Why the Gifts of the Wisemen - Part 2

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Please make your donation today at vision.org.au. The Magi presented baby Jesus with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, not because they carried great value, but because they carried great meaning. Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah considers what each gift conveys about the nature of Christ and how we can respond to him as our King, Priest and Saviour.

With the conclusion of his message, Why the Gifts of the Wise Men, here's David. Well, you know, Christmas and giving go together, don't they? It's interesting how everything has changed for so many. We used to get in our cars and go to the shopping center and pour through the merchandise at the stores.

Now we sit in a chair and look at a computer and we find so much stuff on the computer. And if you haven't realized it, just be observant today as you drive around at how many delivery trucks there are, bringing packages to homes so that those can be wrapped and given to those that they love. However you do it, however it happens, Christmas is a time of giving. And in the New Testament story of the coming of Christ, several months after the birth of Jesus, the wise men came to what the Bible says was a house and they brought gifts to honor the coming Messiah. Those gifts are interesting and they are filled with all kinds of meaningful messages for us. So, whatever you do, make sure you listen carefully as we finish up our discussion of why the gifts of the wise men. And then tomorrow we're going to talk about music. And I'll restrain myself today and not get started on that because it's one of my favorite subjects during this season.

Let's go ahead and get started with this question and let's finish it today. Why the Gifts of the Wise Men. 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. Gold was given because Jesus was a king. An incense was given because Jesus was a priest, the high priest over us all. And then finally, there is this third gift. In Matthew 2-11 says, they presented to him gold and frankincense and myrrh.

Say the word myrrh out loud, 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 were giving recognition to Jesus, who would fulfill these prophecies the psalm writes about. Now, in the New Testament, when Jesus is dying, myrrh 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 if 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 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 this 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 Midian and Ephra. All those from Shey shall come.

They shall bring gold and incense, and they shall proclaim the praises of the Lord. Now, when you read that prophecy, there's something missing, isn't there? What's missing?

Say it. What's missing? Myrrh. 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 here today using man in the generic term. You are all very wise men and women here.

How many do you know who don't have that wisdom? So, I speak to you as to wise men and women. 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 Christmas time? 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 indeed and in action. And he comes not only to be our Savior, but to be our priest. We looked at the passage in Hebrews chapter 4 that 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 33. 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, Mer 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 till, first of all, you give him your heart. Mer tells us that he's a savior who was born to die and when you think of Mer, 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 Christmas time 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 than 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 obviously, 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.

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 absolutely no good. 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. Amen. Amen. Well, thank you so much for listening today, and thank you for being interested in the real story of Christmas, which has been our passion for the month of December. Now, don't forget, tomorrow we talk about music, and I hope you've been listening at the beginning of each broadcast because we've been telling you a lot about a very special music channel, a Christmas channel, if you will, and you can enjoy that during all these days. If you haven't been listening for that at the beginning of each broadcast, we'll play it again tomorrow.

So be sure and listen carefully, and let's celebrate Christmas together. I'm David Jeremiah. What a privilege to be with you today. We'll see you next time right here on This Good Station. Today's message came to you from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Senior Pastor, Dr. David Jeremiah.

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I'm Gary Hoogfleet. Please join us tomorrow as we continue the series, Why the Nativity? That's here on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah. Thanks for taking time to listen to this audio on demand from Vision Christian Media. To find out more about us, go to vision.org.au