King (Candlelight Service)

Unwrapping the Names of Christmas. That's been the name of our December series here at Twin Lakes Church. Hey everybody, my name is René, another one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes. Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!

So this is pretty cool. What we've been doing in this series is every weekend we've been unwrapping, looking at the deeper meaning behind one of the names of Jesus Christ in the Christmas story as told in the Gospel of Matthew in the Bible. So far, we've looked at Messiah and Jesus and Emmanuel. And tonight we're gonna look at King. Everybody say King with me. King!

And I wanna start with a question. Can you recognize royalty when you see it? You think you can? Queen Elizabeth is probably the most recognizable royal in most of our lifetimes, right? She was the queen of the United Kingdom, passed away just a couple of years ago, lived in Buckingham Palace in London, had a vacation home, Balmoral Castle in Scotland, and she loved to go hiking in Scotland. It was just such a beautiful place around that castle.

But some funny things happen there sometimes. Richard Griffin, who was her chief security officer up there, told this story shortly after she passed away. True story. He said that they were hiking in the wilds around her Scottish castle when they came across a couple of American tourists. Now, this is an artist representation. These weren't the actual American tourists, but just to give you a sample of what happened that day, he said it was clear that the Americans did not recognize the queen, who of course was not hiking around with a crown on her head or anything like that, and she did not let on who she was.

And they chatted up and they started sharing the details of their vacation travels. And then one of the Americans asks the queen, "So, where are you from?" And the queen, without letting on, says, "Well, I live in London, but I've got a holiday home just on the other side of the hills." And the American says, "Oh, have you ever met Queen Elizabeth?" And the queen without missing a beat says, "Well, I haven't, but Richie here is her security officer and he meets her regularly."

The hiker then turns to Richie and says, "Ooh, that's so cool, what's she like?" Richie wrote, "Because I'd been with her a long time and I knew I could pull her leg, I said, oh, she could be very cantankerous at times, but she's got a lovely sense of humor." Then the American puts his arm around Richie's shoulders, hands his camera to the queen, asking if she can take their picture. "My friends will never believe I met the queen's security guy." Richie writes, "Then I said, well, why don't I take a picture of you with my friend here?" And I took a picture of them with the queen who they still didn't recognize.

And as we walked away, her majesty said to me, "I'd love to be a fly on the wall when he shows those photos to his friends in America." True story. How about you? Can you recognize royalty? Tougher than you think. In fact, in the story that we're going to look at tonight from the Gospel of Matthew, an entire city misses the king. It's a great story, so let's unwrap it.

It's found in the Bible in Matthew 2:1, "After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem." So let's talk about Magi. Magi were the royal court advisors for the Persian Empire, hundreds of miles east of Jerusalem. And Magi had a job, and their job was to search the night sky for signs about things that were happening or about to happen around the world.

And somehow they saw a sign that indicated to them that a king of the Jews had just been born. And so they did the logical thing. They sent a delegation to honor the birth of the next king of the Jews. And they went to the logical place, Jerusalem, which was the capital city of the Jews. And they asked the logical question, where is the one who's been born king of the Jews? Where's the party? Where's the celebration? 'Cause we brought some stuff for the party. And nobody knows what they're talking about.

And they said, "Well, but we saw his star when it rose, and we have come to worship him." See, the problem was that Jerusalem already had a king, King Herod. And when King Herod heard this, he was disturbed because King Herod was all about flexing his power and protecting his power. He would execute anybody he saw as a challenge to his rule. And so when Herod is disturbed, all Jerusalem is disturbed with him.

Herod had ruled there for a number of decades, and he believed in pomp and glory and maximizing his legend. He had spectacular palaces and spectacular places. And if you visit Israel today, 2,000 years later, you can still see the ruins of his palaces, and you can see how they all were built in these spectacular locations, like his palace up at Masada. Look at these cliffs. Or his palace in Jerusalem. Or the ruins of his palace on the coast of the Mediterranean. That's it right there. You can still see the remnants of his swimming pool.

Or this palace. Now, these are just the ruins. There was a castle on top in his day. That looks a lot like a volcano, doesn't it? But go around to the other side, and you can see the archaeological dig reveals it is an entirely man-made structure. King Herod had this built with hundreds of slaves, again, to flex his power. When I visited it, I thought, this is like a James Bond villain lair inside of a volcano or something, right? But look at the city in the distance. That is Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, in the literal shadow of Herod's volcano-like palace.

And if you go to Bethlehem today, you can see a place called the Shepherd's Field, where shepherds back in Jesus' day and still to this day bring their sheep to graze. And in the Shepherd's Field, there are a number of caves like this one, natural caves, where shepherds back in Jesus' day would bring their sheep to shelter. And inside of these caves are ancient stone mangers from the time of Christ, like this broken one that I took a picture of. After Jesus was born, he was laid in a manger, a feeding trough for the animals, much like this one.

So Herod is the king with the volcano-like James Bond villain lair, and Jesus is the king with a cave and a feeding trough. And that really typifies the difference between those two types of kings, right? But Herod hears about a new king being born, it's a big threat to him, so what he does is he calls together the religious people, the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, and he asks them where the Messiah was to be born.

See, there was a kind of a legend that one day God would send a Messiah and a Messiah was the word that the Jewish people used to refer to the king of kings, the king of all kings, the king appointed by God to rule over his people. And Herod's afraid that if kind of word gets out that this prophesied figure has come, then his own reign is in danger, so he wants to know where this kid is so he can off him, frankly, that's the way the story goes.

So the religious people know where the prophecies, right? Where the prophecies say this king's gonna be born? Well, that's easy, they say in Bethlehem in Judea, for this is what the prophet has written. And in the next couple of verses have a cool prophecy we're gonna look at next weekend when we wrap up this series. So Herod's like, okay, that's all he needed to know, Bethlehem out, everybody out of the court, empties the room that Herod called the Magi secretly, and he found out from them the exact time the star had appeared, a couple years before, apparently, they reveal.

He wants to know about how old the kid is now, right? He says, here's what I want you to do, go and search carefully for the child in Bethlehem. As soon as you find him, report to me so that I too may go and wipe him out. I mean, worship him, worship him. And so they go, and they search and they find him, and I'm coming to the house, by this time, Mary and Joseph have left their emergency shelter, the cave, and they're apparently in a house of relatives or they're renting it.

Anyway, the Magi see the child with his mother Mary, and they bow down and they worship him. And they present him with gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh, which are worth their weight in gold. And they go sneaking back to Persia by another route, and never tell King Herod what they found. The point is they gave him gifts fit for a king. The Magi were the first to call him the king and the first to recognize him for what he was, a king.

How about you tonight? Do you recognize the king? Now, seeing Jesus as king is hard for people. It's even hard for Christians, because frankly, there's so many other cool things about Jesus. It's kind of like this. I was raised Swiss. I'm a Swiss citizen, my parents were Swiss, I was raised with Swiss customs, just out of curiosity, are there any other Swiss people in the room? No, as usual, nobody.

So in Switzerland, Christmas customs are a little bit different. For example, Santa Claus, who they call Sami-claus. Everybody say that with me, Sami-claus. Okay, that was a good effort. One more time, Sami-claus, that's much better. So Sami-claus, unlike Santa, Santa works in America, he doesn't live in the North Pole, he lives in the forest, he doesn't have reindeer, he's got a donkey, he doesn't come on December 24th, he comes on December 6th, and crucially, he does never, never, ever, ever travel alone.

He always travels with schmutzli. Everybody say schmutzli, schmutzli. That's right, Sami-claus travels with schmutzli. Here's the deal with schmutzli. Schmutzli is like Santa's evil twin. He is the anti-Santa, the dark Santa, he's Santa's enforcer, and they're always together. It's good cop, bad cop, and here's the way it works. In Switzerland, you don't go visit Santa and tell him what you'd like for Christmas. Santa visits you and tells you what you're getting.

And he visits you at your house or at your school, like here, and schmutzli and his enforcer are always with Santa. Do you see that book that Santa is reading? I'm not making any of this up, by the way, this is Swiss Christmas. Santa's reading from a book that contains all your misdeeds from the previous year, and some of them have been fed to him by your teachers and your parents. So he reads to you real stuff you actually did and you're astonished that he knows them. And unless you're really good, you don't get gifts from Santa.

Now the good news is you can kind of burn off the red in your ledger by reciting poems or verses to Santa. Those are known as spruchli, everybody say spruchli for samichlauz and schmutzli, here we go, just kidding. But what happens if you're not good enough? Well, see this bag? That's not a bag of toys, that's the punishment bag. If you're bad, you go in the bag. Now, relax kids, I've never seen, nobody's ever seen this threat actually activated, but this is the legend that Swiss kids are told.

Why am I sharing this story with you? Well, there's some childhood trauma I need to work off and share it with you, but I also share this story because I kind of feel like a lot of people look at our religion, our faith, kind of like that. In fact, I would say exactly like that, right? Like God is the big guy in the sky with a white beard and he's got a book of all your sins and you can kind of work him off by saying prayers or coming to church or reading Bible verses or doing good deeds or something, but if you don't do enough, you get schmutzli'd.

But here's the good news, and why Jesus came at Christmas. The Bible says he canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, amen? Best gift of Christmas, Jesus is our savior, but he is not just our savior, he's our king. And he probably wanted to be known most as our king.

Check this out, this is gonna amaze you. Jesus used the word salvation only two times. Jesus used the word church just three times. He used the words Taylor Swift zero times, which is amazing. But he used the word kingdom 126 times. He was all king, kingdom, king, kingdom. It's how he started, it says he went preaching the good news of the kingdom of God. It's how he ended, Jesus said to Pilate on trial. You're right to say I'm a king, but my kingdom is not of this world. That doesn't mean that it's not here. It means it's not like this world.

For example, he told his followers, the rulers of this world lorded over their people like Caesar and like Herod, not so with you. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your what? Servant. And he talked all about this over and over. In Jesus' kingdom, he said, you love your enemies, you bless your enemies, you do good to your enemies, you never retaliate, you forgive and don't judge. The opposite of this is how Caesar and Herod work. This is like no kingdom ever.

But there's an invitation here, and it's this. Are you sick and tired of the kingdoms of this world? Are you tired of the politics, tired of the division, tired of the manipulation, tired of the pride, tired of the preening, tired of the violence? Jesus is saying you can be part of a totally different kind of kingdom. And get this, it sounds utopian, but little groups of Christians back in the Roman era started going, we wanna live like that. Not like Caesar, not like Herod, not like the gladiators, like Jesus did, right?

We wanna elevate the status of women, elevate the status of the poor, elevate the status of the slaves and of children like Jesus did. We wanna visit the sick and those in prison, we wanna take care of the poor, we wanna forgive, we wanna love, we wanna serve. And more and more people started going, who are those people we wanna be, we wanna follow whoever they're following. And the movement grew and grew and grew, not just because of how they believed, but because of how they behaved.

People looked at them and they saw those people follow a different kind of king with a different kind of kingdom. They realized Jesus came to forgive, yes, beautiful, but he also came to be followed. He didn't just come to lead us in a prayer, he invited us to participate in his kingdom. And I've noticed that when people get disenchanted with church, it's almost never because of our king, Jesus, it's 'cause of us. And they intuitively know we're not living like the kingdom he talked about.

But when we're at our best, we do and it feels so good and it gives life meaning and it's powerful. For example, I just wanna thank this church. Last weekend, you gave over 1,500 gifts for the Salvation Army, prison fellowship and more. This was the Labig last weekend. These are gifts for families of migrant workers, families of incarcerated people, families of unhoused people. These are gifts for adults and senior care facilities and let's just thank everybody who contributed to that. It was amazing.

Yesterday afternoon, I'm out here and our People's Pantry volunteers were out there giving out food. Through them, through our food drive, over 800,000 meals were provided via TLC. Just this year, let's thank everybody who contributed to that too. That's powerful. I love these people. But here's the thing, all of this stuff, it's not just about niceness. It's about this is the kind of king we serve. This is what he did for us and this is how he rolls and so this is how we wanna roll, right?

It's kinda like this. The most important question I think we should ask this season and honestly, the most important question you and I oughta ask every single morning when we get out of bed is, is Jesus my king? Not just like did I get a free get out of jail card from Jesus 'cause I'm saved, but is he really my king? And it's as simple as this, really. Let me explain it this way. Take your finger and point it like this. Everybody take your finger, right? Now lift it up, point it to the sky and say king. King.

Now point it to your chest and say not. It's that easy, doesn't that feel good? That solves a lot of problems. Jesus will never coerce or force you into making this choice, but he will invite you to participate in his kingdom. So I'll close with the question I started with, can you recognize royalty? Let's pray together, would you bow your head with me?

Father, we want to bow down and worship Jesus like the magi did as king. King over our lives, king over all our anxieties, as king over all we're afraid of, as king over all our addictions, king over all our fears, as king of kings. For every man and woman, teenager, college student here tonight, I pray that something would light up on the inside tonight. And in a few minutes, when our candles are lit, that each one of us would somehow be saying, "I receive your light to be your light. I want to be a light for you, Lord. I want to live out your kind of kingdom with you as my king." And we pray this in Jesus' name, the name of King Jesus, amen.