The Message of the Magi’s Star
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.500 | We're now just one week away from Christmas Eve and a
00:00:08.140 | reoccurring question about this time appears in the birth narrative of Jesus
00:00:12.300 | about that crazy star that appears in the sky to guide the wise men to the
00:00:16.740 | birthplace of Jesus. You know the story and Pastor John addressed it in his
00:00:21.200 | sermon "We Have Come to Worship Him" which you preached back on December 21st,
00:00:25.500 | 1997. Here's how Pastor John explained it.
00:00:28.500 | I don't have a clue how this star worked. It's absolutely baffling to me. I read an
00:00:35.400 | article last night with four scientific explanations of how the star might have
00:00:39.980 | worked. I mean it says they saw a star in the east and then it says they showed up
00:00:45.060 | in Jerusalem. Doesn't say the star led them to Jerusalem, just says they saw a
00:00:48.540 | star and boom they're in Jerusalem. So somehow or other, I don't know, they got
00:00:54.620 | to Jerusalem and then they asked where's the baby? And it says in the book
00:01:02.940 | Bethlehem. He's gonna be born in Bethlehem. So they walk out. It's five
00:01:09.220 | miles to Bethlehem. That's what from here to 694 or so. And they walk and and the
00:01:18.660 | star shows up and it says goes before them and stands over the place where the
00:01:28.500 | child was. What kind of star is that? I mean these are not dummies. They walk out
00:01:37.540 | at night and see how far the stars are. You can see five miles. You can see 20
00:01:42.360 | miles on a flat space. They know the stars are in the heaven. So what's going
00:01:48.780 | on here? How does that work? Well you can go to the planetarium over at the
00:01:52.460 | university and find out how it works. At least one version. Or you can read
00:01:56.620 | articles. I mean it's comets, it's supernovas, it's Jupiter and
00:02:02.380 | Saturn going into Leo. It's some special light. I mean reject the whole
00:02:11.420 | astronomy thing. It's just some special light that God miraculously did. I
00:02:18.020 | haven't a clue how it happened and it's a non-point. Now let me stress why
00:02:26.100 | I'm stressing this. I'm stressing this because there's a mentality in the
00:02:35.620 | church that some people have which I call a mentality for the marginal. And
00:02:46.460 | you can't get too near these folks because they've always got a new tape
00:02:51.020 | for you to listen to. Or article. I'm really getting myself in trouble here
00:02:57.460 | probably. Or book about some absolutely marginal issue. How did the manna get
00:03:07.060 | there? Where did the quail come from? What kind of special winds were blowing about
00:03:13.820 | 2,300 years ago to split the Red Sea? How does a man live in a fish's belly? How
00:03:20.460 | does the Sun stop in the sky without everybody flying off without any gravity
00:03:27.060 | or... Now this is kind of serious because, here's why it's serious, I
00:03:38.900 | wouldn't point this out if there weren't a serious side to it. The
00:03:43.060 | serious side is this, as I have met a few people like that, the sad thing is they
00:03:51.180 | seldom have a capacity for deep joy in central truths. The holiness of God, the
00:04:00.380 | glory of Christ, the horror and ugliness of sin, the deadness and barrenness and
00:04:09.340 | fallenness of human nature, the beauty of the crucifixion, the wonder of
00:04:16.020 | justification by faith alone, the precious work of the Holy Spirit
00:04:21.780 | sanctifying through the Word of God, the second coming with all the angels in
00:04:27.460 | fire, the judgment of the quick and the dead, eternal bliss at God's right hand.
00:04:32.860 | If you try to get into a conversation with these people about these things,
00:04:38.180 | nothing. Just go back to the margin and talk about the manna. It's sad, it's
00:04:48.220 | dangerous, something's wrong. I'm sure there's a psychological name for this. So
00:04:53.860 | if you tend to be like that, I think the solution is not to be scared now to hand
00:05:01.300 | the pastor a tape, but to meditate on the cross, to meditate on God. So what's
00:05:12.620 | the point here? What's the point in this text on this point? The point is this,
00:05:18.900 | these star, comet, planet, supernova, special miraculous light, whatever, are
00:05:30.580 | not doing this stuff of their own accord. God's doing this and the reason
00:05:37.220 | he's doing it is to get pagans to their Savior. That's the point. He's got a big
00:05:45.340 | wide embrace and he's showing these particular people that he's focused on
00:05:51.380 | for 2,000 years, "I'm done focusing on you. I love you.
00:05:57.100 | Believe my son and you'll have everlasting life, but I'm after the
00:06:01.460 | nations with a passion from now on." At the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, it
00:06:09.340 | is still a come-see religion and at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, it's a
00:06:15.380 | go-tell religion. Still coming to see, just like in the Old Testament, come see
00:06:20.020 | the temple, come see the great King, come on Queen of Sheba, come on up here and
00:06:24.900 | see Solomon. He'll wow you. Same with the wise men. Come on! He's here in Jerusalem
00:06:31.740 | or in Bethlehem. But by the end of the purpose of Christ on earth, it is no
00:06:38.560 | longer come see, it is go tell. Beautiful. That clip was from one of John Piper's
00:06:45.460 | many Christmas sermons over the years, this one from a sermon "We Have Come to
00:06:49.140 | Worship Him," which was preached back on December 21st, 1997. You can find that
00:06:54.020 | sermon and over 1,200 others right now at DesiringGod.org. I'm your host Tony
00:07:00.100 | Ranke, thanking you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. We will be back
00:07:03.700 | tomorrow with Pastor John himself and a question from a bride-to-be. Thanks for
00:07:08.180 | listening.
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