John MacArthur’s comments on “The Bethlehem Star”
Gen. 1:14-15
These luminous bodies were given to separate and secondly to dominate. They literally dominate our lives. Now some have suggested that when He says "signs" here He might mean something else. Well, I'm glad you suggested that, it just doesn't say that in the Bible and I'd rather kind of stick with what God wrote here. People say, "Well, you know, this could refer to land and sea navigation by the stars." Well it could. You know, we line up instruments with the North Star and so forth. And some have even suggested that this could be a veiled reference to the star of Bethlehem which was a sign to the Wise Men...Matthew 2. Some really get carried away and see in the stars some astrological sign. Boy, our culture is really drowning in that bunk, that there's some kind of zodiac out there and these stars are actually deities, or forces or powers that give out messages that have great impact on people's lives. That is pagan. That is ungodly. It is unbiblical. It is pseudo-science. It is ridiculous at best. It is demonic at worst.
And some Christian teachers have even come along and they've said, "Well, it says that they're for signs. And they say there's the gospel preached up there in the constellations." That is a contrived and biblically unacceptable concoction.
Genesis tells us what the signs were. They were signs to indicate seasons and days and years. And in that way they dominate our life. They control human life. They control human enterprise.
Matthew 2
And I don't want to take the time to go over that all, let me just remind you that what we basically saw was that these men were Persian king makers who were coming because they were aware of the birth of the anticipated king that they had no doubt heard about from such as Daniel and others of the Israelites who had lived in their land since the time of the Babylonian captivity, and these Persian king makers were very anxious to look for a king because they did not have a king, the king at the time was deposed and they wanted a great monarch to rise to the throne of the east in order that they might pose a threat to the great Roman Empire of the west, so their feelings were both political and spiritual, and we saw that they came into town and they were immediately confronted with a most Interesting character by the name of Herod, and we're going to see more about him tonight.
Now, they kept asking, where is He that is born King of the Jews? You know it must have shocked them a little bit every time they asked that question, to get a response of ignorance from everybody.
They must have assumed that these people would have known that. I mean after all, they were the Jews, and certainly they would know when their King was born, and where He was born. But two things hit me out of that verse as I read it, and I want to answer those questions because they were the two ones that struck me.
Question number one, what was the nature of the star? "We have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him."
What was the nature of the star? So I did some reading this week and last week, to try to find out what the star was, you won't believe the suggestions. First of all, some people say it was a genuine, real, honest to goodness star. Some say it was Jupiter, because Jupiter is called the king of the planets. Some say, and this was Kepler's theory that it was the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the sign of the fish. And some say it was just an erratic comet. Some say it was a low hanging meteor, and some say it was the star of destiny in the heart of mankind. That's a lot of dribble if ever I heard it.
You want to know what it was...I'll tell you what I think it is. Look at Luke 2:9 and maybe this will help to answer a question you've probably had since you were a little kid, if you're still a little kid you've still got it. Luke 2:9, here's a good key, here we are not at the wise men incident but at the shepherds, and they were the first to come, and they were of Israel. And they are a sort of a picture of the remnant. "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? What was it? 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, when Moses went up into the mountain, and he said, show me Thy glory, God hid him in a rock and God showed him His glory manifest as light, and it was so much light that it got on his face and when he came down the mountain side and spoke to the people his face was lit up.
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. And when Jesus comes the second time out of heaven, He will come in blazing light, and Revelation says, God will turn out all the lights of heaven, all the stars will fall, all the suns, all the moons, everything goes pitch black, heaven rolls up like a scroll, and when it's pitch black then Christ comes revealed as blazing light, and people cry for the rocks and the mountains to fall on them to hide them from the face of His glory.
Now all that just to remind you that God's glory is manifest in the Scripture as light, as light. He told Moses he couldn't look upon His face and live, held be consumed in it. It'd be like standing ten feet from the sun only it would be like a million, million suns.
And I believe that it was the glory of the Lord that shone that night when God's glory was as ... was descending to earth, it was God's glory descending on the earth, coming in the form of a man, and I believe that that glory of God is the thing that the wise men saw.
Now let me give you a little more support on this because I think it's kind of interesting to trace this thought.
The chief word in the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for star is the word kôwkâb, not that that's important just a point of contact with the Hebrew. But it has a basic meaning, and its basic meaning is to shine or to blaze forth, to shine or to blaze forth. Now sometimes the word kôwkâb is used of a real star, sometimes it's used to speak of just a regular star, sometimes it's used to speak of an angel, sometimes it is used to speak of men. So it doesn't necessarily always mean a real star, it can mean anything that blazes, anything that shines, in an incredible way.
In fact in 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: (now listen) there shall come a kôwkâb out of Jacob and a Scepter shall rise out of Israel." That's Numbers 24:17. That is a Messianic prophecy, there will come a blazing forth, there will come a shining One, there will come a star. And people I believe that the prophecy there is, that none other than the glory of God incarnate is the star, the blazing.
Matthew 24:30, "Immediately after the tribulation (verse 29 says) of those days the sun's dark and the moon doesn't give its light," that's what I told you, all the stars fall out of heaven and everything goes black and then v. 30, "Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man," now mark that phrase out, "the sign of the Son of man." In other words, whenever the Son of man is about to show up there will be a sign pointing to Him.
Now do you know what a sign is for? The sign is to point you to something that you want to see. You're driving on the road, and the sign says, Roscoe Boulevard three quarters of a mile. The sign is not Roscoe Boulevard but it's there to point you to Roscoe Boulevard, it has a function, its purpose is to point you to something. And the Son of man has a sign, "the sign of the Son of man in heaven;" oh, interesting, that sign is in heaven, and what is it? "They shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory."
Now here is His kôwkâb, His blazing forth. And although kôwkâb, the Hebrew word is not used in the New Testament it is the same idea. I believe that this sign of the Son of man is nothing more and nothing less than the Shekinah glory of God Himself, God revealing Himself in ineffable glorious light. In fact, it even tells us, I think it's Revelation 1:16 that, that the Son shines, the Son of God, shines as if He were the sun in its strength.
Somehow, now watch this, somehow connected to Jesus Christ is this incredible blazing glory of God, it is His sign in the heavens, He is a spirit, He is a spirit being, He is also in a sense a physical being in the glorified body that He has from His resurrection, but there is a sign that goes with Him, and it is blazing glory, and one day on the mount He showed it to His disciples. And one day when He returns the sign of His coming, the sign of the Son of man in heaven will be there, blazing glory in the heaven.
Well, you know what I think? I think He had the very same sign the first time He came too. I just think it was the sign of the Son of man in heaven. And the sign of the Son of man in heaven is not a star, it's not an astral body, it's not a conjunction of planets, it's not, thoughts of human destiny rattling around in somebody's mystical mind, the sign of the Son of man is nothing more and nothing less than the Shekinah glory of God revealed in light, blazing, dazzling in the heavens.
I would add this thought, verse 2 says, "We have seen (watch this) his aster." His blazing. The word astēr incidentally people, the word is translated star here, but it is used of other things than stars. So He has His own ... and again it means a blazing forth or a shining. "We have seen his shining in the east." We have seen His kowkab, His aster, His blazing, His glory.
And the very fact that it's His star means it's something very special. It has appeared. That's an interesting word. "We have seen his star in the east."
His star. Verse 7, Herod says I want to know the time the star appeared. And the word phainō in the Greek means that which lights up. What, what time was it when that thing lit up? And the word ... the same word, interesting thought, the same word is used with lightning. Lightning is a form of astēr, sometimes it's translated as a star in the sky, sometimes it's translated as lightning, sometimes as the shining forth of something, and here it is a shining forth. We can't push it any further, we can't make it mean a real star, and there is the sense in which Herod says, when did this particular shining forth light up? And even that is sort of a hint that it was something that never existed and was called into existence only because Jesus was coming, and so I believe this was His astēr, the sign of the Son of man, in the heavens. It was there at His first coming, and beloved it'll be there at His second coming. It's His sign, it's His star, and it’s not some astral body.
The pseudoscience of astrology could never predict the Lord, they weren't looking in their little puny deals and seeing, well look there, there's old Saturn and whatever doing their thing, it must be that He's being born, no, no. 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.
And you remember the pillar of fire and the cloud, in the Old Testament stood over the Holy of Holies? Well in this it tells us that whatever this star was it went and stood over the house where He was born. Now you tell me how a literal star would ever do that. Can't do it, it's none other than the sign of the Son of man.
You say, well, well if it was such a blazing magnificent glory of, of Christ's sign in the heavens, how come only the wise men over there in Persia and nobody else saw it? Now that's a fair question, that's the second question I asked. How come God is so selective? Well, you know He ... that's nothing new for God, He can make everybody in the world blind to something if He wants to.
In Exodus chapter 14, 1 found a good parallel, 14:19 says, "And the angel of God, who went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them;" now they're going to go through the Red Sea, so the angels been leading them down to the Red Sea, once they get to the Red Sea he goes around the rear, gets behind them. You say, to push? No, I'll show ya what: "the pillar of cloud (of cloud, here's the glory of God, the pillar of the cloud) went from before their face, and stood behind them."
Now behind the Israelites you've got the pillar of cloud, God's glory, and you've got the angel of the Lord, and who's the angel of the Lord? Jesus Christ. "And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these, so that the one came not near the other all the night." You know what happened? Israel saw it as light and the...and the Pharaoh and his army saw it as what? Darkness. And it was the same thing. There's something about God revealing what He wants to reveal just to those to whom He wants to reveal it. And that's all I can say about it. How did they connect it with Jesus Christ's birth? I don't know, I really don't know, except that God made it so obvious that they knew, that they knew.
Now do you want to know something very fascinating people, this may shake you up a little bit, might mess up your Christmas story next year. But do you know in nowhere in the Bible does it ever say they followed the star to Bethlehem, from Persia? No. It doesn't say it led 'em to Jerusalem, it doesn't say it went anywhere, not at all. "We have seen his star (where?) in the east." They saw the star in the east, and it didn't need to tell them where to go they knew where the Jewish Messiah was supposed to be, they knew the royal city was Jerusalem, they knew that's where all Jewish kings reigned, they knew exactly where to go they didn't need some star to guide them, and when they saw His glory, and God made it so evident and obvious as He always does when He reveals what He wants to reveal to whomever He wants, that they didn't even ask a question, they got on their horses and they went, and they went right to the right place.
And Matthew doesn't give us all the bits and pieces and details of how they saddled a Persian horse and how many miles and how it was and where they ate and all of that, because this isn't the story of these people it's the story of Jesus Christ. And they have a place only in so far as it's related to Him. So the details aren't there.
But it - it's incredible to me how God works things out when He wants to get His things done, He gave these Magi, God fearing Gentiles way off in Persia, king makers, His sign and they knew that it was His sign and they knew where to go to Jerusalem.
And the emphasis of Matthew is so beautiful, he says in verse 2 that they said, "we have seen his aster in the east, and are come to worship him." They knew that He was to be worshiped, to worship Him, they knew there was no other one as worthy as this one, and they were right. Here you have it, pagans who had nothing to guide them but smatterings of Old Testament prophecies, nothing to guide them but their own science mingled with its funny superstitions, and yet they are the true seekers of God.
And when the sign came with all of their misgivings and lacks in knowledge, they were enthusiastically embarking on a journey to seek a king they had along time waited for.
But 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. And here again we see Matthew's constant attitude of condemnation toward the officials of Judaism, and his constant sensitivity that God is opening the church, He's opening the Gospel to the Gentiles.
