As I pondered this Advent and Christmas season, I focused on looking for the small things in our Biblical stories, through which God reveals the really big things, sometimes in subtle ways.
So, how does one seek clues about the “really big things”? Well, how about starting with a “really big thing” concept or conclusion, and using that to focus on things that maybe some consider “incidental” to the story.
Well, here is a “really big thing”: There has never been a “Plan B”; our creation, the fall, and the need for a Savior was not a surprise series of events that forced God to implement some “Plan B” – From eternity past, God has always known how the events around humankind would play out sequentially in this realm we call time – There has only, ever, been “Plan A”.
Now let us use the focus from “It was God’s only and perfect plan, always!” and look at one of our Christmas stories that only appears in the Gospel of Matthew (smaller nuances are sometimes revealed by aspects that appear in only one or two Gospel accounts): The pilgrimage and gifts of the Magi, and the flight to Egypt contained in Matthew 2:1-15 (go read it in your preferred Bible version).
What do we know from the Gospel account? How many Magi? We don’t know, the custom that says three appears to be based on there being three gifts … that is faulty logic – Magus would be one, so there were at least two Magi (the plural), and some more logical based stories conclude there were twelve. The fact that Matthew does not say how many might indicate that the number of Magi was not important enough to mention.
The three gifts have much more significance than how many Magi, and it is noteworthy that there are three specific gifts mentioned: There being three perfect gifts for the Christ child (think of three as the perfect compliment to God: Father, Son, and Spirit), each speaking to Christ’s nature – Gold, the gift for a King of Kings – Frankincense, the gift for the King and High Priest – Myrrh, the precious burial spice for the King born to die for us as Savior. Also, note that the Gospel never says what happened to these very expensive gifts … actually, it does subtly tell us: Joseph, Mary, and Jesus had to flee to Egypt.
You can put together the data yourself – but Jesus was probably nearly 2 years old at the time, and they may have stayed, depending on sources you might find, anywhere from a few months to some 3-1/2 years. One historical belief is that Joseph was a widower when he took Mary as a wife, and already had children. So here is one of those subtle clues that God has always had only one plan: Joseph was not a rich man. How would he provide for Mary, Jesus, and himself in exile, let alone see to the needs of his other children? Well, GOD-Our-Provider ensured expensive gifts of Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh arrived, literally at their doorstep, just at the right time – a gift of God. A sequence of events set in motion about 500 years earlier, with another “exile” in a foreign land – Daniel during the great exile of the Jews to Babylon: Even that exile event played out on the stage of life because it was part of God’s “Plan A”.
These Magi we read about in Matthew came from the “East”, clearly in historical context meaning from “East of the Euphrates River”, a portion of the Parthian Empire, at the time of Jesus’ birth, that included ancient Babylon. Babylon, the great empire where a Hebrew named Daniel was … well, appointed “Chief of all Magi”.
Yeah, just go read that Old Testament Book of Daniel … It is not really that long. Look for statements about “wise men” or “magi” (translation dependent, but the Hebrew חַכִּים, or “chakkim”) in places like Daniel 2:48. You will find that the Babylonian King, because of Daniel’s influence, introduced the God of Israel to the people and appointed Daniel as the Chief Magi. If you put this together with some of the Book of Ezra, you will see that not all Jews returned from exile, and it would be logical to conclude that Daniel (who never returned from the exile), as Chief Magi, would have trained other Jewish “chakkim” about the knowledge Daniel had from Jewish scripture and God concerning the signs of the arrival of the Christ child. Clearly, from the story in the Book of Daniel, Daniel was not the only “chakkim” among the captives from the House of Judah: There were also Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, or you may know them by the names given them by the Babylonians; Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Some Jewish sects believe, based on rabbinical writings from the time of Jesus, that these Magi, who sought the Christ child, were in fact of Jewish heritage with wise knowledge of the teachings of Daniel.
The story of the Magi … Part of God’s “Plan A”. Oh, and Matthew may have had intent to point Hebrew scholars of the time to the story of Balaam in Numbers 24, for rabbinical teachings of the time pointed to the story of Balaam, as a chief magus whose prophecies carried over to the Babylonian exiles concerning what to watch for in the heavens as a sign of the Christs arrival.