You'll turn with me now in your Bibles to the book of Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 60, verses 1 through 7. We'll be reading for our Old Testament reading this morning. If you're using a pew Bible, you can find that on page 787. Page 787, Isaiah 60, verses 1 through 7. As we'll see in our sermon passage in Matthew's Gospel, this is a key piece of Old Testament background for what happens when these wise men from the East come to render tribute to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Isaiah 60, verses 1 through 7, on page 787 of our Pew Bible. First, let's pray. Oh, Lord Jesus, we thank you that your light has shone upon us, that you've come as the one who brings light to the Gentiles, that we who otherwise would be alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, you have gathered us to your people You've illuminated our darkness so that we might see you in your mercy and your grace. And so we do ask that this morning as we come to your word, that it would indeed continue to be that lamp which casts its light into the grim shadows of our sin, guiding our feet into the way of peace. We ask these things of Christ in your name. Amen. Isaiah 60. Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples. But the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you, and nations shall come to your light. and kings to the brightness of your rising. Lift up your eyes all around and see. They all gather together. They come to you. Your son shall come from afar and your daughters shall be carried on the hip. Then you shall see and be radiant. Your heart shall thrill and exult because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you. The wealth of the nations shall come to you. A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah. All those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense and shall bring good news, the praises of the Lord. All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered to you. The rams of Nebaoth shall minister to you. They shall come up with acceptance on my altar. and I will beautify my beautiful house. If you turn now to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter two, you're looking at verses one through 12 for a New Testament reading and sermon passage this morning. Matthew two, one through 12. If you're using our Pew Bible, you can find that on page 1,026. Page 1,026, Matthew two. 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 saying, where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. And assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet, in you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judea, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. From you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. And Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem saying, go and search diligently for the child. And when you have found him, bring me word that I too may come and worship him. After listening to the king, they went on their way. Behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the sower, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way. Man shall not live by bread alone. One thing that any new parents will discover is how a small child can exercise a sort of royal power over your world. Once you have a baby, suddenly little things like going to the grocery store or out to a restaurant become transformed from being easy trips to now being a dash through a ninja warrior obstacle course with a pack of wet wipes and diapers strapped to you for survival. Anytime you go to an evening social event with a small child, the moment you step out the door, you know as a parent that a stopwatch just started. and you need to get back home before the clock strikes meltdown 30. Having a baby means the arrival of a little monarch to govern your world. The advent of their imperial dominion will overthrow your comfort and challenge your whole way of life. And as Christians, we should recognize that there is something good in this in the hands of God's providence. Few things will teach us to die to our idols like parenting a small child. Few things can challenge your kingdom of self. like parenting a small child, because unlike adults, from whom we can escape when we are tired and irritated and simply want to be left alone, you cannot just leave your small child and slink off somewhere else, at least not without having Child Protective Services show up at your door. The arrival of a baby, for all of the joy that it brings into the world of his or her parents, also brings this unyielding challenge to the kingdom of comfort that we would set up for ourselves. And too often, parents, young parents, before having children, romanticize what it means to have babies without recognizing the reality of the challenges that they will bring into their world. And in a similar way, but actually a much, much larger and pronounced way, we also tend to romanticize what it meant for the Christ child to step into our world. We can have a romanticized view of what it means to follow him, to be a disciple of Jesus. Christ was born to rule our world in ways that relentlessly challenge the kingdoms of self that we set up all around us. When we confess that there was one who was born to us that day in the city of David, a savior who was Christ the Lord, we can easily forget that that child was born to rule the nations with a rod of iron. And it is his business to come and to take all of the counterfeit kingdoms that we have erected and to dash them into pieces like a potter's vessel. Here in the opening of Matthew chapter 2, we're confronted with this dynamic that the reality of the arrival of the kingdom of Christ comes to challenge the kingdoms of this world, to challenge our own little kingdoms as we face what his kingdom asks of us. And really we encounter that there are only two ways, there are only two ways to respond to the kingship of Jesus. Either you will respond in repentant worship, or you will respond in violent rage. And in the characters Matthew presents to us in this account here, we see both of those responses played out in vivid detail. So the truth I want you to see this morning from this passage is there in your bulletin, along with the points. If you want to take notes, it's on the sermon note page. It's this. Worship the king who gathers the nations to himself. Worship the king who gathers the nations to himself. Three points we'll consider. First, a challenging king. Second, a gathering king, and third, a worshipped king. A challenging king, a gathering king, a worshipped king. So let's start with our first point, a challenging king. In chapter 2, verse 1, Matthew tells us that these wise men from the east had come to Jerusalem, and he simply says that it was after Jesus was born in Bethlehem. How much longer after, Matthew does not say. It could have been days, it could have been years, we do not know. But what Matthew does tell us from the outset of this account in verse one is that they arrived in the days when Herod was the king. Now, King Herod has become a man who is infamous in our imaginations, but perhaps you're not familiar with the backstory of this man. This Herod in Matthew chapter 2 is Herod the Great. He's not to be confused with the Herod that we meet later on in the Gospels during the adult ministry of Jesus. That later Herod is the son of this Herod, and he was known as Herod the Tetrarch. But this Herod's different. Herod the Great, one thing to note about him and his son is the fact that they were not Jews. They were known in the Greek-speaking world as Idumeans. But in the Hebrew Old Testament, they would have been known as Edomites. And Herod the Great, though not a Jew, was appointed by the Roman Empire to be the king of the Jews. And the reason he was known as the Great is because he got a lot of stuff done. He built many different fortresses, palaces, theaters. He constructed a whole port city and named it in honor of the emperor, Caesarea Maritima. He helped finance all manner of construction projects, not just in Judea and Israel, but all across the Roman Empire, including the construction of pagan temples. Most importantly for the Jews, though, Herod restored the temple that was in Jerusalem. The great centerpiece of Judaism, the place of pilgrimage from where Jews across the world would come and pay homage and worship the Lord, once again now had this magnificence to it that it had not seen since centuries before when the Babylonians came and burned it to the ground. So whatever the ruling religious class in Israel might have thought of Herod's non-Jewish status and his support for pagan religions across the empire, the high priest in the Sanhedrin certainly had much to gain from his patronage. But Herod was also ruthless. He had his own wife and several of his sons murdered in order to protect his political interests. And so his response to the discovery of the birth of the Christ, though horrifying, is not surprising. Matthew tells us in verse 2, then, how the Magi appear in Jerusalem asking this question, where is he who has been born King of the Jews? Naturally, these wise men have come to Jerusalem because they would have assumed, likely, that this newborn king would have been found in the palace of Herod. In verse 3, we read, however, that Herod hears about the arrival of this caravan of wealthy Magi from the east and why exactly they came, but he is troubled by this news. And it's not difficult to discern exactly why this piece of information would have had Herod reaching for his bottle of Mailanta. He is not the rightful king of the Jews. If this child is in fact who the Magi think he is, If he is the Christ, if he is the Messiah, then he is the one who has come from the line of David, whom God promised to whom he would restore David's throne, David's kingdom, and establish a kingship that would command the obedience of the nations. And Herod may be willing to throw the Jews a lot of cash to refurbish the temple, and also in the process control the religious elite, but he certainly is not interested in bowing before Yahweh as the one true and only God, worshiping him alone and kissing his son in submission to the restoration of David's throne. And so this child comes as a challenge to Herod's kingdom. So Herod convenes the chief priests and the scribes in verse 4 for a little Bible research project, finding out exactly where the Christ was to be born. He gets an answer from them in verses 5 through 6. They tell him about this prophecy that's found in Micah chapter 5 about how he would be born in the city of Bethlehem. And then Herod secretly summons the magi to himself in verse seven to gather a little bit more intelligence. He figures out when the star appeared so that he can make a calculation about this child's age as a piece of backup information that we will see next week, later on in this chapter, he uses when he orders the slaughter of all the male children. He then speeds them on their way in verse eight, but with this very cynical request that they come back and tell him once they found him so that he too could go and pay homage to this newborn Christ. Of course, we know that he has no such intent, that this is a lot of blarney, and that he really wants to murder this challenger to his reign. But notice something else. Herod is not the only person who responds in this story to the news that Christ has arrived with something less than an ideal response. Surely, we see in verse 4, as these scribes and Pharisees are gathered together, Consider the implications of surely what this meant. Herod convenes quite the prestigious study committee to go and investigate this question. All the religious elites are gathered together to find out where the Christ was to be born, and surely the news of what these magi were looking for had reached their ears as it had turned the whole city of Jerusalem into an uproar. And think about this, these characters in verse four are supposed to be the religious leaders of Israel, the most pious, devoted men in all of the nation, and one would think that if they discovered that the long-awaited Christ might have been born, that they, of all people, would be hopping on their donkeys to follow the Magi down to Bethlehem. But their only response seems to be apathy. And this is then the first initial sign that this cast of characters Herod convenes in verse four, who respond with what seems to be lazy disinterest, they're going to become in Matthew's gospel what we might call the usual suspects, scribes and the Pharisees, who, as Jesus' adult ministry unfold, do something more. It does not take long for their apathy towards the Christ to awaken into outright hostility that will match and exceed, perhaps, Herod's murderous response to Jesus. And that reminds us that, again, there are only two ways. There are only two ways of responding to the Christ. You will respond either with violent rejection of his reign or worshipful faith. It's true, certainly not everyone in the world who encounters the gospel begins to breathe out threats against it, but do not mistake that for openness. Jesus tells his disciples in John's gospel, in John 15, verse 18, that the world hates him. The world hates him. It takes something miraculous in the heart of man to change that. And that hatred towards Christ is on the same spectrum as what is shown here, that the only thing that separates apathy towards Jesus from violence towards Jesus is the right circumstances. But they're both points on the same spectrum. And so that hatred towards Christ really has to do with the dynamics of what he's come to do. The rule and reign of his kingdom and its realities that we see clashing with the world in this account in Matthew's gospel in chapter two, Christ has come to challenge the idolatrous kingdoms of this world. He's come to take the idols that you and I worship, to take our counterfeit kingdoms and to smash them to bits. And make no mistake, it may not be in the way that Herod thinks, but Jesus nevertheless has come to destroy the very things that are at the center of Herod's wicked rule. He comes to destroy the tyranny of sin and selfishness. And so note that. Jesus has not come to make you happy. or at least not to make you happy with the things that you think will make you happy. Jesus comes to convulse the neat and tidy order of your world as it sits comfortably ensconced around all of your idols. The arrival of the Christ child is the arrival of its disruptive force into the world, challenging its idolatrous order. Later in this gospel, in Matthew chapter 10, verse 34, Jesus will tell his disciples, do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. Put that scripture verse on your annual Christmas card and see what kind of response you get from your family and friends. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. Merry Christmas from the Shrocks. Jesus has come so that he might take center stage in your life. And what it means then for you is that if you're going to follow Jesus, you can expect that he will make a regular habit of constantly challenging your priorities with the priorities of his rule and his reign. So do not think that Christ's child has come to give you a comfortable life. He's come to do something far more valuable and far more magnificent than simply to cater to your every whim and fancy. He's come to unshackle you from the tyranny of your sin. the tyranny of the idols you serve, and to give back to you your humanity in all of its dignity and splendor of what it means to be created in the image of the God you were fashioned to worship. And so one very practical point of application for you is this. Whenever God's providence makes your life hard, and note that when life gets hard, it is God's providence, When trials come, when God begins to knock over the things that make you comfortable, rather than whinge and complain, instead, step back and realize that what He may be doing in that moment is pushing you to seek first His kingdom, contesting your little kingdoms with the supremacy of the reign and the rule of Jesus Christ. He's come to challenge the kingdoms of this world, to introduce discomfort and turmoil into your world, because through that discomfort and turmoil, He's redeeming you. He's changing you. He's sanctifying you. He's breaking the idols that enslave you and teaching you to find your all in Him. So by His reign, He's subdued us to Himself. He's called us out of the tyrannizing, dehumanizing idolatry that we have embedded in us in our sin. And he's called us out of that into the splendor and dignity of what it means to serve him. That brings us to our second point, a gathering king, a gathering king. Opposite of the ruthless political scheming of Herod and the apathy of the priests and scribes, opposite of that is the disposition of these main characters in this account in Matthew chapter 2, these wise men from the East. Now, we need to stop and reflect a bit on who exactly these figures are. The first thing we need to note is that we have no idea if there were three of them. Matthew does not exactly say how many there were. All that we know is that there were at least two because he uses the plural. Could be two, could be three, could be 17. We don't know. Another thing to note is that there is no indication in Matthew's text that these men are kings. In fact, even the word that many English translations use in verse one to describe what they are is a bit misleading in its translation. Our Pew Bible, many others call them wise men, and that might make us think that they're merely exceptionally intelligent people, sages like King Solomon or some sort of philosophers. And there's some degree of that involved here. But the Greek word Matthew uses to describe them in verse 1 is magus. And it's used by Luke in Acts chapter 13, verse 6 to describe another man, a different man. But there, all the English translations unflinchingly translate it as what it means, magician or sorcerer. That's what these men were. They were the sorts of figures that we frequently find surrounding ancient kings to give them advice because of their supposed abilities to be able to interpret signs and omens and the stars. These men are pagans of the Crassus sort. And certainly the phrase, we three kings, has more of a ring to it than the phrase, we unknown plural number of magicians. But do not confuse nostalgic tradition with what the Bible actually teaches. We do not bat an eye when we read this story, because thanks to holiday traditions, the wise men from the East are as seemingly familiar to us as Frosty the Snowman, Bing Crosby, and Red Ryder BB Guns. But we miss the fact that this story in Matthew's gospel is rather mysterious, kind of odd, and perhaps a little unsettling. Who are these sorcerers? How in the world do they know about the arrival of the Jewish Messiah? And why do they bother schlepping across Mesopotamia to find him? Well, the fact that they are from the East may already give us some clues about how they even know about the Christ child in the first place. Remember that the people of Israel in the exile were scattered across the whole world. When God judged Israel and sent Babylon and Assyria to lay waste to the nation and to cart off the people, large numbers of Jews went to the east. They were taken there by the Babylonians as captives, especially the craftsmen, the scribes, and all the educated elite. And so that's why we find in the Old Testament men like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, even in the royal courts of the Babylonian Empire and then the Persian Empire. Daniel is even lumped in by Nebuchadnezzar with the Magi who advise him. And so the whole book of Daniel actually is about how this prophet Daniel was this faithful Israelite who, in the exile, bore testimony to the truth of the one true God, Yahweh, to all of the nations that surrounded him as he was in exile. So the only explanation then for just exactly how these foreign magicians knew about the Jewish Messiah is that Jews in the exile in regions of Babylon and Persia were faithful in telling them and others about him and his coming. They're able to interpret that the Messiah has arrived because they say in verse 2, we have seen his star. Remember, part of what magi, magicians, do is they engage in astrology. the attempt to interpret the future by looking to the positioning of the stars. And the law of Moses unequivocally condemns astrology. So we're left with the uncomfortable question, how did these pagans use astrology to figure out that the Christ had been born? Or how did they connect the dots? Well, the most likely reason is because there is an Old Testament prophecy that indicates this. Book of Numbers, chapter 24, verse 7. That verse is in this story where the pagan prophet Balaam was hired by the king of Moab to come and curse Israel as they tried to cross over into the promised land. But then Balaam, after getting reprimanded by his talking donkey, could only bless Israel instead, no matter how hard he tried. And at the end of all of his prophetic benedictions upon God's people, he foretells this coming king of Israel who would rule the nations. And in Numbers 24, 17, Balaam says this, I see him, but not now. I behold him, but not near. A star shall come out of Jacob. and a scepter shall rise out of Israel. It shall crush the forehead of Moab and break down all the sons of Sheth. Edom shall be dispossessed. Seir also, his enemies, shall be dispossessed. The prophecy of the dispossession of Edom certainly is not good news for Herod, as he is an Edomite. Now, the star that we see the men follow in verse nine is unusual. By the way Matthew words things, it seems to be that it moves as a light in the sky. And there've been all kinds of speculations about what was going on here astronomically. Was it a comet? Was it an alignment of planets? I personally find all of those astronomical attempts to explain what this might have been to be rather pointless. Because it appears to be something miraculous that defies the normal order of nature. But the real significance of the arrival of these men has to do with the Old Testament as well. There are a wealth of prophecies in the Old Testament that speak about how the nations are going to come to Israel and pledge their allegiance to the Messiah when God finally comes in the last days to reassert his kingdom. And there's some very specific prophecies about how the nations are going to bring their treasures to Israel and her king. That's behind what we saw this morning and the hope of Israel's restoration from exile. Because think about what happens in the exile. In the exile, The nation of Babylon and the Assyrians in the northern kingdom, they invade Israel, they pillage all of her wealth, they even lay siege to Jerusalem and ransack the temple of all of its treasures. And the Lord promised then, on the other end of that, that he would restore to his people, as they came out of exile, the wealth that the nations had taken from them. And now, instead of the nations taking their wealth, the nations would bring them their wealth. And that's what's behind what we saw in Isaiah chapter 60 in our Old Testament reading. There in Isaiah 60, the Lord says to his people that they'll be brought back from their exile with their sons and daughters carried on the hip. And then Isaiah says this, then you shall see and be radiant. Your heart shall thrill and exult because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you. The wealth of the nations shall come to you. A multitude of camels shall cover you. The young camels of Midian and Ephah, all those from Sheba shall come to you. They shall bring gold. and frankincense, and shall bring good news, the praises of Yahweh. You see, Matthew includes this detail about the arrival of pagan magicians from the east bringing these treasures in order to indicate something very specific. He's indicating that Israel's restoration from the exile is starting now that the Christ child has come. He's come as the son of David, a king who will command the obedience, not just of Israel, but of the world. Now, Isaiah's prophecy also connects with the significance of the star. Before mentioning the gold and frankincense of the nations coming to Israel, he says in Isaiah 60, verses one through three, this, arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples, but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you, and nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising. These unknown number of wise men have followed the light of the star to this newborn king of Israel who has come. to bring his people out of mournful exile, and to gather the nations to his light. And Matthew's pointing out the fact that this is happening. He is a light of revelation to the Gentiles. They followed that light, and now they're here to worship him. And while the religious elite of Israel sit in apathy in Jerusalem, not bothering even to send one person to go and investigate this report of the Messiah's birth, the most unlikely people imaginable, Gentile sorcerers, are gathered to the Christ. Now this is a story, it's a living example of what Jesus will say later in Matthew's gospel. Matthew chapter eight, verses 11 through 12, Jesus will say, many will come from the east and from the west, reclining at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into outer darkness. The arrival at the Magi, at the beginning of Matthew's gospel, it's the first of two bookends in Matthew's gospel. The second bookend is the very last thing that Jesus says to his church before he ascends to heaven in Matthew 28. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations. Matthew begins his gospel with a story that points us to the closing words of his gospel, a story that demonstrates for us the mission Christ has come to fulfill in his entrance into history. Among the many things Christmas is about, one key thing is that it is about evangelism. You want to be obedient to the Christ this holiday season? Confess his name before men. He is still gathering pagans to himself. And if he can gather through his very birth people whom the Jews would have considered to be the most improbable people of all to come to the Messiah, if he can gather Gentile sorcerers, he can gather anyone in your world who you might think is beyond his reach. They are not. He was born to shine the brilliance of his light into the deepest, darkest holes of sin that we managed to climb into, and to draw us out from them in the radiance of his mercy. Now we need to take careful note of what these Magi do to Jesus. That brings us to our third point, a worshiped king, our third point, a worshiped king. Notice what these Magi announce they've come to do to the Christ in verse two. They have come to worship him. Again, in verse 11, Matthew tells us, when they find the Christ child, they fall down and they worship him. Notice also the connotations of the word that he uses to describe their presentation of their gifts. Our Pew Bible says they offered him gifts. The Greek word underlying that, frequently it's used to describe sacrifices that were offered to the worship of the Lord upon his altar. And so what these magi are doing is an act of liturgical significance, an act of sacrifice, an offering. They are offering these things in worship to this child, and that is quite significant for us to understand if we're going to grasp who this child is and how we should respond to him. There are numerous places in the Bible where humans attempt to bow down before other humans or other creatures and worship them, but then they're rebuked for it. Pagans in Acts 14 see Paul heal a man and they think that now he and Barnabas are Zeus and Hermes come in the flesh and they try to worship them. And Paul and Barnabas tear their robes and yell at them, stop that, don't worship us. We are men just like you, worship God. At the end of the book of Revelation, Revelation 22, verse 8, John falls down to worship the angel that had been giving him all of these visions. But then the angel tells him, do not do that. I am your fellow servant. Worship God. However, it is most significant that as we see people repeatedly fall down to worship Jesus in the New Testament, never once does he say, do not do that, get up. The reason Jesus never stops anyone from worshiping him is because Jesus is God. This is one of the main reasons that the doctrine of the Trinity is supremely practical for you. Many Christians, unfortunately, are tempted to listen to the profound and perhaps even at times perplexing details of the doctrine of the Trinity and maybe just dismiss them, wave them away as a bunch of Speculations of theological nerds, musings that don't really have any practical importance for the Christian life. That is most emphatically false. The reason that the early church spent centuries defending and refining the doctrine of the Trinity, defining words like hypostasis and usia and consubstantial, is because they wanted to know the answer to some of the most basic questions of the Christian life. Here are two of the most basic and two of the most practical questions of the Christian life. Can you worship Jesus? And can you pray to Jesus? Can you worship Jesus? Can you pray to Jesus? If Jesus is not very God of very God, begotten, not made, of the same substance with the Father, if Jesus is not that, then you could do neither of those things to Him. You worship God alone. You pray to God alone. And if Jesus is not very God of very God, then you could neither worship Him nor pray to Him. So do not roll your eyes and settle in for a nap whenever you hear someone start talking about the doctrine of the Trinity. Sit up and take notice, but more importantly, find your place along with the Magi to fall down and to worship the Christ. He is King and God and sacrifice. And notice another thing about the response of the Magi. When they finally are led by the star to the place where Jesus is, Matthew tells us in verse 20, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. Hardly pack another adjective into that. As Leon Morris puts it, deliriously happy may be an overstatement, but it was something like that. And Morris' comment is apt. These men have gone over, as the song says, field and fountain, moor and mountain, to find this child. They've packed up a caravan. They've risked a very long and a very dangerous journey across the world to find this baby and to worship him. They spent dark nights in the desert, huddled next to a fire, sleeping with one eye open for fear that highway bandits and robbers in the wilderness might come upon them, kill them, and plunder their treasure. Their feet must have been blistered and sore. Their backs must have ached from bouncing on the back of a camel for hundreds of miles. And they are joyful. They risked life and limb to come to worship this child. And our response in worshiping Jesus should be the same as the Magi, who should be deliriously happy the opportunity to come alongside these wise men to offer Jesus the sacrifice of our very selves. For all the trials the Christian life must bring us, one of the things that should mark us out to the world is joy. The joy of what it means to find the deepest longings of our soul, satisfied in glorifying Christ, bowing before Him, presenting our very lives to Him as a sacrifice. And sadly, we're not that often, you and I, too often are not joyful, not deliriously happy to know what it means to worship Christ, to belong to Him. Instead, Christians are so often, as my father puts it, like those who've been baptized in pickle juice. sour and crotchety, complaining and angry. But if you truly belong to Jesus, if you truly have a spirit dwelling in you, then among all the many fruits that should be hanging from the tree of your life should be joy, a joy that endures all things. a joy that still burns in you even when trials and sorrows wash over you, because it is the joy of knowing that Christ has come and he has brought you and I out of our petulant kingdoms of self into the peace and the righteousness and the joy of his reign. And so whatever you do this December, be joyful. And be joyful not merely because you have a head full of eggnog and a tree full of presents. Rather be joyful because you belong to Christ in body and soul, in life and in death, and you possess the treasure of what it means to know him as your blessedness and your reward. Worship the king who gathers the nations to himself. Let's pray. Our great God, we thank you for this inexpressible gift that is Christ, that you, Lord Jesus, veiled the eternal dignity of who you are as very God of very God, and you took our frail form so that through your life, through your death, through your resurrection and ascension, the power of your kingdom might come upon us. that we might be brought out of our kingdoms of selfishness and idolatry and into the light of yours. And so we do ask, Lord, that you would continue to change our hearts, displace our violent anger with the joy and the peace of what it means to know you, to believe in you, and to follow you. and to worship you. We ask these things in your name. Amen.