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Come on. All glory to God. Amen. All glory to God. What a gift it is just coming to God's presence together. Amen. I sometimes like to stand over here in preparation for stepping up and getting all my angst in the last three weeks out in one moment of shouting and welcoming everyone to church. But every time God kind of knocks on my heart, gives pause for just a minute, and invites me to just look out and just be reminded about the beauty of his church. And the truth is that a lot of you walk in here with a complicated year that you're about to wrap up. Some of you step into this moment and your tank is on empty. Show of hands, all campuses. Anybody just, like, out of gas. Your tank is on empty. Like you left it all in the field this year. Can I tell you that there's something so beautiful about the simplicity of God's presence that can bring rest to your soul in a moment. And that's what we celebrate at Christmas. And if that's you, can I just encourage you that you're in the right place? Our goal for this weekend was to pull back the layers and the decibels. That was a joke. Okay? So just maybe you could find your heart re centered on Jesus. Anybody else need that? Like, you just need a moment where God can just get ahold of you. If you're coming this weekend and you're out of breath, could you just find yourself, just give yourself enough space today to let the creator of heaven, the author of life, speak encouragement to you, remind you of his goodness. See, it's good that you're here because there's just something about God's presence that just draws us. And this weekend, I want to dive right into a story. And I'll keep you standing here for just a minute. Not as long as Doug would, but if you have a Bible, we're going to go straight to Matthew chapter two. Last week, Doug got to share about the most popular Christmas movie of all time. But I'm a little more holy. So I want to share with you the second most popular Christmas story found in scripture according to ChatGPT. And I'm just believing that God's going to speak to you. I'm believing that you're going to walk out of here with a sigh of relief because make no mistake, we saved the number one most popular Christmas story for Pastor Sean on Christmas Eve services. Come on, you got to get yourself to church. Think of who you're going to invite. We're going to be throwing a massive party at all of our locations. And I promise we will redline our DB reader. Matthew, chapter two, verse one. Now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the King, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem saying, where is he who has been born king the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. When Herod the King heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him, and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet. And you, O Bethlehem in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people. Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, go and search diligently for the child. Sorry, the H Vac. Turn the page for me. Go and search diligently for the child. And when you have found him, bring me word that I too may come worship him. If you know the story, you know that that actually was not Herod's intent, but rather to hunt Jesus down and end any opportunity for his rule or his reign. Verse 9. After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose, went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. 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 fel and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts. Gold and frankincense and myrrh. This weekend it's my prayer that we center our hearts around the King as we approach the single most significant day in human history when the King came close. The title of my message this weekend is December to Remember. Lame. I'm gonna pray. Jesus, I just thank you for every single person that's just looking for you this weekend. Would you be so good God, would you be so gracious to us when we find you? Would we find everything we're looking for in Christ Jesus? And would you recenter on our hearts what matters most? Would you give rest to the weary in Jesus name? Amen. Why don't you go ahead and grab a seat? December 2nd. Remember after Doug's message last weekend, he referenced the infamous Lexus commercials and so I went out after that and I bought Alexis On Amazon arrived just in time. There's something so nostalgic about this commercial. And I was trying to figure out why. Like, why to me, you could tell me that the red bow and the perfect white Lexus in the driveway was like the meaning for Christmas seasons of my life. And I might have been convinced you were right. December to remember celebrated 25 years of the December remember driving sign, the drive sales event last year. And for almost 30 years, the slogan for Lexus was what? The pursuit of perfection. Modified, actually, from the relentless pursuit of perfection that just got a little too long. And I was thinking about us and I was thinking about me, and I was wondering if anybody in here this Christmas you have this pursuit of perfection. Maybe it's the Christmas season that must be perfect. Maybe it's the. The timeline of your life must line up just right. My wife came to me, Whitney, the other day and is like, I feel like I just enjoyed the run up, the preparation of Christmas more last year. And I started to wonder to myself, I wonder if she said that the year before, about the prior year. We have this way of building these things up in our heads and our hearts, don't we? There's just something so special about the nostalgia of Christmas. I don't know if it's the gifts, I don't know if it's the commercials, I don't know if it's the sentiment, but for as long as I can remember, Pursuit of Perfection, December to Remember has been a widely accepted token of our society around Christmas, has it not? And I just was wondering, like, what is it for me? For me, it actually probably is the gifts. Like, I love a good gift exchange. I'm getting older. My sister told me she was gonna stop giving me Christmas gifts. And it hurt, I know, but I don't have to buy her one. So there's just no exchange at all. But it's killing part of the magic. In Matthew, chapter two, we have a retelling of the most famous gift exchange of all time. It tells us that wise men from the east arrived in Jerusalem. And if you know the story, you might know that we don't know their precise location of their origin. But to our best guess, we can assume that they were from Babylon or Persia or the region of Arabia, meaning they would have traveled 500 to 1,000 miles. It would have taken them two to four months, possibly up to two years to arrive to worship the king of the Jews. And they went by caravan. So there was a lot of them. So they might not have been moving Too quickly. And they moved along designated trade routes. And I just feel compelled as your pastor to once again remind you that your nativity scene is lying to you. They were not there as hard as is for me to say, and there wasn't three of them. Like, we can almost guarantee that there probably was more than three of them. But they show up and they say, where is he who has been born King of the Jews? And I love this because these men themselves were not Jewish. They were Gentiles. And they show up in the first recording in Scripture. They are the first recorded people to profess Jesus as the king. They're the first ones to bring that declaration. And we wonder. We know. Sorry about why this is because we know they had access to the Holy scriptures. So about 20 generations prior, which had been about 450 years, the Jewish people were exiled into these regions. And we can tell from Daniel chapter two, actually a Jew that was exiled into Babylon, that he actually gets appointed over the wise men. The wise men would have been known as astrologers and astronomers, those that would study the sky and the celestial occurrences and know about the stars and the movement of them. But ultimately they would be convinced that they were pointing to a coming king. In Daniel chapter nine, it references the appearing of a Messiah and a prophecy that he gives. And they would have also been familiar with numbers 24, where it says, a star shall come out of Jacob. So what does that mean for us? Like, why are we telling you this in the middle of Christmas? All that to say, this astronomer class of men had an expectation that a messiah was on the way. And they would have known roughly the timeline. But year over year, they would observe the sky and the movement and the pattern of the stars. And eventually they would say, the time has now come. 20 generations later. And for some of you, this Christmas, I wanted to challenge you and say, how long have you been waiting on God? How long have you been waiting for that moment of hope that answered promise, that prayer that you have been seeking him on? How long have you been waiting for him to show up? And do you maintain the expectation that he will? Has your gaze remained intent or has it wandered and has it strayed? I wonder myself if I was one of the wise men. I probably would have been scrolling on my phone and I would have missed the whole thing. The caravan would have shipped off. They had been gone. I'd be like, oh, we miss it. They had expectation. And I wonder if you would notice if God showed up and did the miracle you'd been seeking Him. For if you would see the hand of God on your situation. Because the truth is, we see what we're looking for, do we not? You see what you're looking for. If you're looking for reasons to be bitter and burdened, I promise you'll find them. If you're looking for reasons to be upset, they're easy to come by. If you're looking for reasons to leave Red Rocks church, you probably have a hundred of them on your way to the car this weekend. But on the flip side of the coin, if you're looking for God's goodness this Christmas, I think you'll find it. If you're looking for his faithfulness, I think if you're looking for reasons to be grateful, I think they're there for the taking. I think you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to worship and to celebrate, you'll find them. Our daughter had her first preschool Christmas pageant the other day. I don't know if you can really call it a pageant. It was 22 minutes. And the turtle class only gets to be part of the second half because they cannot maintain themselves throughout the duration. So they kind of show up at the intermission parlor about halfway through, do their songs. You could have told me another kid started a fire in the middle of the thing. You could have told me a kid did a backflip off the top riser. Wouldn't have seen it, because I was locked in on my girl. I found her, and she's the only one. And she did her best, I hope, because in our house, we always give our best. A little bit of nose picking, some of the motions. Spot on. You find what you're looking for, do you not? And I wonder what you're looking for this Christmas season. I wonder what you're looking for. As we stand on the precipice of next year, my prayer is that you would actually find it. The wise men stood and they gazed and they looked on, and then they arrived that God had announced a chosen ruler. And so they said, we've come to worship him. That word in the Greek is proskineo, and it means to pay homage to. To put something in superior rank, to position yourself below out of reverence. For they said, the King of the Jews has come. And I could not help but wrestle with this thought. What so compelled them to go all that way to worship the king of a people group that was not even their own? And I just couldn't help but realize, man, we are all searching, we are all wired, we are all designed to worship. Something in our soul cries out and. And craves to attach itself to something worthy of our praise. John Calvin, early church father, says this. There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity. Like we are aware that the human heart will continue to seek and to look. These men sought and they found. Aw Tozer says, we were not or sorry. We were created to worship, and we will worship whether we know it or not. We see this all throughout Scripture. When they get tired of waiting on God, when they get tired of following the path and the plan of God, when they feel like he's gone silent, what do they do? They stray. And they attach their hearts to a new object of worship. And this form of idolatry continues to follow us and permeates our society and our culture today. Our heart will find something to worship. Augustine the hippo, said, you have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. Could it be that 20 generations of their family knew that there'd be a coming king? And just one after the other remained restless until they could encounter the hope that Jesus was to bring. And then Athanasius said this. The human soul is made to behold God. And in beholding him to worship. They said, we have come to worship the king of the Jews. Then verse three, it says this. When Herod heard this, he was troubled in all Jerusalem with him. Herod says, what do you mean you've come to worship the king? I'm the king. If you know the story, you know that they were. Their attempt was to maintain authority and power at all costs. They knew the Messiah might one day show up, but it better not be today, because I'm in charge. And I wonder, like, had they missed it? Like, did they just, like, stop paying attention? It said they were troubled. These wise men from the east came with great joy and expectation. The people closest to the town and the birthplace of Jesus were greatly troubled and disturbed. They were apathetic or even unaware. I think they had just stopped paying attention, or they knew and just were not compelled to go. And then in verse 6, it shares with us a prophecy. He gets them together and he says, where is this king to be born? Where is the Messiah to be born? This comes from Micah, I believe. Yeah, Chapter five. But they recite it here, and they say they told him in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet. And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for from you shall come A ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. You know what I see here? I see a whole bunch of people that knew what the word said, but they had not submitted their hearts to it. Like, they had the writings right there in front of them. They knew, but they did not have the revelation that would compel them forward into the presence of God. They knew what they would find. They just weren't looking for it. And I want to challenge maybe some of us today. Is that descriptive of us? Is that descriptive of our season? Is that descriptive maybe of where you're at right now? Like, you know, but you don't like, know know. You know, like you don't know enough to go. Like, maybe you're in the house, you show up, you get your seat. Maybe you're close to the things of God. Maybe even in routine, man, you pursue the things of God, maybe, maybe you show up, you already know what Christmas service you're coming to. You know how many hours early you're gonna get there. Ca. God forbid somebody be in your seat, you know who you're going to invite, because that's what good Christians do. You got the neighbor picked out. You're going to pop a card on their hood of their car. You refuse to take Christ out at Christmas. If someone says happy Holidays, you look them in the eye and you say, merry Christmas. You believe this guy? Merry Christmas. You're close to the things of God. You're going through the Advent calendar. You got the Christmas devo out. But could I ask you this weekend, where is your heart when it comes to worshiping the king? What has your worship in this moment? What has drawn your heart to a place of falling before him and worshiping? What has you captivated? Some of you are so antsy in your seat right now, you can't figure out why I took three minutes to describe the Babylonian captivity at Christmas time. You got the list waiting for you. You gotta figure out who you're gonna elbow heading into Sprouts tomorrow morning to get your stuff. And I just wonder if literally today Whitney texted me and she goes, is it even Christmas if there's not a fight outside of Trader Joe's, my man. Is that not us? Does Jesus have your worship? As you head into the day that changed everything, have you given yourself space to actually reflect and consider what that means? Because let's be honest, this time of year has a way of highlighting the good, the bad, the hard, the painful, the devastating, the loss that some of you maybe have experienced this year. And those things have an insane capacity to rob us of our worship. And if we're not careful, even good things can minimize and diminish and shift our hearts just enough that we will totally miss an opportunity to encounter the king. So Herod summons the wise men and he sends him to Bethlehem and says, search diligently for the child. And so in verse nine they head out and it tells us this. After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. Verse 10 it says, when they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. Like this is the moment. Picture it. Generation after generation, they've known that there would come a time, in a moment where they get to approach the Messiah, they get to enter into his presence, and they rejoice exceedingly with great joy when it rests over the place that he is. And can I tell you something? I've read this story probably 250 times over the last couple weeks in preparation just that God would speak to me, that maybe I could get something through that would speak to you. And can I tell you that my heart just got wrecked when he challenged me with this idea of when was the last time you rejoiced with exceedingly great joy? And I don't know if you're like me, but man, how quickly can we be? How quickly can the joy that must overflow the joy of our salvation is actually depleted and reduced and minimized in silence. Can you picture this moment? Everything has pointed to this. The very people that were supposed to be counting on this guy are nowhere to be found. But these men say, no, this is it then. Verse 11. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him before he had done a thing, before Jesus had showed up, before he had changed their situation, before he had multiplied their snacks for the road trip back before he had healed anybody a baby. I wonder if you're waiting for God to change everything about your season and your story and to prove Himself to you before you'll find yourself in a moment like them falling down, submitted and elevating him above all, they fell down and they worshiped. They had a revelation of the Messiah and a declaration that the King had come. And all I wanted for this weekend was to acknowledge just that, was to acknowledge the King and allow our hearts to be stirred back to a moment of worship before him, to recenter ourselves. Matthew, maybe you need to be honest about Areas that you have withheld worship. Like, it's not enough that he's been king to you, but you maybe have withheld worship because you're waiting on what might be ahead. Could I tell you that even in your season, even in your moment, that he actually is still king? And, like, I'm not talking about, like, I leave a little bit early, Pastor. I get it. Like, I sneak out like, traffic's crazy out there. But what's the posture of your heart? What's the posture of your heart to the things of God? Have you stopped long enough? And my whole intention was maybe we just, like, talk slower and we don't yell and we do an acoustic set just so people could have a moment to think, God, do you have my heart? Do you have my worship? They acknowledged him, and it spurred on exceeding great joy. Maybe your posture can be totally changed this Christmas season. Charles Spurgeon said this. Those who look for Jesus will see him. Those who truly see him will worship him. Those who worship him will consecrate their substance to him. If you look for him, you'll find him. And when you find him, the inclination of the human heart has no other response but to worship him. And then the verse goes on. Verse 11 ends with this. Then opening their treasures they offered him. And team, you can come on up here. The famous gifts, right? We all know the gifts. We've seen the skit, we've seen the sketch. We've seen the little kid thing where they do the gifts, right? They offered their gifts to him of gold and frankenskinds. Frankincense and myrrh. Gold would be representative of royalty. Think about the crown that sits upon the head of a king. It is made of gold. Frankincense. We would come to decide the wise men were just giving gifts that were of high value to honor the king. But frankincense would become a representation of divinity, which is used in temple worship and would designate and signify the divine nature of God. And then myrrh would point to humanity, the humanity of Jesus. It was a highly desirable spice at the time. It was actually used for embalming and as a pain reliever. It was representative of suffering. See, the wise men offered these three gifts of highly valuable commodities out of their affection for King Jesus. And then they leave the scene. We never hear from them again. Like, did they receive everything that we were looking for was their whole purpose in scripture? The reason that we're talking about them in 2025, to close out man. A chapter of this year. Was it all just to point people back to worship? Because Jesus ministry continues. It actually hadn't even begun then. And about 30, more than 30 years later, we'll circle back to this story of Jesus. He had performed his miracles. He had raised the dead dead. He had made the blind to see. He had opened deaf ears. The lame would walk. People would get their hope back. He would restore and redeem. And his whole ministry would point to the fact that he in fact, is Messiah. And then he would be rejected. He'd be despised. He'd be betrayed by those that were closest to him. And his friends turn him in and they turn their back on him. And the whole life of Jesus culminates in this moment where he's headed to the cross. He was beaten and he was spit on. He was laughed at. There's this moment where Jesus is headed to the cross and he'd been scourged and was in pain. And Scripture tells us that they offered him wine mixed with myrrh on his way to the cross. But this time, rather than accepting the gift as he did as a wee little baby, I don't know if he accepted it. He just dropped it off. He rejects it. Instead of taking on the pain reduction, the painkiller that it was supposed to be for him, he said, I must suffer on behalf of all. You see, there was no shortcut when Jesus died on our behalf. And you see that that crown that should have been made of gold, we find out in Matthew, chapter 27, verse 28, that they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him. And twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And instead of coming to worship, the King of the Jews tells us that the Messiah was mocked. They knelt down and mocked him, saying, hail, King of the Jews. Did you know that this Jesus, the same king that was in the cradle, was on his way to the cross? And he'd make his journey and he'd make his way, and eventually they would nail him up to the cross. And Jesus would willingly go in front of all the people that he came to redeem and to save and to love and to care for. And they raised him up over his town. In verse 37, over his head, they put the charge against him, which read, this is Jesus, the King of the Jews. See, what began as Christmas culminates in this moment at the cross and the crucifixion of Christ. You see, you cannot separate the cross from Christmas because both are robbed of their power without the Other, if Jesus never came close and never came near, there would be no Savior to go to the cross on our behalf and buy back that which we could not afford to pay the debt for. And we get this picture of Jesus and we see that when we sing Emmanuel God with us, we know that's only possible because of the cross. As Jesus hung and bled out and suffered, he willingly gives up his spirit. And that which separated us from him, divided us from his love, divided our mortality from his eternal presence was torn in two. Because of Christmas. Jesus came to dwell with us. Because of the cross, we now have access to Him. Scripture tells us that it was torn in two. And now what used to only be reserved for the religious and the leaders and only accessible at times of year, means that he can dwell with you and with me. In the same way that Christmas changed everything the cross did as well. We have this Advent season, and the final week of Advent is represented by love and man. There's no greater picture of love than the one that would lay his life down for us. And so I thought maybe we needed to remember differently this December. I thought maybe God would just stir our hearts just enough to take a moment of remembrance. You see, nothing brings us back to his kingdom like a moment of communion. So under every single one of your seats, there's a little packet. And before Jesus made that journey to the cross to die as the King, King to be represented as the Savior of the world, he had dinner with his friends and he gave us this symbol. He said, this is my body, the bread that is broken for you. And I hold on to it. Don't get too crazy. We're going to take a moment. But then he said, this cup is my blood which has been poured out for you, which invited the new covenant, which means that we no longer had to open, earn our way to God, but he made a way for us by way of the cross. And he said, when you do this as often as you like, do this in remembrance of me. And so it's my prayer that over this next song, for those of you that have said yes to Jesus, you would remember the cross. Would you search your heart and challenge yourself, God? Would you remind me of who I was? Would you remind me of where I was? Would you remind me of how good you've been to me? Would you remind me that there's no way I could have pulled myself out of the pit of despair that I found myself? And would you remember the moment when you made Jesus your Lord, when you said yes to him? As king of your heart. And maybe you're in here and you haven't done that yet. The Bible is very clear with us. It says if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that it didn't end on the cross, but that three days later he came up out of that grave, defeating death, hell and sin forever, then you will be saved. Maybe this is a December that you'll remember forever. Maybe this is one where man. A moment before the Lord at the cross could change everything. So I'm gonna pray for us, and I'm gonna invite those that would like to make Jesus their Lord here in just a minute. You're just saying he's king. I've tried to do it my way, but I need what he provided on the cross. And the team's gonna play. And I'm just gonna give you a moment at every single one of our campuses. Would you just settle in and would you just let the words of this song wash over you? Be reminded about a Emmanuel God with you and how that came to be this Christmas and on your own. I'll invite you to. Once you feel ready in your heart, you can stand, you can sit, you can do whatever you need to do, but you can take that bread and you can take that cup and you can celebrate and worship the King Jesus. I just thank you. I thank you for this moment. I thank you for your presence. God. I thank you for all that this representation presents. I thank you that your crucifixion was made possible by Christmas. God. I thank you that Emmanuel God with us. God, that you paid the price to have us back. God, would this Christmas be marked by us worshiping a king with every head bowed and eye closed? And some of you have decided you feel God drawing your spirit right now. It's an invitation to just say yes to him as king for the first time. If that's you and you say, hey, this is exactly what I've been looking for this Christmas. I need a king to save me from that which I cannot save myself from. And I choose to make him king of my life and king of my story. Would you just slip your hand up right now? Love to pray with you. I see you. Amen. I see you. Praise God. Jesus, we just thank you for your presence. Would we remember you? Would we recenter our hearts on you? Would we be changed by your presence in Jesus name? Amen.