Is anybody in here good at giving gifts? I'm good at giving gifts. No, are you good at giving gifts? Okay.
Is anybody in here bad at giving gifts? And I'm raising my hand right now. Let me tell you all a story. Tell you a story.
Meredith and I had been married like five months and it was her first birthday married together. And I knew I did not forget her birthday I knew her birthday was coming up. I might not have thought that much about getting her a gift and we were working at the same church together In Rustin. She was a secretary.
I was a technical director and I remember like I need to get her something for her birthday You know growing my family like when you don't have much money gifts aren't that big of a deal? And so like I remember I got from my 16th birthday. My dad gave me a fishing trip with him and his buddy, a big John. Mostly I know me, no I'm scared of fish, I hate to fish.
So you see the trajectory of gift giving in my family. So I already get married at the birthday present. Oh, it's our first birthday since we've been married. Also, my tell you, our very first date was on her birthday.
And so that day's kind of, I didn't know that. Like I get a text message from her cousin, as I'm picking her up, like, is this her birthday? You better get it good. And so I was like, okay, okay, I'm gonna Walmart real quick.
So between Soundcheck and church on Sunday, and between church on Sunday, I run to Walmart. And I get married with a couple of things. I get her a couple magazines I know she likes. Then I get her, I know she likes, okay, these are like, I know she likes those magazines.
And then I got her a box set of both of the Ghostbusters movies, because I was like, yeah, she might like the Ghostbusters. She doesn't. And then I got a couple of boxes of like, like the movie candy that they sell in the big bins. Maris are right at me at the movie candy this week when I told her I'm telling that store about your first birthday.
I'm thinking in my head, it was, oh, we'll have a movie night at the house. And so that, y'all, I still, she still does not let that go. I'm not good at giving presents. I've gotten better in the last few years though, after one particular gift-giving session, it was a couple of tears.
I learned that the thing is, and I didn't know this, the thing is it's not, hey, I got you something. Or it's, I got you something expensive. It's, I care about you enough to think about what you would really like, to think about what would really mean something to you. Just I know you well enough to honor you with this present.
I learned that. I was like, okay, so I've gotten, I've gotten a successively better over the years. I'm still not where I need to be, but I kind of feel like I know a little bit of the secret so much. As kids, I think the first thing that we typically think about during the holiday season is gifts.
I got to think, okay, I'm here, I'm quite a noisier, no, he's like, I'm a hype man today. You know, you get gifts coming, then older you get, you realize like Christmas cookies are coming maybe? Like that sort of thing. Now, I'm almost in my fort, he's like, okay, I'm looking forward to a couple of different things now, but like gifts really is that first thing that we think about the holiday season.
And when we kind of try to attach the wear and the wives that we think about the wisemen in the story of Jesus' in the tibia, story of Jesus' birth and his young life. And so we're gonna talk about those wisemen this morning, but it's really, it's a story of two characters, but it's actually a story about power. And we're gonna talk about just what does power mean in the nativity story, this means. So Matthew chapter two, verses one through 12 is where we find ourselves this morning.
Here's the words of the gospel. Jesus was born in Bethlehem and Judea during the ring of King Herod, about the time some wisemen from Eastern lands arrived in Jerusalem asking, where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his stars at Rose and we have come to worship him. King Herod was deeply disturbed when he heard this, this was everyone in Jerusalem.
He called a meeting of the leading priest and teachers of religious law and asked, where is the Messiah supposed to be born? And Bethlehem and Judea, they said, for this is what the prophet wrote. And you, O Bethlehem and the land of Judah, are not least among the ruling cities of Judah. For a ruler will come from you, he'll be shepherd for my people Israel.
Then Herod called for a private meeting from the wisemen and he learned about them. He learned from them the time when the star first appeared. Then he told them, go to Bethlehem and search carefully for the child. And when you find him, come back and tell me so that I can go and worship him too.
After this interview, the wisemen went their way and the star they had seen in the east guided them to Bethlehem and went ahead of them and stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were filled with joy. They entered the house and saw the child with his mother Mary. They bowed down and worshiped him.
Then they opened their treasure chest and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense and mer. When it was time to leave, they returned to their own country by another route, for God had warned them in a dream not to return to Herod. So like I said, this is a story of two characters. It's actually a story about power.
One of the people that's in the Christmas story that we hear about is Herod the Great, but we don't talk that much about Herod the Great. We don't realize just how much he and his family and it was his grandson that was the ruler when Jesus died. His whole family had a lot to play in the life of Jesus. So Herod the Great was the son of a man named Antipater.
How would you like that, friend name? And Antipater was, he was a regional governor of Judea. He was friends with Julius Caesar, and Julius Caesar had appointed him to oversee this land. And his sons had their own little areas of influence.
And one of his sons was a guy named Herod. He was over the region of Galilee, and he made himself pretty well known because he was good at getting taxes and getting money. He was good at driving away rebels and bandits. And he was really astute at political dealings.
And when he was about 25, 30 years old, this whole land kind of went into revolt, because you see Herod's and his family, they were not Jewish. They were actually from Edom, which if you think way, way back in the Bible, as Genesis, there's Jacob and Esau, remember this story, Esau is where the Edomites came from. They had been just an ancient enemy of Israel and to now have this person who supposedly converts the Judaism is now over you. They're really just not fans of people being over them.
And if you go back to that, that kind of one page in your Bible between the Old Testament and the New Testament, what you'll find is just story after story after story of the Jews managing to rule themselves and then losing it and then managing it's just back and forth for several hundred years. And so just in one of those back and forths, Herod has to escape to Rome because it's not safe for his family to be there. And because of his reputation and his skill in collecting taxes and his political acumen, all sorts of things, the Romans decide not only to make him to give him his father's job as overseer of Judea, but to give him the title of King of the Jews. So Herod then comes back, it takes him two years from once he's given this title to where he's able to actually get into Jerusalem and begin ruling over this region.
And Herod really is known for a few things for what he does, the first is this, he's known for buildings and money. Herod was really, really good at getting money from people. He was decent at using that money for things for everybody else, but he was really good at getting money. A lot of scholars think that the average person in Israel around the time of Christ was taxed 80 to 90% of their income between the Roman government and between the temple taxes.
I mean, almost everything they had was taken from them. And so Herod was able to do pretty well. A lot of kind of crazy stuff with it. There's a picture here of the wailing wall.
Have you all seen this before? Like a National Geographic or something like this, okay? So this is in Jerusalem. This is all that's left of Herod's temple.
Herod actually came in and an attempt to get the Jewish people to like him a little bit more. He realized, okay, so we have this temple here. Y'all built this second one a few hundred years ago. And even in the book of Ezra and EMI, you find that people were crying when this temple was finished because it was not what they thought it was going to be.
Like it's kind of rinky dink. And they felt really bad about that. So Herod said, no, I'm going to come fix your rinky dink temple. So this picture right here, I didn't know this until a couple of weeks ago.
I always thought that they said this is all that's left of Solomon's temple and that people down there at the bottom for scale, they pray there and they put little prayers on slips of paper inside the cracks of the walls. I always thought that this was a wall to the temple. Now this is the retaining wall to the foundation. Like, what was the end of these retaining walls, right?
Like you got a creakriek or you got a retaining wall? Like retaining wall. Herod also realized they needed a port in Judea, which they did not have. So he went to a saltwater marsh, built it up so high that it became a deep water port.
And then began pumping water in through aqueducts over 30 miles away to have enough fresh water to have fountains and swimming pools there. This guy builds gigantic buildings. One of the things that he's known for the most historical record is just he could get so much money from everybody. It's one of the Romans loved him.
He could build just these magnificent structures. But the next thing that Herod is known for is this. Herod is known for paranoia. Herod was always terrified that someone was going to try to come and take his throne from him.
In fact, so many of these massive building projects he built where he was always trying to make sure that he had a scape routes to get out of Israel in case anything ever happened. But that he would not be able to live like in the lap of luxury as he was trying to escape. He built a fortress on top of a mountain called Masada where more aqueducts, more pumping. He has a thing for swimming pools and where he could pump water and have just this absolute gorgeous palace on top of a mountain, on top of the desert.
It actually became about 70 AD. It became this impenetrable fortress. The last time the Israelites revolted against Rome and they were able to hold up there for months on end and avoid the entire force of the Roman army because Herod built just this massive palace fort. But he was paranoid.
He was paranoid so much that it leads us to the second thing that the third thing he's known for is this, he's known for cruelty and murder. Herod had at least one of his wives killed and at least three of his sons killed because he felt like they were trying to overtake his throne. When Herod finally came back and actually took Jerusalem as a young man, the 45 ruling Jewish families, he killed the heads of all of their household because they would not let him into the city. And then he sold the wives and children into slavery to pay his Roman benefactors back that had financed him having a private army to come in and take this country that was his.
So Herod's a little more complicated than we think, right? We're not done yet with Herod. So these wives men, we're used to the wives men in the story. You know, we all got ideas of wise men, right?
So these wise men are a little less like Church Christmas pageant and a little more like that movie 300, okay? That's a little more like that. Not so like my parents had this gigantic stuff and the activities that were the characters like that tall, like no, they're not like that. So the wives men, they're actually pretty well known in antiquity.
The wise men are what's the left of what's a great nation called the Medes, M-E-D-E-S. But they were a hereditary tribe of priests that were particularly adept at always serving as the advisors to whoever was in charge. So we think of Daniel and the Lions Den and I'd be like interpreting these dreams that Nebuchadnezzar needed, like these were magi. That's these were these Medes, these wise men that were going on here.
And so throughout Iran and modern Iran and Syria and Iraq, everyone who's in charge pretty much filled their courts with advisors from this tribe of the Medes. And they managed to keep themselves essentially safe for thousands of years by just kind of weaseling themselves into the ruling class and saying, is advisors and every time something bad would happen, they'd lay low for a little while and then next thing they'd be back in their old jovican. If you get really curious, when you go home, you can Google Zoroastrianism. And that's the remnants of this religious belief that they had, they're still around it.
They have funny little hats, they're still there. But that's where these wise men came from. But they were known as advisors to kings. They were known as the people who could make a coup happen.
They were known to, they would be able to kind of always weasel around governments. If something needed to happen, they could make it happen in order to overthrow somebody. So this was their reputation. They also had a reputation for seeing things in the sky and traveling hundreds if not thousands of miles to show up for something.
It was well documented in several other places besides just the story. That was just kind of one of the things that they did. So we have these two characters and they're now meeting and it gets even more interesting. Because in the historical record, what is this?
There's an essential part of the Jesus story across all the gospels. And this essential part is that whenever corrupt power is there, the gospel manages to overthrow. The gospel always speaks to types of power that do not support and lift up the kingdom of God. And even in this nativity story of Jesus, we found Jesus acting in this way.
So I imagine this, you're there and that you were here at the end of your life. When we said, Herod's paranoid, and Herod's ruthless, Israel mattered so much to the Roman government because it was a buffer state. It was between the Roman Empire and this group of people called the Parthhenians. And the Romans never were able to get the Parthhenians under control.
They were willing to support Herod the great to give him money to do all these things and to kind of look over the atrocities that followed Herod around. Because as long as Herod was there, that Rome was safe. And one of the groups that these Magi had managed to infiltrate, had managed to advise, and kind of managed to be the chief politicians of was this Parthenian Empire. So you have paranoid Herod, and then you have these wise men showing up in his capital city.
But we also have Herod, and we know from the historical record of when Herod died, and we can date the birth of Jesus around it. And so we have Herod at the end of his life has overcome with something that historians in antiquity would refer to as Herod's evil. Like Herod was sick. It was deeply, deeply sick.
In modern doctors to kind of look at the symptoms that people have said he's had, and they're able to kind of pinpoint what it was that Herod suffered from. And it was this thing called, Forniers Gand Green. Okay, are y'all ready for this? It was a late stage gonorrhea that had caused acute kidney failure.
It was characterized by the loss of your bowels and itching all over your body. And a flesh eating bacteria in the one place you do not want to have a flesh eating bacteria. So you have Herod, paranoid, literally rotting alive. And this group of people that are known to be overthrowers and kingmakers are now showing up in full caravan in your capital city with the full military, the type of support that these people would need to stay safe as they journey hundreds of miles across the wilderness.
And you and your family have been called usurpers your entire life and they show up at your front door asking we've come to see the newborn king of the Jews. Where is he? Can you imagine the situation? Now Alan Johnson next week is gonna talk about the outcome of that because it gets a little interesting.
But I wanna just to realize this, sometimes people say the Bible is boring. I don't think the Bible is very boring. This is Game of Thrones level stuff. But imagine Herod is this.
Herod is a type for us to think about this morning. Herod is a type. Herod lets us see what it's like to be a person who is self trusted to the point of death. He's a narcissist, yeah.
You see where it's got him. His life is literally killing him. When it says in the scripture that Herod gets nervous and then Jerusalem gets nervous, Jerusalem is nervous because whenever Herod gets nervous, people start dying. His narcissism has literally eating him alive and is threatening the wellbeing of everyone around him.
How do we not be Herod? In a little ways. And there's a lot of places we could go this morning in this story but I think it's important for us just to think about how do we not be Herod? What are some simple lessons that we can learn?
The first one is this, acknowledge true power. Now, this supposed to King of the Jews did not know the prophecy of where the Messiah was going to come from. The religious leaders and the leading priests, they could answer his questions but they were so apathetic when these magi who came and asked of this, they didn't even go with them to go find out if it was real or not. You know how far away Bethlehem is from Jerusalem?
It's about the distance from where we are right now to the brookshirs on 165. Five or six miles. So these religious leaders, they weren't even willing to go the five or six miles to find out if this was true or not. We acknowledge true power.
Romans 12 and one, it says this. And so, your brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all that he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice, the kind that he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.
We acknowledge true power by practicing the discipline of yielding. Now, what do you think are your best? Or maybe what spaces in our lives do we have that we strive for singular sovereignty? What are the places to, I don't need anybody's help with this, I've got this, I'm so good at this, I don't need to pay any attention to it.
What are the things we're prideful about actually? How maybe in our own self-focus do we end up missing the words of God? Jesus can only work in our lives at the depths that we have given him lordship over. Now, for some of us, we have a mechanical knowledge of Jesus, a mechanical knowledge of the Messiah like these leading priests did, these religious leaders.
Oh, yeah, he's gonna be born just a few miles away. It's over there. Yeah, go tell us what happens over there. Now, some of us might have mechanical knowledge of Jesus, but we've actually not really ever yielded anything over to him.
Now, that first step is yielding ourself to him. And then when we do that, we find out that it's actually a journey of us always kind of self-discovering, okay, wow, this is something that I'm still trying to do on my own. This is something I'm still just not willing to give to you. Now, practicing the discipline of just yielding things over to God has the ability to transform us in just powerful, powerful ways.
The second thing that we can do to not be Herod is to look for revelation, to expect, to experience God in new ways. Now, God uses these pagan sorcerers to bring about the knowledge of the birth of the Messiah to out of touch rulers and religious leaders whose job it was is to be in the revealing presence of God. Like you have one job and they weren't doing it. And we need to expect to experience God.
Now, Jesus can reveal things to us. That Jesus incarnated the Messiah, fully God, fully man, here, active and alive in our world now. You know, founder, we talked about John 114 a lot, the word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood. That the very God who created this earth is the God who comes to bring personal revelation to each and every one of us.
This is a foundational assumption of our Christianity. That the God of the universe uniquely knows us and wants a relationship with us. And do you expect to have a relationship with somebody without ever hearing from them? That's a faulty relationship, right?
Then what does it mean for us just to posture ourselves towards God and say, I expect to experience you? I'm actively looking for that in my life. Pete Greg is how to praise us. It is not until we've done the last thing God adds to us that we are ready to receive his next revelation.
This keeps us close to his side, obedient to his voice, walking by faith and not by sight. This is a continual thing. It's not just a one-time thing. It's a continual way that we posture and live our life.
The last thing that we learned, if we were intentional about not being here at this, is to realize that we're actually not that big of a deal. No, Herod thought he was a really big deal. He thought he was such a big deal that nobody else really mattered that much. And it's easy for us to look at that story, especially at the end of his life.
I'm like, whoo, not like that guy. Doing good. But you know, we all got a little bit of Herod inside of us. We all had the capacity to make decisions that will eat our own life.
These Gentile sorcerers, these people who the Jewish folks believe were evil and incapable of divine revelation are the ones that God has revealed the location of his Messiah to. They're the pagans of pagans, and they can respond to Jesus if given the chance. If God can do all of those things, he truly knows us. And he's capable of giving us a life that's filled with the presence of God larger than we can comprehend.
We just have to give up our own false titles that we end up giving ourselves. These things that we claim are ours, we claim are a big deal. And as us just simply saying, God, the only thing I'm concerned about is who I'm found to be inside of you. That's where I get my everything from.
Who am I to you? I don't care about being a big deal. Because here's the thing. You're already a big deal to him.
We don't need to try to prove ourselves as a big deal to anyone else. And there's a tremendous amount of peacefulness in that realization. After I've thought a lot about, what does it mean to give good gifts, to give the best gifts? I've realized how in the past I've copped out on it.
You kind of cop out. When you just don't give somebody something that acknowledges the fact that you know them. Instead, there's something about just thinking about it and realizing, and realizing, my brother-in-law is consistently hard to buy gifts for. You've heard the phrase, how do you give something to somebody who has everything?
What do you think about them? What do they not know they need yet? I mean, the thing behind gift giving is just it's deeply personal. These kings gave Jesus these gifts because they realized who he was.
They gave him the things that a king has. And God knows us personally, personally, more than anybody else in the world. And he has the ability. He wants to give us these things that we don't even know that we need.
And he wants to work in ways that are beyond our wildest comprehension. The funny thing is, he typically doesn't do it in big, huge, amazing, astronomical ways. He does it in everyday, normal, almost generic ways. Because he can speak to us just the depth of our existence and give us what is truly, truly good.
Because he knows us. And he wants us just to simply know him. Let's pray this morning, Lord. We realize that when we yield ourself over to you, and that we begin expecting you and expecting to experience you.
It's kind of simple for us to look at the story and be like, wow, I'm not as bad as that guy. I'm doing great. But we even realize what we're capable of on our own. And we just want to see more of you.
God, if yielding things to you is what it takes, God, we just give those things to you. We give you those things that we know, but also trusting for you to take us on the journey of the things that we don't know yet.