Looking for Christmas

Pastor Mike will be speaking on Looking for Christmas. He will be in Matthew 2.

And many people are pursuing the wrong things and what they really need to do is say you know what? Christmas is a time for me to reset my heart and to reset my focus and my mind Upon what is most important in this world and that is that there is only salvation in Jesus Christ Merry Christmas, I know it’s not Christmas yet But this is the week that we are going to be celebrating Christmas and it is so wonderful to be able to gather as God’s people Around the Word of God and today I’ve entitled my message looking for Christmas out of the gospel of Matthew chapter 2 We’re gonna study the wise men and they followed a star and they found the Christ of Christmas and today We are all called to look for the true meaning in Christmas and to remember that it’s about a Savior who died on the cross For our sins and I hope today as we study together that you’ll be encouraged in your faith that you’ll be drawn to the Lord Jesus Christ Let’s join together in Matthew chapter 2 now If you have your Bible this morning,

I want you to join me in Matthew chapter 2 Matthew chapter 2 will be covering verses 1 through 12 while you’re turning there Let me just remind you that in the gospel of Matthew that Matthew is continuing his thrust to establish Jesus’s right to Israel’s true and final kingship In chapter 2 Matthew gives us three additional evidences of Jesus of Nazareth’s legitimate, unique and absolute royal right to the throne of David In chapter 1 we see the evidences of Jesus’s royal genealogy As Matthew traces us back to the throne of David and reminds us that as God through his prophets had already said There would be a Messiah that would come out of the lineage of David.

But not only does Matthew give us the evidence of this royal genealogy, but he also introduces us to the amazing truth of the virgin birth of our Savior. Jesus was always acknowledged at his birth as the rightful heir of the throne of David.

Because of the uniqueness of his birth and the connection of his birth to all the prophecies that were made in the Old Testament, he was truly recognized as that promised Messiah. When we come to chapter 2 of the Gospel of Matthew, we see that Matthew gives us the evidence of the testimony of the wise men who searched for the Messiah, and they came to worship the Messiah and to give gifts.

Very much like a courtroom, Matthew lays out the facts and then he brings in the witnesses to affirm the facts and the presentation. As he brings in the magi, the witnesses, we understand that these were not illegitimate witnesses, but they were the intellectuals of their day.

These wise men were skilled in the arts, in medicine, in the sciences, and in philosophy. As an unusual and extraordinary bright star had appeared to these wise men, they knew that a king had been born.

The magi knew that it was their job to seek the king. The question before us on this moment as we are thinking about Christmas and the coming of our Savior is, will you see Jesus this Christmas? As so many people see Christmas and may even be looking for Christmas, but they never see Jesus.

And what I would like us to consider that even though we find ourselves in different times, that each of us recognize that we have a responsibility as believers to once again see Jesus at Christmas. C .S.

Lewis, who was a great thinker and apologist of Christianity, he defined hope as, and I quote, a continual looking forward to the eternal world, end of quote. And I think that is really the description of the wise men.

They were hoping to find a king, the king of the Jews they were looking for, and they discovered Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Each of us must look for Christ, and we must look for the Christ of Christmas and our eyes must be wide open.

And the wise men this morning teach us how to be looking for Christmas, how to more specifically look for Christ in Christmas. And I submit unto you first of all that we must look willingly. We must look willingly.

I want you to come to chapter 2 and I want you to look with me at verse 1 and 2. The Bible says, now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king behold there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem saying where is he that is born king of the Jews for we have seen his star in the east and are come to worship him.

These wise men were called Magi. They came from Persia or the Chaldean area which today would be Iraq or Iran area in the Middle East. They were astronomers, astrologists, and they had been studying the stars.

And as they were studying the stars, they saw this bright star. And the question is, how did these wise men know that they were to seek for a king, that they were to seek for Jesus, they were to seek for a Messiah, that they were to seek for someone who would come and bring redemption and salvation to the world?

Well, in Numbers chapter 24, verse 17, the Bible says that a star shall come out of Jacob. A scepter shall rise out of Israel. These wise men were not just wise because they sought something different, but they were wise because they were looking into the Bible, because they were looking into God’s Word.

And as they were studying the stars, and as they were studying the creation of God, as they were understanding the sciences and the philosophies of the world, these wise men turned to the Bible. And all the way back in the book of Numbers, Moses, that great prophet, that great leader in the Old Testament, had mentioned that a star would point to the Messiah.

These men in their divine wisdom, that God had imparted to them, because they did not look to the world for their answers, but looked to the Word of God for their answers. God, through His Spirit and through His truth, helped them to connect the dots, to understand that a Messiah was to be born, and that a star would lead them to that Messiah.

What is interesting as we reflect on this story is the response of the religious leaders. I want you to jump down to verse 3. We look at this response, We see how it contrasts with the response of the wise men.

The Bible says in verse 3 of chapter 2, when Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.

Now note that they as well know the Bible and they know what the prophets had taught. Look at verse 5. They said unto him in Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophets. And thou Bethlehem in the land of Judah are not the least among the princes of Judah.

For out of thee shall come a governor that shall rule my people Israel. Isn’t it interesting that when the wise men studied the Bible, they were willing to search. They were willing to follow through.

They were willing to look for the Christ of Christmas. But when the religious leaders got together and they met with the king and he said tell me what’s going on. Tell me about this news that the wise men have brought to our community and has all of Jerusalem talking.

Has everybody troubled? Has everybody asking questions? Has everybody thinking about what is going on? Is there the possibility that the Messiah has been born? Is there a new king? What is this? The chief priest quickly referenced the book of Micah in the Old Testament reminding the king that a Messiah would be born in Bethlehem.

But the distinction is that even though they had this knowledge they did nothing with it. They were apathetic towards the truth of God. They never activated it in their life. There are many people who have a knowledge of God and they have a knowledge of the Bible but they never follow through on applying the Bible to their life.

And that’s why these wise men are so insightful is because they not only had this unique knowledge in their study of the scriptures but they quickly applied the Bible to their lives. As you and I are looking for Christmas we must willingly come to the Word of God and we must not only know it but we must obey it and apply it to our life.

A lot of people have a knowledge of God but they never take it any further in their life. People grow up in church. People grow up in a religious home. People hear about God. They hear about Jesus. They hear about a baby being born and they think Christmas is neat and unique and they think it’s a wonderful time for us to all get together and celebrate and be with family and friends and certainly that’s a part of it.

But isn’t there something deeper? Isn’t there something more profound to the coming of Christ to this world? We must willingly come to the Scriptures. We must seek this Savior, this Messiah, the wise men who studied the stars, and they studied the Bible, had a healthy and productive curiosity that led them to God Almighty.

God is not afraid of your questions, and God is not even intimidated by your doubt. He is not scared of your thoughts as you are seeking. But my friends, that as you seek the Lord, if you’re on this journey this morning and you are once again wanting to reestablish your faith, renew your faith, and reaffirm your faith in this special season of the year, know that your journey must always lead you to Jesus.

and that as you come to the understanding, as you come to the knowledge that God is calling you to apply it to your life. The journey ahead is difficult as we are looking for the Christ of the Christmas.

But the reward is unbelievable because we wanna go deeper than just the knowledge. We wanna have a relationship with Jesus Christ, amen? The invitation is never an invitation to religion, it’s not an invitation to rituals, but it’s an invitation to know Christ.

The Bible tells us that there’s coming a day, the gospel of Matthew chapter seven in which Jesus will declare, I never knew you. Depart from me, you that work iniquity, I never knew you. Now, these individuals will claim to have done many signs and many wonders and they will claim to have a lot of knowledge.

But Jesus never knew them on a personal level. Christmas has to be more than just something that’s nice and something that is part of your calendar. But you must have a relationship with Christ and be careful that you are not like the religious crowd that knows the information but never does anything with it.

Never responds to God, never dedicates your life to the Lord, never submits to him and never applies his truth to your life. When you find the Christ of Christmas, you will once again be filled with renewed hope.

The second thing I want us to note from the wise men that as we are looking for Christmas, that we must search carefully. Again, you’ll note in verse eight that the king said to the wise men, go and search diligently for the young child.

Some translations say, search carefully. Search carefully. We come to… Chapter 2, verse 3 of our text, Matthew, in this unique story about the wise men who are seeking the Messiah. The Bible says, when Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled in all Jerusalem with him.

And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet, And thou, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are not the least among the princes of Judah, and for out of thee shall come a governor that shall rule my people Israel.

Then Herod, when he had privately called the wise men, inquired of them diligently what time the star appeared, and he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently for the young child, and when you have found him, bring me word again that I may come and worship him also.

The times in which Jesus appeared and came for the first time, his advent, which is Latin for coming, when he had come to this world was not much different than our world because the people had been longing for a Messiah and there was a passion and a hope in their hearts for someone to bring justice to the land.

We live in times where people want the wrongs to be made right. We live in times where people are longing for something better than what this world has to offer. This was the same condition of the hearts of the people in the times in which Jesus came into the world.

You remember when the angels appeared to the shepherd in the gospel of Luke? You remember that the Bible says in Luke chapter 2 verse 10 that the angel said unto them, fear not for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people.

Why would the coming of Christ be so joyful and why would it be such good news to all the people? Because all that they had already experienced had been a letdown and a disappointment. Herod was a tyrant of a leader.

Herod was a conflicted man. He had been married 10 times and within this there was great conflict between the new wife, the old wife, the children, everybody bidding for control and power. And so Herod was a man who came from a lineage of leaders who were not afraid to suppress the people and if people did not follow their ways they would have them imprisoned or they would have them murdered.

This was just… normal. The people had become disillusioned with their political leaders. They had become disappointed with those who were responsible of authority over them. But when the announcement came, and isn’t it interesting that the announcement was not a grand announcement.

It did not make social media. It was not on television. There was no alert sent to our phones, but it was just announcement made to the lowly shepherds who were considered outcasts of the community. They were responsible for taking care of the sheep that would be offered as sacrifices in the temple and outside of the temple into this field where the shepherds were.

The angel appears and announces that there’s good news. There is good news to all the people. And the good news is that Christ the Messiah has been born. And it is a contrast to all that we have experienced and all that they had experienced.

And this promise of a Messiah who would rule with peace and justice, who would right the wrongs of the world. He would be the one who would bring true salvation, not only to the Jewish people, but to all who would believe in Christ.

Now, those who heard this news kind of jumped the gun a little bit and they were hoping that Jesus would sit upon a political throne and that Jesus would solve all the political problems of their day.

But Jesus came first to be a personal king. He came to be the king of every heart that would believe in him, that would put their trust and their faith in him. And there is a promise, my friends in the scriptures, that not only has he come to be our personal king, but one day he will come and he will be our political king.

But until that time, our hope and our peace and our joy is rooted in the kingship of Christ in our own personal lives. Now, this star of promise that had been revealed to the wise men had guided them and encouraged them.

And because they had searched so carefully and because they had understood that Jesus was a king, that this Messiah was to be born, that they understood that there would be great joy and there would be great happiness.

And the great news this morning is that as you research the scriptures, that the Bible teaches us that Jesus is not just the king of the Jews, but he is the king of the Arabs. He is the king of the Asians.

He is the king of the Africans. He is the king of the Americans. Jesus Christ is the savior of the world. And he is the one that will bring you peace. You will not find peace in politics. not find peace in your circumstances, you will not find peace in this world, but you will only find peace in a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

So as we search, we search carefully, because as we search carefully, we find that in Christ all the questions of life are answered, and that’s what the wise men found out. That Jesus was the answer to all of their hopes, He was the answer to all of their dreams.

And many people are pursuing the wrong things, and they are getting passionate about the wrong things, and they’re getting caught up into the narratives of the world, and what they really need to do is say, you know what, Christmas is a time for me to reset my heart, and to reset my focus, and my mind upon what is most important in this world, and that is that there is only salvation in Jesus Christ,

for the Bible teaches us… that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. The driving message of every believer is Jesus Christ.

It is Christ as the answer, and Christ will lead. Every person who is seeking answers, who is seeking solutions, who is seeking for hope and peace and forgiveness, Christ will lead every person who seeks after Him to the true joy of salvation.

Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father but by Me. And there is only one way to heaven, friends. There are not multiple ways. There is one way. And Jesus is that answer.

And so as you search, search carefully and know that God says if you seek after Me, you will find Me. You will find the true answer. The third thing I want us to note this morning is that we must hope expectantly.

We must hope expectantly. We look at verse 9 of chapter 2, and the Bible says when they, referring to the wise men, had heard the king, they departed. And lo, the star which they saw in the east went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was.

When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary, his mother, and fell down and worshiped him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Sometimes our Christmas songs can mess our theology up. Because we are taught sometimes through these Christmas songs that the wise men showed up and there was Jesus and they showed up in the stable.

But Matthew tells us that they came to a house. Matthew tells us that he was a young child. He’s no longer an infant, but he’s most likely a toddler. How do we know this? We know it through inference in that we can see as we jump down to verse 16 that Herod was upset.

He felt mocked by the wise men. He became very angry and he made sure that all the children, and this is devastating, but all the children in Bethlehem were slain two years and under. Most likely Jesus is somewhere in that range, that he is a toddler.

The wise men have shown up and they see the young child, the Messiah, the Savior. It’s hard sometimes to have hope, isn’t it? They heard about a Savior being born, but it took them a little time to go find him.

We see things happening in the Bible from one verse to the next or one chapter and we think it’s all instantaneously and we’re thinking, wow, man, you know, the pastor got through that sermon in 30 minutes and so I guess all this unfolded in 30 minutes, but it didn’t.

It’s not like that, is it? Hope has to stay alive even when we feel discouraged and when we feel… defeated as the birth of Christ was the fulfillment of the hopes of those who had lived in the days that preceded it.

They were living in this hope and this promise that a Messiah would come. Abraham never saw that Messiah. He saw the Messiah by faith, but he never saw him physically. Moses never saw the great men and women of faith never physically saw.

They never saw the Messiah physically, but by faith they did and they believed in their hearts. Jesus was now in His birth the fulfillment of all those hopes, all those dreams, all those promises, all those expectations now come to fruition.

But the birth of Christ is also the basis for all of our hope and all of our blessings as we live today. We want to see things change quickly. We want to see answers now. We want to experience all that God has promised us even now.

But friends listen, there are the ways I see things should happen and there are the ways that God sees things and His ways are not my ways. And though we would like to see the second coming of Christ and we would like to see every wrong made right and we would like to see justice and peace and eternal joy into this world even now.

We live in times that are difficult and sometimes hard to swallow even after the birth of Jesus Christ. Think about this, Herod had all babies two years and younger murdered. Do you know how devastating that was?

Do you know how the parents weeped? The families were broken? Do you understand the grief that was being experienced in that day? What I want you to know that even as we walk through the trials of life we must remember that all our hopes are wrapped up in this person called.

Jesus. And the Scriptures tell us in Luke chapter 2 verse 11, For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And these wise men understood that, and that they understood that although they had many promises and many hopes and many expectations, that just because they faced trials and just because they faced problems, it did not diminish that hope.

It did not rob them of that joy because they knew that in Christ, he would fulfill in his time, in his way, all that God has promised to his people. That’s what I want you to know. That’s why we must have great expectation and anticipation as we hope.

Now, the wise men came to Jesus. They came to present him gifts. That’s because no one would ever approach a king without a gift. These wise men recognized Jesus as the king of Israel, as the king of the world, as a savior, and they showered Him with gifts.

They recognized that He was the true Lord of lords. And it is interesting that these gifts that they gave Him, for they speak into our lives today. The Bible teaches us that they gave Him gold, gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Gold is a gift for a king. Frankincense is a gift for a priest. As a matter of fact, the Latin word for priest literally means bridge builder. That’s what Christ would do. He would build the bridge to us.

That in our sense, we are separated from God, but Christ would build the bridge, and He would connect us once again to God, and He would bring joy and grace and forgiveness and salvation to all who would believe in Him.

How would we do that? This frankincense gift was prophetic in that it was always used in the temple to worship. It was used by the priest as they offered sacrifices. The frankincense was a scent that was used in the temple by the priest to cover the smell of the sacrifices.

You can imagine how it must have smelt as they brought these sacrifices to God, and that the priest would slay the lamb as it was being offered up to God as a way to say, God, we seek You, and we want our sins to be rolled ahead.

There was no finality in these sacrifices, but as the people came to worship God, seeking God to bring forgiveness into their lives, the priests would present these sacrifices. And the stench of that smell must have overwhelmed, so they used frankincense to cover that smell, and that the sacrifice would…

be a smell that was sweet or special or beautiful. Christmas is always special because we share gifts with one another and we celebrate family. We celebrate those special traditions and we get connected with one another.

And I want and hope that you’re doing that this year, but I want you to remember the greatest gift of all, that is the gift of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gives us the gift of eternal life to everyone who believes on Him.

The Bible tells us that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. I today am asking that if you are ready, call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, put your faith in Him and trust Him as your Lord and Savior.

Don’t go through this holiday season without knowing the Savior. of the season and that is Jesus Christ. I pray that you’ll call upon him. This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.