This sketch of the human story began in a cave, the cave which popular science associates with the caveman and in which practical discovery has really found archaic drawings of animals. The second half of human history, which was like a new creation of the world, also begins in a cave. There is even a shadow of such a fancy in the fact that animals were again present, for it was a cave used as a stable by the mountaineers of the uplands about Bethlehem, who still drive their cattle into such holes and caverns at night.

It was here that a homeless couple had crept underground with the cattle when the doors of the crowded inn had been shut in their faces; and it was here beneath the very feet of the passersby, in a cellar under the very floor of the world, that Jesus Christ was born. But in that second creation there was indeed something symbolical in the roots of the primeval rock or the horns of the prehistoric herd.

God also was a Caveman, and had also traced strange shapes of creatures, curiously colored, upon the wall of the world; but the pictures that he made had come to life.

A mass of legend and literature, which increases and will never end, has repeated and rung the changes on that single paradox, that the hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle.

Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded. It is at least like a jest in this, that it is something which the scientific critic cannot see. He laboriously explains the difficulty which we have always defiantly and almost in ridicule exaggerated, and mildly condemns as improbable something that we have almost madly exalted as incredible—as something that would be much too good to be true, except that it is true.

When that contrast between the cosmic creation and the little local infancy has been repeated, reiterated, underlined, emphasized, exulted in, sung, shouted, roared, not to say howled, in a hundred thousand hymns, carols, rhymes, rituals, pictures, poems, and popular sermons, it may be suggested that we hardly need a higher critic to draw our attention to something a little odd about it, especially one of the sort that seems to take a long time to see a joke, even his own joke.

But about this contrast and combination of ideas one thing may be said here, because it is relevant to the whole thesis of this book. The sort of modern critic of whom I speak is generally much impressed with the importance of education in life and the importance of psychology in education. That sort of man is never tired of telling us that first impressions fix character by the law of causation; and he will become quite nervous if a child’s visual sense is poisoned by the wrong colors on a golliwog[ (rag doll) or his nervous system prematurely shaken by a loud awful rattle.

Yet he will think us very narrow-minded if we say that this is exactly why there really is a difference between being brought up as a Christian and being brought up as a Jew or a Muslim or an atheist. The difference is that every Catholic child has learned from pictures, and even every Protestant child from stories, this incredible combination of contrasted ideas as one of the very first impressions on his mind. It is not merely a theological difference. It is a psychological difference which can outlast any theologies.

It really is, as that sort of scientist loves to say about anything, incurable. Any agnostic or atheist whose childhood has known a real Christmas has ever afterwards, whether he likes it or not, an association in his mind between two ideas that most of mankind must regard as remote from each other: the idea of a baby and the idea of unknown strength that sustains the stars.

His instincts and imagination can still connect them, when his reason can no longer see the need of the connection; for him there will always be some savor of religion about the mere picture of a mother and a baby, some hint of mercy and softening about the mere mention of the dreadful name of God. But the two ideas are not naturally or necessarily combined. They would not be necessarily combined for an ancient Greek or a Chinese, even for Aristotle or Confucius.

It is no more inevitable to connect God with an infant than to connect gravitation with a kitten. It has been created in our minds by Christmas because we are Christians, because we are psychological Christians even when we are not theological ones.

In other words, this combination of ideas has emphatically, in the much disputed phrase, altered human nature. There is really a difference between the man who knows it and the man who does not. It may not be a difference of moral worth, for the Muslim or the Jew might be worthier according to his lights; but it is a plain fact about the crossing of two particular lights, the conjunction of two stars in our particular horoscope.

Omnipotence and impotence, or divinity and infancy, do definitely make a sort of epigram which a million repetitions cannot turn into a platitude. It is not unreasonable to call it unique. Bethlehem is emphatically a place where extremes meet.

G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2022).

Wise Men Seek Him, Not Fools

Matthew 2:1–3
2 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, Wise-men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, 2Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we saw his star in the east, and are come to worship him. 3And when Herod the king heard it, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. 4And gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ should be born. 5And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written through the prophet, 6And thou Bethlehem, land of Judah,
Art in no wise least among the princes of Judah: For out of thee shall come forth a governor,
Who shall be shepherd of my people Israel.
7Then Herod privily called the Wise-men, and learned of them exactly what time the star appeared. 8And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search out exactly concerning the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word, that I also may come and worship him. 9And they, having heard the king, went their way; and lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. 10And when they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. 11And they came into the house and saw the young child with Mary his mother; and they fell down and worshipped him; and opening their treasures they offered unto him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. 12And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.

Are you wise or are you a Fool?

Ps 111:10 The fear of the LORD [is] the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do [his commandments]: his praise endureth for ever.

These passages in Matthew two, deal with the prediction of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, they focus on the coming of the magi to worship Jesus, the One they somehow knew had been born King of the Jews. In this story we see the reaction of Herod, the chief priests and scribes to that same news. We can see examples of the three basic responses that men made to Jesus when He was on earth, and they are still the same today.

Like Herod, some are hostile to Him; some, like the chief priests and scribes, are indifferent to Him; and some, like the magi, worship Him. Which category do you fit in?

Some, like Herod, are immediately hateful, wanting to know nothing of God’s way except how to attack and, if possible, destroy it.

Bethlehem

Now Bethlehem is a quiet little town, approximately five or six miles south of Jerusalem.
Bethlehem has a long and interesting history, back in Genesis you will find that in Bethlehem Jacob buried Rachel
Ruth that married Boaz in the Book of Ruth, she lived in the town of Bethlehem,
The town of Bethlehem was the home and the city of the great king of Israel, David.

HEROD

“in the days of Herod, the king.” This man was not really strictly a Jew, he was an Edomite.

The Romans would come in and take over an area, then set up a procurator, a procurator was like a governor, his name was Antipater, he was an Edomite, , and Herod was his son. They were from Edom descendants from Esau. So they stuck his son Herod up in Galilee, before the birth of Christ, Herod was made the tetrarch of Galilee.

In 40 B.C. that eastern Parthian Persian Median area where the Magi came, started a civil war, in 40 B.C. the Roman Senate made Herod the king of the Jews, and they said, you take an army and they gave him an army, they gave him some crack troops and they said, you go and you carve out your own kingdom over there, and you run your own show.

Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews?

The people in the east had it, and that’s partly why the Magi came. People in many places were anticipating the arrival of a king, it was the mood of the day.

The Magi

The only legitimate facts we know about these particular magi are the few given by Matthew. The magi were primarily known as the priestly-political class of the Parthians, Persia, today, Iran, who lived to the east of Palestine.

The magi first appear in history in the seventh century B.C. as a tribe within the Median nation in eastern Mesopotamia.

They became skilled in astronomy and astrology (which, in that day, were closely associated) and had a sacrificial system that somewhat resembled the one God gave to Israel through Moses.

Because of their combined knowledge of science, agriculture, mathematics, history, and the occult, their religious and political influence continued to grow until they became the most prominent and powerful group of advisors in the Medo-Persian and subsequently the Babylonian empire.

We learn from the book of Daniel that the magi were among the highest-ranking officials in Babylon. Daniel came to be highly regarded among the magi.

During that time there was widespread expectation of the coming of a great king, a great deliverer. The Roman historian Suetonius, speaking of the time around the birth of Christ, wrote, “There had spread over all the Orient an old and established belief that it was fated at that time for men coming from Judea to rule the world.”

The Roman historian, Tacitus, wrote that “there was a firm persuasion that at this very time the east was to grow powerful and rulers coming from Judea were to acquire a universal empire.”

The Jewish historian Josephus reports in his Jewish Wars that at about the time of Christ’s birth the Jews believed that one from their country would soon become ruler of the habitable earth.

We are not told how the God of revelation caused the magi to know that the King of the Jews had been born, only that He gave them the sign of His star in the east.

They were true seekers after God, because when He spoke to them, in whatever way it was, they heard and responded. Though having had limited spiritual light, they immediately recognized God’s light when it shone on them. They had genuinely seeking hearts, hearts that the Lord promises will never fail to find Him (Jer. 29:13).

13And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.

These Magi based on information from Daniel, and other information that they had received from the Jews who were now living in their land since the captivity, and based on their own sense of faith in the true God, and based on their own expectation that God would fulfill His Word, and based upon what they saw in the sky which is called a star here, they came to Jerusalem.

Luke 2:9 “There were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, an angel of the Lord came on them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and they were very much afraid.”

Now what was shining in the sky when the shepherds saw it?

Much speculation has been made about the identity of that star.

Some suggest that it was Jupiter, the “king of the planets.” Others claim that it was the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, others claim that it was a low-hanging meteor, an erratic comet, or simply an inner vision of the star of destiny in the hearts of mankind.

No, It was the glory of the Lord. And if you go back into the Old Testament and you studied the concept of the glory of God, you will find that the glory of God is manifest as light, right? Over and over and over again in the Old Testament the glory of God is manifest as light, when God radiates His presence He transforms it into ineffable light.

When the glory of God appeared at the daytime it was like a cloud of light, when it appeared at night it was a pillar of fire, when the glory of God descended on the tabernacle it was as light, The glory of God is blazing light. And when Jesus revealed who He was, and revealed His glory on the mount of transfiguration, He pulled back His flesh and they beheld His what? His glory, as transparent light.

Numbers 24:17, a most interesting Scripture. It says, and this is a Messianic prophecy. “I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not near: there shall come a star out of Jacob, and a Scepter shall rise out of Israel.”

“We have seen his shining in the east.” We have seen His blazing glory.

What they saw was something they never saw before, and they knew that it had to be something unique and they tied it together with what the Old Testament said and what Daniel had told them. No astronomical research gave them their direction, God revealed Himself. It was no different than the pillar of fire in the Old Testament.

How is it that only the wise men over there in Persia and nobody else saw it?
verse 11 that, “When they were come into the house, they saw the young child.” Christ is no longer in the manger, He is no longer in the stable, He is in a house,

And having been warned by God in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for their own country by another way. (2:9–12)

We are not told what, if anything, the magi told Herod. They had no way of knowing his wicked intent. They proceeded to Bethlehem, not because of Herod’s instruction, but because at last they knew where to find the One they had come to worship. The Lord gave them even more specific help, leading them directly to Jesus.

Matthew is careful to say that the magi worshiped Him, that is, the Child, not His mother.

Frankincense was a costly, beautiful-smelling incense that was used only for the most special of occasions. It was used in the grain offerings at the Tabernacle and Temple (Lev. 2:2, 15–16), in certain royal processions (Song of Sol. 3:6–7), and sometimes at weddings if it could be afforded.

Myrrh was also a perfume, not quite so expensive as frankincense mixed with other spices it was used in preparation of bodies for burial, even Jesus’ body (John 19:39).

Those were the magi’s gifts to Jesus. Gold for His royalty, frankincense for His deity, and myrrh for His humanity.

The warning by God suggests that He was directly communicating with these men, and that their role in the whole event was by divine design.

Herod Gets Nervous

And when Herod the king heard it, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he began to inquire of them where the Christ was to be born. And they said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea,

They had more fear of Herod than they had confidence in God’s Word. They were really afraid of what he would do, it says that “he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.” Why were they troubled?

Because they feared him so much, and they had a lot to fear, they had learned by a long and sad experience that there were no limits to the wrath and vengeance of this maniac

Then Herod secretly called the magi, and ascertained from them the time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, “Go, and make careful search for the Child; and when you have found Him, report to me, that I too may come and worship Him.” (2:3–8)

He was sitting on a political and religious powder keg. He had driven the Parthians out of Palestine but had to continue fighting the bands of Jewish zealots who wanted their country to be free from Roman occupation and domination.

Though Herod was not himself a Jew he knew Jewish beliefs and customs rather well. The current messianic expectations of most Jews at that time was more for a political and military deliverer than a spiritual savior—an expectation apparently shared by Jesus’ own disciples

(Acts 1:6).

The Religious Leaders

v4And gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ should be born.

verse 2 that they said, “we have seen his aster in the east, and are come (for what purpose?) to worship him.” They knew that He was to be worshiped,

What irony, the Jewish hierarchy, with the Pentateuch in their hand, studying it everyday, with the prophecies in their hand, reading them everyday, ruled by a, a bitter and evil man named Herod were content to be totally indifferent to what was happening five miles away.

Matthew’s record it doesn’t appear that the Jerusalem population was at all impressed by the Magi’s questions. You don’t see a mass of people scurrying down to Bethlehem. They didn’t seem to get the picture, there doesn’t seem to be any stir and that’s hard to believe,

The scribes were primarily Pharisees, authorities on Jewish law, scriptural and traditional, who were often referred to as lawyers. They had considerable prestige among Jews, and were recognized as the key scholars of religious Judaism.

Herod called together all of those Jewish religious leaders, who were both politicians and theologians, in order to inquire of them where the Christ was to be born. Although they proved that they knew where His birth was predicted to be (common knowledge among the Jews, John 7:42), they showed no belief or special interest in the announcement of the magi that they had seen the star given as a sign of that birth.

In any case, the chief priests and scribes told Herod what he wanted to know, referring him to the specific passage (Mic. 5:2)
Contrary to what many, perhaps most, unbelieving Jews today think, those ancient teachers of Israel knew that the coming Messiah, the Christ, would be more than a godly attitude or the personified perfection of the Jewish kingdom.

The Messiah would be a real man born among men, sent to rule men. Those chief priests and scribes had a far from perfect idea of what Christ would be like and of what He would do, but they had more than enough knowledge to have enabled them to recognize Him when He came and to know that they, like the magi, should worship Him. They knew, but they did not believe.

We see the three typical responses to Jesus Christ that men have made throughout history.

Some, like Herod, are immediately hateful, wanting to know nothing of God’s way except how to attack and, if possible, destroy it.

Others, like the chief priests and scribes, pay little if any attention to God and His way. They are those over whom Jeremiah heartbrokenly lamented, “Is it nothing to all you who pass this way?” (Lam. 1:12). What they know of God they do not accept or obey. At most, He is given lip service. Eventually, of course, this second group inevitably joins the first—because indifference to God is simply hatred that is concealed and rejection that is delayed.

Others, however, like the magi from the east, accept the Lord when He comes to them. They may have little of His light initially, but because they know it is His light, they believe, obey, and worship—and live.

After Herod received the information he wanted from the Jewish leaders, he secretly called the magi, and ascertained the time the star appeared. His concern was for the time of the star’s appearance, not its meaning or significance

Herod then instructed the magi to proceed with their mission. When the magi, again obedient to the Lord’s leading (2:12), did not report to Herod, he ordered his soldiers to slaughter every male child in and around Bethlehem that was under two years of age (v. 16), in order to guarantee, he thought, the destruction of his rival newborn “King.”

The fact that the true King was not known in Jerusalem, His own city, in His own royal residence, the place where of all places He should have been hailed as King, He was not. They didn’t seek Him, they didn’t care about Him; they never even bothered to come to Bethlehem to see Him.

Instead it was some strangers from a distant land, seeking Him to worship and adore. And besides the common people, the leaders and the rulers and the theologians and the priests of Israel were totally indifferent. Or else as Herod, filled with bitterness and hatred and envy and jealousy. And so right here at the very beginning of Matthew’s Gospel we see the way it’s going to be, there are going to be those people who are indifferent, there are going to be those people who are antagonistic, and there are going to be those people who are worshipful. And we’ll see more about those three groups as we move on. So the Magi represent the first fruits of the Gentile nations, and show us really that God always had them in His heart.