Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for his incarnation, that he was willing to come to earth to die for our sins, that we might have salvation paid for by the blood of Christ. We thank you that he rose again the third day and he sits in heaven and intercedes on behalf of each one of us. We thank thee most of all that he loves us so very, very much. And we pray that you would help us never to forget that. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. If we could have some lights out, at least up this way, so that it's dark. Men love darkness rather than light. I don't need the spotlight on me, please. Okay. Good. That's better. Okay. I need to see them, though. The three wise men. How many of you like three wise men? How many like four wise men? How many like two? How many don't know? I don't know either. How many camels were there? Were there camels? How many are voting for camels? How many are voting for elephants? How many are voting for horses? How many are voting for horses and chariots? You know, the Bible doesn't tell us some stuff. And the reason God didn't tell us some stuff is because he didn't think it was important that we knew. But we filled in a lot of stuff. And you're allowed to fill that in, but you can't say that it's scripture, okay? And so we're gonna look at that this evening, but the title of the message is Worship the King. You know, when Jesus came the first time, when he walked the earth, he was never king on the earth. He was never king here. He was king. He has always been king, but he never ruled on the earth. And we're gonna be dealing with that this morning. Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men, notice no number given, from the east, no particular place in the east given, to Jerusalem, saying, where is he that is born, king of the Jews? For we have seen a star in the east, no particular place mentioned where that east is, and are come to worship him. When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. Herod was one of those people you didn't want to cross, unless you liked to be dead or tortured to death, okay? And he was very strong about holding his kingdom of anything that might take the kingdom away. But notice he asks a question Where is he that is born king of the Jews, is what the wise men ask, for we have seen a star in the east. And so they're asking the king, and they're assuming that the new king will be a descendant of the present king, being Herod. But that was not the case. But Herod had a good question. So the first thing we're going to do is how many wise men there were and what wise men are. Throughout the scripture you'll find the word wise men and that does not necessarily refer to the kings. We three kings of orient Well, maybe not three. Maybe they weren't kings. Maybe they were just wise people. Now, I have some conjecture to throw in, and you can throw it out when I'm done throwing it in, okay? But there were some people who used to live in the East, in Babylon, and the Persian Empire, by the name of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Mordecai, that had influence in those kingdoms. And a lot of that influence had been accepted by people. So it is a possibility, notice the word possibility, it is a possibility that some of these individuals had influence upon the wise men who came. We don't know. But we do know that these individuals were in those Persian kingdoms, Babylonian kingdoms, and had influence there and had great testimonies there. And so that's a possibility. Where did they come from? Some commentators say Persia. Well, that's where Esther, Nehemiah, Ezra had influence as well. What means did they use to travel? Now, we're going to give you some examples in a little bit on that one. What time of the year was it? Christmas is December 25, right? Now, maybe not. You know, the Bible doesn't tell us. You say, well, the problem was they didn't understand time. Well, the fact of the matter is they did understand time very well, because throughout the scripture, there are lots of verses that give time. In the 10th year, in the 10th month of the 12th day of the month, guess what? Somebody knew what time that was. I mean, pretty exact, what time that was. except for the hour of the day. And it came to pass in the eleventh year and the third month and the first day of the month that the word of the Lord came unto me. And so there's a very specific time signature on this particular event as well as this one. And it came to pass in the twelfth year and the twelfth month and the first day of the month that the word of the Lord came to me saying, why doesn't the Bible say in this particular year, or this particular month, or this particular day Jesus Christ was incarnated? You know why? Because God doesn't think you need to know that information. You say, well, maybe God forgot. No, God didn't forget. There's a reason why. God doesn't give us information, and that's because he doesn't think we need to know information that he hasn't given us. Now, this is when Jesus was on the cross. Now, in the sixth hour, there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour, and about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani. That is to say, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Notice, when Jesus was on the cross, time signature was important to God. When Jesus was born, time signature was not important to God. Now, if you wanted to figure out, if you wanted to take a guess at doing some calculating to come up with the time of the year when Jesus was born, you could take the announcement of the angels to John the Baptist's father and mother, father actually and then mother, of course, and you could find out when Zacharias had responsibilities in the temple. When the angel talks to Mary, she said, this is a six month with your cousin Elizabeth who is pregnant, who was barren. After the six months, you take the three months and add them into Zacharias' six months, you can come up with a general time figure, right? Forget that, okay. That's complicated. Hey, what about royal elephants? They still have royal elephants in the east, by the way. You know, Hannibal used elephants, right? How many of you know about that? How many never heard about that guy before in your life? That's just old people's history, I guess. And David smote them from the twilight into the evening the next day, and there escaped not a man of them, save 400 young men, which rode on camels and fled. Have you ever seen a battle picture of the Old Testament where camels were in the battle? We know about horses, and we know about chariots. Absalom was on a donkey in battle. Can you imagine that? I'm thinking, I know why he got killed. At any rate, here's people in a battle and they're fighting from camels. I wondered how that worked. That'd be good with archery, I guess. Thinking about Abraham's servant, and the servant, Abraham's servant, took 10 camels of the master and departed with all his goods of his master were in his hand, and he arose and went into Mesopotamia, the city of Nahor, to get a wife for Isaac, his master's son. One servant, how many camels? 10. So how many camels were in the train that came to see Jesus when he was born? We don't know. So here's one man, 10 camels, and the Bible says, and she made haste and let down her pitcher from her shoulder and said, drink, and I will give thy camels drink also. And I drank, so I drank, and she made the camels drink also. The servant is talking to Rachel's brother and mother and father. Now, this is a horrible picture because there's something wrong with it. How many know what's wrong with it? When she was going back to see Isaac, did she ride a donkey or a camel? camel, okay? But this was the best picture I could find. But I'm pointing out to you that it's wrong, that it's an artist's conception. But when Abraham's servant went to Rebecca's family, they got lots of presents, valuable things. So can I count the number of people giving a present by the number of presents? Okay, suppose I came under your Christmas tree before you opened all your presents, and I saw all those presents, and I counted them up so I knew how many givers there were, right? That would work. Would it work? No, that wouldn't work. Abraham's servant gave lots of presents, but there was only one servant who was in charge of the situation, but he had other people with him, the Bible very clearly says, and they did eat and drink, he and the men that were with him. Now, you need to realize that in this day, you didn't travel by yourself unless you were thinking about fighting off the robbers and the murderers by yourself along the highway, and so that wasn't a good idea, and so that's why normally they would travel together. Queen Yeshiva came to see Solomon, and she, that's Queen Yeshiva, came to Jerusalem with a very great train. Now this is not the train that runs on the track downtown, okay? This is not the train that's powered by diesel or the old trains that were powered by coal. This is a camel train with camels that bear spices and very much gold and precious stones and when she was come to Solomon, she communed with him of all that was in her heart and she gave all kind of presents and she brought Solomon all kind of stuff. So how many camels did she have? We don't know. Did Solomon get one present or a bunch? He got a bunch, okay? So counting the camels that are not counted in the Matthew passage and counting the presents and equating camels and wise men with the number of presents, excuse me, doesn't make a lick of sense, okay? Or they could have ride on chariots, right? Now, the Bible has lots of illustrations of chariots, and lots of times in the Bible when it talks about chariots going into battle, but they also have chariots instead of whatever you drive around to get from one place to another, okay? And you could buy, during Solomon's reign, you could buy a chariot for 600 shekels of silver and a horse for 150. So for 750 shekels of silver, you could have transportation. Now, anytime you read about people coming and going, for example, the people of Israel coming out of the land of Babylon when they returned from the captivity, you'll see that the major means of transportation that they had were donkeys. And that would be normal. And so that was a normal means of transportation. The Spirit said unto Philip, this is in Acts chapter 8, go near and join thyself unto this chariot. Now I did find a good picture here. He was not a king, but he was the treasurer. And it would not have been unusual for him to have a driver, see the man in the chariot? And it would not be unusual for him to have outriders. How many know what an outrider is? Okay. That's somebody riding on a horse to protect you from the enemy, that's what it is. Okay. And so the picture is really quite a good picture. as Philip is explaining from Isaiah chapter 53 to the Ethiopian eunuch, what is happening. But I wanted you to see the picture to realize that there would have been people that traveled with kings, if they were real kings, and with rich people, and even like Abraham's servant. to protect them. You know, the Bible says that Abraham had 318 trained soldiers. That means in his house, who were his servants, he had 318 men who were trained to be soldiers to defend against things. So I'm sure his servant, when he went to get Rebekah, picked that up. He said, now therefore give pledges, and I pray thee to my master, the king of Assyria, and I will give thee 2,000 horses if thou be able on thy part to set riders upon them." So the king of Assyria said, I'll spot you 2,000 horses before we begin the battle. In other words, he said, I can beat you easy enough. I'll give you 2,000 horses and at least it'll sort of make the battle sort of even and we can do that. So it would not be unusual for them to have horses. This is an ax when they were taking Paul away from Jerusalem so that he wouldn't be killed by the religious leaders of the day. And he, that was the centurion, called unto him two centurions saying, make ready 200 soldiers to go to Caesarea, horsemen three score and 10, 80, and spearmen 200 at the third hour of the night. So they're gonna travel by night and protect one prisoner and they've got a bunch of soldiers. Some of them on horses, some of them are spearmen, and some of them are just regular walkers while the other guys ride kind of people. How about horses for the wise men? What do you think? This breed of horse is called Arabian, okay? Now, we could buy one of these horses if you had a million dollars. Today, an Arabian horse A purebred Arabian horse costs you a million dollars. Now, we could put him on the Osteen farm, but we'd have to find somebody to take care of him, okay? Probably sit there with a machine gun to protect it. At any rate, I don't know because I've never ridden an Arabian horse, okay? I've ridden quarter horses, I've ridden Tennessee Walker horses, and there's a whole different ride between those two. Now, the people who have ridden Arabian horses and who have ridden camels, a number of Bible commentaries say, forget the camels, it had to be an Arabian horse, because the ride is something completely different than a camel. And I've never ridden a camel, and I've never ridden an Arabian horse, but it's quite possible that the wise men could have come in on horses. Now, how many of you want to vote? Elephants. No elephants. Camels. Probably that's a good possibility. Horses and chariots. Arabian horses. That's me. NASB stands for New American Standard Bible. Okay. This is from the book of Esther, whoever Esther is. He wrote in the name of King Hazarus and sealed it with a king's signet ring and sent letters by couriers on horses riding on steeds sired by the royal stud. In this passage, there's no doubt about the fact that most likely they were Arabian horses. Esther 8 and 14, the couriers, hastened and impelled by the king's command, went out riding on the royal steeds, and the decree was given out at the Citadel in Susa. And that's why I'm voting for Arabian Horses for the Wise Men. How many have been to Logos Theater? How many saw their manger scene there this year? What animals were there at the manger scene for the Wise Men? Elephants. Horses. Camels. You won't see it the next time. Back to Matthew chapter two, verses four. And when he had gathered the chief priests and scribes together, he demanded, this is Herod demanding of them, notice what he's demanding, where Christ should be born. He didn't say, where is this king supposed to be? He didn't say, who is this king? The wise men didn't say, we're looking for Christ. Whereas he is born King of the Jews. Who could be King of the Jews? But he asked them where Christ should be born. So he knew what they were looking for, even though they didn't know what they were looking for. But Herod knew. He knew enough of scripture to know that there was a promised king. Now, I'll get to it a little later. Jesus was never a political king, yet. He wasn't. The Jewish people had had political deliverers For example, Moses was a political deliverer from the power of the political situation in Egypt. Moses was a political deliverer. Joshua was a political deliverer. He destroyed the people that were living in the land of Israel. The judges, all through the book of Judges, there were political deliverers. Saul, the first king of Israel, was a political deliverer from the Philistines. David did the same thing. So there were political deliverers that the people of Israel knew about in their history, and they were looking, a lot of them, for a political deliverer. We want to be delivered from Rome. We want the Romans run out of town and dropped in the Mediterranean Sea. We want to get rid of them. They were looking for a political deliverer. Christ did not come the first time to be a king. You say, how do you know that? Because he wasn't. You can look through all the Gospels anytime you want, and Christ was never a political king. There were a lot of people who were expecting him to be a political king, because there were those passages in the Old Testament that indicated that when the Christ would come, he would be a deliverer from whatever as they had experienced many times in their past, in their history. So he calls the chief priests and the scribes together and say, you know, I know someplace in the scripture there's a Christ that's supposed to be king. Could you help me with that? And they said unto him, in Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet, in thou Bethlehem, the land of Judah, are not the least among the princes of Judah, for out of thee shall come a governor that shall rule my people Israel. You know what? They stopped there. That's not what the passage of scripture says in Micah. They missed something that was very, very, very important. And why they didn't give this to Herod, I really have beat my little bit of brain out about it, and why they didn't do it. But what the passage of scripture says in Micah chapter five in verse two, but thou Bethlehem Ephrathah, thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall come a governor, shall come forth unto me, that is to be ruler Israel. That's where they stopped. But that's not what the verse says. Notice the verse says, whose going forth have been from of old, from everlasting. This isn't just another Jewish person born that's gonna be a king in the land. This is a person who has been from everlasting. There's only one everlasting. Sorry about that, okay? There's only one everlasting, and that everlasting is the Lord Jesus Christ. He's God. The verse says God will come and God will rule over Israel. But the chief priests and scribes didn't tell Herod that. Whether they thought that when Jesus came and he grew up, he would destroy Herod and destroy the Roman Empire and take over and rule the world, as many passages in the Old Testament indicate, and that time is yet to come. There's a phrase that's used a lot of times in the scripture, and I've just chosen a few of them. And when Jesus departed thence, two blind men followed Him, crying and saying, Thou Son of David, have mercy on us. Now, when you read through the Bible and you read that Son of David, you can just miss something here, because sometimes they said, You're Joseph's son. And sometimes they said, We were not born of fornication. We have one Father, even God. which indicated that they thought Jesus was born out of wedlock, and they didn't understand the virgin birth. But a number of times in scripture we find this phrase, son of David. And when the chief priest and the scribes And the Pharisees and the Sadducees hear this, they are ready to go ballistic. They're like, what, what are these people saying about you, Jesus? Do you understand what these people are saying? And all the people are amazed and says, is this not the son of David? And the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did. This is a triumphant entry verse. And the children crying in the temple and saying, Hosanna to the son of David. They were sore displeased because they knew what these kids were saying. These kids were saying, this is God. This is the Lord Jesus Christ. This is his to reign in Israel. And that's why they were displeased. And that's why The chief priests and scribes said to Jesus, you need to shut, excuse the bad language, you need to shut these people up. You know what they're saying. They said to Jesus, do you understand what they're saying? And Jesus basically said, do you understand what they're saying? They didn't understand that. Notice Jesus asked this question. He said, what think ye of Christ? Whose son is he? They say unto him, the son of David. They were absolutely right. And that's why when the wise men came, and they said, where is he who is born king of the Jews? Herod says, chief priests and scribes, come here. Tell me where this guy is gonna be born. They said, Bethlehem of Judea. But they didn't tell him he is going forth has been from everlasting. Why? Because he was the son of David. But he was really God, Jesus Christ incarnate. There are two kinds of kingdoms. As you read through the scripture, especially the gospels, Jesus was talking to people about coming into the kingdom. And he didn't have a political kingdom. So what kind of kingdom was he talking about if he didn't have a political kingdom? Because obviously he didn't have a political kingdom. He didn't have a spiritual reign as the chief priests and scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees did when he was on earth. They hated him, they fought him every step of the way. That's why he ended up on the cross. They killed him, or they thought they killed him, or whatever. But there's a spiritual kingdom. When we receive the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior, we come into the spiritual kingdom. And the people of Jesus' day received the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior. They stepped into the spiritual kingdom. And that spiritual kingdom is open to everyone. The word whosoever, I will in no wise cast out. The spiritual kingdom is still open. And God is still looking for people to get in. We should be looking for people to get into, and I'm sure we are. But there's a spiritual kingdom, and everybody who received the Lord Jesus Christ as their savior entered into that spiritual kingdom, and God is king. There's political kingdom. England has a monarchy. We have a constitutional republic, whatever that is, right? You know what that is? I don't know what that is either. I do. We get to vote for people. If we don't like them, we can vote them out. We should vote a bunch of people out if we could. I'm not sure there's enough of us to do that. At any rate, there are political kingdoms all over the world. Satan said to Jesus in the temptation, if you'll fall down and worship me, I'll give you all these kingdoms of the world. He said, it's mine. I can give it to whoever I want. That's political kingdom. The day is going to come when the Lord Jesus Christ is going to set up a political kingdom on earth. And there's going to be a whole bunch of people that are going to hate that worse than the president of the United States has hated today. Because if they think he's tough on some issues, wait till Jesus comes and rules with a rod of iron, and then they're gonna find out what tough can look like. So we have a political kingdom. When they were therefore come together, they ask of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? What kind of kingdom were they talking about? They asking about? Was it the spiritual kingdom? or the political kingdom. They were asking about the political kingdom. And as you read through the Gospels, you'll see a whole bunch of times when people were expecting the political kingdom. Jesus, why don't you get rid of these Romans? Why don't you throw them off? Why don't we get rid of them? We want you to be our king. Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world, Right now. He said, what you're expecting in a political kingdom isn't going to happen now. If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight? They couldn't have put him on the cross if he didn't want to go. You understand that? One of the Old Testament prophets was in the city of Dothan, not Dothan, Alabama, but Dothan in Israel. And the king found out that he was there The prophet had been telling the king of Israel all of the secrets of the enemy king. And so the enemy king sent a whole great big army down there to surround the city to capture him and get rid of him. And guess what? He captured the whole army. He said, Lord, all the horses and chariots of fire that you see around here, make these people blind so that we can take them to some area. The king can capture the whole bunch. Do you think before Jesus was crucified on the cross, he could have called for the army of the horses and chariots of fire and won the battle over Rome? I think he would have won. We sing a song. He could have called how many angels? 10,000 angels. He could have, probably could have called 10 million angels, wipe Rome off of the map. If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight? Notice, but now is my kingdom not from hence. He said, this is not the time for that kingdom. He didn't say there will never be a time for that kingdom. He said, this is not the time for the kingdom. Right now, there's no time for the political kingdom, but the spiritual kingdom was always available. How about the phrase, is it written in stone? You know where that came from? One day God said to Moses, I want you to come up on the mountain, and I want you to cut out two tablets of stone. So Moses cuts out two tablets of stone, You know what was written on him when he carried him up on the mountain? Nothing. You know, when we go to worship God, we have to do the same thing. We have to take him blank stones. And if he's our God, whatever he writes on those stones, that's what we're gonna do. And the Bible says, and God wrote on the stones with his finger. Now, you don't write on the stone with your finger, because your fingernail will disappear in a hurry, okay? But he wrote on the stones with his finger, and then Moses and Aaron and the people of God knew how to worship God in the spiritual kingdom. And worshiping God means we take him a blank sheet and say, God, You're gonna be my God. You ride on here whatever you want. And I'm gonna live according to that. That's what the people of Israel said they would do, but guess what? Before he even got down from the mountain with the first set, they'd broken them. They were worshiping a golden idol. So he had to have another set of stones. Guess what? They were blank when he took them to God. And he gave them to God, and God said, OK, here's what I want you to do. And God wrote on the stones. The stone is the word of God, the Bible. And if God is our God, then we worship him by the writing on the stones, the word of God. And these shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings, and they that are with Him are called and chosen and faithful. God said, I'm gonna have a war, and when I'm done with the war, then I'm gonna have a political kingdom as well as a spiritual kingdom. And they that are with Him, that's you and me as children of God, heirs and joint heirs of Jesus Christ, are the chosen and the faithful to help him establish his kingdom. I might die, but a lot of us will. Most likely I will, too. But I don't know whether I will or not. But whether you do or not doesn't change the fact that you'll still be there in the kingdom. and he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is King and King and Lord of Lords in the spiritual kingdom now. He will be King of Kings and Lord of Lords in the spiritual and the political kingdom forever and ever because he is God. I was going to do the hallelujah course, Pastor, but I wasn't sure that it would work. So I left it out. At any rate, we'll have a great reunion, won't we? Where is he that is born King of the Jews? Herod says, I don't know. I'm going to find out. They said, Bethlehem. That's where it is. Herod was thinking political rival. Jesus didn't come to be a political rival of Herod or of Pilate or of Caesar. He came to die on the cross. Remember, we had that cantata, Born to Die. That's why he came. But the spiritual kingdom has the doors wide open. Jesus said, I've set before thee an open door and no man can shut it. You know, the door is still open. Even in restricted access nation countries, the door is open to the spiritual kingdom. And the spiritual kingdom in the days and years to come will become a political kingdom. And we shall rule and reign with Christ forever and ever. So you can have however many camels you want. You can have royal elephants if you want. I'm sticking with Arabian horses myself. But I worship the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And he's given me what he wants me to do, and it's written in stone. That means I can't change it. I can obey it and receive reward. because he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, shall we pray. Our Father, we thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank thee that he came. We thank thee that he came to provide salvation that we might enter in a spiritual kingdom for right now. We thank thee that you promised a political kingdom where you will rule and reign with a rod of iron over the entire earth, and we will rule and reign with you We thank you for that promise, and we pray that you would help us to live in such a way that we might share the message of the gospel of Christ Jesus with others, that they also might come into the kingdom of God and have eternal life in Christ Jesus. We pray in his precious name. Amen.