Wise Men Seek Him

Transcript

This morning’s passage comes from Matthew 2, verses 1 through 12.

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, In 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,

— Matthew 2

(ESV)

and ascertained them from 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, and they fell down and worshipped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by

— Matthew 2

(ESV)

another way. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Thank you, Carly. Merry Christmas, family. It’s good to be here with you this morning. We won’t be able to do this again until 2033, so that’s like 11 or 12 years from now. Okay. It’s pretty cool. I know for some of you, it’s really challenging to get the family together and make your way to service this morning, but I’m so glad you did, because this is what Christianity is all about, coming together with God’s people and celebrating the birth of our rescuing king. Would you take just a few moments to pray with me before we get started? Ask for the Lord’s help.

Three Responses to the King

Father, what a joy it is to come together with your people on Christmas morning and open up your world to us. And open up your word. One of the greatest gifts we have been given is your word. And so we pray this morning, O Lord, that you would give us the help of the Holy Spirit to unwrap this gift, to see what is contained in your word so that we might be mastered by it. May the explaining of your word and the beauty contained in your text cause us to worship with joy because of Christ our King. We pray these things in our mighty King Jesus’ name. Amen. Well, over the last five weeks or so, we have been going through our Advent series. And through that Advent series, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we have selected various portions of Scripture that in some way are connected to the nativity scene.

So we try to do that as best we could. So if you were to take a look at the standard nativity scene, you would likely see the same characters. Maybe you have one in your house or your neighbor has one in their front yard, highly unlikely in Portland. But if you were to take a look at the scene, of course, you would see the same characters. You would have the baby Jesus sitting in a feeding trough as a makeshift crib. You would definitely have Joseph and Mary kind of kneeling down before this makeshift crib. You would have various shepherds around the scene. And obviously you’d have animals to lend authenticity to the fact that they are shepherds. And then you would have these three other strange looking figures. It wouldn’t look like first century Jews. They would have more elaborate clothing. These three men would commonly be known as the wise men

or the three kings. What’s interesting about these three kings that are in the nativity scene is that the Bible doesn’t place them at the actual birth of Jesus. The Bible doesn’t tell us that there were only three of these men. And the Bible doesn’t tell us that these men were kings. So this means that the Christmas song, the Christmas song, We Three Kings is significantly incorrect, or at least a little bit shaky. Now before you go home and take the three wise men out of your nativity scene or purposely not pack them in when you put your decorations away, let me just say that just because history and tradition and sentimentalism has embellished the story of the wise men doesn’t take away from the substance or significance concerning their part in the storyline of Christ, the newborn king. In fact, there is a reason why Matthew’s gospel

has the account of the wise men immediately following the genealogy and the birth of Jesus. And that’s because the story of the wise men help us to better understand the kind of king that was born in Bethlehem. The wise men show us that God has come to rescue all kinds of people from all kinds of different backgrounds and different regions and even from different religions. And the story of the wise men illustrates for us the typical ways in which people respond to the reality of this born king in Bethlehem. And Matthew’s gospel, which alone speaks about the wise men, is perhaps the most Jewish of all gospels. If you don’t know, there are four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But Matthew’s gospel is the most Jewish. Matthew, more than any other gospels, addresses in large part the Jewishness of our Christian faith. But what’s interesting is that

even though Matthew’s gospel is the most Jewish gospel, it is the gospel that speaks most explicitly about non-Jews, or what you might call Gentiles. And that’s because Matthew wants to emphasize that God has come in Jesus Christ to save not just the Jews, but all kinds of people from all nations. Now this is made explicitly clear in Matthew’s gospel when you get to the end of his gospel in what’s called the Great Commission, Matthew 28, verses 19 and 20.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

— Matthew 28

(ESV)

So we see clearly the significance of all nations at the very end of Matthew’s gospel. But what we often fail to see is that the emphasis on all nations is also in the beginning of Matthew’s gospel.

So this theme of all nations, it kind of functions as the bookends of Matthew’s gospel, along with this massive theme, Emmanuel, God with us. So this is why at the end of the Great Commission, it says, and behold, I am with you, Emmanuel, God with us, always to the end of the age. And then at the very beginning of the book of Matthew, Matthew 1, 23, behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. And so right out of the gate, beginning with the genealogy, and most explicitly in our text, you kind of see this reverse engineering of the Great Commission, where instead of Jesus calling us to go into all nations because God is with us, in our text this morning here, God calls all nations to himself to reveal that God is with us.

And this is really a fascinating part of Matthew’s gospel. But perhaps what is most fascinating about our text this morning is that although this narrative happened some 2,000 years ago, if we unpack this text in a way that moves beyond the sentimentalism of Christmas and see it for what it really is, we will find that this story speaks the same truth to us today, which means that this passage is incredibly relevant for us in our world this morning. In fact, as we move through this text and engage with the various characters in the story, what you will see is the same responses to this king 2,000 years ago is the exact same way that people respond to this king today in our culture. And those responses are how I’ve broken up our text this morning. And so we’ll look at these responses in three categories.

Spiritually Seeking

Because the whole Advent series, the other pastors have been using alliterations, I decided to spice things up a little bit and use no alliterations. Okay? So we’ll look at it in three categories. Spiritually seeking, religious indifference, and agnostic hostility. Okay? So let’s begin in verse 1 with spiritually seeking. 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. So soon after Jesus was born, probably when Jesus was around 18 months or just a little under two years, wise men from the east came seeking Jesus. Now, this reality in itself is incredible because what this means is that there were people from an extremely pagan world

in the east seeking after the one true God of Israel. Now, how in the world does this happen before the Great Commission? Well, before we can answer that question and to better help understand the story, we need to ask a few preliminary questions. Namely, who are these wise men and how did they come to know about this king who was born in Judea? Well, first, these wise men who are actually called Magi, they were essentially a tribe of pagan priests from what you might call pre-Islamic Arabia. Okay? These wise men were deeply involved in astrology and astronomy. They were both pagan and spiritual, which kind of sounds like a contradiction, but this wouldn’t be altogether different from what we see today with the New Age movement or the occult. In fact, here’s what’s interesting. It’s from the word Magi that we get the word magic

or magician, which is just another way of saying sorcery. And so this kind of gives you a framework for the kinds of things that these Magi were involved with. So to be clear, the Magi, the pagan, they were spiritually sensitive, but in every way pagan in their spiritual practices. In fact, it was their pagan practice of astrology that in some mysterious and supernatural way led them to Jesus, which is quite interesting if you think about it. Here you have these pagan priests engaged in occultic or New Age practices that are seeking Jesus and through their practices being led to Jesus, which is very strange and it’s not very typical for people to find Jesus through their pagan practices. But just because it’s atypical doesn’t mean that God can’t use their pagan pursuits to make himself known or to draw people to himself. See, the truth is

God sits sovereignly above all of our affairs, all of our pursuits, even the ones that are wicked. And he uses whatever methods he desires to bring us to him. So though these were pagan men, they were seekers, sincerely seeking God the only way they knew how, which was through the stars. And here is what’s crazy. God uses their sincere spiritual stargazing to lead them to the Savior by using a star. Now that can be quite provocative, really, but more than provocative and more than strange is that we see the heart of God who makes himself known and draws all kinds of people to himself, even those completely immersed in pagan practices in a new age world. This is amazing. Now, the Magi in their spiritual pursuit, well, they come to find that Jesus, this newborn king, is somewhere in the region of Judea or Jerusalem

because they’re being directed by the star. But the question that runs through my mind is how they even knew about this newborn king. I mean, they were only willing to follow this star because they had some kind of understanding that the star was going to lead them to the king. But how did they know about this king? Now, here’s where it gets really interesting. Almost 600 years before the birth of Jesus, the Babylonians from the pagan east went to war with Judea, God’s people in the west, and Judah was conquered by Babylon. And as a result, there was this massive deportation of Jewish people from Jerusalem into Babylon. So what this meant was that because God’s people, the Jews, were exiled from Jerusalem into Babylon, there was, for the very first time in the east, a witness of the one true God. Information was being leaked

about the God of Israel by the Jewish people who were being held in captivity. Now, out of all the exiled Jews in Babylon, there was this one man in particular who had a massive amount of influence on the Babylonians, and his name was Daniel. Now, many of you might be familiar with Daniel in the Bible, the one who was thrown into the lion’s den for praying to his God, who was protected by God. I’m talking about that Daniel. That’s the Daniel. Okay, but for those of you who are not familiar with Daniel, Daniel was a prophet of God who rose to prominence because of his unique gift of interpreting dreams. And because of his gift and his reputation, he eventually was brought before the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, because Nebuchadnezzar had some strange dreams going on that he needed interpreted. Okay? Which made Daniel a very good resource

for the king. And this gave him a lot of influence in the Babylonian kingdom. Now, just think about this for a second. This Jew, exiled from Judea, was brought into this kind of pagan, secular culture, and he is given favor, influence. And this ultimately landed him a job as the administrator over Babylon. That’s crazy. And here’s what’s up. One of the primary roles of Daniel as an administrator of Babylon was that he was the chief minister over this strange little group called the Magi. Okay? And it’s likely because of Daniel’s influence over the Magi, his faithful and consistent witness, his knowledge of the Hebrew scriptures, his relentless pursuit of praying, the story of how God rescued him from the lion’s den, that the Magi had come to find out about the coming king of the Jews in Jerusalem. And this knowledge of the coming king

of the Jews that likely came from Daniel was passed down for six centuries. Until the Magi saw this once-in-a-lifetime star rising in the West. And that’s when everything clicked. And being the sincere seekers that they were, they set out from modern-day Arabia and made their way to modern-day Jerusalem. Which in the first century, brothers and sisters, is no small thing. These men traveled some 1,800 miles on horses, not camels, on horses to find this newborn king. Which is quite a commitment. And what was the primary reason for their seeking of this king? Well, the text tells us. Worship. They sought him because they desperately wanted to worship him. Because if what Daniel taught the Magi was right about this king some 600 years earlier, then the Magi were certain that this king was going to be a different kind of king. He would be a king

that reigns over all other kings. An eternal king with an eternal kingdom. And this is why they travel 1,800 miles to worship him. And listen, I hope you see this backstory of the Magi as more than just a history lesson. I know some of you might be into history. I know my son is into history. That’s great. But this is more than just data points along the way. What I really hope you see is the powerful and compassionate God of the universe who sovereignly controls the cosmos, who uses even the stars to do his bidding, who moves mercifully on pagan men and makes them seek him, who allows kingdoms to be conquered so that he can conquer the hearts of all nations so that they might come to find him and worship him. This is so much more than just history. This is how our God

moves in our world to make himself known. And I wonder if you are here this morning sincerely seeking. Have you been searching for God, trying to find him in nature, trying to find him in your own personal spirituality? Can I tell you this morning, you don’t need to keep searching. God can be found in Jesus Christ. And what better day for you to come and know this king of the universe than on the day that Christians celebrate the birth of this king. If you seek him sincerely, he will make himself known to you and he will save you. What I find so interesting about this story is that while God makes him known to these pagan people who have very little knowledge of him so that they might worship him, the religious leaders in this story who supposedly know everything about God, well, they have hearts

Religious Indifference

that are hardened towards him and they refuse to worship him. And you see that clearly in verse 3 with religious indifference. 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 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. Before we dive into the text, it’s interesting. Why was Herod and the rest of Jerusalem troubled by the presence of these wise men? Well, because Herod was technically king of the Jews. He was actually appointed by the Roman Empire to be king of the Jews.

Now, during the time of Jesus’ birth, you essentially had two world powers, two dominating forces, Rome in the west and Babylon in the east. And so when these magi from Babylon roll into town in the Roman-controlled region of Jerusalem, everyone in the town was troubled, especially Herod. And this, by the way, is how you can know that there was more than three wise men. Because three dudes rolling in from Babylon into Jerusalem would be no threat to anyone. No one would care. But a caravan of wise men with an entourage of 200, 300 men coming from the east to hail a new king of the Jews? Well, that would be a strong enough presence and political threat and that was enough to get Herod and the people in an uproar. I mean, could you imagine these two world forces colliding in this little,

relatively unknown town of Judea? This would create quite a stirring in the city. And of course, the wise men, when they finally get to Jerusalem, they first come to Herod. Because why not? It’s like going to the courthouse in Portland. Or where our city officials are. Because this is Herod’s domain. He is the current king of the Jews. He would know all things about his kingdom. He’s obviously aware that there is this newborn king of the Jews. But Herod, he’s not only troubled, he’s also clueless about this newborn king. And so what does he do? He grabs these Jewish religious scholars to help him figure out what this is all about. And what’s crazy is the chief priests and the scribes who are the religious elite, the scholars of the day, they know exactly where to find the newborn king. They know the scriptures so well that they

immediately tell Herod, this king is in Bethlehem. He’s in Bethlehem. Now, how did these religious leaders know this? Well, it was prophesied some 700 years earlier by God’s prophet Micah. In fact, the religious leaders quote to Herod from the Hebrew scriptures the prophecy of Micah in Micah 5

.

But you, O Bethlehem, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from old, from ancient of days.

— Micah 5

(ESV)

That’s just making reference to this eternal king that was coming. So the religious scholars, they knew what was up. But what’s so hard for me to understand is that if the religious leaders knew that the Messiah, the long-anticipated king of the Jews was born in Bethlehem, why in the world were they not there to welcome Him

and worship Him as the messianic king? And it’s here you see the massive difference between the magi and these religious scholars. And that is that the religious scholars were not seekers of the king. They were seekers of knowledge. Which is often the case when it comes to religious people. They know a lot of things about God. They know a lot of things about the Bible. They can kick facts to you all day long about what Christians believe. But they fail to pursue the king in worship and obedience. I mean, what good is there having this vast knowledge about God if you don’t know God? Your theology, brothers and sisters, means nothing if it doesn’t lead you to worship and obedience. And what a rebuke this would have been for the Jewish religious leaders. That they would get outdone in every possible way by the pagans.

The ones entrusted with the Hebrew scriptures, they get outshined by these New Age pagans who search for God through the stars. And we’ve seen this before when we looked at the book of Jonah. The pagans outshined the prophet. This consistently happens all the time. And I wonder if this is the heartbeat of your heart. Are you so religious but indifferent to making Jesus the king of your heart and your world? Listen, knowing things about God won’t save you or change you or help you find purpose in life. Kids, going to Sunday school doesn’t make you a Christian. Just because your parents believe in Jesus doesn’t make you a believer in Jesus. You have to know this Jesus. He has to become your Lord and Savior for you to be a Christian. You need to know Christ Himself. And to know Him means to take Him

Agnostic Hostility

for who He is. The King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and the Savior of sinners. And to know Him means to obey Him and to worship Him with the entirety of your life. And listen, to be quite honest with you, there is nothing neutral about this King. You either embrace Him or you reject Him. To be indifferent to this King is to reject this King. And if that’s you, you need to take what you know about Jesus intellectually and push it into your heart and begin to know Him experientially and personally. Let Christ rule and reign in your heart and make Him Lord of your life on this Christmas morning. And finally, the text shows us the third disposition that people have when confronted with this King, which is agnostic hostility. We see that in verse 7. 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. Now first glance with no knowledge or history of the character of Herod, you might deduce, well, he also is a seeker longing to worship this newborn king. But Herod is far from a seeker and is more of a savage. Herod is a very wicked man. And when he hears news about this king, he immediately perceives this newborn king as a threat. He is a threat to Herod in every way, personally, positionally, politically. See, if there’s to be a newborn king of the Jews, then what does this mean for Herod? It means his reign and success

will come to an end. It means he will no longer reap the benefits of ruling over the Jewish people. It means he will be stripped of his political power and his privilege, which means his whole identity and autonomy is done with. And so what does Herod do? He immediately begins to plot and scheme. Herod does what most wicked people do when they face this kind of threat. In a desperate move of self-preservation, they plot, they scheme, they do all kinds of wicked things to keep their identity and to preserve their human autonomy. And you can see the shadiness of Herod, the duplicit nature of Herod. You get a small glimpse into his character when he says, oh, wise men, you know, thank you so much for coming to seek this king. Please, would you do me this solid? When you find him, come back to me

and let me know who he is and where he is so that I can go and I can pay homage to him and bestow upon this king all the wonderful blessings for his coming kingship. I want to know him. It’s bogus. It’s deceitful. It’s wicked. In a matter of moments, Herod, so good on his toes, he conjures up this plan to bait the wise men into locating this king, not to worship him, but to eliminate him because he is a threat. In fact, what you see later on in this chapter is that the wise men, they never make it back to Herod. So Herod sends his soldiers to eliminate every male child in that particular region two years and under. Herod was a savage king who cared only about himself so much so that he was willing to do the unthinkable to preserve his position

and his autonomy. And this is perhaps the most evil thing you could possibly do. Thousands, thousands of children. And the thing is, Herod knew nothing about this king. He knew nothing about this king. And yet, Herod hated him. He hated him so much that he would do anything to get rid of him. And you see, this isn’t altogether different from people today. They know nothing about the God that we worship, but they hate him. In fact, for many people, they don’t even believe the God we worship exists and they still hate him. And why do they hate him? Why do people hate Jesus? Because Jesus is the greatest threat to their identity and their autonomy. They don’t want to be told how to live. They want to do whatever they want to do on their own terms. They want to be their own kings, the rulers of their own domain.

And they perceive Jesus and his message on how we ought to live as the greatest threat to their happiness. They want to love. They want tolerance. But the only way they can do that is to hate Jesus and be intolerant of those who love Jesus. And I wonder if that’s you this morning. Maybe you’re here out of obligation. Maybe your parents brought you here this morning. You don’t even really want to be here. Maybe you felt compelled to come here because a coworker invited you and you’re finally like, dude, all right, I’ll go. I’ll go. But in your heart, you hate the God that you don’t even know. I want to tell you this morning that all the Christians in this room, at one time, to some degree, we hated God too. We wanted nothing to do with this God. But we came to experience

the love of God. You know, the very thing the world professes to want, love over hate, is precisely what God has done in Jesus. His love has conquered our hate. In fact, this is why God came, born as a baby, to save those who hate God because they love their sin so much. And how did he love us? By taking all the sin that we have committed in our hatred towards God and dying in our place. The Bible tells us that the penalty of our sin is eternal separation from God. But God came in human form, born in a manger, died on a cross, to pay for the death that we deserve so that we might be saved from the punishment of our sin and have everlasting peace with God. Do you want to be saved from your sin this morning? Come to Jesus. Come to Jesus.

The Blueprint for Worship

He will save you. His love will conquer your hate. And if you want to know more about this Jesus, there are so many people in this room who have come to know the love of God that want nothing more than to share with you how they experienced the love of God and how you can find freedom in this King Jesus. Ask the person next to you after the service. They would love to talk to you about that. And what I love, brothers and sisters, about this passage is that it not only showcases the various dispositions of those who are confronted with this King Jesus, but it also leaves us with a blueprint of how we ought to approach this King Jesus. And we see this in the second half of verse 9. 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, and they fell down, and they worshipped him. And here’s what’s so wonderful about this narrative and this blueprint for us. Is that wherever you find yourself this morning, seeker, indifferent, full of animosity, you can approach Jesus the same way these wise men approach him. They seek him, and they don’t stop until they find him. And when they finally find him, they fall down at his feet, and they worship him. That is the blueprint that we see in God’s Word. So seek him with this endless pursuit until you find him. And when you find him, fall at his feet and worship him as King of kings and Lord of lords.

A lot of people wonder if the magi understood in full what this baby would eventually do. Did they understand that this king born in Bethlehem was an eternal king? Was this baby indeed God born in human flesh who would die for the sins of the world? Did they know? Well, I think the answer is yes. And I think their understanding is reflected in the gifts that they offer to Jesus. Second half of verse 11. Then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way. Though these gifts were extravagant gifts that were totally appropriate and fit for a king, there is so much more behind the reason for these specific gifts. They bring this king gold because gold was traditionally part of a royal visit.

But that’s not the only reason. In the Old Testament, in the book of 1 Kings, we get this account of King Solomon who was visited by this Queen Sheba from another region. When she comes to visit him, she brings the king gold because King Solomon was the reigning king. This is what you do. Here’s what’s interesting. Jesus, who receives gold from the Magi, well, He just happens to be from the same bloodline as King Solomon and from Solomon’s father, King David. But they also recognize that this king, he would be greater than King Solomon and greater than King David because he would be the eternal king promised from the very beginning of time, which is why they also bring incense because they know he is far from an earthly king, that his reign and his rule far surpasses an earthly kingdom. They know that he is

a priestly king. Old Testament priests were given very specific instructions for temple worship and of the many instructions, incense was to be burned and more specifically, uncut frankincense was the only incense allowed to burn inside the temple at the altar because frankincense was considered holy and pure. That’s why it was uncut. The wise men knew that this king would be holy and pure, uncorrupted and divine. And finally, which is probably most telling, they offer him myrrh, which if you don’t know, myrrh is a burial spice. And what a strange and provocative gift to give a baby. Who would give a gift used for death just after the birth of a child? Only people who understood that this baby was born to die. That perhaps the greatest significance of this king was not his earthly reign, but what he would accomplish through his death. They give myrrh

because they know that this king will die for the sins of the world. And what’s interesting about this gift of myrrh is that it prophetically pointed forward to the day when men named Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea would wrap Jesus’ dead body with the amount of myrrh customary for a king. The magi knew. They knew. And that’s why they gave those very specific gifts. And what’s so amazing about this whole story is how the magi came to understand all these magnificent details concerning this eternal king. They were pagans. They weren’t raised in a religious home or a Christian home. How did they know? Through the witness of a faithful follower of the one true God who did not consider his exile, his suffering into Babylonian captivity as something to be wasted. But instead, he exploited it to advance the message of the one true God to declare this message

in a pagan world to point pagan people to this baby king born in a manger that would come to save the world from their sins. And brothers and sisters, this is the whole point of Christmas. Not only to celebrate the birth of this saving king, but to use this date to exploit it as an opportunity to advance the message of our saving king in a pagan world to point pagan people to the birth of our rescuing king who has come to save the world from their sins. Christmas is about declaring the birth of our rescuing king to a world who needs to be rescued. And because of this rescuing king, we can celebrate, we can rejoice and worship just like the magi, exceedingly with great joy. Let’s pray. Our Father and our God, we are so thankful for what your word declares to us this morning.

What an amazing reminder on Christmas that the greatest gift we have been given is the gift of King Jesus. The long-anticipated rescuing king from old has been born to do what he came to do and that is to die for the sins of this world. And we, as your followers, have been the recipients of the greatest gift humanity has ever known. And I pray, oh Lord and God, that the reality of that would occupy our hearts and our worship this morning as we celebrate with family, as we eat and as we open up gifts. May we be reminded of the gift we have in Jesus. And for those who are here this morning who are seeking but have not yet found you, for those who are here this morning who are indifferent to you, for those who are here who might be full of animosity,

our Lord and God, would you supernaturally intervene and make yourself known using any means necessary to draw them to yourself. We’ve seen how you’ve done it in your word this morning. Do it again, we pray, oh Lord Jesus. Be the star that leads them to the sun. And we pray these things in the name of our risen king. Amen.