Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] We are back into our last message in this series called Good News of Great. Can you read it with me?
[00:00:08] Joy. Can we say joy together?
[00:00:10] Joy.
[00:00:11] And so we're going to dive right back into the title of the sermon is going to be Responding to the King. On the back of your bulletin, you can see the outline that we're going to walk through this morning. And if you are new here or haven't been here for the last few weeks, let me just give you a brief review of where we have been to help connect you with why we are where we are today. All right, so we started off this series looking through the Old Testament at promises of God saying that there's going to be a savior. Can someone say savior?
[00:00:46] There's going to be a savior. And God kept saying that over and over. There's going to be a savior, there's going to be a savior. And so in the first message we walked through, we were reminded that God is a God who is faithful. Amen.
[00:00:58] God is the God who's faithful. He says he's going to do something and then he's going to actually do it. And so our first message in the series was aimed at God being a God who is faithful no matter what. God is going to be faithful even in the midst of us being a people who any of you unfaithful at times to God.
[00:01:14] That would be me as well. We say, God, I'm going to do something. And then sometimes we mess up. But God is a God who is faithful all the time. The next message was aimed at Jesus being the Savior, that the world is broken and. And the world is hopeless to save themselves apart from the work of Jesus Christ. And so that was the second message in the series, just a journey through God's word, seeing how Jesus is the one and the only one who can save us from the brokenness and the hopelessness that we experience.
[00:01:41] Last week we walked through a message looking at some characteristics of Jesus. In a sermon entitled what Child. There's a song actually like this. Maybe you know the song what Child is what Child is this? We just asked that question and last week we answered that question in multiple ways, seeing that Jesus was one who was the promised Messiah who came into the world. We saw that Jesus was a king who showed up on the scene. Who is the King of kings and the Lord of the Lord of Lords who is preeminent? He is above all things.
[00:02:15] And then today we're gonna look at the last of the messages in this series entitled, as you see on the screen responding to the King. So we've seen that God is a God who is faithful. We've seen that Jesus is the only one who can save us. And then last week, we saw that he is truly the king that was prophesied, the king that was told thousands of years before he came to be the one sent into the world for you and I. So we're gonna look at Matthew chapter two and look at Luke chapter two. Hopefully you have your Bibles open. Your Bibles, you're gonna need them open. Because we're gonna walk through lots of scripture this morning and. And then see what God has for us. As we see some different responses to realizing that Jesus is the king, we already know that. So how are we going to respond to him today as the King of Kings? If you would bow your heads, let's pray together. And then we'll dive into God's word.
[00:03:07] Lord, with all the things happening in this season, I feel like busy is probably one of the most common words we say in the month of December.
[00:03:17] And right now I ask that you would help our hearts to pause from that busy.
[00:03:23] All the plans that we might have for the rest of today, this week, the rest of this month, or even next year, all the things that have already happened, that we would just take a breath right now and pause our hearts, pause our mind, and listen to what you want to say.
[00:03:37] Your word is an incredible gift to us. And this morning we are privileged to be able to open it, to journey with you and your spirit as you guide and direct our heart and our mind.
[00:03:49] I ask, Lord, that this morning you would take us where you want us to go. The things that I say would be grounded not only in truth, but would just be aligned with your heart, Lord, as we walk through this, Lord, that your spirit would open our eyes to your beauty, to your power, and that we would properly respond by submitting ourselves to you and whatever you want to do and say in us in Jesus name, Amen.
[00:04:13] All right, so Luke chapter two. So hopefully your Bibles are open. Luke chapter two is where we will start.
[00:04:21] And there are, as you see in your outline, I said you can read this. Behold, the King is born. That is good news. Can someone say good news? Good news. That is good news. But how will the world respond?
[00:04:34] And so today we will answer that question.
[00:04:38] Will everyone consider this good news? Some will respond with. And if you like to write things down and fill in the points, the blanks on your outline, some will respond with celebration. Some will respond with celebration. And so you see that on the screen as well. And we're just going to walk through Luke chapter two, starting in verse eight. And then from verse eight, we'll just journey together through this, and then we'll fill in more, the two other points underneath that and go on in our. In our time. So the first part of this we're going to look at in verse eight and following the first part is about the angels, and the second part is going to be about the shepherds. So it's on the screen, the passage that we're going through. But hopefully you have your Bible open, you'll be wanting to use that as well. It says this in verse eight, a passage that we all have heard many times in this season in the same region.
[00:05:26] And that is the region of Bethlehem where Jesus was born. Because Jesus has just been born.
[00:05:30] The.
[00:05:32] The birth has just happened. There were what or who? Shepherds. Shepherds out in the field keeping watch over their flock by night. Now, I know I don't sound like Lionel or something from the little show or whatever, but that's what he reads, right?
[00:05:49] Keeping watch over their flocks by night. And I know that there's a lot of the pictures that we see. We see like some shepherds standing on a hillside, and you see sheep kind of out about in the field grazing and such. Just a little historical accuracy to that picture that's actually inaccurate at nighttime. What the shepherds would have done is taken all the sheep and they would have put them in an enclosure and kept them in an enclosure. And the shepherds would have slept around the outside of the enclosure where the sheep were at nighttime. Now, why would they have done this? Because they need to keep the sheep safe. There are wolves, there are dangerous animals out there. They don't want the sheep to wander off in the nighttime because sheep are prone to wander.
[00:06:29] Lord, I feel it.
[00:06:31] And so they would have. This was a common practice of shepherds at nighttime. They would have put them in an enclosure, and the shepherds would have surrounded that enclosure and they would have slept there, making sure that nothing could have gotten to the sheep.
[00:06:45] Unless whatever the danger was, the thief was or the wolf was made it through the shepherd first. So they were keeping watch over their flock by night. They would have been around this enclosure with their sheep inside. And verse nine goes on. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them. And the glory, that word is like splendor. The light of the Lord shone around them. Imagine like a giant spotlight from the sky. This is only used one other time with Saul Paul on the road to Damascus when he says, a light came and shone around me. That's the only time this word is used. Shone around them. And they were filled with what?
[00:07:18] Fear.
[00:07:19] Great fear. Original language says megaphobia.
[00:07:24] That's literally. Go to the Greek, you could look, says megosphobia. And the angel of the Lord said, as angels do, fear not. For behold, I bring you good news. That is the same word that we get the word evangelize from. Good news of great. There's the word megos again. Of megos. Joy of mega. Joy that will be for all people. That is rich and poor, male and female, Jew and gentile.
[00:07:54] For whenever you see that word, for pay attention. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior who is Christ, Lord, that is born in Bethlehem, the Savior, the anointed one of God. And this will be assigned to you. We'll get to point A in a minute. This will be assigned to you. You will find a baby wrapped in claws lying in a manger. And a manger is just a wood or stone feeding trough. Then verse 13, then suddenly there was with the angel, a multitude. How many is a multitude?
[00:08:23] A lot. That is the right answer. A lot of angels show up. A multitude of the heavenly hosts praising God and saying. Now, if you like to write things down, verse 13 says, praising God. How did they celebrate the angels? Celebrated by praise? You could write that in praising God. And how did they praise God? How did they declare?
[00:08:45] They said in verse 14, Glory to God in the highest or in the most high, and on earth, peace among those with whom he is pleased. All right, we'll pause there. That's the first section you wrote in. Hopefully praise there for verse 13.
[00:09:00] That last part right there is what we want to pay attention to for a minute.
[00:09:04] Verse 14 in your Bible says this.
[00:09:07] Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace among those with whom he is. Can we say this last word together?
[00:09:14] Pleased. Now, this would have been good news to the shepherds because they would have said, wait a minute, we can have peace with God. This is really, really good news. Now for you and I, how can we have peace with God? And for the shepherds, how could they have peace with God through the person who was just born that day?
[00:09:34] That is the way they could have peace with God. Because for thousands of years, the only way people could have sure, short term peace with God was by killing animals, animal sacrifice, over and over and over again. That's the only way they could have temporary peace with God. And so the angels are here to declare something, and it's this. You can have peace with God without animal sacrifice.
[00:09:58] You can have peace with God by choosing Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. No matter who you are, if you've experienced Jesus work in your life, if you've trusted in him as your Lord and Savior, you are like the angels. And we're gonna see in just a minute. You and I are qualified to tell people about this good news, aren't we? You don't have to have all the knowledge and all the things understood in the Bible to be like, you know what? I'm not qualified to go tell somebody about Jesus. You and I are qualified to praise God publicly.
[00:10:32] If Jesus has done a work inside of you, you are qualified to say, hey, Jesus is here. And that is really, really good news. Giving joyful testimony of God's work can be as much.
[00:10:49] I'm sorry. Giving a joyful testimony of God's work can be a much better apologetic than thoughtful, dutiful defense. And I want to unpack that for just a minute because this is something that we tend to do, especially as I'm just gonna maybe blanket some of us here today, especially in the more conservative, if you will, view is we can say, well, in order for me to be really good at apologetics, that is being able to defend the faith, I need to know all the things here. But in reality, friends, a joyful testimony of what God has done in your life can be a much better, at times, apologetic that is defense of your faith than knowing all of the details here. Does that make sense? It's. If people are seeing in you and they're hearing from you regularly, God did this in my life, and God did this in my life, and God did this in my life, they're not gonna say, you know what, if you can't tell me how old Methuselah was, I'm not gonna believe.
[00:11:48] Like, that's. That's not going to be their response. Their response is gonna be, I see clear joy in their life, and I know who they were before Jesus showed up in their life, and I see who they are now, the difference that they see in your life.
[00:12:07] That is gonna be an incredible apologetic, incredible defense, if you will, for your faith. So it's not, how much do I know? And then once I know enough, then I can praise Jesus publicly. It's praise Jesus publicly. And I promise you, as you do, that you will continue to grow in your knowledge of the Word as you keep the Word open in front of you. So we see that the first part is this declaration, this praise of the angels because of the celebration of the King being born. We look at verse 15, goes on. The next part is about the shepherds. Look with me here, verse 15. When the angels, this multitude of angels, these heavenly beings that God sent to make a historic announcement to sleepy shepherds, went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, let's go over to Bethlehem to see this thing that has happened which the Lord has made known to us. Now, maybe you've always said us with like a trailing off, which Lord's made known to us. I imagine the shepherds going, which the Lord made known to us.
[00:13:14] Shepherds like the people out in the field, the ones who were out here at nighttime. And it's not just that they were the shepherds, most likely the shepherds that owned these sheep. These people could have been hired hands even of the sheep that they were caring for. Because it was nighttime. Maybe the owner is like, I'm gonna go back home. It was not uncommon for the owner of shepherds to hire people to say, you have the night watch. All right, I'm gonna go home and sleep. You take care of them. They, these shepherds saying, he, God, the Lord chose to make this announcement known to us.
[00:13:43] So maybe as you read this in the future, capitalize those two words, us made known to us. Then they went, leaving their sheep, entrusting it to God, because if an angel tells you to do something, do it.
[00:14:00] They went, leaving their sheep with haste and, and found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in a manger. That is most likely, as we have talked about here before, most likely this would have been on a lower level of a house. This would not have been in a stable or in a cave. Mary and Joseph were. Most likely they would have gone through the streets of Bethlehem, knocking on doors, opening doors. And the way the houses were built, you would have seen animals down lower and the upstairs would have been where the people are. Most likely they would have opened the door and they would have seen two people on the lower level of, of this house, which would have been Mary and Joseph and a baby. Then they go in. Wouldn't that have been a sight? Imagine Mary and Joseph with their brand new baby. You know, when you talk to people who have brand new babies, they're like, I'm not letting my baby out of my sight and I'm not taking them into the public for a long, long time especially. And if you want to be near my baby, you like, put a Lot of hand sanitizer on.
[00:14:50] And then we have Mary and Joseph, brand new baby, keeping him clean. You know, he's laying there in this clean straw and then these dirty shepherds come walking in and they're like, hey, that's who we've been looking for. And Mary's like, I don't know about this.
[00:15:03] Like, did you, Hanson? I don't know.
[00:15:07] But they would have been overjoyed telling Mary and Joseph, we just got a heavenly announcement about your little baby.
[00:15:15] A heavenly. Us shepherds got this heavenly announcement. And what does it say they did when they saw it, after they saw this baby? Verse 17. When they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning the child. That is about Mary and Joseph. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds had told them. But. Or moreover, Mary treasured these things in her heart, pondering them.
[00:15:40] In verse 20, says the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all they had seen and heard it had been told them. The point B on your outline, you could write this in proclamation. There was celebration by the angels with praise, and then from the shepherds with prayer, they went and told other people about Jesus. What did heaven think about Jesus birth? It was worth sending a heavenly host.
[00:16:03] Celebration isn't done quietly when about Jesus.
[00:16:08] It's not done quietly when it's with the shepherds either. And what's to say that we should celebrate quietly about Jesus?
[00:16:17] Nothing, right?
[00:16:18] Celebrate Jesus by yourself. Don't let anyone know. That's not what we see.
[00:16:23] The very concept of glorifying God and praising God is this. Maybe you jot this down somewhere. Another maybe definition you can have kind of in your mind. When we see I'm supposed to glorify God, is this showing him off?
[00:16:34] Showing him off. So when I think my job is to glorify God, that means to me I'm to show God off to other people. Does that make sense? It's how we can see this. We do this. We use that term regularly. Like with people. I'm showing off myself, I'm showing off somebody else when what am I doing there? I'm saying this is worth paying attention to. This is worth looking at.
[00:16:56] You should stop looking at whatever else you're looking at because this right here is better than whatever else you're looking at. When we think about my job is to glorify God. It's, I wanna show God off. I want people to say, wow, look at what God has done over there. Or even in my life.
[00:17:14] Now the Struggle that we often have before we go look at point two is this.
[00:17:19] Joy can be a struggle for us, can't it?
[00:17:22] You and I know that the muscle, if you will, our joy muscle versus our stress muscle, which one's often stronger in us?
[00:17:31] Usually our stress muscle, right? If we were to label it, have it a muscle of stress and a muscle of joy. Usually our stress muscle is a bit stronger than our joy muscle. And we, for all intents and purposes, we often work out our stress muscle a lot more than we work out our joy muscle.
[00:17:47] We do things that build in the stress in our life. We do stuff that we know isn't necessarily the right thing, but it's like one more thing to the calendar. And it's like that's how you add us to your stress muscle, by the way. You just add another thing to your calendar that shouldn't be there and your stress muscle's like getting stronger. But how about our joy muscle? How do we strengthen our joy muscle?
[00:18:08] Perhaps this.
[00:18:09] We lift as we strengthen lots of muscles, we lift weights.
[00:18:13] This is perhaps how we could strengthen our joy muscle. We lift an 11 pound weight a little bit more frequently.
[00:18:21] This 11 pound weight is our head.
[00:18:25] When we lift our head about £11, we often experience more joy.
[00:18:30] When we pull our heads out of our phones and lift it up and look up a little bit more, we're going to experience a bit more joy. Because how many of you know that when I'm feeling down, this is where we go, rather than I need some more joy, I should put that away.
[00:18:51] Too often my head goes down and this is not where I find joy.
[00:18:57] I find joy by lifting my head up that 11 pound weight. How do we strengthen that joy muscle? Maybe one thing that you could do is, is lift that 11 pound weight a little bit more often.
[00:19:07] Lift your head and put down the thing that draws your head down. Because that inevitably is going to strengthen your stress muscle, not your joy muscle. Does that make sense? Let's look at point two together, the wise men. So we have two kind of case studies we've already looked at with responding to the king. We've seen the angels, how they responded, we've seen the shepherds, how they've responded. Now we have these wise men or magi that we hear about really only in Matthew chapter two. So flipping your bibles backwards to Matthew chapter two, it's the only chapter in the Christmas story that speaks about these unique figures that show up in the Christmas story.
[00:19:47] Let's read it together, starting in verse one of Matthew chapter two. And we will see how these magi responded. We can see this. So if you like to write things down, we have celebration already with the angels and with the shepherds. We have with sincere worship. On point two, look in your Bibles there now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, this is Matthew, chapter 2, verse 1. And by the way, the author of Matthew, which is Matthew, he clarifies Bethlehem of Judea because maybe you didn't know this, there are two Bethlehems in Israel. One to the north by Galilee and one in the south, Judea by Jerusalem. Born in Judea in the days of Herod the king. Behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem. This is about an 800 mile journey or so saying. So we have these wise men, they show up and they're saying something. We're going to get to that. I think in just. Actually we'll just read through that now saying that is they said this to multiple people in Jerusalem. Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship.
[00:20:51] That word worship is to prostrate oneself to worship him. So before we go any further, we need to unpack this a little bit because there's a lot of confusing things that, or assumptions that are incorrect that people have. Firstly, these wise men, who are these people? When did they come and why did they come? So I want to just address those three questions. First off, when did they come? Most likely they came somewhere up. Well, up to somewhere in the neighborhood of two years after Jesus birth. Okay. It could have been a little less. I'll get to that in a little bit. But it could have been up to two years after Jesus birth. So all the nativity scenes that we have with Mary, Joseph and the shepherds. That's right, right. And then you have the wise men.
[00:21:32] Sorry, not there. So a couple years later is when these wise men would have shown up. So that's the win. Who are these people? That's what's unique about this is very little is known about these particular people.
[00:21:46] First off, we don't know how many of them were. So we three kings.
[00:21:50] I mean keep singing it and stuff. Just know it's not a biblical song.
[00:21:54] We 3 Kings of Orion are right. It doesn't say that there was three of them. Maybe there was, we don't know. But these three men, wise men. Some of your Bibles might say magi or magicians is actually where that word came from. Most likely from Babylon. They would have been very Wealthy people.
[00:22:10] They would have been very wealthy people who would have known about how to interpret dreams, a lot about agriculture, astronomy, astrology, spiritual realm. They would have known a lot about that. They would have studied a lot about that. Daniel actually remember Daniel and the lion's den. He interprets King Nebuchadnezzar's dream and the king's like, yay, that was awesome. That's super cool. You should now be in charge of all of the other Magi or the other magicians, the other wise men.
[00:22:41] So Daniel was actually above, for a period of time, above all of the other wise men. So most likely from that point onward, for those decades that Daniel was in Babylon, trained other Magi. Daniel being a Israelite, would have most likely then taught them about a coming king. Right?
[00:23:01] He would have said, hey, by the way, the scriptures talk about a messiah who is going to come one day. And here in the Bible, here in the scriptures is where we can find this coming king. So Daniel 650 years earlier was made prince or king over, ruler over the Magi. After this Nebuchadnezzar dream situation, these people proceeded to be incredibly influential throughout the eastern world. And they were actually known as. We drop this down somewhere. They were actually known as people who were called kingmakers because it wasn't without their approval that many in the east became kings because of how wealthy and how influential these particular people were. So that gives a little bit more body to why we're gonna see in a minute why Herod was so concerned when these kingmakers show up at his doorstep. So they travel to Jerusalem and it wouldn't have just been, as the pictures show, these three camels walking along, do, do, do, do, do. Right, that's a nice little picture. And they most likely. I keep ruining things for you. They most likely would have been riding Persian steeds, horses, because that would have been a much more comfortable route way to ride from the east back to Jerusalem. They also would have been having this massive caravan of people because of the amount of wealth that they have, the protection detail that they would have had around them. So there's a lot to know about the Magi. There's just a few things there. That reference, they searched the skies, they knew that it was his star.
[00:24:33] So now that we have kind of all of that out of the way, what do we see? They worship, Their sincere worship was first born out of. Write this down. Somewhere point A on your outline is this. Their worship didn't actually start in the stable. Their worship started with their intentional Study of a coming king.
[00:24:50] That's firstly where we say we want. They knew someone great was going to come and they studied the stars. They paid attention to what was going on around them.
[00:25:02] And so they come before the most popular place, right? The capital city, Jerusalem. And here's what they do. They start asking people, as they're walking with their giant train of people, their giant caravan, asking people, hey, hey, you. I know you're just selling pots right now, but where is he who was born king of the Jews? We saw his star. And the guy selling pots is like, I have no idea what you're talking about.
[00:25:27] Because the guy selling pots wasn't looking for a messiah. He wasn't studying the stars. You get this picture of these people who studied. And they said, well, everyone obviously is gonna be looking for this king. But for some reason, as they wander through Jerusalem asking, where is this king? No one knows. And then who hears about it?
[00:25:46] Herod.
[00:25:47] So that's why we see Herod going, wait a minute, I am getting really concerned here. Look what it says there after. We're gonna jump to verse nine. Look in your Bibles. After talking to the king, King Herod, we're gonna look at him in just a minute. Point 3. After talking with the king, they went on their way from Jerusalem back to Bethlehem. And behold, they saw a star already, which led them to the West.
[00:26:11] Now verse 9 says this. And behold, the star they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where Jesus was.
[00:26:21] This was. We wanna unpack this. There's a lot to be said about this star. This was most likely a supernatural light from God. Okay, if any of you have seen. Any of you seen a star before, have any of you seen a star resting over your neighbor's house before? You're like, it's way far away. I don't know how that. This is most likely a light, a supernatural light. Perhaps just the presence of God in a light similar. Like we look through the Old Testament, we see the light of God, right? Can move into different places. The light of God that rests over a house where the Creator.
[00:26:52] And so now we have the wise men showing up there. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. Again, we have all of the joy words packed together.
[00:27:02] They had joy, by the way, because they kept their heads up. Did you note that there? How did they strengthen that joy muscle? How did they have joy? Right here is because their heads weren't down, their heads were up. Looking at the Stars. Look. What it says goes on. And going into the house. Not a stable. Going into the house. They saw the child with his mother and they fell down and worshiped him. And opening their treasures, they offered him gifts. We know what these gifts are, right? Can we say it together? The first one was gold. The second was frankincense, and the third was myrrh. You can write this in on your outline here. Sacred gifts. Sacred gifts. Through sacred gifts. Gold for his royalty.
[00:27:41] Frankincense speaking to his deity. This would have been something that would have been burned with incense.
[00:27:49] And lastly, myrrh, speaking to his humanity. He was one day going to die. And myrrh was something that was often used in wrapping someone who had died with a perfume that would have been used.
[00:28:01] You can dig into all of that. What do we learn? Three things from the wise men. Because maybe there were three, I don't know. But let's look at three things from the wise men that we can learn before we look at point three together. And it's this. Write this down somewhere.
[00:28:12] Read and believe God's word.
[00:28:15] That's exactly what the wise men did. We want to be wise today.
[00:28:18] Read and believe God's word.
[00:28:22] The wise men's worship of God didn't start when they left their homes. It started in their study before they left their homes. It started with them diligently searching the Scriptures, studying the promises of God, and then believing the promises of God. And speaking of believing. Secondly, we see this is seek Jesus at all costs. That's the second thing we learn from the wise men. Seek Jesus at all costs. The wise men are people that represent those who sought the truth and were willing to go whatever the distance, wherever they needed to go in order to show their commitment to following and to finding the king. Seek Jesus and follow him at all costs. And thirdly, humble yourself before Jesus and his call on your life.
[00:29:05] The most important and sacred gift that you and I can give the king is ourselves.
[00:29:12] He says, right, like Romans 12. 1. Therefore, brothers, in view of God's mercy, offer your bodies as living sacrifices. The most powerful gift you can give Jesus is saying, here I am. Send me. Here I am. I will do whatever you want. Let's look at point three on your outline before we close. And it's this.
[00:29:30] We see this together. We want to just unpack Herod a little bit.
[00:29:34] Herod was a selfish guy.
[00:29:36] He was a selfish guy. You could write selfishness with 0.3 on your outline there. We see this in verses 3 through 9 and then 12 through 18.
[00:29:45] Some of us know a little bit about Herod. Maybe some of you don't know a lot about Herod. I say selfish and you're like, maybe that sounds rude or something. It's not. Let me tell you a little about Herod. Herod was always afraid of any rival out there, someone who might take over as king. So much so that he was willing to kill other people to make sure that they didn't become king or take on any position of authority over him. So he had his wife's brother, who also was a high priest, he had him drowned in a swimming pool.
[00:30:18] He put to death at least 46 members of the ruling class of religious leaders called members of the Sanhedrin. He killed his mother in law and his wife and some of his sons because he considered them rivals to his throne.
[00:30:33] So now when I say selfish, you're like, dude, but I don't feel like that's the right word.
[00:30:38] This guy was obsessed with making sure he stayed in power.
[00:30:44] Caesar Augustus, who was the Roman ruler at the time, speaking about Herod, he said this, or it's said to have been said about this, about Herod.
[00:30:53] Caesar Augustus, speaking about Herod, says this.
[00:30:56] It is better to be Herod's dog than to be one of his children because of how vicious he was towards anyone who might speak against him. So with that in mind, we step into this next point with selfishness. Some will respond with selfishness rooted in control. You can write that in point A on your outline rooted in control. Look at verse three with me. When Herod the king heard this, the kingmakers have arrived in your city, right? He heard about a king from this entourage of people saying, we're looking for the king. He was troubled. Obviously he was agitated. He was distressed is the word. And notice what the last part of that sentence says. And all Jerusalem with him.
[00:31:42] Now, why might all Jerusalem also be troubled too?
[00:31:45] Now at first glance, you might say, and maybe this is to some extent accurate, because they're going, wait a minute, there's another king coming. But also, probably this, Herod's a little crazy.
[00:31:56] And when they know that Herod's crazy and he found out that there's someone else who's gonna be king, what happens when Herod goes a little crazy?
[00:32:05] People start dying.
[00:32:07] And so understandably, all Jerusalem with them would have been troubled. At this announcement, verse four, assembling all the chief priests and scribes, that is anyone who knows anything about all Old Testament prophecy, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. And they told him in Bethlehem of Judea, so that as it is written by the prophet in Micah 5, 2 O u ye, o Bethlehem, the land of Judah, by no means the least among the rulers of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler. And when he heard the word ruler, he's like, wait a minute, I thought I was the only ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. Then heron summoned the secretly and ascertained from them a time when the star had appeared. That is kind of what speaks to how old Jesus might have been when the wise men showed up and he sent them to Bethlehem. And he says this in his calm, gentle, humble voice, go search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word that I may too come and worship him. Did he want to worship Jesus?
[00:33:09] Most definitely not.
[00:33:11] His plan was most definitely. How can I remove this threat to my throne? Verse 9. And after listening to the king, they went on their way.
[00:33:18] So that is the wise men, they went on their way and they found Jesus in that house. Verse 12. And we'll conclude here is this. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod because he was crazy and wanted to kill Jesus, the wise men departed to their own country by another way, which by the way, would have been very challenging with the amount of people that they had in their massive caravan coming this eight journey to Israel. Now, as they departed, behold, an angel of the Lord also appears, not only to the wise men, but to Joseph, saying, it is time that you flee to the land of, you know this Egypt. Why? Because Herod is searching for the child to destroy him. It says in verse 19, verse 13. And so, Joseph, because as we saw earlier, when an angel tells you to do something, you what? You do it. Joseph. He doesn't say, all right, five more minutes, Mr. Angel. He doesn't say that. He immediately gets up while it is still dark. Do you see that? It is still dark. He gets up and says, mary, we gotta go. And she says, why, Joseph? It's still.
[00:34:23] It's still dark. And he says, well, an angel told me we need to leave because Herod wants this king dead. Now, most likely, Mary would have heard about how bad Herod was, and she would have said, yes, Joseph, let's go, let's go. And so we see another prophecy fulfilled in Hosea 1:1, where it says that the Lord is going to call out of Egypt, I will call my son. Verse 16 says, Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked, when you have a guy that is that High on himself and he finds out he's been tricked. How do you think he's going to respond?
[00:34:54] Not well. When he finds out he has been tricked by the wise men, he became what? Furious. He took this personally. How dare somebody get over me. I had a plan and go on and on and on. And everyone in his house probably ran another direction and he sent and he 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.
[00:35:27] The lovely Christmas story just hits rock bottom. Like, how on earth did this happen?
[00:35:36] Christmas is supposed to be this lovely time, shining lights and angels singing and all of that. But inserted into the Christmas story, we have evil, terrible evil.
[00:35:50] And what do we see here in Jeremiah 31:15, another prophecy fulfilled, where it says that those in Ramah, this lamenting will happen in this place of Bethlehem. We see point B on your outline is this. Not only is his selfishness rooted in control, but also in pride.
[00:36:08] You could write that in somewhere. Herod, an evil man, resisted Jesus because he wanted to stay in control. He liked his life. Maybe you've heard this in the 21st century. He liked his life, his way, and he was willing to do whatever it took to keep it that way. He didn't deny. Do you note something? He didn't deny Jesus power or authority to the throne. He knew it must be real because these kingmakers just showed up on the scene. And instead of waiting to see if Jesus would become anyone when he got older, Herod says this.
[00:36:40] We're gonna cut that tree down right now. We're not gonna let that tree grow and see what happens. Herod, we might say, is much more vile and treacherous than us today.
[00:36:52] But in reality, Herod represents and mirrors us, even America today, in at least two ways.
[00:37:01] He does in the Christmas story what Americans have been doing for killing babies that get in the way.
[00:37:11] Secondly, he possesses a similar trait to much of humanity today.
[00:37:15] He demonstrates his desire not to be ruled by anyone.
[00:37:20] The length Herod went to protect his throne reminds us of the lengths that Pharaoh went to protect his land from the Hebrew nation, the death of baby boys.
[00:37:30] Sadly, we see this today and we're like, what do we do with that? How do we conclude with that?
[00:37:38] This Christmas story? I mean, we look at Luke chapter two, and that's where we come to a conclusion today. For many, particularly us Christians, though we see this, our selfishness may not look like hope, may not look like the taking of the life of another. But our selfishness does manifest itself in ways, doesn't it?
[00:37:56] Today our selfishness is rooted in our pride and our desire to maintain control of our lives in many other ways than taking life like Herod did. Maybe it's like this. Here's some. I won't submit to God's instruction, clear instruction in that area of my life.
[00:38:10] Maybe it's this as far as how we respond with selfishness. I won't treat my spouse the way that God told me to treat my spouse. I won't let go of that addiction because it's mine and I want it. Yeah, he may be the king of my life over there, but I don't want him king of this part of my life over here.
[00:38:27] You know what? I can parent my kids the way that I see best. I don't have to open the Bible as I parent my kids. They're my kids.
[00:38:35] I will ignore God's voice in that area of my life. I just. Maybe I won't tell him that, but I'm going to because it's my life.
[00:38:44] What happens with my business and at work with me, that's mine. It's not God's.
[00:38:50] I worked for my money. I shouldn't have to give any of that away.
[00:38:54] Selfishness manifests itself in different ways, doesn't it, for us, in our lives, all over the place. So how do we conclude?
[00:39:02] How?
[00:39:03] The title of the message is this. You can go to the next slide. How should we respond to the King?
[00:39:08] That's the question that we have to wrestle with today. How should you and I respond to the King?
[00:39:14] Here's the answer to that question.
[00:39:16] By treating him like a king.
[00:39:19] By treating him like a king in some way, each of the characters that we looked at actually had some proper response to the birth of the king.
[00:39:30] The angels, they evangelized. The shepherds, they testified, the magi, they magnified.
[00:39:36] And Herod, he was terrified.
[00:39:39] And for us today, we would also do right, to say, oh my goodness, he's the king.
[00:39:45] I gotta get my life in order. I gotta do something. Because I can't think that it's okay for me to have Jesus and all of the other stuff that Jesus doesn't want. I can't think that it's okay for me to take Jesus and for me to stay on my throne. And Herod knew his throne was in jeopardy because the real king had shown up. Friends, we would do wise to know this, that our throne is in jeopardy.
[00:40:07] And really, if you've never submitted to Jesus, your throne Is his. Your life is his. And if you've submitted to Jesus, what you've said is, jesus, I'm gonna get out of the throne of my life, and I'm gonna let you sit there.
[00:40:20] But sometimes we're like this as Christians, aren't we? Hey, Jesus. Can I have that back?
[00:40:24] Hey, Jesus. Oh, oh. Actually, I didn't want to do that. Can I have that back?
[00:40:29] The right way to respond to the king being born is to treat him as king, to let him stay in the throne no matter what happens.
[00:40:38] One question that you can ask Jesus multiple times between now and maybe this coming year as we enter into the new year, one question to kind of bring all of this full circle is this.
[00:40:50] Ask Jesus this question regularly through the day.
[00:40:53] How do you want me to respond to you as king in a way that I'm not already?
[00:41:00] How do you want me to respond to you as king in a way that I'm not already?
[00:41:04] And listen.
[00:41:06] Listen to see what he says.
[00:41:08] And I promise you this, if you listen, he will tell you.
[00:41:12] He's not gonna say, you know what? You're good. It's fine. I don't want any more of your life.
[00:41:17] He's gonna say, I'm ready to take one more step into your life. Ask him, how do you want me to make you the king? Is there a part of my life that you're not the king? Cause if there is, show me that I'm ready to get out of the throne of that part of my life and let you be king. And maybe for some of you today, that means trusting in him as your Lord and savior for the first time.
[00:41:38] If you've never trusted in Jesus as your Lord and savior, do that today.
[00:41:42] Treat him as he is, the savior of the world. Let's pray.
[00:41:46] Lord Jesus, we're grateful that we're able to come together today to sing songs and to open your word, to be reminded of the power that you brought into the world when you came, how you literally altered, completely changed the course that humanity was going down. And you brought hope. You bring joy. You can help us experience peace in a way that we never could before.
[00:42:11] Lord, I ask this morning that you would help us to see you not just in the cradle, that we would rejoice with the fact that you went to the cross, and also that we would treat you as king, that we would see the whole picture of Christmas, the cradle to the cross, to your kingdom. In our life, Lord, as we consider all of these things this morning, we. We're grateful that your spirit is real and living inside of us.
[00:42:40] For those here today who have never trusted in you, Lord, I pray that you would show them again your beauty and your power. And through that, Lord, we know that you will do great work in our lives. In Jesus name, amen.
