The Wise Men and Herod: Will You Bend the Knee or Raise the Fist?

The Christmas story is a very Jewish story. There’s a Jewish man, engaged to a Jewish woman, who gives birth to the Jewish Messiah, come to the Jewish people as predicted in the Jewish Scriptures. All of this takes place, of course, in the ancestral home of the Jewish people. But within this story are Herod and the wise men, an individual and a group who are not, in fact, Jewish. Yet as we compare these two, we find two radically different responses to that first Christmas. As we look at these two examples, we find ourselves faced with a very personal question: how will we respond to the Christmas story? Will we bend the knee to the new king or will we raise our fist in defiance?

 

The Insanity of Herod’s Rebellion

If there was a Gentile you would expect to receive the King of the Jews, it would be Herod. In fact, Herod didn’t consider himself a Gentile at all. He was an Idumean, descendants of the Edomites who had mixed with the Jewish people. As such, Herod thought of himself as a king of the Jews who was himself a Jew. His subjects didn’t consider him truly Jewish, which as you might imagine caused some stress. What better way to show your authenticity than by celebrating the Messiah that Israel had long been expecting?

Herod no doubt knew about the prophecies of a coming Messiah. Messianic expectations reached a fever pitch during the first century because different groups had all calculated Daniel’s 70 weeks and knew the time was coming close. These hopes and expectations were so widespread it’s hard to imagine that Herod knew nothing about them. It’s not surprising that when the wise men asked where the Messiah was born, Herod didn’t seem confused. “Let me go check, I think my scribes know the answer to that question” was his deceptively diplomatic response.

But Herod did not, of course, warmly welcome the Messiah. It’s hard to know if he knew that this was the true king who was prophesied, or if he thought he was dealing with some very confused foreigners who were an unwitting spark in the powder keg that was first-century Judea and Galilee. But given Herod’s murderous and violent response, I don’t think it mattered much to him. Herod wasn’t looking for and expecting the King of the Jews for a very simple reason: he was the king of the Jews. If Jesus was king, then he and his sons wouldn’t be king. That meant that whether real or imagined, this new “Messiah” needed to go.

 

The Humility of the Wise Men’s Faith

If you were going to pick someone who would respond in humble, sacrificial faith, the wise men would have been an odd choice. Imagine telling a first-century Jew that there would be a group of people who would be willing to make a great personal sacrifice to come and worship the Messiah at His birth, bringing great gifts. Who do you think they would have guessed? The pietistic Pharisees? The revolutionary Zealots? The intensely separatistic Essenes? Nope, Gentiles. Pagans from a foreign land. Shepherds would be there, too, but to be fair they only had to run down the road. No it would be pagans who would come and honor the newborn King in a manner appropriate for His majestic person. If you were to go back in time and try to convince a first-century Jew of this, I don’t know that you would ever succeed.

We don’t know exactly where these wise men were from, but Scripture tells us they came from the east. It’s possible they were from Babylon, and some have speculated they might have had access to Daniel’s prophecies telling of a coming ruler. But from the east, these astrologers saw a star that somehow, in some way, communicated to them the news of the birth of a king. In humble eagerness, they prepared gifts and came to show Him honor. We don’t know how exactly the star led them, but we know that it disappeared just long enough for them to need Scripture. Once they checked in and learned from Micah where Jesus would be born, they were back on the trail following the star.

There’s an interesting paradigm at play here. These wise men were given revelation by God through nature. That revelation didn’t bring them all the way to Jesus, but it brought them to where they could get the rest of the message from Scripture. The wise men responded in humble obedience to the general revelation before them, so they were given more revelation from God’s Word. Ultimately, it brought them before the newly born King of the Jews. Even today, God speaks through creation, and those who respond in faith to the little revelation they are given are often given more from God’s Word.

 

Which One Are You?

God likes to subvert our expectations. He makes the weak strong and brings the strong to their knees. He works through the poor and shows no favoritism to the rich. Those who dwell with the High and Holy one are those who are lowly in mind. And the King of the Jews was rejected by the Jewish king and embraced by traveling foreigners. Why? Because Herod wanted to be king and the wise men were willing to bend their knee before the King.

This Christmas, there will be people who accept the King and people who reject Him. People who bend the knee and people who raise the fist. And the real question for them, as it is for us, is if we are ready to accept Jesus as our King. Because if Jesus is our King, that means we aren’t king. When Christ first came, there was a promise of peace and joy and a coming kingdom. That kingdom is still coming, and that offer is still open. But the peace and joy of Christmas is for those who will humbly accept the King and bow before Him.

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Ben Hicks is the Associate Pastor at Colonial Hills Baptist Church in Indianapolis. This article originally appeared on his Substack.

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Photo by Inbal Malca on Unsplash