Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): Pastor Bill Luebkemann says that we would have no doubt orchestrated the birth of Christ much differently than God did.

Bill Luebkemann: Everything he did was the opposite of the way we would do it. If any of us was asked to plan this event, if God called you on the phone and said, "I'm looking for advice on how to do it. How would you do it?" We would have said, announce it on television ahead of time so everyone can be expecting it.

And let him be born at the most famous children's hospital there is, in the best conditions that there are. And have people there with crowns and gold and gifts when he's born, and all this other kind of stuff. No one on earth could have dreamed up this story. People say the Bible's fiction, we don't believe it, it's just a bunch of made-up fables.

Nobody could ever make this stuff up. Nobody would have ever thought of it. Christianity is so different from any other religion in the world because it's the only belief system where God came to us.

Guest (Male): Hello again and welcome to Hope From the Word. We're glad to have you with us today. Christmas was yesterday, but we're going to continue with more teaching from Pastor Bill Luebkemann centered around the Christmas message. Many of the movies we see have a villain. And in the case of the Christmas story, our villain is King Herod, a man so obsessed with his position as king that he ordered his own son murdered.

Last time we talked about the wise men and their trip to visit young Jesus. As we review the journey of the wise men today, we begin with their visit to Herod's palace as recorded in Matthew chapter 2.

Bill Luebkemann: Herod gets together all the top guys here in verse 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. He gets together all the important people. Notice it doesn't say that he recognizes them. It says all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law. It doesn't say his chief priest or that he looks up to the guy as chief priest or that he recognizes the authority of the chief priests and teachers of the law.

He calls together the chief priest and the teachers of the law that are recognized by the people, and he says to them, "Where is this event supposed to be happening?" And they answer promptly, "In Bethlehem in Judea," they replied, "for this is what the prophet has written. 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."

It doesn't take them long to figure out or to tell him where this baby is to be born. He calls them together, they give him the answer immediately. They tell him what the scripture said. Now, there's no real interest here in worshipping this baby. They just want to know it. And I think it's interesting, all these people get together, say he's going to be born in Bethlehem. You would think that they would be so excited.

"Wow, he really was born? You mean he was born in Bethlehem? We've been waiting for hundreds of years. The scripture says he's going to be born in Bethlehem. Let's all go down and see him." You would think all of Jerusalem would want to go over to Bethlehem. It's only seven miles. And we're all going to go over there and check it out. They report where he's going to be born. They sound like college professors. They're giving you the facts.

He's going to be born in Bethlehem in Judea, for that's what the prophet wrote. Anything else you need, or can we go back to sleep now? Look, it's interesting here too. The Gentiles are being drawn in by a star. The Jews here know the scripture, and it's the Gentiles who are on their way to look for this king, not the Jews. The Jews have the scripture, they know what it says. They even have some Gentiles come to them and tell them, "Hey, this is happening now." And you'd think they'd want to get on board. No interest in that.

They quote from the Old Testament from Micah chapter 5, verse 2. "But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah." It was a small town, maybe not significant in some ways, but this promise from the Old Testament comes shining through: "For out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel." There's no mistake about it. This coming of the Christ was foretold hundreds of years before in the Old Testament, in many places, over and over and over again.

Now, what does Herod do with that information? Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. Some of the verses say privily. That's what it means. It means secretly. So he called them on the sly. He didn't want anybody else to know what he was doing here. He calls the Magi back in. Now, they've been staying in town for a while. It wasn't like today where you could send out an email and everybody could get the message right away, get on the horn and call everybody together and say we're having a meeting tomorrow.

It took time to get everybody together to ask this question. He calls the Magi back secretly and spent time with them. I would have to guess he treated them real well because he was sly and he wanted to get some information from them. Maybe he fed them dinner or something. Maybe he looked up to them or pretended how important they were in his mind when really he didn't care at all. He just wanted to get rid of this baby who was a threat to his kingdom.

So he calls the Magi in secretly. Maybe it was at night. Nobody else knows about it. He asked the rulers and the chief priest, "When do these events happen?" Now they're gone, and he calls the Magi in. It's not exactly shown to us here that the Magi knew how he got this information. And it doesn't exactly say that the chief priests and the rulers, the people who he asked, might not have even known that there were Magi. Herod may have been working both sides of the table here. That's the kind of person that he was.

He called the Magi in secretly, and he found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. When was that exactly? You're going to find out if you read further. When he killed the babies, he kills all the babies that are two years old and under. And that's why we believe when they told him when the star appeared, it must have been a year or two before this. So they were not there on the night that Christ was born. If you have a little manger set at home and you have the wise men there, you've got to get rid of them because they don't belong there.

So he sends them on to Bethlehem. This is Herod now. 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." Now, there was a decent number of people that lived in Bethlehem. It was only seven miles away. It was a suburb, if you will, of Jerusalem. They probably watched the Jerusalem TV stations and rooted for the Jerusalem sports teams.

And he says, "Well, this is where you want to go. You asked me where to go. Here's where you want to go. You want to go to Bethlehem. It's only seven miles south. Easy to get to there. And when you go there, make a careful search for the child." The King James says a diligent search. And really, what that word means is to know accurately, to do exactly, to investigate diligently. In other words, be careful, be methodical about it.

You're going to go there. There's a lot of kids in Bethlehem. There's a lot of people that have young infants. How are you going to find the right one? Go and carefully search for this child. Be diligent, be careful. Be sure you find the right one. Herod's already thinking in his mind, "I'm going to kill this child. I've got to be sure I'm killing the right one." "As soon as you find him, report to me so that I may go and worship him." Well, he doesn't want to worship the child. He wants to kill the child, as we're going to see.

Verse 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. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child was with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and frankincense and of myrrh.

And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route. So they continue on here after verse 9. They heard the king. The king told them these things. They hear what he has to say. They go on their way, and the star reappears and went ahead of them and stopped over the place where the child was. Now, one of the theories—I have no favorite theory, by the way—is that it could have been a completely supernatural event. It could have been God using some natural events.

One theory that's been mentioned is that it was a comet or something. And comets, when you see them, you see them for a while, and then they go around the sun and you don't see them for a while, and then when they come back, you see them again. With that comet back in the 90s that we saw, you could see it for a few months, and then you couldn't see it for a few months, and then you could see it for a few months again.

So that's an interesting possibility. Maybe this was some kind of a comet, and maybe when they got to Jerusalem, it wasn't visible because it was behind the sun, and some time later, it appeared again and they were on their way again. Just one possibility. Don't go home and say Pastor Bill said it was a comet. Just one possibility. It could have been anything. I have no problem with God creating something completely supernatural, and that may very well have been what it was also.

But they went on their way. They were told Bethlehem. They went on their way, and then they saw the star again, and it went and stopped over the place where the child was. So somehow this star indicated to them the house they were to go to or the street or something. The exact mechanics of how all that worked, it just doesn't say. And if we try to make that stuff up, then we're just making it up. So we'd rather just not make it up, and we'll just believe what it says here.

When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. And that's another reason why you might think that they had lost sight of it for a time. Because they were asking where this was, and maybe this was God's way of getting them to tell the Jews so the Jews could not claim that they didn't know that this event was happening. So maybe God led them here. Now we're in Jerusalem, the star is gone, we'll ask around. And now the Jews know about it.

And they consult the scriptures and they put two and two together and they say, "Wow, here's some Gentiles who are looking for a guy. They've been led here by a star, and it might be the same Messiah that has been foretold to us in our scriptures. Let's check this out also." You'd think that they would have been interested in it. And certainly they got the message. It was their own decision not to be bothered.

And maybe the wise men were even discouraged when they got there and saw no one else is worshipping Jesus. They were overjoyed when they saw that star again. If it reappeared, came back, moved into a different position, whatever it did, I can't help but think it was gone for a while. Because if it was just moving on its own, they wouldn't have needed to stop and ask for directions. And by the way, I think it might be the only time in the Bible you find men asking for directions.

They continued on, got themselves down to Bethlehem, and they were overjoyed. I just think that's interesting also. They were overjoyed. They had so much joy they could not contain it. Why? Because they're finding this Messiah. And the same Messiah can be found today by anyone who seeks. And we can be filled with the same kind of joy that they were filled with. We should be overjoyed as well. He's still alive today, still doing the same thing today that he did back then, and we even know the whole end of the story.

So if these guys were overjoyed, we should be extremely overjoyed. And they come to the house. Verse 11: On coming to the house, they saw the child was with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. There he was at the house. Was not in the manger. Was not lying in the feeding trough where he was born. He was in the house where he lived with his parents. They saw the child with his mother, and what is their first response? They bow down and worship him.

Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of frankincense and of myrrh. Look, there's a whole lot there, and it's all guesswork. Gold could be because of royalty. And frankincense is often used by the priests as part of an offering. And myrrh represents death. Myrrh was what they used to embalm bodies with. So in these three gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, one way you can look at them, they represent royalty and they represent the priesthood and they represent death.

Three things that all were to happen to him. He was royal, he was a priest, and he was going to die for our sins. In a kind of a common, practical kind of a way, you could also look at this and say, "Look at this. The Lord was really providing." Mary and Joseph probably were not well-to-do, and they had this stuff. It was valuable. And they could sell it, and maybe they could feed their child now and eat a little bit. So you see some practicality here, but you also see some symbolism here.

And here they are worshipping, these wise men, probably a little bit on the older side, worshipping a baby. It's just amazing. And maybe they were a little discouraged. They're the only ones there worshipping him. Some people think the reason why Herod and Jerusalem were so troubled was because this was a huge caravan. This may have been 50 wise guys and all kinds of donkeys or camels and animals. It could have been a huge caravan of people.

I kind of like that interpretation because if it was just three guys that showed up, I don't think it would bother Herod that much. But if it was a huge caravan bringing all kinds of gifts, now, the bigger the better and the more nervous the rest of Jerusalem would have been. What's going on here? Why is this happening? And they came to the house here, and I think this is interesting also, there's a lot of good stuff in here.

They see the child with his mother, and what's the first thing they do? They bow down and worship him. This child less than two years old, they're bowing down. These old guys, it must have been a sight to see. I would love to have a picture of that. In all the manger scenes, they're all standing there with their gifts here. I never saw a manger scene where they were bowed down and worshipping him. Worshipping this baby here.

And I think it's interesting how diligent these guys were at getting to this town and finding this baby and worshipping him. And then they present their gifts afterwards. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. I think the order here is also significant. They worship him first, and then they present their gifts. Gifts are worthless unless you present yourself first.

Because that's what he wants. He wants to have a relationship with each one of us. He wants us to worship him. He wants to be our Lord. And if you have a Lord, what you do is you worship your Lord. He's not your waiter, butler, yes-man, chauffeur, genie in a bottle that can give you whatever you want. If he's really your Lord, then you're going to worship him. And worshipping him is the most important thing you could do.

On coming to the house, they saw him, they bowed down, they worshipped him. Then after they worshipped him, then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by a different route. Some people think they actually asked God what to do. Should we go back the same way or not?

Maybe they had a kind of a hunch that Herod wasn't such a nice guy. He doesn't really want to come and worship the baby. He's really going to do something nasty. So I don't know if they were asking God or not, but God told them. They were warned in a dream. Don't go back to Herod. Go a different way. Return to your country by another route. We're not going to continue here in chapter 2, but you know what happens after that is Herod gets mad because they stood him up.

And Herod wanted to kill the baby, but now he doesn't know which baby to kill. So Herod kills all the children that are two years old and younger in that whole entire area. The whole area of Bethlehem, just wipe them all out. And of course, Jesus has left the area because an angel had warned Joseph in a dream, "Take Jesus down to Egypt. Get him out of here because some bad things are going to happen."

So Herod murders all these children. Jesus is not one of them because he's safe down in Egypt. And then Mary and Joseph come back after Herod passes away when his time is up. We're not going to get all that way. Right now, we're going to end with verse 12. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country a different way.

I think to conclude here or to summarize, we can see different ways that these different people responded to the coming of the Christ. Look at Herod. Herod despised him. He hated him. He wanted to kill the child, and he killed every two-year-old baby in that town hoping to be sure that he killed the baby Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ. There was hostility there, open hostility. He was against the Lord, 100 percent against him.

But then if you look at the leaders in Jerusalem, the chief priests, the scribes, the teachers of the law here that they brought down, when he called all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was born, and they told him in Bethlehem. Those people, the chief priests and the leaders, they were indifferent. I don't see the hostility there, but I see indifference. But they were religiously respectable.

They came out and they probably straightened their collar. "Yes, you called for us. We're the experts in the law. Oh yes, I have this question: Where is the Christ to be born? Oh, we know the answer to that. We study the law all the time. He's to be born in Bethlehem." They didn't personally want to do anything with that information. They went back to studying the law and going about their life of studying the law, not really making it a part of themselves.

They were respectable from a religious standpoint on the outside. People looked up to them and said, "Oh, they're religious people. They know the law." But they didn't do anything with it. They didn't appropriate it for themselves. So you have Herod on the one hand, hatred and hostility. You have indifference on the part of some of the leaders in Jerusalem. And then over here you have the wise men who went to great cost and great expense to seek out the Lord and to worship him.

They took months away from—months or years away from their family, away from their business, away from whatever they did for a living. They took a long period of time away from that to come and worship him. And they brought very expensive gifts with them. They went on a long journey, spent a lot of money, missed their families, and they did this because they wanted to worship the Christ that they were looking for.

I think those three kind of responses are the same ones that are prevalent today. Look around the world today. You have the people who are openly hostile to the message of Jesus Christ. There's certainly plenty of them around. And then you have the people who are indifferent. No time for that. We're too busy living our lives, doing the things we do here on the earth, can't be bothered thinking about that. It's nice that it works for you, but we're busy with other things.

And then you have those who are sold out and committed to Jesus Christ, which hopefully all of us are, willing to go to great expense and great amount of difficulty to worship him and to follow him. I think it's interesting that the three mindsets, if you will, the three types of people are still out there in the world today. And I think it's also interesting that Jesus came—all throughout the scriptures we're reminded over and over again—he came to the Jews first and then to the Gentiles.

Even as early as on the night he was born, the angels appeared to the shepherds first, and then here come the Gentiles later having seen this sign in the heavens. It's almost like he came to those who were humble and lowly first, and then he got to the wise men, the educated people, the respectable ones later. It's almost like you see him coming to the poor first and the rich later. Everything he did was the opposite of the way we would do it.

If any of us was asked to plan this event, if God called you on the phone and said, "I want some advice on how to do it. How would you do it?" We would have said, announce it on television ahead of time so everyone can be expecting it. And let him be born at the most famous children's hospital there is, and the best conditions that there are. And have people there with crowns and gold and gifts when he's born, and all this other kind of stuff.

And who would have ever thought he would come as a baby? Let him come down as a grown man. That would be even better. Everything the Lord did, he did the opposite of the way we would do it. No one on earth could have dreamed up this story. People say the Bible's fiction, we don't believe it, it's just a bunch of made-up fables. Nobody could ever make this stuff up. Nobody would have ever thought of it.

Christianity is so different from any other religion in the world because it's the only belief system, the only religious system where God came to us. And he died for us. And he did it all for us. Every other religious belief in the world, people are working hard to keep their mad God appeased and happy. And it's always been that way. The Greeks, they were making offerings to gods so the rain god would send rain and the sun god would shine on their crops.

And when things didn't work out right, they were making offerings, even sometimes sacrificing their own children to their gods to try to appease their god. And if you examine every other religious system in the world, it seems everywhere their gods are always mean and nasty, and you have to make offerings to them to appease them. And who would have ever dreamed up this kind of operation here? That God loves us, that he came to us, that he died for us, that he did everything for us. Everything he did, the opposite of what we would have done, and all so that he could show forth his love for us.

Guest (Male): With that kind of love coming our way, how can we respond with anything less than adoration and worship? We're going through a Christmas series here on Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann. For a CD copy of the message, call 856-983-1662. That's 856-983-1662. You can also replay today's program and catch what you may have missed at ccmarlton.org.

Another great way to listen to a program you enjoyed or access other teachings from Pastor Bill is through the Hope FM app. Go to ccmarlton.org to download the Hope FM app today. It's available on all platforms and it's free. We want to invite you to join us here at Calvary Chapel of Marlton. We have a Sunday morning service which begins at 10:00.

We also have a midweek service as well on Wednesdays at 7:00. It would be great to have you here with us. Look for our directions and more information about the church online at ccmarlton.org. And would you please send us an email sometime today? It would be nice to hear from you and learn how the Lord is using the program in your life this Christmas season.

You can also email Pastor Bill from our website at ccmarlton.org or just call us if that's preferred: 856-983-1662. We'll have more Hope From the Word from Pastor Bill's Christmas series next time. We'll see you then.