The Three Wise Guys

So, I was doubting if you could tell when we were doing announcements that we even had more here last week than this week. And then we started singing the songs and I was like, the place is full, not of hot air but of the Holy Spirit singing through you guys. And then the harmonies coming out from the congregation, it was like, whoa, we’re doing some church today.

And now they’ve got to hear me, sorry. I have been, Christopher has been asking me some questions about my grandparents because he never got to know them. And I tell him how I used to, when I was in high school, my brother and I would mow their lawn.

And after we would mow their lawn, the whole point was not to mow their lawn, but then the rule that came from my dad and mom was that we would sit down and talk with them. So we would get done mowing the lawn and then we would, then the first thing my grandpa would say, okay, go down to the basement and grab yourself a Coke. So we would go down to the basement and the bottom of the stairs that were creepy stairs was this old rounded top refrigerator with the handle you had to pull to unlock it and open it up.

And in there, my grandpa always had bottles of pop. I called my grandpa pop, by the way, but that’s not why. And he had the pop in there and there was Coke and there was 7-Up and we would grab a bottle, even though most people didn’t drink bottles at that point in time, but we would grab the bottles, we would come up, we would open them and we would sit down and talk.

And my brother and I would catch up with our grandparents and they would tell us stories. And I remember sitting down with my grandma. Now, I do the math and I go back, my grandfather was born in 1903, so he was a lot older than me as I was growing up, and my grandma was born in 1904.

And so I knew they lived through the Great Depression and using some of my history knowledge I would go to them and say, okay, so what was life like back in the Great Depression? And they would tell me stories of that and they would often switch to thinking more about the Dust Bowl that hit Kansas back in the 30s. And they would share, my grandma would share stories about how they would get the sheets wet and hang them in the windows so it would collect the dust blowing in and do everything they can to keep the dust off the babies, which was her perspective. They had babies around that time.

And I would go to my grandpa and I’d go, okay, what was the Dust Bowl like for you? And my grandpa would say, the Dust Bowl was so hot, it was hot and the corn was in the fields and it was growing up and it was about ready to pick, but it got so hot that it just started popping right there, right there on the stock. And the horses saw it and the horses thought that this popcorn was snow. So they fell over and they froze to death.

And I was like, I think this is where I’m supposed to laugh. But that’s how they would share their lives with us, is they would tell stories. When my family would get together, they would tell stories of people they knew and when others came in, they would talk about stories from way back when.

Those stories are what bonded people together in our family and in our community. And as we are looking at Epiphany, Luke is telling a story. Luke is telling you an account of, Luke wasn’t there, but I think he sat down with Mary.

There’s a lot of clues in there that tell you he sat down with Mary because it always goes back to Mary and Mary says she pondered this all up in her heart and treasured that. Well who else is going to know what she pondered in her heart? And Mary, Jesus’ mother, would have relayed these stories. And when I think about these stories, I start thinking about a class I took years ago on storytelling and preaching.

Now I had already been preaching when I took this class, so I had thought about different characters and there are certain characters that you just can’t relate to at all. But they said different people relate to different characters, so you have to learn to relate to those characters when you’re telling a story. They have a purpose in the story that is not just they’re the bad guy, but what does that have to do with us and how do we connect? So it kind of changed how I looked at Epiphany and looked at the characters because I always thought about it from that perspective of Mary and of Joseph and of Joseph going, why am I already out of the story in Luke chapter 2, I mean in Matthew chapter 2? What happened to me? Some people say he must have been out working because even though the pictures all show Joseph there, the Epiphany account doesn’t account for Joseph.

So I can think about what do you miss out on? Think about when I’m out working and Holly was home with the boys when they were young, what are all the things I’m missing out on? Were there any wise men who came? Okay, it’s not you, don’t worry. Wise guys, the theme of today’s sermon is the three wise guys. I had three wise crackers, but I thought that was a little disrespectful so we backed up into wise guys.

Now the three wise guys are three different groups of people we have a perspective on. Now we sang We Three Kings and how many of you have been singing We Three Kings since you remember singing songs? And I don’t want to ruin this for you, but it doesn’t say anything about kings in there. It doesn’t say anything.

I still like the song though, so we sing it. In this account, when I read this story from Luke and Luke tells the story of what happens with the star and the wise men, the magi and King Herod and the scribes and the Pharisees and the Jews that are involved here and Mary and the baby Jesus, just start thinking about here the different perspectives and where everybody else was and maybe we can relate to it a little bit. The whole Bible, I didn’t look up the percentage before this week, but a vast percentage of the Bible is set up with story because that’s how they pass traditions down from one story.

Did you guys have any ancestors, any grandparents, anyone who passed things down by story? And that’s what Luke is doing for us here. Will you stand as you are able? That’s what Matthew is doing. I took off after Christmas and I haven’t thought since.

Matthew, now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem saying, where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw a star when it rose and have come to worship him. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled in all Jerusalem with him. And assembling the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where Christ was to be born.

They told him, in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written in the prophets, for you O Bethlehem in the land of Judah are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. When Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared, he sent them to Bethlehem saying, go and search diligently for the child.

And when you have found him, bring me word that I too may come and worship him. After listening to the king, they went on their way and behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it was, it came to rest over a place, the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.

And going into the house, they saw the child marry his mother. And they fell down and worshiped him, then opened their treasures. They offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.

And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way. The word of God, inspired by God, for the people of God, thanks be to God, amen. You may be seated.

Matthew would have known Mary pretty well. I mean, Mary traveled with the disciples. Mary would have probably, you know, the guys would have been, hey, tell me something about Jesus.

What can I, you know, like buddies do to their friends. And Mary would probably just tell them stories. I mean, she wasn’t playing games on her phone.

She wasn’t surfing the net. So they sat around and told these stories. Now I told them a thousand times, but when I look at these, I think there’s three wise guys in here.

There’s three guys that just shoot off their mouths and upset people. They think they’re being cool, but they may not be. But I also want to think about now how we can relate to them in some way.

The three wise guys are Herod the Great, the chief priests and scribes, and the magi. The three wise guys for today’s story. So you may have related to being in the manger and Mary and everything, but we’re going to focus on these three to try to pull out how we can learn from the biblical story today.

The first wise guy, and probably the wisest, the smart-aleckiest, the most off-kilter, the least wise, trying to be wise guy. That’s what I’ll go with. Herod the Great.

Herod the Great was the Roman leader appointed to Judah. He was half Jew, half Edomian. So he was supposed to be, because the leader of an area was supposed to be a part of that area so he could relate to them.

So in his Jewishness, he was supposed to relate to the Jews. He was supposed to understand the Torah. He was supposed to understand what the scripture said.

Now later in his life, he became very paranoid. Paranoid to the extent that he had several wives killed, several sons killed, several people who were close confidants of him killed because he was worried they were going to usurp him. And this was just a stepping stone to the great things he was going to do in his political career.

And he was that paranoid. In fact, Caesar Augustus, the Caesar over all of the Roman Empire, argued with him about things a lot. Things like, you need to chill out and quit killing people.

And Caesar, after one argument, finally had a famous quote that he said, I would rather be Herod’s pig than his son. Now that’s a little jab at the Judaism part of that, meaning, you know, if you had a pig, at least the pig wasn’t going to be killed and eaten. But you never know about the son.

Herod saw the Messiah as a threat. He came in and he got the disciples, and of course, the Magi, with their kind of role in being a wise guy, we’re sticking with Herod, but they said, where is the one to be born king of the Jews? Herod the Great is going, you’re looking at him, what are you talking about? And they go, we saw his star. Now, they put Herod on alert.

And it said he was afraid and terrified, and so all of Jerusalem was, at least all the Jewish leaders that knew about this stuff, and he called the scribes and he tried to figure it out. Now, first of all, with Herod is, he was supposed to be a follower of God, but he put his career first, and the thought of the Messiah was a threat to him and what he wanted. Now, I think we have to all admit there are some things that Jesus wants us to do in our lives.

When we meet Jesus, even decades after we meet Jesus, that are a threat to our lives, a threat to what we are comfortable with, a threat to who we are, a threat to our reputation, a threat to what we think of as what we should be spending our time doing. That when I, once I took that class, I could start relating to Herod and see that there is a little Herod in me, and there’s a little Herod in all of us when we, even though we meet Jesus and we think he’s awesome and he’s, you know, for them, he’s a cute little baby, right? I’m just adding that, that didn’t say that, but we also like the thought of a baby Jesus because a baby Jesus needs us, not so much the thought of the Jesus in Revelation that had fire shooting from his eyes and he had a tongue of a sword. When we meet Jesus, he can be a threat to what we want to do with our lives and where we want to go.

So in a way, I hope that if we’re really honest, we can relate to Herod a little bit there. The chief priests and the scribes, wise guys number two, they were teachers, interpreters of the law. In fact, when Herod asked about this, he pointed, they pointed to Micah 5 too, that we read on Christmas Eve saying, and you, Bethlehem, and the land of Judah are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for you shall come, out of you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.

Now that’s a pretty important prophecy that Matthew gives us that is fulfilled in Jesus’ coming that was prophesied from the day of Micah, which was, you know, somewhat close to that Babylonian exile. And Micah said, the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem, in Judah. That’s pretty specific.

So the scribes and the Pharisees knew this, they understood this, they knew the Torah, they knew what it said, but they didn’t get excited when there was someone being born in Bethlehem. They had some of the same difficulties. As learned as they were about Scripture, as much as they understood, they held an arm’s length from that Scripture saying, well, just historically, you’ve got to understand a little bit, when you talk about scribes, those are the ones who would rewrite the Bible.

They would do it very well. They were sometimes called lawyers, which was a little different, but they understood the law, and they could tell you the law, and what the law said, and what was important with the law. And the Jewish leaders, let me throw out another term for Jewish leaders that we hear later called Sanhedrin.

Who were the Sanhedrin? Where did they come into play big time? Anybody know? The arrest and crucifixion of Jesus. Now they’re made up of Sadducees and Pharisees. Now the Sadducees are richer people who would do business with the Roman government, and who had high appointments because of the Roman government.

So they were very connected to Rome. They were dependent on Rome, and if anything would happen to the Israelites, then it would affect what they were. And then you had the Pharisees who weren’t necessarily rich people.

I mean, Paul was a Pharisee, remember? Well, Saul was before he became Paul, and then he would make tents because he wasn’t just walking around with treasures going, hey, I got a happy retirement, and I don’t have to do anything. He kept having to make tents, and he would do things to make money along the way and try to earn his way. And, but, they didn’t come expectant and open for a Messiah.

The scribes, the religious leaders, liked the gig they had. They didn’t want to mess with it, and we find out later that they want to control the Messiah. The Messiah would come out of them.

So they don’t even think about it, so all they do is the bare minimum, give Herod what he wants and move on. So the question for me is, who are they loyal to? Are they loyal to God? Are they loyal to Herod? Or are they loyal to, everybody say it out loud, themselves? We’ll take the loudest answer for the right answer. Whatever works for me is what I want.

Now sometimes, even though we start learning the Bible and understanding the Bible and growing in our knowledge of the Bible, it takes a bigger step to transform our hearts and lives to what God tells us to do through Holy Scripture. Sometimes we even change things in churches because we don’t want the Bible to be any kind of rule or reign over us. I don’t know if anybody’s experienced anything like that.

But I’m not talking about them, I’m talking about us. How do we read the Bible? Have any of you ever read the Bible and you come across something and you go, how could that be? Do you make that face? Okay. And you go, oh my gosh, how could that be? How could God do that? Why would God say that? What is going on here? But then, do you pray something like, God, help me to understand, this doesn’t make sense to me.

Speak to my heart. Help me to know where you are at here. And open ourselves to it a little more.

So in a sense, if we’re really honest, we’re like those scribes and those Jewish leaders who knew the law but wanted to control it. Finally, the most famous wise guys in this whole thing are the magi or wise men. Not kings, but the magi were basically, would have been made up of religious leaders from eastern cultures and wealthier people in those cultures.

Thus, they have the gold and the frankincense and the myrrh, and they had those and they brought all those. Now, if they were Persian wise men and priests and, oh man, should I say that one out loud? There was no number mentioned. All right.

Put your thinking caps on. Why do we say three wise men? Three gifts. Yeah.

The wise men did not grow up in the church. They were outsiders coming in. In fact, they had other pagan kind of religions and it was just weird, creepy kind of stuff they were doing.

They would look at the stars and not, maybe not worship the stars, but look for guidance from the stars in astronomy, astrology, those kind of things, and somehow, by studying the stars based on another pagan religion, they knew how to find the messiah and that was the messiah was coming. Now, what Matthew doesn’t tell us is that in that day, as everybody knows and we all study diligently, the main Hebrew Bible that was used was called the Septuagint. How many of you read your Septuagint this morning in Greek? The Septuagint was written sometime before Jesus by a whole bunch of men who came in and they took the Hebrew scriptures and wrote them into Greek so people could read it.

It was like one of the first things was spreading the news about God around the world, so it’s thought that they had to have a copy of the Septuagint and they were reading it in their Persian circles and then they saw where the star pointed and the star was pointing to, ended up pointing to Judea and then so they went to the capital Jerusalem and then they ended up going to Bethlehem. Now these guys are like the interlopers. They come in and they ask Herod, hey, where’s the next king? And Herod in his mind, I just picture, don’t roll your eyes, I picture Curly from the Three Thuges going, wise guys, eh? And wanting to poke them in the eyes.

But they kind of were turning everything on its head and they came in with all this information and they usurped it. Now they might not have grown up in the church, but the three magi had scripture, they had the star, and they had a dream that God, in God’s grace, used things outside of the Jewish religion, outside of the church, to draw them in. I don’t know how much you’re reading about what’s going on in the world today, but God is doing those things in amazing abundance in Islamic nations that they are having dreams.

And those dreams are about some guy in a white robe is one of the consistencies of it. And it’s Jesus just showing up in their dreams. And the star, they like doing this.

So if you like looking at the stars, how about this star, plunk? And he knew how to reach them, that God can do that. And even though we have the church and we have scripture and we have so many things, it’s important for us sometimes to see the connections, maybe even to see signs and find things that are beyond what our current understanding is to see God doing big things and God doing new things and God doing amazing things. So even though we may have never been in a Persian religion, we can relate to that because we need God to penetrate our shells by showing us and by moving and nudging and guiding us and leading us and helping us to find Jesus like they did.

Now the real question that we have for Christmas and Epiphany is what child is this? Sometimes even Christians forget what child is this. This child’s name is not Saint Nicholas. This child’s name is not whatever I want it to be.

This child’s name is Jesus. Jesus means Jehovah saves. Jesus means that we, knowing that child, is fully God, fully human.

The gold, the frankincense, and myrrh, those are gifts that are just expensive gifts they took out that they might have taken to anyone who was royalty. What child is this? He’s royalty. But you can also see there’s some connection, even though some of my, the people I read from doubt they had this in mind.

I think God might have had this in mind, that the gold was a gift for royalty. Jesus is king. That’s who this child is.

The frankincense was what the incense that they burned before going into the Holy Holies and represented the presence of God, that that child was the very presence of God right there. And the myrrh is used as a burial spice to signify he will die. Now, if Jehovah saves, then he’ll die for our sins and save us from our sins.

As we begin 2026, remember what child this is, that we celebrate so.