I will admit to being kind of a geek, growing up. I loved learning new things. I don’t mean school subjects; that was boring. I mean details about things that nobody else was thinking about. I wasn’t very good at small talk. I would often start a “conversation” with, “Did you know . . .” And then I would tell them something I had been learning. You can imagine that this kind of thing won me a reputation, and not a good one. I carried my reputation to college, where I was thought of as an “egghead” on the football team (kind of a contradiction, I know). I remember I was walking back from class one afternoon, when a fellow player met me in front of the dorm:
“D.J., there’s a twelve year old genius visiting, and he’s thinking of coming to school here next year! He’s smarter than you!”
You Know Who!
It is painful for me to admit this, but I was irritated. I should have been flattered that my friend thought I was smart. After all, I kind of liked my reputation. But I thought, who is this kid that is challenging my turf? And who does this guy think he is for calling me out, like it’s important to me? Hmmpfft! “It’s not a contest!” Anyway, I never walked down to the room where the kid was holding forth.
But I should have. A player we all knew had graduated and went on to be a youth pastor. He brought some of his young people to visit the campus (a Christian college). On the way, he concocted a plan to entertain himself with a little deception. He rehearsed some academic questions with one of his charges, a twelve year old boy, and, together, they fooled a large segment of the football team. It was truly a thing of beauty, and I am sorry I didn’t get to see it. I can imagine him correctly answering questions about the capital of Timbuktu, and how many feet were in a mile, and mesmerizing his audience.
For my part, I still love to learn new things, and I still love to tell other people about them. Why do you think I am writing this blog? My family knows that I want books for Christmas. They also know I am going to buy them books for Christmas. My wife buys all the real gifts. I get books I think they should like to read, and that I might borrow later!
“Dad, don’t you want to know what we want for Christmas?”
“It’s not necessary. I already know what I want to give you.”
One of my fondest Christmas memories is, I think, the last time I took my family to my grandma’s house for Christmas Eve, before she passed away. My youngest was just old enough to have cute little conversations with us. The great thing about my family is that, no matter who you were outside, you were always special inside the circle. We were entertaining everyone with our “adorable” little toddler. I would ask her a math question, and she would answer it. And no matter what her answer was, I would declare, “That’s right!” And everyone would cheer. Well, she loved being right. And she loved that everyone was cheering for her. So, it kind of spurred her on. And I think it made an impression on her.
Fast forward just two or three years. Her older brother was participating in an academic bowl competition for middle school students. I think he was in seventh grade, so that would have been the year before Aubrey started kindergarten. The students were down on the gym floor in teams, trying to work out the answers to brain twisters. All the families of the students were up in the bleacher seats, looking at the questions and the multiple choices on a big screen. Every time they would come to a new question, Aubrey would blurt out the answer. Not really the answer, but the A, B, C, or D that corresponded to the answer. We started to wonder what was going on, because she was right every time!
So you know that in our family we love to be right, even if, hypothetically, we aren’t. Well, I love to be right. I am always fighting the urge to turn this blog into a collection of studies on esoteric Bible-related knowledge, like, “was Jesus really born in December?” or, “where is the Ark of the Covenant hidden?” Someday, you will look at the web site and there will be a second tab, just for stuff I find interesting. I will warn you, in advance, not to go there unless you enjoy “useless information,” like my friends used to call it. And now for my topic:
“Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem.” (Matthew 2:1 KJV)
I don’t normally quote from the King James Version, but I couldn’t resist it, because in the KJV they are called “wise men.” How cool is that! In other versions they are called Magi. They were a sect of astrologists and “proto-scientists” from the East, meaning, possibly, Babylon, or maybe Persia. The book of Daniel may refer to them in the second chapter, and it is not too hard to speculate that they are intellectual descendants of Daniel, himself, who served in the courts of both Babylonian and Medo-Persian kings. Anyway, they show up out of nowhere, in the city of King David, the center of the worship of the Hebrew God, where Jews have been waiting for the Messiah for centuries,
“Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.” (Matthew 2:2 KJV)
The current king of the Jews was a man named Herod, who served at the pleasure of Caesar, was not a Jew at all, and was certainly not of the line of David.
“When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.” (Matthew 2:3 KJV)
Now you can guess why Herod was troubled. This baby was a real threat to his throne. But isn’t it a surprise that all Jerusalem was also troubled? Shouldn’t “hopeful” or even “overjoyed” have been the word? I guess they were only looking for the Messiah in theory. When Herod consulted the religious experts, they correctly identified the town where He was to be born, but apparently had no interest in taking the six mile trip to check it out. By contrast, the magi saw a star and made a trip of 800 to 900 miles to see the wonder of the promised Messiah.
There is a lot of speculation about the nature of the star, and I’ve already told you that I love speculation. I tend to think that it was an orderly stellar event, visible to all, but not some spectacular light show that would have attracted everyone’s attention. I will save most of the speculation for some later, “useless information” blog. But we are pretty sure of the Bible prophecy that speaks of the star:
“There shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel” (Numbers 24:17 KJV)
That’s it. That is all there is concerning a star and the Messiah. And that is what I find most compelling about this part of the Christmas story. The magi took this scrap of a scripture prophecy (possibly put it together with a prophecy that was given to Daniel concerning the time of the Messiah’s arrival), packed their camels and took a 900 mile trip. Now, here is what I find compelling, and I want you to be honest, like I am being honest with you. When you read the phrase, “a star out of Jacob,” doesn’t that sound like poetic language to you? Isn’t it just a metaphor? We take for granted that there was a star, now, because of the Christmas story, but how many other things in the Bible are we missing, because we don’t read it in its most literal sense? Recently, I read about a lady whose sister was dying in the hospital. The doctors said there was nothing they could do. She read a passage of scripture that said,
“He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit.” (Romans 8:11)
Many of the commentaries I have read say this verse is about our resurrection some day. But this lady read the part that said “life to your mortal bodies.” She went into her sister’s hospital room, laid her hands on her sister, and prayed for her recovery with that scripture in her heart. The next morning her sister was sitting up in bed in perfect health.
“The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” (John 6:63)
There is a difference between knowing something and believing it. I want to share with you a little something God showed me about the difference. If you were to find the most difficult, challenging, and perplexing thing that Jesus said about faith, I think it would be this:
"Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be taken up and cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him.” (Mark 11:23)
Most people don’t know what to do with this passage. The temptation is to read it through our modern filters and turn it into a metaphor or an exaggeration for effect. More likely, religious people don’t read this passage at all, but skip on to things in the Bible that seem easier to do. You may have tried to pray for something that you really thought you needed or wanted. You tried to chase every doubt from your mind and believe as hard as you could, but it didn’t work. Now you are secretly skeptical. How do you chase doubt from your mind? I’ve heard people say, “I wish I could believe like you.” They have doubts about things which seem too good to be true, and they think it disqualifies them. But notice that the passage does not say anything about doubt in your mind. Jesus said, “Whoever . . . does not doubt in his heart.” Why is that important? The word that is translated “doubt” is the greek word “diakrino.” It does not mean “to doubt” the way our modern minds think of doubt. Krino means to make a distinction, to separate or to judge. Dia is the root from where we get the word diameter, and it means the complete distance from one point to another. Diakrino means, literally, to judge a distance or separation between. It is the same word from which we get the word condemnation (or self-condemnation). So what is Jesus talking about?
Jesus is saying that the moment you realize that God is actually talking to you and not just to everyone is the moment when you believe. It is the moment when you realize that you are not separated from His love and grace, and you are not condemned. Then you can hear words that give life to you, and you can speak words of faith, because you know that God is with you and in you. Faith is not believing as hard as you can. That is turning faith into something you can earn. And faith is not knowing something. Faith is knowing that you are His child, and there is nothing He will not do for you.