We’re taking a unique and fascinating journey to Bethlehem this year. As in most places in Scripture, there are parts of the story we simply read over and never stop long enough to ask important questions like: what’s going on here? Let’s ask that question in the story of the Magi.
Matt 2:1 Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, 2 “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him."
Magi were the learned class of Persia. They were within the collection of people called Wise Men. They studied all the sciences and were particularly intrigued with the stars. Because we are offended by the word Astrologers, we historically have said they were Astronomers, or star gazers. Astronomers deal with celestial objects in space and the physical universe as a whole. Astrologers look for messages and information in the alignment of the stars.
The Magi announced they had come to Jerusalem because they saw a star that indicated a great king had been born. The heavens had declared to them a message.
Now for them to make that long journey to Jerusalem, they had to have more than just a hunch-driven curiosity. They needed some conviction what they saw in the night sky was real. Because we know the rest of the story is true, what they saw had to be true. God had announced the birth of the King of kings in the heavens.
How did they make the connection? Go back a bit over 500 years and you’ll remember Daniel was one of the Wise Men of Persia. Daniel had a vision: Dan 7:13 I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, and He came up to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him. 14 And to Him was given dominion, glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations and men of every language might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away; and His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.
Is it possible Daniel shared his vision with the other Wise Men? Did they, from that moment on, watch the night skies for a sign?
Remember it’s the Astrologers who study the stars for signs. So, if God gave them a sign, does this give credibility to Astrology? Not in the perverted sense of the word, but yes in the orhestrated plan of God to declare His glory in the heavens.
On the fourth day of creation: Gen 1:16 God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also.
That last statement seems like an add on. That, “Oh yeah, by the way, God made the stars, too.” But there’s much more there than just the physical creation of stars. What purpose do stars have in our night sky?
Navigators have used them forever to find their way. Locking in on the North Star, they can determine their location relative to it and know which way to go. But beyond that, other than beauty and magnificence, stars do little more than decorate the sky. Unless the God who designed them placed them in proximity to each other to tell a greater story.
Ps 19:1 The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. 2 Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. 3 There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard.
David said they were silent communicators of a greater message about God and His work. That God could speak through the display of the heavens.
The word is personification – giving reality and thought to the objects God uses to reveal Himself: which means God can communicate through anything within His creation. The rocks and stones can cry out, a donkey can speak, His prophets can perform miracles.
This personification plays a heavy role throughout the Bible but especially in the story of the Exodus.
Ex 8:6 So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt.
Ex 8:17 They did so; and Aaron stretched out his hand with his staff, and struck the dust of the earth, and there were gnats on man and beast. All the dust of the earth became gnats through all the land of Egypt.
Ex 9:23 Moses stretched out his staff toward the sky, and the LORD sent thunder and hail, and fire ran down to the earth. And the LORD rained hail on the land of Egypt.
Ex 10:13 So Moses stretched out his staff over the land of Egypt, and the LORD directed an east wind on the land all that day and all that night; and when it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts.
Ex 10:22 So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and there was thick darkness in all the land of Egypt for three days.
Ex 14:21 Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD swept the sea back by a strong east wind all night and turned the sea into dry land, so the waters were divided.
The word for stretched out is the word pervert. But before we react to such an offensive word, understand its usage in Scripture.
From one extreme, Perversion is the alteration of something from its original course, meaning, or state to a distortion or corruption of what was first intended. We use it to describe the actions of people who take something good and make it evil, who pervert what is considered normal and make it horribly wrong.
But the word Pervert means: to bend toward or away from or to stretch out with intentions of doing something beyond the ordinary.
In the Exodus story Moses stretched out his hand to cause something to happen that was a perversion or alteration of what was normal. What happened wasn’t the expected outcome but different. It is also like bending toward or bending away from something for a positive result.
Ps 119:112 I have inclined my heart to perform Your statutes forever, even to the end.
Prov 2:2 Make your ear attentive to wisdom, incline your heart to understanding;
Inclined is the word pervert. I lean toward or bend my life toward God’s intentions.
Judges 16:29 Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested, and braced himself against them, the one with his right hand and the other with his left. 30 And Samson said, "Let me die with the Philistines!" And he bent with all his might so that the house fell on the lords and all the people who were in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he killed in his life.
He leaned toward completing a final task in His obedience to God by destroying Philistines.
But, granted, we most often see the word used in its highly negative sense.
Deut 27:19 Cursed is he who distorts the justice
1Sam 8:3 His sons, however, did not walk in his ways, but turned aside after dishonest gain and took bribes and perverted justice.
It then becomes a distortion against what was intended. Explained best by Hosea:
Hos 11:7 So My people are bent on turning from Me. Though they call them to the One on high, none at all exalts Him.
Following an inner desire to turn away from what they were not to turn away from, the urge to exalt God became perverted with the wrong application. As turning toward idols.
In the subject of Astrology, I’m the first to reject it as mythology and superstition. I refuse to read my horoscope. Believing my future is tied to someone’s projections is lumped within the category of Tarot cards, fortune tellers and palm readers. And if you go away saying I said believing in Astrology is Biblical, I didn’t say that.
But what if, God declared the glory of His plans within the constellations of the stars? So that: Ps 97:6 The heavens declare His righteousness, and all the peoples have seen His glory – and then somehow what He declared got perverted or distorted into something He never intended. Replaced by the imaginations of men who have rejected Him and turned to worshipping false gods.
We know Satan is the great deceiver. Matt 16:22 Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, "God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You." 23 But He turned and said to Peter, "Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God's interests, but man's."
His primary objective is to get people to reject God for man’s interests. To replace God with a substitute and Rom 1:23 exchange the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.
It was the same rebuke of Jeremiah to the false prophets: Jer 23:25 I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy falsely in My name, saying, 'I had a dream, I had a dream!' 26 "How long? Is there anything in the hearts of the prophets who prophesy falsehood, even these prophets of the deception of their own heart, 27 who intend to make My people forget My name by their dreams which they relate to one another, just as their fathers forgot My name because of Baal?
Who was Baal? He was the primary substitute god, a false representation that captured the hearts of and minds of the people, taking worship away from God and giving it to an idol.
Josiah, King of Judah, heard what Jeremiah had said and saw what perversion these false prophets had created within the kingdom.
2Kings 23:5 He did away with the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had appointed to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah and in the surrounding area of Jerusalem, also those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and to the moon and to the constellations and to all the host of heaven.
What God intended for good had been perverted into evil. Instead of leading men to Him their practices were taking men away from Him, as worldly Astrology also does.
2Pet 3:17 You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness, 18 but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Col 2:8 See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.
With no intention to make worldly Astrology an acceptable source of information and useful for instruction for today, we still need to understand how God placed His glory – the representation of His presence that reveals His magnificent plan – in the heavens.
So that, Ps 68:33 To Him who rides upon the highest heavens, which are from ancient times; behold, He speaks forth with His voice, a mighty voice.
Back in Genesis, Gen 1:14 God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years;
Signs mean a signal of something to come. Seasons means an appointment at a fixed time or appointing beforehand something that would come later.
Like a highway sign set up by someone who knows what’s coming. To warn or direct or give guidance in advance. The sign is set up by someone who knows more about the route than the one coming later, to help direct their journey to its proper destination.
Three priests holding signs on a dark and rainy night: Beware. Turn Back. The End is Coming.
It may seem foreign to us that the Bible specifically refers to constellations. We see them as a part of Astrology tied to Greek mythology and reject them outright. However, constellations have a history far beyond Greece. In fact, outside of the Bible, symbols of the Zodiac have been found on Babylonian boundary markers as early at 1000 B.C., in China as early as 2500 B.C. and in Egypt around 3000 B.C.
Even in the book of Job: Job 9:9 Who makes the Bear, Orion and the Pleiades, and the chambers of the south;
The Bear, Orion and Pleiades are all constellations well known to the people of Job’s day. The chambers of the south are the expected constellations they had no knowledge of since they never saw that portion of the night sky.
Amo 5:8 He who made the Pleiades and Orion and changes deep darkness into morning, Who also darkens day into night, Who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out on the surface of the earth, the LORD is His name.
Job 38:31 Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades, or loose the cords of Orion? 32 Can you lead forth a constellation in its season, and guide the Bear with her satellites? 33 Do you know the ordinances of the heavens, or fix their rule over the earth?
The word constellation is plural, meaning all that makes up the constellations. And the word ordinances means something prescribed. God is challenging Job’s authority over the heavens which only He has to give the constellations meaning.
Remember the word season? Seasons means an appointment at a fixed time or appointing beforehand something that would come later.
Ps 147:4 He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them.
When God set the stars in space, He did so with great purpose and precision. Man has since applied his own understanding – or misunderstanding – to what the position of the stars means. And because Satan has confused and perverted that understanding, he has clouded the truth of God into a mysterious unknown. Satan has performed the act of the magician to misdirect the eye to not see what he doesn’t want it to see. To do so, he stirs the minds of men to see what isn’t there and not see what is there.
It is this perversion that God has judged.
Isa 47:13 Let now the astrologers, those who prophesy by the stars, those who predict by the new moons, stand up and save you from what will come upon you. 14 Behold, they have become like stubble…
False messages from false prophets who use the ignorance and gullibility of the people to get them to believe whatever they say is true.
But the constellations were designed by God to give insight into the story of redemption and though Satan distorted that message by overwriting it with a different story, the original still remains.
Since the heavens declare the glory of God, they must be doing more than giving a sparkling display of His creative power. They are telling a story. And it was the Magi from Persia who saw that story in the sky and went to Jerusalem searching for the Baby King who was born. The star in the East was real, as was the Baby King they found in Bethlehem.
And Matt 2:9 After hearing the king, they went their way; and the star, which they had seen in the east, went on before them until it came and stood over the place where the Child was. 10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. 11 After coming into the house they saw the Child with Mary His mother; and they fell to the ground and worshiped Him. Then, opening their treasures, they presented to Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
This Christmas Season, I hope we can get perspective from the Magi to understand how the heavens declared the glory of God.
TAKEAWAYS:
- For a God who can write His commandments on the hearts of His people, writing a message in the heavens should not amaze us.
- His goal is to reveal Himself in ways mankind can understand and respond.
- With the whole universe as His tablet, He can use any of it to speak on His behalf as He chooses.
- His glory is of such magnitude, even the infinite heavens can only give us a glimpse of how great He really is.
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