In this time leading up to Christmas we've been looking at some of the key passages that refer to Christ's birth and we are doing that again this morning. For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. These are the words that were spoken by the wise men to Herod when they came to Jerusalem seeking Jesus. And what we will see as we go through this passage, this wonderful story of the wise men, is that those words are words that all the people of faith can say. We have seen his star when it rose and have come to worship him. This story of the wise men following the star to Bethlehem to worship Jesus is of course very well known and much loved. It's a wonderful story in its own right and really needs no embellishment. But there's also a tremendous amount of meaning in the story and to appreciate some of the significance of it, I believe a good question to ask is Why did God use a star to lead the wise men to Bethlehem? Have you ever asked yourself that question? Why a star? God could have spoken to them in a dream and given directions as we've read about the way he spoke to Joseph. He could have sent an angel to visit them and tell them where Christ was as he did with the shepherds. But no, the wise men were given a star. What is that star? What is the significance of it? I believe the star was given as a sign of two things. Firstly, it is a sign of the Messiah's kingship and secondly, it's a symbol of revelation or enlightenment. Kingship and revelation. And they actually have a lot to do with each other. They are very closely entwined. So let's have a look at that. It's obvious that the wise men understood the star to be a sign of the kingship, the kingship of the Messiah. They said to Herod, where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. So where did this understanding come from that the star was a sign of the king? Perhaps they were aware of certain prophecies from the Hebrew scriptures that related to the appearance of a star. Turn with me to Numbers chapter 24. And in verse 15 of Numbers 24 we are given an oracle of Balaam, the son of Beor. Now Balaam you might remember was a diviner. And he was hired by Balak, the king of Moab at the time, when the people of Israel had travelled through the wilderness for 40 years and they're on the border of Moab and are about to invade Canaan. And the Moabites were terrified and so their king knew of this diviner called Balam and hired him to issue a curse on the people. But the Lord intervened and rather than a curse, he put a blessing on the lips of Balaam. And three times, instead of cursing them, he pronounced a blessing on the people of Israel. And now this fourth time, He speaks again, and in verse 16 where he says, I see him, but not now. I behold him, but not near. A star shall come out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall rise out of Israel. It shall crush the forehead of Moab, and break down all the sons of Sheth. Edom shall be dispossessed. Seir also his enemies shall be dispossessed. Israel is doing valiantly. And one from Jacob shall exercise dominion, and destroy the survivors of cities. Right from the early days of Israel's life as a nation, there is this prophecy, this pronouncement that a star should come out of Jacob and in his hand will be the scepter. The scepter is the symbol of royalty and of authority. And so a star right from those early days was associated with kingship. and the people of Israel expected that there would be a Messiah King who would come and crush the enemies of God's covenant people. Also in Isaiah chapter 60 there is another prophecy which takes up the association of a star with kingship. From the beginning of chapter 60, Arise, shine, for your light has come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples. But the Lord shall arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you, and nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising. 6 A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ethai, all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall bring good news, the praises of the Lord. It's actually from Isaiah 60 that the tradition is built up that the wise men were actually kings and that they came to worship Jesus on the back of camels. But there was these prophecies there that associated the kingship with the brightness of a star rising. And the homage of the wise men is a fulfilment of these Old Testament prophecies and highlights that this one born in Bethlehem is king of all nations. The wise men coming from a foreign country were really representative of the nations coming to worship the Saviour. And it shows that Jesus, signifying that Jesus is a messiah not only for the Jews, but for all nations. Now whether the wise men knew of this prophecy, we are not told. But Matthew, as the writer of the Gospel, includes their visit in the Nativity story because he wants to emphasise that Jesus is the fulfilment of prophecy. James made that point last week as he took us through chapter 1. In particular, Matthew wants us to know that Jesus is King David's descendant who inherits the promise to David of an everlasting kingdom. In chapter 1, Matthew is being very specific in introducing Jesus as the son of David and explaining how Joseph, Jesus' legal earthly father, is of the line of David. And here in chapter 2, the story of the wise men again reinforces the point that Jesus is the king of David's line. The wise men have identified the star with the king of the Jews, and then Herod advises the chief priests and the scribes that are gathered together, they identify Jesus' birthplace by reference to Micah 5, verse 2, which is the prophecy that reveals that Bethlehem is the place from which Israel's ruler will arise. And you might remember that Bethlehem is where King David actually grew up as a boy, and it's where Samuel first anointed him as king. So the significance of Jesus being the king in the line of David is that He is the fulfilment of the Lord's promise to David. And that promise, if you read in 1 Chronicles 17, is that God would raise up one of David's offspring and establish his kingdom forever. The promise of a king with an everlasting kingdom features regularly in the prophecies of the Old Testament. And Isaiah 9, which was read for us this morning, is about one example of those prophecies. But what we notice, particularly in Isaiah 9, is that the king who rules forever is also divine. His name is Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. He shares our humanity as one born and yet he is God. Now with the eyes of faith and with the benefit of the revelation of Christ, we can see that for a kingdom to be eternal and everlasting, the king also must be eternal and everlasting. And so, with the eyes of faith, we can say, yes, that makes sense for the king to be a man-god or god-man. It's not a surprising thing, as we know Christ, for the prophecy to speak of the king being one who is born but who is also God. So the star is a sign not only of the birth of Israel's king, but of the king of kings, the divine God-man, the one to whom worship was due. Notably, when the wise men came to King Herod, they came not to worship him, they came to worship the one to whom the star belonged. We have seen his star and have come to worship him, they say. King Herod would have been utterly distraught by this. He was a selfish and self-indulgent man who committed heinous acts in his time of rule. He would have thought that if anyone is to be worshipped it should be him. So this was received by him as an incredible threat and he took the announcement as a challenge to his own power and he made plans to murder the child. The wise men's submission to Jesus though stands in stark contrast to the response of Herod and indeed to the response of the Jewish leadership generally. They were unwilling to receive Jesus as their Messiah King. and to borrow from John's Gospel. Jesus came to his own people but they knew him not. This really leads us to the second symbolic feature of the star. The star is a star of kingship but it is also a star of revelation. As you know a star can only be seen at night when it is dark. It is a light shining in darkness. And one of the stars, the morning star, which we know now as the planet Venus, actually heralds the dawn. It is visible while it is still night, but shortly before the sun rises. It is a sign of the coming daytime. It announces the day. In that sense, the morning star reveals the sun. A star then, and the morning star in particular, is a metaphor for revelation. But this star that the wise men saw is more than a mere metaphor. Over the centuries there has been much discussion about the nature of the star that led the wise men to Jesus. Was it the morning star? Was it a comet? Was it a convergence of planets, Venus and Mars? Was it a supernova? Maybe it was a meteor skipping along the perimeter of the Earth's atmosphere. For various reasons which we don't need to go into today, none of those explanations have proven satisfactory. And I think we're really left with the conclusion that the star has to be understood as an angelic or a spiritual visitation and not as a physical thing that can be explained by astronomy. And the story itself gives some indications of this. Firstly, it seems that only the wise men could see it. There's no suggestion that Herod or any of the other people mentioned ever saw it, and certainly they couldn't follow it. Secondly, it seems that the wise men had no guarantee that they would see it when they wanted to, which is why they rejoiced greatly when it did appear to them again after they left Herod. It seems that the star had been seen as it rose and that spoke to them of the birth of the King of the Jews, but it wasn't a constant sight and they had to drop into Herod for further directions. But all of that suggests that it could only be seen by those whom the Lord intended. And finally, we're told that the star went before them until it rested over the place where Jesus was. This suggests to me that the star moved in a direction and in a way that was specifically controlled by God. The point of this is to say that the star was both a metaphor for spiritual revelation, light shining in darkness, and also a revelation itself in that it could only be seen by those to whom God revealed it. So the star is a sign of both kingship and revelation, and speaking of revelation, At the end of the book of Revelation, chapter 22 verse 16, Jesus says, I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star. And what he is saying is that his kingship is a revealed kingship. It cannot be seen by the naked eye. To this very day, Jewish people will not accept that Jesus is the Messiah because he never reigned as a king on earth. But as Jesus was to say to Pilate before his execution, my kingdom is not of this world. His is a spiritual kingship with a spiritual kingdom and one must be born of the Spirit to be able to see it or enter it. We will never see Jesus as King in this age unless it is revealed to us by God. And this is very important to say, in all matters of the faith we only know what we know by revelation. If what we think we know has not come to us by God's personal revelation to us, then we don't really know it. Let me say that again. If we think we know If what we think we know has not come to us by God's personal revelation to us, then we don't really know it. We don't really know anything. The sign of whether we have a revelation of Christ that has taken root in us is that we worship him. Herod and the religious leaders could work out from the scriptures where the Messiah was to be born. From the scriptures they could have known a tremendous amount about him, but they were not interested in worshipping him. And so all of us can work out certain things by using logic and intelligence. And as Westerners, we're so used to weighing up information and the data and working out what's credible and what's not credible and making conclusions and arriving at opinions about things. But we have to say that unless a revelation of who the Messiah really is breaks through to us, we will not know him and we will not worship him. Now whether the wise men had read the Old Testament prophecies, it does not matter. The fact is they had a revelation of Jesus as the King of the Jews, the King above all kings, and they came seeking to worship him. And we, as worshippers of the Lord, are worshippers because a revelation of Christ has come to us, and for no other reason. We've not worked it out. The reason we can only know Christ's revelation is that we are in darkness and light has to shine in the darkness. Jesus himself is the light of God who shines in the darkness of our sinful state. As John in his gospel spoke of the incarnation, the word becoming flesh, he said, in him was life and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. The true light which enlightens everyone was coming into the world. The star the wise men saw announced the arrival of the light. The star shone into the darkness of King Herod's kingdom and directed them to Jesus the Messiah. that light also has to shine into the darkness of our hearts. There is a wonderful verse in Peter's second letter, chapter 1 verse 19, which says, And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. For all of us who have come to know Christ, this is our story, isn't it? A lamp has shone in a dark place. The day has dawned and the morning star has risen in our hearts. If that is not your story, then pay attention to the prophetic word until the day dawns on you too. And paying attention to the prophetic word is more than simply reading the scriptures. We see how limited effect it had on Herod and his advisors. Anyone can read the scriptures. Paying attention to the prophetic word is actually listening out for God's voice. It is waiting for it, longing for it. And when he speaks, we hear his word and he reveals himself to us in his word. When we receive his word, we receive him. We can't separate the Lord from his word. The word comes to us and he comes to us in his word. To those who hold fast to the prophetic word, there is a promise that Jesus gives in Revelation 2.28. He promises to give them the morning star, the light of revelation. So, listen to him. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined. As we've seen with Herod, the darkness is not simple ignorance. It is the sinful evil state of our hearts. It is a condition for which we are morally responsible but incapable of doing anything about. For light to penetrate into that darkness, the light must overcome the darkness. And this is what Jesus has done. From Isaiah chapter 9 we see that the government will be on his shoulder, which is actually an unusual way of describing someone ruling, to have the government on their shoulder, it really draws in the idea that he's an oxen with the yoke on his shoulder and putting his shoulder to the burden to shift it, to steer the plough through the ground. And so the nature of Christ's kingship is to shoulder the government. What we cannot do, he does for us. He takes on the responsibility of overcoming the darkness. As we know, Jesus did not come with all the accoutrements of royalty. He was born in humble circumstances. He didn't have grand palaces. He did not have the host of servants to wait on him. He did not come to be served, but to serve. To truly govern for his people, he had to suffer and die on a cross. It was by hanging on a cross with a crown of thorns on his head that he exercised dominion. And this is something that we will never see unless it is revealed to us. It is there on the cross that he ruled. The cross was his throne. And there he confronted the powers of darkness and bore our sins in his body. The thief who was crucified with him said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. What an amazing revelation he must have had to see this man under judgement of being a heretic, of making false claims to kingship, suffering the excruciating death of a cross and yet he could see that he was a king. And Jesus remembered him and he has remembered us all. as he bore our sins on his body, on that tree. And he descended into the depths of humanity's guilt and degradation. He's taken us with him and he has entered into our darkness, the darkness of our guilt. But by the power of God, he was raised up again in victory over death. And now he rules at the right hand of his father in heaven. And so in this story of the wise men and in the passage of Isaiah 9, what I want to say finally is that let's not miss out on the joy of it all. It is one thing to enjoy a good meal with family and friends and be gladdened by the pleasure of it, but it's another thing still to know the joy of what God has done. At this time of year, perhaps more than any time, it bears remembering what Paul had to say to his Roman brethren. For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Christ rules by shining light into our darkness, and the joy of it is that it is so undeserved. That light shining in our hearts is an absolute and utter work of grace. It is his mercy to us that light has come to us in our darkness. Through Christ the Father has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. We have been taken out of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of his beloved son, the kingdom of light. When the wise men saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. Who were they? They were foreigners from an idolatrous country. And yet the Lord had summoned them to participate in this great event of Christ's coming. Likewise, when the morning star rises in our hearts, we are filled with joy. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. Joy is the true response to the revelation of Christ's kingship when light breaks into our darkness. It is that we are in such deep darkness that the light is so brilliant and we cannot but rejoice with great joy. And it's that joy that will be our strength even as we experience great suffering. The joy doesn't take away the pain, it doesn't take away the suffering that we will all experience from time to time. But it's actually in the times of the suffering that we realise the reality of the revelation that has come to us in Christ, because the joy doesn't end. It's in suffering that we know the full extent of the joy that we have in belonging to Christ, in having a kingdom, that will not be shaken, a kingdom that lasts forever and we are secured in the eternal one, the one who is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. So in a strange way, suffering actually highlights the joy and it's inexpressible friends. It is inexpressible. So there's no need to fear suffering. It will only press us into the everlasting arms of God. And so as we celebrate Christmas very soon, remember the joy of it all, where it comes from and why you have it. And worship Jesus, our King. For we have seen his star when it rose and have come to worship him.