A Christmas Spirit – 4: A Spirit of the Wisemen

Well, Father God, we are very thankful to be here once again today and to worship You.

Lord, thank You for this time of year.

Thank You for letting us all have the opportunity to just show gratitude for the original gift

of Christmas of sending Your Son to come and show us the way.

And, Lord, this morning as we gather together to worship You once again, Lord, we ask as we

always do that Your Holy Spirit would come in this place, but more importantly that You

would come and that You would rest in our hearts.

And, Father, that we would have the attitude and the willingness, Lord, to just simply invite

You in.

The beauty about who You are and the God that we serve is that You do not force Yourself

upon us, but, God, You call our names.

You speak in powerful ways, but in gentle and loving ways as well.

And, Father, I pray that You would help every person here this morning to just humble our

hearts before You.

And, Lord, maybe not literally be on our hands and knees, but just figuratively in our hearts

to get on our hands and knees and say, God, here I am, I'm Yours.

And I will submit to You and I want You to live in me and I want You to speak to me

and I want You to guide me and show me because I know that everything that I've been doing

is not working.

Father, help us to just surrender to You today to make You the true Lord of our lives the

way that You should be.

And, Father, as we come and we read Your Word and we have this time of singing and praising

and fellowshiping with one another, Lord, we have a lot of people this morning who

are sick, Lord, we just pray for them, whether it's flu or stomach bug or COVID or whatever

it may be, God, that You would touch them this morning.

Pray for Miss Sandra, who's got the shingles today.

God, just touch her body as she's in a lot of pain.

Father, we pray for Nate Helton.

Just pray that You touch his body as he's been in the hospital this week and just trying

to get his body regulated.

I just pray that You would touch him this morning, be with he and him.

God, we pray for Josh Stimpiar as he's delivering his first sermon today.

Father, I pray that You would send Your Holy Spirit in a powerful way to him, that, Lord,

it would not be his words or his thoughts or his ideas, but, God, that it would be You

speaking and working and moving through him.

Oh, Lord, for so many others, so many other churches who are meeting this morning, we

pray that You would show up and be present in powerful ways in the churches in this

morning, and, God, it doesn't matter what denomination we are, it doesn't matter what

we have hung on our sons, but, God, You are truth, and You can speak and move and work

in a way that shows all truth, and so, God, we give it to You this morning.

I pray that You would reign, I pray that You would be in control, and, God, we pray that

You would be glorified, but it has to start with us first, so, Lord, I pray that You would

help us to be humble and receptive of Your Spirit, Your ways, Your word, and Your guidance

and all that we do and say here at this church, Lord, we love You, and we thank You, and we

ask all this in the precious and holy name of Jesus, and all God's people say, amen, You

may be seated. Our song this week goes, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, jack-frawl

snipping at your nose, yuletide carols being sung by a choir, and folks dressed up like

Eskimos. Everybody knows a turkey and some mistletoe helped to make the season bright.

Tiny tights with their eyes all aglow will find it hard to sleep tonight. One of the

things we've been talking about these songs is that they basically set the stage or

the mood of how we should feel at Christmas time, and this song that I just quoted the

first little verse to is actually called The Christmas Song. I'm going to give you a little

bit of background on it, especially since we had such a burner this past year for Christmas.

I don't know about y'all. We didn't buy any outside toys this year, and then it was 75 degrees and

like one of the most beautiful days of the year, so that was really fun. But as it was

pretty hot this day, this song was written in July of 1945, and Bob Wells in this time,

there was no air conditioner, and so this man named Bob Wells is sitting in his house,

and he is sweating away, and his thought was if I can think about things during the winter,

perhaps I can find some relief from this heat that is just overbearing in this moment.

And so he writes basically the first few lines of what we know as the song that I just read to you,

and then this guy named Mel Torme comes in who's a friend with him, and he sees the

lyrics written on a spiral-bound notepad, and he sits down with him, and he finishes writing

the words to this song, and in less than 45 minutes writes all the music for the song,

and it has been one of the most played songs at Christmas time that has ever been written

by mankind, and it was written during the summer.

We've talked a lot about how everything in the world tells us how we should feel, and

how we should pursue things, and how we should think about things, and even a lot of the music

around Christmas time tells us how we feel, and the thing that we've been talking about is to

really understand what it means to have the spirit of Christmas, that we need to begin with

having the spirit of the people who actually brought us the very first Christmas. So I'm going

to do a little pop quiz with you this morning. Let's see if you remember what kind of spirits

they had. What kind of spirit did Mary have? A willing spirit. Thank you, ma'am. What kind of

spirit did Joseph have? Obedience. Thank you. And what kind of spirit did the shepherds have?

Obane. Faithfulness. And a faithful spirit. And today, we're going to talk about the wise men.

So if you turn to Matthew chapter 2 verses 1 through 12, if you haven't noticed, we've been

Matthew 2:1–12

bouncing back and forth between Matthew and Luke. Luke gives us the best, the most complete

version of the Christmas account, but there's a couple things that doesn't include that Matthew

does, the account of Joseph and also the account of the wise men. So let's read verses 1 through 12

together of Matthew 2. It says, Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea during the reign of King

Herod. About that time, some wise men from eastern lands arrived in Jerusalem asking,

where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star as it rose, and we have come

to worship him. King Herod was deeply disturbed when he heard this, as was everyone in Jerusalem.

He called a meeting of the leading priests and teachers of religious law and asked, where

is the Messiah supposed to be born? In Bethlehem in Judea, they said, for this is what the

prophet wrote, O you, O Bethlehem in the land of Judah, are not least among the ruling cities

of Judah, for a ruler will come from you who will be the shepherd for my people Israel.

Then Herod called for a private meeting with the wise men, and he learned from them the time when

the star first appeared, and then he told them, go to Bethlehem and search carefully for the child,

and when you find him, come back and tell me so that I can go and worship him too.

After this interview, the wise men went their way, and the star they had seen in the east

guided them to Bethlehem. It went ahead of them and stopped over the place where the child was,

and when they saw the star, they were filled with joy. They entered the house and saw the

child with his mother, Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him, and they opened their

treasure chest and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. When it was time to

leave, they returned to their own country by another route, for God had warned them

in a dream not to return to Herod. So I wanted to talk to you today about the wise men,

number one, because they came a little bit after the birth of Jesus. So after Christmas day,

they arrived, and one of the reasons why we give gifts and we celebrate Christmas the way we do

is because the wise men came bearing gifts for this newborn king, but also today's sermon is a

little bit different from normal, and you'll see as we get going. So point number one,

the mysteriousness. I want to talk about the mysteriousness of this account in this moment.

One of the things that you need to realize and see about the wise men

is that there's no explanation about them in scripture. There's this very vague account of

who they are and where they come from. It doesn't even say where they come from, it just

gives the direction of they came from the east. And because of this vagueness, there is this

obsession that takes place with biblical scholars as who these men are and who they could be and

where they actually come from. And we argue over and over again about all this,

how many of them were there? I don't know if you've ever thought about that.

It doesn't give us a lot of information, doesn't give us how many there were,

it doesn't tell us that they were riding camels. All it talks about is there are three gifts that

they gave and that they showed up about the time that Jesus was born. Very vague.

One of the greatest things about scripture is that it is vague at times. And it's vague for a

reason. You know, we get frustrated because we like detail. We've grown up in Western culture,

Western education, where details and times and information is vitally important to understanding

something. But the way that God operates is very different from the way that mankind operates. He

gives us what he wants us to know and then the rest of it we have to accept as it's not that

important. And it gives us the opportunity to have fun conversations like we're going to have today.

So for at least two years, as it says in verse 16, these wise men have been following the star

somewhere around two years. But we don't know exactly how long they had been traveling. The

trip from Babylon to Jerusalem was four months on foot by caravan. And so we don't know if the star

appeared right when Jesus was born or right when he was conceived or if God had prepared and we're

just we have no idea of the timeframe that has passed from the time that Jesus was born

until the wise men showed up. It just says about that time. And something I want to

take your attention to is that because this morning as we talk about the wise men,

they're just a part of the story. They're supporting characters. And the main character

in all of this is Jesus Christ. And so we get all the information that we need to know about Jesus.

So when you read your Bibles and there's something that you don't understand or something you're not

satisfied with or you feel like you want more information about something, when you read

scripture, everything in your Bible points to Jesus Christ from Genesis to Revelation in some

way shape or form, it points to Jesus. These wise men are just an arrow that points to Jesus.

And they do it in a significant and amazing, a beautiful and a very mysterious way.

Point number two, the wise men, aka the three kings, aka the magi.

According to what translation you read and according to what song you're listening to

can refer to these men as different things. This is one reason why so many people think

there's three of them is because the song We Three Kings come out to be and there was three gifts.

And so people just assume there was three. We don't know how many there were.

But one of the things about reading scripture when you read your Bibles

that you have to remember and people ask me all the time,

James, what translation should be reading? What version of scripture should I be reading? Which

one's the best? And always tell them, I'm like, look, all of them, all of them are the best.

They are the most and they're all written and translated for different reasons.

One of my favorite versions is the King James version because I think it's easier to

remember scripture in King James version. It's more poetic. To me, it's a more beautiful language,

but to me, it's the hardest one to study personally. But that's the one I memorize

scripture in. If you listen to me quote scripture, more than likely I'm going to be quoting it from

the King James version. You can look at other passages of scripture and some translations

are translated specifically word for word translations. And so as you do that,

you risk this, you can get the word for word translation from the original language into

today's language. But in doing the word for word translation, you lose a little bit of the context

in what it's actually talking about or what it may mean. And so other translations will focus on

contextual translations of we want to focus on the context so you can understand what it means.

But in the context, you lose a little bit of the meaning of certain words, which can be

significant for certain studies and things like that. And so one of the things that you find is

in different scriptures, it will refer to these as wise men or it will refer to them as magi.

And so the more correct translation for the word is probably magi. And so as you look at these

men, so today was the spirit of the wise men, you can cross through that and up top cross

through wise men and you put magi up at the top. That's the more correct word for word translation

for that word is magi. When you look at magi, it's short for magicians, which is kind of weird

because wise men sounds better than magicians, right? I don't know about y'all when I hear the

word magicians, I think of some guy pulling a rabbit out of a hat and sawing people in half.

But yeah, they were magi, they were magicians. So point number three, let's go to the source

as to what most biblical scholars believe. In Daniel chapter one, verse 20,

the Israelites had been taken captive. They had been shipped off to Babylon to serve their

punishment for turning away from the Lord. They were going to spend their 70 years in exile.

And as they are there, Daniel and three other boy, young men, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego,

they proved themselves multiple times to be wise and capable and just above everyone else. And so

what you find in Daniel one verse 20 is it says, whenever the king consulted them in any matter

requiring wisdom and balanced judgment, he found them 10 times more capable than any of the

kingdom. And so the word for word translation in that account for the magicians and the magi is

actually the same word that it translates into for the magi who come from the east.

It just so happens that Babylon is directly east from Jerusalem.

So here's Daniel who's taken into captivity as a teenager and he serves alongside of these kings

as a magi, as a wise man, and he deciphers many different things throughout his time in Babylon.

And he serves many different kings. And if you remember, we did a series on Daniel.

I don't know when time lapses now. I'm getting to that age a while back. And we talked about how

Daniel had these times where he was like the main guy and then he would just be in the background

and then he would be the main guy again. He would be in the background. But in the midst of that,

he goes through these different kings. He goes through, let's see if I can find their names on

here. Make sure I get them right. He goes through Nebuchadnezzar. He goes to Belshazzar.

He goes through Darius. He goes through, and I think there's another one, but I can't find it

on my paper right now. But as he's transitioning from these different kings from one to another,

he always seems to just kind of fall to the background. And then God will do something

significant, speak in a significant way. And then Daniel just kind of rises back to the surface.

And he's the one that God chooses to provide the answer for, to speak in this amazingly

powerful way. And then for the rest of that time, Daniel seems to be the head of the magicians or the

wise men or the magi in that time until another ruler takes over. And you see that more prominently

with the story of Belshazzar when God puts the writing on the wall. Daniel's just in the back.

He's just being faithful to the Lord. He's not in the limelight. Belshazzar doesn't even know

who he is, but Belshazzar's mother says, there's a man who has the spirit of the Holy God living

in him, bring Daniel in, and he can tell you what the writing on the wall means. And that's

exactly what happens. And Daniel serves faithfully in the midst of all this. And one of the things

that a lot of biblical scholars believe is, is that in the midst of this time when Daniel

is in Babylon, that he is actually teaching and training and presenting all of the things

about God and God's word and God's laws to these magi. And so when you look at Daniel 9 verses 20

Daniel 9:20–27

through 27, so Daniel's this weird little book, it goes through all these different transitions of

kings and how Daniel serves. And then there hits a certain point in Daniel where he starts talking

about things that God has been speaking to him all along. So it's not in chronological order,

but God is speaking to Daniel through all this stuff. And God starts telling Daniel about this

coming Messiah, the coming of the Lord's anointed one. And he not only tells Daniel about the one

who's going to be born, but how he's also going to die. And Daniel's writing down all this stuff.

And a lot of biblical scholars believe that Daniel is being faithful. He's writing this.

He's teaching the other magi in the midst of this. He's communicating them what God's been telling them

and his reputation. Because it wasn't like Daniel just said, oh, I'm a really cool guy. There was

times where everyone's head was on the line. Nebuchadnezzar was ready to kill every single wise

man in Babylon because they couldn't give him the answer. And if God had not spoken to Daniel,

they'd all have been dead. I don't know about you, but I'd be real happy if someone saved my neck.

And so Daniel has built up the reputation. He has been faithful. He's continued to serve.

And as God is speaking to him in places like Daniel 9 verses 20 through 27 about the coming

Daniel 9:20–27

of the Lord's anointed one. And he's talking about this. Most biblical scholars believe that

Daniel is teaching this and showing the other magi and guiding them and saying, look, y'all

need to know there's going to come a day when this is going to happen. This is the most significant

thing that will ever have happened to this world and you need to be ready for it.

And if you're not ready for it, it's not going to change anything because God's still going to do

what he's going to do, but you're going to miss it. And you have the opportunity and you have the

ability to be a part of it if you're faithful and if you're looking for it and if you're ready.

So point number four, you have the gifts.

And as these magi show up from the east miraculously at just the right time when

God is anointed, expecting the newborn king of the Jews that they just happen to know about

and we don't really know how,

they give the gift of myrrh, which is a valuable spice symbolizing royalty

used for perfuming incense, pain relief, and also embalming dead people.

So how in the world do these magi know

that this guy is going to be king and not only is he born to be king of the Jews, but he's also

going to die and so we're going to provide this very expensive thing to give to him to prepare him

for this. But they also brought frankincense, a gum resin used in religious ceremonies for

worshiping. And so they know that he's the king of the Jews, but they also understand this idea

that he's not just royalty, but he's also deity. He is God's son who is to be worshiped. And so

they provide this very essential element of coming before God and worshiping him in the midst of

this. And then obviously they bring gold as gold is something that mainly royalty or extremely

wealthy people have access to and has been the measuring stick of wealth and worth since the

beginning of time. Pretty cool, right? Myrrh being considered more valuable than gold during this

time. Frankincense considered being more valuable than gold during this time. Like we hear about

this and we think, oh, gold frankincense and myrrh would have been the thing that other people

would have been grabbing that worth more than its weight and gold. And I think it's really

important to see and understand that when these magi come, they're not just coming to just pay

homage to royalty, but they're coming to worship. They said we have come to worship the newborn

king of the Jews. They completely understood the significance of this moment. He wasn't

just a person, but he was very much God and was deserving of their worship and they came prepared

to give him that worship.

Point five, the future. The last one, I'll let you go.

You know, we've had a lot of fun. I've had a lot of fun talking about a lot of theoretical information.

I think it makes pretty good sense.

And as the Bible makes it seem like it happens in this one amazing day, a lot of times as we're

reading it to know that this thing about Jesus and the context of the story is being spread out

over months at a time and God's communicating to understand that God is still communicating

and he's still affirming as time goes on. And I think that's one of the things that we need

to see as people, that God doesn't just work in these moments and then he just disappears and

then it's done. That whenever God does something, he works and moves. And you see this continual

faithfulness of God to come along, especially in times, because let's be honest, as time passes,

a lot of times it loses excitement. A lot of times things can lose its luster as time passes.

And so every once in a while, we just need to be reminded of who God is and his faithfulness

and the plan that he has and remind us of the calling that he's put in our heart and life.

And God is continuing to do this through these magi. He's reminding Mary and Joseph,

in case you were doubting and in case what happened the night that Jesus was born wasn't

enough. Let me just give you a little something extra to sustain you through time.

And I always like to say, what if, you know, last week it was what if the shepherds weren't

where they were supposed to be? What if they had just bailed on their job that night

and they'd have missed it? When you think about these magi, if they came from Babylon,

if they are in fact the magi who had studied under the magi, who had studied under the magi,

who had studied under the magi, who eventually became the ones who saw the star and went,

what if one of them or all of them would have said, nah, I don't believe that.

Man, Daniel was a whack job. I don't even know that guy. I mean, I'm glad y'all thought he was

really cool, but I wasn't even around before he died. I never seen the guy. You want me to

just believe what this dead guy had said? Man, it's been a hundred. It's been 200, it's been 300.

It's been 550 years since Daniel was even alive. Do you know that? 550 years had passed

from the time that Daniel was alive till Jesus was born in Jerusalem in Bethlehem. 550 years.

Think about the amount of faith that it would take for a person to just accept and believe

what Daniel was saying, not only for themselves to say, okay, Daniel, I believe you. I will look

for the signs. I will look for the star, but then to spend your life looking and waiting for

a star that you never got to see. And then you have to make this decision. Am I going to believe

in this enough to say, okay, it didn't happen in my lifetime, but here's the next magi.

Because I don't know if you know this or not. It's not like it's their kids. It would just be

the next magi. Most people think that they were eunuchs, so they didn't have children.

If you don't know what that is, that's a fun conversation to have when you get home.

But the next magi comes and you say, okay, I believe in it enough where I didn't get to see it in my

lifetime, but I believe in enough to teach this magi. This is what you should be looking for.

This is what we're waiting for. This is the most significant, the most amazing thing that's ever

going to happen to this world is for this baby to be born. And we are looking and we're waiting

and you need to be ready for this and looking and waiting. And the Bible estimates

for the lifespan of people in this time, it would have been somewhere between 22 to 24 generations

that would have had to believe and kept the faith for themselves personally,

but also to teach it to the next one coming. And if any one of them had said,

I don't believe in that garbage. They've been squawking about that for hundreds of years

and I'm not going to be ready and I'm not going to do it.

If any one of them had failed, it wouldn't have changed God's plans.

It wouldn't have changed much about the story of Christmas other than it was a really cool

moment. And I'm sure it greatly helped Mary and Joseph to just affirm once again what they had

been told, maybe even what they had been doubting, just a little bit in their own life. But to know

that the faithfulness of whoever these men were, to continue to believe and not just believe in

enough to say, yeah, I believe that. Yeah, I remember Daniel talking about that. Yeah,

I believe in that, but they lived by it. And for 550 years, they kept that same message

and kept the same idea and they kept the same faith where they were willing to believe in enough

so that when the star did finally appear, they were ready. They were ready to make at least a

four months journey from Babylon to Bethlehem to be able to worship the one who came, which was

the greatest thing that ever happened to this earth. And you talk about the spirit of Christmas

and being able to just overcome situations and circumstances and the things of the world and

perhaps, you know, the turkey or the ham didn't turn out exactly like you wanted it to on

Christmas Day or not everybody got to show up on Christmas Day or maybe there wasn't as much

money to go around this year on Christmas Day and have all these things, all these variables that

can affect how we feel on any given day to just be reminded that we are called to so much more

than just the situations and circumstances of the world. You know, you hear people say,

Jesus is the reason for the season, but it's not just the reason for the season,

he's the reason for everything. And if you don't have a spirit of willingness,

you can't even begin to understand what it's like to truly live with God in your heart.

God is not going to come in and fully dwell inside of a body and a heart and a mind

that is not willing to give him complete reign over your life. And if you don't have a spirit of

obedience in the midst of that, God is not going to stay and he's not going to continue to speak

and he's not going to continue to work and move in your life in the absence of obedience.

And if you don't have a spirit of faithfulness to simply do the stupid, mundane things that maybe

we don't understand in everyday life that God calls us to do, we say, God, why? What's the purpose?

Why do I have to give this up? Why do I have to do this? If we're not simply willing to just do

the faithful, mundane things, we're going to miss some of the most significant things that God

has for us to experience in our lives. And if we don't have the spirit of belief

like the wise men did, to just continue to believe even though you don't see it,

even though you can't feel it or you just you haven't experienced it personally,

even though you've heard some old person talk about it and some other old person talk about

it and now you're hearing somebody else talk about it and you haven't experienced it for

if you don't have the spirit of belief to just trust and believe in God that he is faithful,

that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. And whenever he gets ready to work and move,

I'm going to be ready.

Hebrews 11 one says, faith shows the reality of what we hope for. It is the evidence of things

that we cannot see. There's so many things about God that we cannot see, that we cannot understand.

And there's a lot of it that we're just hoping for. And if you try to rationalize that in your

mind and make that make sense, it's not going to make a whole lot of sense. You have to step out

in faith and believe in God despite what we're able to understand and what we're able to comprehend.

And talking about the spirit of the wise men this morning for 550 years, if they were the ones

who got it from Daniel, who came from Babylon, if that is the case,

for 550 years they kept the belief alive until that one generation was ready.

And they were willing to do exactly what God called them to do.

And I say that because let's be honest, you've heard all these old crazy coots

holler and squawk for 2,000 years about how Jesus is coming back, right?

And it'd be very easy to say, well they've been saying that for 2,000 years

and it ain't happened yet. I don't believe in that mess.

Be very easy to say.

But the people who believe and who trust and who are faithful and obedient and willing,

those will be the people who will be ready on the day that he does return.

And it may not be me and you.

It may be your kids, it may be your grandkids, it may be your great-grandkids,

it may be 50 generations from now.

But I believe with all I am that God is faithful.

I believe that one day when he's ready he will return.

And we have to decide in our lives whether or not we're going to be faithful.

To believe it enough, to say even if I don't experience it in my life,

I believe it enough to make sure that whoever's coming behind me

is going to believe in this so that when the time comes, they'll be ready.

That's true belief.

That's the spirit of belief that the wise men have.

That's the spirit of belief that you and I are called to have.

That even if we don't get to experience it, that we'll be ready for it.

And even if we're not experiencing it, we'll make sure the next one's ready for it.

And we'll live it in such a way to make sure that the one that comes after that will be ready for it.

That if you don't believe anything else in your life, believe in Jesus Christ.

Believe in the faithfulness of God.

Believe that what he says he'll do, he has always done and he will do again.

That's the spirit of being a Christian.

That's the spirit of Christmas.

That's the spirit not just for the season.

That's the spirit for everything.

Jesus is the reason for everything.

And if you can celebrate every day, Christmas is just the cherry on top.

It doesn't matter what else happens in the world.

It'll be good because Jesus was the reason it started

and he's the only reason we should be celebrating.

Let's pray.

Father God, thank you for the opportunity to be in your house once again

and to worship you and serve you.

And Lord, I pray for the people in this room and anybody who watches or listens later on.

Lord, you would speak into our lives in very powerful and intimate ways.

That you would reveal truth to us that Lord,

even though we can't make it make sense, we can't comprehend it.

God, that we would step out in faith knowing

because we can feel in our very depths of our soul

that what we hear and what we read and what we know about you is true.

And it's hard to comprehend, but God help us to believe it anyway.

Help us to make the choice today to put our trust and faith in you.

Lord, the biggest thing that we're waiting on as Christians

is for you to step out on those clouds and return once again.

Just like the wise men, Lord, you'll come from the east.

And we don't understand it.

We don't know when it'll happen.

But God, I pray that you would help us to be ready.

Be ready for any moment that you come back

that we are paid up, prayed up, and ready to go up with you.

Father, we love you today and we thank you.

We ask all this in Jesus' name.

You are dismissed. Thank you.