The Importance of Knowing Jesus from All of Scripture

All right, well, good morning, everybody. How are we doing today? Good? Me too. Although I am sad that I missed the men's breakfast this morning, so I wanted to apologize for the fact that I couldn't make it today, and I heard it was a huge turnout, and I think that's fantastic to hear of men from all over the place gathering here in this church.

So thank you to everybody that made that possible, everybody that did the cooking, and everybody that showed up. Really grateful for everything that you all are doing, and I also want to say that I had a couple of people ask me what scripture we'd be going over today, and we're just going to walk straight through the gospel of Matthew, and I'll do my best to let you know what's coming up.

I had intended to do Matthew chapter 2 verses 1 through 12 today, but as I got into prep and I got into writing this out, I realized that verses 1 through 6, I believe, have about as much as we can cover in one Sunday, so we're going to go ahead and dive in there.

So like I said, I'll do my best to tell you what's coming, but every once in a while I get surprised myself by just how much how much there is and how much there is to talk about. So like I said, we're continuing this journey, this walk through the because it's important for us, again, as I've said before, to learn who Jesus is, for us to to really know who he is, because the most important thing for us and for our Christian walk is for us to understand the person and work of Jesus so that we can understand how this impacts our life and how we're to understand the things that Jesus did, because as you get out in the world, like when you walk out these back doors, it can get confusing as to what people say that Jesus is, because some religious traditions teach that Jesus was a prophet, or they teach that he was a, you know, a really, really great religious teacher, but what he was not was God, so those teachings are obviously false, and some branches of Christianity will teach that, or they will at least acknowledge that he is God and that he's God's son, but at the same time, they'll hesitate to accept the full counsel of Scripture.

They'll hesitate to truly acknowledge everything that the Bible says about who Jesus was, and I understand why they do this. In fact, I would say that that a desire to do this exists in all of us, because what we all want to do sometimes is to construct a Jesus that suits our particular wants and needs.

We want to construct a Jesus that allows us to do what we want, allows us to live the way that we want, and the best way to do this is just to pick and choose the stuff from Scripture that we like and pick and choose the things from Jesus's lives that help us construct that Jesus, so when somebody is doing this, you can sort of think of this Jesus as an a la carte Jesus, right?

This is not a biblical Jesus, but again, the reason we do it is easy. It's because when we take the stories out of Scripture that support our view and we take the stories out of Scripture that allow us to continue doing the things that we want to do that we probably know aren't right, we can still feel like we're Christians, right?

We can say, but we got this from the Bible. You know, some people want Jesus to be the epitome of socialism or, you know, we want it to be all about charity. We want it to be all about taking care of people, and Jesus is absolutely about that, or we want Jesus to be all about love, and Jesus is love, but there's so much more to it when we take things out that we find inconvenient or we emphasize just the things that make us feel good or good about ourselves, we're doing a disservice to Scripture, and we're doing a disservice to ourselves as well, and please don't think that I'm just standing up here on my own little pedestal lecturing everybody because we all do this.

I want to do this too, right? There's plenty of stuff that is challenging to me, and it makes it harder for me to live my life, and that's a big part of the reason why why I'm preaching this way. This is why we're going through the Bible in the way that we're going through the Bible, because it forces me to think about every single verse, and it forces me to think through the things that are challenging as well so that I can share them with you.

One of the most important things for somebody who preaches to do is not to look at the Bible and try to think about things that people in the pews need to hear. This is inside baseball, right, for pastors.

Sermons, in order to be effective, and again, nobody's perfect at doing this, but these have to be preached. I have to preach this to myself as I'm going through this. Again, it's not because I'm perfect and because you all need help.

No, I need help every bit as much as some people, and probably more than some of you if I'm being honest. So that's why we're stepping through this verse by verse, and some people don't like to go verse by verse through the Bible, because they feel like maybe it limits their creativity, right?

We could have a whole bunch of series about stuff that people want to talk about, but if we're honest, limiting our creativity up here in the pulpit is probably a good thing. As highly as I think of myself as a creative individual, you know, I've written songs and do all kinds of stuff like that.

This really isn't the time or the place for me to exercise that kind of creativity, because it could mean that I start eventually going off script and going out of the Bible and start to, you know, every week I got to come up with something better and better, right?

And I can't come up with something better than what we see in Scripture here, and another reason is that we're never going to run out of material, right? One of the interesting things, and we can come back to this in a couple of years if this goes that way, but the tenure of a pastor in a lot of churches these days is about two years, and a lot of pastors have 52 sermons or 50 sermons, and they preach them twice, and then they got to move on to another congregation, right?

But when we're walking through the Bible in this way, and we keep God's script, then we're not going to run out of things to say. I'll talk about that later, too, but I also don't want to be looked at as gatekeeping any information.

I want to give you everything that's in the Bible, and I've talked to people about this before. I want you all to be like the Bereans of Acts as well, right? Because when Paul came and preached to them, they would go back and they would look at their Bible to make sure that what Paul was preaching was right, and that's what I want for you all.

You know, you can add that to the list of things that I keep saying over and over again, and I'll probably continue to say for a really long time. And also, as I've said before, everything that's in the Bible is there for a reason, and it's not up to us to leave any of it out, and it's not up to me to feel like you don't need to hear certain things, or that some part of this Bible is not worthy of our consideration.

So, if we consider that the gospel of Matthew was inspired by the Holy Spirit to be written by Matthew the Apostle, he has very carefully, and very thoughtfully, and very intentionally put the things in here that he did.

And not only that, he laid it out in a certain order for us, very intentionally, because he has certain things that he wants to show us about who Jesus is. And we have to think that this is important, because he walked with Jesus, right?

Not only was he an author, but he's somebody who lived and ministered alongside Jesus while he was on the earth for those three years. And we haven't really gone super deep on all of the themes that are present in Matthew, but we're going to hit a couple of them today.

And I wanted to read a quote from D .A. Carson. He said this about the things that Matthew wrote in his gospel. He said, of course, Matthew did not just chronicle meaningless events. He wrote to develop his theme of fulfillment of scripture, to establish God's providential and supernatural care of this virgin-born son, to anticipate the hostilities, resentment, and suffering he would face, and to hint at the fact that Gentiles would be drawn into his reign.

So there's a lot of stuff going on, and Matthew is wanting us to see all these things. Another big theme of Matthew is that Jesus was going to be rejected by the very people who were waiting for him to come.

He was going to be rejected by the people that were looking for him or looking for a messiah. And at the same time, he was going to be accepted by others who were just out of left field. These are things that we never could have predicted, but that's how God's story works.

But there's another reason that we want to go verse by verse through this, and that's because the more familiar we are with these stories, the more we think we know them, even though we don't, right? So we've heard the story in Matthew 2 over and over again, ever since we were children.

But what tends to happen is when we think we're familiar, we don't necessarily feel like we need to go directly to the text and read it. We just, we got what's in our head. And over time, as you all know, sometimes that stuff can shift, right?

I was talking to somebody last week, and he told me a story, and I'm not going to tell you who it is because this story is really funny, and I wanted to share it anyway. But when he was first saved, and he felt like he was needing to get involved in church, he volunteered to teach a Passover.

And he said, oh, yeah, Passover. That was when the Israelites passed over the Red Sea and out of Egypt, right? Well, obviously, that's not what happened, and that's sort of an extreme example. But we think we know what's in the Bible until we get back in there and look at it, and as it turns out, we're often surprised because we create this composite of stories, right?

This birth narrative and the visit to the baby Jesus, it shows up in Matthew here, but it also shows up in Luke, and they have different details and things that are just a little bit different. So then we cram them together, and we put them up on our mantle in the Nativities.

So part of what we're going to do today is to make sure we have a scriptural view of one of what's probably the most popular stories that we have at Christmas time. And I'm not doing this, you know, to take away anyone's fun or to get you to rearrange the figures on the Nativity scene.

I don't want to take any joy away from this story, because it truly is joyful. But what God has revealed in Scripture for us is far more beautiful than anything that we could come up with on our own, right?

No matter how creative, like I said, we think we are, God is so much farther above that. Psalm 119, 105 says, Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. And if God's word is that light that we need, what happens when we drift from that word, right?

What's on either side of this path? It's darkness. We wind up in darkness, and sometimes it happens so gradually that we don't even recognize it, right? Because what happens if you're walking on a lit path in the dark?

If you just step a little bit off to the side, your eyes start to adjust to the darkness. But ultimately, you wind up somewhere where you can't see a thing. So we want to stay as close to Scripture as we can, and we're going to jump right into our passage.

The Magi and Their Search for the King

So today, we're looking at Matthew 2, verses 1 through 6. So I'm going to read all of these verses, and then we're going to take a look at each one of them and what it has to teach us. So this says, Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, 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. And when Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he was inquiring of them where the Christ was to be born.

And they said to him in Bethlehem of Judea, For this is what has been written by the prophet. And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the leaders of Judah. For out of you shall come forth a leader who will shepherd my people Israel.

So in these six verses, we're introduced to a couple of new characters in the story, right? We looked at the genealogy of Jesus a couple weeks ago. Last week, we saw information about the virgin birth.

So we met Mary, we met Joseph, and we've talked a little bit about Jesus. But these characters, their roles are smaller, but they're still extremely significant. And the first one of these characters that we want to look at are a group of people.

And these are the magi. And this is kind of a unique translation. I know a lot of other Bibles translate this as what? Wise men, exactly. These are those three royal-looking guys in your nativity scene.

But I want to talk about them just a little bit, because what do we actually know about the magi? See, this is one of those things where our story is that there were three wise men, right? And that makes sense, because they brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh, right?

So one gift each, three wise men. The first thing I want to highlight is about the Greek word that gets translated as magi or wise men. It's a word that's pronounced magos. And the interesting thing about this word is it's basically an untranslatable word.

So there's actually no translation directly out of the Greek, which is why we have things that are a little bit different. But it referred to a class of men from the east, which really could be any number of different countries, you know, maybe Persia or someplace like that.

So what we do see is that exactly where they're from is not specified, so it's probably not that important given that Matthew didn't list it specifically. But another interesting thing is that these guys were probably from a class of men that were fairly significant in their culture.

They were important people. They learned a lot of different stuff, right? They were occultists, which means they dabbled in magic and witchcraft and that kind of thing, and all kinds of other stuff that the pagans in their culture liked.

So the reason this often got translated as wise men is because they were so educated, they were so learned, they were so knowledgeable that they were considered wise in their culture. So wise man is a sensible translation for that.

And they were well-versed in what we might consider modern philosophy of their day. In fact, Charles Spurgeon said that they essentially were the professors of philosophy. Now, while they were considered wise in our culture, just like a lot of people are considered wise in our culture, ultimately the things they were studying and the things that they dedicated their life to were not the things of God.

They weren't the things of Christ. So while they are called wise men, we could probably consider them foolish because they dedicated their time to things that are ultimately going to perish. Other stuff they studied, things like astronomy and astrology.

They looked at the stars. They would try to figure out from what was going on in the sky what was going to happen. But they also studied the scriptures. They studied these Jewish traditions. It wasn't because they believed it because they were absolutely pagans from a pagan culture, but it was just something they were curious about.

They're renaissance men just trying to learn as much as they can so that they could still be considered wise. So this is sort of like when people study comparative religions, right? We study the Bible to learn who Jesus is.

They study comparative religions just to learn what all the different religions believe, which is there is value in that. But there's something else that's interesting about these magi, these wise men.

John MacArthur said this. He said these were very high-ranking official priest-type people among the Medes. And I forgot to say this too. The Medes, one of the first times we see those folks is in the book of Daniel, right?

These are the magicians who were trying to interpret the dreams. These are the people who got him thrown into prison and got him thrown into the furnace. So they probably descended from the same people.

So priest-type people among the Medes, much as the Levites were priests among the Jews. They rose by virtue of their wisdom, by virtue of some occultic powers, and by virtue of some astrological and astronomical ability that they had.

They rose to places of being the advisors to kings and the courts of Babylon, Persia, and Media. So they were high-ranking. And that's kind of stuff we've already talked about, right? That's a little bit more specific, the things we've already mentioned.

But I think the next part is really interesting and particularly relevant to where we're going with this today. He said they became so high-ranking that no king ever took the throne of the Persian or Parthian empire that wasn't trained in their laws, and no king ever took the throne that wasn't approved by them.

So they were the king-makers of the great empire to the east of Israel. It was their business to recognize and coronate kings. So they're all about kings, recognizing kings, coronating kings. They're so important that kings often weren't put on the throne without their approval.

And now they're here. Well, not here. Now they're in Jerusalem asking about Jesus. And I spent a couple minutes talking about who the Magi were. But what is more striking about who the Magi were, especially given what's going on in the story, is not who they were, but it's who they weren't.

They weren't Jews. They weren't part of God's chosen people. They weren't the religious leaders of Israel. They weren't the people who should have been making the trip. So that part's pretty remarkable by itself.

We have these these men, these Magi from some eastern empire, some unnamed empire to the east of Jerusalem. They've tracked the stars. They've read the scripture. And now they're traveling to Jerusalem from wherever they came from because they had determined from the stuff that they learned that the king of the Jews had just been born and they wanted to get in on the coronation.

They wanted to be part of this, right? So now let's look at one of the other significant characters in this story, one of the other characters that's in this drama playing out around the birth of Jesus.

Herod, the Troubled King

And this is Herod. We've heard Herod the king a lot. We've heard his name plenty of times before. So I want to do the same kind of thing that we did with the Magi and just spend a few minutes looking at who Herod is and how he plays into this story, right?

So here's kind of a quick thumbnail sketch of Herod. He was the son of an Adumian, which means he's an Edomite from Edom, Arab named Antipater, who was a leader of one of Rome's police forces. And Herod took over for his father as a head of these police forces.

And then he was named king of Judea in 37 BC. But even though he was named king of Judea, he was king of these Jews, he was not a Jew himself. He's obviously a Gentile. He was a Roman. And in order to make himself more acceptable to the people that he was king over, he married a Jewish woman.

Because the Jews at the time looked at him as a usurper of the throne, right? They couldn't do anything about it, but they didn't like Herod. They didn't like that he was king. And this is going to come back as an important factor pretty soon.

And while we do look badly at him, we think badly of him and the things that he did, he wasn't all bad, right? There's a reason that he was put on the throne. He was a very skillful orator. He was a skillful warrior.

He was a skillful diplomat. And he was a skillful manager as well. So he did some good stuff. There were times during an extreme hardship where he actually gave some of the tax money back to the people.

Things were so bad that he gave some of the money back to them. During a famine, he melted down gold and stuff that he had taken from taxes to help pay for food for the starving people. Because you're not much of a king if everybody in your kingdom is starving, right?

If everybody dies, you got nothing. And he revitalized several cities. He built a port. He built a whole bunch of different things. So probably a large part of this was to maintain his favor with the people that put him in this throne, right?

The people in Rome who made him the king. But of course, there's more to the story. Obviously, he did good stuff, but he did some bad stuff too. So we see that he was a power-hungry kind of guy. He was somebody that even though he gave tax money back at one point, he also taxed the people very heavily.

He was, you know, taxing them to a point of being abusive. And he was a violent, paranoid guy as well. One of the commentators I read mentioned that he had some kind of medical issue later in his life that increases paranoia.

Maybe he had to take some kind of medication. But he always felt like people were out to get him. And to an extent, he was right because the Jews did not consider him a legitimate king. So we have that.

But in addition, he killed his first wife and he killed at least two of his sons. So he's very violent. Not such a great guy. And that's something that we'll see in a big way later. Probably not today.

Probably next week. But what we have here is a violent, paranoid man who's not a Jew ruling as a king over a group of people who consider him a usurper of their throne. And then with all this going on, the Magi show up in his city in Jerusalem asking where they can find the child who was born king of the Jews.

So we see this in verse 3. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. But we understand why he is troubled, right? So he's already mentally unstable. He's paranoid that his subjects don't like him and don't consider him to be a legitimate king.

And now we have some people coming from outside of his kingdom to affirm some of his paranoia. And it says that all Jerusalem was troubled with him. And there could be a lot of reasons for this, right?

When we just read that and skim through it, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Why are they troubled that he's upset? But if you've ever been around a volatile person, you know, if you've ever been around somebody who you don't always know how they're going to react.

You understand how this is, right? You might feel like you're walking on eggshells all the time because you don't know what the next thing is that's going to set them off. And then something happens, right?

And you just got to be ready for whatever happens. And this is the kind of thing that is going on with Herod in Jerusalem. People know that in some way his kingship has been challenged and they know he's not going to like it.

They know he's not going to take it well and he's probably going to take it out on them. So that's what the people in Jerusalem may have been experiencing with some of this news. So what happens next is in verse 4, Herod gathers together all the chief priests and the scribes to see if they know what's going on.

He's asking them if they can figure out, you know, where Christ was to be born. Because if there's somebody who's going to take over his throne, he needs to know what's going on so he can figure this out.

The Chief Priests, Scribes, and the Danger of Knowing Without Worshiping

Now, this is another group of people that we're looking at in this story. It's the chief priests and the scribes. And this group of people is made up of the high priests. And these were probably descendants of Aaron.

You know, they're going all the way back to the original Israelites, Moses and Aaron. But by the time we've arrived to this point, that office had been corrupted. And as opposed to just being descendants of Aaron, these are offices that are given out as favors.

You know, this has become a politically charged thing. So it's like whoever's going to tell the king what they want to hear, whoever, you know, can give the king something that they need. These are the people that are going to be in these offices.

So it's been corrupted by political favoritism. Now, these priests were mostly Sadducees, and then the scribes were primarily Pharisees. So we have these different groups of Jews that don't get along.

They argue with each other about all kinds of stuff. So Herod was consulting with them, although he's probably consulting with them in different groups, right? He's not bringing them all together because then they would argue.

He's doing it separately because he is doing whatever he can to figure out where this potential replacement for him is and who it's going to be, especially now that he's been born. So he asked the chief priests and the scribes this.

And in verse 5 and 6, I'm going to read these verses again. This is what we see. And they said to him, in Bethlehem of Judea, for this is what has been written by the prophet, and you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the leaders of Judah, for out of you shall come forth a leader who will shepherd my people Israel.

So they know exactly where the king of the Jews is going to be born because they know their scripture. And verse 6 is a very plain reference to Micah 5 .2. This is why they know, because it was in a prophet, written or spoken written by a prophet.

Micah 5 .2 says, but as for you, Bethlehem of Paphra, too little to be among the clans of Judah. From you one will go forth for me to be ruler in Israel. And the way Matthew has done this is he's also tacked on a little bit of 2 Samuel 5 .2.

So we've got Micah 5 .2, and we've got 2 Samuel 5 .2. 2 Samuel 5 .2 says, you will shepherd my people Israel, and you will be a ruler over Israel. This is remarkable, too. All this stuff is remarkable, right?

They, priests and the scribes, know this scripture. They know it like the back of their hand because this is their life. This is what they do. This is what they study. They know it inside and out. And they're not dumb, right?

These are smart guys. If the Magi were philosophy professors, these would probably be the seminary professors. But despite all that they know, these things that are happening are taking place right underneath their noses.

And we'll talk about this next week, even though I'm going to tell you right now, but Bethlehem was probably no more than five or six miles away from Jerusalem. So, you know, that's like a two-hour trip at best.

It's not a long way, even back then without a car. And even though this is going on, these Magi have come to talk about it, and they show where it is in scripture, they didn't really show even a small amount of interest in it.

They had their own idea of who the Messiah was. They had some specific ideas about who he was, and somebody being born in a humble place in Bethlehem wasn't really part of their idea of who the Messiah was.

So, even though even though they knew this well enough to look at chapter and verse, and when somebody asked them to show them exactly where in scripture this occurs, they just they gave it to him and that was it.

And we're going to stop there with the verses and take a look at what we can learn from these passages, and what we can learn from these groups of people, what they did, how they reacted to what was going on with the birth of Jesus.

Because the thing about scripture is that there are profound lessons in it everywhere, right? It doesn't matter where you look. Sometimes you have to know how to see them, but they're there. Even in the most unsuspecting verses, like the ones that we just read, like it seems like a simple story, six verses, but there's a lot in here.

And that's why I want to encourage you to do something, and this is probably the first takeaway or the first lesson. What I want for you all is to develop a fascination with the Bible. You're never going to find, I'm never going to find, the end of the lessons and the wisdom that it has for you.

It doesn't matter how many times that you've read it, you're not going to find the end of the lessons that you can learn. And why is this? It's because God who gave us this Bible is beyond anything that we can comprehend, right?

We can never ever reach the level of fully understanding who God is, or what God has done with creation. Romans 11 33 reminds us this. It says, Oh the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and unfathomable are his ways.

So you can't master the Bible. You know, don't ever say, well I've already read it. You know, I have one or two books at home, just a couple. I was looking at my wife because I have stacks and stacks and stacks of books.

They're everywhere. And it's kind of ridiculous. But a lot of those you read one time and you put them on a shelf, right? Because you've read it. You know the information in there. That will never happen with the Bible.

It reminds me of a saying that I heard one time. And the saying is that a man can never step in the same stream twice. If anybody has heard that before, you can't step in the same stream twice because if he does it later, he's not the same man and that's not the same stream.

And it's the same thing when you approach the Bible. When you come to scripture, different things are going on with your life. You'll find different meanings in there. You're not the same person and scripture is never going to be the same thing every time you look at it.

So that's my encouragement is to develop a curiosity. Develop a fascination with scripture because what's in here, it's what you need to know for your sanctification, right? Want to know how to live a holier life?

It's there. And one of the evidences of your salvation is that you want to know God's word and you want to keep his word. This is how you know. A lot of us will ask this question, right? We want to know.

The Bible says a lot of things that seem contradictory to our mind. They seem contradictory about how we can know if we're truly children of God or how we can know if we're really saved. But the Bible tells us this is one of the ways.

1 John 2 says, and by this we know that we have come to know him. If we keep his commandments, the one who says I have come to know him and does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him.

If you say you're a Christian and you say you know God, but you live in a way that says otherwise, you may not be saved in the way that you think you are. That's not to say that we don't sin, but if you know God's word and you know what he's telling you to do, you're going to know when you sin.

And the more you know about it, the more guilt you're going to feel. The worse you're going to feel about these things that you do, that we all do. Hosea 4 -6 says this, my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.

Psalm 119 -11, your word I have treasured in my heart that I might not sin against you. Psalm 1 verses 1 through 3, how blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked nor stand in the way of sinners nor sit in the seat of scoffers but his delight is in the law of Yahweh and in his law he meditates day and night and he will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf doesn't wither and in whatever he does he prospers.

Romans 12 -2, this is one of my favorite verses too, and do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may approve what the will of God is, that which is good and pleasing and perfect.

How do you do this? It's in the Bible. But the reason that I specifically said to develop a fascination or to develop a love or a passion for the Bible is because there's a danger, there's a danger to reading the Bible too much and to knowing too much about it, and that's what we see with the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

If the study of the Bible turns into an academic exercise, if the study of the Bible turns into nothing more than a quest for knowledge so that you can answer questions or so that you can judge people for the things that they do with chapter and verse and it's not reaching your heart then it's it's nothing but a bunch of information in your head and again this is what we see.

With the Magi versus the religious leaders, so you have the Magi on one hand and it's so interesting because they're not even necessarily believers but they've read the scripture and not only did they read the scripture, they looked at what it said and they said there's a king here and what did they say in verse two?

Not only did they say that we saw it, here's what it says, verse two, where is he who is born king of the Jews for we saw his star in the east and have come to worship him. They didn't just come to see him, they came to worship this king and then you have the chief priests and the scribes.

See, the Magi went to Jerusalem, they didn't go to Bethlehem, so they had read the scriptures and they got close but they didn't get exactly to where he was but that's not a problem for the chief priests and the scribes, they knew exactly where he was.