Transcript

Good morning church. Don't you just love all the Christmas music in this Christmas season? It's wonderful, it's wonderful. And we are kicking off a new series this morning entitled the Three Gifts. And I'm wondering this morning, how are you doing on the Christmas season?

Have you got all your shopping finished, everybody? Got it all finished, everybody? Good. I see a lot of no's and a few yeses. Okay.

Have you got anybody that is really hard to buy for? Got anybody in your family like that or somebody like is it, is it your, is it your wife? Is it your husband? Maybe it's your mother or your mother in law, Is it somebody like that? There's always at least somebody in your family.

Like I just don't know what to get them. They have everything maybe, you know. And I wonder what the magi, the wise men were thinking when they brought those three gifts to the one born king of the Jews. That's the theme verse for our series. Over the next three weeks we're going to unpack the meaning of those three gifts.

It says in Matthew chapter 2, verse 11 and going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts. Gold, frankincense and myrrh. They brought three gifts and they're not ordinary gifts, are they? They are unusual gifts that they brought.

They're not the kind of gifts you normally see presented at a baby shower. Right, but these are the three gifts that they brought. And prominent among those is that first gift, the gift of gold. Gold. And what does that mean that they brought the gift of gold?

Well, I would remind you, they came to worship the one born king. And that's what gold is. Gold is a gift fit for a king. And they came to worship. And I wonder how can we worship the one born king, the one that we celebrate at Christmas?

I guess the first question we must ask is what is worship? What is worship? And worship is whatever you set your focus on as being as it's of highest value to you, highest worth. And so you recognize it's worth and you see that it's worth something. And then there's a follow up step to that in worship.

Then you give what it's worth, you begin to, to serve or to pay or to bring offerings to that. And so that's what worship is. And we're all built for it. Everyone worships, but we don't all worship the true king, King Jesus. We all have something or someone we worship.

Ironically, Christmas might be one of the most difficult times to worship King Jesus because we have so many temptations, so many material distractions at this season. You know, Christmas is one of the most significant dates on the Christian calendar, but even surprisingly, it is probably the most significant date on the business calendar, on the retail calendar. According to Forbes magazine, retailers in America can expect to make $989 billion this Christmas. That accounts for one quarter of their annual profits. And so Christmas is big business, and so we're often distracted.

And I asked you a minute ago, have you finished your Christmas shopping? And just bringing that up probably brought some tension to you, but you started thinking about your list, and don't you all feel the tension, the pressure to try to make this the most special Christmas ever? It's like you're trying to grasp some feeling that maybe you had as a child. You're trying to recreate that, especially when you start having children. You just.

I just feel like if I buy this, if I buy this, and you're trying to recreate or make some kind of happiness, and the surprising thing is the more you feel this anxiety, this tension to spend, spend, spin, you often feel less and less and less the joy and the peace, and there's a true happiness that we should feel at Christmas. Don't you wish you could put off all of that crazy, chaotic spending and really focus on King Jesus? Well, that's what we're talking about today. In the Gospel of Matthew, the story of the birth of Jesus is told within the political backdrop of the Roman Empire and King Herod the Great and all of these details. And we see a battle for the worship of the three wise men.

The wise men come and there's a battle that breaks out for their worship. Who will they worship? And I believe that there's still a battle today between will we worship King Herod or will we worship King Jesus? Because King Herod represents the world's system, but Jesus represents the kingdom of God. And as I believe today, we'll look at the book of Matthew, and I hope you can look at it with fresh eyes today.

This is my 33rd year of preaching at Christmas, and every year I go, well, we have Christmas again. How will I talk about it? And I will talk about it every year, as I always do from the Scriptures. And so now we're going to be looking from Matthew, chapter two and looking for three steps on how we can worship the true king, how we can put our worship on the true king, King Jesus, Chapter two of Matthew. Now, after Jesus was born, In Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the King.

Behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, where is he who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet.

And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word that I too may come and worship him. After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose, went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was.

When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly, with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother. They fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts. Gold and frankincense and myrrh.

And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way. This is God's word. Amen. We're looking for three steps on how we can worship Jesus as the true king. Here's the first step.

Understand the battle for our worship. We can understand the battle for our worship. You'll notice the word worship is in our reading today three times. And I would direct your attention to the first occurrence. It's in verse two, and it's the wise men coming for the purpose of bringing their gifts in worship to the one born king of the Jews.

And of course, they came to the place where the throne was, and that was in Jerusalem. Of course, they followed the star from the east, and they came where they thought the whole Jewish people would be celebrating. But to their surprise, they were not. In fact, they were troubled when these Persians, I believe they were Persians, they came from the east. If you go directly east of Israel, you find yourself in modern day Iraq, or as it was called in those days, Persia.

And they came and they encountered a king named Herod, who was called Herod the Great. Now, he was not a full Jew. He was half Jewish, half Ijumaean. In other words, he came from the Edomite clan. He was a false king.

He was a puppet king of Rome. He'd been placed there by the Caesar, and so he was put there to control the Jewish people so that they would pay obedience to Rome. He served there from about 37 B.C. until his death and 4 B.C. he was known as the Great because he was a great builder.

He built Caesarea by the sea, that wonderful port there. He named almost all of his great wonders after Caesar. He also supersized the Jewish temple. He took the temple that had been rebuilt by Zerubbabel after the exile to Babylon, and he enlarged it so that today when you visit Israel and you visit the one place that you can see that was still from the time of Jesus, the Western Wall, or as it's sometimes called, the Wailing Wall, because modern Jews go there and they place their prayers between the cracks, and they'll rock back and forth and weep because it's the closest they can come to the Temple Mount, which is under Palestinian authority. And upon the place where the Holy of Holies was, there is a golden dome placed there by the Muslims.

And so they rocked back and forth at the Wailing Wall. But that Western Wall was built under King Herod the Great. He did this to accommodate the Jews, to make them happy. He was a very paranoid king. He was threatened by his own children.

He had many wives and many sons and daughters. And he was known for even being willing to kill his own family if he thought they were a threat to his throne. In fact, the Roman Caesar Augustus uttered the famous pun concerning King Herod. He said he would rather be Herod's huas than his huias, which in English is, I'd rather be his pig than his son. Now, in order to get that pun, you have to recognize that Jews don't eat pork.

It'd be safer, he's saying, to be his pig, than his son. Well, this is who King Herod is. King Herod the Great. There's nothing great about him at all. He's the false king, and he's troubled.

But not only he, but all of Jerusalem that says they're all troubled, verse three, by the arrival of these wise men. Now, you probably have three of them on your mantle, riding on camels or some such. And we say wise men because that's how we read it here in the esv. The Greek word is magoi. It's where we might get the English word magi.

They were students of the stars. But I believe also students of the Hebrew scriptures. How would they have had access to the Hebrew Scriptures? Would you remember with me for a moment the prophet Daniel who wrote 12 chapters in the Hebrew Bible? He was the chief of the wise men over Babylon.

And then when the Persian ruler Cyrus overthrew Babylon, he became the chief wise man in Persia. And so the wise men, I believe had access to the Hebrew scriptures from that day forward, he had carried them with him. He refers to them in the book of Daniel. My sense, if you say they came from a far land to the east, that they were coming from Persia or modern day Iraq. And they came because they had read a prophecy in the Hebrew scriptures all the way back there in the book of Moses, the book of Numbers saying this, numbers 2417, a star will come out of Jacob, a scepter will rise out of Israel.

And so they came looking for the one born king, the scepter that would rise out of Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel. And they believed the scriptures. How ironic that they came and the Jews had to bring in the professionals and say, where was he supposed to be born? Because they weren't looking. But these Gentiles, these Persians who had access to the scriptures came looking.

It's a foreshadowing that when Jesus came, he came to the whole world. And so they came looking for a star. Now we say that there are three wise men. By the way, if you don't want to hear the rest of the sermon because you're concerned it's going to ruin your nativity scene, that maybe you should just, I don't know, Google something and put in your earphones or something because I'm about to ruin your mantle. Where you have your nativity scene, you probably have three wise men.

Do you see the number three here? You do not. Where do we get that from the three gifts? We get that from the three gifts. We don't know how many wise men, we don't know how many magi there were.

I think it's more likely that instead of three, there may have been 30 because it created quite a fervor when they came to town. Three guys coming in on camels. Well, that happened every day in Jerusalem. But these, these people coming in were in a caravan, I believe, carrying wealth. So they would have carried guards and protection.

They came as representatives of Persia, which was not under the control of Rome. In fact, they were in enmity against Rome. So here come the Persians that everybody in Jerusalem have been like, oh boy, what's this? And they show up with all this wealth and in this great caravan and we say they were wearing, they were riding camels. But I think it's more likely the Persians were known for horseback riding.

I'm ruining it for you. I know, I'm sorry I told you not to listen. But here they come. They come. And so they come into town and they've troubled everybody.

And so immediately they have a problem because they come to the big city of Jerusalem, the city of lights, the city where all the wealth is. And they come in, they go, where's the one born king? And somebody has to go look it up. And so they have a battle right out of the gate for their worship. There's a battle for their worship.

Now, we don't know about this star. We have many modern scholars trying to make a natural explanation for the star of Bethlehem. And some of these may be correct. We really don't know. The Bible doesn't describe it.

Some say it was a comet. The astronomer Kepler actually suggested it was alignment of Jupiter and Saturn because when we look at the planets and the stars, we can follow with mathematical precision because it's like God set a clock in the heavens and so you can run it backwards and figure out where things are. It's predictable. And Kepler suggested it was, it was along about 4 BC or thereabouts that there was a perfect alignment between Saturn and Jupiter which would have created this star, like amazing appearance. We don't know if it was a natural star.

We do know it was a supernatural star because God had predicted it in the book of Numbers. And so there was a battle and here they come bringing these gifts and causing and stirring up this trouble. It says in the book of Luke, no one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon and you cannot serve King Herod and King Jesus. A choice has to be made.

You see, there's a battle for our attention and there's a battle for our affection. A battle for our attention and for our affection. Because worship always involves, first of all, you recognize the worth, then you give what it's worth. And so have you noticed the spooky way that when you look up, like you looked up something you thought you wanted to buy for somebody for Christmas, like you googled it or you went on walmart.com or Amazon.com and you just looked it up, you didn't buy it, you're just looking at it and Then you get on Facebook and that thing just keeps popping up like, wow, how'd Facebook know that? It's kind of spooky.

Like, you start looking around like, how did you know? How do they know that? And it's based on what they call social media algorithms. An algorithm is just a list of instructions. If A, then B, if not A, then C.

And it's a list of. And then, you know, X and Facebook and Instagram, and all of them share these algorithms that they can predict your viewing, what you prefer to view, and what gets you to stay on there longer. And they say it's to improve your experience, but the truth is it's to improve how long you will stay on there and buy something. Because that's how they monetize social media now. In other words, they want to keep your attention as long as they can so that you will give your affection to whatever you're attending.

Now, this is not a sermon about social media, neither pro nor con. But what I want to say to you is that social media is nothing new. That there's always been a spiritual algorithm to get us to look at things and to get our attention so that we take our eyes off of the one true king. And once we get our attention on something else or someone else, and we put someone else in the place of God or something in the place of God, our eyes fall to it and we begin to experience a battle for our worship. Now, every morning I get up and I read the scriptures and I have this combination of things I've been trying this year where I'm reading the scriptures on my laptop, but I have my phone sitting there playing the audio of the same scriptures.

I have an app that will read the one year Bible to me. So I get it through two gates simultaneously. Through the eye gate as I read and through the ear gate as I listen. And it's been sweet. But occasionally since I have these two technological devices in front of me as I'm studying in the mornings, I'll get a notification and I'll be like, I wonder what that is.

No, I'm reading, I'm listening, I'm reading, I'm listening. I can hit pause. I could hit pause, I'll hit pause, hit pause, and I hit it and then I'm somewhere else. It got my attention. And now I'm reading some news thing that just gets me in a bad mood when I should have been staying where I was in the word of God.

But because your preacher is human and I can experience the battle for my Worship. And so can you. Do you understand that? There's a battle for our worship, there's a war going on for what you would give attention to and then what you would pay your affection to. And that leads us to the second step.

The first is to understand the battle. The second is to overcome the temptation to spend our worship wrongly. To overcome the temptation to spend our worship wrongly. We're up to verse four through eight now. And so he brings together King Herod, brings together all the leaders of the scribes and the chief priests to inquire of them, well, where's this baby supposed to be born?

Because he didn't know. He's not even a true Jew, he's just a political appointee. And he brings them in and they quote Micah5.2, and you see they're just quoting it verbatim in verse six. And the prophet Micah said he'd be born in Bethlehem. And they were like, well, according to Micah, he said that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem.

And that was hundreds of years before Jesus came. It was predicted where he would be born. There are over 300 messianic prophecies in the Old Testament, every one of them fulfilled in Jesus. This is just one of them. And so we see it here.

They quote from Micah 5, 2, and we see that he is born in Bethlehem, as was predicted. Now, it's ironic, don't you agree, that Bethlehem, which Bethlehem in Hebrew means house of bread, Beth. If your name's Beth, you're the house. Your name means house and lehem means bread. And so isn't it ironic that the bread of life, the bread of heaven, was born in the house of bread in the city of David?

I think that's wonderful. That's beautiful. And so as it was predicted, as it was prophesied, that's where he's born. So when they hear this, we see in verse seven that Herod summoned the wise men secretly, because he's a devious snake, this King Herod, and what he cares about is retaining his throne, staying in power. And so he brings them in secretly.

He doesn't want the other, the priests and so forth, to hear what he's planning. And he wants to know, what time did that star appear? When did you first see that star? And I believe it appeared two years or less ago. Well, Gary, I don't see that in the scripture.

You said we were going to stick with the scripture. Stay with me. We didn't read it today, but if we stayed in chapter two and we got up to verse 16, then we'd see then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, remember they went back by a different route. He became furious and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. That means the star appeared around two years before they got there.

It must have taken them a little while to get together their caravan, to get together all that wealth that they were bringing and to make the distance, to traverse that distance. And so he ascertains it. And then we see the second occurrence of the word worship in the mouth of the false king Herod. He says, go and search diligently for the child, and when you found him, bring me word that I too may come and worship him. It's a lie.

Because if he'll kill his own children, he'll certainly kill this boy. And as we see in the book of Matthew later, he killed every baby boy under the age of two just trying to kill King Jesus. And we still see the same leader, Satan in this world today, active as a roaring lions, seeking whom he may devour. He hates Jesus, he hates the church, he hates every believer and he desires to destroy. And so we see him pictured here in King Herod.

Here's what we read in First John chapter 2. Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes. The pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world.

And the world is passing away along with its desires. But whoever does the will of God abides forever. Now Gary, why are you reading this, this verse? Because John has identified Satan's bag of three tricks. He has a bag of three tricks.

The magi brought three gifts. But Satan has a bag of three temptations, three tricks if you will. And it goes all the way back to Genesis chapter three. He pulled this on Adam and Eve. And we see the desires of the flesh is one of the temptations we see in first John.

And we see as he comes to Eve, she looks at it and she's hungry and she sees that the fruit is good for food. Genesis chapter three says the desires of the eyes. She looked at it and she saw it looked good, good. She saw it was a delight to the eyes. And then Satan said to her, it'll make you wise like God.

The pride of life and so we see all three depicted in the three temptations in the garden. And then what does Satan do when he tempts Jesus In Matthew chapter 4? In the wilderness, same three tricks. He says, you're hungry. I can see you're hungry.

After fasting 40 days and 40 nights. If you're really the son of God, why don't you turn these stones into bread? And Jesus says, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And he quotes Deuteronomy 4:4 back at him. And so that's the what?

That's the desires of the flesh. And so then he goes, okay, he didn't fall for that one. And he pulls that other trick out of his bag. And he says, if you'll bow down to me, I'll give you all the kingdoms of the world. And so that's kind of like the delight of the eyes.

Look, look, I'll give you all this. That didn't work. And then he said, throw yourself down off of this temple. And notice how the angels. Doesn't the scripture say the angels will lift you up so that you don't even get a bruise?

And that's the pride of life. Just go ahead and take the shortcut here. And don't do what God the Father has told you to do. That's the pride of life. But what does Jesus say to him ultimately?

He says, be gone, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. So we see that John has depicted the three temptations. We see how we have failed. Adam and Eve are our parents. But Jesus brings a new way and he defeats the temptation for wrong.

Worship. Worshiping. Only the Father and those of us that are in him now have overcome. We have overcome this temptation to spend our worship wrongly. Now there are some practical ways we could continue to grow in overcoming this temptation.

Because generosity is the antidote to greed. I've noticed in life there are really only two categories of people. There are takers and there are givers. Have you noticed that there are takers and there are givers? Those that are in Christ Jesus.

And the life of Jesus is being fully formed in them so that they're becoming like Jesus. They become sacrificial givers following Jesus. We are filled with his agape love, which is sacrificial, unconditional love. And we become givers. We pour out our lives because the life of Jesus is in us.

And we become givers. Those apart from Christ, the further apart they are, the more they see life as. You got to grab all you can get becomes like a beer commercial. You got to grab all the gusto, whatever gusto is. You ever look at gusto?

I'm not sure what that means, but I think it means life or something. I don't know. And so you become a taker. So what might be some practical ways? Well, you might know of a single mom that's going to have a hard time this Christmas providing Christmas for their her children.

Or you might know a family where they just lost their job. And so you might, they might be in your small group or they might be a neighbor or a co worker and you overhear this. And because you're a believer and because you're a giver, because you're a believer in Jesus, one of the practical ways that you can overcome temptation is you pull your affection off of self and off of worldly things and off of King Herod and you put it on Jesus. Well, Gary, how is helping a single mom or somebody who lost their job putting it on Jesus? Well, Jesus himself said, when you've done it to the least of these, you've done it unto me.

That's a practical way of being a giver at Christmas and just thinking because giving is the antidote to greed. And so we break the bondage of selfishness and greed by letting Jesus form himself in us so that we pour out and we become givers. And then we know that God always takes care of us. We're not worried about what we will have because he flows to us and through us to others. And so that's one way, another way that you could be practical this season.

I want you to be prayerfully thinking about how much you're going to give to the Christmas, the Christmas missions offer offering which goes to our international missions. So we have missionaries that we support in Mexico, in Istanbul, in Turkey and in Uganda, and then through the International Mission Board around the world. And if you're going to give a gift to Jesus, then it's his birthday after all. Right? Give the most sacrificial gift you can give in the coming weeks.

I'm not asking you to do it today because I want you to pray about it and really think about it. Bring a sacrificial gift. And we promise that every dime we will send to international missions to support the gospel going forth. Just some practical ideas on how we could break the temptation of greed and how we could pull our affection, our worship off of King Herod and put it on Jesus. Now here's our final step.

Recognize that Jesus alone is worthy of our worship. We're at verses 9 through 12. We're going to be looking at the third mention of the word worship. And we see it in verse 11 that they fell down and worshiped. Now, I told you to be careful about listening to me this morning, that I was going to ruin your nativity scene.

I've already ruined your three wise men on their camels. I've already messed that up. Sorry about that. Okay. Sorry.

Not really. Okay. Because we're going to be Bible believing. We're not just going to believe in false imagery that we've gotten. It's fun to look at, but.

So I've ruined that for you. But I want to ruin some more. I want to draw your attention that says in verse, let's see, when they behold the star, that they seen it again. After they left Jerusalem, they went to the place where the child was born. When they saw the star, they rejoiced.

Verse 11. And going into the house, they saw the child. Just pause on that for a second. It said. Did it say stable?

No, it said house. Did it say infant? No, it said child. Okay. How long ago did the star appear?

We think about two years ago. How old is baby Jesus now? He's not a baby. He's a toddler. He's probably close to two years old.

Gary, you ruined everything. You've ruined. No, I'm just telling you what the Bible says. And so it's messed up your nativity scene completely. Now I got the wise men.

They're not even supposed to be on the mantle yet. If you've got a stable with the shepherds. Yeah, that's Luke 2. That's the baby is born chapter. This is the Magi come and visit the child at the house.

We know Joseph was a carpenter. He may have built the house. They came there with nothing. And so they lived in a stable because there was no room for them at the end. That's Luke chapter two.

And what we've done with our nativity scenes and with our memories. We've melded the two stories together into one. It's two stories. Sorry about that. Ruined it for everybody.

But this is what we're looking at here. And we see that when they came to him. I want you to picture something different. It's not Mary holding a baby that they bow down to the feet of Mary. The Greek word for worship is proskuneo.

It's where we get the word to fall prostrate or to kiss the Hand or to kiss the feet. It literally means to lower or bow down and kiss. Maybe even to kiss the floor. To bow down and kiss. And I want you to picture, okay, Mary is there.

It mentions that they go into a house and we have a child that's two years old is beginning to speak. A child that's two years old is beginning to walk. Am I right? This is a little toddler that can speak. And they bow down, these magi from Persia bringing these gifts.

And they bow down and they kiss the ground. They kiss his feet. And there's something spiritual happening here. They came all this journey, they have all this emotional anticipation. They've been distracted and lost sight of the star when they were in Jerusalem.

But as soon as they went south of Jerusalem, which is only about a six, it's about a six hour walk. It's about six miles, rather it's about a two hour walk if you're just going slowly and it's not far. But soon as they headed south, they saw the star again and they're overjoyed and they bow down and they worship King Jesus and they give him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And then it says they were warned in a dream. Can you see how God's really speaking to them not to go back to King Herod?

I think they kind of had an inkling that that was the case. I mean, he didn't even know what was up. They come down, they have to go south to Bethlehem. Instead of being in the big city of Jerusalem where the temple and all this greatness is and where the throne and all this, all the lights of Jerusalem, they lost sight. You know, we lose sight sometimes of what matters when we get distracted.

Of all the, all the glittering lights. As soon as they went south, be kind of like leaving Wilson and going down south to. I don't know where would we head if we was going to go to a small town? Black Creek. Okay, we're going to go down to Black Creek.

Maybe we go over a little bit to Green Pond over there in Bailey, you know, and then you pull up with this caravan. I'm telling you, everybody closed their doors and shut their shutters. Boy. And they knocked on one of the doors. Anybody know about a baby being born around here about two years ago that caused it?

Well, there was one about two years ago. There was. There was these shepherds that showed up. They haven't shut their mouths since then talking about it. He lives in that house right over there.

They didn't have Google but they had hearsay, and they had a star over the place. And so it was a little place just, you know, it's a southern town south of Jerusalem. And they go down there, and they were warned in a dream, don't go back the way you came. And so they obeyed. Have you ever seen this show Pawn Stars?

You ever seen Pawn Stars? I like shows like that a little bit sometimes. I like seeing people come in with something they think is valuable, and they think they're going to get some money out of it. You know, like, I wonder, you know, my grandfather gave me this, and I was always told it was valuable. Or there's another sale, like the Antique Roadshow or something like that.

That's another one. They bring furniture in, and so I always like it. And so the owner of the pawn shop on Pawn Stars is Rick Harrison. And so I was watching an episode recently, and a guy came in with a coin. It's a little bitty coin, and it was imperfect.

It was just kind of this little coin. And on one side, it had two daggers, and under, in Greek, it said, ides of March. It's written in Greek. And then on the. He puts it on a black velvet cloth on his countertop, and he puts gloves on, and he goes, where'd you get this?

And he goes, well, my. You know, it was passed on to me by my grandfather or whatever. And he goes, I was always told it was valuable. He goes, is Brutus on the back of this? And he goes, well, take a look.

And he flips it over, and he goes, ah, and depiction of Brutus, you know, etu brute. He's on the back, and he flips it back, and over he goes, hey, man, this was. This is. This looks like the real thing. But let me call my expert in.

He always has to call an expert in. He calls in a coin expert. And you're watching the show, of course, it goes to commercial five times. But then here comes. Here comes the expert.

He comes in, he looks at it, he puts the gloves on. He examines it. He puts one of those glasses on. He does this, right? And he goes, it's real.

He said, well, and the other guys over here, it's real. He goes, well, how much is it worth? He goes, I think at auction, this would probably go for $150,000. And the guy's like, whoa. And so then Rick goes, well, how much you want for it?

$150,000. That's all he wants. And Rick goes, well, I have to resell it. You know, I can't you know? So they.

They start finagling. But what I like about that story is he sees what its real value is. He finally. It's just been a little coin that his grandfather gave him. But now this thing's worth $150,000, right?

It's worth a lot like that. Have you looked at Jesus? Have you recognized his worth?

He came and took on our sin, our suffering. The Son of God stepped down the ladder of love and became a baby, A child was nursed at his mother's breast, took on all the pain and problems, walked the dusty streets of the Via Dolorosa and carried that cross, shed his blood, overcome sin, death in the grave, and ascended to the Father. Have you looked at what he's worth? Oh, it's matchless. There's no one who comes close.

What gift? How could you give him the gift of gold and call him king this year? How could you give the King of the universe who flung the stars and set every planet in motion by just saying, let there be light? How could you give him, the one who owns the cattle on a thousand hills and the earth and the people thereof are his? How could you give him anything?

What do you give the one who owns it all? He might not have you. How could you give gold to Jesus this Christmas? Have you given him you? Have you given him your heart yourself?

Have you called him King, Lord of your life? That's how you give him the gift of gold. That's how you bring that gift of worship to Jesus. You recognize what he's worth. You give him what he's worth.

And so we see Paul say, I appeal to you. Therefore, brothers, Romans 12:1, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Give him your whole life. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your word.

Thank you for the Christmas story.

But the shadow of the cross overshadows the cradle. This baby came to die. And so we repent of our sins. If you're here today and you've never given your life to Jesus, you can pray with me right now. Dear Lord, I repent of my sin.

And I recognize that you died on the cross for me and that you were raised from the grave and that you live today. Come and live in me. I declare you king of my life. Come into my life. Forgive me.

Make me a child of God. I want to follow you all the days of my life as my Lord and Savior. If you're praying that prayer of faith, believing he'll save you. He'll adopt you into his family. Others are here and you're a follower of Jesus.

But you've been distracted by the glittering lights. You've taken your eyes off of the value of King Jesus. Would you just set them afresh upon his face and upon him and remember who he is. And then give him your all afresh. We pray it in Jesus name, Amen.