Advent - Bethlehem's Supernatural Star

“Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we  saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.” (Matthew 2:2)

Over and over the Bible baffles our curiosity about just how certain things happened. How did this “star” get the magi from  the east to Jerusalem?

It does not say that it led them or went before them. It only  says they saw a star in the east (verse 2), and came to Jerusalem.  And how did that star go before them in the little five-mile  walk from Jerusalem to Bethlehem as verse 9 says it did? And  how did a star stand “over the place where the Child was”?

The answer is: We do not know. There are numerous efforts  to explain it in terms of conjunctions of planets or comets or  supernovas or miraculous lights. We just don’t know. And I  want to exhort you not to become preoccupied with developing theories that are only tentative in the end and have very  little spiritual significance.

I risk a generalization to warn you: People who are exercised  and preoccupied with such things as how the star worked and  how the Red Sea split and how the manna fell and how Jonah  survived the fish and how the moon turns to blood are generally people who have what I call a mentality for the marginal. You  do not see in them a deep cherishing of the great central things  of the gospel—the holiness of God, the ugliness of sin, the helplessness of man, the death of Christ, justification by faith  alone, the sanctifying work of the Spirit, the glory of Christ’s  return and the final judgment. They always seem to be taking  you down a sidetrack with a new article or book. There is little  centered rejoicing.

But what is plain concerning this matter of the star is that  it is doing something that it cannot do on its own: it is guiding  magi to the Son of God to worship him.

There is only one Person in biblical thinking that can be  behind that intentionality in the stars—God himself.

So the lesson is plain: God is guiding foreigners to Christ to  worship him. And he is doing it by exerting global—probably  even universal—influence and power to get it done.

Luke shows God influencing the entire Roman Empire so  that the census comes at the exact time to get a virgin to Bethlehem to fulfill prophecy with her delivery. Matthew shows God influencing the stars in the sky to get foreign magi to Bethlehem so that they can worship him.

This is God’s design. He did it then. He is still doing it now.  His aim is that the nations—all the nations (Matthew 24:14)— worship his Son.

This is God’s will for everybody in your office at work, and  in your neighborhood and in your home. As John 4:23 says, “Such the Father seeks to worship him.”

At the beginning of Matthew we still have a “come-see” pattern. But at the end the pattern is “go-tell.” The magi came and saw. We are to go and tell.

What is not different is that the purpose of God is the  ingathering of the nations to worship his Son. The magnifying  of Christ in the white-hot worship of all nations is the reason the world exists.


(From "Good News of Great Joy: Daily Readings for Advent 2012", by John Piper)