King Week One: Gold
Notes
Transcript
What Gifts Do You Give To A King?
What Gifts Do You Give To A King?
Are you ready for Christmas? Are you ready to open your gifts? Me too.
When we think about Christmas, sometimes our focus is on gifts. And that’s ok. There is nothing wrong with that. Think about the gifts that you have because of Christmas.
For most of you here this mo rning, when I say the two words, gift and Christmas, you are thinking about what you are going to open on Christmas day. Right? Will it be shoes? Will be be a new dress? Will it be a toy? A new shirt or trousers? I know Julty has been talking about the gifts for a long time.
But what about the gift of our Savior. The original Christmas gift. I hope the first gift you would think about is the gift of God’s Son sent to this earth in the form of a baby. The prophets Isaiah and Micah both, 400 years before Jesus was born, said he was coming. The ultimate Christmas gift would arrive 4000 years after the sin of Adam and Eve.
It is the time of the year when we celebrate God’s gift to man. A small baby born in a manger around some cows and sheep. No ordinary baby. He is different, because he is God, come down to earth in human flesh. And I want us to never lose site of this…HE IS THE KING. He is not A king…he is THE KING. The book of Revelation sya sit this way
16 On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.
That is pointing to the day when this world will end as we know it. But today, let’s look at this King of kings and this Lord of lords as he came into the world.
++++Cornerstone Creed
Open your Bibles to Matthew Chapter 2.
1 Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, 2 saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
11 And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.
The angel had announced that Mary was favored and that the Baby that she would bear was not from her intended husband Joseph, but was from the Holy Spirit. After nine months, Joseph and Mary had to travel to Bethlehem and it would be there that Jesus would be born.
Luke tells us that on the night he was born that angels visited shepherds in the field to tell of his birth, and they left immediately to go see the Christ child. Mathew records how there were people from the East who came to see the he who was born King of the Jews. And as they arrived they brought gifts. Three gifts: gold and frankincense and myrrh.
Would you like gold for Christmas? yeah. What about frankincense? Myrrh? For the next three weeks we are going to look at each one of these gifts. Why? Because each gift represents something about the reason Jesus came to earth.
This week, we are going to look at their gift of gold.
In that time, it was the custom that if you visited a king, you would come with a gift. No one in that time would approach a king and not present them with a gift.
But why gold? Why was gold the first gift that Matthew records? Because he was the King. Not the King of a nation, but the King over all creation and over all of mankind. He would be the only one
Gold, given as a gift, was a king’s gift. King Solomon had a ivory throne and it was covered with the finest gold.
18 The king also made a great ivory throne and overlaid it with the finest gold.
The furniture in the tabernacle as the Israelites traveled to the promised land had gold on them. The Ark of the Covenant, where the presence of God was, was made of wood, and overlaid by gold as well.
Gold was for kings, and Jesus was the coming King.
Other people would call him a King. When he arrived in Jerusalem before he went to the cross, the people shouted..
John 12:12–13 (ESV)
12 The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. 13 So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!”
When Pilate asked him, are you the King of the Jews…
Matthew 27:11 (ESV)
11 Now Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus said, “Yo ‘u have said so.”
And Pilate didn’t just ask or say that Jesus was a King, he wrote it down…
John 19:19 (ESV)
19 Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”
This baby, born into a manger, wasn’t a prophet, he wasn’t a good teacher, he wasn’t just a good man …he was God and he was the coming King. Not a ruling an earthly Kingdom, but the one who would bring forth the Kingdom of God.
If you think about the Kingdom of God, it is all about giving and receiving.
God gave his Son, those who believe receive him and eternal life. We give honor and worship to God, and he receives the glory he deserves. We give our lives, set apart for him, and he rewards us, by receiving us into his family.
Before there was a gift TO the King, there was the gift OF a King.
The prophets in the Old Testament pointed to his coming:
2 Samuel 7:12–13 (ESV)
12 When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house for my name, and I w ill establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
How was it fulfilled?
1 The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
What God has promised when Adam and Eve sinned, he fulfilled by sending a King. Not a King like Saul or David, but a King who would save people from their. And because only God could do that, this King on earth was God. He was Emmanuel, God with us.
Isaiah 7:14 (ESV)
14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
His purpose was simple: This King would save people from their sins. He would be nailed on a cross and take the weight of our sin upon himself. He would provide a way for sinful man to be justified before God.
That’s why he told the woman at well…
John 4:10 (ESV)
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
He is the gift that always gives. He gives to man the most important gift they could ever receive: redemption.
Whatever gift you receive this Christmas, what Christmas meal you enjoy, if you have never recieved the gift of God, you have nothing that matters. The gift of God, a King was born in a manger 2000 years ago, and the wise men knew who he was and they came to worship him.
Where is your worship? Where is your focus this Christmas season? The simpel gifts that are wrapped in pretty paper, or the gift of a King?
So before the gift of gold was given to Him as a King, a gift of a King was given to God’s creation.
But sadly not everyone follows the King. Not everyone agrees that a ruler or government is good. I think about about your president. There are people who like him and there are people who don’t. There are some people who say he is doing good and others who say he is not.
In the same way, as our King Jesus and the gospel message of his death and resurrection are presented to people, some will not care. They will not have a mind for him. And they have that choice. They have that right. We know from the Bible that those who reject him, he will reject them.
But for those who follow him and believe in him, we give a gift to him. Not gold, but self sacrifice.
Don’t miss what the wise men brought to Jesus. Yes, gold. A wonderful gift. But look what they did before they presented him with gold:
Matthew 2:11 (ESV)
11 And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.
When you worship something, you give up yourself for that thing. You give up yoru time, your attention, maybe your money…everything that is important, if you worship that thing, you give yourself to it.
So what gets your worship? What gets your self sacrifice? What moves you and makes you look to something over other things?
Here something about worship, everyone worships something. Everyone. Someone might say they don’t believe in God, but they are still worshipping something. They’re focus and attention is drawn to something. Something else is important to them, so they worship that. It may be money, school, a job, a girlfriend or boyfriend.
If you are a Christian, someone who follows Christ, if something else gets more attention that love for him and serving him, your worship will be that thing, not Christ. We all do it, even I get caught up in others things from time to time and I have to readjust, refocus my worship back to the one that worship was created for.
Let’s get back to worshipping the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Let’s make him our focus. Let’s turn away from ourselves and focus on him.
I know this time of year, for many of your it is about receiving gifts. You get gets, because you are children. But listen, one day, when you have families, you will see it will be a greater to give a gift rather to recieve. I know its hard to think that now, but one day you will understand.
__Play Video___
What did Toby come to understand? Christmas wasn’t about him, it was about Jesus, who he was, A KING, and what he came for.
He is deserving of all the gold in the world, but all he wants is you. He wants you to look away from yoru self and look to him.
*’He
is the king Gifts fade, but his gift of salvation d oesn’t.