Tonight, following the sermon, we will enact a commissioning service for the mission team to Nepal. It is appropriate that we should do so tonight, on the Lord’s Day called "Epiphany Sunday," and at a service in which Matthew 2:1-12, concerning the "visit of the magi" is the text for the sermon. 

The "visit of the magi" is a missionary text. No, it doesn’t appear to be so on the first reading, on the surface. There is no one being "sent out" in mission to the world.  In fact, just the opposite occurs. Instead of a "sending out" there is a "coming to". And that is just the point. What point? you ask. The point is that "the visit of the magi" reveals to us in a dramatic way that Jesus, the Messiah of Israel, is also the Light of Salvation to the Gentiles, that is, the Savior of the world.

Matthew, as you may know, is the most positively Jewish Gospel of all of the four Gospels. It begins with the genealogy of Jesus, and verse one announces --- as in big, bold, letters --- that Jesus Christ is "the Son of David, the Son of Abraham." Now, to Jewish ears, that means something! That means that Jesus Christ is fully and rightfully a member of God’s covenant people; but more than that, in the way that Matthew puts that at the opening statement of his Gospel, "Son of Abraham, Son of David," it is clear that Matthew intends to announce that Jesus Christ is the personal fulfillment of all the covenant promises given to God’s Old Covenant people through Abraham and David. In other words, in Jesus, the covenant promises to Abraham and David have their completion and their fulfillment.

Then as we continue in chapter one and through chapter two, and then throughout the whole Gospel of Matthew, we see Old Testament Scripture quoted over and over and over again, most often to show how Old Testament prophecy had been fulfilled in the events of Jesus’ life, from His birth to His death and resurrection. Think also, for example, of the Sermon on the Mount, in which Matthew reveals Jesus to us as the "Moses of the New Covenant," teaching His disciples what it means to fulfill the Law of God by living according to the "spirit of the Law" --- that is, love of God and love of neighbor --- as children of the heavenly Father filled with the Holy Spirit and with the Law written on our hearts, and not merely outwardly obeying the letter of the Law, which leads to the dead legalism of the Pharisees. And there are many other examples which show Matthew’s emphasis on the Old Testament basis of the New Testament faith.

Well, the Jewish character of the Gospel of Matthew, with all its Old Testament references and themes, clearly shows us that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel, the One of whom Isaiah and Jeremiah and Micah foretold by divine inspiration. But the really good news of the gospel, which Matthew makes abundantly clear --- and which is clear throughout the rest of the New Testament --- is that Messiah of Israel is also the Light of Salvation to the Gentiles, the Savior of the world.

From the time of God’s call to Abram, it had been revealed that God’s blessing would be upon the people of Israel not for their sake alone but for the sake of the whole world. God spoke to Abram and said, 

...I will make you a great nation and will bless you and you shall be a blessing ... 
and in you all the families (all the peoples) of the earth shall be blessed (Gen.12).

Abraham and his descendants, the nation of Old Covenant Israel, were blessed to be a blessing --- that is, through Old Covenant Israel, the blessing of the covenant, the blessing of fellowship with God, the blessing belonging to God’s household of faith, would come to peoples of all nations.

This was the vision of Isaiah also, when he prophesied,

"Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow to it. Many people shall come and say, "Come let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths." For out of Zion shall go forth the Law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. ...Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore."

This prophecy speaks of the nations streaming to Jerusalem, that is, in New Covenant terms, to the throne of the Messiah, to Christ in His Kingly rule, bowing before Him and living under the banner of His peace.

This morning, for our Call to Worship, we read from Isaiah 60, the prophecy of the Gentiles coming to the Light which was to shine upon Israel --- (turn to Isaiah 60)

"Nations (Gentiles) shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

(verse 5) "... the wealth of the seas will be brought to you, to you the riches of the nations (Gentiles) will come. Herds of camels will cover your land, young camels of Midian and Ephah (Arabian tribe). And all from Sheba (Arabian peninsula) will come bearing gold and incense and proclaiming the praise of the LORD."

This passage from Isaiah 60 provides the Old Testament prophetic backdrop to the visit of the Magi. If you’ve ever wondered about the traditional Christmas carol, "We three kings of Orient are" --- why are they called kings? --- the answer lies in this passage. This prophecy says that "kings will come to the brightness of your dawn" and so the hymn-writer, connecting Isaiah 60 with the visit of the Magi, took the editorial license to word it in that way. And this passage mentions that the Gentiles will come to the Light of salvation, bearing gifts of gold and incense. Matthew tells us that they came offering the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. (And that is the reason that the hymn-writer took the liberty of assuming that there were "three (3) kings" --- because of the three gifts mentioned: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Matthew doesn’t tells us how many magi actually came.

The point, however, for Matthew, and for us, is that the prophecy of the Gentile nations coming to the light of the covenant, coming to the light of salvation, coming to worship the God of Israel, bearing gifts, paying the tribute of praise and adoration --- this is what is so gloriously fulfilled. We don’t even know the precise timing of the visit ---which is another question that’s really not so important. It appears certain that the magi did not arrive in Bethlehem on the day Jesus was born --- as is traditionally portrayed in Christmas pageants and nativity scenes. It seems that some time had passed, since Herod --- who was certifiably crazy --- decreed that all male Israelites under the age of two should be killed. On the other hand, Joseph and Mary had not yet returned to Nazareth, and so we must infer that the magi did arrive in Bethlehem not too long after Jesus had been born. Crazy Herod would have decreed the slaying of two-year-olds even if Jesus had been born only two weeks beforehand!

But the questions of chronology, and of how many magi there really were, and whether they were kings in the sense of political rulers in Arabia or Babylonia are really all beside the point. Matthew wants us to see the light! Matthew is making it abundantly clear that the promises to Old Testament Israel have been fulfilled in the birth of Jesus, and that God’s promises to the world through Old Testament Israel have been fulfilled in the birth of Jesus, because now the nations of the earth are coming into the Light --- the Light of redemption, the Light of the covenant, the Light of blessing: through Jesus, the Messiah of Israel, the Savior of the world.

Now, let’s take a closer look. The magi (the Greek word is the root word from which we get the words magic and magician) were astrologers --- men who studied the stars and the planets, and discerned meaning from the movements and constellations. They were Gentiles (non-Jews) from the east --- Babylonia or Persia (modern day Iraq or Iran) or from Arabia (as the Isaiah 60 passage would indicate). They were pagan, idolatrous men; for the practice of astrology --- seeking a message from the stars and planning one’s life accordingly --- is clearly condemned in Scripture. Yet, here they are following the star, seeking to find the new-born King of the Jews.

How did they know to follow this star? The rising of the Bethlehem Star goes back to another Old Testament prophecy --- Brother Franz (Adrianna Ribiero’s father) made reference to it in that great sermon last Sunday evening --- found in Numbers 24:17.

"I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel."

Now, actually, that is a very obscure prophecy. How and why would the magi, some 1500 years or so later, know that the star they saw was actually the star prophesied in Numbers 24. How did they put it together and realize that the Messiah of Israel had been born? Well, here’s my answer: I don’t know! It must have been by divine revelation in some sense that they were able to interpret the star as the sign of the Messiah’s birth. But how did they, pagan astrologers, know about that Numbers 24 prophecy anyway? For that, I do have at least an intelligible explanation. 

First of all, when the Jews were exiled from Jerusalem in 587 BC and taken into captivity in Babylon, one of the positive things that happened was that the Scriptures were taken and spread abroad in pagan lands of the east. Even pagan wise men would be interested in the sacred writings of the Jews, and would have studied them to try to glean some extra insight from them. 

But secondly, and this is especially interesting, I think. The prophet who spoke the prophecy of the star in Numbers 24 was not an Israelite prophet. No, it was Balaam, a pagan prophet from east of the Jordan River. And, by the way, he was a rather famous prophet, and there are references to him in ancient literature other than the Bible. Could it be that the prophecies of such a pagan sooth-sayer were preserved in the pagan traditions, passed-on from generation to generation, so that the magi had actually studied Balaam’s prophecies? We don’t know for sure, be we can be sure that God --- the one and only true and living, sovereign God --- had been at work in some way, even in pagan lands and through pagan prophets, to prepare the pagan world to receive the Light of Salvation through Jesus Christ.

Pagan astrology in that day, as in our day, was practiced with the belief that the planets and stars were supernatural entities --- deities of a sort --- which affected human destiny. They believed that their lives were fatalistically determined by the movements of the planets and stars. And so they planned and lived their lives according to the constellations. But these magi knew that the light of this star meant the end of their darkness. The light of this star dispelled the darkness of their idolatry; for they knew that this star signaled the birth of the ruler of the One Who was to come out of Israel whose kingdom would extend throughout the earth, for peoples of all nations. These gentile, pagan astrologers came to Jesus, honoring and worshipping Him not only as the King of the Jews but as King of the Universe, the Savior of the world.

I love the way Michael Card expresses the visit of the Magi poetically in his song, "We Will Find Him." I won’t sing it to you, but listen to the words:

It was a night like any other, so cold and black and dark; and it told us all too clearly of the night inside our hearts; then the star tore through the darkness, and like an angel shone, to guide us to that one true Light who became flesh and bone!

Their lives were in a new light now --- not the light of the stars, not even the light of the star which led them to Bethlehem; but now, their new life had begun in the true light, the eternal light, of Jesus Christ. And Matthew tells us,

"On coming to the house, they saw the child with His mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh"  (as tradition interprets it: gold, for a king; frankincense, as a sacrifice of worship; and myrrh --- spiced perfume for burial, in anticipation of the Messiah’s death). Whether the magi actually offered these gifts with these thoughts in mind, but again --- that’s really beside the point. We know that Christ is our King and the King of kings; we know that He is our great High Priest who offered Himself for us as a sacrifice sweet and pleasing to God; and we know that He died for us and was buried, having suffered the punishment due to our sins.

And you know what --- we are Gentiles, who like the magi, by God’s sovereign grace and mercy, have received the covenant blessing through Jesus, the Messiah of Israel, the Savior of the world. And that leads us back to where we began this sermon --- thinking about our mission team to Nepal. They are headed to the east --- to encourage the work of evangelism among people who have not yet heard the gospel, to people who still sit in darkness, to be witnesses of the Light: the Light of salvation for all peoples, the Light of salvation for all who believe and who worship Him as King of kings. Amen.