Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Jan/82

Contributor - Rev. Arie Blok

Title - Epiphany And Youth

Topic -Epiphany

According to the Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Church Year (which our Reformed Fathers largely ignored and probably wisely so), the feast of the Epiphany falls on January 10th of this year. Epiphany means simply the "appearing". Epiphany is really the celebration of the coming of the Wise Men to Bethlehem. Through the centuries, the coming of the Wise Men became associated with the birth of Christ, although the best and most careful reading of Matthew suggests that they saw the Star in the East at the time when the Lord Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Organizing an expedition would take some time, the journey would take still longer, which is also supported by the account of Matthew that the Wise Men came to the house in which the child Jesus was, rather than to the stable as the Shepherds.

The Church of the first centuries saw great significance in the fact that the Magi were Gentiles and not Jews. It is indeed very significant that God heralded the birth of His Son and our great King, not only to believing Shepherds in Bethlehem, but also to probably Pagan astrologers in the East.

Do the stars give us the kind of information that the Magi read in the Star in the East? No, and yet God used even their superstition to set them searching for the Great King. What kind of king did the Wise Men start out to seek and where did they come from? Tradition tells us something about the Magi but all of it is nonsense. That they came "from the East" suggests that they came from a place beyond the limit of the Jews' knowledge of geography. They obviously were not from Persia, Egypt or Mesopotamia, because had they been, Matthew would have known the country from which they came. Old Chinese records tell us that about the time that Christ was born, a Chinese ruler sent ambassadors to the west because he had heard that a Western (Roman) Emperor had been born. Now, Roman Emperors were not hereditary rulers but the people who were that far beyond the borders of the Roman Empire would not know that.

It is probable that as they neared Judea, asking questions as they went, they heard that a Messianic King was to be born to the Jews and their search began to focus more and more on the Messiah as they followed the Star they had seen in the East.

Were the Wise Men young? Were they old? How many Wise Men were there? We are not told. All we know about them is found in those few verses in Matthew's Gospel. They arrived mysteriously and they disappeared again just as mysteriously. What we do know is that these Wise Men found the Christ Child and rejoiced with great joy. It was not their fault that old King Herod's paranoia resulted in the massacre of the little children in Bethlehem.

Herod, you see, wanted to be his own great king. What became an unhealthy ambition in the young King Herod turned into a crazed obsession with the old King Herod who found his grip slipping upon his political power and upon life itself.

Youth is the time of life for the decisions in life that really count. Herod too had made the important decisions in life when young and they had all turned out to be the wrong ones. Spies, rigged courts, officials who kowtowed to Herod's every whim: What did it make of Herod? A man who was still sly in his senility, even though he could no longer think straight. That he would surely be dead and in his grave before the Christ-Child would grow up was something that Herod could not bear to think about. Herod could not say, "Lord, now let Thy servant depart in peace", because he had never been God's servant. He had wasted his youth in turning away from God and so all Herod had in his old age was just Herod.

It is very true that we are only young once. It is a precious time of life. This is why the Bible urges us to seek our Creator in the days of youth, If you do, you will avoid many if not most of the pitfalls in life, and spare yourself many things to regret, and many more things that you ought to regret but have become too blind of heart to see.

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