We shall now turn to the chapter which we read together, Matthew's Gospel, chapter 2, and we shall read again verse 11. Matthew 2, verse 11. And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down and worshipped him. And when they had opened their treasures, They presented unto him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. It's natural at this time of year to think of the birth of Christ. There are many reminders of it. And it's a very important subject. We think of John 3.16. That great verse, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. God loved the world and he gave his son to be the savior of the world. And the son of God loved the world And he voluntarily chose to enter into this world to become a man. And he died for our sins on the cross. He came to save the world. And the only way he could save the world was by dying for the world. His birth doesn't save the world. His birth was essential. It was the first step. But he was born to die. Without his birth, nobody would be saved. But especially without the death of Christ, none would be saved. So we have here, first of all, this morning, a unique child. Who is he? Who's this baby in Bethlehem? The son of God. He's one who existed before he was born. None of us exist before we're born, before we're conceived in the womb, but Jesus existed. He existed from all eternity. That's the way John begins his gospel. In the beginning was the word, The Word is a name for Jesus. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. In the beginning, the Word began. No, in the beginning was the Word. When time began, when things began, the Word already was. He was already in existence because he is the eternal Son of God, the everlasting, who never had a beginning. There's a mystery there, of course there's a mystery. How can God have a son and the son be as old as himself? But that's what's revealed to us in the Bible, and we accept it by faith. God is eternal, and the Son of God is eternal. In the beginning was the Word, He was there. And the Word was with God. There were two persons at least in the Godhead. The Word with God, face to face with God, two persons. The Son, the Word, and God the Father. And the Word was God. The Son, Jesus, is God. The Word was God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. Everything that was created was created by Him. How foolish of the Jehovah Witnesses to say that Jesus is a creature. No, the Bible tells us plainly, all things that were made were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. So everything that was created was created by Christ, by the Word, by the Son of God. And that's why in chapter one, verse 23, we find another name for Jesus. Behold, a virgin shall be with child and shall bring forth a son and they shall call his name. Emmanuel, which being interpreted is God with us. His name is God, Emmanuel, God who has come to dwell amongst us. Yes, he is God. Now, God is, of course, a God who is holy, who is just, who hates sin. And God created our first parents, Adam and Eve, as sinless beings, placed them in the Garden of Eden, and everything was beautiful, and it was all paradise. Until, until our first parents ate the forbidden fruit. They rebelled against God, and they did the one thing that God told them not to do. And because of that, God was angry with Adam. And not just with Adam, but with all Adam's family. Because all of us, since Adam's sin, we're all born sinners. born in sin and shaping in iniquity. We come into this world just like our father Adam. We come into this world doing things that are wrong, saying things that are wrong, thinking things that are wrong, and there's nothing easier for us to do than to sin. Sin is natural. and is to be seen even in little children who fight and squabble and tell lies and steal things and show very, very soon just the sinfulness of their wicked hearts. And just as sin is to be found in seed form in a child, so it comes to full expression in our later lives. We're sinners! And the Bible tells us God is angry with sinners. And the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. God is just and holy and must punish sin. But God in his great love has provided a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. God has provided a savior who is God himself. God, the second person of the Trinity, God, the son. He came into this world. He took our nature and he took our place. God spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all. There's grace, there's love and mercy. God spared not his own son and the son of God spared not himself, but he came into this world. He came into this world to suffer and to die. And so we're told that an angel came to visit Mary. Luke tells us about this and told her about God's plan and what God was going to do and that she was going to have a child. And so we're told in chapter 1 of this Gospel, Matthew and verse 18, that she was found of a child. She was found with a child of the Holy Ghost. By the power of the Holy Spirit, a miracle was performed so that A child was formed in her womb, a child who would partake fully of her own body, of her human nature. But a child in whose birth no man had any part, not Joseph nor anyone else. She was a virgin, and as a virgin she conceived, and as a virgin she gave birth to this child. So the child was a miracle. It had to be like that because everyone descended from Adam in the ordinary way, by ordinary generation, partakes in the sin of Adam. And Jesus had to be born in a different way so that he wouldn't share in the guilt of Adam, so that he wouldn't be part of the covenant that was made with Adam, that covenant of works which Adam broke. And we all who were born by ordinary generation through Adam, broken Adam, sinned in him and fell with him. Jesus had to be different. He was born of a virgin, truly human, but his birth miraculously formed, his body formed by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary. And when Joseph discovered that his espoused wife, his engaged wife was pregnant, he thought of sending her away. He knew that he had nothing to do with his pregnancy. But then he had a dream. In that dream, he was told to take Mary as his wife. The child was not the product of some other man, but a miracle of God. No other man had been involved. She was still a pure virgin. And he was told that when the child would be born, he should call his name Jesus, or Joshua, the Old Testament form of the name. Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. Call him Savior. He is the Savior. He shall save his people from their sins. And so Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the only child with two natures, a full human nature, not just a human body inhabited by God, but a human spirit, body and soul, just like you and me. He had everything that you and I have, everything that you and I have apart from sin, but he also had another nature. a divine nature, so that when he was born, conceived and born, he didn't cease to be God. He didn't become a kind of mixture of God and man. He remained God, fully God, unchanging God, almighty God, still in heaven. When he died on the cross, he was still the living God in heaven, in his divine nature, unchanged. But united to that divine nature was a true human nature, with all the weakness and frailty and feebleness of a human nature. Two natures. Two full natures. Two unmixed, unmingled natures in one person. In one person. Fully God and fully man. And as a full human child, he had to be nursed. He had to be washed. He had to be clothed. He had to be fed. He had to be carried about just like any other child. He had to learn to crawl, and we all know what it is to look at a little baby shuffling along, maybe on its bottom, perhaps backwards to begin with, and then they start going forward, and bit by bit, Jesus, just like other babies, would learn to crawl, and then pull himself up on furniture, and bit by bit, start to walk, and then bit by bit, lisp a word, and then another word, and another word, fully human. Really human, yes, the Lord Jesus, a full human being sharing in our nature, a body, human body and a human soul. And so he grew up, and he grew up having to face temptation, grew up tempted by the devil, surrounded by difficulties and problems and needing to be guided by his parents and directed and learning and growing, bit by bit growing in wisdom and in favor and in stature and eventually becoming a man, then learning his trade with his foster father, his stepfather, Joseph, learning to be a carpenter and working for several years there in a very ordinary, humble occupation, a joiner, a carpenter in Nazareth, then becoming a preacher. and a miracle worker, and then arrested, standing before the high priests, before Pilate, condemned, nailed to the cross, and there he died in our room and in our place, bearing our sin, bearing our punishment, bearing our hell, to give us heaven. He died for us. He laid down his life on our behalf. He gave himself a ransom for many. You are redeemed not with corruptible things, you're saved not with corruptible things such as silver and gold, but with the precious, precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. The Lord Jesus, born in Bethlehem, growing up in Nazareth, Having to exercise faith in God, just like you and me have to do. Praying for help against temptation, praying for strength to continue, living the life of faith as the perfect example. Tempted but never sinning. He was the second Adam. The first Adam, he sinned and he fell. The second Adam, he never sinned and he saved his people. He came, he came to be the savior and he did all that was required. To do thy will I take delight, O thou my God that art. These were his words, prophesied by David and Psalm 40. Consider then this unique child, this wonderful baby. But then secondly, today, I want you to think about the interesting visitors that came to see him. We're not told a lot about the birth of Jesus. two chapters in Matthew's gospel and two chapters in Luke's gospel, but that's all. Luke tells us about shepherds who are out in the fields at night near Bethlehem. And an angel came and visited them and told them, glad tidings of great joy unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior who is Christ the Lord. And then angels, lots of angels appeared in the sky singing praise and hallelujah to God. And the shepherds went and found in the stable, lying in the manger, the little baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, just as the angel had described for them. But here in Matthew's Gospel we're told about the visit of the wise men from the East. The Greek word that's used here is the word Magoi, from which we get the Latin word the Magi, Magi. We get the word magician from that. But the Magoi, who were they? The Magoi were a priestly caste amongst the Medes and the Persians. They were the priestly people, they were the kind of intellectual people, the people who spent their time studying things, studying the stars, and studying all sorts of things involved in the heathen worship in these lands. But we've got to remember too that to Persia and to Babylon came Jews at the time of the exile. There were people like Daniel, Daniel who was very prominent in the Kingdom of Babylon and later in the Empire of Persia. And also Mordecai, you remember, and Persia and Esther. So there were Jews, godly Jews in these lands. And these godly Jews would speak about their faith. And it would seem that some amongst the the Magi, some amongst the wise men of Persia, heard the message of the Gospel, heard about the coming Messiah, the coming Saviour. Daniel spoke so clearly about this coming Son of Man, this Saviour who was going to die in the place of sinners. So Daniel and others would speak about these things and it would seem that a small number of the wise men discovered the gospel, the way of salvation, and they were looking and longing and waiting and expecting the coming of the Messiah. How amazing! And there in Persia, they were expecting and waiting for the coming of the Saviour. And as they waited and prayed and looked and expected, the Lord spoke to them, the Lord revealed to them that the Saviour, the Saviour had come and that He was born in Bethlehem. And so they came, they saw this star that guided them. The Lord sent this special star to guide them and it guided them to Jerusalem. Where would they expect the king, the savior, the son of David to be born but in Jerusalem? So they came to Jerusalem guided by the star. And then he began to ask about the birth of this special royal baby. And they were directed to the palace and they came and they spoke to Herod, asking about the birth of the king, the great king, the everlasting king, the mighty king who would reign forever. And Herod is troubled when he hears about this, doesn't dismiss it as rubbish. He too knows something of the Old Testament and the prophecies of the coming Messiah. And he's amazed at these wise men coming all that way from Persia, coming to Jerusalem, looking for the Messiah. And so Herod makes inquiries and he calls for the chief priests and the scribes, the rabbis, to come to him, to the palace, and he asks them, where will the Messiah be born? What does the Bible say? What does the scripture say about the coming Messiah? And he's told what the prophet Micah had said. Micah chapter five, verse two, thou Bethlehem in the land of Judah, least amongst the families of Judah, out of thee shall come a governor who shall rule by people Israel. The wonderful coming of Christ told hundreds of years before it happened that he would come born in Bethlehem. That's why Mary and Joseph had to make their way. They had to make their way from Galilee up to Bethlehem. That's why Caesar had organized. had organized a census and everyone had to go to their native city. And so Joseph being a son of David and Mary too, they had to go to Bethlehem in order for that census to take place. And in order for Jesus to be born in Bethlehem, the city of David. And so they come, these priests and these scribes, they come to Herod and they tell Herod about the birth, the birth will be in Bethlehem. And so Herod tells the wise men to go to Bethlehem, to look for the child there, and then come and tell me when you've found the child, so that I will also come and worship the child. And so the wise men set off for Bethlehem. But as they make their way south, As night falls, they notice a star appearing again, and they rejoice with great joy, exceeding great joy. The Lord is still leading them forward to meet this child, this child that's most special, this child that is more wonderful than all the other children that have ever been born into this world. They're led to meet this child in Bethlehem, and following the star, they come to the city of Bethlehem, and there, over a house, the star stops. It has guided them to this house. Jesus, of course, was born in a stable laid in the manger, but now it would seem that they've been able to move into a home, a house. And so they enter into this house and they see the baby and Mary, the mother, and they fall down and worship the baby. They don't worship Mary. How wrong, how wrong the Roman Catholics are with all the honor and the reverence and the worship that they give to the Virgin Mary. There's nothing like that in the Bible. Nothing to be found like that. We're to worship God and God alone. We must never worship or give honor or reverence of that nature to any human being. Mary, Mary was honoured, yes, to be the mother of Jesus, but she's not to be worshipped in any way. She's not to be prayed to. She's a human being. We're to pray to God, to God alone. I was saddened to hear about Gavin Ashenden, who had been one of the chaplains of the Queen. And then, because he had taken a strong stand against the immorality of the homosexual lobby and spoken out against the accepting of homosexuality in the Church of England, he was forced to resign as a chaplain. but just there in the past week it seems he has decided that he would join the Church of Rome. Reacting against the liberalism in the Church of England and rightly reacting against that, but he has cast himself upon the traditionalism of the Church of Rome. Rome that in so many ways has distorted the gospel. It's not to churches we should be looking. It's not to popes, and it's not to priests, and it's not to the Virgin Mary. We are to be looking to Jesus, to Jesus alone, returning to the scriptures, to the Word of God. and not following the word of man or the false traditions of the different churches. We are to come to Christ, to Christ alone. And so these wise men, they came from the east and they came to Bethlehem and they came into the house led by the star and there they see the baby and we are told that they fell down and worshipped him. What an amazing sight that must have been. These great men, we don't know how many of them there were. Tradition says there were three. Why should there be three? We're not told. They say there's three just because there are three different types of gifts mentioned. Gold, frankincense and myrrh. But all the wise men could have brought gold and frankincense and myrrh. We're not told how many there were. So we shouldn't say that there were three there. There were several of them, and you see these men, some of them perhaps old men, and they get down on their knees before the little baby to worship him. A little baby, a little baby who cannot speak to them at this stage. who cannot respond to them in any way, but they're bowing down on their knees and worshiping him because they recognize that this baby is the son of God. This baby is the savior of the world. This baby is the great king. This baby is the one who will die for their sins. And this baby is the one who will come back at the end of the world. and judge this world, and you and I and everybody in this world will have to come and stand before the Lord Jesus Christ to be judged. And the great question will be, what did you do with Jesus? What did you do with Jesus? Did you love him and respect him? Did you trust in him and honor him? Did you give your heart to him? Did you follow him? Did you take him as your savior? Or did you treat him just like a baby? As so many do in our own day and generation. So, finally we have here a disturbing birth. Herod didn't regard the wise men as cranks. He thought that there must be something that had brought them all that way from thousands of miles from Persia to Jerusalem. He could see that they were intelligent men, wise men, men of faith. We're told in verse three, Herod the king, when he heard these things, he was troubled, an ambitious man. a man who had succeeded in making himself powerful and wealthy, he had built palaces for himself, built citadels like Atada, he was a powerful individual, a cruel man, killed, wives, some of his own wives and children because he saw them a threat to himself. He was a king. He would kill anyone to be king. And when he heard about this baby who was born to be king, he was concerned to find out where was a baby and he was going to destroy the baby. So he told the wise men to come back and tell him and he would come and worship the baby, would he? No, he would come to kill the baby. But silly Harold thinks he can fight against God. How foolish he is. Silly Harold thinks he can overthrow the plan and purpose of God and their silly men and women around today. And they think they can fight against God and resist God and stand against him and blaspheme and curse and swear in his face and that they'll get off with it at the end of the day. But no man can fight God. And all the wickedness and the sin and the evil that people do, they will have to give account for it. And they will have to stand before baby Jesus, who's the great King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And he will say to me, son, depart from me, ye cursed, into that place prepared for the devil and his angels. And he will say to others, come ye blessed of my father into heaven with me. And it all depends, what's our relationship to Jesus? What does Jesus mean to us? So he's plotting, as we were singing in Psalm 2, why rage the heathen and vain things? Why do the people mine? Kings of the earth to set themselves and princes are combined, like Herod, to plot against the Lord and his anointed. plotting against the Lord's anointed, plotting against baby Jesus. Are they going to succeed? Of course not. So the wise men are warned in a dream not to go back and tell Herod. They set off home a different way. Herod realizes that the wise men haven't come back to tell him. So he thinks of another policy. and his policy is to send his soldiers to kill every baby in Bethlehem under the age of two years. But of course, God has already warned Joseph, and Joseph has taken baby Jesus down to Egypt. Nobody can fight against God. Many pretend to worship Jesus, but they want a baby Jesus who won't harm them. They like to keep that little baby as a baby. And so we find at Christmas time lots of indulgence, lots of feasting and drunkenness and immorality going on. And they think that they're celebrating the birth of Jesus, whereas they're only adding to the wrath that will come upon them. When the Lord Jesus comes, the Jesus who calls us away from drunkenness and immorality to holiness and to godliness. So many, so many who have their parties and they think it's wonderful to have an excuse for a party, but at the end of the day we've got to remember but we've got to face the judge. It is appointed unto men once to die and after that the judgment. Shortly you and I will have to meet our judge. Shortly after this Herod died. Two or three years after the birth of Jesus Herod died and Herod went to face the judge. Herod who thought he could fight against God, who thought he could kill the Messiah. Herod had to go to face the judge. And where is he today? We fear that he's in a lost eternity, and for 2,000 years he's been weeping and wailing and gnashing his teeth. But there is a Savior. There's a Savior born. The Lord Jesus Christ came into this world to save sinners. Look unto me, he says, and be saved. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Rejoice in his birth. The broad road leads to hell, but Jesus has opened the narrow gate and the narrow way to heaven. And he says, look to me, trust in me, believe in me and you'll be saved. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. We rejoice today that there's a savior in heaven, born in Bethlehem, crucified at Calvary, risen, ascended, exalted, seated upon the throne in heaven, and the Lord Jesus Christ is mighty to save, willing to save. Why perish when Jesus is offering to save you?