Throughout this sermon series, I interacted heavily with The Great Christ Comet by Colin Nicholl.
“9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh.”
Given that we have a Christmas program today, I assume that we have a good number of guests and visitors among us this morning. I want to do everything in my power to make you feel welcomed and so I thought I would help you out with a few last-minute gift ideas. If you are a member, you can use these ideas too. Now these ideas are local. They are all from Oak Street Station.
First, gifts for kids of all ages.
Kids love milk. Wrap up a gallon of milk and put it under the tree. It’s heavy so it feels expensive and from the way I understand it, this gallon can sit under the tree until December 30 without spoiling. The date is right there.
Maybe you forgot to buy something for a man in your life. Men don’t like being cold in the winter. Put a can of soup under the tree.
Perhaps you need a last-minute gift for a lady. Ladies love chocolate.
Just make sure this isn’t your big gift for your wife this Christmas. That would be foolish. This is more appropriate for the big gift of Christmas.
Now those gift ideas are ridiculous because they don’t fit the occasion. Nobody wants to open a gallon of milk on Christmas. A can of soup isn’t a gift and Christmas calls for gifts. It calls for particular types of gifts. The occasion calls for different sorts of gifts from Valentine’s Day.
Those gifts are also silly because they don’t fit the recipient. No man is particularly excited to open a can of soup for Christmas. You need to consider a man’s interests and his style when buying him a gift. You need to find a gift that fits him. You need to find a gift that fits the recipient.
So if you are looking for a gift, find one that fits the occasion and fits the recipient. That is what the Magi did. They brought gifts that fit the occasion. They brought gifts that fit the recipient. They brought gifts appropriate for the birth of Christ. Christ deserves what is fitting for him. They Magi brought what was fitting for him and so must you. You have to consider what you will offer the one who offered everything for you. Christ deserves what is fitting for him. Don’t offer less. That is the claim of this sermon.
We will see this in two points. First: fitting for the occasion. Second: fitting for the recipient. We will see that the magi brought gifts that were fitting for the occasion in verses 9-10. We will see that they brought gifts that were fitting for the recipient in verse 11.
First: fitting for the occasion. The Magi brought Christ gifts that were fitting for the occasion. They first heard about this occasion from the stars. “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?” they asked. “We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.”
As we’ve seen, the star that marked this occasion was likely a comet. We’ve been studying the many connections between this comet and Scripture, and if you would like I would be happy to point you to them, but today we will study how this star guided the Magi to the very house where the Christ child lay.
The Magi had come to Jerusalem expecting to find the Messiah or receive further directions to the Messiah. The religious leaders responded with indifference. They told Herod that the child was to be born in Bethlehem but seemingly made no effort to find this Messiah foretold by the Scriptures they taught.
Herod’s response was even worse. Herod planned to eliminate this threat to his throne. He told the Magi about the Bethlehem prophecy and asked them to return and tell him about the child so that he too could go and worship.
The Magi resumed their search with no more information than the name of the town. Imagine that you wanted to find a particular baby who was born in a small village like Sa Pa, Vietnam. You don’t know the geography or local culture. You don’t know anyone who lives in that town. You don’t even know the baby’s first or last name. You only know he was born in or around this village. You would feel quite lost as to where to begin your search and that was the case for the Magi. This is the background to verse 10, “When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.”
The star that had first told them of Christ’s birth had returned to guide them to the precise location of the child. If you have ever found yourself lost in a foreign country like France or Japan only to find directions in English, you know the joy of those Magi. You know the joy of being directed.
The star had disappeared from sight for a while. It is possible there was a long period of cloud cover blocking the night sky. It is more probable that the comet which had appeared larger and larger as it neared earth had passed earth and begun rounding the sun in a trajectory similar to this first star slide, if you could bring that up.
This return trajectory would make sense of the manner in which this comet guided them in a new direction. Before it had led them from Babylon to Jerusalem. Now it led them from Jerusalem to Bethlehem.
This comet was well suited to guide the Magi because it was so very bright. First century church father Ignatius wrote of this star saying, “a star shone in the heaven [with a brightness] beyond all stars; its light was indescribable, and its newness caused astonishment.” This comet would have appeared like a bright arrow in the sky.
The comet could have pinpointed the location of the place where the child was by way of its tail. If you could bring up the next picture.
Here we see a photograph of a comet and planet pictured from a distance. You can see how it looks almost like an arrow pointing down. In this second photograph, you get a bit of perspective from the ground level.
This next slide is a painting, but that doesn’t necessarily negate its reliability. This was the artist’s best attempt to capture what he saw.
If I told you to follow that comet, those directions would make sense to you. You can imagine yourself coming upon a view like this next painting and seeing verse 9 in action, “it stopped over the place where the child was.”
Now that is a plausible explanation for Matthew’s account, “the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.” If it sounds a bit fanciful to you, please consider why. If it sounds fanciful because it is such a specific explanation, please recognize that however that star guided them to the Christ child it would have to do so in a specific manner. It had to pinpoint the house.
If this explanation sounds fanciful to you because so many variables would need to align perfectly for a comet to pinpoint the house, then again recognize that any explanation would require any number of variables to align perfectly to pinpoint the house.
Also recognize that the One who controls all these variables is the Father of this child. Earthly fathers make grand announcements about the birth of their children. That is good and right. It is godly – in the broadest sense meaning that it is like God. It doesn’t strain belief to think that God would paint the sky for the birth of His Son. This birth, after all, is an occasion for celebration. This is the moment upon which everything hinges. We rightly divide BC from AD by the birth of Christ.
This is the moment for which the world was made. “Every expectation is fulfilled in Jesus, not only that of the Old Testament, but also the expectation of the whole natural world as well,” writes Julius Schniewind; “here is the world-king whom all await.” Or as the Christmas carol puts it regarding this little town of Bethlehem, “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight.”
So if this explanation or any explanation regarding this star strikes you as fanciful, please recognize that you have put yourself in a very closed universe. You have imagined a universe within which God cannot act. If you have trouble believing that God could use a star to guide Magi to Christ, you will have trouble believing that God could become man. If you have trouble believing that God could orchestrate the stars, you will have trouble believing that the death of the Son of God could have any impact on sin. Either God can do what God can do and He can do it in the history in which you live, or this really is all a myth. Matthew didn’t present this as a myth. As we’ve seen there was no genre of realistic fiction in those days. Matthew presented this as news, as good news.
The Magi saw it as such. When they saw that star, they followed it. Genuine seekers genuinely seek. They sought so as to find, and the star helped them find. What is happening right now in this moment is my attempt to help you find what the Magi did. ‘The work of the ministry,’ writes Fredrick Dale Bruner, ‘is to do the work of the star...” What was said of the star then should be said of the church’s ministry ever since: “it came and stood shining right over the place where the child lay.”’
The coming of the Son of God was so important that God used the stars to tell these Magi about it. It is so important that I am telling you about it. I’m not telling you about it because it is my job; it is my calling because I want to tell you about it. This is the good I want to do for you – not those gift ideas at the beginning. The coming of the Son of God is the greatest event of human history. The Magi recognized that and so they behaved in a way that was fitting for the occasion.
They brought gifts that were fitting for the occasion. Gold is a fitting gift to commemorate the greatest event in human history. The costliness of incense and myrrh is appropriate. If you found that the stars themselves were directing your journey, you would be sure to behave in a way when you arrived. These Magi knew they were privileged to be present for this auspicious occasion and they brought fitting.
These gifts were also fitting for the recipient. We see that in our second point: fitting for the recipient.
We have now, after three and half sermons, finally come to what is pictured in the nativity scene. “On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh.”
The Magi now saw in the flesh what they saw in the night sky. They saw the woman who had birthed the king and they saw a king himself. They responded with gifts that were fitting for a king.
The gifts of gold and incense were fitting because they were costly. They were also prophesied. Isaiah spoke of Gentiles coming from afar carrying gold and incense. He prophesied that, “all from Sheba will come, bearing gold and incense and proclaiming the praise of the Lord.”
Now it is very possible that the Magi knew this prophecy. We’ve seen that it is likely that they had familiarity with Judaism and correspondence with Jewish teachers and familiarity with the prophecies of Isaiah. This same Isaiah who told them about the virgin who would give birth to a king told them that gold and incense were appropriate gifts for Gentiles like them to bring this divine king.
They also brought myrrh. Some scholars believe that myrrh was given because it was a costly and representative gift from the Magi’s homeland and that was certainly true. We should give our best. Just as China sometimes gives panda bears to foreign zoos as a show of honor so these Magi could have brought myrrh as a show of honor.
Myrrh, however, was also regularly used to perfume dead bodies. While that might seem to be a strange gift for a baby, some scholars think that death is precisely what these Magi had in mind. It seems fairly certain that the Magi were familiar with Isaiah’s prophecies about the Messiah and Isaiah is the prophet who speaks most clearly of the death of the Messiah; “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”
Wealthy men like these magi would offer myrrh as perfume for the dead. Perhaps this was their way of doing justice to their understanding of what would happen to this king who would die for his people. Nicodemus did something similar when he brought seventy-five pounds of myrrh and aloes for Jesus’ burial.
Now if the Magi brought this myrrh with the death of Christ in mind, they perceived what the religious leaders of Jesus’ day missed.
It seems these Magi who knew very little Scripture believed what they read and behaved appropriately. Those who knew a great deal of Scripture were blind to what they taught. We’ve already seen this, however. The religious leaders didn’t travel the three hours from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to see if the Messiah had been born. The magi travelled more than three weeks to honor Christ. Understanding has more to do with the heart than with the intellect.
You can know if you would have travelled with those Magi. You can know if you would have honored or ignored this king who would die for his people. You know that you would have behaved like the Magi if you offer an appropriate gift. You must offer a life for a life. He offered his life for you; you offer yourself to him. The Magi offered themselves. As Matthew tells us, “they bowed down and worshipped him.”
Now we don’t know how well they understood Jesus’ divinity or monotheism, the understanding that there is only one God. We don’t know everything about their theology. What we do know is that they behaved in a fitting way. They worshipped.
I want you to consider if you worship Christ. You might consider that an absurd question given that we are in a sanctuary but there are any number of people who come to worship but never worship. Some people come to leave. They know they should go to a time of worship and so they do but they want it to be over as quick as possible. They would, in their heart of hearts, rather be elsewhere. Some come to be entertained. They consider matters of sin, repentance, holiness, and acts of love to be rather passé. They believe that if the church is going to survive it needs to market its product in a more attractive way. Some people come to inspect. They have particular criteria for which they are looking. They stand in judgment of the music and the sermon. They talk afterwards about what they liked or didn’t like but they were never the audience to begin with. It is God who is inspecting their worship.
He is the audience. You are the performer. You exist for His pleasure. It is God who is inspecting your worship. If you are offering anything less than yourself in worship or in life, your gift is unfitting. It is unfitting for the occasion of Christmas. Christ came to you. You must come to him. To offer anything less than yourself is unfitting for the recipient. He gave his life for you. Give your lfie for him.
If you offer yourself, God will accept your gift. If you offer less, He will reject it.
You might not think that you are much of a gift but God longs to have you the way a father longs to have his wayward child come home. You only know how valuable you are when you give yourself to God. You are the gift fitting for this occasion. You are the gift fitting for Christ. Amen.