Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

Of Proxy Wars And Dog Whistles

“Attacks on the West, America, traditional values, the patriarchy, hetero-normativity, and so on are all proxy wars aimed at Christ. And Christians are largely clueless.”

Doug Wilson
Last Letters of the Year
2022

Doug is speaking in the abstract here but when we start looking at the concrete Doug is tweeting a pretty large dog whistle. Concretely speaking, one has to ask who built ‘the West,” and then America? Who are the people that established traditional values, patriarchy, and hetero-normativity?
The answer is that it is the Christian white man who built the West and then America. The answer is that it is the Christian white man who established traditional values, patriarchy, and hetero-normativity.

And the upshot of all this is that the ultimate proxy war aimed at Christ that Doug speaks of can not be successful unless that proxy war successfully destroys the Christian white man.

And what that means, in turn, is that Doug should be defending not only the West, America, traditional values, patriarchy, and hetero-normativity in the abstract but Doug should also stop with his “race isn’t real” bilge and start defending the Christian white man whom God, out of His pure grace, called to build a civilization where patriarchy, traditional values, and hetero-normativity became the norm.

And maybe Doug could also admit that the attack against these things has, historically speaking, come from one particular and concentrated direction.

By Today’s Standards Jesus Was A Racist

And He answered and said, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”   Matthew 15:26

Dogs (κυναρίοις). A contemptuous diminutive, rendered by Wickliffe, “whelpies,” or, as we might say, “curs.” This was the term applied by the Jews to the Gentiles, even as Turks nowadays talk of “dogs of Christians,” and as in later times, by a curious inversion, the Jews themselves were generally saluted with the opprobrious name of”dogs.” Some have seen a term of endearment in the diminutive “little dogs,” as though Christ desired to soften the harshness of the expression by referring, not to the prowling, unowned animals that act as scavengers in Oriental towns, but to the petted inmates of the master’s house. But Scripture gives no warrant for thinking that the Hebrews ever kept dogs as friends and companions, in our modern fashion; and our Lord adopts the language of his countrymen, to put the woman in her right position, as one with whom Jews could have no fellowship. To take the blessings from the Church of Israel in order to give them to aliens was to throw them away on unworthy recipients.

Pulpit Commentary

Nine Paragraphs On The Failure Of Natural Law

Fallen man remains God’s man and as Gods man fallen man remains the fingerprint of God. However, fallen man hates God and by extension hates himself as the fingerprint of God. Therefore fallen man both knows God and doesn’t know God. Ontologically fallen man cannot get away from the realities of who he is. However, fallen man uses his epistemological apparatus to deny what he can’t escape ontologically. In Romans this is called “suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.” This epistemological suppressing the truth in unrighteousness is applied to all of creation and nature since all creation and nature likewise are fingerprinted with the finger of their creator and as such the real meaning and truth of them must be suppressed and denied. The further fallen man becomes consistent with his suppression the more God’s creative reality must be assaulted and denied. This explains the current perplexity where a sitting Supreme Court justice and countless others like her no longer can answer the question; “What is a woman.” Fallen man cannot answer this question because even though fallen man cannot escape ontological reality, he will, by the usage of his epistemological apparatus suppress and deny what he can’t escape from knowing.

When a whole culture is given over to this consistent denial and suppressing of Natural Law givens the result eventually will be death, because all those who hate God love death.

However, cultures strewn with the unregenerate can be stabilized by the presence of believers who are not suppressing reality and who read Natural Law aright because they are reading it through the lens of Special Revelation. In such cultures and in such cases what happens is that fallen man, being inconsistent with his self avowed God denying principles, sneaks into his Christ hating worldview capital from the Christian world and life view. This stolen capital keeps the unbeliever afloat so that, as one example, in a culture leavened with Christ (a Christian culture) they can make marriages that last and are comparatively stable.

In such a culture stabilized by a Christian ethos you would then expect there to arise a philosophy that embraced Natural Law because then the stability of the culture can be ascribed to man who reads NL aright instead of being ascribed to the Biblical beliefs of the Christians in the social order. However, all along, the epoxy of the social order is special revelation.

In such a culture, Christian thinkers themselves may well begin to talk about Natural Law as being the epoxy that allows Christians and fallen man to together create a stable social order. However, if those same Christian thinkers could live long enough lives to see the deterioration of their once stable cultures because the Christ hater began to be more and more consistent with their suppressing the truth in unrighteousness they would then realize that it was not Natural Law that was the epoxy that held the culture together but rather it was the explicit special revelation that was embraced by them and their kind that created a sturdy headwind that allowed the unregenerate to sneak that earlier spoken of stolen capital into their worldviews in order to keep stability in the culture leavened with Christ.

If the above isn’t helpful try to reverse engineer all of this. Imagine growing up in a Cannibalistic adulterous ridden culture where treachery and treason were exalted as genius and so was untouched by Biblical Christianity. Could anyone imagine that such fallen people would ever come up with a Natural law that taught the precepts found in the 10 commandments?

Of course the problem here is never with God’s natural revelation of which Natural Law is a subset. The heavens do indeed declare the handiwork of God. All of creation screams the truth of God. However, fallen man is like the chap who is constantly pushing the buttons in order to find a radio station that doesn’t play “the truth of God’s revelation.” Fallen man, becoming increasingly consistent with his enmity against God (Romans 8:7) would go as far as to rip his own eyeballs out in order to not see the truth contained in Natural Law.

Because of this Natural Law is a weak reed in order to lean on to make law for a particular social order populated by a large majority of people who are being ever more increasingly consistent with their hatred of Christ. We are seeing this daily in the West.

For Christians in the West then, the appeal is not to Natural Law. The appeal is to the politicus usus of God’s perspicuous Law in order to order social order aright. This, in combination of heralding the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only way to pull back anti-Christ social orders from the edge of the abyss. Appeals to Natural Law will only hasten our nearing, ever nearing, to the final fall.

Is The Moscow vs. Ogden Kerfuffle Really Less Theological Than Political?

https://www.thedailygenevan.com/blog/2025/1/3/paleoconservatism-and-christian-nationalism?fbclid=IwY2xjawHmrLRleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHb3EWNdEhbATkejp-zW4VBqNS3fqTkiy4qJ_h24vBS-EbQUk4W_vggniWA_aem_zJNuGIgKhILwy73x6IQDRQ

I strongly recommend the above link by my friend Darrell Dow. It is an excellent and succinct explanation of why Ogden is Battling Moscow. A Battle where the Moscow position is way more liberal than we would like while the Ogden position is not nearly as conservative as we would like.

For those of us who are not completely satisfied with either Ogden or Moscow we have to take what we can and try to support Ogden as much as we can without compromising our core principles. We do this realizing, as Joe Sobran once said, “I don’t have a dog in this fight. My dog died a long time ago.” There really is very little to support in the Moscow position.

Now at points I strongly disagree with some positions of those whom Dow is providing summary. On the other hand I agree with nearly everything that Dow says in his own analysis in this piece except for one important observation;

“With exceptions, the vituperativeness and anger directed at Wolfe and adjacent allies is less theological than political, less about principle than power. The attacks aren’t primarily about doctrinal distinctives (or memes) but a result of men protecting their brands and roles as self-appointed gatekeepers. In other words, it’s all very Buckleyesque. “

I am convinced that the rhubarb in this kerfuffle is indeed not less theological than political and oddly enough, Dow even later agrees with me as he explains the reasons for the break which at their core are all theological.

When you read the article you find Darrell laying out the differences between Ogden and Moscow, (Ogden and Moscow are shorthand … I realize there are more parties involved) and those differences when traced back to their beginning point are straight on theological. Because there are these theological differences there are in turn differences in the politics of each camp.

Darrell spends time noting the differences between Ogden and Moscow by telling us that Ogden in more inclined to hold on to the particulars while Moscow desires to hold on to the Universals. Another way of saying this is that Ogden (rightly I think) is responding with an offered correction to decades and decades (maybe even centuries … stemming back to the Enlightenment) of emphasizing the cosmopolitan and the unity of mankind, which Moscow is championing. This stems from the classically liberal worldview wherein the brotherhood of all men and the fatherhood of God over all men is emphasized. Now, Moscow, is not completely in the tank for that idea but what Moscow is doing is offering up a sanctified version of that world and life view and the chaps at Ogden are protesting in favor of particularity of peoples and nations. This difference can be captured by comparing the lyrics of a couple different songs,

“I believe in the Kingdom Come
Then all the colors will bleed into one
Bleed into one
But yes, I’m still running” U2

This represents the kind of Universalism that the Ogden chaps are opposing. They would prefer to sing along with “Show of Hands;”

“And we learn to be ashamed before we walk
Of the way we look, and the way we talk
Without our stories or our songs

How will we know where we come from?
I’ve lost St. George in the Union Jack
It’s my flag too and I want it back

Seed, bark, flower, fruit
Never gonna grow without their roots
Branch, stem, shoot
We need roots”

Again Moscow is not as WOKE as John Lennon singing “Imagine” but as I said they are trying to bequeath a Christianity that is mixed with this kind of Universalism. Likewise, Ogden is not based enough on this subject but it seems they are moving in a wholesome direction.

Now, back to the theological issue that is driving all this. The theological issue that is driving all this is the Christian doctrine of the One and the Many. Because there is a one and a many in the Creator there is a one and the many in creation. The accusation against Moscow (which I believe is true) is that they are emphasizing God’s oneness over His manyness to such an unhealthy extreme that we are losing particularity in creation, as seen in Doug Wilson’s constant sniping at “racism.” When God is seen as One to the neglect of Many the result is a creeping monism in creation where the particularity that is rightly found in “the Many” is lost.

Now, speaking only for myself, I see the Ogden chaps trying to understand the beauty of this Creator One and the Many as it incarnates itself into the created one and the many. I still think they are holding on too much to the One but it is a breath of fresh air to read some of the things they are saying.

So, we see the differences between Ogden and Moscow are theological before they are political and it is only because the differences are theological that the political division subsequently arises. Because there are differences in theological principles you have this contest over political power. The difference, contra Dow, are doctrinal before they are political. There will be no solving of the political fracture apart from a conversation of the theological issue of “The One and The Many.”

In the West we have lived a very long time neglecting the import of the One and the Many. The result has been egalitarianism, WOKEism, and Cultural Marxism. The Ogden boys are trying to speak to that.

Read the whole Dow piece and bring yourself up to speed on what is disturbing the “conservative” Church in America. Darrell does a bang up job in his article. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Addendum

Elsewhere I have reduced all of this to this one paragraph;

“If Oswald Spengler was correct (and he is not) that ‘Christianity is the grandmother of Bolshevism’ then the contest going on right now between the Ogden / Wolfe chaps and Doug Wilson / James White is a contest between an older Christianity vs. a Spenglerian Christianity. Wilson/White/Boot/Sandlin and company, intentionally or not, desire a Christianity that is rootless, and cosmopolitan in its social order theory while being Capitalistic in its worse sense economically. They are practitioners of Enlightenment “Christianity” and they are doing their utmost to halt the return of a pre-Enlightenment Christianity where rootedness, family, and belonging are the signposts pointed at by the few who retain ecclesial sanity.”

Matthew 2:1-12 … Epiphany … 05 January 2025 … Wise Men, Gifts, Herod, Christ

2 Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, [a]wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2 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.”

3 When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born.

5 So they said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet:

6 ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
Are not the least among the rulers of Judah;
For out of you shall come a Ruler
Who will shepherd My people Israel.’ ”

7 Then Herod, when he had secretly called the [b]wise men, determined from them what time the star appeared. 8 And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the young Child, and when you have found Him, bring back word to me, that I may come and worship Him also.”

9 When they heard the king, they departed; and behold, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was. 10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. 11 And when they had come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshiped Him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to Him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

12 Then, being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed for their own country another way.

Intro —

Why Church Calendar

1.) Recital theology

11 I will remember the deeds of the Lord;

yes, I will remember your wonders of old.
12 I will ponder all your work,
and meditate on your mighty deeds.  (Psalm 77)

The Church calendar gives us the means to recite our theology and our History. If familiar with the Church calendar we can become a people who are anchored in our undoubted catholic Christian faith. When we are involved in this recital theology as connected to the calendar we are involved in a kind of catechism.

2.) Importance of History

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of history.

George Orwell

We want to use the Church Calendar to remind us of our History as a Christian people. And so we spend this time seeking to ground these New Testament texts in the history of God’s people. The purpose is that we will be both theologically and historically grounded.

When we celebrate Epiphany, for example, we look at the History of God’s people looking forward to the coming of Christ and then we speak of that fulfillment and then we add that we now look forward to a future coming of Christ.

3.) Muscular Christianity

As a Christian people we desire to measure time in a Christian fashion and not as a people who think the measuring of time is neutral. If we will not measure time as Christians we will measure time as non-Christians. Why should we note President’s Day or MLK Day and not mark Epiphany or Advent?

4.) Church Calendar not Absolutized

There is no intent to absolutize the Church Calendar. We ourselves do not find ourselves tied to it. We will deviate to address other issues that need to be spoken to but neither do we find ourselves required to ignore a means that can work to help us to ground us in Christian thinking habits.

There is no Romanism or mysticism in observing the movement of time in Christian terms.

 

Epiphany

Greek — epiphaneia, “manifestation, revelation, striking appearance”

In the West, Christians began celebrating the Epiphany — that is the visitation of the Wise men in the 4th century. Even up until the 19th century, January 6 was as big a celebration as Christmas Day. However, with the increasing removal of Christianity from the public square increasingly Epiphany as a day of celebration was pushed into the background.

If in Christmas we celebrate the birth of the sinless Christ child to Mary in Epiphany we celebrate the work of the Father in making His revelation known to the peoples. With the accentuation on these Gentiles from the East bearing gifts. Epiphany becomes tied up with the truth that the Gospel is God’s gift for all the Nations. In finding the Gentile Nations in worshiping the Christ child we have a prophetic word from Isaiah  49 affirmed

6He says, “It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant To raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also make You a light of the nations So that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

That Epiphany was connected to the idea of Christ for the Nations was seen in how each of the traditional three wise men became characterized as coming from different continents. Because of the three gifts mentioned it has traditionally been held that there were three Kings though the text nowhere tells us that. The three Kings (Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar) represented Europe, Arabia and Africa respectively.

There is an insight that we can gain here if we take this long held church tradition as true. The insight as to do with a proper understanding of the way particularity and universality work. The nations, in these wise men come to worship Christ and Christ receives the worship for people in every tongue, tribe, and nation. All men from all tribes, clans, races, and nations are commanded to come to Christ just as these esteemed men came. However, in coming they did not lose their national identity. They came, if Church tradition is correct, as Kings representing Europe, Arabia, and Africa. Men from every tribe, tongue, and nation as in their tribes, tongues and nations. There we find all the nations in their nations gathered around Christ to worship Him. Those who gather to worship Christ have a unity that does not sacrifice their particularity. It is the principle of the one and the many.

Anyway, it is appropriate that these Kings should come as the covenant is going to be expanded to include the nations. Israel will refuse her Messiah but the nations own Christ and the reputation of Christ is enlarged by the swarms of people groups that come to worship Christ.

Now we have these Magi and they are bearing gifts. We shall look at the gifts in turn but first let us note that there very presence was anticipated by Scripture. All of what we are seeing here is a fulfillment of OT prophecy regarding the Messiah. Remember Matthew is one of the more Hebraic of the synoptic Gospels and he returns repeatedly to the OT. Many believe that Matthew is seeking, in His Gospel, to reveal Christ as the faithful Israel as compared to faithless Israel. As such he pays close attention to the Old Testament. With the recording of the coming of the Magi Matthew may have had in mind Psalm 72,

10 [m]Let the kings of Tarshish and of the [n]islands bring presents;
The kings of Sheba and Seba offer [o]gifts.
11 [p]And let all kings bow down before him,
All nations serve him.
15 So may he live, and may the gold of Sheba be given to him;
And let [u]them pray for him continually;
Let [v]them bless him all day long.

Or alternately Matthew may be appealing to Isaiah 60,

“Nations will come to your light,
And kings to the brightness of your rising.

“A multitude of camels will cover you,
The young camels of Midian and Ephah;
All those from Sheba will come;
They will bring gold and frankincense,
And will bear good news of the praises of the Lord.

So Matthew is seeking to connect the prophecies of the OT to their fulfillment in the NT, something he does repeatedly in his Gospel. Sometimes Matthew does it explicitly. Sometimes he does it implicitly.

Whom we call “Wisemen” the text refers to as “Magi.” R. T. France in his commentary tells us that Magi was originally the name of a Persian priestly caste, but later, this title was used widely for magicians and astrologers.

These magi were high ranking statesman in the kingdom of Babylon, and then the Mede and Persian kingdoms.

Herodotus, the ancient Greek Historian, tells us that the magi were trained in the arts and sciences. They were the university professors and the political power-players all rolled up into one.

No Persian prince ever became king without having been tutored by the magi, and only when the magi determined the heir to the throne to be ready would the prince be crowned king. They were essentially Kingmakers and these Kingmakers present themselves to Herod to speak of the one who has already been born King of the Jews.

Let’s turn to the gifts for a moment;

 

The Church understood the gifts brought by the wise men as having symbolic significance.

Gold being a chief representation of value in the ancient world it was used especially in the context of royalty — men and gods. In the Old Testament, we find the Ark of the Covenant being overlaid with gold (Exodus 25:10-17).  Also in Solomon’s temple, we find it decked out with 3000 tons of gold.

Gold, therefore, represented the royal and divine standing of the Messiah. He was both very God of very God and King of Kings.

Frankincense represented his divine birth

Frankincense is an aromatic white resin or gum used in incense, oils, and perfumes. It is obtained from a particular type of tree in Arabia. The way it is harvested from these trees is by making incisions in the bark and allowing the gum to flow out. It is highly fragrant when burned and was therefore used in worship, where it was burned as a pleasant offering to God (Exodus 30:34).

4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Take for yourself spices, stacte and onycha and galbanum, spices with pure frankincense; there shall be an equal part of each.

It is interesting that this incense made with frankincense was to be used only in worship. Anybody caught wearing it would be cut off from the people.

Here we may find, at the very beginning the hint of the fact that Christ would be himself our pleasant offering to God as our burnt offering sacrifice.

Myrrh represented the humanity of Jesus by suggesting his mortality

Myrrh was also a product of Arabia, and was obtained from a tree in the same manner as frankincense. It was a spice and was used in embalming. It was also sometimes mingled with wine to form an article of drink. Such a drink was given to our Savior when He was about to be crucified, as a stupefying potion (Mark 15:23). Matthew 27:34 refers to it as “gall.” Myrrh symbolizes bitterness, suffering, and affliction. The baby Jesus would grow to suffer greatly as a man and would pay the ultimate price when He gave His life on the cross for all who would believe in Him.

Taken all together it is interesting what is going on here that whereas in the OT the examples are of Faithful Israelites being proven superior to foreign wise-men (Gen. 41, [Pharaoh’s dream] Ex. 7-10 Pharaoh’s Magicians vs. Moses] Daniel 2 [Nebuchadnezzar’s forgotten dream]) here instead it is the foreign wise men who are superior to faithless Israel thus again hinting at the eventual unfolding of the Gospel where unfaithful Israel is displaced by the Gentile Church as God’s people.

When we take the text as a whole we see that what is going on here is a contrast between the illegitimacy of Herod’s rule as well with the Jewish wise men whom Herod at appointed with the legitimacy of the Messiah and His Magi wise men. There is a fairytale quality to this, and in saying that I mean zero disrespect.

Once upon a time there was a wicked pretender King who ruled over a people to whom he was not related by blood nor by faith. A violation of this people’s law book. While he was usurping this throne the true heir to the throne was born in an obscure and impoverished village to poor peasant parents. While still a toddler the child was visited by Kings from the East in fulfillment of a long known but forgotten prophecy. These Kings from the East had been guided by a supernatural star in the sky which they had long studied in anticipation of their trip. Upon arrival to worship the true King they stop and visit the pretender King who feigns interest only with the purpose of killing the child with the purpose of keeping his own wicked throne secure.

As a brief aside it is interesting the means that God uses to make known His Son. We often speak of God making Himself known via natural revelation and special revelation. In the arrival of Christ we see both of these means being used. To the Shepherds God’s uses what we would term as Special Revelation providing an Angelic band to make the announcement to them. However, to the Wise men every indication is that their discovery was in keeping with a kind of Natural Revelation whereby they studied the matter out consistent with astronomy and on the basis of that natural revelation the Wise men came to worship the Messiah.

Purpose of the Wisemen’s visit

All they wanted to do was Worship the King.

But their were hurdles to that worship they sought to bring and the main hurdle was a chap named Herod. Let’s talk about him a wee bit.

Like many of the Jews today, Herod, though known as “the King of the Jews” was no Jew. He was an Edomite …. a descendent of Esau.

The text reveals that Herod was troubled at the news the Magi bring of the birth of the King of the Jews. And when Herod was troubled all Jerusalem was understandably trouble with him because the man was, like many politicians, a psychopath. This is proven by his murdering of his wife Mariamne I due to his great jealousy against her. In his final 2 years of life, Herod’s paranoia of being overthrown became so terrible that he murdered three of his sons. This helps us to understand this man who will soon order all the young boys to be killed in Bethlehem in order to try and kill the true King of the Jews … the Messiah.

This fake King who lived on the scale between sociopath and psychopath had been told that the King of the Jews was already born. His paranoia is driven by the fact that he knows he is a pretender King ruling over a people who the OT had clearly taught were to be the ones ruling over the Edomites. Going back some two millenium Jacob had been blessed by his Father under deceptive circumstances,

“Let peoples serve you, and nations bow down to you. Be lord over your brothers, and may your mother’s sons bow down to you.” Genesis 27:29a

But now the sons of Jacob were bowing down to Herod the Edomite whom Rome had finally granted him his life-long wish to carry the title, “King of the Jews.”

For 1900 years there had been this sibling rivalry between Esau and Jacob and their descendants and now Herod the Edomite … the usurper, in the time of his dotage and the last years of his reign … hears that the true King of the Jews has been born.

We should note here a word about God’s providence. The might and plans of the wicked find them plotting and scheming but when God moves to accomplish what He will, nothing can stop His providence. Not even a maniacal and mentally ill King Herod. This is why Scripture teaches that God sits in heaven and laughs at the plots of the wicked against him.

We should also note again how worthy of Worship Christ remains. It should be our prayer that we would realize that every week as we gather to worship Christ we are, in some sense, repeating what the Magi came to do. Are we all in to worship Christ as they were?

We should also thank God that He receives our worship for the sake of Christ who imputes His righteousness to our worship so that it is heartily received. We are not turned away from worship because Christ is our the one who makes us fit for worship and who makes our worship fit to be received.