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Weimar University

Don Mackintosh

The Day After Christmas

How many of you have ever heard the poem, "'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, no 1 stared, not even the mouse." How many remember this?

And the stockings were hung with care and hoped that Saint Nick would soon be there.

How many of you like to look forward to Christmas?

Looking forward perhaps as a young person to the gifts you'll receive, the stockings maybe, and I know some of my children, 1 of them especially, was looking forward to Christmas and was lamenting the fact to his mother that the gifts could not be opened sooner and that he couldn't see other people open the gifts that he gave them sooner.

And I won't mention who that is, but it was 1 of my children.

But today I don't want to talk about the gifts that are coming in Christmas, but the day after Christmas, t'was the day after Christmas and all through the house.

And that's the story we're going to look at today in Matthew chapter 2.

So turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 2.

And in Matthew chapter 2, we'll read several verses and see the day after Christmas.

Father in heaven, thank you today that we have a moment again to turn aside to look at your Word.

And may we each get a message from you individually as we study together in Christ's name.

So day after Christmas, Matthew chapter 2 may not be the exact day right after Christmas, but it's definitely after Christ was born.

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.

So this is the day after Christmas or the day after Christ was born.

You have these wise men coming from the east, probably from Persia, maybe Babylon, and they're arriving here in Jerusalem.

Where is he who has been born King of the Jews?

For we have seen his star in the east, and have come to worship him.

So they came the day after to worship the baby they knew had been born and they came to Jerusalem.

You thought that maybe in that center they would know where Jesus was, he was to be a king, certainly someone would know about him.

Tacitus, Josephus bear testimony that the messianic hope existed in that time in the East.

Even Augustus himself, the Roman Emperor, called himself the savior of the world.

Tacitus, the historian, says the East was to grow powerful and rulers coming from Judea were to acquire universal empire.

He says, look, there's gonna be someone coming from Judea that's gonna be universal in his rulership.

And so a waiting world was looking for a Messiah, And it's right at that time that Jesus was born.

Now among these magi, which we sang about, we 3 kings of Orient are, among these magi were many who imposed on the credulity of the people, kind of like the astronomers, astrologers, the sorcerers, the Chaldeans in the time of Babylon.

There were those that imposed on the credulity of the people, in other words, took advantage of them, But others were upright men who studied the indications of providence in nature Were honored for their integrity and wisdom and of this character were the wise men who came to say Jesus So they were looking into the stars the heavens declare the glory of God the earth so forth is You know his handiwork And they saw that star and they said, there's something unusual about that.

So they came after Christ was born to Jerusalem.

Then Herod, verse 7, called the wise men secretly, determined from them what time the star had appeared.

Then he sent them to Bethlehem and said, go and search carefully for the young child.

And when you have found him, bring back word to me that I may come and worship him also.

And when they heard the king, they departed.

And behold, the star which they had seen in the east went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was.

When they saw the star, They rejoiced with exceedingly great joy So they're following the star Right to where Jesus had been born Now what was this star Over the last couple weeks in the press there's been a lot of talk about the Christmas star that hasn't been seen for 800 years.

How many of you went out and looked at Saturn and Jupiter as they got close together?

Have to probably have a special lens, maybe all the clouds out of the way, different things, and he'll probably be asking for that now after the message.

So there was a lot of press this week on this.

1 article I read said it's not a star at all, it's a confluence of planets.

And they came together and they looked to the naked eye as 1 star, and that's what they saw long ago.

In fact, Kepler, the famous astronomer in 1603, just before he got his King James Version of the Bible, said this was an unusual conjunction of stars.

He said in 7 BC Saturn and Jupiter joined together in Pisces.

Then later on that same year Mars joined with them.

And it was all those together, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars that created the star that was seen.

And that's why he called for the dating of Christ's birth to be around 7 BC.

Problem is that Herod didn't die in 7 BC.

He died a little earlier than that and we know from the scriptures that Jesus was born before Herod died.

So the math was messed up but the scientists really trying how can we have a naturalistic explanation for this?

We want to be able to describe it and explain it based on science.

After reviewing the articles, I noticed something.

The luminous wonder was actually moving from north to south, from Jerusalem to Bethlehem.

Another wrote, the star moved as a guide, the star arrived, the star stood.

It is all perfectly plain, absolutely miraculous, unlike any star that ever was.

A star would start and it would stop, it says in verse 9, and it stood over where the young child was.

So the star was not a confluence of planets, timing was off, and stars don't act like that.

And even students of astronomy say efforts to explain the star are inadequate.

Back in 1967, right here in San Francisco, Herbert Bernhard said, if you accept the story told in the Bible as the literal truth, then the Christmas star could not have been a natural apparition, its movement in the sky, its ability to stand and mark a single building, these would indicate that it was not a normal phenomena, but a supernatural sign, 1 given from on high and 1 that science will never be able to explain.

But that doesn't mean that last week they didn't try and explain it.

Oh, they tried, and tried, and tried, and tried.

And then more up to date, Grant Matthews, theoretical astrophysicist cosmologist, had this to say, we may never know if the star of Bethlehem was a conjunction astrological event.

Maybe, this is the last sentence after he spent all kinds of verbiage, maybe it was simply a miracle.

I mean, he couldn't bring himself to this, the last sentence, maybe It was a miracle.

Well, if anything, if 2020 has taught us anything, it's that we don't need a naturalistic explanation of things.

We don't need more science, falsely so-called.

How many think we need a series of miracles?

If 2020 has taught us anything, it's that finite man is fragile, subject to plagues, subjects to death.

And what we need is not only a miracle, we need a man of miracles.

Now in the Old Testament, healing is really rarely seen, virtually non-existent.

We have Naaman the leper, we have Hezekiah, King Hezekiah, we have the healing of all those people that got bitten by the snakes in a group.

But in the Old Testament, you don't have that many healings.

You also don't have that many resurrections.

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The Day After Christmas

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