Matt. 2:1 “Wise-men”

How many wise men were there?

Why do most readers of the Bible assume there were three?

They were special emissaries who studied the stars (astronomy).

Their intentions seem to be to carry back the information to their people.

Not ordinary men! Probably from the East (Persia or Mesopotamia, probably gentiles from Babylon).

Most of us would have probably not noticed the new star!

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which has been shown them (Nature, 1836, Section 1).

The same God that placed that star in a precise orbit millennia before it appeared over Bethlehem in celebration of the birth of the Babe has given at least equal attention to placement of each of us in precise human orbits so that we may, if we will, illuminate the landscape of our individual lives, so that our light may not lead others but warm them as well (Neal A. Maxwell, That My Family Should Partake, 86).

Matt. 2:11

“Come into the House”

(Probably 6 months to two years

after Christ birth)

1. Gold: represented the Savior’s royalty.

2. Frankincense: used in cultic sacrifices, represented the Savior’s

ultimate sacrifice. 3. Myrrh: used as an incense in burials,

represented his future death for mankind’s sins.

Matthew makes no additional comments about the gifts, nonetheless, the gifts would have represented a great amount of money.

Matthew 2:13 Dreams!

Joseph was like unto Joseph of Egypt.

Dreams should be called “visions.”

3 reasons Joseph took his family to Egypt:

1. Nearby Roman Providence2. Outside of Herod’s jurisdiction3. Large Jewish Community

Matt. 2:16

According to a well known story, Herod ordered the nobles whom he had called to him in his last moments to be executed immediately after his decease, that at least his death might be attended by universal mourning (Jesus the Christ, 101).

Herod was “tyrannical and merciless, sparing neither foe nor friend who came under suspicion of being a possible hindrance to his ambitious designs. He had a wife and several sons, as well as others of his blood kindred, cruelly murdered” (Jesus the Christ, 98).

The mortal end of the tyrant and multi-murderer is thus treated by Farar in his Life of Christ, p. 54-55: --- “It must have been shortly after the murder of the innocents that Herod died. Only five days before his death he made a frantic attempt at suicide, and had ordered the execution of his eldest son Antipater. His death-bed, which once more reminds of Henry VIII, accompanied by circumstances of peculiar horror, and it has been asserted he died of a loathsome disease, which is hardly mentioned in history, except in the case of men who have been rendered infamous by an atrocity of perse and zeal. On his bed of intolerable anguish, in that splendid and luxurious palace which he had built for himself, under the palms of Jericho, swollen with disease and scorched by thirst, ulcerated externally and glowing inwardly a soft slow fire,’ surrounded by plotting sons and plundering slaves, detesting and detested by all, longing for death as a release from his tortures considering it as the beginning of worse terrors, stung by remorse yet still obsessed with murder, a horror to all around him yet in his

guilty conscience despite terror to himself, devoured by the premature corruption of anticipated grave, eaten of worms as though visibly smitten by the finger of God’s wrath after seventy years of successful villainy, the wretched old man, who they had called the Great, lay in savage frenzy awaiting his last hour. As none. As he knew that none would shed one tear for him, he determined that they should shed many for themselves, and issued an order that, under pain of death, principal families of the Kingdom and the chiefs of the tribes should come to Jericho. They came, and then, shutting them in the hippodrome, he secretly commanded his sister Salome that at the moment of his death they should all be massacred. And so, choking as it were with blood devising massacres in his delirium, the soul of Herod passed forth into the night.”

Zacharias the First Martyr:

When Herod’s edict went forth to destroy the young children, John was about six months older than Jesus and came under this hellish edict, and Zacharias caused his mother to take him into the mountains, where he was raised on locusts and wild honey. When his father refused to disclose his hiding place, and being the officiating high priest at the Temple that year, was slain by Herod’s order, between the porch and the altar, as Jesus said (Matthew 23:35, Luke 11:51, Teachings, 261).

Matthew showed several similarities between the birth of Moses and the birth of the Savior:

Why?

“To teach that “Jesus Christ” was the New Moses!”

1. Just as there was an attempt to destroy the infant Moses by Pharaoh, so Herod attempted to destroy the child Jesus.

2. As Moses came from Egypt, so Jesus also came from Egypt where Joseph and Mary had fled to escape the butcherous hands of Herod’s soldiers.

As the Lord’s chosen people came out of Egypt into a land of promise to receive his law and walk in his paths, so His Beloved and Chosen came out of Egypt into that same promised land to dispense the new law and invite the chosen seed to walk in the appointed course.

In the minds of ancient Israel there was no greater miracle than their mighty deliverance from Egypt. But now, in the minds of all men there should be the thought of an even greater deliverance!

When Jesus was born, “the veil of forgetfulness common to all who are born to the earth, by which the remembrance of primeval existence is shut off” was cast over him” (Talmage, Jesus the Christ, 111).

President Joseph Fielding Smith further explained:

Without a doubt, Jesus came into the world subject to the same as was required of each of us – he forgot everything and he had to grow from grace to grace. His forgetting, or having his former knowledge taken away, would be requisite just as it in the case of each of us, to complete the present existence” (Doctrines of Salvation, 1:33).

3 Nephi 1:13

Oh, the magnitude of that sacrifice, that condescension! That night, God the Son traded his heavenly home with all its celestial adornments for a mortal abode with all its primitive trappings. He was left alone to inherit a manger. He exchanged the dominion of a god for the dependence of a babe. He gave up wealth, power, dominion, and the fullness of his glory --- for what? --- for taunting, mocking, humiliation, and subjection. It was a trade of unparalleled dimension, a condescension of incredible proportions, a descent of incalculable depth. And so, the great Jehovah, creator of worlds without number, infinite in virtue and power, made his entry into this world in swaddling clothes and a manger (Callister, The Infinite Atonement, 2000, 64).

D&C 93:12-23

In short grace refers to the gifts of God by which men can be brought to perfection , that through obedience more and more power is given by the Father, until they receive a fullness of his power.

Luke 2:40-52

Elder Bruce R. McConkie, of the Quorum of the Twelve, explained that Jesus must have had a normal boyhood. “He was as much the product of the mother who bare him as were her other children. As a babe he began to grow, normally and naturally, and there was nothing supernatural about it. He learned to crawl, to walk, to run. He spoke his first word, cut his first tooth, took his first step – the same as other children do.

He learned to speak; he played with toys like those of his brothers and sisters; and he played with them and with the neighbor children. He went to sleep at night and he awoke with the morning light…” …He learned to speak, to read, to write; he memorized passages of scripture, and he pondered their deep and hidden meanings. He was taught in the home by Mary, then by Joseph, as was the custom of that day.

Before 12 = Mom after 12 = Dad

Jewish traditions and the provisions of the Torah were discussed daily in his presence. Beginning at five or six he went to school, and certainly continued to do so until he became a son of the law at twelve years of age” (The Mortal Messiah, 1:368-69).