I hope you have had a wonderful celebration of Christ’s Birth! Merry Christmas!

This week we are going to turn our attention to Matthew 2 and the account of the Magi’s visit to the Holy Family. There is a lot going on in this chapter, but I want to focus our attention on the concept of wisdom as it’s lived out in this passage. Wisdom is defined as “the ability to use your knowledge and experience to make good decisions and judgments.” In our text we will see one man, King Herod, makes a bad decision and judgment because he refused to accept the knowledge he had. Herod failed to apply wisdom to his knowledge and experience. However, the Magi from the east had the same knowledge as Herod, but acted with wisdom based on what they knew. The results were drastically different between Herod and the Magi – that’s why we call them “Wisemen.”
All of mankind faces a similar situation as Herod and the Magi. We are blessed to live in an age of knowledge unlike anything human history has known. Together with knowledge people can have experiences previous generations could not even imagine. As with the characters in Matthew 2, all knowledge is used through the filter or lens of an individual’s own biases and presuppositions. People can filter the knowledge of the universe through their own presupposition, a presupposition that often elevates man’s place in the universe and at the same time diminishes God’s. The outcome from Sunday’s passage is one of either worship of the one true king, or embracing a culture that leads to death. Will you follow the path of the Magi and become a wiseman (or wisewoman) by considering the natural revelation through the knowledge and experience of a supernatural God.