{"id":8978,"date":"2022-06-14T00:00:41","date_gmt":"2022-06-13T14:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/?p=8978"},"modified":"2022-06-15T07:08:57","modified_gmt":"2022-06-14T21:08:57","slug":"searching-for-the-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/2022\/06\/14\/searching-for-the-king\/","title":{"rendered":"Searching for the King"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matthew 2:1-2\u00a01<\/sup>Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem\u00a02<\/sup>saying, “Where is the one who was born King of the Jews? For we saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The story of the magi from the east introduces another important identity of Jesus. Matthew has already shown Jesus to be the Messiah, Son, Savior, and Immanuel and now uses this story to show him as King. Matthew does not give the details of Jesus’ birth, which are found in Luke’s Gospel. The story skips ahead to an unknown time after Jesus’ birth. We get the location of his birth in Bethlehem of Judea and the time of his birth during the days of king Herod. The location was the fulfillment of Micah 5:2. The time was the ideal point in history (Galatians 4:4) and the fulfillment of Daniel 9:25-26. King Herod the Great was a strong and ambitious leader who reigned from about 34 – 4 BC. He was a great builder and renovated the temple in Jerusalem.\u00a0King Herod was also known in history as being paranoid about keeping his power and position as king of Judea, an idea which becomes an important part of this story.<\/p>\n

The identity of the\u00a0magi from the east<\/em> has long been discussed, with many fanciful traditions emerging over the centuries and becoming part of the Christmas story. Matthew actually gives few details about them. For example, he does not say how many of them there were. These magi may have been scholars and priests of Zorastrianism origin from the area of modern Iran who studied the stars for divine signs. Another possibility is that these were Jewish scholars from the descendants of the Jews taken into exile by Babylon. They have been called “wise” in tradition because of how they studied the stars and prophecy.<\/p>\n

These men knew something was different because of\u00a0his star<\/em> that appeared in the east.\u00a0<\/em>They identified a special star and interpreted it to be a sign of the birth of ta Jewish king. Their response to this sign is remarkable because they had to travel far,\u00a0from the east<\/em>, to get to Jerusalem. They likely followed the fertile crescent from the area of ancient Babylon or Persia, which would have taken several months.<\/p>\n

The purpose of their coming is stated at the end of verse 2: they came to worship<\/em> the new king. The Messiah is now identified as the King of the Jews in Matthew’s Gospel. The descriptions of Jesus keep piling up the further we get into this book.\u00a0Worship\u00a0<\/em>(proskyn\u0113sai<\/em>) is a strong translation of a word that can also mean to submit to a higher authority or fall down before a person of honor. It is especially used for transcendent beings, like God. It is to give the highest honor to a divine being. These men recognized that the new born king was of such high honor that their response needed to be the honor of worship.<\/p>\n

For older posts, click\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Matthew 2:1-2\u00a01Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem\u00a02saying, “Where is the one who was born King of the Jews? For we saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.\u201d\u00a0 The story of the magi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-devotions","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8978"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9016,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8978\/revisions\/9016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}