A Star
(based on
Isaiah 60:1-6, Matthew 2:1-12)
There are so many amazing aspects of the events
surrounding Christ’s birth, but one that has especially made its way into our
decorations, cards, carols and nativity scenes is the Star of Bethlehem which
was foretold in the ancient texts and followed by the wisemen. The account of the star has fascinated biblical
scholars and astronomers for centuries. Some claim it was a conjunction of
planets, some say a comet, others a supernova in the sky. So, what was this star, and why is it
important? What was God’s purpose behind this Star of Bethlehem?
Have you ever gone outside on a clear night and
looked up into the night sky? Probably when
you’ve been on vacation, away from all the city lights and other distractions
of everyday life. It’s beautiful, isn’t
it? About a thousand years before Jesus
was born, King David (one of Jesus’ ancestors) sat out under the same night sky
and wrote in Psalm 8:
“When
I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son
of man that you care for him?”
David was awestruck by the beauty and the
majesty of God’s handiwork. And yet he
had no conception of the vast distances and sizes of the objects he observed. We have so much more knowledge of the universe
today. And so, when we look at the
heavens, we should be even more awestruck than David was when we consider the
wonders of the universe in which we live.
It is vastly immense and actually growing larger every day.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and
the earth. God created the galaxies and
the stars, and God set them spinning in space in astronomical precision. As the ancients studied the night sky, they
observed this beauty and order. For the
most part, they found the sky was predictable. As the great star wheel turned above the
earth, each of the stars stayed in relative position to each other. But there were also some surprises. Meteor showers, comets, sudden flare-ups in
the sky – many of the ancients viewed these as signs or portents in the
heavens.
It was that the Magi, written in our scriptures
as men from the East, who noticed something unusual in the sky around the time
of Christ’s birth. Something out of the ordinary caught their attention and
spurred them on to make the long journey to Jerusalem. If God had not first created a universe of
such order and precision, this star would not have stood out to them.
When the Magi got to Jerusalem, they began to
ask the people: “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to
worship him.” Somehow, they connected
this star with the birth of an enormously important new king, and they came
seeking to worship him. You have to
remember that for the most part the entire world was under the rule of Rome,
and Caesar it’s Emperor. If a star
showed up to announce the birth of a new king, this king would be even more
important than the Emperor, therefore someone worthy of praise and
worship. They searched the ancient
scriptures of Israel as this trajectory of the star and found in it the mention
of a Messiah, the Christ.
Long before Christ came into the world, the
Scriptures foretold his coming. God
chose the people of Israel to be his very own, and he gave them the law, the
sacrifices, the temple and the promises – all of which pointed forward to
Christ. One of those early promises was
recorded in the book of Numbers, where it was prophesied: “A star will come out
of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel.”
This promise was connected to an earlier prophecy about the scepter in
Genesis which says: “The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s
staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the
obedience of the nations is his.” Another prophecy that may have influenced
them would be today’s Old Testament reading from Isaiah 60:
“Arise,
shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick
darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears
over you. Nations will come to your
light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.”
Taken together, these prophecies speak of a
ruler who will come out of Israel from the tribe of Judah and to whom the
obedience of all the nations belongs and all nations will come to sit under his
rule. Reading these texts, it might be possible
to see how the Magi related the image of the star in Genesis and Numbers to
this mysterious star in the east arriving over Jerusalem as a sign that the
King of the Jews was finally born into the world. And if the obedience of the nations was his,
then this Christ was not only King of the Jews but he was a king for all people. Remember there’s an Emperor who rules over
the whole world at this time, so this wasn’t really a big stretch even for
these Magi that come from a distant land.
Whatever Scriptures they knew, somehow, they
were able to make the connection between the star they saw rising in the east
and this ruler who was prophesied in the Old Testament. And so, they came to worship him.
We know the Magi initially saw the star in the
east, they made the connection to Christ, and then they came to Jerusalem, for
some unknown and miraculous reason, the star moved across the sky and then
stopped over Jerusalem and ultimately over Bethlehem. There is some question as to whether the star
led the Magi all the way from their home to Jerusalem, or whether it reappeared
once they reached Jerusalem and then led them to Bethlehem. But either way, as they traveled from
Jerusalem to Bethlehem, “the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them
until it stopped over the place where the child was.”
So, what was the Star of Bethlehem? There have been many attempts over the years
to identify this star and I’ve written previous sermons about that, but in a
quick review here are the four most common explanations:
A comet: The early church father Origen was the
first to suggest that the star may actually have been a comet. Halley’s Comet made an appearance in 12 B.C.,
but that is much too early for Christ’s birth. Another comet appeared for about seventy days
in March and April of 5 B.C. That is
closer to the time frame of Christ’s birth, but it does not explain the
miraculous movement of the star toward Bethlehem. Also, comets were generally considered omens
of evil rather than bearers of good news.
A conjunction of planets: Others have suggested
that the star was really a conjunction of planets. Johannes Kepler, one of the fathers of modern
astronomy, pointed to the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 7 B.C. (later
joined by Mars in February of 6 B.C.). However,
once again it does not explain the movement of the star. Also, planetary conjunctions are fairly brief
events, lasting at the most for several nights and in their most compact
configurations only for a few hours.
A supernova: Kepler actually preferred a
different explanation himself – the possibility that the Magi saw a star that
had gone supernova. A supernova is
basically an exploding star. It is a
spectacular event as the star suddenly flares up in brilliance and maintains
that brilliance over a period of time due to a series of internal explosions. The last supernova that occurred in our own
Milky Way galaxy took place in 1604. It
is reported that the star was so bright you could actually see it in the
daytime. Now the ancients sometimes got comets and novas confused; they often
called novas “comets without a tail.” There
are reports of a tailless comet in the year 4 B.C. which may actually have been
a supernova. The timing is close, but
once again it does not account for the movement of the star.
Given what knowledge we have today, we still cannot
fully explain the Star of Bethlehem yet.
Perhaps God did something that we still do not understand – imagine
that. When all is said and done, we have
something much better than an explanation, though. We have a mystery. We have a miracle. And the miracle of the Star of Bethlehem is
one of the many wonders of the Christmas story that draws our hearts to worship
the Lord each Christmas season.
But even if we cannot explain the Star of
Bethlehem, we aren’t left in the dark as to its purpose. God’s purpose for the Star of Bethlehem was
simply to point the Magi to Christ. God
used the star to catch the Magi’s attention and bring them to Jerusalem. It was there that they received a fuller
revelation of Christ from God’s Word, when the teachers of the law, under the
direction of Herod, opened the Scriptures and pointed them to Bethlehem as to the
place of Christ’s birth.
And then, somehow, the star went on ahead of
them to Bethlehem until it stopped over the place where Christ was. Matthew 2:10 says: “When they saw the star,
they were overjoyed.” Why were they
overjoyed? Not so much because they saw the star, but because the star had led
them to their goal. It had pointed them
to Christ.
I would say that this is still God’s purpose
for the Star of Bethlehem today. It
points us to Christ. Just as the purpose
of a reading lamp is to shed light on the book you are reading, or the purpose
of a spotlight is to highlight the person on the stage, so the purpose of the
star is to point us to Christ.
It’s interesting that the gospel of Matthew
begins with foreigners from a distant nation coming to worship Christ. And the gospel of Matthew ends with Jesus’
commission to the church to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” So, the Star of Bethlehem has a missionary
thrust. It’s a reminder to us that we
are to share the good news of Christ with everyone, everywhere we can. We are to make disciples of all nations as we
point them to Christ, for He IS the true Star of Bethlehem.
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