If you're a Michael Jackson fan,
you might know that
when he died,
he was just a couple of weeks
away from a string of 50 shows,
50 concerts that he was going to give
in the city of London.
All of the concerts sold out
in just a short amount of time.
And I saw that there was one ticket
that sold on eBay at the time
for uh, for $13,000.
Someone was willing to pay $13,000
to go to a Michael Jackson concert.
Which, amazingly, is not the
most amount of money that
someone has been willing to pay
for a concert ticket.
Back in 2007,
the band, Led Zeppelin,
was beginning what you imagine
would be their last concert tour.
And I saw that somebody was willing
to pay for a pair of concert tickets:
83,000 euros.
83,000 euros. Which at the time
Which at the time
translated to $82,000 per ticket.
Would you be willing
to pay that much for
a Led Zeppelin concert ticket?
To attend a Led Zeppelin concert?
What would you be willing to pay
to attend a concert of
your favorite band?
And what would you be willing to pay
to attend a concert like
the one the shepherds heard
on the first Christmas evening,
when angels from heaven were singing?
It was a one-time event
that not everyone would be
able to experience.
This week, we're going to spend some time
looking at
some different gifts that were
given as part of
the Christmas season.
And today we're going to start by
looking at the gift of praise
that the angels gave
the newborn baby Jesus.
We hear about in in Luke, chapter 2,
when it says,
A glorious, monumental,
once-in-an-eternity concert
that they didn't even advertise
and really wasn't even heard by
anyone except
a couple of sheep,
and a couple of dirty shepherds.
In fact, they were the guests of honor.
But the real concert that they were
invited to
wasn't one that was sung by
hundreds of angelic voices,
but just by one.
And it wasn't given from the sky.
It came from underneath the sky,
in a manger,
in Bethlehem.
To the untrained ear,
the concert really just sounded
like a newborn baby's cry.
But to those
who've been trained by life
to hurt,
to hope,
to long for deliverance,
forgiveness,
salvation,
they knew
that this was the sound
of God
in the flesh,
crying out for them,
crying out for you.
A God who is worthy of
the greatest gifts of praise
we could ever give him.
As of today, you have less than a month
to get all of your Christmas shopping done.
Now for those of you who
got all of your Christmas shopping done
back in September already,
you don't have to worry about this.
But for the rest of us,
these next few weeks are going
to raise your blood pressure a little
bit as you hit the malls
with a little bit more urgency.
Urgency isn't unusual
during the Christmas season.
In fact, we see it
already as part of the first Christmas.
Yesterday, we talked about
the angels' announcement
to the shepherds,
the announcement of
the newborn king,
the gift of praise
that they offered that
compelled the shepherds
to think about what,
what now what they were considered,
going to considermost important.
Because now they had an important
choice to make.
Were they going to stay with the sheep
to keep them safe,
or were they going to visit
the newborn king
and leave the sheep behind?
We see their answer in Luke 2:15,
the verse immediately after the angels'
song is finished.
It says,
And I don't know if that decision
would have been an easy or
difficult one for you, but
based on the 3,500 churches
that close their doors
every year,
it seems that there are a lot of souls
who don't give to Jesus with the
same urgency
that these shepherds did.
When they left their sheep
to find
the one shepherd
who would never leave his.
And that's why ministries exist.
That's why we build churches.
It's not so that we have
big phenomenal,
impressive-looking buildings,
but so that lost
and hurting and
weak souls
who get entangled so easily
in the traps of sin
and worry and discouragement,
might have just
one place
where they can always hear
the forgiving,
comforting voice
of a good shepherd
who loves them.
If you're connected with a ministry
that is determined to help
souls hear that voice,
then consider today
how you might give
towards that ministry
with the same type of urgency
that the shepherds lived with.
Kara was pregnant with her fourth child
when she was diagnosed with
stage 4 melanoma.
Her doctor told her
to deliver the baby immediately
so that they could start
the treatment immediately,
but Kara said "no."
She knew that the treatment
would be bad for the baby
and she also knew that
the baby would
have a better chance of living
if they made it five more weeks
to 28 weeks.
So that's what she decided to do.
She waited
until she was at 28 weeks.
And then they induced
and she gave birth to a
healthy baby girl,
Shaylen,
2 pounds, 2.1 ounces.
And she was doing amazing.
Kara -
mom -
she died the following Tuesday.
She died,
because of a matter of priority.
There was something that
was more important to her than,
than even living.
And her priority,
it cost her something.
And priority often does.
Just like with the shepherds
that we see in the Christmas story.
Do you know the,
do you know what we are never told
in the gospel of Luke
with the shepherds?
We're never really told
what happened to the sheep.
When they decided to leave the sheep,
we're never told what
happened to them.
Just listen. It says,
We're told that they hurried
to see the baby.
And they hurried
to share the news
about the baby with others.
But we're never told
what happened to the sheep.
And that's not insignificant.
Because sheep are pretty vulnerable.
They need, they need a shepherd
to watch over them.
to watch over them. It wasn't insignificant It wasn't insignificant
that the shepherds
left them alone.
But they did.
And what they found
when they did
was something so wonderful
for anyone who has ever felt
vulnerable in this life.
They found someone
who believes so strongly
that giving you the right
to breathe in the
to breathe in the gift of life, gift of life,
to breathe in the gift of hope,
to breathe in the gift
of forgiveness
is a gift that is
even more important
than even him living.
That's what they found in that baby.
That's what they found in the manger.
That's what they found in Bethlehem,
when they left their sheep behind.
Can you think of any better gift
that is worth hurrying
to see every day?
Can you think of a better gift
that is worth sharing
with anyone around you?
Like the shepherds,
hurry
to see that child
as often as you can.
See him in the word
and then hurry
to show the world what it means
that he is our priority.
The most well-known gifts
in the Christmas story,
other than the gift of Jesus,
are the gifts that
the wise men gave to Jesus.
And we read about those in
Matthew, chapter 2,
where it says,
Those are some pretty impressive gifts.
Gifts we don't know the value of.
The bible doesn't tell us
exactly how much they were worth.
Consensus seems to be that
they were worth quite a bit.
But the value of those gifts
is one thing we don't know.
We do know this, however:
we do know that Jesus
didn't need them.
Psalms 24 reminds us that
the earth is already the Lord's,
and everything in it,
he already owns.
Absolutely everything.
In Matthew, chapter 17,
Jesus once needed some money
to pay his taxes.
And he commanded a fish
to jump out of the water
and spit coins
out of its mouth.
And that's how Jesus got his money.
If he wants money,
he can get it without us.
He doesn't need our help.
And so why did the wise men
give these valuable,
expensive gifts
to little baby Jesus?
Well, that's easy.
It wasn't because he needed it.
But because they simply believed
that he was worth it.
And do you know what that attitude is?
That's worship.
Worship is us
telling God
that he's worth it.
In fact, that's the only acceptable
type of worship that,
that there is.
The willing worship.
Nobody had to force
these wise men
to travel all those miles
to go all this way
to present gifts,
expensive gifts,
to a baby they had
never before seen.
They just wanted to do it.
They just did it.
And when they did,
the scripture tells us
that they were overjoyed.
They were excessively happy
because of the gift
that was given to them.
The one that they found
in the little child that
they met that day.
The gift of a God
whose generosity has given us
the abundance of heaven.
The gift of a God
who knew that a trip to earth
would cost him more than
the value of the gifts that
the wise men were giving,
it would cost him his life.
But that's a gift that he wanted to give.
Because he wanted you
to be able to walk through life
knowing that you are treasured,
that you are loved
and entirely forgiven
by a God
who is worthy of the greatest worship
we could ever give him.
We don't really know a whole lot
about the wise men
that we read about in scripture.
Pretty much everything we know about them
comes from Matthew 2:1,
where it says,
There was a song that
was written in 1857,
kind of a popular one,
titled, "We Three Kings of Orient Are,"
meant to tell the story
of these wise men.
And you know what's wrong with that song?
As far as we can tell,
pretty much everything.
The bible doesn't tell us
how many there were.
It could be three, it could be 37.
They weren't, you know,
they weren't kings.
Magi are astrologers,
people who looked at the stars
which explains how they would have
noticed the star that they followed.
And they weren't from the Orient.
They were more likely from Babylon,
which means they would have traveled
almost a thousand miles
to get to Jerusalem,
where they started looking for the baby.
And do you think that there was
anyone back home
that was telling them not to go?
Wondering if an investment
of all that time,
traveling all those miles
with those heavy
gifts or all that unfamiliar terrain?
Just wondering if
it was going to be worth it?
And yet they did.
And why?
A couple of years ago,
my mother-in-law
was diagnosed with cancer.
And
the news hit my wife pretty hard
obviously.
And I remember still
receiving the phone call
from my wife,
telling me that she had gotten the news.
I was driving
on the road, and
and she was wondering about
making a trip
a state away just to go
see her mom that day.
And I asked,
well, what would she say when
she went to,
when she finally got there?
And she said, "I don't know.
I don't know that I would say anything.
I might just show up on the doorstep
and give her a hug.
And then leave again.
Just tell her that I love her."
And she went.
And it turned out to be a
pretty meaningful trip
because
her mom found something really significant.
Somebody who traveled all that way
just to say something really important.
And that's why these magi
made this incredible trip.
Not so much because they
wanted to say something significant
but because they found
a little child who did.
They found a little child
who invested a lot of time
in eternity, dreaming up their existence.
And a child who would one day
invest a lot of time
hanging on a cross
to forgive any kind of sin
that would keep them from him.
And
a child who had already planned
on spending all of eternity
in perfection
with them
right next to him.
They found a God
who had made an incredible trip
all the way from heaven
simply because he wanted to
tell every single soul
that they were worth it.
That you are worth it,
to him.