Advent: Magi & Gifts
December 20, 2020 Morning Service
Fourth Sunday of Advent
Immanuel Baptist Church, Wagoner, OK
Rick Boyne
Message Point: God has provided salvation through Jesus as His free gift.
Focus Passage: Matthew 2:1-16
Introduction: Talk personally about some strange gifts you received to set up the account of the Magi giving the gifts to Jesus.
I. The Magi
a. Who were these guys? We don’t know.
b. Where did they come from ? We don’t know.
c. How many were there? We don’t know.
d. Where they kings? We don’t know, but probably not.
e. Did they arrive at the stable? Very doubtful. Vs 11 says they came to the house where they were and found the child with his mother. It doesn’t say “baby.” Also, later, Herod was only interested in finding boys who were two years old and under.
f. What do we know? We know they were from the East. We know that they were held in high esteem in the East and got an audience with Herod. From history, we know that magi studied the stars, medicine, and religion. We see many instances of their kind throughout the Bible, but not in a good light. It was magi who tried to conjure tricks to meet the miracles of Moses. It was a jewish false prophet (magician) that Paul struck with blindness in Acts 13.We know they were not Jewish. We know that they didn’t come expecting to honor God, but honor a newborn king. They probably learned about the expected Jewish king from the centuries of Jewish bondage in Babylon and from the Jews who continued to live there. We know that God spoke to them in a dream and they had the sense enough to obey.
II. The Gifts
a. Gold – gold isn’t typically something you give to a young child. It is a gift for a king.
b. Frankincense – incense isn’t something you normally give to a child. But it is something a priest could use.
c. Myrrh – no one in their right mind would give this to a child. It was used as both perfume and medicine, and the Jews used it with other spices, to wrap up the dead for burial. (John 19:39, Nicodemus joined Joseph of Arimathea with 100 lbs of myrrh and aloe to wrap the body of Jesus for burial)
d. Did they know the significance of their gifts? Probably not. But they were expensive gifts and continue to be expensive to this day?
e. How much gold, frankincense, and myrrh did they give Jesus? We don’t know. If it had been important, it would have been recorded for us.
III. The Result
a. First of all, God’s salvation was revealed to the gentiles.
b. You just can’t have a delegation of foreign VIPs show up without causing a stir.
c. Herod became jealous and had all the baby boys in the area killed
i. This fulfilled Scripture: Thus says the LORD, "A voice is heard in Ramah, Lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; She refuses to be comforted for her children, Because they are no more." (Jeremiah 31:15 NASB)
d. Joseph is warned to flee for their lives in Egypt
i. The gifts of the magi fund the trip to Egypt
Application/Invitation: Jesus is the perfect gift. The Bible says that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.
(Romans 10:9-10 NASB)
