The Cast Of Christmas: Wise Men: Adoration & Worship

And then there's myrrh. Myrrh was a spice that was used primarily for embalming the body when someone died. All of these have prophetic looking ahead and back to all that God had planned here for the arrival of the Messiah and why this baby was born to be the king, to be our high priest, to be the sacrificial lamb for us when he died on the cross. [00:28:43] (32 seconds)  #MyrrhAndMessiah

So when we see these wise men in Matthew, chapter 2, I want you to think through how God even set everything up, connected all the dots for them so that they would recognize when the time had come. It wasn't just the star, but that star was the main thing they saw at that moment to tell them that this child had now come. That this one who would be the king, the anointed one, the Messiah, had arrived. And it was so significant to them that they decided they needed to go and see this child that the prophets had talked about so many years before the time that it happened. [00:34:29] (41 seconds)  #StarAnnouncedMessiah

And I think it helps us answer the question that all of us have from time to time. Maybe more than once, we ask, what's God want for me? What's His will for my life? Where is He trying to lead me? What's He trying to get me to in my life? Because God wants us, He says in Scripture, if we seek Him, we will find Him if we seek Him with all of our heart, right? So, He wants us to seek Him, but then how do we know that He's guiding and that it's Him guiding and not something else? [00:35:48] (38 seconds)  #SeekToKnowGodsWill

We have tended to equate comfort and what we call blessings with the fact that we must be in God's will if we're comfortable and feel blessed right now. When, in fact, Satan would love for you to feel comfortable where you are right now, even if you're outside of God's will right now. He would very much want you to be comfortable being disobedient to the Father. [00:41:06] (28 seconds)  #ComfortCanDeceive

Well, some of the will of God is uncomfortable. It's hard. And by the way, any marriage you see that has lasted a lifetime, that really the people stuck with it, they stuck through some hard things to be there. It wasn't just good all the time in every way. There was struggle. But you have to stick it out through the struggle to get to all the good that comes from that. [00:42:58] (27 seconds)  #StickThroughTheStruggle

Hundreds and maybe thousands of innocent children, two years old and younger, were slaughtered after Herod looked at the timeline of when the wise men said they saw the star and then when they arrived and then when they got to Bethlehem. And he allowed a little extra measure there to cover at least two years of children being born during that time to be sure he wiped out this child that he saw as a threat to his role as king. It was an awful story. [00:48:20] (36 seconds)  #RememberTheInnocents

``You see, if you're searching in your life, looking for what God wants for you, I can tell you this. The most important thing God wants for you is to find Jesus and then to follow Jesus when you find him. There's nothing more important to the Father than you coming to know and follow Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. [01:03:57] (21 seconds)  #FindAndFollowJesus

And that's why, as we think about this, God will use a lot of different sources, like he did the star for these wise men, to help us find our way to Jesus. If you look back over your life and you already know Jesus, you can connect some dots, can't you, of different people and different circumstances that God worked through to get you to Jesus? I can in my life too. There's certain people that God used to help me find my way to Jesus. And there probably is in your life as well. [01:04:18] (28 seconds)  #GodConnectsTheDots