Faith versus Wisdom

Matthew 2:1-2
Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.”

So we all know the story of baby Jesus, and the basic miracle of it: virgin birth. We look through this and think about Jesus’ birth, which is what our first reaction should be, but there’s more to this verse.

It isn’t stupid men who come to worship Jesus. They aren’t foolish, they’re not dumb, they’re not crazy. The Bible describes them as wise.

Our next question is: Why would wise men come from the East to worship a baby? They saw a star and their immediate reaction is ‘Look! A big star! Our King’s born!’. When you think about it, why would these intelligent men do something so crazy, so unconventional?

Love makes people do crazy things. They had more faith in God than they did in their sense of reason. Even though they were smart, they followed Jesus. Why?

If you haven’t already realized it, Jesus is pretty cool. But He was just a baby at this point! Why would these smart men have faith in a baby?

Faith is something that one just knows in their heart of hearts. It can’t be explained, because it’s beyond words. These men were wise, and they were also full of faith in God. Now, if they hadn’t had this faith and had just been wise, they wouldn’t have been in the Bible. If they had the faith and weren’t wise, they still might have been in the Bible. To God, faith is more important than wisdom.

How is this Christmassy? Wisdom says a virgin birth isn’t possible. Faith says it is. Wisdom says a man who dies can’t come back to life. Faith says he can. Wisdom says that we all just kind of…happened one day and slowly became humans from apes (although reading that, it doesn’t appear too wise). Faith says we were created. Who wins? Tune in to Proverbs 3:5 to find out!

In His Service,
Joyce