In this series, we are talking about God with us, Immanuel. Immanuel is the title given to the Messiah in the book of Isaiah, and as much as it is a title, even more importantly, it is a fulfilled promise.

Jesus, God Almighty, became man. He lived a sinless life, suffered an undeserved death, and was raised back to life.

These are not metaphors, these are not fairytales. This is the truth, and the truth is not only confirmed in the Bible, but in extra-biblical texts from historians who weren't Christian, like Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny, and others.

What this means is that we all have a decision to make about the person of Jesus: Fairytale or factual?

Now, most of you've already made the decision that he was real, that he actually lived and died and rose again. Even if you have a hard time believing the supernatural element of all this, at the minimum you have to at least acknowledge the truth that Jesus did exist, that he did do miracles, he did die, and based on the following hundreds of years of martyrs, including the apostles who were willing to face death rather than recant what they believed about Jesus, that all of these really believed he rose again.

It is amazing to see the impact the birth of Jesus had on those in Israel and beyond in real time. Next week we're going to talk about how the shepherds responded and how incredible that response was. We have evidence from antiquity, even Chinese history under Emperor Gwung Wu that talks about Jesus, both his death where they wrote of the sun going dark when a “man from Heaven dies,” but also the star at his birth.

Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society
“Astronomical and historical evidence suggests that the Star of Bethlehem was a comet which was visible around 5 BC described in ancient Chinese records.”

That star is what guided the wisemen who visited Jesus sometime after his birth.

Let’s read that account in Matthew 2:1-12
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 have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.” 3 When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. 5 So they said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet: 6 ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, Are not the least among the rulers of Judah; For out of you shall come a Ruler Who will shepherd My people Israel.’” 7 Then Herod, when he had secretly called the wise men, determined from them what time the star appeared. 8 And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the young Child, and when you have found Him, bring back word to me, that I may come and worship Him also.”

9 When they heard the king, they departed; and behold, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was. 10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. 11 And when they had 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 gifts to Him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 Then, being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed for their own country another way.

While we always see the wise men in the context of the birth of Jesus, specifically visiting him in the manger, the truth is that Jesus was most likely a toddler by the time they visited him. We know this was for sure before Jesus was 2 years old based on Matthew 2:16 where Herod, angry at being deceived by the wise men, issued a decree to kill all male children under age 2, called the Massacre of the Innocents. This is beyond comprehension that someone would be so arrogant and cruel.

Yet the wise men knew something about Jesus that they could only know by revelation from God above, and we can determine this by the text.

Not only did they travel from afar to visit Jesus, which in and of itself is a massive undertaking (most scholars believe they traveled anywhere from 500-900 miles which would take months to accomplish), they also brought gifts that were incredibly meaningful.

The gifts of the Magi weren’t random presents, but statements about who they believed Jesus to be.

Gold: Gold was (and still is at $4200 an ounce) a precious metal symbolizing royalty, honor, and wealth, given to acknowledge Jesus as the King of Kings. I realize that Heaven’s streets are made of gold according to scripture, and that fact might seem to devalue the material, but golden streets aren’t meant to devalue the material but to indicate the truth that our abundant God has more than enough!

Frankincense: A fragrant resin used in temple worship. This gift connected Jesus to the very act of worship of God in the sacrificial system, specifically to the point of creating a sweet aroma in the Temple that represents God’s very presence. To an Israelite, that fragrance was a tangible sign that God was with them. Frankincense was a declaration of Jesus’s divinity and His role as a mediator or high priest.

Myrrh: A bitter resin used for anointing the dead. Myrrh symbolized Jesus's humanity, suffering, and sacrificial death for humanity's sins, foretelling His crucifixion and burial.

So what we have in these three gifts is a declaration by the wise men that:
Jesus is the King of Kings, he is God with us, and he is the Sacrificial Lamb who came to save us.

Let me ask: Who is Jesus to you?

Let me contrast these three wise men, who are often represented as kings, with another king I mentioned before: Herod.

Herod the Great was a Roman-appointed king of Judea (37–4 BC). He is most famously known for trying to kill the newborn Jesus by ordering the Massacre of the Innocents in Bethlehem and its district. Though a powerful builder who expanded the Jewish Temple, he was also cruel and paranoid, ruling with violence to protect his throne. Isn’t it interesting that potentially pagan astrologers were the first to seek out Jesus, while the one who expanded the existing religious system was the first to try to kill Jesus? All about the heart, yall.

Four men. Three of them saw Jesus as king, Immanuel, and savior. One saw him as a threat.

Which is it for you?

Now I realize that none of us here today have a tangible kingdom that would be potentially threatened by the person of Jesus, but we definitely have an intangible kingdom that could be.

Matthew 10:34
34 “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. 35 For I have come to ‘set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’; 36 and ‘a man’s enemies will be those of his own household.’ 37 He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. 38 And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. 39 He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.

What in the world? What Jesus are we talking about here?

We’re talking about the real Jesus - the one who has come to threaten and disrupt your fleshly kingdom. FYI We need our fleshly kingdoms disrupted! We need to be under his kingdom! We do that by acknowledging who Jesus is.

In acknowledging Jesus, I want to share with you three things you’re doing:

1. You’re submitting your kingdom to his.
I didn’t say you’re getting overthrown or deposed. I didn’t say you are being taken captive, either. What I am talking about here is submission to the authority of Jesus Christ. Lordship, which will require you lay some things down.

There are numerous verses about us submitting our will to his will. For instance, Jesus constantly prayed to the Father, “Not my will but yours be done.”

Here’s one: Romans 12:1-2
1 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. 2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

There are two words I want you to focus on here: transform and will. When you say yes to Jesus, you are choosing to submit your will to his will. You are embracing his Lordship, and that simply means that you submit your kingdom, your life, to his kingdom, his life, so that you can become everything he created you to be.

Let's be real, your flesh is going to hate this! Your flesh is not going to be OK with submitting to some other king. Think of your flesh as Herod. Herod didn't see Jesus as a blessing, he saw him as a threat. Jesus was never someone he would submit to. And your flesh is going to refuse to submit to the lordship of Jesus as well. Remember Romans 6: your flesh and spirit war against each other

That's why the word transform is such a big deal. Transformation comes through discipleship and development. It is constant learning, growing, leaning into God, getting help, dealing with sin, increasing those things that feed righteousness, etc. This is why we are so focused on trying to disciple and develop you, and this is why the enemy fights you so hard to stop you.

You transformed is what we after, and why? Because when you are transformed you can effectively submit your kingdom to his.

Transformation stops you from seeing Jesus as a threat to your way of living, and he starts being the reason that you are living.

The wisemen got to experience Jesus’ very presence, but Herod did not.
I know you want Immanuel, God to be with you, but until Jesus is in his rightful place in your life, his will never be a presence that you delight in, but one that's a threat.

Jesus and his kingdom will always be a threat to your flesh and its kingdom.

So what do you do to fix this?
You embrace discipleship and development.
You embrace his Lordship.
You allow that discipleship to transform you into who God created you to be.

At that point, Jesus stops being a threat, and he starts being the blessing that he came to be.

2. You’re declaring who God is in your life.
As we embrace his Lordship, we are also declaring who God is in our life. Now I partially mean we are declaring who he is, but I also mean we are declaring what we see as God in our lives.

If there's one thing we have in common with Israel, more than anything else, it's that we are really good at idol worshiping. They worshiped Molech, Ashtoreth, and Baal, but we worship money and peoples’ opinions and intangibles like success or happiness.

When the wise man brought that frankincense and laid it at the feet of Jesus, he was declaring, "Jesus, you are God." When I think about this, I think about what I bring to Jesus on a daily basis that says the same thing. I can easily get lost in anxiety over financial issues, or I can easily get overwhelmed by what people think about me, and as for me, when I choose anxiety over trusting God or other peoples’ opinions over what God says about me, I am laying frankincense at the feet of my financial problems or other peoples’ words. I'm declaring with my offering, "You are god in this moment.”

If you want the basic point of Colossians 3:5, its: put idolatry to death in you. (Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry). Here it is simply: stop worshipping idols (anything you put over Jesus)

When you allow your thoughts and beliefs and actions to be driven by the truth that Jesus is not only the one true God, but that there is none like him, none who compare, what happens is your flesh submits, your allegiance is right, and the result is that:

3. You’re creating space for Jesus to work.
We don’t know what happened after the wise men left, other than the fact that they went home another way. But there is no record of the lives these men led after encountering Jesus.

Herod on the other hand, died shortly after the massacre from a painful illness, according to the Bible and historical record.

I wonder: What if Herod had the same heart towards Jesus as the wisemen? How would his life have been different, even his death been different, had he responded appropriately to Jesus?

Jesus was teaching parables along the Sea of Galilee and decided to return to Nazareth, his hometown. We pick this up in Matthew 13:54-58
54 He returned to Nazareth, his hometown. When he taught there in the synagogue, everyone was amazed and said, “Where does he get this wisdom and the power to do miracles?” 55 Then they scoffed, “He’s just the carpenter’s son, and we know Mary, his mother, and his brothers—James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas. 56 All his sisters live right here among us. Where did he learn all these things?” 57 And they were deeply offended and refused to believe in him. Then Jesus told them, “A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his own family.” 58 And so he did only a few miracles there because of their unbelief.

Do you know what was missing in this story?
Fatih is a good answer, but there is something else. Something was missing in the hearts of the people in Nazareth. Jesus was common to them. They scoffed at him. Considered him basic. Those thoughts and actions stopped the miraculous.

What was missing was the gold, frankincense, and myrrh, but not the tangible gifts. They failed to recognize his lordship, that’s gold. They refused to consider him as divine, that’s frankincense. They couldn’t believe him as their savior, that’s myrrh.

More than anything this Christmas, I pray my life would reflect the truth of who he really is.

I don’t want fear and familiarity and unbelief to be the gifts I lay at his feet. I want it to be gold for my king, frankincense for my God, and myrrh for my Savior. How about you?

To be honest, I've never thought about the gifts from the wise men like this. They were more than just tangible items, but reflections of who Jesus was to them.

And I'll confess that putting this message together this week had me in a place of conviction. Maybe you feel the same right now.

Maybe it's not that you’re convicted by the sin in your heart or the fact that we all fail, If you’re like me, the conviction is that the gift that I bring to him isn't always the gift that is due him.

Sometimes I bring him things that he deserves, my praise, my worship, my devotion.

But sometimes my gifts are wholy inadequate for my king, my God, my savior.

I think of Psalm 51:16-17
16 You do not desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one. You do not want a burnt offering. 17 The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.

He doesn’t want some gift I could bring or what I could add to him. He just wants my heart.

And a broken spirit is not hopeless or crushed by despair, but softened, surrendered, and honest before God. It’s a heart no longer defensive, proud, or self-justifying. It simply recognizes its need for God.

Simply put: we need Jesus. We need Immanuel, God with us.

He’s not looking for what you have to bring to him. He’s looking for a heart that is receptive.

If you’ll come to him with a heart that declares he is king, he is God, he is savior, the result is that you’ll get his kingdom, his family, his salvation.

How’s your heart this Christmas?
Is it threatened by Jesus, is it hard towards him?
Or is it receptive, soft, and grateful?

Wherever you are in this, and whatever gifts you’ve been bringing to him,
let’s have the heart of the wise men this Christmas and declare he is king, God, savior.

Let’s pray.

How to respond:
- take a moment and declare who he is to you
- repent of any idolatry you’ve engaged in
- give Jesus access to all of you so he can work
- ask the Holy Spirit to lead in spite of your flesh

What is the Holy Spirit saying to you through this message?

How does he want you to respond?