O Xmas 3
Notes
Transcript
Taken for Granted
Taken for Granted
There are so many things we take for granted this time of year.
Thanksgiving, we take for granted that there will be turkeys in frozen food section of the grocery store.
Agee’s couldn’t get turkeys for months from their supplier b/c there was shortage. How dare they! We should sue somebody if we can’t get our thanksgiving turkey!
Xmas it will be hams or prime rib, we take it for granted that there will be plenty for all of us.
Presents. It’s a given. It’s not a question of if, but how many and how much!
We just sent the OCC boxes off and they will end up in the hands of kids who certainly do not expect anything.
What if you, or your kids, opened a shoebox and all it had was toothbrush and a soccer ball?
For us, it’s a given there will be wrapped packages under the tree this year, like every year.
Traveling. We take for granted we can cross state lines to visit family and friends w/out necessary papers, a passport, or visa.
You can travel from the republic of CA to the republic of TX w/out having to prove your state of origin. Or state of mind.
And, we take for granted the GPS on our phone will lead us where we’re going on the shortest and fastest possible route. It will even update in real time slow downs, accidents, and radar traps so now we have no excuses for not getting where we’re going.
I would be lost w/out my GPS.
I have argued w/ my phone app. I’ve told you about that. Why do I argue w/ it? I won’t win. There’s a commercial on TV right now where some guy supposedly knows a faster way to go than his GPS. They’ve tapped into something. B/C, we all think we’re smarter than our equipment.
Sadly, I don’t even need Artificial intelligence to tell me I lack some common sense when it comes to directions.
My GMC is a ‘15, too old to have its GPS update thru a cell service. It still doesn’t have the names of the streets that were changed here in MP. It has us living on Silver Lake. But, we live on Fishlake.
The first couple of years we lived here we had to make sure delivery ppl knew how to get to our house. They do now, b/c their GPS systems updated.
We take for granted our Xmas deliveries will arrive at our door on time.
When you start a trip, short distance or long, you need to know where you want to end up, how to get there, and why you’re going. It doesn’t matter if we are driving to AR to visit our son or Allegria to visit Allan and Linda Kitchen.
Thanksgiving and Xmas are the number one travel seasons all year.
In fact, before Thanksgiving, the industry was estimating records would be set this year for number of travelers and miles traveled.
Something else we’ve all taken for granted. How in the world did we allow our society to remove Christ from Christmas.
Maybe it all started w/ the abbreviation; Merry Xmas.
A big X. Or, chi, is an abbreviation for Christ. We took for granted all of our lives, until recently, that Christ would always be in Xmas.
Then, it was the schools. Winter break, not Xmas break.
Businesses now post “Happy Holidays” not “Merry Xmas”.
Jokes on them. You know what ‘holiday’ means? Holy Day. Our calendar was based on religious holy days.
You’re not really short-changing nor insulting God by saying happy holidays.
Xmas and Easter are the highest holy days on the calendar.
On maybe the 2nd Xmas ever, a group of Magi loaded up their camels w/ gifts, followed their heavenly GPS for a route that would lead them to their intended destination where they would worship the 1-year-old toddler who would reign over God’s kingdom, mediate between us and God, and take away our guilt from all the things we mess up.
They mapped the stars, not the roads. They could not take their route for granted, their destination for granted, nor the certainty that they’d find what they were looking for.
On faith, they set out.
This season, If we’ll do what they did, take nothing for granted, follow our own heavenly GPS that will lead us to where we can leave the gift of our life for Him and find the greatest gift of all, our Savior who gives us hope for every season we will ever go thru.
Let’s follow the Magi, who followed the star, that led them to their Savior who is our source of hope and worship him.
This morning, we are looking at the story of the Magi.
3 is a common number in the bible. The trinity. # of days Jesus was in his tomb.
We are going to look at 3 sets of 3, that can help us find our way to source of hope, so that we can relax and know everything is going to work out just fine.
We’re not going to take anything for granted. We are going to take things as they come and follow the Magi to find hope this season.
Their story comes from Matthew 2. I’m going to read the whole story, then unpack it focusing on 3 sets of 3.
The Wise Guys
The Wise Guys
After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:
“ ‘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 shepherd my people Israel.’”
Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time 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 to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”
After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
You know the story well. All your life, you’ve sung about them, sent Xmas cars w/ their likenesses on them, and maybe dreamt about your own bag of gold.
These Magi represent the hope we all have. They worshiped and celebrated in their present, but their presents that they brought to Jesus point to our future hope.
Hope is rooted in the future. No matter how dark your present situ may be, there is a light at the end of your tunnel. It is not an oncoming train. It is the Light of the World.
In this story there are 3 sets of 3.
3 types of ppl. 3 types of revelation. And, 3 types of gifts that represent the 3 offices that Jesus fills.
The first set of 3 we are studying in this story are the 3 types of ppl in it.
O Xmas 3 begins w/ the ppl.
3 Types of People
3 Types of People
There are 3 types of ppl either described or implied in this passage. And each type has its own destination in mind.
First,
People who were Hostile toward Jesus
People who were Hostile toward Jesus
This list begins w/ Herod.
Herod the Great was a brutal man. He was punitive and uncivilized in handling of opposition.
He saw Jesus as unwanted competition, a threat to his position.
Keep in mind, he executed several of his sons and wives under the suspected suspicion they were plotting to have him killed. He didn’t need proof. It was a wonder he had any sons left to take his throne.
King of the Jews? He was king of the region that included Judah and Jerusalem. What sort of competition did this baby present? He was years from any position of rule.
But, in the words of Barney Fife, he set out to “nip it in the bud.” Before Jesus could blossom into a full fledged king of some age, do away w/ him.
In time, the Jewish leadership would be hostile toward Jesus. This would lead them to play a major role in his crux.
It wasn’t a majority of ppl, but it was a majority of the powerful and influential who opposed Him. They were insecure and fearful of losing their grip on the ppl when someone who preached freedom and grace came along to challenge their rules and authority.
Their destination was the destruction of Jesus. their route led them to the cross. their goal was the elimination of any threatened competition.
Herod didn’t live long enough to see his death. His son, Heron Antipas was the Herod who oversaw Jesus’ trial where the Jewish leadership pled their case that led Him to the cross.
The second group of ppl were indifferent toward Jesus
Indifferent toward Jesus
Indifferent toward Jesus
This was a vast majority of those who were around in Israel at that time.
There is no mention of anyone beating a path to the young family’s door after the shepherds and before the Magi.
You know word spread, rumor or truth, about the angels announcement to the shepherds. But, true to the day, no one respected the word of a shepherd. They were nasty, smelly, dirty, uneducated, and unreliable.
An easy excuse to ignore them would have been they were probably drinking that night like they always did. Rough, uncivilized, and unreliable characters.
If the night sky lit up, you know others would have noticed. Did they care?
And, the star. If anyone was paying attention, they would have noticed it too. There are plenty of amateur astrologers today. There would have been then, as well. There was no light pollution to cover the light of a new star.
A star brighter than any other. In a place where there had never been a star before.
We live in a dark area. We would notice something that bright in the sky above us. The Magi saw the star from miles away.
Most just kept doing their thing.
Why didn’t anybody else come to see what the star illuminated? They were indifferent. Ya, whatever.
Until an angel spoke to Zechariah and told him he and his wife, Elizabeth were going to conceive and have a child who would be John the Baptist, it had been 400 years since God spoke to any human.
No prophets. No burning bushes. No talking donkeys. Then an angel spoke to an average, run of the mill priest, who was doing his duty in the temple in Jerusalem one day.
No one in Bethlehem would have know about this. Nor, that this priest had not uttered a word since the vision he saw that day. The angel muted him b/c he lacked the faith to bel what the angel told him.
The assumed conclusion was, God must not care about them any more. God had become indifferent to them. It seemed, He just didn’t care. Maybe he had given up on them.
They had given up on Him long before. And, no, He hadn’t given up on them. Had they realized, they might have cared to notice the celestial announcement of God coming to them.
This group’s destination was their daily routine. Nothing changed. They missed it entirely. They didn’t travel anywhere to do anything other than head to work the next day to do what they always did.
The Magi traveled much farther than any Israelite who cared would have had to.
The 3rd group, a tiny group, of non-Jewish astrologers, the Magi.
And, they came to worship Jesus.
Worshipers of Jesus
Worshipers of Jesus
The Magi.
How many were there?
We don’t know much about them. They were from the east and traveled west. The nations east of Israel were Babylon and Persia; modern day Iraq and Iran. Imagine, Iranians and Iraqis, muslims, caravanning to Israel to worship the baby king.
The Israelites were indifferent.
Worship means, to communicate that the one you are worshipping is more valuable to you than anything else. Words, deeds, and gifts. Whatever they brought, they deemed Jesus to be worth more than it cost them.
The trip itself would have been expensive, time-consuming.
Their ultimate destination was beyond Jesus. They understood that. They recognized Jesus as a means to an end. The end being Heaven.
The star led them to Jesus. And Jesus led them to Heaven. That will be an interesting convo when we get there, too.
3 groups of ppl, w/ 3 different destinations, and 3 different routes to get there.
No different today. You see all over the news those who are hostile to anything having to do w/ God. Those of us who side w/ Israel are ridiculed and set aside.
Most of our MP friends are indifferent to Jesus. They’re okay if we do what we do here. But, they’re busy doing their own things. We’ve come to worship the baby who grew up to be our King.
Maybe this year they will follow us as we follow the Magi.
The star was not the only guide that night. There are 3 types of revelation that help give us a route to get to where the Magi were headed.
3 Types of Revelation
3 Types of Revelation
The Greek word for Revelation is, “apocolypsis”. We get the word apocalypse from this.
Think Bruce Willis movie when a huge asteroid is discovered, or revealed to be on a collision course w/ earth that will mean the annihilation of all mankind and life on the planet. It’s a big deal.
It means to open a special present and reveal what’s inside the box.
Not a pair of socks for Xmas. It’s the BIG one in the corner!
Biblical revelation is God opening His box to reveal Himself to us. It’s the biggest box, the best present to be revealed, ever.
There are 3 types of revelation that help give us the route to our intended destination.
The first type is General Revelation
General Revelation
General Revelation
General revelation is all of creation. God reveals himself to us in nature.
Just look outside. Trees. Mountains. Oceans. Wildlife. And, us. How could all this be the result of a cosmic accident?!
Seasons. Spring rain. Summer heat. Fall harvest. Winter rest.
Rains bring new growth. Summer brings the growth to maturity. Fall brings the harvest. And winter kills everything so things can come back fresh in the spring.
Planets, stars that stay in their orbits. If one wobbles off course by and fraction, then we would see a cosmic pinball game at night as the heavenly bodies crashed into one another. Eventually, crashing into earth and destroying everything.
The Magi were experts in the stars. They saw evidence for God in creation, when a previously unseen, unknown body appeared that led them to Bethlehem.
Scientists a few years ago believed they discovered thru the Hubble Telescope that the universe is expanding, still growing as the galaxies, solar systems, planets and stars spread out farther as time goes by.
What they concluded was, if you could turn back time, reverse the expansion, then it would take us back to a time when there was starting point. If there was a starting point, then there must be a starter and a purpose for starting it.
That didn’t fit their spiritual and religious paradigm. So, they couldn’t change the evidence of the expansion. But the could change their interpretation of it.
Heaven forbid, creation points to a Creator who made himself know to us at Xmas, who is the only way to get to Heaven in the end.
The 2nd type of revelation is specific revelation. Specific revelation is made in the bible.
Specific Revelation
Specific Revelation
This is God’s word that reveals specifics about God to us in writing.
“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
though you are small among the clans of Judah,
out of you will come for me
one who will be ruler over Israel,
whose origins are from of old,
from ancient times.”
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.
Hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth these things were written about Him.
There are more than 300 prophecies in the OT about Jesus and He is fulfilling each and every one. He has not contradicted any. He has not fulfilled all of them, yet. But, He will.
And, of course the NT, Jesus said if a person has seen Him, then they’ve seen God. So, a study of the NT reveals even more about God and Immanuel.
The 3rd type of Revelation is Personal
Personal Revelation
Personal Revelation
Jesus is intensely personal. What is more personal, intimate, than conception and the delivery of a child to a young mom and dad?
What melts the hearts of the hardest men and women like holding and cooing a newborn?
The angels showed up and announced to the shepherds, the crustiest of the crusty, the arrival of the One who would make it possible for them to be cleaned up, inside and out. They immediately ran into town to see the baby the angels described.
They found him in a stable, among animals. I’m sure little baby Jesus contributed to the smells that were already there. But, God came into a mess to show us He will come into any mess, my mess, and personally help us clean it up.
Jesus is our personal revelation of God. He is our pathway, road, gate, and door; thru the curtain and into the very presence of God Himself.
We know Him on a first-name basis. We don’t know God, the Father that way. But, if we know Jesus that way, then we have a personal relationship w/ God.
God came to us in the form of a baby in a manger. Immanuel.
Angels came to the shepherds and announced His arrival.
When we come to Christ, it means a personal relationship with the creator of the heavens and earth, stars and planets, galaxies and solar systems, you and me.
Jesus was not too busy to come into our world at the very 1st Xmas, and he is not too busy to come into your world now.
God has revealed Himself in 3 different ways as the best present ever given at Xmas. We can study all these and get to know God better.
Among the specifics, the Magi revealed 3 truths about Jesus’ future in the gifts they brought Him that night in Bethlehem.
The significance of the the 3 gifts of the Magi
3 Gifts of the Magi
3 Gifts of the Magi
I remember when I graduated from high school, I thought the strangest, least desirable gift I received from a distant cousin was an umbrella. Are you kidding me? I was collecting money for a new stereo system for my college dorm room. And you sent me an umbrella.
Guess what? That turned out to be one of the most valuable and appreciated gifts when i had to walk across campus in the rain to get to an 8:00am class. They knew something I didn’t.
The Magi knew something about Jesus few others did. How? How did they know? Somehow, God revealed it to them. So, they brought gifts that didn’t seem to make sense, were inappropriate for a 1-year-old toddler.
First, they brought gold.
Gold for a King
Gold for a King
There was no Ft. Knox. There were no gold mines to dig or streams to pan for your own gold. Kings had storage rooms full of the precious metal. It was a sign of the importance and respect of the King.
Jesus was 1-year-old. He had no store room. Joseph was a poor carpenter.
But the Magi got the word from God that this little baby was born King. He would not be made King. He would not become a King. He already was King.
So, they brought Him a gift that represented the office King of God’s kingdom. He was already authoritative and powerful.
Currently, He has ascended into Heaven to sit on the throne over God’s kingdom. One day, He will return to earth and sit on David’s throne. Still ruling over all creation, but doing it from earth.
This little baby boy would rise to reign over all God’s creation.
2nd, they brought something that smelled good; Frankincense.
Frankincense for a Priest
Frankincense for a Priest
Sin creates a stink. So, for use in worship in the temple, once the ppl had repented of their sin, incense was burned as a pleasing aroma to God to cover up the stink of their guilt.
The priest would hear confession, sacrifice the lamb or bull on the altar, cry out to God, and light the incense.
It was the priest’s job to be the mediator between man and God. God would speak to the priest and give him a message for the ppl. The ppl would speak to the priest w/ a message for God, usually of confession, thanksgiving, praise, or a request. The priest would relay the message to God.
Jesus came to be the best Priest, the last priest we need who would always relay every message sent from one to the other.
And what better mediator than the Son?
The Magi knew this and provided Him a gift that represented the office of Priest.
And, they brought Myrrh.
Myrrh for the Messiah
Myrrh for the Messiah
Myrrh was used in preparing a dead body for burial. It was a thick, milky white liquid. They would dip cloth in it then wrap the cloth around the body. As the myrrh dried, it would harden, creating a cocoon type mummy. The body would decompose inside. The smell and biologics would be contained inside.
Who in their right mind would come to a baby shower and give a child something that represented its death?
These Magi did just that.
How could they have known, unless God Himself revealed it to them, that the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world would have to do it by dying for the ppl of the world?
Jesus was born to die. He had to die to fulfill his office of Messiah, Savior. We needed for Him to die to save us.
And that’s the Light at the end of our tunnel and what gives us all hope for our future.
What hope did this little family have? It all could have ended right then. Our hope would have ended w/ theirs.
The most powerful man on the planet sought to have them killed. Joseph was a poor carpenter. As expensive as the Magi’s journey was to Bethlehem, this family’s journey to safety would have been just as expensive.
These gifts pointed to the distant future and offices Jesus would occupy. And, the pointed to the immediate future and God’s miraculous and unexpected provision.
To escape Herod’s scheme, they relocated to Egypt. There would have been no way they could have afforded this relo w/out the gifts of the Magi.
God provides in mysterious ways.
Jesus was born King and would one day sit on the throne of God’s kingdom. He would become our last and greatest Priest, mediator between us and God. And he would become our Messiah, our Savior who died to take away the guilt of all the sins that all the ppl could and would commit so those of us who come to faith can be saved.
The only application today is to follow the Magi.
Take nothing for granted.
No more hostility toward Jesus, no more indifference, but pursue Him w/ diligence and worship Him.
Open the box God has provided to reveal Himself to us and find a personal Savior.
Give the greatest, most valuable gift you can to Jesus; your life. You give Him yours and you’ll get His.
This season, If we’ll do what they did, take nothing for granted, follow our own heavenly GPS that will lead us to where we can leave the gift of our life for Him and find the greatest gift of all, our Savior who gives us hope for every season we will ever go thru.
Let’s follow the Magi, who followed the star, that led them to their Savior who is our source of hope and worship him.