Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text (Matthew 2:1-12):
Then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.
Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Tonight’s sermon will be in three parts:
Part 1, Gold. Part 2, Frankincense. Part 3, Myrrh.
So, Part 1: Gold!
Gold is for kings.
And there are two kings in this reading tonight, King Herod and the King of the Jews, Jesus.
Now, you might know about the kings of the Old Testament, like David, Solomon, Josiah, Hezekiah, and others.
And God promises to David that his throne will last forever.
But now, the line of King David has died out. King Herod is not descended from King David. He’s not a king according to the promise which God gave to David. He’s a foreigner. Herod is not descended from King David – he’s descended from the Idumean dynasty, as they call it. King Herod’s father was appointed by the Romans. And the Jews probably hated that!
And so the wise men from the east ask King Herod, where is he who is born “King of the Jews”?
King Herod thinks, “Well, I’m the King of the Jews.” But he’s not the king descended from King David which God promised. So in that sense, he’s not a king of the Jews. Jesus, on the other hand, was king of the Jews.
And so the wise men from the east travel a long distance to come and meet the baby Jesus, who is the king of the Jews!
But it isn’t Jews who give gold to Jesus, instead it’s Gentiles! The wise men are not Jews, and that’s the reason why Epiphany is important, is that we’re not Jews either. And nevertheless, we’re included in all of this. And so the wise men come and they bring gold to the baby Jesus, to acknowledge them as their own king. And Jesus is a king who is not of this world. He is not a king who is charge of this country and that country. He’s not the king of Judea, and he’s not the king of Persia. He’s the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
It’s also important for us that we bring our treasures, the things that we consider most valuable to us to the baby Jesus, and let him as our king take charge of them. And if we think that we are rich before the baby Jesus, we’re simply deluded! We will either love our king, or we will love our gold. The love of money is the root of all evil. But the love of our king will be the root of all good! So we need to bring our gold into his possession. He allows us to have money, treasures, gold, but he demands that they be used for his service.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, says Jesus, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who are not afraid to have a baby as their king. Blessed are those who have nothing and come and receive everything from the baby Jesus. Blessed are those who don’t still think they’ve got a few gold coins to win back their king later on, but give all their treasure to their king.
And St Paul says, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.”
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Part 2: Frankincense.
Gold is for kings. Frankincense is for gods.
Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel – which means God with us.
And Jesus is true God. He is God with us. He is our Immanuel.
And so the wise men, say, “Where is he who has been born King of the Jews? For we say his star in the east and have come to worship him.”
They have come to worship their God.
And we read:
When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him.
They acknowledged this little child as their God.
They had done away with idol worship from their old country, and had come to worship the invisible God -- now made visible to them -- in the person of the baby Jesus.
And they offer him frankincense. Incense is what people offer to gods. That’s why in some churches, and in the more ancient church, it was common practice to use incense in church, to acknowledge that we were in the presence of our God, Jesus Christ.
Psalm 141 says, “Let my prayer rise before you as incense.”
And in Revelation it says, we read that the angels stand before the throne holding bowls of incense, which, the text says, “are the prayers of the saints.”
And so it’s appropriate that the wise men offer them incense, as they bow down and worship this baby, who is their God, God with us, Immanuel.
When we commend something into the hands of Jesus, we acknowledge that he is in fact God after all. When we want to do everything ourselves, we treat ourselves as god.
So instead, we come to Jesus to offer our prayers to him, because he is in fact our God, and he promises to hear our prayers.
Let my prayer rise before you as incense.
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Part 3: Myrrh.
Gold is for kings. Incense is for gods. Myrrh is for corpses.
Myrrh is for dead bodies. Myrrh is a good thing for a proper burial.
Myrrh actually stops worms breeding, and also makes the body smell nice. And so the wise men come to give the baby Jesus myrrh, because they know that their king and their God is going to die.
Now you might think, how would they know that God is going to die?
There are many religions in the world. And there were many religions also at the time of Jesus. And most religions believe that the world is in charge of gods, rather than the gods in charge of the world.
I don’t know if you know anything about the gods of Ancient Rome, or Ancient Greece, or Ancient Egypt, or some other ancient culture. The gods are usually sinful – they have affairs, they make mistakes, and then this mountain comes about, or this thing happens. They believe that the world is eternal, and that gods fit into all that. Most people who don’t believe in God, think like this. The world has basically always been there, and it it’s never going to end, unless of course we mess it up ourselves.
Maybe the wise men thought something like that. But then when they met Jewish people like Mary and Joseph, maybe they put them straight and told the wise men that God is in fact eternal, and the world has a beginning and an end. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. God is in fact older than the earth, and he will also outlive the earth.
And it is this God, who has become a man in Jesus Christ.
The Father and the Holy Spirit did not become a man, only the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God became a man.
But now that this has happened, Jesus Christ, true God and true man, is destined to die. He is destined to taste the bitter myrrh.
On the cross Jesus is given wine mixed with myrrh to drink, but he doesn’t drink it.
Instead he thirsts for you. He thirsts for your life, as he lays down his own. He wants you to come and take his body and give it a proper burial. He wants you to anoint his body with myrrh and fragrant spices, and to bury his sufferings and his death deep within your heart. To put him to death with in you, to put to death your sin, so that he will also rise from the dead there and strengthen you in the forgiveness of sin.
And so it is appropriate that the wise men bring to Jesus Christ, the man of sorrows, the bitter tasting, sweet smelling perfume, myrrh.
There’s another aspect to myrrh, though. It’s funny how the most occurrences of the word myrrh in the bible is in the book of Song of Songs, which is a love song. Myrrh is a fragrant perfume – almost a kind of sweet-smelling love potion. And there is a sense in which the suffering and the burial of Christ are bitter for him, they are bitter tasting like myrrh, but as he dies, and smells the bitterness of death, when the myrrh rises to his nostrils, Christ remembers that he loves us, and that he dies for his precious bride, his one and only love.
And so as we come to the Lord’s Supper this evening, we also come to bury Jesus deep within us, to place his body and blood into our mouths. And when he sees us there acknowledging him as our Lord and God, he treasures us as pure gold, he receives the incense of our prayer and he smells the bitter perfume as our sin is put to death, and our bodies and souls are made alive through the forgiveness of sin.
And so we have gold for our king, incense for our God, and myrrh for our suffering Saviour.
And when experience suffering, when we taste the myrrh in our life, we are called to offer the incense. We are called to pray to our God. And when we call upon our God, we take our stand in the kingdom which is not of the world, and place ourselves under the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
And when our Lord Jesus Christ looks at us, he sees gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Gold, because we are precious to him. Frankincense, because he hears our prayers. And myrrh, because amid all the bitterness, he smells the perfume, the sweet perfume, and he calls to mind again and again that constant, unfailing love with which he loves us.
Amen.
Lord Jesus Christ, you are our king, our God and our bridegroom. We thank you for the witness of the wise men, offering you Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh – knowing that you rule heaven and earth, that you have come as God in the flesh, and that you will die for the sins of the world. Send us the Holy Spirit, as we take our stand in your kingdom, with all the faithful Jews and faithful Gentiles. You alone are holy, you alone are Lord, you alone, O Christ, with the Holy Spirit, are most high in the glory of God the Father. Amen.
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