Did the wise men give gold, frankincense, and myrrh to young Jesus because they were the most valuable gifts? or the most meaningful. Today, on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah answers that question. With insights on how each of these gifts reflect Christ as King, priest, and savior.
From Why the Nativity, here's David to introduce the conclusion of his message, Why the Gifts of the Wise Men? You know, the Christmas story is just the gospel right in the middle. It's the gospel of Jesus coming to be one of us, becoming a man and going to the cross to die. But the imagery of this story is also great. The gifts of the wise men tell the redemption story, and we're studying that right now.
And I hope you'll stay with us for today as we go to part two of Why the Gifts of the Wise Men. This series began a number of years ago when I was asked to write a book on Christmas answering 25 questions that had surfaced through a publisher. We did that book and it did very well and people liked it. And three years ago, it was turned into a movie called Why the Activity. That movie has won awards, it's been seen everywhere in America.
It's now beginning to be shown all over the country. It will be on television. It will be in the place where you normally hear And see Turning Point on television, and you'll be able to follow in December why the Nativity, the movie. We believe God has His hand on this movie and is using it to bring many. to faith, and we want you to pray with us and help us as we go forward with this initiative.
And let me remind you that when you send your gift of any size, we'll send you this beautiful devotional book A Closer Walk with Jesus. 392 pages. And a devotional for every day of the new year. Beautiful photography between each month, and a wonderful leather cover. With silver embossed letters.
You will be so proud of this and you will be so helped by it. And we want it to be yours for this coming year. We'll send it to you when you give us a gift for the end of the year here. That's right, for a gift of any size. Just ask for your copy of the 2026 devotional, A Closer Walk with Jesus, and we'll send it to you right away.
Your gift is a blessing to us and a very important part of what we do in December. And so we want to say thank you with the gift back to you, A Closer Walk with Jesus, our resource for the month of December. And now Once again, the wise men in the story of Christmas. John Henry Hopkins Jr. gave us the little carol that we sing at this time of the year, We Three Kings, which includes this stanza: Born a King on Bethlehem's Plain.
Gold I bring to crown him again. King forever, ceasing never, over us all to reign.
So gold is a gift which was given To signify the royalty and kingship of Jesus. Secondly, the Bible says the gift of gold for a king and the gift of frankincense for a priest. Once again in Matthew 2:11, we're told that when they opened their treasures, they gave to Jesus gold. and frankincense. I did a little homework on frankincense, and I found out it is a resin, which is from a kind of tree that is held so sacred in Arabia and Ethiopia, where it grew, that only a few particularly Holy and pure people were even allowed to approach the trees.
To obtain this precious frankincense itself, an Arab cuts a slash in the trunk of the tree, like someone from Vermont cuts a maple tree, and then strips off a narrow piece of bark about five inches long below the cut, and the sap slowly oozes out of the tree, and it's allowed to harden for about three months. Then it's collected in lumps. And these lumps are yellow or colorless, dusty looking with a bitter taste. But when you light them on fire, they burn with a bright white flame, and there arises from them this beautiful smell that goes to heaven, which certainly made the wise men believe that this was a gift that would be pleasing to God. In Jesus' day, This kind of incense was used in temple worship.
It was mixed with oil and it was used to anoint the priests of Israel. It was also mixed with the meal offerings as they offered them to God. But one of the interesting things about incense is this: that it was always an offering of thanksgiving and praise to God. It was significant of the priest's role among the people, and it is that, I believe, to which Paul refers when he writes to the Philippians in Philippians 4:Indeed, I have all and abound. I am full, having received from Epaphroditus the things sent from you, a sweet-smelling aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, well pleasing to God.
In other words, Paul said, like the incense offering of the Old Testament, what you have given to me to support me in my ministry, Paul said, is like an incense offering that goes up to heaven, and the aroma is pleasing to God. In the Old Testament. The incense offerings were never associated in any way with the sin offerings. Never was an incense offering offered with meat offerings or with wine offerings. In atonement for sin.
The incense was always a thanksgiving and praise offering. It was always an act of worship to bring incense to God. Almost as if to say, as they presented this gift to the Christ child, here is the gift that is fitting for a priest. Yes, fitting for a sinless priest, who himself will become sin for us, that we might know his forgiveness and his righteousness. And then finally, there is this third gift.
In Matthew 2.11 says, they presented to him gold and frankincense. And myrrh, it is a word which comes from the Hebrew word mar, which means to be bitter. In Jesus' day, myrrh was the ingredient that was used to embalm a dead body. It was an external embalming. As you remember, in those days they did not have the procedures that we have today.
But when they prepared a body for burial, they would wrap the body in layers of cloth and then they would place their embalming spices in between the layers and then wrap the body some more and continue to do that. We are told in the scripture that when Joseph of Arimathea came to prepare Jesus' body for burial, that he brought with him 100 pounds of myrrh for the burial. to be wrapped within the cloth that was used to bury our Savior. One of the churches of Asia Minor that we read about in the book of Revelation is the church of Smyrna. That sounds a little bit like myrrh, doesn't it?
And it should sound like myrrh, because that's where myrrh was manufactured. Smyrna got its name from the manufacturing of myrrh. Interestingly enough, in the seven churches of Revelation, Smyrna is the church which is associated with suffering. It is a suffering church.
Now, ladies, if you were invited to a baby shower, To honor a new baby. And you were asked to bring a gift. Would it even cross your mind to bring a case of embalming fluid? I doubt it. But indeed, that's what these men brought.
Myrrh had a value, it could have been sold for money, but the significance of the gift of myrrh is that it was given to someone who was born for the particular purpose of dying. Just as Mary of Bethany over in John 12 anointed Jesus' body for burial before he had even died, remember when she poured all of her expensive ointment on him and washed his feet with her hair. And it says in the scripture that she anointed his body for burial in advance.
Well, long before Mary ever did this, the wise men did the very same thing. And the one who brought that gift to Jesus was saying, This one we have come to worship is not only our king and our priest. But we worship Him as our Savior, for He has come to die for us. and the gift of myrrh. signifies his death.
Now there are many interesting things in the Bible about myrrh. I always wonder when I read the New Testament stories of people like the wise men, I wonder how much they knew about the Old Testament. We don't have any way of knowing that. We can make some assumptions, but what we do know is this: had they been students of the Old Testament, they could have learned a great deal about the life of Christ even before he was born. It has been said that there is enough information in the Old Testament about Christ to reconstruct an accurate Christology, a life of Christ, before the New Testament is even written.
In the Old Testament Psalms, for instance, there are a number of psalms that are referred to by the scholars as messianic psalms. That means they're psalms about the Messiah. before the Messiah is even born. And it is so unbelievable to see how accurate they are in describing events that would take place many hundreds of years in the future. For instance, one such illustration is Psalm 22, where in verses 16 through 18 we read these words.
This is a messianic Psalm, and this is what it says: They pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones. They look and stare at me. They divide my garments among them. And for my clothing, they cast lots.
Now, if I didn't tell you where that was found in the Bible, you would think I was reading from the New Testament, but I am not. I am reading from a Messianic Psalm in the Old Testament. Perhaps the wise men had studied this psalm. And we're giving recognition to Jesus who would fulfill these prophecies the Psalm writes about.
Now In the New Testament, when Jesus is dying, MER once again comes into play. In fact, there is. A supposed controversy about it in the New Testament. And I want to show this to you just as an incidental part of this message. In Mark 15, 23, we are told that when Jesus was on the cross, they gave him wine mingled with myrrh to drink.
But he did not take it. That's what it says. That's what the scripture says. You can read it there.
Now, in John's Gospel, we have another statement concerning this, and in John 19:30, we read: So when Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, It is finished. And bowing his head, he gave up his spirit.
Now in one place the scripture says they offered Jesus wine mixed with myrrh and he would not receive it. And in another place, it says that they offered him something to drink, also used for wine, and he received it. And the scholarly critics come along and they say, There you have it, Jeremiah. There you have it. There is a contradiction in the Bible.
The Bible has errors in it. Here it says he drank it, and there it says he didn't drink it. But I want you to note that when anybody says that, you need to ask them have they read the text carefully. When Jesus was offered wine mixed with myrrh, he refused it. For you see, one of the properties of myrrh, not only was it used for embalming, but it was used to deaden the pain of suffering.
And when my Lord was offered the opportunity to find relief from the suffering he was going through on the cross for you and for me, when they gave him a painkiller. To lessen the pain of his agony for me and for you. He turned it away. Because the scripture said he would feel every ounce of suffering for sin that was due to us. But when in John he was offered wine without myrrh.
He received it. You see, in John, it just says he was offered sour wine, some kind of a vinegar wine, but it didn't have myrrh in it.
So he received it. There's no contradiction here. These two passages are perfectly in harmony with one another, and they teach an important lesson. A lesson that tells us that even given the opportunity for the pain to be deadened, In his death, Jesus refused it because he was called to suffer it all for us. There's one more verse about myrrh that I want you to see.
This one from the Old Testament that is even more exciting to me as I see it. In Isaiah chapter 60 and verse 6, there is. A prophecy concerning the second coming of Christ. Jesus at Bethlehem is the First coming, and there's another time when He's going to come again to set up His kingdom on this earth to rule and to reign. And we will all be subjects with Him if we are Christians.
The prophecy of Isaiah Chapter 60 has to do with the second coming of Christ. And I want to read it to you from the sixth verse, and you listen to the prophecy carefully. The multitude of camels shall cover your land, the dromedaries of Median and Ephra. All those from She shall come. They shall bring gold and incense, and they shall proclaim the praises of the Lord.
Now, when you read that prophecy, there is something missing, isn't there? What's missing? Mm-hmm. The writer must have forgotten. No, he did not forget.
Because you see the gifts you bring to Jesus. In his second coming, don't have any myrrh in them because his death is already past. When he comes the next time, it will be for the gold and frankincense of praise and worship and myrrh will be absent. Hallelujah. He died once for all, and he will never die again.
Myrrh is associated only with his first coming, and how accurate is the scripture, even so many years in advance, that when speaking of his second coming, The third gift is omitted because it doesn't fit With the worship and praise of Almighty God, our King, when He sets up His reign upon this earth.
So, there's a lot more in the gifts than you thought. gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Gold for a king, incense for a priest, and myrrh for a savior.
Now, the question I want to ask as we close our time together is this. We talked first about what the wise men gave to Jesus, and I want to talk for just a moment about what wise men still give to Jesus. And I want to compliment all of you today using man in the generic term. You are all very wise men and women here. What do wise men and women still give to Jesus?
Well, let's go back through the gifts once more and notice that first of all, we give to Jesus gold, responding to him as our king. Gold is the gift for a king. And as Christ's followers this Christmas, a gift we can bring to Jesus is our absolute total submission to him in the kingship of our life. We can say, Lord God, I bring to you the gift which is yours as my king. I bow my knee before you as the Lord of my life.
And I am confident that what God wants from his people, more than the great treasures that we have, even more than the money which we give, representing our sacrifice. Is he wants our obedience. In fact, in the Old Testament, it says straight out: to obey is better than sacrifice. God wants the gold of our willingness to come before our King and really make Him King of our life. It's not enough that he be resident.
He wants to be president. When we become Christians, we invite Him into our heart and He forgives our sin. But along the way, we begin to realize that He wants more than just the opportunity to forgive our sin. He wants to govern our lives as the king over us, and when we yield to Him as the sovereign Of our being, we begin to understand the purpose of being a Christ follower. You can become a Christian.
and just sort of slip inside the door. Give lip service sometimes, not total commitment to Him. But what greater gift could you give to Jesus this Christmas season than your total, absolute? Devotion to Him and willingness to let Him govern your life. Have you looked back over your life in this past year and noticed?
how easy it is to do foolish things, make stupid mistakes. go ways that now looking back you say, how did I ever miss that?
Sometimes, when we do our own thing, we have to pay a penalty for it. Almighty God wants to spare us of that. He just simply says, If you'll just come, I will be the Lord of your life, and I will guide and direct you in every step. Then, secondly, we not only give him Gold, responding to him as king, but we give him frankincense, reaching out to him as our priest. Is there ever such a time as this that it is more wonderful to be a preacher of the gospel than at Christmastime?
For Christmas says basically this, that Almighty God did not stay in heaven to say, I love you from a distance, but he came to earth to draw near to us so that he could be touchable and knowable and put his arms around us in love and say, not just, I love you in words, but I love you in deed and in action. And he comes not only to be our Savior, but to be our priest. Hebrews chapter 4 says that we have a high priest who has sympathized with our weaknesses. Who understands the hurts in our life? He has come down here to be one of us so he could experience it all, not even sparing all of the anxiousness of a child being born.
into the womb of Mary. and growing up to be full-aged at thirty-three. And throughout all of his life, he felt the pain that you feel and that I feel. And frankincense reminds us that he is our priest. He is the one who has come.
to draw near to us. And we offer him now our hurts and our hang-ups and our problems and our issues. Have you ever thought of that? Remember the story about Jerome, who said he had a dream, and God said, Jerome, just give me your sins. That's why I came.
Did you ever stop to think about the fact that one of the gifts you can give to Jesus at this season of the year are all of the things that have so troubled you, and you can offer them to Him for His help and His encouragement, and He reaches out to grab hold of them as He grabs hold of you? Offer him the frankincense of responding to his high priestly ministry. And then finally, And most important of all, Murr tells us you can receive him as your savior. That's the thing that you need to do most of all.
Somebody said, What gift should I give the Lord Jesus first? Give him your heart. If you haven't given him your heart, there's nothing you can do. He won't receive any gift from you until, first of all, you give him your heart. Murr tells us that he's a savior who was born to die.
And when you think of Murr, you ask yourself this question: So he died for me. Have I received his gift? And have I given him my heart? That's the most fundamental truth of Christmas. And as a preacher of the gospel, I love more than anything else to remind you at Christmastime, even though I know you are so preoccupied with everything else, that God loves you and Christ came here to be your Savior.
And if you don't know Him in a personal way as Savior of your life, you cannot fully comprehend the true meaning of Christmas. For he wants to be born in your heart as he was one day born in Bethlehem. One day after a service, a preacher had a young man come up to him who was very upset with him. He said, I don't know why you have to preach. On the cross, why you have to talk about the blood, why you have to say something about Jesus dying, especially at Christmas time.
It doesn't fit, and I don't like it. Why can't you just talk about Jesus as the great example? We would all deal with that so much better. And I have a lot of friends who've told me that if you wouldn't talk so much about the blood of Jesus and the death of Jesus, and if you would more talk about him being a great example, that they would be much more favorable toward the church and probably even support it more financially. The pastor who received these compliments was much wiser.
Your pastor and more knowledgeable about how to deal with these things. And he said to the stranger, He said, Sir, Would you be willing to follow Christ if I preached Christ as an example? If I preached Christ just as an example, would you be willing to follow him? He said, absolutely, I would, and so would many others. And the preacher said, Jesus Christ did not sin.
Can you take that step? And the stranger said, No, I can't. I do sin. He was sort of confused. He didn't know what to do with it.
Well, said the preacher, your first need of Christ then is not as an example. Your first need of Christ is as a Savior. If you try to follow him as an example without his redemptive work in your life, he will set an example you cannot follow. for he is sinless, and you sin. Do you see the problem?
And then he told him this little parable. He said, Son, suppose you were sinking in quicksand, and a man on firm ground nearby calls out to you, Walk like I do. Lift your feet like I do. Follow my example. His advice would do you no good because you have to get your feet planted on solid ground before you can walk like he does.
What you need is someone to come and take you out of the quicksand and lift you up and place your feet on solid ground. What does that sound like, class? That's what it means to be saved. To be brought out of the sand pit of sin by the Miracle of God's grace lifted up out of all that we have been and set over here on the solid ground of faith. And then as you watch the Lord Jesus in the New Testament, you can begin to emulate his life because he gives you a new power in the person of his Holy Spirit who comes to live within you.
So, my friends, today there are many in our pulpits who are preaching that Jesus is a great example, like other great teachers who lived when He did. But if all our Savior is, is a great example, we are in worse shape than we would ever be if we'd never heard of him, because he sets a standard none of us can follow. And that's the beauty of the gospel. While we cannot reach up to him, He has reached down to us. And when he came, He came that we might be redeemed.
What can you give Jesus at Christmas? Give him The submission of your heart over all of your life. Give him the praise and worship. And acknowledge his priestly ministry as he comforts you in your sorrow and sickness. But most of all, give him your heart.
Because that's where it starts. And until you've given Him your heart, you don't have a relationship with God. He came here so that if you would believe in him, you would not perish, but have everlasting life. I don't ever want to stop giving an invitation at the end of these programs, and I invite you today to receive Jesus Christ as your personal Savior by inviting Him into your heart. Ask Him to forgive your sin.
Tell Him that you believe He is the Son of the living God and accept Him into your life, and He will change you. The Bible says when you become a Christian, old things pass away and all things become new. You can be a new person. You can be born again today into the family of God. Do it now while the Holy Spirit is talking to you about it.
And let us know if you've done it so we can help you with some information to get you started on your walk with the Lord. Just write and ask about it and tell us you became a Christian listening to Turning Point, and we'll respond in that way. Once again, don't forget to ask for your copy of the devotional for 2026. Our way of saying thank you for your gifted Turning Point in the month of December. See you next time right here.
Today's message came to you from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Senior Pastor Dr. David Jeremiah. We love hearing how God is using this ministry in your life.
So please write to us at TurningPoint, P.O. Box 3838, San Diego, California, 92163. Visit our website at davidjeremiah.org/slash radio or call 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David's helpful new 365-day devotional for 2026, A Closer Walk with Jesus. Yours for a gift of any amount.
You can also download the free Turning Point mobile app for your smartphone or tablet, or search in your app store for Turning Point Ministries to access our content. Visit davidjeremiah.org/slash radio for details. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue the series, Why the Nativity? on Turning Point with Dr.
David Jeremiah.
