Well, it's late Christmas Eve, and sorry, but you're sitting in the Los Angeles airport. It's time to board your flight. You board a flight to Sydney, Australia. It is a long, long flight. You take off from the runway in L.A. on Christmas Eve, and when you land in Sydney, Australia, it's December 26th, the day after Christmas. You have effectively missed Christmas. According to the Sydney Morning Herald paper, there are 20 flights, six different airlines, that take off from the United States and Canada on Christmas Eve. And when you're flying, you cross the international date line, and when you land in Sydney, Australia, it's the 26th, you miss Christmas. So, flying all that time, missing Christmas. Doesn't that kind of sound like a Hallmark Christmas movie? You know? Bill and Sue, strangers on Christmas Eve, sitting in the airport down about Christmas. Now they're going to miss Christmas Day. Sue owns her own business. She's a florist, and she just broke up with the wrong guy. Bill is so wrapped up in his career, he doesn't have time for relationships, but his heart is empty. But on this long flight that misses Christmas, they sit right beside each other and find what their heart longed for—Christmas love. I don't watch Hallmark Christmas movies, but my wife has watched a few of them. every single story is the same, okay? I know what they are, so. No, you don't need to do that. Bill and Sue appreciates it probably, but man. Anyway, never mind. Missing Christmas, that's, man, that's not good. Who wants to do that? Sadly, Bill and Sue and everyone else on those flights are not the first people to miss Christmas, and they're not gonna be the last. Matter of fact, we probably have some people in our lives that's gonna miss Christmas. I hope one of them's not you. It doesn't have to be. See, it's not about flying high in the air, it's about what's deep inside of our hearts. Here's what I mean about missing Christmas. Missing out on Christmas has nothing to do with the day on the calendar, just because you crossed the international date line or whatever. It's about missing the meaning of Christmas. Missing out on Christmas means you miss out on the fact that God loves you and Jesus came to save you. Missing out on Christmas means missing out on the Christmas gift, the free gift of salvation that Jesus offers every one of us. Do you know in the Bible there is the story of people that missed Christmas? That's what we're gonna look at. You find their story tucked in the Christmas story of the wise men, and it's all part of our second message here in our series called The Star of Christmas. Our four-part series, The Star of Christmas, we're talking about the wise men. Stars and Christmas go together. We understand that. And how that all began is going back to the first Christmas and the story of the wise men. And there's so much to their story. That's why we're taking four weeks to look at the story of the wise men this Christmas. You might remember when it comes to the word a star, star of Christmas, two main meanings, a celestial body that's a point of light in the night sky, and a second meaning of a star is a foremost, famous, important person, where our title, star of Christmas, both of those apply. You see, the star in the sky, well, that's the star the wise men followed, and the star, that most important person ever, that's the star that the wise men worshiped. The Christmas star in the sky guided the wise men to the only star of Christmas, which is Jesus Himself. So this Christmas, we're following what the Bible says in Proverbs 13, 20. He who walks with wise men will be wise. We're going to walk with the wise men. We're going to go to the star of Christmas, which is Jesus. And my prayer for you and for me, for our many friends joining us online, is that the birth of Jesus, this Christmas this year, the birth of Jesus, will mean in your heart exactly what God wants it to mean. Part two in our series, here's our title. It's that flight from LA to Sydney. It's called Missing Out on Christmas. missing out on Christmas. If you haven't already done it, you need to have your Bible app on your phone or your Bible open to Matthew chapter two because we find the story of the wise men in verses one through 12. Now last week, part one, we introduced the wise men and talked about some overarching lessons that we learned from their life. You can go back and check that out. I really encourage you to do it if you've missed it. It's on our Facebook page. It's on our website. If you go to our live stream, it's on our YouTube channel. Just a lot of places you can go back and listen to that message. But let's look back at what we looked at last week, verses one and two, and let me read verses one and two of Matthew 2 to you. 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 the king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east, and we have come to worship Him. Let me sum up quickly what we talked about last week. Bottom line, the wise men are a great mystery to us. We really don't know that much about them. We know what God wants us to know in the Bible, but we can draw some educated conclusions about them. Real quickly, the wise men were not at the manger. We see in verse 11 of Matthew 2, they went into a house. Jesus was in a house. If you wanna say manger or house, last week we talked about a barn dominion. You'll have to listen to the message to understand that, okay? Therefore, we don't know when the wise men were there. Was Jesus two weeks old? Was he two days old? Was he two months old? We just don't know. We don't know how many wise men there were. We know in the Bible it's plural, so we know that there was more than two. Traditionally, we think three wise men because there were three gifts, but honestly, there could have been six or 12. We have no idea how many wise men there were. We know that they did come from the east, and we believe that that is Persia and Babylon. Modern-day Iraq and Iran would have been about an 800-mile long, difficult, dangerous journey, taking several months to get there. We know the Bible gives them the title wise men or magi. They were highly educated scholars. They were not kings, okay? We three kings. They were not kings. Matter of fact, history tells us over and over, the only way you could become a king in Persia was that a wise man had to put that crown on your head. They were not kings. They were king makers. They were that powerful. They were highly powerful religious priests in their false religion. They were scientists and astrologers and scholars in this mystic, magic kind of weird religion in the world in that day. And they looked at the stars, trying to figure out what life's all about. Well, God in His goodness, about 500 plus years before Jesus was born, sent some young godly Jewish men to Babylon. They were taken captive after Jerusalem was judged by the Babylonians, by God using them to do that. Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Daniel. You can look at the book of Daniel. And Daniel and these guys never compromised their faith. They continued to teach God's word. And only what God could do, He made Daniel the head of all the wise men. And there's no doubt that Daniel had to teach the Word of God about this coming Messiah King who would one day bless all the world. Now hundreds of years later, here is this amazing star in the sky, the scholarly stargazing wise men see. It's not a natural star, it can't be explained by science, it's a miracle, it's supernatural from God. And that Word of God that Daniel had planted in their hearts for generations, God stirred their heart, God drew them to Himself and His love, and they said, this is what we've been looking for, let's go. Let's go meet the one true God. and let's go meet this newborn Messiah King." In verses 1 and 2, they've made the several-month journey, and they now enter the city limits of Jerusalem. When they enter the city limits of Jerusalem, don't picture three guys on camels sneaking in at night, and maybe a dog barks at them. There is no way guys of this stature would have had I mean, travel by themselves. It would have been a huge, huge caravan. There would have been servants, probably family members, donkeys saddled with all kinds of supplies. When they hit the city limits of Jerusalem, it made a big splash. Everyone in Jerusalem knew that they were there. They were the talk of the town. Why in the world would these wise men come all the way to Jerusalem, They didn't have to wander very long, because at the end of verse 2, the wise men were telling everyone. They were going around, I'm sure their servants, others, going all over the city, saying this one thing over and over, where is this king that's been born? Where is this Messiah? We have seen His star in the east, and we've come to worship Him. They're saying it over and over all over town, and that brings us up to picking up the story in our text today, Matthew 2, verses 3 through 8, and verse 12. Follow along with me. Verse 3, when Herod the king heard this, word gets to him that these wise men are asking, where is this king of the Jews that's been born? He was troubled. See that word troubled? It means he was messed up. He was greatly disturbed. He is literally shaking in his royal shoes. That's the strength of that word. And notice all Jerusalem with him. When he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he inquired." That word inquired, the tense of that verb, means he is like running around over and over and over saying, where's this king of the Jews been born? Hey, do you know where he's been born? He is like frantic. He's so worked up about it. He's inquiring of them when the Christ was to be born. So they said to him, they gave him a prophecy from Micah 5.2, that was 700 years in the past. In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet, verse six, but you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah are not the least among the rulers of Judah, for out of you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. Verse seven, then Herod, when he had secretly called the wise men, again, this shows the stature of the wise men. You just don't get an audience with King Herod. It shows their stature. Verses 9 through 11 is the wise men going to Bethlehem, the joy, the worship, the gifts. That's our next two weeks that we're going to talk about, verses 9 through 11. Skip down to verse 12. Then, being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed for their own country another way. There are four groups, four individuals, if you will, in the story of the wise men. There's Herod the king, there's the people of Jerusalem, there's the religious leaders, and there's the wise men. Three of those four missed Christmas. They missed out. They responded the wrong way. One of the four, the wise men, responded the right way. The right way to respond to Christmas and not miss Christmas is to do what the wise men did. It's to come to Jesus in faith. Matter of fact, we say that lostness is someone that never comes to Jesus. Lostness is someone who misses Jesus, misses His personal salvation, misses having personal faith in Him, They miss out on Christmas. Let's look at these four groups, and may it help us to not miss Christmas in our lives. May it encourage us this Christmas to see how much God really loves us and how blessed we are that we'll never miss Christmas a day in our lives once we know Jesus. Number one, let's go through these four. Let's start with Herod. Lesson for living number one, Herod missed out on Christmas. He wanted to destroy Jesus. Herod missed out on Christmas. He wanted to destroy Jesus. of the wise men coming in Jerusalem looking for this newborn king. They want to go worship him. It spreads all through the streets. It spreads into the palace, and he gets to Herod himself. Man, Herod, what a piece of work this guy is. His title is Herod the Great, and he gave himself that title because he has so much humility in his life, OK? Herod the Great is an absolute, knows everything going on in his area. And when he hears that these wise men are looking for a king of the Jews, again, he's troubled. A little history on Herod. He killed his wife. He killed his mother-in-law. He killed two of his brothers. He killed three of his sons because they were all a threat to his power. He hated religion. 30 years before the birth of Jesus, he killed and murdered a lot of the religious leaders in Jerusalem. Herod is proud, wicked, and he is the top of the food chain, and there is not anyone or anything that's going to take him off his throne. He's going to make sure of that. That's why he's so upset when he hears from these incredibly important wise men that they've come to worship this king. That's why he says, hey, go find the baby and come back to me so I can go worship him. He's lying. He wants to go murder Jesus, have Jesus murdered. That's why later in this same chapter of Matthew chapter 2, it's so heartbreaking, he had boy babies under the age of two in that area murdered. Wicked guy. He wants to destroy Jesus. He misses out on Christmas because he wants to eliminate it, eliminate Christ. There have always been and will always be those who want to destroy Jesus, the things of Jesus, and even the people of Jesus. It's always been that way, it will always be that way. There will always be the Herods out there who want to destroy. Right now, Open Doors 2024 says there are 365 million Christians around the world who face incredibly high levels of persecution. Two out of every five believers in Asia face persecution. And I know it's hot in the news right now what's happening in Syria, the civil war, Islamic radicals taking over the country. There is a great, great concern about the massacre of Christians that might take place in Syria. But Jesus told us that should not shock us. He said, they will hand you over to be persecuted, and they will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of my name. So there are those who miss Christmas. They miss the salvation of Jesus because they want to destroy Jesus. Now, in our nation, the United States, It's typically not people want to kill the Christians. It's not that people want to destroy believers. They want to destroy the things of God from public life. They want to destroy the thought of God. They want to destroy the place of God in our heart. That's why what is so popular in American culture today is called secular humanism. Secular humanism wants to destroy, not kill Christians, but it wants to destroy the things of God. The core of secular humanism is that man is the center of everything, not God. Secular humanism reminds us that everything is about human reason. It embraces secular ethics. It embraces this philosophical naturalism. It believes that science is the answer to everything, that the way to have peace and justice is human achievement, that you can have this great fulfilling life apart from God or anything else in your life. And what it is, secular humanism, we see it every day in the news. I'm not gonna give you a million examples, you know them all. It wants to remove God from public life. It wants to get rid of the things of God, the thought of God. It's just really like King Herod, even though it's not like I wanna kill Jesus, I wanna kill Christians, but it's this, it's the attitude of Herod. I do not want Jesus, I do not want the gospel, I don't want any of that. You little Christian people, you keep all you're doing inside the walls of that auditorium, but you keep it out of the school, you keep it out of the workplace, you keep it out of my neighborhood, because you know why? Because I'm God. and I'm on my throne like Herod, and nothing's gonna control me but me. I have embraced my lustful, sinful, selfish life, and I don't want Jesus, I don't want the Bible, I don't want God's truth, I don't want any of those things messing up my life. I'm on my throne, I'm in control. I wanna destroy all the things of God. Even to the point in our nation, you know how bad it's gotten? that people think they can decide what their gender is. God doesn't decide if you're a man or a woman. People can decide that themselves. Why? Because they think they're God. I might get one amen from some Baptists. But you know how loving God is to Herod and to all people, how much he loves them? God gave Herod the witness of the wise men. God gave Herod, in verse six, scripture. God gave Herod a chance to go six miles to Bethlehem, to come to Jesus himself, and Herod, his own fault, refused all that and said, no, I'm gonna miss out on Christmas, because I want to destroy Jesus. Sad. Believer, you can mark it down, this modern world will do all it can to keep you from loving God, believing the Bible, and following Jesus through his body, the church. It's gonna do all it can to keep your grandkids away from this place. It's gonna do all it can do to help you to think that the Bible's a pretty good book, but you can rule your own life. It's gonna do everything it can do to say, yeah, you can say I love God, but don't you dare radically sell out and make Jesus the most important thing in your life. You and I constantly, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, are in this incredible battle of destroying the thought of God, the things of God, and the place of God in our heart, our life, and public life, and our families. It's sad they miss out on Christmas. We all have seen personalized license plates before, and there's a story about a guy named Benny Hart who had a personalized license. Let me show you the plate he had in Kentucky. It says, I'm God. Now, Benny Hart had that plate in Ohio for 12 years, and it was no big deal. When he moved to Kentucky, he applied to get an I'm God license plate, and Kentucky denied him that and said, no, it's distracting and it's obscene. Well, he took the state of Kentucky to court in 2016. In 2020, he won his court case. He was awarded $150,000 in attorney fees, and he gets to keep his I'm God license plate, and that's a copy of his license plate right there. Again, it's sad, but Benny Hart is an atheist. And he absolutely hates anything to do with God. He has the I'm God license plate intentionally because he wants to start conversations. He wants to belittle Christians. He wants to attack God. He boldly says, I'll give anyone $100 that can prove the fact that I'm not God. If Benny Hart never comes to Jesus as his Lord and Savior, and I want you to hear me, this breaks my heart, there is one of these days he's gonna know clearly he's not God. So will Herod, so will everyone else who persecutes the church. But we want them to be saved. Those license plates have a name, they're called vanity plates. Vanity means excessive pride. And that describes Herod. That describes this guy, that describes anyone. They wouldn't put a license plate on their car that says, I'm God. But they walk through life, every day of their life, saying, I am God. I control me. Keep Jesus away from me, because I rule me. But Christians, we all know the truth. Destroying Jesus will never happen. The Bible says in 1 Chronicles 29, 11, yours, O Lord, is the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, the majesty, for all that is in heavens and in earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord. You are exalted as head above it all, and all God's people said. Herod missed out on Christmas. He wants to destroy Jesus. Number two, the people miss out on Christmas because they disregarded Jesus. They disregarded Jesus. They ignored him. When the caravan of the wise men hits the sea limits of Jerusalem, Herod's not the only one who stirred up and troubled about it. The Bible says the people are. Remember verse 3? When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled. And look, all, does that mean every single person? It's probably hyperbole, but it means that a bunch of people in Jerusalem. A bunch of people in Jerusalem were just as troubled and worked up about the wise men as Herod was. Isn't it amazing that these people, again, heard the witness of the wise men. They said, hey, here is the Savior going to be born. He's six miles away. They found out, all these sort of things. But did you notice this? The wise men went to Bethlehem all alone. No one went with him. These people here in Jerusalem, I mean, he's asking around, this king has been born, but the people ignored it, and the wise men went to Bethlehem all by themselves. Why would people ignore Jesus? Why would they stay in their lostness and just disregard Jesus? There's a number of reasons, self-righteousness, worldliness. Love for sin, spiritual ignorance are some of the reasons people disregard Jesus and miss Christmas and stay in their lostness. I mean, we see worldliness that is so common. Worldliness means that you put the affairs of the world ahead of spiritual things in your life. And maybe this is what's happening in the streets of Jerusalem when the wise men are there. It's a huge reason, it sounds so simple, that keeps people away from Jesus in their life. It's just this, I'm too busy. I'm so busy in the world, I ain't got time for God. And let me just do a little rabbit trail here and talk specifically to us as believers. Because this whole worldliness, I'm too busy, it can infect us as believers. Being too busy for the Lord, Christian, is always an issue of priority. We always find time to do the things we really wanna do. Well, I'm too busy for a small group, or I'm too busy to attend, or I'm too busy to serve. No, it's issue of priorities. We always find time to do what we really want to do. And if we're too busy for the Lord, and we're too busy for His body, His church, it's not that we have wrong priorities, it's called idolatry. We're putting other things in this world ahead of the Lord. We're to give our life to what matters most, and Jesus matters the most, and therefore, to say, I love Jesus with my lips and ignore him with my life, it's not love. I'm done with that part of it, okay? Let's get back to those who missed Christmas. Another one is self-righteousness, this is huge. the people of Jerusalem, here's how self-righteousness works. I believe God's real and I'm a good person. I have morals. Again, I believe in God. I'm a great citizen. You'd love to have me as a neighbor. I work hard to support my family and my kids and pay my bills, and I love them, and I'm patriotic, and I love America, and I love our veterans, and I'm a good person, and I try to do good things, and I believe that God is real, but Jesus said in Mark 10, 18, no one's good but God. See, self-righteousness causes someone to miss Christmas, to miss Jesus, because they miss out on the fact that God is holy and perfect and every single person is separated from God in our sins. It misses out on the fact how desperately we need His death and resurrection on the cross to save us. It's the only hope we have. It misses out on what the wise men did, that you have to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ to be right with God, to be saved, to not, if you will, miss out on Christmas. And so there are those because they think they're good enough and they believe in God enough in their lives that they don't even consider Christ, they ignore Christ, they disregard Christ. and they miss out on Christmas. Donna and I, a few weeks ago, we were in our favorite place, the Smoky Mountains. We were celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary a little late there. And we went on the North Carolina side of the Smoky Mountains to a place called Smokemont. And we were going to do some hiking in this area. And we noticed a sign for a church. And we thought, hey, let's go check out that church. I got a picture of it. It's called the Lufty Baptist Church. And it was established on that site in the mountains of the Smoky Mountains in 1836, almost 190 years ago. and it was reconstructed in 1912. So that old church building itself is 112 years old. We thought, wow, let's go inside of it. We thought we were the only ones there. We walked inside this old church and there were two guys sitting there, just the four of us, and they were getting ready to play dulcimers. I got a photo of those guys too. They're sitting there getting ready to play some dulcimers and we were like, oh man, we're sorry, we didn't know you guys were in here. And they were super nice. They go, no, no, no, you're welcome to come in. We said, where are you guys from? They said, we're about 30 miles from here. They said, we love to come here and play music because the acoustics in this old building are just so great. That's the inside of that old 112-year-old church. And they began, Don and I said, you care if we sit and listen? They go, no, go ahead. And man, they started playing on those dulcimers, Amazing Grace. And Don and I were sitting there, and we were looking out the window. I was looking at God's creation, the Smoky Mountains, so beautiful, and sitting by my beautiful wife of 40 years. And I just began to praise the Lord and thank Him for His grace in my life. It was so beautiful and peaceful. They played another song, and they were done. And it was just real quiet. And Donna goes, man, that was beautiful. She said, do you all know the Lord? And they looked at us and shrugged their shoulders and says, no, I guess we don't. And I said, the reason my wife asked that is because you're in this old church and you're playing the song Amazing Grace. And the guy closest in the photo said, I mean, he's real nice. He says, Amazing Grace is just a good song. I don't know anything about it. And we witnessed to Him, we had a chance to tell them. They were so kind and listened, told them about Jesus and how He had changed our life and how He would change their life. And I wish I could tell you that right there in that old church, they came to Christ, they didn't. But we had a chance to sow seeds of the gospel in their life. And it just really hit me. Here they are in a place of God, doing songs of God, and they're clueless about God. I wanna tell you, those guys, you'd love to have them as your neighbors. They are good old boys from North Carolina. I guarantee they believe that God is real, and I guarantee they've seen every John Wayne movie there's ever been, and I guarantee they fly their flags, and I guarantee they're great citizens and all those things, but they are lost. Because just believing that God is real and trying to be a good person will cause you to miss Christmas. Like the people of Jerusalem. I think about them often, pray for them. We're surrounded by people like that. work, school, some of them in your family. This is a great time of year to invite them, to pray and witness to them. Invite them next Sunday. Invite them two Sundays from now. We've got all the camels and everything in here. Invite them to lights of Christmas to hear the gospel. Invite them to the candlelight service. That's why we're doing the end of year Christmas giving. We're just not trying to raise funds. God doesn't need any of your money or my money. Who do we think God is? This world needs Jesus, and that's how God has chosen to fund that. That's why we're doing it. The world's filled with people like that. We want them to know Christ. So Herod missed out on Christmas because he wants to destroy Jesus. The people of Jerusalem missed out on Christmas. They disregarded Jesus. Third, the religious leaders missed out on Christmas because they denied Jesus. And this group may surprise us. They denied him. I mean, here we see in verses 4 through 6, the chief priests and the scribes. The chief priests are like the number one religious leaders. They're from the tribe of Levi. They have great influence in politics and society. The scribes are like you would think a seminary professor. They study scripture and then interpret it. But of course, Jesus used his harshest words in all the New Testament to condemn these guys, saying they tell you what you should do, but then they don't go out and do it in their own life. But to the people of Jerusalem, when they called in the chief priests and the scribes, when they went to go see Herod, they're going, wow, that's the religious dream team. And Herod calls all these guys in and says, okay, religious guys, remember he was inquiring. He's like, tell me, someone tell me, where's this king of the Jews, where's this child that's going to be worshipped going to be born? And again, they pull out a 700-year-old prophecy from Micah 5-2 that says it's going to be Bethlehem. They point the wise men to Bethlehem to see the Savior, but they don't believe it themselves and didn't act upon it themselves. The false religious leaders had an answer about the Messiah, but they did not believe the truth of the Messiah. They may know about Jesus in their head through their religion, but they do not know Jesus in their heart by a saving relationship. They are lost. They miss out on Christmas. They totally miss out on it. And right now today, our world is filled with guys just like that. False liberal religious professors, leaders, and many of them are standing in pulpits right now this morning preaching. They hang out at religious places, they do religious things, they sing religious songs, they use religious words, but they do not know Jesus. They deny God and they deny the authority of Scripture. You see, we see in our world today, and this liberalism of religious leaders, false leaders, they'll say, absolutely, love like Jesus and live like Jesus, and they stop there. They never talk about The need of redemption they never talk about us being sinners hopelessly lost our souls being totally dead They don't talk about the fact that jesus died on the cross for you and for me And he's the only hope the way the truth the life and it's grace and we must know jesus as our personal savior They never talk about the wise men that you've got to come to personal faith in jesus christ. They base everything on progressive modern experience. They don't do anything to embrace the authority of the Bible in their life. Everything they are about is social. You've got to do social works to help other people. Spiritual regeneration of saving the soul is not even in their framework. But you see, those of us who know Jesus, we have a biblical worldview. The lens that we see the world through is through the Bible. The Bible is the roadmap for our life. The Bible is how we decide what to say yes and no to, how we evaluate our choices, what we say, what we do, where we go, how we make decisions is to be based upon biblical truth and biblical principles. False religious leaders don't do that. They may use a scripture or say a scripture, but they deny the authority of the Bible and who Jesus really is. They deny it. They deny that the Bible's the inerrant word of God, perfect from cover to cover. They deny that in the Bible you find absolute forever moral truth. They deny in the Bible that Jesus was born of a virgin, that he lived a sinless life, that he died on the cross for our sins, that he arose from the grave. They deny that faith alone, in Christ alone, is the only way of salvation. They deny there's a real Satan. They deny that you and I are supposed to have the responsibility for the rest of our lives of telling other people about Jesus Christ. They deny it all. I'm so grateful for our Christmas decorations and the team that did that. Here's a Christmas decoration story that just happened a week or so ago. We keep all of our Christmas decorations out in the big service building, big metal building back on this big back parking lot. And all of our Christmas decorations are stored there. They load up the Christmas decorations in a truck, bring it into the building, unpack it, and then begin to set it up. Well, something happened this year that I wanna share with you in decorating for the church. They brought in one of those cardboard boxes. Inside is one of these little artificial Christmas trees. They put it out in the lobby, opened up the box, pulled out the Christmas tree, and this is what was laying in the bottom of the Christmas tree box. They thought it was a piece of electrical tape. That's a black rat snake. He'd been dead for a long time, okay? They love to eat mice, so we can best figure out in our big service building out there, we've got poison and a mouse ate the poison, snake ate the mouse, snake bit the dust. That's how it works. And that snake said with his final hissing, I wanna go die in a Christmas tree. And so, Mike, the guy that found him, I was talking to him after last service, you know, I would have loved to have filmed that. You know, you're in that holiday spirit, decorating your church, open that old box, jingle bells, jingle, pick up that tree, and there is this big, giant snake. I begged the church office, I said, someone go out and buy a black rubber snake, and let's put it in like one of these trees so while they're decorating, you know, they were all freaked out anyway. Hey, we're all about love in this place, anyways. So, right now, Christmas 2025, who would like to sign up to decorate next year, right now, today? I mean, you know, our series is stars and Christmas. Stars and Christmas go together. Snakes and Christmas don't go together. Oh, yes, they do. Christmas is filled with snakes. If you don't believe me, watch, don't do it, Discovery Channel, History Channel. They have all these shows, the true meaning of Christmas, who Jesus really was, the true story of the wise men. Don't you watch that stuff. It's some lost liberal professor who doesn't believe the Bible and doesn't know Jesus as their Savior, and all it does is mess people up. And they just don't do it at Christmas. There are snakes at Christmas. There are snakes 365 days out of the year that slither and share the venom of their falseness. You say, wow, Pastor Kenny, you're pretty hardcore calling them snakes. I'm just saying what Jesus did. He said, you snakes, you brood of vipers, how will you escape being condemned to hell? Why is Jesus so harsh? Why am I so worked up about those who deny the Bible and deny Jesus and deny that they come at Christmas and want you to miss Christmas? They wrap themselves around Christmas and give it a meaning that it doesn't mean it's because of this. False religious leaders do not know God and they will keep your children, your grandchildren, your neighbors from knowing God. It's serious. So the caravan of the wise men, they leave. They're heading the six-mile journey to go to Bethlehem, six miles away, and boy, the people in our story, their hearts are a million miles away from Bethlehem. As they hit the city limits, Herod is pacing and boiling in a rage in his palace, says, I can't wait till they get back to me and tell me where this kid was born so I can have him killed. No one's gonna rule me but me. The people in Jerusalem wave goodbye, goodbye wise men, thanks for coming. Oh man, I gotta pick up that ham in 30 minutes. Take off and do their same old, same old stuff. They may say God bless you, they may say isn't God good, but they miss Jesus, they never come to Him in faith. They got too much going on in the world and they're too good in their own view. And the religious leaders are looking out the windows as the wise men exit, smirking, Wise? Can you believe these clowns? They believe the myth of a Savior. They believe the miracle of a star. They believe the meaning of Scripture. And it's 100% their own fault. Romans 1 says, no man has an excuse. They miss Christmas and they stay lost because they never come to Jesus. I'm so glad the wise men are in this story, too. The wise men is our fourth and final lesson for living of how to respond to Christmas so you don't miss Christmas. They did not miss Christmas, because they were delivered by Jesus. Think about that. It's so simple. The wise men hear God's Word. They believe, and they act. That's all they did. They went in faith to where Jesus was. They responded to God's Word. They believed, and they act. Deceitful, powerful, wicked king couldn't shake their faith. The apathy of people who could care less in Jerusalem couldn't shake their faith. These false religious leaders couldn't shake their faith. They never heard Jesus preach a sermon. They never saw Jesus do a miracle. He is a baby in his mama's arms, but they believed. They went to Jerusalem, or excuse me, they went to Bethlehem. They saw who they were. They knew who he was. And they believed, and we're gonna spend the next two weeks diving into that. You see, the wise men are the very essence of great wisdom. You know what great wisdom is? You wanna be a wise man, wise woman, this is great wisdom. Come to Jesus in saving faith. That's what they did. Have you? Again, God gave them the witness, gave these groups the witness of the wise men, gave them scripture, gave them opportunity, and they just missed. The wise men knew about Jesus and did something about it, have you? Which of these four groups are you in? Have you lived your whole life saying, keep that Jesus guy away from me? Have you been bought into something about, well, you know, the Bible's just a book written by people about God, and you can have a lot of beliefs, and I believe God's real, and God grades on a curve, and he'll let me in one of these days. Do you trust your own goodness, self-righteousness? Are you so just busy doing your thing you've never considered God's love? Which of these four groups are you in? Or like the wise men, have you come to Jesus in faith? You can, you can do it right now. That's what we want for you. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him would not perish, have everlasting life. If you're willing to admit your sin and turn, it's the word repent, turn from self and sin and turn to Jesus alone, a change of heart and faith that He died and rose again, He'll give you the free gift of eternal life. Remember where we started, Bill and Sue and the plane where you missed Christmas? Remember those 20 flights, six different airlines, if you take off on Christmas Eve, you cross the international date line, and you miss Christmas Day because you land on the day after Christmas? Well, this is what's cool. The opposite of that is true if you fly the other way. If you take off in Australia on Christmas Day, you cross the international date line, and when you land in Los Angeles, guess what? It's Christmas Day. You get two Christmas days. You don't miss Christmas, you get two back-to-back Christmas days. I'm so grateful, like the wise men, because Jesus is my Savior, I'm never gonna miss Christmas. What it means? I just don't get Christmas two days in a row. Get this, I have Christmas every single day of my life. Even on the hard days, the bad days, the confusing days. And that Christmas is gonna stretch out all the way into eternity. Because I'm not going on an international flight to Australia, but one bright morning I'm gonna fly away and I'm gonna see Jesus the star of Christmas face to face. How about you? Let's pray.