Gifts

I have a list of people that I shopped for this Christmas. And there’s checks next to every one of those names. Aren’t I good? How many of you are not quite there? You know, I realize that’s like a stinger question, ’cause what if the person next to you is somebody that’s hoping you have their gift already and they’re gonna ask you, right?

When church is over, “Hey, when you raise your hand, was I on that? “for me,” and I kinda think, but. So who’s on your Christmas list? You don’t even have to shout names, just relationships. Wife, mom, Jesus, okay, who?

Children? Grandkids? Great grandchildren? Can I just say something, pastors, can I say something that? That is a very good idea, okay, so let me just say that.

Let me say that woman in the fourth row, Alberta, has a bag of goodies for this pastor. And it was hard to get out here and preach, ’cause I want to get out that bag of goodies right now. But Alberta, thank you. And all the staff said, thank you, because there’s a bag for everybody, and I might pilfer their bags too, but anyway, that’s another subject, and talk about that later, but there are a lot of people on our list, right, we have wish lists. For most of us, and I heard family, and I heard friends, and that’s to be expected, some include neighbors, if you like them, but anyway, and I heard coworkers?

I didn’t hear pets, how many bought something for a pet? Presumably you’re all dog lovers, so that’s good, that’s a good thing, but I did some checking, actually, here’s the deal, and let’s have a little fun for a minute on gifts, and before we get into the word, and it does tie in very nicely, but I did some checking on gifts suggestions. I thought, you know, for people that are like me, I’m asked actually, Debbie asked me every year with sort of that suspicion that she

will get nothing in response to her question, which is what would help me with things that you dream about and would love to, and I just, I have a blank list most of the time, I mean I’ve got a fifth wheel on that, and a new truck, and oh anyway, but here’s the deal, I did some checking, found us a surprising number of gifts suggestions, are really, there’s somebody no one mentioned, but these are described as gifts suggestions for really important people, and I thought, okay,

so what does that mean, and I was surprised at how many websites define really important people as yourself, all right, now that alone didn’t quite surprise me, but so much I guess you could say for the giving spirit, it’s the getting spirit for some I guess, but so let’s assume that that really important person on your list isn’t you, then my question is who is it, and what do you get them, so you don’t have time to shout out different ideas, so I thought I’d do

some shopping for you, all right, and chances are their gift is probably for you the most creative, and I’m gonna guess, to some extent, the most costly gift, because after all, we’re describing them as that most important person, right, so you tend to, you know, get your mailman something, if that’s, you know, a plate of cookies or something would be cool, you know, but for that person that’s really special, you go all out, right, and that makes kind of sense, I’m not telling you something that

should shock you at all, but there you’re really important person, so I took my question to the internet for gift suggestions, and there’s plenty advice from Tiffany and Company, and other sites, so there was a certain famous boxer, he goes by the name Tyson, and there is this well-known Tyson Tub, I don’t know, he was successful as a boxer, so he had the money to buy a 14 karat gold bathtub, yeah, and they make them for others, if you would, if you have 2.3 million dollars

just sitting around, so that’s an idea, but let’s move on, and since we mentioned pets, there is a very special collar, and a more, which is love in, Spanish, I was thinking Spanish, but maybe, is it Spanish? It’s Greek for a more, okay, so anyway, and, but I’ll say on the front end, it’s a bit pretentious, it has, no kidding, somebody counted them, 1600 diamonds, it’s got to be a big dog, let’s just face it, that’s not for a poodle, okay, those some poodle owners would

say yes it is, but, and it includes as a centerpiece, imagine this dog being walked in your neighborhood, and it’s dragging this seven karat diamond centerpiece down the sidewalk, I don’t know about you, but I kind of wait for that thing to dangle off and go whoa, that was a win, that was a win, but anyway, don’t, don’t growl at the price tag, it is 3.2 million dollars, but can I just say, this is man’s best friend, okay, so give that some thought, let’s, let’s, okay,

those are millions, right, I thought people are not going to relate to that Lord, I got to get down to earth here, so these are in the, these are in the thousands, okay, so remember last week we talked about the Jesus star, those of you that were here, and we talked about the star and, and the wise men that are coming up again in a minute, they followed this star, and those of you that were sort of grabbed by that and thought, you know what, I

want to get a close up, place, look at star, so you found your way to, if, and there’s, there’s still time, I understand, there’s still 50 seats left in the, the Virgin Galactic Tour ship that is soon to launch, there were 500 seats, there are now 450 of them are sold, and I’m not kidding, this is good news, some of you will scrape this together, it’s only 200,000 for, for a seat on that baby, so you with me, how many are going to do that, nobody,

you wouldn’t raise your hand, right, all right, all right, on a budget, is that what I’m hearing, I’m with you, all right, so I didn’t shave to illustrate this point, more down to earth, who doesn’t want a good, clean, smooth, close shave, raise your hand if that appeals to you, I see some women raising their hand, I understand, that’s okay, it’s okay, it’s all right, it works for us, all of us, well I found a razor that’s going to work for you, and this is, I’m

telling you, this is the Zafiro razor, and I think it’ll do just fine, apparently it lasts a while, and it better, because it’s $100,000, it’s got rubies, so you won’t get bored shaving, you know, it’s got all that you need there, and I’m just going to call it since it’s small, a stocking stuffer, okay, that work for you, all right, yeah, it goes with the golden tub for sure, well, there is, I said, a really spiritual story line, to my fun with Christmas gifts, and it’s

a thought that’s been actually on my mind, this season, pretty much for the last month, I’ve had my mind sort of captivated, with the question, what am I missing, when it comes to this scene that’s so familiar, we miss stuff, at least I do, and I’ve been putting together messages for a long time about this scene in Bethlehem, and I thought, is there anything I haven’t said Lord, is there something you want me to see, and then by connection that I can share with the folks

that will fill this room today, and so I found something, caught my eye, when I went again to the story of the birth of Jesus, which is for those of you that are sort of new and finding your way around the Bible, which is our only reliable, solid, unchanging information about Jesus, only Matthew and Luke of the four gospels tell the story of his birth, and there was a scene that seemed to captivate Matthew especially, I’m gonna call it mesmerized, think he was mesmerized, both by

the wise men, and the gifts that they brought. Matthew chapter two tells their story, so as you turn to Matthew two, if you haven’t already, let me prepare you by asking this question, what gift would you give a king?

Just think about it, I don’t need your answer, I need you to think about, if you are one of the people wise men or shepherds, they were the only non-family folks at that birth, so if you were one of them, wise men or women, or shepherds, shepherdises, whatever, what would you bring, what would you buy, what would you give a king? Now, Matthew focuses our attention on the magi that we’re gonna read about right now, and they are known in some versions as the, what’s another

name, wise men, or if you follow the 19th century Christmas Carol, they are we three kings, right? So those are kind of the options, we’ll just today call ’em wise men, but they could be the kings, whatever. What we know for sure about them is captured in these 12 verses, beginning in verse one. After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, and here they show up for the first time.

Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, where’s the one who’s been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and we have come to worship him. When King Herod heard this, he was disturbed, so was Jerusalem with him. And when he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, think authorities, the ones that might know the scoop and the skinny about what just happened. He asked them where the Messiah was to be born.

In Bethlehem in Judea, they replied, for this is what the prophet Micah has written and they refer to a Old Testament prophet, but you Bethlehem in the land of Judah are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for out of you will come a ruler who will be shepherd, who will shepherd rather, my people Israel. Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time that the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report it to me so that I may come to and worship him. After they had heard the king, they went on their way and here the star shows up that we talked at length about last week.

The star, they had had seen when it rose, went ahead of them again until it stopped over the place where the child was. So I’ll move around a little bit and let you sort of fix your eyes on our rendition of that star over the birthplace. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. No arms folded here, no, wow, cool lighting. It was joy.

It was like, oh man, it’s happening right here and I’m seeing it with my own eyes. On coming to the house where they saw the child with his mother Mary, they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented them with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod in Jerusalem five miles north, they returned to their country another route, found another way home. So what do we know about the Magi?

The Magi? The wise men? The three kings as they’re known by the Carol. Well, we know that they traveled from Eastern lands. I get that right away, verse one.

They traveled all the way from the east and verse 12 tells us it’s another country. Okay, so put those two things together. I’m not making it up. That’s what we know about where the wise men came from. We don’t know how far.

We could just say it’s as many scholars are divided on, is it a few hundred miles or several thousand miles? It’s likely further than Gresham is to Portland. That is the east to the west here in Portland. It’s probably another state. We might say Idaho or something further east.

So they traveled. Different suggestions have been made but let’s just land on, we don’t know. We just simply know that they came from the east to Jerusalem as verse one tells us. And we know that they followed a certain star and it’s dubbed, it actually has a name in verse two. It’s called his star, according to Matthew’s retelling.

So it’s this definitive star, this standout star in a sky filled with stars that most people by the naked eye could see. We covered a lot of this last week. So we know that about these these wise men. They followed a certain star and they came and they were careful. And I get this from verse seven.

If you look at that again, this is the dialogue between Herod and them when he was trying to ascertain some of the details of this special star. We get this sense and I’m circling the word here exact. They found out that Herod calls the Magi secretly to find out exactly the details, the time that the star appeared were told here. So there’s not a randomness here is what I’m getting at. My Debbie, when our kids were little, we would like to go on road trips.

Our biggest road trip was a seven week 38 state, 12,000 mile road trip. How’s that for you? In a minivan. And everybody lived, right? It was amazing.

All over the country, zigging and zagging and they were six, eight and 10 or seven, nine and 11. So they’re young, right? And this was before cell phones. You could talk unlimited anytime because they could have borrowed our phone. They were too little to have their own and they could have just talked all day long.

But we didn’t want that because we wanted them to see things, right? As we’re going. And then when we would stop, we would want them to get out in cool places and check it out with their own eyes. Places grab their attention like Mount Rushmore. You just go, whoa, and you stumble over, that is impressive.

Reagan, no, he wasn’t one of them, but you get the idea. Really cool presidents and important people in our country’s history and the kids were just all into that. You didn’t have to say anything or suggest a little more pace to their gate. Equately, we would get out and I thought pretty cool places like the Liberty Bell and Philadelphia or places like that. And Debbie used this expression and we adopted it the rest of the trip, walk with a purpose.

And so it’s kind of fascinating because there’s sort of this, oh, what are we going to see? Oh, I’m tired. Can you carry me and all this stuff to, hey kids, walk with a purpose. They made their way to the bell in this case, right? Well, this is what’s going on here.

The word exact tells me these guys weren’t just going, hey, you know, got time to kill. Nothing going on in our lives. The three kings or whatever they were. No, we’re just kind of no. There’s a clarity.

There’s a careful, precise exact time. And Herod knew it and he’s asking about it. Tell me the exact details. Now let me circle back to something I’ve said several times. The assumption is that there were three wise men.

Again, that’s based on one detail in the story we just read, one detail. Did you notice it when we got to it? It’s in verse 11. It’s the one detail that suggests there were three. And it’s based on the fact that there were three gifts presented.

There’s no other supporting reason to believe that there were just three kings. Could have been more than three. We just simply, I guess if we’ll go with what the song says, they’re worth three, all right? We’ll leave it at that. But here’s what’s catching my eye next is what caught your eye, the gifts.

What did these kings give? Most of the tivity scenes ours doesn’t ’cause it would be too crowded here, but they depict how many? Three. You can notice them and they’re in various sizes and kind of decorations and regalia. They’re kind of cool people and they are depicted as presenting what the text tells us here, gold, frankincense and mer.

I’m just gonna guess, okay? That most of us are only familiar with one of those three. Fair enough? Gold. So I thought I would, just since we know that that part, I thought I’d bring a little bling.

You got me? No earrings, just a necklace. This is my gold, this is my bling and these are from a golden birthday yesterday, party that I was at. And I’ll just give you a hint, it was one of the people on the worship team. As far as I go, okay?

‘Cause Kelly may not want me to mention any more details. I don’t know, I could be, maybe not, but anyone, there it is. Okay, so gold is the one that stands out to us, but the other three are sort of, huh? I suspect, my guess is most of you don’t go, it’s rarely on your shopping list that you go and make sure and get that frankincense and mer. Fair enough?

Anybody gone shopping for frankincense? Really? You have. I’m not gonna call you by name, but that’s weird, and that is, that’s different. You did?

Okay, frankincense and mer. Well, I actually have some right here. Really true, there’s this cool box, it’s a nice, we’ll tell you about that later, but we’ve been telling you about that advent giving box, but this is a gold camel bone box, it really is, and there’s gold, gold, rimming it, I’m sorry, it’s so small. The folks actually in the next room over are getting a much better view than you in here, so. But inside, you open it up, it’s purple for royalty, right?

And then there is, it’s dried, so it’s, they’re from a tree, we’d call it sap, and it’s a resin, and it dries, and it crystallizes, so there’s actually frankincense and mer. You’re welcome to come up and look at this, but don’t take it ’cause I have no idea how I would explain that to the person that loaned it to me, all right? So I wanna take a second, let’s leave the chest open if it’ll stay like that, that’ll work. And so there’s a scholar, a biblical scholar that wrote a classic, it’s called The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. Alfred Eddershim was the one that did that, and he put in really plain speak, you don’t need help on gold, gold is, how many would agree, it’s one of the more valuable rare metals still, right?

I mean, how many have gold on today? Okay, all right, a lot of gold in here, right? ‘Cause at the end, we’re gonna take an offering, and we’re gonna ask for that, that’s kidding ya. So we get gold is what I’m saying. There’s white gold, there’s yellow gold, we understand that these others don’t, so we don’t get gold, quite as clearly, so Eddershim is gonna help us with that.

When taking as gifts for, and keep in mind, the grown men, the Magi, came to see a baby, okay? Now his words. When taking as gifts for a newborn baby, a king at that, the items that the Magi brought appear inappropriate, how many have little grandkids that you’ve been at their first birthday, or they were born like recently, and you went to the hospital, you likely did not bring them anything like this, or their mom and dad, right? That’s just not done, so he’s right, they’re kind of, they appear inappropriate, especially, he says, the frankincense and myrrh. Gold fits the idea of Kingly wealth, but perfumes would not have met the same standard.

The ancient church understood the gifts to symbolize aspects of Christ’s life and ministry, and keyword here, and the sacrifice that he would make. Still quoting, the gold suggests something that we could probably all guess, the royalty of the king. He is the king of the Jews, and he’s the king of kings and Lord of lords, amen? So gold works there, but the frankincense pointed to his divinity. Colossians 2-9 and Colossians 1-19 make an emphatic statement that Jesus was fully God.

He didn’t become a God, he wasn’t short of a God, wasn’t partially God, he was fully God, all fullness of deity, dwelleth in bodily form. So that captures the frankincense, it points to his divinity. The myrrh represents his humanity, and the kind of humanity that to the fullest extent took him to a cross, and his death and bearing burial. Thus the gifts came to show Jesus, he concludes, as king, God, and man. That’s too much to take in, in quote, let me just give you my favorite simple one sentence definition.

It’s Charles Ryrie and my favorite study Bible, the Ryrie study Bible, a scholar at Dallas Seminary, and he says, “The early church fathers understood the gold to be symbolic of Christ’s deity, the frankincense of his purity and myrrh his death.” End quote. Now I’m not going to have you close your Bibles just yet, because I’ve pretty much said what’s easily read by you, as it is by me, and it’s kind of a little bit sort of known over the years by most people that pay attention to the Christmas story and truth. We know there were kings, magi, and we know that there were gifts given. But I stayed here for a little bit, and I think this is going to happen for you right now.

You stay with the scene a moment longer, and you start to see a couple of other gifts. That making you curious? You start to notice something else, and you go, whoa, that actually comes into focus. I’ve all sort of focused on the chest here, the golden and the frankincense and the myrrh, but I guess I didn’t really stop long enough to consider the other. Those are the tangible gifts for sure, and they were valuable, but there are two other gifts that are presented that I see having, can I just say a boldly, much greater value than this stuff.

Much, and I want to show them to you now that you’re insanely curious. The first is in verse one. Would you look back at verse one? Stay with the words. Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea.

During the time of King Herod, magi during that time, magi from the east came to Jerusalem. The verse is over. You see in the gift? No word of God there yet. It’s what they did.

They gave themselves. They were just simply told in the words, magi came from the east to Jerusalem. That was a gift, because every trip was time and effort. Fair enough. We’re tempted to say that they came knowing what I just told you, they must have come from really far, because if they came from really far, like Florida to Portland, he’d go, that was a lot more time and effort than coming from Lapine to Portland or Boise or whatever eastern city you want to pick.

Again, I’ll come back to stay true to the text. We don’t know how far they came. The point is, every trip involves time and effort. And I thought, wow, that’s cool. I honestly, personally, never saw that until I just stayed with them.

I thought, what are these guys doing? That stands out as impressive. And it’s not just what they brought, and finally on that, I’ve covered all that. And effort and the time involved in them traveling to see this king. And those things matter.

In fact, there’s lots of research today that suggests that time’s more valuable to people than money. This room’s full of people that travel, right? And I got to thinking about the ways I travel. I take road trips. I like to drive and go places.

You seeing a trend here? Then I like to cycle. Get on the banks, burn on your trail and just ride it. And then I’ll jog or I’ll walk, or maybe if I go off-road, I’ll hike. Do you see the trend here?

But 100% of all those methods of getting from point A to point B are time and effort. I can go to Florida today in five hours, six hours. Five and a half you fly at Alaska Airlines. But anyway, I could go there and go to Orlando and hang out at Disney World. That would take me time and effort.

It’d be work. You had a good TSA. I don’t have to break it all day. I’m out for you, but you get the idea. So the very, the gift aside, I’m not discounting the other gifts, but the missed gift here.

It has impact for all of us. Time and effort. Here’s the second one and you see it in the very next verse. They gave their worship. Did you look at verse two again?

Where’s the one who’s been born king of the Jews? Came the question. We saw his star when it rose in the east and we’ve come to what? Worship him. We’ve come to worship him.

And then weren’t just talking yet. Would you look across the page also in the same story we read in verse 11 on coming to the house. They did exactly what they said. They came to do which is they bowed down the verse ends and they worshiped him. They gave their worship.

They bowed their knees to the baby born king of the Jews. And I’m gonna say to you, I’m speaking personally, that’s the greatest gift of all. In fact, I was thinking about these, let’s call them kings. Had enough time on that. Probably they had the bucks.

They had a fat wallet, which tells me this, they could have sent a courier with this little puppy. That would cost, it wouldn’t cost my time. Could have sent this baby to the king and somebody could have opened it and said, you know, we give this on behalf of the three kings that are, you know, long ways, they’re kind of busy. They probably could have done exactly what I’m describing. It would certainly have required less time and effort.

But instead, they chose to come. And I’m gonna say that they’re coming, grew out of something driving that bus. There was something moving them to wanna do that. And I think it’s their heart. I think it was what can only come, the legitimate form of worship only comes from the heart.

And that’s what we see. So inspired by the gifts, given to Jesus by the Magi, I have a couple of parting questions and we’re gonna wrap it up. And they’re questions for you just like they’ve been for me all week long. How might you give of yourself, which they did with time? And effort and of your worship to him.

Don asked that simple question in the worship set earlier. When we were doing the advent candle, he asked the simple question, what gift might you give? And I don’t know about you, but I tend to think money, something that wraps up. But it’s a deeper question. Let me give you two gifts or suggestions.

That I think you can do today. Here’s the grabber, you can do it after Christmas. Do it all next year, every day next year. You can do it the rest of your life. The first is this, love Jesus.

He says, if you love me, the last night he was with his disciples, you will obey me. You will follow my commandments. You could do that every day. You can do that today and then tomorrow and Christmas even. The next day and so on and so forth.

Secondly, second suggestion. So the first one is that, love Jesus, just love him. And how do I love him? You live for him, you obey him. You don’t read his word and go, yeah, that’s good.

I hope that works for some. That’s too big a stretch for me. It’s a whole ‘nother sermon, but there’s not a single word in here that doesn’t apply to you and me. And not a single command that doesn’t come with an expectation that with his help we can do. We can’t.

So love Jesus. Secondly, it’s what they did, worship Jesus. I came across these words that the Bible explains how that look. Hebrews chapter 13 verses 15 to 16. Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise.

The fruit of lips giving praise to his name. Verse 16, “And do not forget to do good and share with others, for with such sacrifices, God sees and is pleased.” Do good in Jesus’ name. And when you do, tell the people you did it for, why. Would you bow your heads with me?

And the earth does bow down, Lord. Some that we know of, not willingly. But I’m gonna assume something about people that fill this room today, God. We are among those that have, I suppose we could send somebody this. Stand in for us in a worship service.

That’d be kinda silly and weird. But it’d be sad too, because it wouldn’t be true, it wouldn’t be real. Instead, you want us through our, through our, the impact of the story of these people, we’ve never met and probably won’t meet, but you want us to be the people that say, God, I give myself. My time and my effort. And any other way that you show me is a reflection of who I am, I wanna give that to you.

And then God, the most obvious and heartfelt part of this whole thing is to worship you, to bow down. And I pray that that would be the offering that is most readily and regularly given to you. We give you our gold and we also give you our lives. As we conclude this service, Lord, cause that to be seen. We ask that you would see it, most of all.

The King of us. Let’s stand together and sing this final song. Ushers are gonna come and gather your giving of the morning, then I have a parting word to leave with you.

Transcript machine-generated from the sermon audio, so it may contain errors. 5,271 words.