← ArchiveSunday, December 1, 2013DateDecember 1, 2013SpeakerChris BurnsTextMatthew 2Passages in this sermonMatthew 20:08Matthew 2:1–121:25TranscriptClick any line to jump there.0:00Amen. Thank you, Brother Rick. If you have your Bibles with you, I want you to turn with me to Matthew chapter 2. Matthew chapter 2. You probably realize right off the bat, Matthew chapter 2 is after the birth of Jesus. And I got to thinking so often, we leave out the magi Christmas because we know they weren't there at Christmas, which are the day of the0:24birth of Christ. But then again, when you get to thinking about it, Christmas is something that we ought to be celebrating every Sunday, every day. It is God bringing his gift to us, his son Jesus Christ. And just because they were a couple of years late, there are a lot of similarities about their introduction to the Savior as their word, the similarities that we see on the day of Jesus' birth when the shepherds out in the desert saw the great0:51light and were led by the light to the presence of where Mary and Joseph were and Jesus was born lying there in a manger. So I wanted to jump start Christmas with let's go to the two year late and let's do it early. Does that make sense? Well, whether it makes sense or not, it's a good sermon, amen? To the best of our ability, it will be. If you have your Bibles and1:18you found Matthew chapter 2, verses 1 through 12, I wanted to set the tone for what we're going to be all about at Christmas. I read my devotion today from David Jeremiah, and maybe you got yours as well, you get them. And one of the things, it was yesterday, one of the things he says, you know, it's such a hustle and bustle in the world at Christmastime, Black Friday, and you saw all that1:43was going on. It said, let the only thing that's red around you at Christmas be the gifts and the decorations and not your face. So as we think about Christmas every year, I think about how continuously commercialization and the world is stealing away the holy day of the church. And that don't happen unless we let it happen. That doesn't happen unless we get caught up in their2:12celebration of what they presume Christmas to be. And we keep Christmas as what we know it should be. And that's the celebration of Jesus Christ and the birth and his birth is coming. It's the celebration of God beginning the redemption of man by becoming a God man through the birth of a virgin or being born2:37of a virgin some 2,000 years ago. But before or after that took place, there was an interesting event that I want to bring up because of just what it says in itself to us. It's a very simple sermon and it'd be very easy to follow. If you'll look now at Matthew chapter 2 beginning at verse 1,3:03we have this wonderful event being explained to us. Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, Magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem saying, 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. We've seen his3:31star in the east and now we've come to worship him. And when Herod the king, remind you, Herod was an Edomian. He wasn't Jewish. So he didn't know a whole lot about what was happening or what they were talking about. But when he heard this, he was troubled because if there was a king being born, he would be a rival to him. And he had worked very hard through the various Caesars before him4:00to politically come to the place of leadership that he was now head of this Palestinian cooperate that included the Jews. And so he says, so it goes on, Herod heard this and he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. Well, now he's got all the other people of Jerusalem that should not be4:23troubled by this troubled. He's got the religious people troubled gathering together all the chief priests and the scribes of the people. He inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. And they said to him, in Bethlehem of Judea, for this is what has been written by the prophet. And you,4:45Bethlehem land of Judea 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. Interesting that they would even come to the conclusion after losing so much of the understanding when Jesus actually starts teaching them. Then Herod5:08secretly called the Magi and directed them from the exact time and determined from them the exact time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem and he said, go and search carefully for the child. And when you have found him, report to me so that I too may come and worship him. After hearing the king,5:33they went their way and the star which they had seen in the east went on before them until it came and stood over the place where the child was. And when they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And after coming into the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell to the ground and worshiped him. Now you can imagine he's a couple of years old and mother Mary standing6:02beside him and he's kind of latched on maybe to her leg. You know, a lot of children do that at that age. And you can picture these men in these ornate garb that they had clothing that they had come and they see him and they fall and they fell to the ground and they worshiped him. Then opening their treasures, they presented to him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned by God in a dream6:28not to return to Herod, to Herod the Magi left, excuse me, and having been warned by God in a dream not to return to Herod, the Magi left for their own country by another way. Can you imagine putting yourself in their position, why does anyone truly seek God? And that's exactly what this is about. This is6:56about men that were in the dispersion. There are a lot of speculation, a lot of commentary on who these men were. The very meaning for Magi is that they were of great prominence. Well, possibly astronomers, some of them are gazers. Some say that they could have been Jewish and that there were Jews in the7:22dispersion. Most folks don't think so. They came from the east, so they're oriental. But still yet, they could have heard the message from Jews that had been in their area about the coming of the Messiah. And you can speculate all you want, but I want to make it just really simple. There's nowhere in here that it tells us that there was one, two, three, or four of them. We assume7:47there was more than one because of the way it's spoken. We assume three because they bought three gifts. There's a lot of assumptions, but let's throw the assumptions out the window. Here are men looking for a king. How much of our life is truly spent looking for the king?8:08I mean, these guys undoubtedly were prominent people. They had enough money to travel anywhere they needed to travel. They probably traveled in a caravan. They probably all had Tahos of their day. And they all had nice campers that they pulled behind them air streams.8:39You know, if you look and you watch TV, the Bedouins and the travelers of that day, they had camels and they had, some had horses and they had donkeys and they had all kinds of means of transportation. And they carried a lot of supplies with them and they dressed very ornately and colorfully. And of course, the more money you had is no difference. For the most part, the more richer you looked. And9:06undoubtedly, they looked their part. But the most important thing for us to understand here today is, as we think about it, why in the world do men of such means and such prominence from so far off look for a king? And I want to say that we're going to see that as we progress in this.9:29But because people look for a king for a lot of reasons. People look for a king so that if he's a neighboring king and you think he's going to be a powerful king, you think that he's going to be a great king, you want to make an alliance with him. That means you want to find him out as soon as you can and become buds with him. If he's a young king, if he's a young child, then you're going to have to9:57make sure that he's told later on in his life, hey, these guys from over here came over here and they brought you some gifts and they were real good friends because you want a strong alliance with someone you believe is a strong king. And so they did that then. Do we think that's why? No, I don't. I don't think they were looking for an alliance with the king. There are a lot of other people that10:23that look at it for other reasons. They want to scope out who this new king is so they can find his weaknesses or find his strengths so that if someday they he does become their enemy, then then we'll know better how to fight against him or to protect ourselves from him. Do I think that was a reason for them coming? No, I don't. I think when we read this passage, there was one reason for them to come10:47to Jesus that day. But the most important thing that we see or one of the most important things that we see is they sought a king. Today, people are seeking all kinds of things out of life. People are seeking for fame and fortune. There's a new TV program and I enjoyed watching this when it's on reality TV. It's a rare11:14one. But how many of y'all seen The Moment? Raise your hand. All right, I'm the only godly part, two godly people here now. But it's really good show. It's got a former quarterback for the LA Rams. What was his name again? Are you sure you saw it? Oh, don't worry. It's not about them. Somebody keep her quiet over11:40there. She's messing this up. But not what The Moment really is about. Kurt Warner emcees it. And what happens is you nominate people that you know have special gifts and talents that desire something have always desired something in their life. This one person that had desired to be a football coach all12:06of his life, desired truly to find his way to be a great coach, coached over in Europe for a while, but his mother grew elderly and weak. And so he gave up his coaching, came back, took care of his mother until he passed away. Married, had a couple of daughters. And because of the responsibilities at home and things that he needed to do and his focus became on his family, came to a place, his wife12:34recommended him to this program. And somehow they brought him in and they did some interviews and literally they prepared him for an interview with Notre Dame as an assistant coach. Another one was this young man wanted to be a chef and became a chef and he wanted to be a good chef. And so he had spent all of his life studying to be a chef and had become a really good chef. But now13:03there was a job open by the catering service that caters the White House. So they brought him in and they introduced him to some elite caterers and they set a test up for him. And he had to go in and he had to prepare a meal and make sure that it was served from the beginning of it to the end of it for, I think it was the ambassador to China that was visiting the United States13:31at a royal meal and meeting. And he had to do everything just perfect. And then he interviewed with these people afterwards and they critiqued him as to whether or not he got the job. These men had no other aspiration in life at this point but to travel from a very long way13:54to find a king. And there was only one way they could have known who this king was had there not been God speaking to their hearts and lives. Now we go on to understand that there were a lot of things that played into their coming14:22to Jerusalem. And some believe because they were astronomers, whether they were astronomers or not, it's neither here nor there. Some believe because they're about every 600 years, I think it is, Saturn and Jupiter line up in a special way with Mars and it looks like a great star so they followed that. And you can say what you want. But what we see is that when these men made their way to Jerusalem and they asked Herod where the king was, listen,14:51in the days of Herod the king, Magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem saying, Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star in the east and we come to worship him. My friend, the highest applause that we have for being in church today is not to sit here and say, give it to me preacher, but here to say, I want to give it to you God.15:20Our highest means of worship is to hold our hands up and say, Lord, I surrender why I came here today that I might be for you what you want me here today for. Listen, it's not about why you're here. It's about him being here and us coming here to see him.15:36You see, they came from afar to worship him. They didn't come to hear from him. They didn't want to hear what kind of message they he was far too young for that. He hadn't started his ministry yet. Thus, the only message that they might have had would have been the message from Isaiah as Isaiah, the prophet spoke of him.15:50And Isaiah, the prophet in chapter seven and chapter nine explains a little bit about his ministry and the government being upon his shoulders. But they knew more about him than the king that was in the land where he was.16:10And can you imagine how sad it is to be around something so much that becomes so familiar with it that we forget that the king could be right under our nose. That happens in church every Sunday. I believe we get so familiar with being in church. We get so familiar with what's going on in church.16:37We get so familiar with the Sunday school class. We get so familiar with the people that we're sitting with. We get so familiar with the friends that we have there. We get so familiar with the songs that we sing. We get so familiar. Brother Rick, I think you ought to go back and listen. Let's blow these folks' mind next week. I want you to go back. You'll have to look on the internet.17:01And Spurgeon, in the 1800s, wrote his own hymn book. Let's pick up some songs out of there and see if we can find the music to it. They glorify God. Because even back in the 1850s and the 1800s, Spurgeon was so distraught over the direction music was going in that he wrote his own hymn book for his church.17:17Folks, we come for one reason today. And it's not to praise the preacher and to gauge and grade him on his sermon. I left a sermon one Sunday on the pulpit. And it was at Christmas. And I've still got the sermon.17:45And I used to, back then, I used to just use a little bitty small sheet of paper. And my memory was far better. And I jotted my outlines and all my sub points down on the page. And that was my first church out of seminary. And I left that little sermon setting up there. And we got ready for the Christmas program children were going to sing. And so they were moving the podium, you know, and everything out. And one of my buddies in that church, one of my deacons, who was also called to be a preacher,18:10and he had not gone to seminary, saw the sermon up there. And he wrote on it. And I wondered, what in the world has he written on my sermon? That's my sermon. You know, you don't throw these things away. And I looked at it, and he wrote up there, B+. And then later on, he said, did you find your sermon? I said, yeah.18:31I said, why was it just a B+. And I don't even know how the conversation went from there. But I still got that sermon. It's still got B+, still got B+, on it. And it just reminded me how many people come today to grade the preacher instead of meet God.18:56We've been so close. We said in church Sunday after Sunday, the king, Herod, an Edomian, who could give a rip about religion, who was a pagan in every way, but yet was ruling over a people in whom God had chosen and God had selected and God had blessed and God had promised he would raise up a Messiah out of the midst of them, knew so little about it that he had to bring people in that would read Scripture to him19:25and tell him that this would be where he's from. He bought into it anyway, and he did send the Magi in the right direction. But how often is it that God is in this place on any given Sunday, and we're here, and we're so used to being here that we don't even feel or know his presence. They had a purpose.19:56They'd come to worship. And they were going to worship. Think of the obstacles that they had to overcome to worship the king that day. First of all, they're ferners. Y'all know what ferners are, don't you? That's southern for foreigners. Did I say that right? Ferners. Ain't from here. Could have been from up north. Yeah, Ohio, Indiana, New Jersey.20:27They weren't. They, you know, when back then, just like nowadays, when somebody wasn't from where you're from, they didn't look like you. Can you imagine? They didn't look like everybody there. Well, if they were from the east, could they have been a little Chinese in them maybe? Or were they not that quite that far east? Maybe they were just a little darker than the regular Jewish people or the Italians.20:52But there were Romans there, too. So there was an influx of all kinds of people who looked different. But, oh, boy, did they dress strange. Yeah, they wore their hair different. They had turbans that were different. They had long, flowing robes. The camels had trinkets on them. You heard them jingling when they walked. They had groups of people with them, and they had all their tents packed on their dongle.21:21They had a whole crowd of folk that came with them. They drew attention. What's the one thing when you're in a foreign country you don't want to do? Draw attention. Listen, this wasn't a great day to live. You remember Barabbas? Yeah, this was in the day of Barabbas. They're a large enough people, but they were willing to overcome the obstacles.21:49Notice the second thing that they had to overcome, not only being from a foreign land, but going to a foreign leader. Can you imagine what it would be like if somebody comes into your house and wants to see somebody that's in charge, and it ain't you, and you have to point them to your wife? Well, it'd be far worse if somebody came to the United States, and they said,22:15Oh, I don't want to see your president. I want to see your vice president. Wow, I like your vice president more than I do your president. Or I don't want to see your president. I want to see the person that ran against him. You see, when they came, Herod was so, he was a, he would be a classic person with psychological needs22:31that he had to constantly be worshipped himself and uplifted and all good things. And now they're coming, and he's the leader. He's more or less the king, the governor, the tetrarch, the leader. And they're coming to him, and they're saying, We want to go see the king.22:59That's the second obstacle they overcame. Let me ask you something. What kind of obstacle did you overcome today to be here? I've been to church when people have to walk for miles. What time did you start? We started about 6.30 this morning, and we got here in time for Sunday school. Well, if our tires are low, we'll say, Well, I have to go get some air in the tires tomorrow.23:28We can't go to church today. It's raining. I don't know where the umbrella is. Oh, it's out in the car, and I don't want to go out in the car and get the umbrella because I'll get wet getting out there. I'm not saying. There are all kinds of obstacles. Let me tell you, there are probably a lot of folks that aren't here today because yesterday Bill won't go there. Let me just say, folks, listen to my heart. We don't overcome much to come to church,23:56and so it's real easy to overlook the king when we get here. Oh, we see the decorations, and I think they've done a wonderful job. We've got beautiful decorations. I love our banners. I have people all the time that talk about how beautiful our banners are. Man, I think y'all got a beautiful worship center, and you know, I think it is too. I think we've got beautiful everything. We've got a beautiful preacher.24:25We've got a beautiful worship leader. We've got beautiful accompanists. We've got a beautiful accompanist. We've got all kinds of things. But the reason we ought to be here is to see the king. You know, it's been said so many times that we've so programmed the church.24:51And when we say this, the only people we can program, we can't program the building, okay? When we talk about programming the church, we've programmed ourselves to follow through. And I'll remember this till the day I die. Yes, I hope I forget it one day because I even remember the person that wrote me the note. But you know, how many of y'all used to go to church when they took the offering up at the first?25:22All of us did. I mean, if you've been to church much, you took the offering up right after. And we decided we would take the offering up at the end. And you say, well, why in the world are you changing that? Well, because if guests want to write a note or fill something out, we never gave them time before we took the offering up. And besides that, if we can really stir you good preaching, you'll give an extra 20. Amen? And so we take it up at the end now.25:52And I got a note saying, ever since I've been in church, we took the offering up at the beginning of the service. And I can't believe we've moved it to the end. And I'm going, why did you come? Because you didn't come to see the king. People all the time go out of here and, you know, all I got to do is say tithe or mention money.26:17And they'll go out and they'll, that's all they preached on that Sunday. Why did you come? To see the king? People walk through the church and they'll say, you know, I visited that church down the road there. I'm so glad they're here. They didn't even speak to me back there. Why did you come? To get spoken to? Or see the king?26:48Let's go back to that programming thing. We got a program. We got a Sunday school program. We got a church program. We've got ushers and we've got order and we've got this and we've got that. You know, you keep all those things in order and you don't make people mad and they'll come back over and over and over again. You change something up. But I want to ask you something.27:17What happens when we get to heaven? And we say, God, what happened? And he said, I left in 1975 and you never knew it. Why? Why? Because we didn't come to see the king. Folks, I want to tell you something.27:49We can come because we want our children to be brought up in church. We can come because our wives have badgered us to the point that we have to. We can come because we enjoy it. It's a lot of fun. And we can come for this or we can come for that. But there's no good reason unless we've come to see the king. You see, the Bible says they said there's a king of the Jews been born and we saw a star and we've come to worship him.28:12Their hearts were moved at the presence of the king. Do you know when people come to see the king, the first thing they think about is bringing gifts. When people come to the church, let's don't talk about that.28:40I mean, you know, I got my house payment, got my car payment, but not these guys. It said they brought gold. You know what gold is? And, you know, there are a lot of speculations here as to the gifts. And those gifts are interesting. First of all, gold represented royalty. Gold represented the royal, that this king was the king of kings and he was worthy of a gift of gold.29:08And they brought that gift. The second thing it says is they brought frankincense. Frankincense was a very common spice used in worship. And so they would burn frankincense at the time of worship in the sanctuary. Now, if we started burning incense, everybody in here would flip out.29:37With all the allergies we got going on, there'd be people sneezing. Then there'd be some other folks up there going, whoa. And then some folks would go, boy, this takes me back. But there are frankincense. And they brought those frankincense to worship. They brought it to worship. Why? Because this king was different from all kings.30:07He was worthy of worship. So they came prepared. They came ready. They came with gold. They came with frankincense. And they came with myrrh. You know what myrrh was used for? It was a very potent spice. It was used for burial. It was used for burial. When they would wrap the body,30:38they would take the myrrh, and they would anoint the body so that it wouldn't smell because they had no embalming. So they not only came to seek a king, they came to seek a savior because he was going to die. And they knew it.31:09How did they know it? God sent them. God ordained and chose these men to have special knowledge, to come to a special place, to see a special king. And they came over hill, over river, through kingdoms31:39through kingdoms with the choices of gifts. And they did not mind it because what would we say today if we were going to go give gifts to a king and we went somewhere over in Avalon, knocked on somebody's door, some lady came to the door with a two-year-old child, and we left gold, we left frankincense, and we left myrrh there because we knew this was the king.32:07And we'd think to ourselves, we're at the wrong place. How many of you have ever gone somewhere only to knock on the door and go, uh-oh, I'm at the wrong place. But how did you know that? What if you were at the right place? Here's how they knew it. Because they came to seek a king who had come32:36from heaven to earth to die for them. My friend, I don't know why you came here today, but I hope before you leave you meet the king. Let's pray. Father, you came to earth that you might be glorified.33:05That's it, God. You came to earth that you might be worshipped. You say, oh! He came to save. No, God, you came to be glorified through your redemption. You came to save us that we might worship you. You came to save us that we might serve you.33:34You came to save us that we might glorify you. And oh, God, how we've missed the point for so many years that, God, you're there for us and not us here for you. You're the king and I've come to see you.34:03Come, Lord, and rest on our hearts and minds that Christmas may be about a people that are praising and worshiping a king that's come. For it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So we begin our hymn of invitation and before we do, not many kings34:34are called kings that don't have thrones on earth. But the king that you and I search for today, know today, have today living in our hearts, his throne's not here. His throne is here. And if you're truly looking for him, the Bible says seek him today while he may be found. Don't put it off.35:04Seek him today while he may be found. Let's stand for our hymn of invitation. And if you would seek the king and you would seek salvation through this king, we invite you to step out and come. Doesn't matter whether you're a guest or a church member. If God has spoken to your heart and you know that today you're here because you come here, God brought you here.35:33You thought for whatever reason, but he's here that you might find him and that he might know you. Won't you sing and won't you come? If you're looking for a church home and God's brought you here during this invitation time, we invite you to come as we sing.More sermons on Matthew →
