gifts for a king. Today's daily devotion from pastor Greg Lorry.

Our scripture reading today is from Matthew chapter 2 verse 11. They entered the house and saw the child

with his mother Mary and they bowed down and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasure

chests and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense, and

murr.

Christmas is a time of giving, a time when we remember friends and family and give gifts in the

name of Jesus. But sadly, many of us often feel pressure to spend a lot of money or to buy gifts for people with whom we have no relationship at all.

Then there are times when we receive gifts from people, yet we haven't bought gifts for them.

Thus we sometimes give gifts out of obligation.

On the other hand, we look forward to buying gifts for certain people.

In fact, we often can't wait to give our gifts to them because we want to see

the joy they have in receiving them. Jesus said, it is more blessed to give than to receive, and

it truly is. The wise men from the East brought gifts to Jesus, gold, frankincense, and murr.

Now, what kind of gifts were these for a child?

Murr is an embalming element. Why give an embalming element to a baby?

The wise men, however, had an insight into who Jesus was.

They gave Jesus gold because they recognized it was a proper gift for a king. They gave him

frankincense which is what the high priest used when he went into the temple

to represent the people. And they gave him murre because they recognized this king

would die for the world.

He is the king of kings and the lord of lords.

He is our high priest, and of course he is the one who died for all our sin.

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