マタイによる福音書2:1-12 Matthew 2:1-12,

Happy Christmas! Christmas is the day when we celebrate and offer worship to Jesus, the Saviour of the world, for his birth into the world. In the Bible passage we read today, there is a story about wise men from the East, from around Iran in today’s country, who travelled all the way to Bethlehem in the country of Judea, now Israel, to worship the infant Jesus.

These wise men are astrologers. Astrologers are scholars who studied astrology. Astrology is the divination of a person’s destiny according to the star they were born under. You see it in magazines, for example, “The fortune of a person with the sign of something this week is…” However, according to biblical teaching, the life of a human being is determined by God’s plan, not by the stars. Therefore, horoscopes are not allowed according to biblical teaching. But if you say that teaching to someone who doesn’t know the real God, they probably won’t understand. That is why God made a star shine in the universe that would indicate the birth of the Saviour in a special way so that scholars who studied astrology could understand it. God is not only in control of this earth, but also of the whole universe, which is very, very large. How great and wonderful is God’s power!

Astrologers came to Jerusalem, the capital of the Judea, and asked Herod, the king of the Jews. “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” When King Herod heard that a king of the Jews had been born, he was troubled, thinking that his kingship might be taken away from him. But he put on a nonchalant face and asked the chief priests and scribes, who were familiar with the Bible, where the Messiah, or Saviour, was supposed to be born. The chief priests and scribes replied that, according to the words of the Old Testament prophets, it was Bethlehem, the home of David, the king of Israel of old. So the astrologers went to Bethlehem to meet the infant Jesus. They then offered offerings and worshipped Jesus. They did this because Jesus was not only the king of the Jews, but also the Saviour of the world.

The offerings were of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Gold is a precious metal, frankincense is a good-smelling substance from wood that is burnt during worship, and myrrh is also a good-smelling medicine from wood, which in the past was also used to keep the body of a dead person from decaying when they were put in the grave. Gold, frankincense and myrrh were all expensive. And not only were they expensive, they were also worthy offerings to Jesus, the Saviour of the world. Because Jesus was born into the world to die on the cross and resurrect in the future to save those who believe in him from sin and death. The offering of the myrrh may have alluded to Jesus’ death on the cross. Worshipping Jesus, the Saviour of the world, is the true celebration of Christmas.