Three Men and A Baby

Jesus is the shepherds and the wise man. The simple people gather around that manger. It was holy ground. Now Lord, the tables have turned and you gather your angels where we are. This becomes holy ground to you. I pray that in the midst of the tradition and history of it all, Lord, that we never lose sight of holiness. Holiness. God, how you would restrain yourself in flesh, we'll never understand, but we thank you that it was holy flesh. You sanctified just by being in it. We praise you now, Lord, and thank you that we can worship you in spirit and truth in Jesus' name. Amen. Praise the Lord. Would you be seated, Church. By the way, if you're a visitor with us and worship is something that you're learning and maybe is new to you, we've prepared a booklet for you that looks like this. It's got a little jacket with some people on the front and all the literature racks in the back. If you'd like one of these, it explains why we worship the way we do. What it means and how it can, as you understand worship from a biblical perspective, it begins to open your heart to receive from God. So if you're new in these things, don't be hesitant to pick one of these up and take it home and read through it. I think it will help you a great deal in understanding. How many of you know we want to grow in our understanding as well as our will? We need to understand what we're doing so that it's not just mindlessness. Amen. Well, let's look at the word in Matthew chapter 2. Matthew chapter 2. Reading in verse 1. A familiar Christmas story. After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw his star in the east and have come to worship him. And when King Herod heard that he was this, he was disturbed in all Jerusalem with him. For when he called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born in Bethlehem in Judea. They replied, For this is what the prophet has written. But you, Bethlehem in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel. By the way, let me just stop there. Isn't it interesting that the ones who knew the word weren't leading the parade? Interesting, isn't it? I mean, they knew the prophecy. They knew the word. But they weren't leading the search party. Verse 7. Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, Go and make a careful search for the child. And as soon as you find him, report to me so that I, too, may go and worship him. After they heard the king, they went on their way. And the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. And when they saw the star, they were overjoyed. I love the translation. It's in the New King James Version. They rejoiced with exceeding great joy. I'm going to come back to that. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him. And they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route. First of all, let me ask you about your homework from last week. How many of you have been practicing your looks of love? How many knew that you were being practiced on? How many were practicing your words of love? Anybody? You've all changed sections, haven't you? I'm hoping I'm going to do it again this week. And how many a touch? Anybody? You people had the most fun, I hear. That's what I heard. Keep practicing, would you? Keep practicing. You see, today we're going to complete the series on truth. I apologize to those of you who maybe just came in for this one morning from out of town. I know we have lots of friends here today. I'm at the end of a four-week. Actually, it was five messages on truth. But I felt constrained that we needed to finish this today because next week we're heading in a new route and the New Year and so on. And it's very important that we wrap this series of messages up. And yet, here's what so blessed me. Because I sought the Lord about this for some time. I want you to see today how the Christmas story just remains relevant to us 2,000 years later. It's as though all you need to do is exchange cars for camels, you know. And maybe just, you know, a sport coat for a robe of some kind and light bulbs for the candles. We've got the same thing. Because human nature hasn't changed. We think we're so much more sophisticated than that early culture. It's not true. How many of you think we have some wise men here today? Wise guys, yes. I heard that one before. And we have some shepherds. We've got some simple people. But this morning, I want to look and walk through the Word and help us to see some things about truth. And the response of two contrasting people. Actually, one group, the wise men, and another person involved intricately in this story, King Herod. Both of them receiving the same truth, but their response radically affected not only their own lives, but the lives of hundreds and hundreds and then eventually thousands and, by God's Word, millions of us later. We're going to see, first of all, the life of Herod. Now, this isn't a pretty picture. I almost didn't want to share it in Christmas time. Who wants to have a downer on Christmas morning? But Herod, you see, is a key figure in the Christmas story. Herod was a king. And see if some of his characteristics sound familiar to you. I did some research about Herod. He was in rule some years before Christ was born. Interestingly, by the way, he was not a Jew. He was appointed by the Romans to be the king of the Jews. And his character represents a tremendous truth of spirit reality. He was a self-made man. He clearly had gone through the hoops of being a governor and then eventually a king, appointed by the Romans. My research told me that he was a man who exercised tight control, ruled with a strong, heavy hand, eliminated opposition when it came along, competitive. The research said that he was a great builder. He would build things. Amphitheaters and hippodromes and buildings of the government that stood. In fact, it even recorded that he built another temple for the Jews because he just liked to build stuff and put his name over it. And then this one really got me. And he loved sports. Now, does that sound like anybody you know? He's the all-American man. Loved all this kind of stuff. And Herod gets the news that this one named Jesus Christ was born king of the Jews. And let's look at what the Bible says about him. It says that Herod, verse 3, when he heard this, was disturbed. Disturbed. The Greek word terasso means to be frightened. Now listen, fearful, upset, and even to be thrown into confusion and alarm of mind. He wasn't just a little bit anxious. Folks, he was scared to death. When Herod got the news, he was scared to death. Because you see, his secure little territory was being threatened by this rumor of one called a king. Then the Bible says, all of Jerusalem with him. Why? Because they were all wondering who this... No. Why was Jerusalem all upset about Herod's reaction, folks? Because they feared Herod. And they'd seen what he'd done to people who disagreed with him, who got in his way. Kind of like, you know, the administrator of a POW camp when a prisoner tried to escape. What's he do? He punishes all the prisoners. So all of Jerusalem was disturbed, frightened, scared to death. Then we see that Herod was defensive. He was defensive. He immediately called together all these people and said, well, we've got to check this thing out here. We've got all the chief priests of the Jews and so on. We've got to check this thing out. And then he was deceptive. We see this down in verse 7 and 8. Hey, he called these Magi in, these wise men. He said, by the way, when you find him, tell me where he is so I can come and worship him. You know? Sounds a little bit like Yasser Arafat maybe or someone like that, you know? Just tell me what I want to hear and I'll tell you what you want to hear and everything will be just fine. But dear ones, if we read the story, and we didn't read all the way down to verse 16, when Herod found that he had been outwitted by the Magi, the Bible says that he killed all the baby boys under the age of two. Can you imagine that? All the baby boys in Bethlehem under the age of two. He was destructive. Now, before we leave Herod as some kind of a strange figure that's, you know, a warped, which he was, and we write him off as someone that we could never understand or even begin to relate to, I want to ask you a question or two just about our own lives when you hear truth. What is your response when someone garners up the courage to tell you the truth? What do you do? What goes through you when truth comes? Do we listen to it carefully? Take it seriously? Or do we respond in some way that kind of sends the message that, hold on here a second. You know, when we bought this building, there was a leaky roof. How many of you remember the leaky roof? Yeah. Well, you know, we had a hope that it could be patched. And so we, you know, we sent some people up there, some roof professionals up there to check it out for us after we bought the building. And we waited for the news and they came down and they said, well, here's the report. Is it good news? And the guy said to us basically, well, do you want me to lie to you? Or do you want me to tell you the truth? I can lie to you and make you feel good. We'll patch it for you. It'll last about two weeks. We'll do it all over again. Well, the truth was we needed a whole new roof, $75,000. There it was. But I was so glad. I've been so glad, haven't you, that we fixed the roof. I mean, yesterday morning it rained for three hours. That roof, I mean, we could have all been drenched. Here's a person, I don't know if she's here this morning. I think she is, in fact. I see her last week. She had a very difficult report from a doctor. You see, when she had gone in for a normal checkup, the doctor found something in her body. She went for her report. She said, well, what's the report? The doctor in essence said, do you want the truth or do you want me to lie to you and make you feel better? Well, I want the truth, of course. The truth was you need an operation. Well, we prayed last Sunday for that operation. And I got the report back on Tuesday morning that everything's fine. The doctor found no problems of an ongoing nature. You see, there's wisdom in hearing the truth and responding to it and not fooling yourself. You see, dear ones, we are all inclined to want to hear something that tickles our ears and makes us feel just a little bit better about ourselves. I don't know about you, but I know with me, as soon as the truth begins to come, I send up all these little defenses, you know. If someone wants to share something with me, I have this little system. I start to, you know, I gauge the situation. I always get on my toes when someone says, now this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you. I've rarely found that to be true. But I get all, you know, immediately something starts to happen in me. My denial systems go up. Just as this person opens their mouth and starts to share, I say, now whatever it is they're about to say about me, whatever it is, I'm sure that there's someone else that they really have in mind. You just, there may be someone else that's involved here. And then, you know, if they go on a little bit, then how many of you know that retaliation thing starts? Well, if we're going to be looking at that here, you know, I see some things in there. I'd like to talk about, right? And we are really good at it. And then, you know, then the rationalizing system starts. Well, hey look, you're picking on that little thing in me. There's people out there who are, you know, dealing drugs and all these kinds of things. We have denial. We have rationalizing going on. We have retaliation going on. And all these things begin to happen. And I had to, someone said, you know, they said, you have so much insight into sinfulness. Well, you know, there's a reason for that. But I have to say, it's scary to give someone permission to speak truth. And I'm asking God in this new year in my own life just to be a little more responsive, a little more open. Not to be Herodian, you know, not to send up the defenses and the destructive retaliations and all these kinds of things because I want some people to speak the truth. I have an idea. I wonder if, if we gave a little group of people permission and we said to them, listen, I promise I won't retaliate. I promise I won't deny it. I promise I won't begin to rationalize it. I just want to hear the truth. I wonder what would happen. I know I'd allow a lot of time for that. Let people share. I just, I'll throw that out. Maybe something we ought to consider. Because all of us want to grow and yet we don't grow without pain. We have to face that. On the other hand, let's just look for a few minutes at the wise men. We see Herod, I don't want to be like Herod. I don't want to be defensive and destructive and deny. I want to be like the wise men. Let's look at them. You see, they receive the same truth. Now, these wise men, I want to underscore, these weren't the three stooges of the Orient. Sometimes we get this picture of these guys plodding along like bozos through the desert. And they were men, according to the Bible, and according to what I could discover in my research, who were men of state. They were obviously influential because another king invited them in. If they had just been peasants or goof-offs, King Herod would have just written them off. Forget that, I don't care what you think. But he knew that these three, and we don't know there were three, by the way, they only had three gifts, they didn't say there were three men. Have you ever taken one of those Christmas tests and you see how much of it we just believe because someone told us? That's one of them. It doesn't say three wise men. It says three gifts. But, you know, they had to change the whole song and everything. You know, three kings or whatever. So, what we see here, they were wealthy men. The gifts that they gave were not cheap. We know they were wealthy. We know that they were some kind of heads of state. And we know that they had come from a far land. And it took money and it took influence to be able to travel through countries. And so, these were people not unlike Herod. And it's important that you grab this point because, you see, sometimes we are forced into a corner to think, well, only mindless idiots believe stuff that Christians believe. You know, if you're really with it, you'll kind of be like, you know, a lot more selective in the things that you pick and choose. That's not true. We need to put to rest this whole idea that, you know, you put your brain on the shelf when you walk in the door. God sanctifies our minds and our hearts. These wise men represent people who were well-respected in their day. Now, it says that they did several things. We'll just jot these down. If you have a pen, you might want to write these down. Get the right response to truth. Number one, I want you to see this. When they heard the truth, they moved on it. They moved on it. Verse 1 and 2. They moved on it. They left their homeland and moved toward Jerusalem. Can I say to you that in 1989, I pray that every one of you will ask God for the grace to take initiative. Take initiative. Don't wait for someone to come up and hand you spiritual maturity on a platter. It will not happen. If you are new in the things of the Lord, don't wait for God just to drop some. Take a step. Move out. When you hear a message, respond to it. Take some initiative. We have a couple here in our church. We have several of them. I could use as illustrations. When they first came to the church, they lived in another part of the city, about an hour and ten minutes away. They were not believers. They had some friends at work from downtown who brought them out to the church. But God so began to work in their lives that they determined that if this was to go on, they couldn't be that far away. They looked for a church in there and couldn't find anything. So they literally moved up here to the North Hills to become a church. They took initiative. They took control of the factors that would influence their destiny. Wise response to truth is take initiative. You may not need to move. You may just simply need to get some things out of your house or add some things into your life. Take initiative. Number two, they searched. Not just moved, they searched. The Bible says some wonderful things about searching. The word to seek and to search. If you're not a searcher, you will not be a finder. If you're not a seeker, you will not find. Hebrews 11, 6 says that God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek. Diligently. I don't know about you, but many, many times the price I pay for searching is one that sometimes gets more expensive than I counted on. How many of you have found that in order to achieve what you wanted in life, you had to dig for it? You had to invest. You had to look. We think that somehow these blessings from God and the people around here who you think are mature have dug down deep over the years. The word says in Jeremiah 29, 13, you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. How many people would say that would be a prayer of mine for 1989? I want to seek the Lord with all my heart. God. The wise men were searchers to truth. Number three, they rejoiced. When they got there, now let's look at this verse because I've got a message in it that many of us will miss. Look at verse 10. When they saw the star at the house they had wrought, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. I love that translation. Let me talk for just a couple of moments here about the power of childlikeness. How many of you have little kids? What did you see on their faces this morning? Ah, they were crying. They were mad. They had to get up for church. You know, it's amazing. There is something simple and pure. I mean, I have to yank my kids, at least one of them, out of bed most mornings. This morning, you know, hey, this, you know. All we have to do is have Christmas every morning and we'll get to school on time. I mean, there's something wonderful and lovely about that simple joy. You know, one of mine was just circling a pair of socks. Oh, great. Got excited and gave Huggs socks, you know. I mean, I could give him socks in June and he wouldn't care less. Socks on Christmas? You know, there's a joyfulness about it. Now, these wise men, understand, these were mature. The word magi, it's in the Greek, that literal word is the Greek word magi, has the implication of people who were mature and stately. And this word in the Greek is emphasized over four times for joy. Rejoiced with exceeding great joy. These stately, dignified men got happy. And I want to say to us, dear ones, when we hear truth, when we confront truth in a person who shares with us, when we find something true about God in our lives, we should get happy about it. We should rejoice about it. This isn't just hyperbole that, you know, the Bible picks its words very carefully. Do you know that? If you believe the Bible is inspired, believe that when the Holy Spirit authored that book, He wanted you to know that they really got happy. I don't know if they danced and pulled up their things. I don't know that. But we know that deep inside, joy was bursting open in their lives. They were shaken loose from self. And in our culture, there's a great inclination for self always to be in control, isn't there? I mean, self is always just given the right response. The childlike, just the overflow, the bubbliness, it's gone in so much of our culture. And these wise men just shed that because they encountered truth and they knew it and they discovered it. You see, we tend to mark our maturity in our culture by our control, don't we, man? We control our emotion. We're cool. Ladies. Hey, let's not get too excited. Let's let ourselves go a bit. Can we do that? I mean, as far as I can tell, there's not much wrong with letting self go. Let's get rid of it. All together, in fact. Let's let God be the one who dictates our response and frees us up. You say, well, you know, we need to be in control. I want to ask you a question. How many of you went to a party in your office or a social... How many people there were doing some things to try to let themselves go? Huh? Let's see how much punch we can put down. How much spirits we can imbibe just to let go a little bit. Just to kind of let the inhibitions sort of go away so that we can loosen up and have a good time. Is that right? You see, and that's the way of the world. The world has to work to let itself go. And it's right and appropriate in a business office party to let yourself go a bit, huh? I want you to know something. The Holy Spirit will give us His wine in our hearts that we can allow Him to give us that, just that little bit of lift to get us out of the drudgery so that we can let ourselves go unto God. I want to submit to you that it would be a whole lot better to let yourself go in the wine of the Holy Spirit than the wine of the world because it will last in our lives. They rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And finally, they responded to the truth that they discovered by giving. They gave. You know the word there, they saw the child. Look at verse 10, 11 now. They saw the child. The word there for see is the word eido which means to see with a perception. Not just blepo which means to see and observe. Eido means that if I'm a designer I look up and I see these banners and the way they're made. I observe something about them. I see the nature of their design and so on. See these wise men when they observed God they perceived something in this Son of God. They saw Him for who He truly was. And when they perceived Him they worshipped Him. They worshipped Him. I want to say something to us as we conclude here this morning. Jesus said these words where your treasure is there your heart will be also. Where did the wise men put their treasures? It says that exact word in verse 11. Their treasures. Where was their heart? Their heart was with the Son of God. You know here in our church I won't ask you to raise your hand but I know there are a number of people here today over the last year your treasure and your heart have lined up in a place they haven't been before. You know when we take on a project like we just finished with Prelude to a Promise even when we take up an offering it is very easy to spot the people who understand the relationship of treasure and heart. And if you've been coming along in God and it's still the hardest thing for you to do to bring a treasure and present it to God let me just suggest that you need to see Him a little differently. My mom was a person who had been a church goer all of her life raised in the Catholic church and so on. Something happened to her in the early 1970s about 18, 17, 18 years ago and she discovered a need in her life and was invited by a friend to go to the Catherine Kuhlman ministry when many of you are familiar with that ministry a number of years ago a decade or so ago. And I remember her telling me she said you know I was so changed by what I experienced in that ministry that when the offering basket came down she said I would have taken my whole purse and gone poof because my heart was being filled there. It didn't matter that stuff didn't matter compared to what was happening in my heart. And that stuck with me over the years. And the reason I know that many lives here are being changed is because I'm seeing treasures not to the church it's to God. That offering you gave to God our name goes on it but God receives it. And so I just want to say today what response will you have to truth? Will you be like Herod defensive, destructive denying, fighting it? Or as God brings truth into your life in 1989 will you open to it? Search for it some more ask some questions particularly in regards to relationships. Let me conclude with this. I believe that 1989 for us will be a year when every single one of us will be stretched beyond what we believe we could do in the past. But it's going to take someone using the jaws of truth to open us up again. And I want to be one that says with you Lord help me to open to that. To take some initiative. To search a bit more if someone brings it into my life. To respond with joy to the things that are opening up. And then to be willing to give with that work we continue. Is that what you desire for the new year? Is it? Amen? Let's pray. Father this message today this message of truth speaks to us of a powerful contrast. And I pray that the Herod spirit that would deny and deceive and destroy Lord if it's in any of us in any way I pray you'd cast it out. And rather Father you'd fill us afresh with the spirit of these wise men that we'd still seek for truth. That we'd still take.