Magi - Real Men of Christmas: Wk 3

1122 presents Real Men of Christmas. Today we salute you, Mr. Too-Many-Lights-On-Your-House-Guy. For 11 months out of the year, you're cool, calm and collected. But after Thanksgiving, you flip the switch. Most men have one tub of lights, not you. You took being the light of the world literally. You don't just hang lights, you go to war with darkness. Why worry about fiscal responsibility when Santa is counting on you? Is it over the top? Yes. Do your neighbors kind of hate you? Probably. But what we know under the lights, power cords and authentic one-tenth scale blow-up reindeer set is a heart for making Christmas magical for your family. The wise men might have brought gold, frankincense and myrrh, but you lit up the whole neighborhood. Mr. Too-Many-Lights-On-Your-House-Guy. Amen, amen, amen. Well, Merry Christmas, church. How we doing? You look good. If you got your Bibles, you're better. Matthew chapter 2 is where we are going to be. We are in week three of this series called Real Men of Christmas, and it is good to be back. I've been out for a couple of weeks. But let's be honest, Pastor Charles and Pastor Britt and Pastor One did an amazing job. Amen? Amen, amen, amen. We're never going to put a slouch up here, so don't worry about it. All right, hey, I haven't got to tell you this, Merry Christmas, but I love me some

Christmas, man. I do. I love it. I love it. I'm not a curmudgeon. I'm not the kind of preacher that bashes on all the commercialization of it because I love it. I love all the things. I love the movies. Don't you love the movies? I love it, man. Home Alone? Love that one. Home Alone is about the gospel. Did you know that? You need to know this. If Kevin can fight his way through the wet bandits and make it to church on a snowy night, you can make it to church. Amen? Amen. And he walks in there, and he meets this old guy who is the Christ figure. And when he first meets old man Marley, what's he doing? He's salting the earth because he's a picture of Jesus. If you look real closely in the church, he's got a pierced hand all the way through. Did you notice that? And then by the end of this, and then in the church, what Kevin does, Kevin confesses some things, and he repents. He's like, when I go home, I'm going to do some things differently. I'm going to treat my family different. And then when Kevin does not have the ability to overcome the burglars, the wet bandits

on his own, what happens? Somebody comes and does for him what he cannot do for himself. I'm telling you, Home Alone is a Christian movie. Praise God for that. All right? I love it. I love the dumb ones, too. The other hardcore Christian movies, like Elf, love it. And then I love the greatest Christmas movie of all time, which is Die Hard. Not a Christian movie. I'm not condoning it. Don't watch it with your children. There's naked people. It's very sinful, but it's just the best one. That's just a categorical fact. I love it. I love the decorations. I don't really go crazy at my house. I ain't got time for that. But I love when you do it. I'm going to come visit your house. I grew up in the kind of family where some of my family members, we loved Christmas so much. We didn't do Christmas just at Christmastime. We decorated for the whole year. You know these people? My Uncle Phillip, I can remember. It was Fourth of July. We were going to his house for a pig picking, you know, a barbecue. And we were pulling up to Uncle Phillip's house, and there were his lights of all the

colors on his chain link fence in July still on. And I go, Daddy, how come Uncle Phillip's got his Christmas lights on? He said, Boy, you can't hide money. That's what he said. At my house, we didn't even take the Christmas tree down. Fact. We never took it down. We had an artificial tree. By February, when somebody thought about it, we didn't take it down. We slid it into the Christmas closet. That's right. We had a closet. We would just open the door, and we'd put the tree in it. So if it's like October, Halloween, the devil's holiday, you could just, if you need a little Christmas spirit, you could peek in there, and it was there the whole year. And then the day after Thanksgiving, we'd drag that puppy out. We'd put it in its spot. We knew which way it went because we only decorated the side that people could see. You'd plug it in. The lights didn't work. Did we replace the lights? We didn't take the lights off. We just went to Walmart and added another strands of lights. That thing weighed 900 pounds when I was in the fifth grade, I'm telling you, okay? I love it. I love the sweaters. I ain't going to wear one, but I like when you do it. I love the family time. I love the parties. I love it all.

And just to let you know how shallow I am, I love the gifts. Oh, I love it. I love the white elephant gifts. I love the real gifts. I love the sentimental gifts. I love it all. I love the gifts. I'm telling you, one of the greatest Christmases we ever had was about five years ago. our children puppies. Puppies. We named them Georgia and Dooley because we're Christians, all right? But when you see my little kids come alive or those little schnauzers come running down the steps, man, there's nothing like it. I love receiving gifts, too. Two years ago, my wife, for Christmas, surprised me with a 2023 Harley Davidson motorcycle back out. Take that, wives! Get into it, all right? The two best Christmases of my whole life. Sixth grade and 50 years old, I got a motorcycle for both of them. Man, I love it. Now listen, when you get the right gift at the right time, it can mean a lot, right? Because that right gift, what it communicates is that I love you, I know you, and I value you. Now, you can get the wrong gift, too, so you got to be careful. Fellas, this is for you. Be real careful. Like, if you give your wife a gym membership, she's like, I don't even go to the gym. Okay, you know? I know a dishwasher makes a lot of sense to you, okay? I'm like, come on. Or any of those books for dummies. I'd hold off on that. I wouldn't do any of those things. But man, when you get the right gift, it can mean something. In fact, the reason that Christians have adopted gift exchange at Christmas, first and foremost, the early church began to give and receive gifts, because ultimately, they said Christmas was that time of the year when God so loved the world that he gave a gift. He gave the gift of his Son, Jesus Christ, to do for us what we could not do for ourself. And then in our text, in Matthew chapter 2, because the Magi, the wise men, they showed up on the scene, and what they did is they brought gifts and they gave them to the king. Then the early church began to give and receive gifts. And so I want

you to win at being a gift giver this year. Matthew chapter 2, we're gonna look at it, says this. It says, now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king. Herod is called Herod the Great, but he was not great. He built a bunch of great facilities, but he was a terrible man. He was an evil man. And what's interesting is that his granddad converted to Judaism. He was not born Jewish, but he converted to Judaism. And so Herod grew up in a family that believed in the Old Covenant, the Old Testament. And so not by birth, but by practice, he was a Jew, although he did not adopt any of the practices himself. But when he was appointed as king, part of the title that he was given was king of the Jews. Herod was known as the king of the Jews. It says, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east. The Greek word for wise men is magi. Now, there's a lot of mistakes that we have in Western Christianity about these guys, okay. How many of you have three wise men in your nativity set? You got those three guys? I know you're afraid to raise your hand, okay. It's because the Bible, first of all, they're not kings. So like, you know, we three kings of Orion are. That's wrong. And the Bible never says there's three. They bring three gifts, but I'm giving Gretchen more than three gifts, and I'm not more than one person. It was probably an entire caravan of people, all right. And in all of those, in all of the manger scenes with the three, there's always a white dude, an Asian dude, and a black dude, okay. This is not the UN, all right. That's not how it goes. I don't know if people have made this stuff up. None of that is true. What's actually happened is the word magi gets translated as wise men, and it doesn't just mean like these are smart people, like randomly smart people. It was actually a governmental office that they held in Babylon, in Persia, and they were in charge of a couple of things. They were like theologically trained scientists, and they looked into the creation, and they interpreted dreams, and this is a really big deal. And so these wise men from the East show up on the scene. The Bible says they came to Jerusalem, and the reason that you go to Jerusalem is because they're looking for a king, and they would think that the king was found

in the capital. And so when they show up, verse 2, here's what he said. Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? And Herod was like, well who are you talking about? I'm the king of the Jews. He's intimidated by this. He's insecure about this, and they say, for we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. Now why in the heck would these wise men from Persia, from Babylon, travel 800 miles, which by camel, even if you didn't stop at a rest area or at Buc-ee's, it would take you about 40 days to travel to get there. Why in the world would they travel all of this way? Again, it's because these are theologically trained people who have been looking into creation, and here's how they even know to be looking for a Messiah, a king of the Jews. Because if you've been around Bible study, if you grew up in Sunday school, maybe you know this, 600 years before this, the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, because of Israel's unfaithfulness to God, God allows them to be taken over by the Babylonians, it was called the Babylonian Exile, Nebuchadnezzar comes in, he sacks Jerusalem, and he took the best and the brightest, he took the gifted class, the smartest of all the kids, and he brings them into Babylon because what he wants to do is he wants to brainwash them into Babylonian culture, that's what he does. And one of the kids that he took is a kid named Daniel, he also took Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, if you've ever heard of those guys, same people, same kind of group, all right? And so the wise men, the Magi, are mentioned six times in the book of Daniel, and their job, again, was to interpret the creation,

and their job was to interpret dreams, and King Nebuchadnezzar has this crazy dream, and none of the wise men can interpret it, and then Daniel shows up on the scene, and then Daniel interprets the dream rightly. And so what King Nebuchadnezzar does is he puts Daniel in charge over the wise men, the Magi, of Babylon, and what Daniel begins to do, through a whole series of things, and then there's the lions then, and all of that, what he begins to do is he begins to do Bible study with the wise men of Babylon. And these brothers, for 600 years, they begin to teach the Bible that they have been taught by Daniel the prophet, and for generation after generation after generation, they begin to point the Magi, the wise men, to the Old Testament, to the promises of God. And they say, fellas, we always have to be on the lookout. In the stars and in our dreams, we have to be on the lookout for this king, for this Messiah, for this rescuer who is gonna show up on the scene. And so then, one day, the Magi, they see this something in the sky. The Bible says a star. It's really just like a light in the sky. They see this thing, and something is different about it, and they think, what if it's true? And they travel all the way.

And here's why they were on the lookout for it. In Numbers, chapter 22, there is this bad king named Balak. And Balak wants to curse Israel, and so he gets a false prophet for hire named Balaam. And so he goes, Balaam, here's what I want you to do. I want you to prophesy a curse on Israel. And so Balaam is on his way to go curse Israel, but as he's on his way, God sends an angel, and he's gonna kill Balaam. And God allows the donkey that Balaam is riding to see the angel, and the donkey, on behalf of Balaam, moves out of the way and bumps Balaam's leg into the mountain, and Balaam gets mad at his pet because it won't do what he wants, and he beats his donkey. If you read that in the King James, it's awesome, okay? Happens three times. Goes out of the way, he smacks it. Goes out of the way, he smacks it. And then the Bible says that God gives this donkey the gift of speech, and the donkey's like, why are you beating me, man? And they had this whole conversation there. And then Balaam, the donkey beater, realizes, wait a minute, this is from God, and instead of cursing Israel, he gives a bunch of different oracles. And the fourth oracle that he gives is in Numbers chapter 24. This would have been some of the things

that Daniel would have taught the wise men, and the wise men would have been studying. And in Numbers 24, beginning in verse 15, the Bible says, and he took up his discourse, and he said, the oracle of Balaam, the son of Beor, the oracle of the man whose eye is open, the oracle of him who hears the words of God, and knows the knowledge of the Most High, who sees the vision of the Almighty, falling down with his eyes uncovered. And here's the oracle, verse 17. I see him, but not now. I behold him, but not near. A star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel. And there's this group of people, these Gentiles from a foreign land, and for generation after generation, they have been looking for this sign of this new ruler that would be coming out of Israel. And though God speaks to us all generally in his creation, he speaks specifically and reveals himself in his revealed word, and this is what's going on. He says, the wise men pack it all up, it was probably bunches and bunches and bunches of them, and they make their way to Jerusalem, and they go before King Herod. And they say, where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw the star that Numbers 24

that Balaam was talking about. We saw when it rose, and we have come to worship him. Verse three, and when Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, he was severely bothered, he was upset, he did not like this at all. And all of Jerusalem with him. In assembling all of the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. So Herod didn't know his Bible very well, but when they show up, and it's like, where is this king of the Jews? He's like, let me get the Bible experts. And so that's what he does. He gets all of the chief priests and the scribes, the people that study their Bible all the time, and he goes and he asks them, verse five, and they told him. They're like, this is easy. In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it was written by the prophet. And now he is going to quote a little bit from Micah, a little bit from Isaiah. 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 shall shepherd my people Israel. Again, God's general revelation gets them close, but you need the reveal word of God to get face to face with Jesus. Verse seven, and inherit some of the wise men secretly

and ascertain from them what time the star had appeared. It was almost two years ago, probably. And he sent them to Bethlehem, and here's what this government official said. Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word that I too may come and worship him. Here's something you need to know. Here's what God told him. Our government official asked us to grab his child, in fact, his baby Jesus. Here's what we got. And how many of you have told Jesus that we are going to have divine plans when it comes to our children in love? That you're going to love him. How many of you think about the preaching that when God says don't believe everything you hear, you're like yeah, but he works for the government. The word of God on our children has been around for a long time. And we are here at 1122 to say not on our watch, amen? Amen, all right. Verse nine, and after listening to the king, they went on their way, the wise men 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. So this is a different kind of star, okay? Now listen, don't be the kind of Christian

that gets caught up on the wrong details. The amount of commentators that spent pages trying to describe what this is in AD six, we know astronomers tell us that three of the planets lined up and it probably looked different or could have been Halley's Comet. Listen, man, if the one that spoke all things into existence just with a word from his mouth, if he wants to make a bright thing shine in the sky and run it around like an Etch-A-Sketch to get the wise men where they're supposed to do, he does what he wants, when he wants, with who he wants because he's the sovereign king of the universe, amen? Amen, so, all right. Verse 10, and when they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. If you knew this in Greek, they were like, joy to joy joy, that's what's going on here. They were very, very, very joyful. And when they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy and going into the house. Notice it says house, not manger, they weren't at the manger. Again, before, if you got wise men at your manger scene, at your house, it's fine. Your manger scene is not biblically accurate. I'm not saying you're going to hell, it's fine. You just put your faith in Jesus, but if you wanna be biblically accurate,

what happened, they got there much later. So you can take your little three guys from the manger, you probably need to add a few more people to them, and then bring them out to the garage. They're on their way. They're not there yet. You can pop them back in in July, 4th of July, bring them back in, like, we're here. Okay, so, they're at the house. Now, here's what I want you to see. In this event, I don't like to use the word story, this is not a story, okay? This isn't flannel graft, this isn't veggie tales, this is an actual event. Baby Jesus was born, and now they're at the house somewhere. Okay, and these people, these men from the east, they show up on the scene. And in this event, there's three different types of people here. There's three actual people, but there's types of people. There's Herod, who's the king, he's the most powerful, there's Herod, who's the king, he's the boss, and then there's the scribes and the chief priests, and then there's the magi. And I kinda wanna ask the question, I want you to look at this as you hold up the word of God as a mirror, and say, well, how am I approaching Christmas? You see, because two of them didn't find Jesus at all, and only one did.

And I don't want you to miss Jesus this Christmas. The first one is Herod. I mean, Herod's the boss, Herod's in charge. And when Herod hears that there's another king born as a baby, he goes, uh-oh, and don't miss this. Herod can't see King Jesus, because Herod can't see past Herod. Herod, when he hears about the king of the Jews, he begins to go, whoa, whoa, whoa, but what does that mean for my throne? What does that mean for me? What is this gonna cost me? And then fear and control begins to take over. He's insecure. He lives a lifetime of ego and insecurity. In fact, the historians tell us that Herod. Herod was so afraid that he was gonna lose his throne, he had his favorite wife murdered. By the way, if you got a favorite wife, you're not doing it right. He had two of his sons murdered because of fear and insecurity. Herod hates Jesus because of what he thinks it'll cost him. And he's threatened by this little kid. I got some terrible news. Some of you are Herod. And I can be too. Does that sting a little? God, what do you mean? I'm not like Herod.

I don't hate Jesus, I would never kill anybody. Man, you live a life, you live in the kind of world where you are the center of everything. And you live with that kind of egomaniacal attitude and that narcissism where everything has to revolve around you sitting on your throne. And you pay attention to what it does to your marriage. You pay attention to what it does to your relationship with your kids. You look in your wake, and we know people, and some of us are people, and there is a wake of body bags behind us because we sit on the throne of our own life because we refuse to bow down to Jesus Christ. And when it comes to Christmas, you'll say the right thing. Oh, let me know when Christmas Eve service is so I can go and worship him. But you have no, no kind of idea that you're gonna actually bow down and worship Jesus. You just wanna say the thing. And you go, well, hold on, hold on, hold on a second. I don't hate Jesus, I'm at church. Well, then why do you reject him as king and refuse to give up your own throne? You're like, well, no, I kind of believe in Jesus. Then why are you still ruling and reigning in your own life? If you claim Jesus as your king, then why do you continuously make excuses for blatant sin in your life as it's not a big deal? I can tell you why, because you don't know him.

Because you don't know him. And I'm talking about sin like greed and selfishness and just feeding of the flesh. But you go to church, you're definitely gonna come Christmas Eve. You just have no plans of bowing down and worshiping King Jesus, just like Herod. You see, Herod was afraid of this. What is he gonna take from me? What is he gonna take from me? I mean, if I do this Jesus thing, what is he gonna take from me? You know what my confession is? Oh, Jesus is a taker. He's gonna take all kind of stuff from you. You know what he's taken from me? He's taken my sin, my shame, my guilt, the condemnation. He's taken away a past that would disqualify me from standing in the presence of the king, and he has given me the gift of himself. Please don't be like Herod and miss Jesus. Please surrender your pride, surrender your ego, and bow down to King Jesus and allow him to sit on the throne, because he's the only one that deserves it. And I know, man, sometimes people are like, why are you so intense? Because I ain't got time to play church. I just don't have time to play church. I don't know how to explain this good.

I'm into it, man. I know what he did for me. Like I know what he did for me, and I know the freedom that he's given me, and I know what the gospel can do to change a life, and I see some of you just jacking around with the silliness of this world and kind of playing church a little bit, and I just, I've tasted and seen that he's good. I've experienced the blood of the cross. I've experienced the forgiveness, and I wish I could just reach in my soul and pull some out and jam it down your throat a little bit so it gets a little bit intense sometimes, okay? And I don't want you to miss him because you can't see past your own self. Don't be like Herod this Christmas. And some of you grew up in church, huh. Yeah, and some of you right now, especially you Southern Baptists that have come hang out with us, and you're like, you get them, pastor. All right, I got a word for you, too. There was a group of religious people. The scribes and the chief priests had all access to the word of God. They studied the Old Testament because they knew that their job was to be so close to the prophecies of the prophets and the covenants

that they would be the first ones to see the serpent crusher when he showed up on the scene. But by the time Jesus is actually born and Herod says, hey, where's the king of the Jews come from? And they're like, oh, that's Bethlehem. This is where it says right here in Micah. But they were so comfortable in their traditions and their religiosity, they didn't give a crap about going to find the king. You know why? They didn't think they needed him because they thought they were obeying the rules pretty good. I mean, think about this. If your job was to find the Messiah in the scriptures and a group of wise men show up from 800 miles away. By the way, don't you think at least one of you would be like, hey, can we come too? And they don't get off their blessed assurance, why? Because it would cost them too much. And so please, please, please, please don't miss Jesus this Christmas because of your comfort, because of your religion, and because of your traditions. Traditions are fine as long as they point to the source of what we're looking for. And then there's the magi, the wise men. First and foremost, they're Gentiles. What Matthew wants us to know, we're gonna spend all year next year studying the book of Matthew, okay?

The thing starts out with the whole world is invited to come and see the king and it's gonna end with, you take this kingdom to the whole world. That's Matthew right there. And so these magi, these outsiders, these Gentiles, they come from 800 miles away, 40-day journey on very little information. They got a star and a verse out of Numbers. And you know what? Imagine they have a little magi meeting. All right, boys, what if this is what Balaam was talking about? I mean, what if it's true? And one of them's like, it's gonna cost us a lot. He goes, it's worth it. Who's gonna tell Mrs. Magi? Okay, I will. Hey, Mrs. Magi, we gonna be gone for like two months. Why? What if it's true? And I'm just telling you, man, God has a special place in his heart for the person that's not sure, for the person that's searching, for the person that's seeking. Technically speaking, Jesus is not lost so you don't have to find him. He's the one looking for you. But from your own personal experience,

what it feels like is, what if it's true? Like some of you, you're watching this right now because you're just kind of kicking the tires on this whole Jesus thing. And you're leaning in because the ways of this world just hasn't worked for you. And you haven't shown up to like an actual church, you haven't come to 1122 yet, but you're watching one sermon and it turns into another sermon and another sermon and you're leaning in and you're like, all right, God, if you're real, I need a sign. I'm your sign. What if this right now is the thing to tell you God loves you and Jesus is the proof and he's into you leaning in? This is who the Magi are. God meets people in all kinds of different places wherever you are to invite them into a relationship with him. And I love this so much. This is why we are a movement for all people to discover and deepen our relationship with Jesus Christ. I keep this email in my room, in my office. And somebody on our team, Allie, who produces the services, she printed it out. And the reason it's so small is I don't, it's got too many cuss words for you to see it. I do, I have Galatians 110 and I have this email. And it reminds me of the seeker, like the Magi,

far from God, but asking, just maybe this is true. Okay, I hate to break your heart, I don't read a lot of my emails, but the subject on this one was dude. And it came at 1 a.m. So you know it's gonna be good, you know what I mean? Oh, let's see what dude has to say. So I click on it, subject, dude. Here's what it says, and it's very bad. So I apologize if you're easily offended, you're not gonna love it here anyway, so you can just figure it out. But here's what it says. It says, hey guy, I don't know who you are, but I stumbled on a YouTube of you doing some conference. I appreciate you, cuss word, the worst cuss word. He calls me an effer. For you bad, but it's not a heifer. The effer is a bad word. It's not a heifer that you would sacrifice on the atonement. No, no, no, effer. Now listen, I was in a fraternity, so I speak, I can interpret drunk, okay? This is actually a compliment. Now I know you baddest don't understand what's happening. Seriously, man, this is like, you know how Pastor One rightly pointed out, when you say bless your heart, sounds like a blessing, but it's actually a curse. This sounds like a curse, but this is like,

I love you, man, that's what it is, okay? He goes, I appreciate you, effer. You spoke to my heart. I focused on money and not my wife as much as I should have, and I'm sitting here, actually setting, I'm sitting here drunk as, eff word, crying like a baby. Dude, you're doing God's work, take care. That's it, man. Now listen. I've been to state school, tons of money going forward. Like I start all my classes, I have my formula for teaching, and I need Him to thank me. I gotta give what he promised and my parents AND my fiance, but maybe they don't agree. You don't have to, you know, you can promise me as much as you want it. Someday it's gonna come true. Make yourself clean before you come to him. They'll welcome you with open arms. He came to clean us, he came to die for us, The exact same thing, they don't expect you to worry. and God's got a special place in his heart That's what they expect you to do. for the person that's just reaching out, They fight enough with you,

just going, what if it's true? What if it's true? And so the magi show up just in case it's true, and I'm here to tell you wise men still seek him. Don't ever give up on a God who has not given up on you, because he sent his son Jesus to prove that he loves you. That's just true. Verse 10, and when they saw the star, they rejoiced, with great joy, and going into the house, notice not manger. They saw the child, not baby, that's okay. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. They did not worship Mary. They only worshiped Jesus, the Christ. And then, here's how they worshiped him. Here's the normative response for when you see Jesus for who he actually is. And then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. Now, there's a lot here. Last week, I was sitting right over there as Pastor One was preaching. And by the way, when he got done, I walked up to him and said, that was the perfect sermon. Was that not an incredible sermon? Now, a part of it is his accent. So when you hear his accent, you add like 15 IQ points to him, I get it. And when you hear mine, most of the time,

when you hear people with my accent, you're like, is he describing a NASCAR pit stop, or what is he doing? But whatever, I don't care. Incredible. He told me something, I didn't realize this. He said, in Luke chapter two, it's the only place where these three titles of Christ are all put together, Savior, Christ, Lord. And he's all three of those. He's Savior, he's Christ, and he's Lord. Well, these gifts here in Matthew chapter two point to the reality that Jesus is Savior, Christ, and Lord. That he gives him gold, why would you bring a baby gold? Because he's King. They'd bring him Frankincense. Frankincense was this incense stuff that would use in the temple, and it was a picture of your prayers being lifted up to God, so people could see them. Why, because he is a priest. That the Christ's job, a priest's job, is to connect people to God, that's what he came to do. And he's the Savior. That he came to pay our sin debt that we could not pay for ourselves. And that's why they gave him myrrh. Now listen, if you had your own kid's party, myrrh was used to prepare a body for burial. You can read about it in the end of the book of John. It's what they did to the body of Jesus. And so if you had your son's two-year-old party

and somebody brought gold, you'd be like, sweet. You know, and they brought you incense, you'd be like, you're probably a pothead, but we can talk about that later, that's different. But if they brought you embalming fluid, you'd be like, you ain't coming to my kid's birthday parties anymore, man. But this king came to die. This king did not simply come to rule and reign some sort of temporary kingdom. He came to rule and reign in the hearts of humanity and for all time. And the way that that had to happen is the sin of humanity had to be paid for on the cross. Christ did not simply die for us, he died instead of us. And so when they see Jesus for who he is, and when you see him for who he actually is, then this is how you respond. And by the way, here's what they did. They bowed down, they worshiped, and they brought gifts. Sound familiar? You know what we do at the end of every service? We say, hey, why don't you come and bow down and pray? And why don't we worship and make much of him? And why don't we bring to God our first and best? That's what we do, why? Because it's the normative, natural response to King Jesus, Christ the Lord. This is how they respond to Jesus. They gave joyfully and sacrificially as an act of worship.

This is a good time of year to ask. The end year is a good time for you to ask, is that how I have responded to Jesus? Have I bowed down? Have I laid my treasures at the feet of Jesus because I see him as king, or have I been selfish and greedy with my time and talent and treasures, with the gifts that he has given me? Do I think like Herod and go, what does this mean for me? Or do I think like the Magi and just throw it at the feet of Jesus? It's a good time to ask, am I like Herod? Like this Christmas, is it all about me? Or am I like the religious people, the chief priests? That, okay, I mean, you know, I was raised to tithe, so I'm gonna check that religious box, and I'm gonna make sure I just do the bare minimum to be okay. Or are we gonna be like the wise men, just to live a life of extravagant generosity and generosity and generosity? Extravagant generosity, because that's how Christ has taught us to live. You see, sometimes nonprofits and churches talk about year-end giving. You know what's cool about year-end giving? Is if you're honest. I know this is a church, there's no place for honesty, but if you would take a minute and ask the question,

this year, have I been rich towards God or not? Year in giving is an opportunity to reconcile that thing. And you say, God, I wanna live the kind of life like these magi live. They claim you as king, they claim you as Lord, Christ, Savior, and I wanna worship you with my whole life. And so the way we do that typically is we bring our first and best to Jesus. The reason you bring it through the church, the local church, is because he is the head of the local church, because Jesus is the head of the body. So you're not bringing it to me, you are bringing it to him. But the Bible talks about tithes and offerings. And so a good question to ask at Christmas is this, I mean, I started this thing out with this, the right gift communicates I know you, I love you, and I value you. Well, let me ask you, what do you think Jesus wants for Christmas this year? You ever think about that? You probably don't think about that. I'm getting to be buddies with this guy named Ruslan KD, okay, he's like a YouTube online Christian influencer guy. He's cool, I'm not cool, I'm old, but I wanna be helpful. And, but he's cool. And what I love about it, he kinda talks about all the current events and things, but he consistently comes back through the scriptures over and over and over and over. And he wrote a book called Godly Ambition.

I love that, Philippians 2 says you should do nothing out of selfish ambition. But we should have this godly ambition and his tours and his conferences and his stuff. He says this, I wanna equip people to live a life that bless God. So I've been listening to him for the last few weeks or so, and he keeps talking about blessing God. And I began to think, anytime we use the words blessing God, we almost always say, God, will you bless me? Well, how do you bless God? Well, you gotta ask, well, what does he want? What does he want? Well, first and foremost, he wants you. I mean, that's it, he wants you. In worship and in prayer, in devotion, he wants you. And how do you bless God? Well, if you were gonna give Jesus a Christmas present this year, what are you gonna bring him if you wanna bless him? Well, I'm here to tell you, he don't need gold, frankincense, and myrrh anymore. You know where Jesus is now? He's not a baby in a manger. He's sitting on his throne at the right hand of God the Father and they got so much gold in heaven, they use it as asphalt. You realize that? I mean, it just paves the streets. What is he gonna do with gold?

And he doesn't need frankincense for prayers to be lifted up to heaven. In fact, the Bible says that King Jesus is praying on our behalf and he has the right ear of God the Father right now. And he doesn't need myrrh to prepare his body for death because he did that one time and he ain't ever doing it again. And so what in the world do we bring King Jesus? Well, I got good news. He shared with me his Christmas list. Gretchen and Reagan are Malha, they're the best. Gretchen used to be a pain to buy for. Now she just sends me the list. I'm like, you're gonna have zero surprises, but it's gonna be right, all right? Reagan has a PowerPoint thing, the sheet literally, and you just click the links and it all shows up, okay? Jesus sent me what he wants for Christmas this year. And as you notice when you walked in, you see these compassion packets on the right and left. Okay? In the year of High Water, that's a ATP Compact. Especially if you can communicate with things a lot easier, okay? What do you bring a King? In Matthew chapter 25, Jesus tells us what he is looking for. Matthew 25, Jesus tells three parables.

In Matthew chapter 24, the disciples asked, hey boss, what's the end of the world gonna be like? And it's spooky. And he tells the stories back to back to back. He tells the story, he tells the parable of the virgins, doesn't mean what you think it means, it means don't miss the party, put your faith in Christ. He tells the parable of the talents, which means don't waste your life. Leverage everything you have for the advancement of the kingdom of God until I return. And then he tells the parable of the sheep and goats. He says, if you know me, you will be about my business. And so here's what he says. So this is how I know what Jesus wants for Christmas. Here's what you can give me. In Matthew chapter 25, beginning in verse 31, the Bible says, and when the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on his left. And then the king will say to those on his right, come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, for I was hungry and you gave me food.

And I was thirsty and you gave me drink. And I was a stranger and you welcomed me. and I was naked and you clothed me and I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me. And then the righteous will answer him saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you? And here's what the king says. Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these brothers, you did it to me. You wanna bless Jesus? Then be a blessing to the most vulnerable people around the world. And then I bet the guys on the left are like, uh-oh. Because he looks at them, verse 41, and then he will say to those on his left, depart from me, you curse into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food and I was thirsty and you gave me no drink and I was a stranger and you did not welcome me. And you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me. And they're gonna be like, objection. Then they also will answer saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger

or naked or sick or in prison and not minister to you? Like Jesus, if we'd have seen you, we'd have pulled over. We'd have sacrificed a little bit. But we didn't see you. And Jesus is saying this because you don't know me. If you knew me, you'd see me. And then he will answer them saying, truly I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. And these will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life. Now, he's not saying this. He's not saying you can buy your way into heaven. He's not like, hey, God's running a special today. Sponsor a kid, you get to go to heaven. No, no, no, no, no, no. We are saved by grace through faith. Not by works, but we have been saved through good works. And what he is saying is the evidence of whether you know me or not is do you recognize me in the face of the least of these? Why? Because that's how he loved us. Because we were broken and we were helpless and we were spiritually bankrupt and poor and Jesus didn't just have feelings about us. He came and he rescued us from spiritual poverty and adopted us into his family. And so Church of 1122, here's what you can give Jesus for Christmas this year.

You can sponsor a compassion kid. In just a little while, in eight minutes and 54 seconds, as we close, you see these packets over here on your left and right? Jesus is in the face of every single one of these children because these are the least of these. These are children without education, without medical care, without food. Most of them without fathers. And it is not a stretch in Matthew chapter 25 for Jesus to say, I was a compassion kid and you sponsored me. And so this is what we do. We have partnered with compassion. And by the way, if you're watching online, you could text the word sponsor to 83393. Or if you're just sitting here and kind of in the middle and you're a little bit lazy and you're like, I ain't walking over there, cool. Then you could just text the word sponsor to 83393 and you Calvinists will love this because the sovereign king of the universe has preordained which kid you're gonna get so you can just do it and receive your kid. So good for that. We have partnered with Compassion International for 25 years. I have, my family has. 25 years ago, right after Gretchen and I got married, we went to this conference

and we heard a compassion graduate share their testimony. And Gretchen went to the table and sponsored our first kid 25 years ago. She brought me the package. She was like, this is what we're doing. And we hadn't been married a year yet. I didn't know you could fight back. So I was just like, yes, ma'am. And that just led to a pattern. And then when we planted the church of 1122, I just said, this is just what we're doing. This is what we're doing. That if you go to 1122, we sponsor kids. It's just what we do. Like in your family, you have rules, right? Like in my family, we don't wear orange and blue. We wear red and black because we're Christians. In this family right here, we sponsor kids. Why? Because it blesses God. First and foremost, I could talk to you, I could go on and on and on about their need. I totally could. I could also go on and on and on about how blessed we are. I mean, if you think, I ain't got $43. I guarantee you, I could follow you around for a minute, Herod, and show how you've been aiming $43 that you don't need. It's actually making you fatter and dumber. And you could be better if you wouldn't spit it on you

and aiming at them. But I'm not gonna do that because I'm nice this year. What do we bring to the king? We sponsor kids. It's what we do. Why? Matthew 25 makes it abundantly clear. Why? Because God wants us to love people like he has loved us, right? That's why we do. And so, it costs you $43 a month. That's what it is. $43 a month to feed. Educate, bring healthcare, and most importantly, everything Compassion does is through a local church, and these kids will hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's just what we do here at 1122. So far, listen, man, you have no idea what hangs in the balance. When my wife felt the nudge of the Spirit of God 25 years ago to sponsor that first kid, so far, the Church of 1122, not even adding the ones from this weekend, we've sponsored 24,327 children through Compassion International, okay? And it's not a competition, but we're winning. Now, I would never ask you to do something we don't do. My family, we currently sponsor seven children, okay? That's Grace.

I've had dinner in her house. We've got kids from Brazil. We've got kids from East Africa. We've got kids from all over the place, man. I mean, you know, I get so into my sermons, I convince myself every single year. I mean, we've got kids from all over the place. There's a girl in here named Brandy. We've sponsored her since she was, I met her when she was three months old. Her mom was 17 years old. Her mom's name's Grace. Her grandma gave me a chicken one time. You know how hard it is to explain the Delta chicken policy in a mud hut in Africa? It's tough. Then we've got dudes like this. I don't, O'Neal, you're gonna have me pronounce his name. A-B-A-T-E-R-D-U-O-R-O-U-Z-I-E. We call him Z at my house, all right? That's Z. We have seven. So far, our family's sponsored 23 children over the last 25 years. And here's the thing. This is what we do. We're 1122. We do this. This is what we do. I wanna set records.

I wanna be an example for every other church in America. I hope somebody tries to catch us. You know why? We sponsor more kids. I want you to bless God by sponsoring the kids. It's just what we do. And some of you weren't here the last time we did this. We do this every single year. Hang on to this. Last year, I didn't preach Compassion Weekend. One of our campus pastors did at all of our locations. From last year to this year, we have grown as a church by 14,000 people, all right? Praise God, okay? Praise God. You know what's not gonna, when we get to heaven, you know what's not gonna happen? Jesus ain't gonna be like, whoa! That time you grew by 14,000 people, that was awesome. No, no, no, no, no. You know what he's gonna do? He's gonna say, when I was hungry, you fed me. When I was sick, you visited me. When I was naked, you gave me clothes. That's what he is gonna say. And I wanna bless God. I wanna be a part of that. And I want you to be a part of it. I want you to be a part of it. I want you to be a part of that sheep

because you have experienced the grace of God. You've been rescued by the Redeemer that you and I are a part of the rescue team. You wanna be an active participant in the Great Commission. You wanna be a missionary today, I got good news. You can take the gospel to the ends of the earth and make disciples by sponsoring a Compassion Kid today because the right gift at the right time communicates love and value. I want you to hear the testimony of this young man who was a graduate of Compassion International and what the gift of sponsorship meant to him. Check this out. My childhood life was a very challenging. When we are studying, we have to share pencils. The pencil, we must sharpen it until the eraser or the pencil will get smaller. We lost some hopes because we think we are not getting to high school. Compassion Ministry has provided us school supplies. So we don't have to share some pencils, some socks, some bags. I remember I said, now I can go to college. I can feel that every time I wrote the letter to my sponsor, I just imagine I was talking to her face to face. Also, my sponsor give me a gift every birthdays. Surprisingly, my sponsor gave it a fund to buy a guitar. It's like an engine to my faith. So I want to give best to God by serving and by playing guitar.

Since we started our business to have this printing shop, I said to my wife that it is a business, but it is also a ministry. Back then when I was a child, we're struggling with school supplies. And right now, I'm selling school supplies now. Sometimes I sell the school supplies on cheaper price. And sometimes it's free because I've been there, I've been there. It's hard. If my sponsor was watching me. I just want to hug her for taking my life, my situation, releasing me from poverty and releasing me from spiritual poverty. Amen. So that's what we're going to do. The way the text ends is this, and being warned in a dream not to return it to Herod, the wise men departed to their own country by another way. What if this year at Christmas, we just did Christmas another way, that we didn't do it like Herod. So what does this mean for me? And we didn't do it like the religious people, they were just caught up in their traditions, but they missed the point. But we would be like the wise men. The wise men walked into the room, and they laid down with their hands earthly treasures. And they walked out in their hearts with the treasures of heaven. That's what I want for you. And so we're going to do what the wise men did. We're going to sing. We're going to make much of Jesus. We're going to bring our tithes and our offerings, our first and our best to King Jesus, just

like we always do. But we're also, we're going to give Him what He asked for for Christmas, and we're going to sponsor some kids. And I mean, we need to stretch. A good rule of thumb, if you're like, well, how many should I sponsor? Just think about the number of people that you claim on your taxes, and you should sponsor that many people. We do seven, even though we only got four at my house, okay? That's what we should do. You could give these as gifts, saying, hey, instead of you getting some more junk that's going to make you dumber this year, I have got you a compassion kid. Parents, one of the greatest discipleship tools in the life of my kids with me and G is that we would sponsor kids that were our kids' age so that, and especially, dude, when they gripe and complain, we'd be like, you can go write your kid a letter right now, huh? Yeah, go ahead and complain about your Nintendo batteries don't work. Let me hear that one, all right? So anyway, that's a little bad, but whatever, whatever it takes. But that's what we're going to do. Now, listen, when you get one of these packets, these are actual, they represent a person. So you got to fill the thing out right now. You can't take this into your car. If you do that, that means this kid is out of circulation and won't be sponsored. It'll take six months to get them back in the loop, all right? And if you do that, I pray the Spirit of God does not let you sleep at night until you get them turned in, understand? And I know some of you are in a hurry to go watch the game. No problem. I've already checked with the Lord we're going to win because it is pretty presumptuous. There's only one name that gets to ride in on a white horse, and it ain't Bo Nix.

And I get a witness, all right? So we're going to beat them down. So if you want to go faster, do the text thing, 833-93-SPONSOR, it goes boom right to your phone. If you want to like look and, you know, pick based on whatever country or churches that we sponsor, partner with, or birthdays, or whatever, may we do this year different. You want to bless God? Be a blessing. Would you please stand to your feet and let me pray for us. Our good and gracious heavenly Father God, we love you, love you, love you more than anything because you love us first. And God, I thank you that you have rescued us from sin, and death, and poverty, and abandonment, loneliness, and condemnation. And God, because you have done that to us, may we be a part of the rescue team. Lord, I pray for every single one of these kids, image bearers of you. And Lord, I pray that Jesus, you would be blessed this Christmas. Because of what you have done for us, whatever we do for the least of these, these brothers and sisters of ours, God, we do this for you. We pray it in Jesus' name, amen. So we're going to respond. We're going to sing. We're going to bring. We're going to pray. We're going to sponsor.