[00:00:00] Speaker A: You. Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's words you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 830 or 10:30 a.m. If you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find
[email protected] Be sure to also check out our Bible Study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: What's the worst Christmas gift that you've ever received? I would dare to say for some of you in this room, it probably was at one of those white elephant gift exchange things. Or sometimes we call it Dirty Santa. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, it oftentimes happens maybe at like a business office Christmas party or maybe a family Christmas party. And what you do is you tell every person what the money limit is, whether it's a $5, $10, or a $15 gift, and they go buy that gift. They put them in the middle all wrapped up, and you draw numbers.
If you've ever played that before, you usually end up with a gift that you really don't want. For me, it seems like you usually get at the very beginning the gift that you really do want and someone takes it and then you're left with this. But then you have to act excited because the person that's in that circle is like, you like it? You're like, yeah, it's great.
You have to act excited about a gift maybe that you don't even want. And I know for me, two of the times that I have received or seen some of the worst gifts given is at one of those gift exchanges. One of the times was very painfully awkward. And I'm one of those people I actually love and sometimes invite awkward situations and I feed off those and enjoy them. But this one was even more than I could even handle in the fact that they brought a gift for that gift exchange. And it was very obvious because I remember the gift that was given to that person last year, not from a gift exchange, but as I hear, we want you to have this for Christmas. It's like everybody in the room could feel it and we were all making eye contact. I don't know if they didn't know or maybe they just wanted them to know, this is how I feel about that present.
The other one came from when we were in Montgomery, and I was working at university and Faulkner as the campus minister. So every year for tradition, for our college students and our campus ministry, we had something called a white chicken chili Christmas. And basically what that was, our college students, they loved white chicken chili. And so we had crock pots all over the house of that, and then we had them in our home. And what we told them to do was to either get something from the dollar tree or from their dorm and wrap it. Now, that can be dangerous. But we also knew they didn't have a lot of money, so we were trying to think reasonably for them. And so they all wrapped their gifts, brought them to our house, and put them under the tree.
We draw numbers and draw names, and the time comes for Lorianne to pick a present, and she picks this one. That was no doubt, I'm serious. The prettiest wrapped gift that was there was in this little bitty box.
And she picks it up, and the moment she picks it up, I make eye contact with the group of guys that are in our campus ministry that were always great guys just making trouble, okay? They were the ones pulling pranks. They were the ones that I always had to keep an eye on, on trips. The moment she picked up that box, they did this number to each other.
And I was like, oh, no, this is not good.
And I'm thinking, I almost want to warn her. But then they're doing the.
And so I didn't say anything to her.
She picks up this box and opens it. And I want to just go and tell you, to give you a little bit of context. At the very top of the list of things that Lori Ann hates, that's mice or rats, she opens this box, not one, but two mice. She drops it, they go loose.
And I know Lorianne comes off as sweet and she is, but let me tell you, in that moment, you could have heard a pin drop as she, with fury, lets them know, this party will not move on till those mice are found. And by the way, they did find the mice and put them in our. Anyway, you know, we've all received probably sometimes a bad gift. And I was having fun with this this past week. I got online and just looked up, worst Christmas gifts ever. And one of the things you'll notice at the top of the search was an article that was done by Time magazine, where they asked people, hey, what were some of the worst Christmas gifts you've ever received or seen other people get. And of course, as you can imagine, at the very top of that list was a lot of things that husbands had given their wives for Christmas, like pots and pans, vacuum cleaners, or one of my favorite ones that was on that list was a waffle iron. And when she opened it, there was a note on the top that said, I can't wait for you to use this. And if you're a newlywed and you're like, what's the problem? If you're saying that you're not going to have a Merry Christmas, I'm just letting you know.
But the funniest one that was on that list came from two daughter in laws. So the two daughter in laws, they wrote time and said, one of the things that we know that our mother in law has made it very obvious that she likes one daughter in law way better than the other daughter in law. And we see this every year at Christmas. And so a lot of you, if you've been to a department store before and bought a gift, sometimes you'll probably notice as you walk through that department stores, they have these boxes of, like, if you buy, like, a cologne set or a perfume set, it comes with, like, five or six different things. And then it also comes with a free gift in a separate little box. Well, the daughter in law said that the daughter in law that she really liked always got the big box with all the stuff in it. And every single year, the daughter in law she didn't, like got the free gift box. And she said it was so bad that one year the daughter in law opened up the free gift box that she got, and it still had the sticker on it that said free gift. So that's a pretty bad gift. But at the end of the day, whether it's a birthday present or whether it's a Christmas present, what is it that determines the value of a gift?
Well, what I want to encourage us to see this morning as we dig into this narrative in Matthew, chapter two, that what makes a good gift or a good or a bad gift bad ultimately is connected to the attitude and the demeanor of the person that's giving that gift.
And some of you that are parents, you know what I'm talking about, because there's been times where maybe it was your birthday, you get a card on construction paper from one of your kids. It's got popsicle sticks on it, it's got pieces of paper all over it, colors everywhere, and so much glue that it's sticking to your hands, but you put it on your refrigerator. Why? Because there's something about the person behind the giving of the gift. But then, on the same token, you've probably received a gift from somebody that you could tell there was like an ill will behind it. They didn't really want to do it, but they did it maybe with a hateful spirit or a vengeful spirit. You're like, I don't want that.
And while it's interesting, that card, you would put it on eBay and it wouldn't sell for ten cent, but this other gift could sell for thousands of dollars. What means more, the one that had a certain heart and an attitude behind it.
When we look at the Magi in Matthew, chapter two, these wise men that bring these gifts, the more we start to understand about the journey they took and who they are. It helps us to understand the true value of the gift that they understood, which was King Jesus. Brandon did an awesome job last week of giving us a little bit of the context of the gift that we're going to talk about today, which is gold. If you look at the Magi, it really is amazing if we start to understand who these guys were. One of the things that I read this past week said that the Magi were not just some, but they were the most highly educated people of their day. But one guy made a point to say, it's important to note that their education was actually heavily secular. And the reason why that matters is that these were guys that studied astronomy, they studied astrology, they studied philosophy, but they also studied prophecies. And one of the ones that they would have come across is the fact that one day a star, as numbers 20 415 talks about, is going to show up in the sky and introduce a new king. Well, it turns out there's a king we're going to talk about today, excuse me, a historian, Tacitus, that also believed and said the same thing. They understood the prophecies. So these men were incredibly secular in their studies.
The reason I want to point that out is it can be easy at times to think, well, where were they from? And that's important to know.
But it doesn't matter whether they were know, Turkey or Timbuktu. At the end of the day, the most important thing to know about these wise men and Magi, they were not Hebrews, but yet they still understood that he is a king, y'all. They traveled somewhere, most people believe, around 900 miles to fall down before KING Jesus.
And the reason why that should mean something to every single one of us is one of the things I hear, probably like our young people hear, and we all hear. The more you study, the more educated you become, the more you start to realize that there could not be a God, there couldn't be a Jesus that the Bible talks about. But yet these guys that studied so much, they came to that conclusion and realized, no, the more we study, the more we look, we begin to see, no, the evidence is there. Like, these were the guys that would have been like your Yale, your Harvard folks, your MIT folks. They were the ones that said, no, he is a king. When we begin to understand their journey, we begin to understand a little bit more about their gifts. So I want to give you a little bit of context of Matthew two at this time. Herod, he is king. And one of the neat connections that Brandon talked about last week, that as we try to figure out who these Magi were, there was a Nabateean region in that area, especially Perda, where frankincense, gold and myrrh was grown as resins, or it was grown as what they call, like a noble jewel. And one of the neat connections was king. Herod's child was also married to the Nabateean king's child. And so that could have been the connection as to how he found out about the fact that there was this king that they were pursuing. Now, we don't fully know, but here's what is interesting. If you think about it, if it's a 900 miles trip, a lot of the pictures that we have of maybe different nativity scenes and things like that, they don't actually fit necessarily the context and the age of who Jesus was. In fact, most people believe that when the wise men, not the shepherds, the wise men showed up, at minimum, Jesus was about two years old. Now, the reason why that matters is if you read this text, it says this, that when they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw a child with Mary, his mother. It says, these wise men, they fell down and they worshipped. Then, opening their treasure, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Even if you've never had a two year old, let's just say he was that you've heard a two year old, you've seen a two year old. Maybe you heard them at Walmart, maybe you've heard mine in like you hear two year olds. And what's interesting about that, it kind of changes my mental image as they're bringing these gifts, because if he is older, he gets this gift, and you have to wonder if he's looking at know, what am I going to do with that?
But what I want you to think and understand about these gifts is these gifts were incredibly practical gifts.
If you've ever gone through the time where you go through the Walmart or target or somewhere like that, and you register for baby gifts, what are you usually looking for?
You're looking for something practical, like something that you can use. And I know for us, there were several things that we got from our baby showers. I don't know if anybody. Does anybody know what this is?
It's a wipe warmer. I'll basically tell you what this is. This is something you use on the first child, but not the second or the third child. That's the best way I know how to explain it. Crews had the warm wipes to start in the morning. The other two, their coffee was a cold wipe to start the day. Right. And so this, to us, was something we thought we needed. This one is something a lot of people thought we needed. I'm still not sure really if it works or if it's worth it. This is a nose, Frida, and I was trying to think of a polite way to describe this.
This is a mucus sucker. It attaches a tube into your child's nose and you breathe in to pull the mucus out of their nose. You're like, don't you get sick with that? And the answer is, yes, you do.
But why not get one person sick? Get two for Christmas for us today, these are those kinds of practical gifts. But what I want us to see about the gold, the frankincense and the myrrh, as you begin to dig into, and as Brandon and I dig into each and every one of these elements of the next few weeks, that every single one of them. Yes, they were incredibly practical, but what I also want us to see, they were so much more than that.
Yes, they were practical, but what you're going to see is, from an apologetic standpoint, they were also incredibly historical. But the most important thing for us today is this. They were also incredibly deeply spiritual.
So let's talk about the spiritual nature of gold.
Josephus was a historian around the time of Jesus, as well as Tacitus. He was a historian during the time of Nero, who was a Roman emperor. And one of the things that they write about that was very common is during this day, whenever a new king came about, people would come and bring that King gold. And part of the reason why they would bring that King Gold is kings receiving gold meant two things. Number one, it meant that you said, hey, I see you as a king. But number two, I see you as somebody where I will have peace. In one of the examples that was given from Josephus, he said that usually whenever a country would be overtaken by some bully or even some nation that was out for vengeance or blood, that the neighboring countries that thought, oh, no, we are probably next, they would found some gold. They would bring it to them and say, hey, here's some gold. Like, we want to be in your kingdom. We're cool, we're great, and we want peace. It was a symbol of you saying, hey, listen, we see you as king and we want peace.
But you and I know it's not just enough to call somebody a king.
There's a big difference in calling somebody a king and claiming somebody as a king. There's a big difference in saying, hey, you're a king, and letting somebody in your life or in your heart actually set up and establish a kingdom. What it really looks like to say that somebody is a king for you is when you let them establish a kingdom in your heart, in your life, in your business, wherever it is.
And what's interesting, when you look at the different responses to Jesus as king, yes, we have the wise know, the wise men understood him to be a king, but not everybody did. See, the more you dig into Matthew's Gospel account, one of the things that you're going to start to see is that there's three different distinct responses to Jesus'kingship. You've got the guys like the wise men, they made this incredibly long journey and they bowed down at Jesus'feet. But not everybody had that mindset. For example, a guy named Herod.
What's interesting about Herod is that Herod's first response to Jesus'kingship was fear. In fact, this is what the text says.
Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise man, it says he became furious. One of the Greek translations actually mentioned that a better word for furious was actually troubled or fearful. He was scared of his kingship, it says, and he sent, he killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all of that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. Why in the world was he fearful of Jesus being king? Well, I want to think about this for just a second. Here we are 2000 years later, and I would suggest that that's the response from a lot of us today.
Because again, if we truly make someone king, that means they're going to establish a kingdom.
And if we're not careful, we can make our own kingdoms prevalent more than his. We can pursue our own desires, our own wants, and try to fit in his kingdom, wherever. That's not how it works. When it comes to kingship in Christ, it's all or nothing. It's not a little bit inside. It's an all or nothing kind of thing. Why was he fearful?
Well, you look into the background of Herod, and some of you, if you're history buffs, you'll probably already know this. Herod had two sons, had several kids, but two of his sons had verbalized to people in the courts that one day they would like to take their dad's spot when he passes and become king.
When he heard that, you know what he did?
He killed his kid.
He killed both of his boys because he saw them as a threat to his kingdom. Well, now here's Jesus coming into this world and he sees what Jesus as a threat to his own kingdom.
The reason why I want to highlight this is I don't care if you're five years old in this audience or 95 years old in this audience. There is always a repercussion for selfishness. That whenever we are self serving and we are selfish, it always hurts other people and it also injures other people. You know this in business, you know this in work. You know it in every single area of life. If we're seeking to only serve ourselves, it will always bring injury or hurt to other people. I'll give you an example. Galatians, chapter five. Paul's writing to the church in Galatia. And if you look at your heading on Most Bibles, it says freedom in Christ. And so the dilemma is this. In the Church, he's saying, a lot of you are talking about this freedom you have in Christ, which you do. But what you're saying is, now that I'm free in Christ, I can do whatever want.
He's like, no, then you've misunderstood freedom. Freedom in Christ is not giving you a means and a reason to do whatever you want. It's giving you the opportunity and the means and the reason to do what you should. That because you have freedom, you should leverage your freedom not to serve yourself, but to serve other people. And if you notice in verse 15, this is what he says happens when you serve yourself. When you serve yourself, all you end up doing is biting and devouring one another. Do you see what he's saying? If you serve yourself, you're going to be by yourself. There's a direct connection between self service. And injuring and hurting other people, but also hurting ourselves. Herod was fearful of what he would have to give up. And because of that, it actually hurt the people he loved the most.
Here's the next one.
It was the Jewish priest. And to me, if there was any group of people that should have made the trip to fall down at Jesus'Feet should have been these guys.
And if you actually look at the geography of it, they were the closest, but yet they didn't make the trip.
What's so amazing about that is if you look in your understanding of who the Jewish priests were. There was no group of people that knew the prophecies of Jesus's birth more than these guys.
There was no people that knew numbers 20, 415 more than these guys.
But yet they didn't make the trip. Why wouldn't that kind of show you about the responsibility of truth.
And the responsibility of holding the word of God?
That truth is not so much a matter of the Head as it is the Heart. Like you can know all the right things but still do the wrong things.
Or the right things with the wrong Motive, if that makes sense, you can do it from a heart of selfishness or a heart of vengeance.
That for the chief priest and the Jewish priest, they knew all the things, but yet they chose a different way.
One of the texts we talk about a lot as an example of how to handle truth or the importance of truth. Is John 14 six, which we should. It's a great one. It says, I am the way. I'm the what? The truth. And I'm the life. We say, see, he's the truth.
But do you notice something in that list that comes before truth?
It's the word way.
And the reason why that's important is in a Greek list, whatever is listed first is not necessarily the most important. But what it's saying is, if you understand this, then the rest is going to take care of itself. It's kind of like the list of fruits of the spirit. What's listed first?
Love. So if we understand what love is, we're going to be more patient people. We're going to be more self controlled people. Notice what he lists first. I am the what, the way.
And I'm the truth.
And I'm the life.
Truth has a way.
It's not about the intelligence that is in your head. But about the direction in which your feet go. You might say, well, I know truth, and I believe in truth. Well, how you and I know whether or not we know, truth will directly be seen by the direction our toes are headed in.
Truth has a way. We say, well, we have truth. All right, well, what direction are your toes going?
You know, when Jesus called his disciples, he didn't say, hey, guys, come figure me out. He said, hey, come follow me. It's on the way. You begin to understand truth. See, what happened for the chief priest is their way got in the way of the truth.
And so because of that, when Jesus actually did show up, they missed him. And I think part of the reason why they also missed him, he wasn't the king that they thought he would be.
I love what Ronnie mentioned this morning. They had a picture not of him riding on a donkey, which was a symbol of humility. They had a picture of him riding on a horse to make a physical war. Don't get me wrong, he made war, but war against sin.
And they had a picture that when he would come into this world, he was going to sit with the elite. But yet who did he sit with? The sinners, the tax collectors, the people that were sitting on the edge of society that no one would be with.
That's the way. That's why Jesus says, listen, come on this way. Because before you say, I want to follow you, you got to understand what the way looks like. It's not enough to know the truth. We're supposed to walk in its way.
And so when you think about the kingship of Christ, isn't it kind of amazing when you start to understand he's that kind of king, that he would want a relationship with us, that the Creator and the sustainer of the universe would want a relationship with you and me, it's amazing. He's a king like no one else. If you were with us in our prayer and fasting class that we did downstairs a few months ago, I share with you how one of my favorite texts on prayer comes from Psalm Five. And in Psalm five, David is going through a very difficult time. And in his agony and in his sorrow, this is what he writes.
Give ear to my words, O Lord.
Consider my groaning. Give attention to the sound of my cry. You're my king and you're my God. And if you continue to read the text, by the way, one of the things that a Hebrew guy wrote, he said that there are more personal pronouns in that part of Psalm than any other part of Psalms.
What he's trying to illustrate is that, yes, while God is big enough to deal with the big stuff in this world, he's not too big to see you.
That he sees all the things, and he can do all the things, but he still sees you.
He's a king like no other. The example I gave in that class was how one of our first ladies was like me and my family. She was a hugger, and she saw the queen. She went in for the hug, and the moment she did, as everyone gasped, she realized, you don't hug the queen, but you definitely don't touch the queen. Okay, that's off limits. But yet you go online and you look up pictures of where the grandchildren of the Queen are sitting on the throne, sitting on her lap or climbing up her back, all on that throne. Why? Because children have access to that throne that no other people do.
That's the kind of king we serve. We have, as Hebrews talks about it, the opportunity, because of Jesus Christ, as king, to approach his throne. We have a picture of royalty, but this is a picture of a true king that you would want to give your life to. So what's your response? Again, some oppose him because of fear. Some won't pursue him because maybe we're comfortable. Our way gets in the way of the way, so we don't receive the truth, or maybe it's the choice to crown him.
We won't spend much time on these next two. But gold was also historical. I mentioned Tacitus to you earlier. One of the things that he wrote about during the time of Nero was that there would be a star, or as one version of history says, a comet in the sky that would introduce the reality that a new kingdom was being established. That was secular history. They understood that the moment that star appeared, that something new was ushering in.
But the other neat thing about this, you go back to the pictures that you remember, probably from elementary school and Sunday school, of the Tabernacle. And as it moved around that in the middle of it, of course, was the presence, the holy of Holies. And that was completely coated with gold. And that gold that was coated was to show the nature of the kingship of God, but also the fact you could go to see the very presence or be near the presence of God. We fast forward. Jesus is that gold. He is that presence.
But the final thing is this. That gold was also incredibly practical. One of the common hell beliefs is that the reason why Jesus was in their family, given gold was possibly because they didn't have a lot of money and making this trip, trying to avoid Herod and death, they needed a lot of money to make those trips. And so maybe gold was something that would have blessed them for a very long time, especially knowing what the Nabateeans usually give would have given them the opportunity to provide a living for a long time in their life. We don't know. But what we do know about gold is a few things. Number one, gold is something that is incredibly rare. But don't miss the fact that just because something's rare like gold doesn't mean it's not available.
You can't just go outside in a parking lot and find, usually gold on the ground unless someone drops an earring. But gold is something that is findable.
Like, if you just go look for it, go on a journey for it. While it's rare and it's valuable, it's still available.
There is nobody like our God. But while he is rare, I want you to understand he's also available, and he's approachable. One of my favorite examples of this is in Jeremiah 2019. The context is God's people had been in exile. And in exile, they're discouraged. They're in a place of darkness, and they're in a place of despair. And listen to these encouraging words that he gives them. Also, using, again, personal pronouns, he says, then you will call upon me and pray to me.
I will hear you.
He says this, you will seek me, and you will find me. When you seek me with your whole heart. Do you see what he's saying? He's saying, I'm the easiest person in the world to play hide and seek with.
Have you ever played hide and seek with little ones? If they're really little like you, don't go and hide in the attic.
You hide in a place where, yes, there's a search involved, but at the end of the day, what are they going to do?
They're going to find you. He's like, that's me.
If you look for me, if you go on a search for me, you will, in fact, find me. Yes, I'm rare, but I'm also available. The other neat thing about gold is how malleable it is. I could not believe this when I read it, and I wanted to confirm my Google search, and I found it in another place that you can take 1oz of gold and melt it, and it can turn into a wire that is 50 miles long.
That blew my mind how malleable gold is. You know when the Bible calls Jesus the bread of life?
For them in that day, bread was understood to be something you would put in your pack when you went on a long trip.
When Jesus says, I am the bread of life, he's saying, I'm food for that journey. That when you're going through this, when you're going through that, I'm malleable. I can handle this. I can handle. There's nothing I can't not handle. But the other thing about gold is how incredibly durable it is. And what's neat about gold is unlike any other thing. If fire hits a lot of stuff, it dies. It breaks up. But when fire hits gold, you know what happens? It only becomes more pure that every single test, every single challenge that Jesus went through, part of the reason why there's people that at first did not believe in the deity of Christ, but then began to write and say he must have been a king, is because there was nobody else that could go through what he also went through and come out on the other side of it even more pure. What's your response to Jesus's king? I hope for every single one of us, we will make that choice to bring our gifts. Speaking of, when you begin to understand the gift giver, you better give the right gifts. The more we begin to learn about our king, it will help us and encourage us to bring our absolute best gifts. Number two, I hope it motivates us to worship him. We've talked about this a lot, but that you might have come into these doors carrying a lot of different things, and you worship. And worship didn't take away the problem, but worship has the ability to shift your focus, to shift a focus from the problem itself to the one that can solve it. But the other thing is this. To maybe be like the wise men and to pursue him.
Maybe you're here this morning, and you're like, well, I don't think God would want to hear from somebody like me. I hope this morning that this, in this text, put that thought to rest.
He is a king. That is so rare, but yet he is so approachable, and he's so available. Maybe you're here today and you want to make the most important decision you will ever make in your life, and that's to put on Christ in baptism and to say, he's my king.
Maybe you're here today and you just want the prayers of our shepherds, that each and every one of these exits, there's that opportunity.
As you think about that, one of the neat things that I read this past week said that, you know, what Bethlehem was known to do.
Bethlehem had the reputation in that region for raising lambs that would be made to go to sacrifice.
Isn't that amazing? To think of every single little detail that our good God covered to set up our sanctification and our justification through Jesus Christ. Maybe you need to make that decision today. To put him on or to confess some type of sin. Whatever it is, please come forward while we stand and sing this song.
