Matthew 2:1-12

Introduction

Introduction concerning Christmas and the myths.

As Christians, we all are called to submit ourselves to the authority that the Elders have in the Word of God.

We are called to take what is told to us, examine Scripture to see if it is true and when it is, we are to take the application given us by the Elders and apply it to our lives.

Yet, what happens when that goes awry?

What happens to the Church whenever people are told something that doesn’t truly line up with Scripture and they also do not go and check what they’re being told?

I think you can find examples of this both in major ways within the Church.

Yet I think you can also find minor examples as well.

Let me give you an example.

Mark was a newborn baby the very first time he was brought into the Church building.

Every Sunday, Wednesday and whatever other days the Church had something going on, Mark was there with his parents.

In essence, if the Church doors were open, Mark was there.

He had good Christian parents who always tried to shepherd his young heart in the right way.

Well as Mark grew up, he developed a love for the Christmas season and the Christmas story.

Every year he truly looked forward to the time when the pastor would set aside the normal sermon series and begin teaching about the conception and the birth of the baby Jesus.

He especially loved the story of the three Magi which traveled many days and followed the star to find this newborn baby Jesus.

He loved the nativity scene which his Church set up and even spent his own money to buy one for their home when he was a teenager.

As Mark grew into adulthood, he remained in the faith and his love for birth of Jesus remained.

One Christmas season, Mark invited his friend from work over to have dinner with him with a goal of sharing the Gospel.

Little did Mark know, his friend was actually a well informed atheist.

One which could spot false arguments and inconsistencies which Christians would espouse.

As Mark and his friend sat down for dinner, Mark began to share with excitement the good news about Jesus and why Christmas was so important.

That’s when it happened.

Marks friend called him out on beliefs which didn’t truly line up with Scripture.

His friend began to call out the inconsistencies with the manger that was set up in Marks yard.

Why do you have three wise men?

Why is Jesus a newborn baby?

Why is Jesus sitting in an outside manger?

Mark was confident that all of these questions could be very easily answered so he went and grabbed his Bible and came back to the room.

He flipped open to the Gospels and began to search out the Scriptures which he could show his friend.

That’s when it dawned on him.

The text does not say there were three wise men.

The text does not say that Jesus was a newborn baby.

The text does say that Jesus was born in a manger but he was without a clue as to why the manger was portrayed as a shack.

You see, Mark was doing what most Christians do when they hear the preacher.

He took the stories which he had been told concerning there being three wisemen, Jesus being an infant as well as much more, and he made that Gospel truth without verifying what he had been taught.

Now on the surface, many of you might be thinking that this is a minor issue.

He wasn’t wrong on some major point of doctrine so therefore, it shouldn’t really be a big deal.

Yet it is a big deal because if we are wrong about minor issues, chances are very high that we could be wrong about other more serious issues.

So today I’d like to dispel a couple of modern myths concerning what the Scriptures tell us concerning the birth of Jesus.

The first issue is the issue of the wisemen.

Have you ever noticed that all around us, in manger settings, in sermons and in stories about the birth of Jesus, there are almost always 3 wise men?

One of the reasons that this assumption is generally made concerning this story is because they only brought 3 gifts.

This would mean that there was one brought from each person.

Historically, I honestly have no clue where this came from.

So who are these men?

Tradition says that they were 3 kings or priests.

That their names are Gaspar, Melchoir and Balthazar.

For a small fee you can actually go visit their corpses and relics in Cologne where they’ve been since 1192.

However, these traditions have no Scriptural basis and is only found in a writing appearing around the 7th century.

That same history claims that these men would have been Kings. However, that is not true.

History tells us that these were men of the stars. Astrologists from the earliest of times.