniel 2:16-19
- Understanding is a characteristic of someone seeking God, but being without understanding is a characteristic of someone who does not want God. Romans 1:28, 31
- Notice who points the way to the Lord. It is Herod! But the wise men will also understand that Herod is not interested in worshipping the Lord.
God rewards this search with honor
- Hebrews 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
- People’s names become associated with their discoveries; it’s the honor given to those who will diligently search out a matter.
- Watt – unit of electrical power, 1882, in honor of James Watt (1736-1819), Scottish engineer and inventor.
- André-Marie Ampère, (born January 22, 1775, Lyon, France—died June 10, 1836, Marseille), French physicist who founded and named the science of electrodynamics, now known as electromagnetism. His name endures in everyday life in the ampere, the unit for measuring electric current.
- Fahrenheit is a temperature scale that bases the boiling point of water at 212 and the freezing point at 32. It was developed by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, a German-born scientist who lived and worked primarily in the Netherlands. Today, the scale is used primarily in the United States and some Caribbean countries.
- In 1742, Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius (1701–1744) created a temperature scale that was the reverse of the scale now known as “Celsius”: 0 represented the boiling point of water, while 100 represented the freezing point of water.
- It is a characteristic of nobility to be diligent in matters. Furthermore, it is a characteristic of nobility in God’s kingdom to search out the things of God in this lifetime.
- Proverbs 25:2
- Acts 17:10-12
Wisdom is an active search
- Wisdom is not a passive thing.
- Wisdom is the active pursuit of God. The wise men weren’t wise because they thought about God. Their wisdom was their actively seeking out the Lord.
- Wise men would seek him in spite of the unknown
- Wise men would seek him at personal cost to them.
- Wise men would seek him regardless of distance they had to travel.
- Wise men would search the scriptures to find him.
- Daniel – Remember discovery and diligent search are characteristics of honourable men. Here is Daniel, a diligent man who has been promoted because he is a diligent man. Daniel 9:3 …seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth and ashes:
- Romans 2:7 …who by patient continuance in well doing SEEK… There is a difference between self righteousness that says I’m going to do good to build a reputation for doing good. Versus someone seeing the crowd go to a strip club or get drunk and saying within themselves, ‘That’s not right. I shouldn’t be going there.’ One says I’m going to do good to feel good about myself, and the other says I’m going to do because I fear God, though they may not know him yet. The example of one is the Pharisees which they do to be seen of men. They loved the titles. They loved the preeminence. The other is the example of Cornelius in Acts 10 who simply feared God.
- Now you could say that Herod was also actively seeking the Lord. But Herod was hunting the Lord. The wise men were actively pursuing the Lord in order to worship him.
