Matthew 2:1-12

Discussion Questions

1. What does true worship look like? When the Magi encountered Jesus, they fell to their knees in awe and adoration. When we gather, are we actively joining our hearts and engaging in worship, or are we just going through the motions? What would keep us from responding to Jesus like the Magi did?
2. What is the difference between happiness and joy? What attitudes lead toward joy?
3. As we enter the new year, how can we shrug off spiritual lethargy, and stir up spiritual curiosity? What might that look like? While resolutions can be quickly forgotten, what are some ways that we can maintain a faithful walk full of spiritual curiosity, devoted gratitude and dynamic obedience throughout the year ahead?

Transcript

We study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel. We have extra copies. If you didn’t bring one with you and you’d like one to follow along, raise your hand up real high and somebody will drop one off. The QR code is up on the screen if you would like the notes and quotes for today’s sermon. Hello and greetings to our folk online. Hey, it’s the last Sunday of the year. Could you y’all just wave at that camera right back there? We love y’all. We appreciate you dialing in from wherever you may be dialing in. It’s been amazing this year to discover folks are worshiping with us from literally around the world, and we’re so grateful that you could join us today.

This will be a familiar passage. So as is the case, whenever we get to familiar stuff, I always try to remind you, don’t allow your familiarity to breed an indifference or a tune-out thing. I find, and I’ve been studying this book we call the Bible for a long, long time, that I come to passages like this so many times, and it just feels like I missed something. I can’t believe I didn’t see that before. And it happens to me over and over again. I should expect that, shouldn’t I? After all, it’s the Word of God. It’s God’s word to us, unique in its source. It is timeless in its truth, broad in its reach and transforming in its power. And so, when we go to it, we should expect those kinds of things to happen.

Today we’ll study Matthew 2 … If you want to turn there, it’s the first book in the New Testament. And I’m going to call this “From Whatever to What If” because I’ve got a feeling some of us have a bit of “whatever” in us, probably a couple decades ago, it’d be “whatever.” Notice I said that it. It used to be a mantra: “Whatever” that sighing assessment of something that’s going on or something that someone has said, and you’re wanting to diminish it and so you said, “Whatever.” You just did that kind of thing. And I love this story because, while it compares two kings and two kingdoms, it really shows us the kingdom of “whatever” and the kingdom of “what if.” And that’s the way we’ll look at it as we go through Matthew 2.

Let’s read the text first, and then I’ll get into some of these things that I want to say. A couple of notes along the way so, if you have a pencil or a pen, you may want to take a few notes. It’s probably a year and a half, maybe two years since the end of chapter one is my guess. We’re just best guessing it. So, Jesus is a toddler. Did Jesus have a “terrible twos” stage? Some people just go, “I can’t believe he said that!” Is lightning coming through the window here? No, but Jesus was a human person, let’s not forget that: one hundred percent human, one hundred percent divine. And that’s a mystery. The incarnation is what we’ve been studying the whole time through Advent, the wonders of it.

And so now a year and a half, two years is my best guess, they are still in Bethlehem, but no longer in a stable. We will see that that’s mentioned. But as I read the text, I just wonder if there will be some things that you will find missing here, that you have thought always fit this story and were a part of this story. And then maybe also there might be a few things in here that you never noticed before and for the first time you’re hearing it, and perhaps this will be meaningful to you.

Before I read, let me pray: Lord, thank You for Your Word – that it’s living and active. As we read these dozen verses today, I pray that You would speak to us yet one more time, one final time here as a corporate entity called The Village Chapel. And Holy Spirit, give us a clearer vision of Your truth, a greater faith in Your power and a more confident assurance of Your love for us, Your intention to hold us fast. What if we believed that? What if we walked with that belief all through next year? We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen and amen.

Now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the King, this is Herod the Great, his reign was roughly 37 BC to 4 BC. You’re saying if he died in 4 BC, how is all of this going to happen? Because Herod the Great’s the one that sent the soldiers to Bethlehem to do that deed that, since we’ve got kids in the room, I’ll just bypass some of that. But how is that possible? Well, Dionysius Exiguus, who set the western calendar in the 5th and 6th century AD, knew less than we know about when Herod died. And knowing what we know now, Jesus was likely born in 5, 6 or maybe even 7 BC. I lean toward the 5 BC, but it’s not really up to me, is it? And you can believe whatever, but I’m just telling you he dies in 4 BC, and yet some of the stuff that he does goes on, and Jesus is already born.

So, Herod is the king. “And behold magi,” wise men I think is the way some of your English translations might say it, “wise men from the east arrived in Jerusalem saying, ‘Where is He who has been born king of the Jews?'” You could underline the word “born” because Herod the Great wasn’t born king of the Jews. Herod the Great was paranoid. Herod the Great had 10 wives. He killed his favorite wife because he didn’t want her coming after his kingdom. He also executed two of his own sons for the same reason. And he also decreed that on the day of his death, he got sick and knowing that he was going to die, he declared that on the day that he died, some great number of the leading men in Jerusalem were to be put to death when he died, so that there would be mourning and wailing in Jerusalem on the day that Herod the Great died.

Fortunately, evidently once he was dead, they felt like they could disregard his commands. A lot of, whew, families going like that. So, these wisemen come from Jerusalem, and they’re saying “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east…” By the way, they’re all his stars. Just in case there was any doubt or question. I was looking up on the night sky last night, and I was just going, “Wow, that’s so beautiful, man.” And I was thinking about how every single one we look up at is His. And do you have that app where you can identify the star Arcturus or the planet Venus or Jupiter, whatever it is? I love looking up there, and we’re watching one of those space travel series right now, Kim and I are, so it’s just fascinating, the world that we live in and the billions and billions of stars that make up the Milky Way galaxy, which is one of billions and billions of galaxies.

And the One who made that directed one of his tiny little flashlight bugs to do a little special number. “Where is He who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him. When Herod the King heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him.” That happens in most places where there’s an eastern despot who’s in charge. If they get troubled, so do the people that they are tyrannically ruling over top of, because you just don’t know when they’re going to go off and start lopping off heads and killing people. And he’s a crazy man. So, it’s like throwing a political grenade when these wise men from the east come in and say, “Where is He who was born King of the Jews? For we saw his star in the east and have come to worship Him.” It’s like a grenade. Herod the King heard it. He was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. So again, political grenade. Not that we know anything about political grenades going off in our own day and time.

“Gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he began to inquire of them where the Christ was to be born.” What was the prediction in the Old Testament? Herod knows just enough about Jewish history and Jewish scripture to say to these guys, “Where is it predicted that Christ will be born?” They said to him, notice how they know, “In Bethlehem of Judea.” That’s about six miles south of Jerusalem, six miles. “In Bethlehem of Judea; for this is what has been written by the prophet…” and this is Micah 5:2. “And you Bethlehem, Land of Judah…” Judah is the Hebrew way of saying Judea. Judea and Judah really referring to the same region, the southern third of Israel. “And you Bethlehem, Land of Judah, are by no means least among the leaders of Judah; for out of you shall come forth a ruler who will shepherd My people Israel.” In other words, someone who will be born King of the Jews.

“Then Herod secretly called the magi and ascertained from them the time the star appeared.” And so, when the star appears in the area that these magi are from, wherever that may have been, not identified in the passage, but it was to the east somewhere. How far to the east? 500 miles, 800 miles? Don’t know. I’ve got a guess, and I’ll tell you that in a minute, but I think they saw that star there. They followed it all the way to Jerusalem, and he wants to know when they saw it the first time. He sent them to Bethlehem and said to them, “Go and make careful search for the Child; and when you have found Him, report to me that I too may come and worship Him.”

Here’s Herod. Not only is he paranoid; he’s a boldfaced liar. Fancy that, a politician who lies. Why are you laughing? Fancy that, a politician who says one thing and pretends they want to do something, and they really don’t have that in mind at all. They don’t intend to do that at all. And that’s exactly this guy. If anybody was ever power hungry and wanting to retain power, it’s this guy. Total paranoid and to the point of being a murderer, as you see if you read on further down in this particular chapter. So he’s pretending he’ll come and worship.

Please don’t pretend you’re coming to worship. That’s one of the great things about images like this in passages that I’ve read a million times. I ask myself, “Why am I coming here to this place? Is it just because I’m doing my southern duty, my southern habit?” Or when I walked through that door this morning, did I intend to look up to Abba Father in some way and say, “Hold me fast, please. I need You to hold me fast, because I’m not good at holding on myself.”

Worship Him. He’s the only one worthy of worship. This morning I got up very early and some of you, if you follow me on Instagram, you saw the photo I took of the burst of sunlight that hit the clouds. It was amazing outside my front door, right there outside my front door. And all around the world He does that every single day. So, I just took a picture, and I said, “He does this every day, and He never grows tired of painting that picture.” And He does that for us to be able to see His glory. The heavens declare the glory of God. And not only to see it, but I got to tell you the photo that I took just doesn’t do it. You guys know this. You take a picture of a mountain, you take a picture of a sunset, you take a picture at the beach. And you look at the picture and you go, “That’s a pretty cool picture, but it’s not as cool as being there.”

And His glory is to be seen, but it’s also to be experienced. And I don’t know how to tell you that other than just like me, we’ve all got to put our devices down from time to time and not race for the post and just experience His glory. Just do that. And I’m glad I could get that shot, but man, I was much more glad to be able to be there in the moment and to see it. This is the One you want to come and worship.

“Having heard the king, they went their way,” verse 9 says, “and lo, they went their way.” So, they start traveling again. They’re in Jerusalem. Now they start moving toward Bethlehem six miles away. It takes a little time to get there. They’re not in a motor coach, they’re not in a car, they’re not on a rail train or anything like that. “And lo, the star which they had seen in the east went on before them.” In other words, it reappears somehow, “until it came and stood over where the child was.” I don’t know how that happened. I know there’s been a lot of speculation about what this star was. Some people say it was a supernova. Some people tried to figure out which comets showed, what came around again through our solar system and all that sort of thing.

And I’ve got news for them. So many times, I’ve done that. I’ve heard a lot of really interesting Christian apologists try to say what they think the star was. And at the end of the day, I think it’s my natural mind that’s inclined towards wanting to be able to know everything, and I want to be able to explain everything. So, I tell you today, I don’t know what this star was, and I’m okay with that because the One who made your eyelids and programmed them, on the average 14,000 times a day, to blink to moisturize your eyeball. And that’s just one of the myriad number of things that you yourself have right in front of you for proof of intelligent design and the fact that there’s somebody that did this. It’s not a happy accident. It’s not just some accident that happened. “Oh, look at us. We are so fortunate. We are not a cockroach. Look at us.”

No, this is amazing. And every day we should be amazed by what we see that He has done. They saw the star. Verse 10, you’ve got to look at verse 10. “And when they saw the star,” here it is, ready? “they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.” That’s not just joy, that’s rejoicing exceedingly with great joy. That’s not just joy times two. That’s not even joy times three. That is joy times four. I think it was Piper that said that, and I think it’s amazing. That’s a lot of joy in one verse. And what are they so joyful about? Why are they rejoicing exceedingly? We just read it. Why are they rejoicing exceedingly with great joy? Because the star appeared again. And what it meant was it was going to be … This meant to them it’s going to continue to lead them to the One they’re longing to meet.

So, this is brilliant. Verse 10, you’ve got to let those four words “rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.” Man, when you start to sit in that, that will pull you out of … If you’ve been in a malaise or in a boredom, some of us are just bored because we’re affluent. Some of us are sad because of stuff that’s happened or that might happen. Some of us are anxious. Some of us are angry. And the invitation of verse 10 is, “Come over here. Come over here and look at this. Look at the God who has worked so hard to show you where you can find Him and to reveal Himself to you. Now, rejoice exceedingly with great joy. Don’t use normal joy. Don’t use boring old joy. Don’t use just mere happiness that depends on happenings. Joy is on offer.”

As Lewis said, “It’s the holiday at the sea that’s being offered to you.” And some of us are just happy making mud pies in the backyard, and yet He’s bringing us this great joy. It’s in His presence. It’s all about Him. Verse 11, “They came into the house,” not the stable, “where they saw the Child with Mary, His mother.” I don’t know where Joseph was at this particular moment, but he hasn’t passed away yet. I know that because he’s in the rest of the text of this chapter. So, the child with Mary, His mother. “And they fell down and they worshiped Him.” That’s what real deep joy that’s exceeding joy expressed with great joy leads us to worship.

And I was thinking about this too. They fell down. I bet a lot of us, even the Presbyterians among us, those of us who went to Presbyterian seminary like myself, we don’t do a lot of falling down. We’re not like, “Ah, ah, ah.” We’re a little more reserved. But I bet if we were in His presence, we would soon discover the only proper response is to get on your face and to fall to your knees and to worship. And that’s what these pagans from the east, that traveled, 5, 800, 1,000, I don’t know how many miles. They traveled a long way. It wasn’t just six miles, but they traveled all that way.

And then not only did they fall down and worship, they opened treasures that they presented to Him, gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. “And having been warned by God in a dream not to return to Herod.” And by the way that’s true. The Lord will speak through dreams from time to time. But I want to warn you, bad pizza speaks through dreams too. There’s a lot of things that speak … Watching a really bad TV show speaks through dreams. You get some consequences from some other things as well. So, check your dreams. If you’re having dreams that you think are from God, here’s the book, check your dream.

This book says, Micah 5:2, “He will be born in Bethlehem.” This book says, “The king is coming and a virgin will be with child.” And the angel Gabriel spoke and said, “Call His name Jesus,” like we did in our confession here, “because He’s going to save His people from their sins.” So they were warned in a dream by God not to return to Herod. “They departed for their own country by another way…” which I love. Every single time you encounter Jesus, you will not leave the same way. Every time you get in front of Him and pray rejoicingly, thanking Him, praising Him for who He is, you’ll never leave the same way.

All right. So, what can we pull from this particular thing? Well, let me start with a quote by this great theologian who I think you’ll like. “And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without rags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. ‘What if Christmas,’ he thought, ‘doesn’t come from a store? What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?'” Could it be that we’ve become really great, maybe even expert, at building anticipation for an event, but we still aren’t very good at maintaining the enjoyment of that event?

How many people, you heard somebody else say or you thought, “Man, this year has flown by really fast?” I’m the same way. It feels like that happens, and the Christmas season is like that even though they start building anticipation for it in, what, July was it when we started seeing the stuff in Costco and whatever? Not to take it out on them. I love that place. Go there all the time. But it’s like the trees, the wreaths, all that stuff is on sale way too early. And at the same time, we want to go through Advent, which starts in the dark, and remind ourselves that Jesus came to a dark world. So whatever darkness you’re going through, whatever darkness I might be going through, please know that doesn’t keep Him out.

And whatever is going on in our world, even now or in the year to come, even in the year to come, we need to know this. We need to remind ourselves of this over and over again: What if it’s really true, and I say it is, that the King of Kings has actually come? He has inaugurated his kingdom. That is, it has begun to unfold. And though it is an already-but-not-yet-fulfilled-completely, it is indeed in motion because the King has come. What if we started to live as if that were true?

These wise men, I think they had access to the Old Testament scriptures. That’s my guess. I surmise that, like this one. And let me tell you why I think that before I read this scripture. If these guys, indeed like a lot of Bible scholars think, are from the area that would have been ancient Babylon or even Medo-Persia over that way, they likely would have had in their libraries copies of the ancient Jewish scrolls. Why? Because 500 years earlier in 586 BC, Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians came, ran over top of Judah and destroyed Jerusalem and dragged away a whole bunch of the brightest and best. And with all of their library books, let’s call it their library scrolls if you’d prefer, and dragged them away. And one of them, a guy named Daniel. And you remember Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, which happened to actually be their Babylonian names, they all became higher-ups in the government of crazy old Nebuchadnezzar, believe it or not.

Wouldn’t it be interesting, when we all get Home to sit down, have a coffee with Daniel and to find out how many of those scrolls he left? And then to maybe sit down and talk with these magi and go, “Did you guys actually get to read some of those old scrolls? You mean you read from the books of Moses? You mean you read from Isaiah? You mean you read from Micah?” And here’s what they might have read. Numbers 24:17. “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near; a star shall come out of Jacob,” another way of saying Israel, Judea, Judah, “and a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the forehead of Moab and break down all the sons of Sheth.” And so the magi, the wise men, read this, and they go, “There’s a king coming. He’s going to not just be a normal king. He’s going to be the king of Israel, but he’s also going to be a king that is more powerful than all of the kings in their surrounding countries. We have got to go and honor that king, if that king comes.”

And there’s going to be a sign. It’s going to be a star. And so, they see this astral anomaly in the sky, and they go, “Oh, look at that. That’s strange. What if it means something special?” And they read in Isaiah, “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them.” Isaiah 14, “How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low!” Even predicting there, I think, the crucifixion itself, and yet he still laid the nations low. And so, they’re wondering about this king, and they read Micah. “As for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you One will go forth for me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth or from long ago, from the days of eternity.”

And when they get to Jerusalem, having forgotten Micah 5:2, and they say, “Where is he supposed to be born?” one of the religious experts goes and finds, I know that’s in there somewhere. Unrolls the Micah scroll, says, “I think it’s Micah 5:2.” Well, they wouldn’t have used 5:2. That was 13th and 16th century numbers, chapter numbers and verse numbers. But they would have found that statement, that prediction in Micah and read it aloud. And one of the guys, we don’t know how many magi there were, by the way. I know it’s, “We three kings of orient are.” Don’t know that there was three. Don’t even know they were kings. Sorry.

So if you took them away out of your creche, out of your nativity scene, because I said something about that a couple of weeks ago, are you allowed to bring them back? Yes, you are allowed to bring them back. It’s funny how the whole thing around Christmas time, all of a sudden, the Protestants are not opposed to statues and things like that. They’re okay because it’s the holy family, and we’re okay now we can do that kind of thing, but never any other time can we have anything like that.

So anyway, I love it that when the religious leaders, the Jews say something about it being Bethlehem. And I can imagine one of the wise men going, “Oh yeah, I think I read that somewhere.” And so it’s all resonating with them, and the joy is starting to build, and they’re getting ready to go again. So excited about all of that. All right. I want to look at, is there a way to move our spiritual life from “whatever,” just sighing, “whatever”? I think I’ve asked this before, but how many of you sigh a lot? You’re a sigher.

My mom is the queen of sighing. “How you doing, mom?” “Uh. Eh.” That kind of thing. And I think it’s cathartic. It’s probably good. It’s a way of letting something out, some of the bad whatever, feeling. But sighing “whatever” to a singing “what if,” I think that’s what we want to look for. So spiritual curiosity has got to be a part of that, and I see that in these wise men. I love it. They probably had some astronomy in their educational background. I think of these guys as polymaths of their time, a little bit of astronomy, a little bit probably mixed with some astrology actually, and certainly lots of sciences, kind of Renaissance people before the Renaissance.

And so they’re polymaths like that, and they’re analyzing what they see up in the heavens. And they see this anomaly, and so they decide that it makes them curious. They begin looking in some of their libraries, and maybe a guy overhears them talking just in the library there and says, “Well, I think those Jews knew something about a star. Why don’t you check out some of their material?” And you can see how all of this could happen. But what it says to me is that they’re curious. And I wonder today, are you curious? Maybe you have a curious mind but not a curious heart, or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe you have a curious heart but not a curious mind.

I’m really glad the Lord gave us both. I tend to lean toward the mind stuff more than I do the heart stuff, but I think my heart sometimes surprises me. I think it’s there more than I probably know, and that might be true of you too. I don’t know. Maybe you think you’re 51/49 one way or the other. I don’t know. But how amazing that the same God that designed your eyelashes to do the 14,000 flaps a day also equipped you with a brain to think and a heart to intuit. It’s not just the seat of the emotions, it’s not just about a mood, it’s also about intuition and creativity and all of that. The heart, the inner part of who we are, blends together somehow or another with our minds and the outer evidence that we see.

And so these wise men had a spiritual curiosity that began with God doing something in the heavens, an anomaly of sorts, so that they went, “Wait a minute, that doesn’t fit the model in my brain from astronomy class, and now I’ve got to find out what that is.” Have you got that “I’ve got to find out some more about Jesus?” I hope you have some spiritual curiosity. It really is important. If you’ve ever wondered how far the Lord would go to make sure you were His own, look down into the manger, look up onto the cross, and there is your answer. So said Chad Bird in tweet a couple of days ago. I thought it was really brilliant. “This is how much the Lord loves you and wants to make you, not just His property, not just His possession.” Does the Lord own everything in the universe? Yes, He does. Why? By right of creation. He created it all. It all belongs to Him in a very general sense.

But the offer of the Gospel is for you and I to become more than just possessions, more than just objects He owns, but sons and daughters in His house. Come! Be that! The invitation is for you too. And the question is, are you curious about that? Look at how far He has gone. A couple thousand years ago, to add on to everything else He had done, He does this thing with one star. And then He has these guys that are pagans that aren’t even looking for God, not even interested in Yahweh, the God of Israel. All of a sudden, they see this. And so, He uses scientific natural means, natural evidence to prompt these guys to start thinking, and their curiosity is aroused. I think that’s part of how we get from “whatever” to “what if” is ask ourselves, are we curious spiritually?

How about the joyful pursuit? I really love the joyful pursuit. Verse 10 is where I draw this from. They are getting more and more excited in verse 10 because the star reappears, and one more time they think they’re going to be led to right over the house. By the way, I don’t know how a star settles right over a house. That’s another reason why I think this is just a supernatural event of some kind. But it’s so exciting to them that verse 10, those four words, they’re just overjoyed with the fact that they’re getting closer and closer. How about you? Are you overjoyed at the opportunity to become closer and closer to the Lord? And I don’t say this to shame anybody because you might be sitting here going, “He’s up there just shaming us because we don’t feel it like he does.” No, not at all. I’m seeking to stir us up. I’d like to be the church that doesn’t just feed you but makes you hungry for more.

That doesn’t just happy, slappy, gospely you, but that walks with you through whatever you’re walking through, reminding you that Jesus came into a dark world so that we would know we would never be alone no matter what we go through, no matter what we’re about to go through and don’t even see coming. But we go through it not alone, but with the One who holds us fast and with each other as well. I love this new book I’ve been reading by Justin Brierley. It’s called The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God. There was a wave of these new atheists that had come along and sold millions and millions of books and seemed to have all the arguments figured out, and then some real philosophers and some believing scientists began to pick apart their arguments. And there is a surprising rebirth of belief in God, even among some very well-known atheists. Stay on top of it. I think it’s important.

Justin is a guy who’s interviewed a bunch of them. He says, “The power of metaphor is contained in the fact that it ultimately points towards something that exists in reality. We cannot live on metaphors alone. We cannot use poetry, psychology and myth to hold God at arm’s length forever. What if the 2000-year-old story is only able to reconnect with our deepest desires for meaning, purpose and identity because it is the true story to which all other stories point?” You see what he’s saying there? He’s basically saying the kind of thing that we feel every single year, all of us, when the holiday season is done. Now, I know some of you introverts can’t wait for January 2. It’s like get it over with. I’m hiding in my cave, and now I can come back out and get back to isolationist life or whatever.

I get it. I understand some of that. But the real world in which we live, a lot of us go through these holidays, and we are good at pumping it up and getting excited. Awesome, and give me a J, all that stuff. And then right after all of this settles down, it’s back to the normal yelling and screaming and hollering at each other about stuff that probably sometimes didn’t even happen or sometimes did happen. But whatever it is, we just get back to the angst and the acrimony and the anger. It’s as if it didn’t really happen. It’s certainly as if it didn’t really matter.

And I would suggest to you that it really matters that the Son of God became one of us. And we will continue to talk about that throughout the year in an effort to say, “That’s the true story and it’s what makes sense of everything else.” Got to keep moving. Moving from “whatever” to “what if” – spiritual curiosity, joyful pursuit, also grateful devotion. Look at verse 11 one more time. “They came into the house, they saw the Child with Mary, His mother, and they fell down and worshipped Him. Opening the treasures, they presented to Him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh,” or to hear one little kid retell the story “gold and Frankenstein and Smurfs.” Just bring what you got and just lay it at the feet of Jesus, right?

You’ve read some of the commentaries, I’m sure, that suggest gold for a king, frankincense for a priest, myrrh because it was a spice used to prepare a dead body for burial. Is that what is intended here by these pagans from the east? I don’t know. Could very well be. Could be that for Matthew, he saw the cadre, the cache of gifts, or he heard about them rather. And he said, “Man, those three. That’s what that reminds me of.” Because Matthew, formerly Levi, the Jewish man, he’s connecting the dots all the time, quotes the Old Testament ninety-some times, and he’s really trying to connect the Old Testament to Jesus. And so perhaps indeed that’s what that means.

But here’s the deal. These guys are showing us that the Lord just wants you to come. And perhaps as you come, you do start to see that He is your real treasure, not gold, not frankincense, not myrrh – He is your treasure. And then all of a sudden you become not a grumpy giver, but just a giver. The Apostle Paul would talk about that. He’d say cheerful giving, and so, we need to be more and more like that. Look at what the Lord has done for us. We should respond with gratitude. And Keller said, “Gospel narratives are telling you not what you should do but what God has done. The birth of the son of God and the world is a gospel, good news, an announcement. You don’t save yourself. God has come to save you.”

What’s the proper response? Fall down and worship. Give thanks and it’s all His. That’s amazing. All of it. “How do you want some of this to be used, Lord? How do you want some of my resources? How do you want some of my time?” I was talking with a brother this morning. “How do you even want to use some of my suffering? How could that be turned into some gold, frankincense and myrrh for You?” Because see, what’s happening here is these aren’t gifts trying to bribe God for the future. These aren’t gifts trying to appease an angry pagan deity. These are gifts to honor. So, bring yourself, all of who you are, and honor Him along the way.

“It should be obvious by now that putting on the new nature is far more radical than attitude adjustments and behavior modifications. The life hidden with Christ in God is one of such growing union with God and love that God’s presence becomes the context of our daily life, God’s purposes become the matrix of our activities, and the values of God’s kingdom shape our life and relationships. God’s living presence becomes the ground of our identity, the source of our meaning, the seat of our value and the center of our purpose.” So says theologian Robert Mulholand, Jr. All these are available online and you can download them from the QR code that we showed earlier. Since they’re lengthy quotes, I thought I should at least say that.

I do need to hurry, so I’m going to jump right to my next rather quote that I would like to offer to you from J.I. Packer.

“The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets … The real difficulty, the supreme mystery with which the gospel confronts us … lies not in the Good Friday message of atonement, nor in the Easter message of resurrection, but in the Christmas message of incarnation… This is the real stumbling block of Christianity. But once the incarnation is grasped as a reality, these other difficulties dissolve.”
J.I. Packer

That is, the resurrection as a miracle goes away when you think to yourself, “Who was it that got up from the grave?” The Son of God. He became one of us. Can He rise up from the dead? Yes, He can. Can He be born of a virgin? Yes, He can. He created all of that stuff anyway. For Him to walk on water is nothing. He created gravity. He created the H2O He walks on. He created the feet that have a million little bones and muscles in them to make it so that you stand upright. And He walked on water. Nothing for Him. Why? Because He’s the Son of God who became a human person. And why did He do that? Why did He come? We’re told in the Scriptures: to save His people from their sins. He came for you. He rolled up His sleeves and came here, condescended to become a tiny little baby born to a peasant couple in a pass-through nation at an insignificant time in the history of the world where they were oppressed by the Roman government. That’s when He came.

So, all of the stuff that’s going on in our world, which is dark and may be darker than we’ve ever seen it, but our slice of history, He could come to our slice of history and change it again. And as a matter of fact, He intends to come back one day, and I’m looking forward to that. We are in the in-between, but it’s a good in-between.

So, as we go from this year ’23 into ’24, what’s a great way to think about moving into a new year? Well, don’t ever forget who came and why He came. He came for you. He came for me. And He is the God who made us, the God who laid out and designed us. And the miracle that you are and the miracle the person is that’s sitting right next to you is so beautiful. It’s so amazing. It’s so filled with wonder, each and every human person. And He loves you so much that He was willing to come for you and to allow Himself to be rejected and to allow Himself to be put on a cross and to suffer and die for you, to pay the price for your sins. Rebel though you are. Rebel though I am. He did all of that with full knowledge of what a wretch I am. And He still did it because of His great love for you. And we’ll be reminding ourselves of that all through the next year.

Here’s my one and only New Year’s resolution. Kim and I used to live in Philadelphia. I went to this guy’s church, and I loved what he said about New Year’s resolution, and I’m right with Jack Miller on this.

“The only New Year’s resolution I make every year is to collapse more fully on Christ. I trust in Jesus’ resolve, not mine.”
Jack Miller

What if He is holding you fast? What if He’s calling your name right now? And for some of you, maybe for the first time. For some of the rest of you, maybe it’s about returning to Him. What if that’s happening right now? How will you respond? Let’s pray:

Lord, thank You for this text. Help us to be wise enough to be curious, to be filled to overflowing with joy, to be so grateful we’ve got to say thank you and complete the experience of receiving from You by thanking You. And Lord, in dynamic obedience, to go back another way to actually live our lives walking with You, listening for You, watching for You to speak to us, Lord. Give us that kind of heart, that kind of mind, that kind of will, and give us that kind of courage, Lord. Not courage that is confidence in ourselves, but courage that is confidence in You and what You can and want to do through each and every one of us in the coming year, and what You can and want to do and intend to do through this church. We pray all of this in Jesus’ name, for His sake and for His glory. Amen and amen.