This sermon delves into the story of the Magi visiting Jesus, emphasizing how God revealed Himself to Gentiles and foreshadowed His love for all people. It highlights the significance of the gifts brought to Jesus and the divine protection provided through dreams, showcasing God's intricate plan to preserve Jesus from harm.

Well, thank you so much for joining me today. Great to have you back once again as we're continuing our chronological study through the New Testament. And we've just begun our journey. We're, of course, studying the life of Christ starting in Matthew chapter one. We're now in chapter two. Previously, we were looking at the story of the arrival of the Magi from the East who were coming to present their gifts before Jesus. And we talked about how they must have had some supernatural revelation in order to do what they did. They traveled perhaps months, maybe even years. Just seeing a star in the sky isn't enough to know that you're coming to worship the King of the Jews. And so somehow God revealed to these Gentiles, and there probably were a lot more than three, they brought three different gifts, but it weren't necessarily just three wise men who came from the East. God revealed to these Gentiles that something worth traveling for, a historic event had occurred, and they were going to be blessed and privileged to be a part of that. So we left off last time in Matthew chapter two. And let's start today in verse number 10. All right. Matthew two, verse number 10. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. They were happy to be back on track. And after coming into the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell to the ground and worshiped him. Now, who do you worship? Well, pagans do worship statues, but they worship them because they're deceived about them because they think this is God, I suppose. It's not natural normal to bow down and worship before something or someone unless you think that thing is greater than you. And they believed at bare minimum, this was the king of the Jews, but you might bow down before a king, but you don't worship a king. Only God should be worshiped. And so here's a really an amazing foreshadowing of God revealing himself to the Gentiles in a public way before a watching Jewish world. He sent those Gentiles right into the heart of Israel, just six miles south of Jerusalem in Bethlehem. They come, they announced to all Jerusalem, everybody has heard it. There's a buzz about the place. God has sent Gentiles here to worship the king of the Jews, the Messiah, the one whom Micah has foretold would be born in Bethlehem. What a testimony, what a foreshadowing of what was to come. What an amazing indication of God's love for all people, not just for the Jews, his chosen one. He's always trying to help Jews see that you're special, but I love everybody. Jesus died for everybody and I sent him to be the savior of all mankind. Remember, we read this previously, God said way back in Genesis when he revealed himself to Abraham, he said, in your seed, all the families of the earth, all the families of the earth, not just the family of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the descendants of Israel, but all the families of the earth will be blessed in your seed. And that singular seed was Jesus. So he was the savior of all, praise God. And I just love this story. Maybe I'm belaboring the point too much, but here are these Gentiles and they're bringing him these very precious gifts. In verse number 11 again, then opening their treasures, they presented him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. All right. Some people try to find significance, some symbolism and all those things. I don't know much about that. Okay. Some prosperity preachers try to tell us that Jesus was rich from the start because he has loaded with gold. I'm more inclined to think that God was thinking about preserving Jesus because there was a plot being formed against him by Herod at that very moment. Remember, he already told the Magi to go there and worship him and then come back to him. So there's a plot being formed to kill him. God's going to give instructions to Joseph and Mary to get out of there and they're going to sojourn as a family in Egypt for some time. That gold that they got was probably God's provision to get him there and sustain him for some time. All right. Wonderful. Now in verse number 12, and having been warned by God in a dream not to return to Herod, the Magi left for their own country by another way. So they bought some time for Jesus and his family. Verse number 13, now when they had gone, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, get up, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt and remain there until I tell you for Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him. And so this is one way that God might lead us, but this is not the only way that God might lead us. I can't tell you that I've been led frequently through dreams. I can tell you that I've had an awful lot of dreams over the years. And if I was to think that every dream I had was from God, I would be a very, very confused person and I'd be all over the place doing all kinds of strange things. So just because you have a dream doesn't mean it's from God. It's proven scientific fact that people are dreaming all the time when they go deep into sleep and most of us don't even remember our dreams. But if you have a dream from God, God's able to help you to understand this is not just because you ate too much pizza. This is a dream from me. An angel appears to Joseph and says, get up and flee because Herod is going to try to search for the child to destroy him. And so Joseph obeys and he got up and he took the child and his mother while it was still night and he left for Egypt. And so God didn't give him a whole lot of forewarning, did he? I mean, it was urgent. Get out of there right away that very night. You're under the cloak of darkness. And let's see verse number 14. So Joseph got up and took the child and his mother while it was still night, left for Egypt. He remained there until the death of Herod. Death of Herod is kind of just spoken of as an incidental thing. Herod died. And I would add as a commentary, Herod died and went to hell because he was selfishly ambitious. He did not love Jesus. He did not rejoice in the birth of the King of the Jews. He was only threatened by Jesus. Okay. So we'll talk about that as we continue in this story. All right. See you next time.