##Introduction

We are in our advent series leading up to Christmas and today weare in week two of a man unlike other men. Last week we saw howJesus was a man without beginning. Jesus never had a beginning.For us our birth represented the beginning of our existence. ForJesus, his birth represented the beginning, not of his existence, butof his limitation.

And we marveled at this concept of Jesus - the universe-creatingGod - emptying himself entering into time/space both to reveal hisglory and to redeem his people.

It’s just a staggering concept. Well today we focus on a secondaspect of the uniqueness of the person of Jesus.

Jesus was a man, whose birth, life and death were promisedhundreds of years before. My birth was prophesied in detail inprecisely zero books by precisely zero people. Look in the Bible andtry to find a prediction of your birth. You’ll probably be looking for along time.

Jesus by contrast, was a man whose coming was predicted by notjust a verse here or there but by the entirety of the OT. Just thinkabout the storyline of the Bible. Genesis 1-11 is the story of why weneed a Savior-Messiah and then Genesis 12-Malachi 4 traces thehistory of a chosen people who would produce the Savior-Messiah.

It’s so important to get away from this idea of looking for these one-off passages here or there that prove some aspect about the comingof Messiah. They certainly have their place but its so much betterthan that.

There is this giant story that is building. What makes Jesus so

amazing is not that he matched a few details mentioned in Is. 53. Ofcourse that’s true and we celebrate that and it is encouraging to ourfaith. But what really makes Jesus amazing is that he’s the climax ofthe story line that has been building.

The Ram caught in the thicket that saves Isaac suddenly explodeswith meaning.We look at the scapegoat in the OT and we marvel at parallels.We look at the bronze snake lifted up on a pole, the curse uponwhich everyone must look in order to be healed.

Every word of the OT is either preparatory or predictive in thismanner. It either prepares us for understanding the significance ofChrist or it directly predicts the coming of the Christ.

Such that Paul could write in:

The OT is a massive setup. For thousands of years God is settingthe stage, filling up words with meaning, laying down concepts,

developing cultures, languages, ideas, allowing nations andkingdoms to try one dead-end solution after another. For thousandsof years the despair builds.

The best stories are always like this - laying the backdrop,developing the characters, thickening the plot, arousing discord anddiscontinuity such that thick tension and desperation looms large.And then the hero flies in unexpectedly from the East and with aswooping move that nobody could have expected, resolves theproblem.

The entire OT is a giant preparatory work for what we see explode ofthe pages of the gospels. The OT is like a bow that slowly getsstretched back and with every inch that it gets pulled back thetension increases.

Genesis and the patriarchs, Abraham is called out of his paganculture and promised that from his loins a nation would arise.through Moses and the wilderness we are given the concept of apriest who would intercede for the peoplethrough the conquest and the judges desire for a king was createdthrough the period of the kings and the prophets we are taught thatno human king will dothrough the destruction of the temple and the deportation we areinstructed of the consequence of the evil king we all thought wewanted.prophet, priest and king are converging

It just keeps stretching and stretching back tighter and tighter, themainspring of history keeps winding and winding. And then whenthe fullness of time had come, (when we open the pages of the NT)God sent forth his son… an arrow gets inserted into that bow andreleased.

With the force of all that OT preparation, the messiah gets launchedinto the world with a velocity that shatters history.

In a single message we couldn’t hope to do justice to the prophetictension wound up in the OT which prepared and predicted JesusChrist, so we’ll examine this preparatory work of God in preparingthe world for the coming of Messiah through a single narrativeevent. The story of the wise men.

The Surprising Punctuation of the OTNow to appreciate the prophetic element of the narrative we readthis morning, you have to consider that to the OT saint their Bible islike an unpunctuated sentence that could be read a couple ofdifferent ways. I remember in school my teacher give us thisexample.

Do you see how the punctuation, flipped the meaning completely.The OT was like this. The content of the OT was there, but it wasunpunctuated, meaning the OT saint didn’t have all the data neededto interpret the meaning completely. But that didn’t stop them frompunctuating it according to their bias.

When Jesus came, he dropped in that needed comma, that missingcolon, that critical aestrisk and opened up the interpretation.

And to many people’s horror, they discovered they had punctuated itexactly incorrectly, such that they had an entirely different conceptof Messiah. When Jesus came, he punctuated it in a way thatcompletely inverted their expectations.

Today we are going to think about the story of the wise men and weare going to look at a massive “Messianic Expectation Inversions”.

Messiah Came to Redeem the Unrighteous

Now here’s the first inversion.

The 1st century Jew was busy trying to be righteous so that Godwould bless them. This was their prayer, “Come Lord and bless andreward the righteous.”

Now that is actually a correct prayer and a very biblically astute OTprayer. Here’s a representative verse of dozens like it:

And we think, I want to be blessed. I want reward, therefore I betterbe righteous because after all, righteous people are rewarded. But of

course we know the flaw in that thinking. We can never be righteouson our own. The only way to be righteousness is to receive therighteousness of God given to you. God declares you righteous bygiving you the righteousness of another and then enables you towalk forward with clean hands that he will reward.

Jesus did not come to reward the righteous; rather he came toredeem the unrighteous and give them a righteousness not theirown so that THEN they could be rewarded.

Jesus teaches this all through his ministry.

It’s not to the ‘righteous’ Pharisee that he seeks out but theunrighteous tax collector. Jesus said, “It’s not the healthy that needa Physician but the sick.” So this theme of inversion is all throughthe gospels and it begins in the opening paragraphs of Matthew’stelling of the Christmas story. Today we look at the visit of the wisemen.

Some of you perhaps may know that this visit of the wise men didnot happen exactly at the time of Jesus’ birth. I know this ruins allsorts of nativity sets, but it’s certainly the case. The wise men came,not days later, not weeks later, but months and months later. Howlong after his birth do the wise men appear?

Many will say two years? Where does that two years come from inthe text? It comes from the fact that Herod asked the wise menwhen the baby was born and after hearing the answer killed all thebabies two years and under. Now think about this. King Heroddiscovers there is a divine child born who is “King of the Jews”. He’sking of the Jews. That was his actual title. From everything we knowof King Herod he was absolutely paranoid of any pretender kind. Hekilled so many of his own family members that the saying arose, “It’s

safer to be the swine of Herod than his son." So the birth of Jesus isa horrible threat to this madman. So Herod asks,”How old is thebaby?" We are not told what the wise men say; we are only told thatHerod kills all the babies two years and under. Given thatinformation, what do you think the wise men said? I’m guessing thewise men said, "He’s four months old or six months old." And Heroddoubles or even triples it just to make sure he doesn’t miss anyone.See the point?

At any rate, Joseph and Mary and the baby Jesus are living inBethlehem and we are told that wise men from the East come andvisit Jesus. Who were these wise men. The word translated “wisemen” is the word magi. Some translations just use the word magiwhich is just transliterating the Greek word.

Elaborate legends have grown up around the Magi, virtually none ofwhich have any basis in the text of Matthew and equally important,no basis in reality.

Most of the modern conceptions of the magi arose centuries afterthe New Testament period, including the identification of the Magi askings. They were almost certainly not kings. In fact, even theidentification of these guys as “wise men” is a pretty big bummer inmy way of thinking.

Who were these men? I think the most important exercise here is totry and ascertain what the word magi meant in the 1st century. Andthere is plenty to go on here. The best place to start is the NT itself.The Bible identifies two magi. And we are going to look at both ofthem and I want you to answer in your mind, is being a magi a goodthing or a bad thing.

Do you remember Simon the magician? Simon is identified in Actschpater 8 as a magi. Simon was watching Peter lay hands on peopleso that they could receive the Holy Spirit. We don’t know what hesaw and in what way the Spirit manifested himself because the textdoes not say. But whatever it was, Simon wanted it.

So there is your first example of a man who in the NT is describedas a magi. What do you think favorable or unfavorable? There’s oneother example.

So what do you think, good or bad? If we look at the Greektranslation of the OT we have more examples of magi. Themagicians who tried to interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Danielare described as magi in the LXX. So is Baalaam the false prophetwho tried to cast a curse over the nation of Israel but was thwartedby God. Even the magicians in Pharaoh’s court are called magi.

So the biblical data is entirely negative. What about extra biblicaldata? If we divide the literature in half between Jewish and nonJewish literature we can observe a pattern here as well.

If we look at the literature of the Greco-Roman Empire in generalranges from high regard for magi (“wise and learned” men, Cicero)to contempt (“absurdities,” Tacitus). But this is to be expected. It

would be expected that many pagans would revere the magicians fortheir ability to do magic. That was, after all, their trade.

But, by contrast, Jewish extra biblical literature is uniformly negativetoward magi. Various midrash sources portray magi as

“bunglers who provide the story with an element of comic relief”Philo, a Hellenistic Jew, speaks of Balaam as a magus whom hecalls the “most foolish of all men”

So the first century data, at least in terms of Jewish perception, wasentirely negative. And Matthew is most certainly writing to a Jewishaudience.

Now the point seems to me to be that Mattthew’s readers areexpected to regard magi, generally, not as wise men but as lost foolsin the same way that we would regard someone caught up in theoccult. I mean, picture the person you would least expect to show upto church service on Sunday..someone enlisted in the domain ofdark magic, encantations, wegee boards? What would that personlook like in your mind? I think this is what the word magi would haveevoked in the minds of the Matthew’s readers.

It was a surprise. It was an inversion of their expectations. Godchooses to reveal divine truth not to the wise but to infants (11:25).The disciples themselves are going to be prime examples.

The magi were the opposite of who everyone expected God to comeand redeem. Everything was the inverse of what was expected. Wefrequently make this point about shepherds, but the point is equallymade with these magician/astronomers.

In our day, it may be the person we prejudge on the outside. Thatperson isn’t fit for heaven. Lots of ink, lots of dark clothes, makeup.They must be into the occult and have no interest in God. What’sthe message of Matthew? Perfect material for presenting gifts at thefeet of Jesus.

Where Did They Come From?

Now the perception that these are wise men is not without warrant inthe text. After all:

They very wisely travel hundreds of miles to lay treasure at KingJesus’ feet.They very wisely and correctly identify the baby Jesus as Messiah.They very wisely avoided telling Herod about Jesus and returned totheir country.

That doesn’t sound like Magicians working black magic. Certainlythey had been converted. But the title remains as a sort of reminderof their former stigma. Much like Matthew the Tax Collector or Marythe one who had been delivered from seven devils or doubtingThomas.

How did these workers of magic come to follow Jesus? The Bibledoesn’t tell us directly but we could hazard a guess. How could it bethat magicians from the East care anything for a Jewish baby bornto the nation of Israel.

How could the birth of Jesus even be known by magicians who livedhundreds of miles away through a star that appeared in the nightsky?

It could be just a miracle; and that would be enough. God could have

appeared to them in the same way that he appeared to theshepherds in the field. That would certainly do the trick.

But we might be able to find a connection in the Scripturesthemselves. The text says, these guys are from the East. But that initself is pretty helpful. There’s only two possibilities of East fromIsrael and that is Arabia to the southeast or Persia to the northeast.Due east is inhospitable desert.

What is the nearest biblical antecedent of Magi from the East. Well450 years earlier we run into some magi in Daniel chapter 2. Nowlet’s recall why Daniel is in the East and particularly in Babylon. Thetemple had been destroyed in 586 B.C. and Israel had been hauledoff into captivity. In fact, tens of thousands had been hauled off suchthat according to some records, the Babylonians would not allow anymore for fear of being overrun.

Now Daniel was part of the 1st wave of captives who was taken

away because he was both young and educated which made himthe most valuable kind of slave and so he’s inserted into the royalcourts and immediately finds himself wrapped into it’s drama.

Let’s recall the story.

Now, Nebuchadnezzar knew this dream was from God. God made itobvious to him but he had no idea what it meant so he called themagi and said, tell me what my dream means. And they said, “Sure,what was it.” Nebechanezzar was smart. He was tired of theirtrickery. He says, "Nope, so I can know that the interpretation isfrom God, you tell me the dream and it’s interpretation."

And, just to lay a little pressure on, if you can’t do what I ask, then Iwill tear you apart limb from limb.

They came back to him twice and said, “Oh king, strong, great andmighty. What the king asks is very difficult. Who can do this except

the gods themselves? And the gods do not have flesh and bones.”So the king became absolutely furious and the decree went out todestroy all the magi. Daniel heard of the decree and went before theLord and prayed. And God revealed to him both the dream and theinterpretation of it.

And so Daniel goes before the king and I’m guessing the magicianswere there as well and the jaws of everyone were on the ground asDaniel calmly, matter-of-factly tells the king both what he dreamedand what it meant.

Now notice carefully what happens. Nebuchadnezzar was cut to theheart.

Now notice what happens next.

Now what do you suppose Daniel, as chief prefect over the wisemen probably taught these wise men? Well, I’m guessing, amongother things, the book in the Bible he wrote!

If you were a magi trained beneath Daniel the book of Daniel wouldhave been the bread and butter of his Curriculum. And in this bookhe wrote, there are many, many indicators of when the Messiahwould come.

Let’s start with Daniel 2 itself. Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that hedreamed of a statue with a head of gold, a torso of silver, thighs ofbrass and legs of iron. These represented four kingdoms before thecoming of Messiah. And sure enough, like following a script we seeBabylon fall, Medo-Persia, Greece and then Rome arises.

So attentive followers of the traditions taught by Daniel would bethinking, okay, four kingdoms have passed and now Messiah is tocome.

Daniel chapter 2. The son of man identified in chapter 7.

Daniel 9 ProphecyBut possibly among the most intriguing and amazing and specific ofDaniel’s prophecies is in Daniel chapter 9. Now I’ve got 10 minutesto do this and I spent 10 hours trying to make this as short and clearas possible so hold on to your seats folks.

This prophecy is virtually impossible to appreciate withoutbackground of where we are in the story of Israel’s history and whatgot her here. Remember we began by saying that God is winding themainspring of history tighter and tighter and tigher and then whenthe fullness of time has come God sent forth his son. Themainspring of Daniel chapter 9 began winding clear back inLeviticus 25.

When God gave Israel the law clear back in Leviticus 25 one of thethings he built into his law was the idea of a year of sabbatical rest.God was anticipating the day when they would have their own landand their own farms and they would be growing crops. But rest is abig deal to God.

He said, when you get into the land one of the things I want you todo is to take a rest every seven years. Every seven years is asabbatical year where you rest and you let the land rest.

Okay so let’s visualize this.

Now God’s not done. It’s a little more complicated. Once you gothrough this cycle of seven years seven times, 7 years, 7 times - soevery 49 years, the 50th year will be a year of jubilee.

Now so far so good. What does this have to do with wise men?

You’ll see. So far I just described the system to you. But now I wantyou to listen to the ACTUAL language where God describes thiscycle because it is going to be really important for what’s coming sopay attention.

God is going to call these first seven years a week.

You shall count seven weeks of years. And so he defines sevenweeks. Seven weeks = seven times seven or 49 years. That’s superkey.

So this Leviticus 25. This was God’s law given clear back at MtSinai. God starts winding that mainspring. Now just as God hadpromised, they conquer the land through Joshua and then throughthe period of the judges they occupy it and then God gave them aking. Now they were established as a nation and for the first timethey have an administrative head and an administrative centerwhereby the could adjudicate this year of sabbath and almostimmediately they ignored this command.

The history of Israel and her kings is one giant, flagrant act ofdisobedience. And from king Saul clear to the destruction of thetemple in 586 BC. they completely ignore this command to keep theSabbath rest.

God sent prophet after prophet and warned them what Moses hadtold them. If you obey you will be blessed, but if you disobey I willsend in another nation to destroy you and carry you off into captivity.Prophet after prophet is sent until finally God had enough. Nowlisten to this:

Now do you see what he’s saying here? You haven’t kept 70Sabbaths. And so I’m going to carry you off into captivity for 70years to make up for the 490 years of ignored Sabbath rests.

So if you start at Saul and go all the way to the last king of Judahand the destruction of the Temple in 586, that’s 490 years whichmeans that should have kept 70 Sabbath years. But since theydidn’t, God would force it. The length of Daniel’s captivity was goingto be 70 years.

Exactly what Jeremiah the prophet prophesied in Jeremiah 25.

So Daniel and all Israel are going into captivity for 70 years to makeup for the 490 years of ignoring the Sabbath.

Okay, so are you tracking with me? What does this have to do withwise men. Hang on. Now we open to Daniel chapter 9. This is abook that Daniel as the chief officer over all the wise men of Israelwould have taught the magicians.

Now let’s get our chronology straight? Darius’ first year was in 522so this is like 65 years into the 70 years. Daniel knows he’s gettingclose.

Daniel said, I was reading Jeremiah the prophet, the one we justread, and I saw that the captivity was going to be 70 years long. Andit’s year 65. Daniel is an old man. And he’s praying to God.

And in the midst of his prayer, which is a beautiful prayer ofrepentance on behalf of the nation of Israel, God send the angelGabriel. And God let’s Daniel know what’s going to happen next.

They knew why they were there. Why? Because they hadn’t keptthe sabbath for 490 years which of course was emblematic of alltheir sin. It wasn’t like God was just getting nitpicky about theSabbath. They were wholesale rebelling against God. So becausethey had rebelled for 490 years, God was sending them into captivityfor 70. But what is next.

Here it comes. Here’s the next chapter. Now, I’m using the NASBtranslation here for reasons I don’t have time to get into.

Seventy weeks have been decreed. Now that should sound familiarto you. What is a week? Remember back to Levitcus 25 if you can.What is a week? A week is a period of 7 years. So seventy weeks ishow long? 70 x 7 or 490 years.

So do you see the parallel? He’s giving us the next chapter ofhistory. And it’s a mirror image of what has just transpired. Now thisis where it gets tough to explain in a short period of time. There aremultiple views on this passage, but I’ll explain the right one. Ha ha.

The text divides the seventy sevens into three groups. Gabriel statesthat the first two groups (seven sevens plus sixty-two sevens) willconclude with the coming of “the Anointed One, the ruler” The wordanointed one, is the word Messiah.

So what happens in this first seven (the first 49 years) - the sectionin green? The text says, “from the issuing of a decree to restore andrebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the prince will be seven weeks andsixty-two weeks.” So that first seven weeks is 49 years where theyrebuild the city of Jerusalem and the temple which is recorded inEzra and Nehemiah.

So the 70 weeks, the 490 year timer begins with a decree to rebuildthe temple. When is that decree? There are actually five possibilitiesmentioned in the OT. You have two decrees by Darius another byCyrus and two more decrees by Artaxerxes that range anywherefrom 538BC to 444BC.

Now I won’t get into the details, although I’d love to. But for verygood reasons, I think the best answer is the decree of Artaxerxes Ito Ezra in 458 B.C. And so imagine being a trained Magi underDaniel and you’re watching this take place. A pagan king issues adecree to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple. Why would they allowthis?

The text says they would be allowed to build it but it would be introubled times. Is this not exactly what happens in Nehemiah as hetries to rebuild the wall and he’s getting harassed by Sanballod andhis men.

So Jerusalem and the temple are rebuilt. The Jews are steadilyreturning to their land.

So that was the first 7 weeks or 49 years. And then we have aperiod of sixty two weeks or 434 years - the purple area. So if weadd that all up, what do we have. 483 years after the decree ofAraxerexes to rebuild the temple brings us all the way to here.

Now if you are a descendant of wise men trained under Daniel andyou believe that Messiah will begin his ministry at 483 years, thenyou deduce, well how old are kings when they begin to rule? About30? If that were the case, when would the Messiah - prince be born?

See the point. While they might not have been able to nail it exactly,they could certainly would have known they were close. I think thestar that appeared was not an astrological phenomena but amanifistation of the Spirit of God. There are too many indicators inthe text that the star behaved very much unlike any other star weknow. It came and disappeared and reappeared. It stood over ahouse so as to identify it, etc. So when they see this supernaturalstar, this manifestation of the shakina glory, they say, this is it. Hemust be here. Let’s go see this Messiah.

Now what about this last week? Again, multiple views but let mequickly explain my view. I think vs 26 is an overview of this lastweek. He says after 62 weeks Messiah will be cut off and the city

and the temple will be destroyed.

When will the Messiah be cut off, (that’s a violent word that meansdeath). I think the timeline is revealed in verse 27. So I think verse27 is a further explanation of vs 26.

Okay,

Now here’s the point. And it took a long time to make the point. Wehave just traced a single prophesy through the lens of one group ofmagicians in a far corner of the Persian empire.

But the ENTIRE WORLD was being prepared for the coming of theMessiah. The entire world. Jesus was a man unlike other men inthat he was promised. This universe-creating God, this sin bearingOT lamb was prepared before the foundation of the world….thepromise made to Adam was carried on through Abraham, throughMoses, through David, through Jeremiah, through Daniel such thatmagicicans, the most unlikely men of all, magicians from Persia,might traverse the desert for 3 months to welcome this predictedMessiah and present their gifts to him.

We serve an amazing God