Being Led by the Spirit

Matthew wrote in a very Jewish way about the interest Jesus had in Gentiles. He was a servant of the Gentiles when he met Jesus, working for a foreign government, collecting taxes for them from his fellow Jews.

Two times he made a point of displaying the fact that the Spirit of God was leading Gentiles to revelation are related to the sorcerers who came looking for Jesus in the beginning of his record, and in what we call chapter 8, with the centurion who caused Jesus to marvel at the level of his understanding of what the Spirit had revealed to him about the connection of faith to authority.

The magi were sorcerers (Matthew 2). At least they were if Simon in Luke’s story of Philip leading a city in Samaria to Jesus was a sorcerer (Acts 8) and Elymas, whom Paul blinded in the city of Phaphos was one (Acts 13).

The two times the word “magos” is used in the New Testament, it is in one case describing people who saw a star and came looking for a King Who was worthy to be worshiped, and in the other, Elymas in Phaphos. The work of Simon in Samaria was referred to by a form of the word that described the work he was deceiving the people with as sorcery. King James’ translators didn’t mind translating it into English as “sorcerer” when Luke was describing Elymas, but cleaned it up to “wise men” when Matthew used it to refer to the foreigners who studied astrology. “Astro” – star; “logy” – words. They were listening to the stars and heard the voice of the One Who breathed them into being.

Be encouraged by Matthew to get the fact that God wants to talk to you and make you able to understand what He is doing around you and in you and through you. If the guys who weren’t really important enough to get invited to the party by the religious leadership were important enough to God to give them valuables that the leadership didn’t even get, I interpret that to mean that you don’t have to be important in earthly business to still be very important in Kingdom business.

Listen to the Spirit. Get secrets. Get Life.