You know when I think of all the intelligent people who have ever lived, one of the first names that pops into my head is that of ALBERT EINSTEIN. He may have originated the concept of a “bad hair day” but no one will argue the fact that he was an intelligent person! This week I read of a true incident from Einstein’s life that occurred while he was on a lecture tour of our nation’s universities presenting his theory of relativity. Now, Einstein did not have a driver’s license, so he had a chauffeur who drove him from place to place. As they were driving along one day, a couple of months into this lecture tour, the chauffeur said to the brilliant scientist, “You know, I’ve heard this lecture so many times now that I could give it myself.” Well, Einstein accepted the challenge and said, “Let’s try it. The people at the next university have never seen me, so they won’t know who I am. You put on my clothes and I’ll wear your uniform and cap. When we get there, you introduce me as your chauffeur and I will introduce you as Dr. Einstein.”
Everything went according to plan. The chauffeur delivered the speech on relativity flawlessly. And Einstein, sitting at the back of the lecture hall, enjoyed it immensely. Then, something happened that the two had not considered. The moderator of the lecture said, “We have fifteen more minutes, just enough time for some of you to ask Dr. Einstein a question.” A mathematics professor in the audience asked a very complicated, technical question involving higher mathematical formulas and language that the chauffeur did not understand. The chauffeur was quick on his feet and he said, “Sir, the solution to that problem is so simple that I am really surprised you would even ask it. Anybody can answer that simple question. To prove it, I am going to have my chauffeur come up and answer it!” Well, Einstein might have been intelligent- —but his chauffeur was obviously a wise man! And you know, all of us want to be wise. Every day we face complex decisions that often require on the spot thinking and we wish we had the wisdom of Solomon so we would instantly know what to do. Now, don’t get me wrong, we DO have knowledge….lots of it! In fact as much new knowledge has been developed in the last year as has been discovered in all prior years of civilization combined. But knowledge is not the same thing as wisdom. Knowledge is just information that often leads us from the simple to the complex. Wisdom is a practical thing. In point of fact, it leads us from the complex to the simple.
I like Charles Swindoll’s definition. He says, “Wisdom is the God-given ability to see life with rare objectivity and to handle life with rare stability.” One of the wisest men I have ever known was my Grandfather Adams. He was a farmer in the deep south….never even graduated from high school…but he was a truly wise man. He always knew what to do! I remember when I was a teen on vacation with my family I’d sit under the cedar trees in Grandad’s front yard for hours with the rest of the “men.” I would listen as they talked about everything that was going on in the world and I always admired my Grandad’s perspective on things. His words made much more sense than all the news analysts I had heard on TV. Well, we need wisdom in our day and age….people like my Grandad are scarce. As Will Rogers said, “Common sense isn’t as common as it used to be.”
And this leads us to this third question that Christmas answers. In today’s day and age when wisdom is so scarce we wonder: What does a wise man look like? A great place to search for an answer to this question is in the 2nd chapter of Matthew, for here in this portion of the Christmas story, we come across some men who have had the reputation of being wise for nearly 2,000 years. I think that if we examine their involvement in this chapter of the Christmas story we will see some of the elements that go into making a truly wise person. So take your Bibles and turn to Matthew’s gospel and follow along as I read the first 12 verses.
Matthew 2:1-12
1 – After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem
2 – and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.”
3 – When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.
4 – When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born.
5 – “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:
6 – “`But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.'”
7 – Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared.
8 – He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”
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.
12 – And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
Okay let’s begin by taking a close look at these WISE MEN. Who were these strange travelers from the east? Matthew gives us almost no details about them and most popular beliefs are misleading. It is doubtful that they were anything like the camel-riding travelers we usually see portrayed on Christmas cards and in Christmas pageants. In fact, they probably rode Arabian stallions, not camels. Even the old Christmas Carol, “We Three Kings of Orient Are” is wrong on several counts. These men were certainly not kings and we have no evidence that there were three of them, other than the scriptural record that they brought three gifts to our Lord. Some traditions say there were as many as a dozen wise men and nothing in the Bible says that they came from the Orient.
Most of the information we can glean from history infers that they came from the land of the Medes and the Persians, modern day Iran. I remember touring the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem that is built above the cave where Jesus was born and our guide told us that one reason the invading Persians spared this church in 614 A.D. was because they saw the golden mosaic over the doorway depicting the wise men in Persian head dress. So the wise men who traveled to Bethlehem that night probably came from Persia. These wise men or “MAGI” were the scholars of their time. Their teachings became known as the “law of the Medes and the Persians”and both Magi and their laws are referred to in the Old Testament books of Esther and Daniel. (Esther 1:19, Daniel 6:8) These laws of the magi were seen in Persia as the highest unalterable legal code. Our word “MAGISTRATE” comes from the word “magi.” So to summarize, these magi were learned men: scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, doctors, as well as the legal authorities in their land. And, because of their knowledge, these magi rose to places of prominence in the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, and Greek empires. They acted as advisors to kings, interpreting dreams and the like. In the year of Jesus’ birth the Magi were still very powerful in the same basic territory which by then was known as the Parthian empire. And we should note one other thing: one of the Magi’s main duties was choosing kings in Parthia—which is why their arrival in Jerusalem would have upset King Herod. He knew these men were king-makers and here they were going about town asking for the One who had been born King of the Jews!
Imagine the scene. These men arrived in Jerusalem no doubt with a great deal of pomp and show all decked out in their magi outfits riding Arabian horses accompanied with a small army for their protection. They must have been an imposing sight! Furthermore, Herod’s own small army was off on duty with the census. This was no time for a well-armed band of foreign king-makers to show up. Herod was the “king of the jews”….a title given to him by Caesar Augustus himself. And Herod was in a difficult spot geographically as well. His region formed a very small buffer between the rival Roman and the Parthian empires. It had already been a battleground in several wars between these two world powers. He no doubt saw the magi as a serious threat to the stability of his kingdom. So when Matthew 2:3 says that he was “troubled” it uses a word that means “shaken” or “agitated” like the heavy-duty cycle of a washing machine. In other words, to quote a popular Elvis lyric, Herod was “all shook up!”
Okay, enough background on these men! What was it about them that made them worthy of the title of WISE MEN in scripture? Based on this event, What does a wise man look like? Well, first of all, in this chapter of the Christmas story we see that a wise man….
1. …knows that GOD is the only source of true wisdom.
Billy Graham once said, “Knowledge is horizontal. Wisdom is vertical….it comes down from above.” And these men were wise because their source of knowledge was not limited to what man knows. They also considered information that God provided. They made the most important journey of their lives based on prophecies they had read in the word of God….specifically the prophecies concerning the coming Messiah. Now how did it come about that these men from Persia would know the messianic prophecies of scripture in the first place?
Well, to answer that we must look back at the Old Testament. Magi are mentioned there in the accounts concerning Israel’s dealings with the Babylonian Empire. Remember Nebuchadnezzar was the Babylonian king who destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple and took the Jewish nation into captivity in 587 B.C. Scripture teaches that he hand-picked certain young Hebrew men of extraordinary wisdom to serve him, including Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. In a sense they became rivals of Nebuchadnezzar’s Magi. Ironically, Daniel made an early favorable impression on Nebuchadnezzar by doing what the Magi were supposed to be able to do but could not…..that is interpret the king’s dreams. Daniel prayed for God’s wisdom and as a result was able to interpret the dream and the king rewarded him by making Daniel master of the Magi.
As their leader he would have had great influence on their studies. Knowing what we know of Daniel’s character and zeal for God, we can be certain that he would have taken advantage of this opportunity to instruct the magi about the One true God. So, it stands to reason that they would have gained a great deal of familiarity with Jewish scripture, including all prophecy regarding the coming Messiah. So these wise men who visited Jesus had probably read Numbers 24:17 which says. “A star shall come forth from Jacob, and a scepter shall rise from Israel.” This by the way is the only verse in the O.T. that talks about a star being any kind of a sign. And the word, “scepter” would suggest a coming “kingship.” So these men were wise because their based they life’s journeys on the only true source of wisdom, God Himself. And any one who wants to become wise will do the same. James 1:5 says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, Who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.” You see without an underlying belief in God all knowledge leads to a dead end.
In his book, CHRISTIAN BELIEF IN A POSTMODERN WORLD, Diogenese Allen writes, “It has been taken for granted in the intellectual world that the idea of God is superfluous. ?We do not need God to account for anything,’ is the common attitude.” But, he goes on to say, “Today there are fundamental developments in philosophy and cosmology that actually point to God. It is beyond those fields of inquiry to make a positive pronouncement on this matter.
All they can say is that the order and existence of the universe pose real questions that they cannot answer and they recognize that God is the sort of reality that would answer them.” In other words what Allen is saying is this—in the intellectual climate of our post modern world, where it has been cool to just ignore God and to decide that we do not need Him to account for anything, there is a dramatic shift of change taking place. People with great knowledge are beginning to ask questions about existence and life and the universe—and the questions they are positing cannot be answered by their scientific disciplines. So what has happened is this….we have produced a whole generation of people that are highly intelligent but are abysmally ignorant and foolish because they have intelligence without faith in God. They have rationalism without an acceptance of the One from whom all things come. This reminds me of 1 Corinthians 1:25 which says, “The foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.” Our greatest knowledge is nothing compared to even God’s foolishness! So true wisdom begins with a world view based on a fear of God…a respect for God as the only source of true wisdom. And we see this quality in all wise men including these strange gift-bearing travelers who made the journey of their life based on something God said.
A second identifying quality in people who are wise is this. They know that…
2. …wisdom is more than KNOWLEDGE….it is ACTING on that knowledge.
Matthew tells us that the Wise Men came to Herod and asked for his help in locating the King of the Jews. And Herod responded by calling in all the Jewish experts….the religious leaders of Jerusalem. He asked them where the Christ was to be born. And they knew! They weren’t even surprised by the question! They had the same Old Testament writings that the Wise men had read. So they looked at these writings from God and they reminded their king of the prophecy in Micah that pinpointed the Messiah’s exact birthplace in Bethlehem. Now don’t miss this…..these religious leaders of the day had all the knowledge necessary for locating the true King of Kings—- but they did nothing about it. Only these strangers from the east were wise enough to ACT on this knowledge. The Jewish theologians knew their Bibles and spoke truth to Herod but they did not join the magi on their journey of wisdom. Historical biblical truth did not make the slightest difference in they way their lived their lives. They were too engrossed in the study of theology and in the activities of temple ritual. So, tragically there were more people who saw the star and didn’t follow it than there were those who saw it and followed it as it led those men from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, “Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal and are all the greater fools for it. To know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.” And Spurgeon is right! It is foolish to amass great knowledge…even religious knowledge….without acting on it….without applying it to our lives.
James 1:22 says, “Do not merely listen to the word…DO what it says.” You know even today many people believe in Jesus but they do nothing about that belief. Every Christmas they celebrate the birth of God’s Son but they don’t repent of their sin and make Him Lord of their lives. They believe but they don’t do anything about that belief. Well, James 2:19 says that, “even the demons believe and shudder!” Knowledge is not enough. Wisdom is more than believing….it is more than knowing….it is DOING!
So, a wise man knows that God is the only source of true wisdom. He knows that wisdom is not just knowledge. It is acting on that knowledge. And then a third characteristic seen in a wise man is this…he…
3. …follows God even when His GUIDING LIGHT cannot be seen.
Matthew tells us that these wise men saw the star in the east and then traveled in that direction even after it disappeared. Then the star re-appeared to guide them from Jerusalem to the specific house in Bethlehem where Mary and Joseph had set up their first home. So, contrary to pictures on Christmas cards, the Wise Men traveled long miles of their journey in the dark, without benefit of the glorious star. This is true to life, isn’t it? We spend a lot of our journeys in the dark. God guides us to attend a certain college, and we go there, not knowing what lies ahead. He leads us to a specific career or a profession and we go in that direction, not knowing any more than that.
Again and again in life, we have a moment of great luminosity, when everything becomes clear and we know that God has guided us in this direction;…then the light gives way to stretches of darkness, with only the memory of the light to guide us. The star does not shine brightly at all times. When it doesn’t we must walk by faith, remembering its shining and by hoping it will shine again. Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not SEEN.” All Christians go through times when it seems like God is hidden….and when this happens WISE followers will remember that God is always there guiding us even when we can’t see His guiding light. Job thought God had abandoned him but he discovered this was not true…that…in fact more was going on in and around him than he could perceive. He learned that God was never MORE present than in those times of trial. You know scientists tell us that in the natural world human beings only receive about 30 percent of the light spectrum. Honeybees and homing pigeons can detect ultraviolet light waves that are invisible to us. So a lot is going on around us in the physical world that we never see.
In the supernatural world our vision is even more limited and we get only occasional glimpses of all that is going on. The prophet Daniel went through a time when it seemed that God was hidden….no longer guiding him through life. He prayed and received no answer to his prayer then one day Daniel got far more than he bargained for. A supernatural being, with eyes like flaming torches and a face like lightning, suddenly showed up on a river bank beside him. Daniel’s companions fled in terror and in Daniel 10 said, “I had not strength left. My face turned deathly pale and I was helpless.” When he was talking to the dazzling being, he could hardly breathe. The heavenly visitor explained why there had been a delay in the answer to his prayer. He had been dispatched by God with the answer but had been delayed by a three-week standoff with “the prince of the Persian kingdom”…a powerful demon. Reinforcements in the form of the Archangel Michael arrived and he was finally able to continue. We don’t have time to go into a discussion of spiritual warfare here but we should take note that in Daniel’s experience much was going on around him that he could not see.
To him prayer may have seemed futile and God hidden but a glimpse “behind the curtain” revealed exactly the opposite. And wise men stubbornly cling to God in times of darkness and hardship knowing that when they pray, more…much more….may be involved than they dream.
They have the kind of faith that knows that God never abandons us no matter how distant He may seem. And then one more quality of a wise man is this. A truly WISE MAN…
4. …seeks GOD — and when he seeks Him—-he always FINDS Him.
You know, there are many reasons that these men may have journeyed to pay homage to God’s newborn Son. They may have actually started seeking Him because of political motivations. Perhaps they thought this new King would help the Parthians defeat Rome. Maybe they were even looking for a new king to unify the two empires. Possibly they were simply curious about the long-prophesied Jewish Messiah they had studied about. But I think they set out on this huge road trip because they were genuinely seeking the true God. I believe they realized how empty the world’s knowledge is and so with hungry souls they set out to find the One true God. In Deuteronomy 4:29 God promised, “If you seek Me with all your heart you will find me.”
And these men found God….I think…in answer to their sincere seeking. And when they found Him, Matthew tells us they “fell down and worshiped Him.” God in His grace opened the eyes of these pagan men to something His own people did not see-that Jesus was God in human form. I take it from their response that they were converted and thus became the earliest Gentile believers in Christ. Scripture is silent on this but tradition says that Thomas, the doubting disciple, spent his life after Jesus’ ascension as a missionary in the far east and that in his travels he met the original magi and baptized them. I don’t know about that but I do know that God warned them in a dream and they departed to their country another way. And this phrase can have a double meaning. They went back a different way…our route…AND they went back a different way…they were followers of another way in the spiritual sense-THE WAY….they were changed men. You know there are basically only two kinds of people in this world: wise people who accept Christ and foolish people who reject Him. Colossians 2:3 says, “In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” And like these wise men….whenever we seek God sincerely we find Him through Jesus Christ. Our denomination has missionaries who serve “in secret” in Muslim countries sharing the gospel at the risk of their own lives. One of them shared the following true testimony of a young Muslim man, named Omar in this month’s issue of SBC LIFE…..the names are changed to protect the people involved from persecution. Omar was raised in a strong Muslim family, forced to go to the mosque and obey all it’s rituals but inside he hungered to know God. He often cried out, tears in his eyes,`God, I want to know you. Talk to me.’ One day Omar met a man named Bill on a bus. They eventually became close friends and after several weeks Bill felt it was safe to tell Omar that he was a Christian. At Omar’s request they began to discuss their different faiths and during one of their discussions Bill challenged Omar by saying that he could know God but through Jesus Christ….not Mohammed. Bill urged Omar to read the New Testament and investigate the claims of Christ.
Omar writes,
Bill told me to open my eyes and my heart. He said, ? God is not limited, my friend. He made you and will show himself to you. Ask Him.’ I went home with a storm in my heart. I was so accustomed to following a culture, a ritual. But I kept praying. Bill helped me know more from the Koran, from the Bible, from different books. Then he gave me the names of some other Muslims who had accepted Christ. I talked to them and they said, ? Brother, we were in darkness. Now we are God’s children.’ I couldn’t eat; I couldn’t sleep. Bill saw the restlessness in my heart and said, ? Omar, I think you’ve read enough books.
This is the time to challenge God. Find a quiet place, close the door and kneel before him.
Ask Him to come to you in the name of Buddha, in the Hindu gods’ names, in Muhammad’s name, and in Jesus’ name. See which name He answers. Late one night I thought, ? This is the time.’ I washed my face, came to my room and closed the door and windows. I knelt before God and put a chair in front of me, like He would come and sit there. I said, ? God, all these years I have prayed to You. You know my heart. I want to know You. I need to challenge You. Talk to me. If You are the God who created me, I ask You to come to me in Buddha’s name.’ I waited. No answer. Then I said, ?I ask You to come to me in the name of all those Hindu gods. If this is the way You want me to worship You, I will worship those idols.’ I waited five minutes, ten minutes. No answer. Then I started praying in the name of Muhammad. My heart was heavy, because I always had such respect toward Muhammad, the holy beloved prophet of god. I told God, ? All these years, I have been praying to You through Muhammad. The time has come now to ask You if Muhammad is the anointed one.’ There were tears in my eyes. I waited, ten, twenty, thirty minutes. No answer. Then, unwillingly, I said, ? If You want me to pray in Jesus’ name, if He is Your real anointed One, I ask You to come to talk to me.’ Let me tell you, I didn’t have to wait thirty minutes! Right at that moment, I felt like someone walked into my room. The hair on my body stood up. I felt from my feet to my head that Somebody was touching me. I heard a voice saying, ? Omar, I am Jesus, your Lord. I love you. Do you want to know anything more?’ I cried, ? No my Lord. I trust You! You are my Lord from today. All these years I have been worshiping god, and he never answered. Today, You answered.” I didn’t sleep that night. Such joy filled my heart that I had never felt before. I told Bill and was baptized and from this day on, God has had such mercy and grace on me…to this day I am serving Jesus in His ministry.
You know all over the world, wise men like Omar still seek God and when they do they find Him.