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The Gift of Myrrh (December 14, 2025)

• Organic Church • Season 2 • Episode 57

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A burial spice at a child’s cradle doesn’t feel festive—until you see what it’s saying. We explore why the Magi’s myrrh isn’t an odd flourish in a Christmas scene but a prophetic banner over Jesus’ life: King, God, Sacrifice. Gold points to kingship. Frankincense signals divinity. Myrrh points to the cross and to the reality that love chose suffering so we could be free.

We walk through Scripture to connect the dots. Isaiah 53 names the Man of Sorrows who bears our griefs. John 19 records myrrh and aloes at Jesus’ burial, echoing the gift laid before Him in His early years. Exodus 30 folds myrrh into priestly anointing, revealing Jesus as our High Priest and Lamb who ends the cycle of bulls and goats. That thread ties the cradle to the cross and the cross to the empty tomb, moving us from sentiment to substance: death doesn’t win; deliverance does.

Along the way we get personal about surrender. What does worship that costs something look like? Sometimes it’s cutting off corrosive conversations, choosing accountability, and refusing to let gossip or cynicism poison joy. Sometimes it’s dying to stubborn habits and breaking patterns for the sake of our children and their children. We talk growth through trials, the fragrance of sacrifice, and how an eternal view reframes everyday choices. If He carried our sin without numbing the pain, we can carry our cross with hope, mercy, and resolve.

Listen now for a clear, grounded, and practical message on surrender, costly worship, and living with eternity in view. If this resonates, share it with someone who needs courage today. Subscribe for more faith-deepening conversations and leave a review to help others find the show.

SPEAKER_00:

Father, I pray that today as we continue to consume the word that was sent to us through divine intervention, Lord, I pray that our hearts are prepared, that our minds are ready. Father, that we are able to absorb all of the words that you're going to have said this morning. Father, I pray that you move mightily through this place. Lord, bless the children as they go to children's ministry. Lord, I pray that you just continue to lead, guide, and direct. Father, we see the anointing beginning to rest on them. We thank you for your faithfulness. Father, I pray that this message is delivered directly from you and not of me, Father. That there is blessing beyond compare today. Lord, we praise you. We give you honor and glory in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. We'll let the kids start heading back to class. Well, today I want to cover the last of the three gifts, and honestly, I want to cover what I consider the most overlooked. You know, we talked about the gold and the fact that it spoke of kingship. We talked about frankincense and it declared his divinity, but today I want to talk about myrrh. Myrrh was often used as a burial spice. And I think that it's often overlooked because it's kind of hard to swallow the fact that the wise man came to this child and presented him with the prophecy of his own death. He's a child, right? Now, I don't know how many of you know this about me, but it's a fun fact. This might be on next year's Christmas trivia, so remember this. Alright? I always thought I was gonna be a funeral director. I thought that's what I was gonna do for a living. Desperately wanted to do it. My wife told me. Did you know in the state of Ohio you can have a bachelor's degree in literally anything and get a funeral director's license? It's not a joke. You could have a bachelor's degree in music and still go get a funeral director's license, but you have to have a bachelor's degree. And if anybody knows anything about me, I don't like school. Right? I don't like to, I don't like to sit down and focus on those things for too very long. So I never followed through with that, but I always thought it was what I was gonna do. And I remember the very first time I ever walked into the funeral home, and I don't remember whose funeral it was, but it was R.K. Lindsay, and I remember Lorrigan holding the door open for me and just how peaceful that place was in that moment, right? How well put together it was. Like this is a weird message, isn't it? But let's be honest, it was so peaceful, and there was such beauty in that moment that I thought, this is what I was nine years old, and I thought this is what I want to do the rest of my life. I was weird at nine. That hasn't changed. But I realized very quickly that that wasn't gonna happen, and that wasn't what God had called me to do, and then he called me to pastoring. I believe that in the funeral care, uh, in the funeral home, that you are helping people in their hardest times, and I realized as a pastor, you do the same thing. Right? So I just didn't understand what God was calling me to, but I knew it was going to be something. And I'll tell you, I I I would I would officiate in a funeral all day, every day over a wedding. Right? Do you know why? They ain't gonna argue. They're not gonna come. No, I'm kidding. The reason that I am that way is because weddings are a direct reflection of my ministry to come. Now, what I mean is if you get married and then you go acting foolish after you get married, right? That is a reflection of my ministry. When I am burying somebody and committing them back to the Lord, it is a reflection of my ministry in the most positive way. Because, you know, when I I buried uh Roger Tidrick, and I'll never forget the very first thing I said is it is not often a pastor gets to eulogize somebody that they genuinely loved, cared about, and knows beyond a shadow of a doubt, entered into the kingdom of heaven. Right? It's not often, and I was able to say that beyond a shadow of a doubt. That man mowed nine acres at this church by himself for years, paid for all the gas, never asked for a penny. And when he retired, we tried to give him money. He wouldn't take it. He said, I never did it to get money, I never did it to be recognized. I did it as service unto the Lord. Thank you, Jesus, right? Okay, so we're really off track here, but we're talking about death. And I always thought that that's what I would do, and then I realized really, really quickly that I couldn't do that. Do you know why? Because the death of a child will always make you see your own. It will always make you see your own. And I thought, I don't know if I can take that. Right? And so now think about it. These wise men show up. At this point, Jesus is a toddler, right? He's sitting there with Mary and Joseph, and they show up and they give him gold, and they're like cha-ching, and then they give him frankincense, and they're like cha-ching, and then they open the chest of myrrh and they go, but wait a second. Why myrrh? It's a perfume, right? It's used for burial. The wise men were fulfilling a prophecy of Jesus' death. They knew what they were doing. These gifts weren't brought by happenstance, they were brought intentionally. But see, the myrrh whispered something that we don't fully understand. It whispered sacrifice, suffering, a savior who came to die. Oh, thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Picture it, they're traveling across the desert, they've got these three chests. Not in inside is not just wealth and it's not just perfume, but it's a prophetic announcement that this child was born to die for the sins of this world. It is a prophetic, it is a prophetic announcement. Have any of you ever seen the prophetic really make an announcement that you're like these people are nuts? In this church, it's happened a time or two, right? You know, I love telling this story now because once God really gets a hold of you, you really get to understand some of it. One time there was a uh somebody spoke over my life, my mine and my wife's life, that we were gonna have another kid. And I belly laughed at that prophecy because I'm like, you're nuts. Five's enough, right? Six months ago, my wife and I started having that conversation. What does it look like to have another baby? Right? But can I tell you the reason why? As I've gotten older, I've realized I've missed so much of my children growing up because I've always been so busy, right? And so now I'm looking at maybe baby number six, and maybe I can get it right after six. It takes anybody else that long? Maybe some of us still haven't figured it out. But the point is that when those prophetic things are spoken into our lives, oftentimes we hear them but we don't believe them. Right? We see the prophetic happen in front of us and we don't believe it. And I can think that Mary and Joseph sitting there seeing these gifts, they see the myrrh, they know that they're holding the Messiah. They know what they've been asked to do. But they haven't arrived there yet, right? They haven't been put in that position. And I think, Lord, how hard would that be? How hard would that be? But see, the gift wasn't random, it was a true revelation. In the ancient world, myrrh was incredibly costly, rare, and deeply valued, just like the other gifts. Amen? There was nothing about this that was less than the other gifts. It was used to prepare bodies for burial. That's in John uh 19, 39 and 40. You want to pull that one up for me? I think you've got it. Anybody else hot? I'm wearing like three layers of clothes right now. I am sweating to death up here. They told me they were gonna crank the heat up if I went too long, they'd get me out of here. It says, afterwards, Joseph of Arimathea, who had who had been a secret disciple of Jesus because he feared the Jewish leaders, asked Pilate for permission to take Jesus' take down Jesus' body. When Pilate gave permission, Joseph came and took the body away. With him came Nicodemus, the man who had come to Jesus at night. He brought about 75 pounds of perfumed ointment made from myrrh and aloes. We're gonna stop there. Do you hear that? The prophecy coming true, the prophecy being provided to him as a child, in his thirties, being crucified and covered in that same perfume. It represented mourning, sacrifice, and preservation. And so, just again, thinking about Joseph or Jesus sitting on Mary's lap and them showing up with this perfume, obviously, there was a very firm understanding of what they were looking at and what that it meant to them. God wrapped eternity in flesh. And even in his cradle, the shadow of the cross hung over him. Before that cross was ever cut, before that cross was ever was ever prepared for Jesus, it loomed over him. His entire life was overshadowed by that cross. But with death came purpose. But with death came purpose. Do we have Isaiah 53? He was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. Yet it was our weakness that he carried, it was our sorrow that weighed him down. Do you hear that? It was our weakness that he carried, it was our sorrow that weighed him down, and we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sin. But he was pierced for our rebellion and crushed for our sin. He was beaten so we could be whole, and he was whipped so we could be healed. Hallelujah. A man of sorrow acquainted with grief. They didn't just give him perfume, they acknowledged his destiny. The myrrh was used to ease pain, often mixed with medicine, but I will remind you that on the cross, Jesus refused it. On the cross, Jesus refused it. Why? Because he chose to feel the full weight of our sin. He chose to feel the full weight of our sin and to ease our pain. But the cross said he would suffer willingly. I need you to hear that because this wasn't by chance that Jesus went to the cross. It wasn't by our decision that Jesus went to the cross. Yes, crucify him, crucify him, shouted from the crowds. Yes. Father, should it be your will, let this cup pass from me. Should it be your will? And God said, for the sin of mankind, my blameless son will die. So that that sinful world might have everlasting life. The Lamb of God sacrificed so that we may have everlasting life. Alright. So myrrh was also used as one of the ingredients in the priestly anointing oils. We're not going to read this. It's Exodus 30, 23. Jot it down. I don't have a whole lot of time with you guys this morning. I joked that if we let that last worship song play all the way through, I wouldn't get to preach. So we had to cut her a little short. It was used to consecrate priests for sacrifice that allowed them to do sacrifice. So when the Magi brought the myrrh, they were proclaiming two things that the child was a high priest, which we already know, right, from the frankincense, but that he was also the sacrificial lamb. Right? Are we understanding that these gifts, when when provided to Jesus, when when delivered to his family, there was significant meaning and each of them tied into the next. Right? We knew that he was a king. We knew that he was divine. And now we know that he's going to die. A blameless man sacrificed to die so that you and I may live. Now my question is, are we living the way that we should live for Jesus? You know, I say this often. We should pick up our own cross. Amen? Carry your own cross. But oftentimes we don't want to carry our own cross. We want to lay the cross down, live how we want to live, and we say, well, but there's always tomorrow. I'm not gonna do it, but the sun will come out tomorrow. We saw Annie last night at Little Theater, and I desperately want to sing it, but I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna. Not gonna. Somebody else is singing it. Stop it. You're gonna start it. They were proclaiming that he was the high priest and the lamb. He would offer himself as the final sacrifice. There would be no more bulls, no more goats, no more yearly offerings. Myrrh wasn't just for a funeral, myrrh was for the altar. For the altar of sacrifice. Do you hear what I'm saying? They were anointing the lamb for sacrifice. I know there's only a couple of us here today, guys, but Jesus, right? Do we understand what we're hearing this morning? Jesus from a child was preparing for death, right? His ministry didn't happen just because it happened. It happened because he was the Son of God sent to die for us. From his childhood, he was preparing for the cross, fulfilling prophecy after prophecy after prophecy so that when he went to the cross, we would have everlasting life. Yes, it's not an it's not an accident. This is intentional. It connected, ready? Write this one down. It connected the cradle to the cross and the cross to the empty tomb. Listen, we're celebrating the cradle right now. Listen, every year on Christmas Eve, I preach a message you guys don't ever want to hear, right? Because the message I preach on Christmas Eve is what? Death and destruction every year. Because we celebrate the cradle and then we get to the cross and then we get to the empty tomb, right? But we have to remember in this season, the cradle is yes, let's celebrate the birth of our Savior. But remember the birth was just the beginning. There was so much, so much that led up to that crucifixion. But that crucifixion led to the empty tomb. The cradle connected it connected to the cross and the cross to the empty tomb. Listen, Myrrh calls us to respond to the suffering of a king. Right? Okay. You ready? It was not just symbolic for Jesus, it was instruction for us. Okay? You got your pens out? You ready? If the suffering, if he is the suffering savior, then we must become. Are you ready for it? The word, it's the word, the surrendered disciple. Right? I said it three weeks in a row now. We cannot celebrate the birth of Jesus without surrender. Right? We have to be able to lay it down at the we can come in here and we can sing Christmas carols together. We can do that, right? We can do all of the Christmassy things. We can light the tree. We can sing all out the holly. We can do all of the things. But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if we have not surrendered to Jesus Christ. It doesn't matter because we're celebrating something that isn't real in our lives. Do you understand that? Listen, when Jesus got a hold of me, he made changes in my life that I didn't like, right? Listen, I fought with him, I still fight with him, right? I argue about all of the simple things in life rather than just saying, I am going to surrender all. Listen, it's so much easier if we just surrender. It's so much easier if we just say, Lord, here I am, use me. Lord, whatever it is, find it, take it away. Lord, if you if you call me to it, I will commit to it. That's hard stuff to do. But it's what we should be doing. Because the the cradle has to create sacrifice. See, the cross should urge us, it creates a sense of urgency. But the cradle, when we know the story begins, should be the beginning of our process of surrender. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Myr challenges us in three ways. Are you ready? It calls us to die to sin. Right? Romans 6, 6 says, Our old self was crucified with him. What did I say? It calls us to die to sin. So if our sin, if our old self was crucified with Christ, that means the new man lives today, right? Just when Jesus rose from the grave, Jesus is the same yesterday. Today and forever, amen. We know that it's the cornerstone of our belief. We know that Jesus Christ is the same. We should not be. He calls us to change. Listen, we're all gonna go through seasons, right? We're gonna go through hard patches, we're gonna go through really great stuff. But the thing is, is we should learn in each of those seasons. We should be called to something new in each of those seasons. We should be able to look at the burdens of our life and say, I'm gonna lay that down today and I'm not gonna pick it up. And then we should be able to look at the high point in the next season and say, I'm gonna celebrate this because this celebration comes from laying that down. Right? We don't get to celebrate all the time. I wish we did. If celebration was all we had to deal with, we would be a bat, a bunch of fat, lazy Christians, wouldn't we? Right? Listen, we only grow when we're tested. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego literally in the fire. And the king is like, who's in there with them? Who is the fourth man in the fire? Can I tell you? I've walked through some fires. I remember, oh Lord, I remember being in jail, right? They put me in the drunk tank. I wasn't drunk, but they put me in the drunk tank because they thought I was gonna hurt myself, right? I remember standing in there and I was singing thank you, Lord, by Don Mo at the top of my lungs. And the lady, the jailer, the lady, she thought I was nuts. She was right. But I wasn't crazy. I was crazy about Jesus, right? I'm gonna tell you something. Had it not been for my salvation in that moment, had it not been for God taking a hold of my life before that happened, I don't know what would have happened, right? God was doing something big in my life before I even knew He was doing it. Long before I knew He was doing it. But here's the thing a lot of people look back at that at that person. I had somebody reach out to me on Facebook a couple of years ago, and they were less than kind about that situation in my life. And it took me a minute, but I realized they're looking through the windows of my old house. I don't live there anymore. I don't live there anymore. I look at that and I say, That sucked. I was there, I lived it. You don't know, right? You don't know a half of it. You know what you saw, you know what you read, maybe you know what you felt in that moment, but you weren't there. Do you know who was there? Jesus. Jesus. And he knew what I was feeling, and he knew what I was going through, and he chose, he chose to deliver me from it. It calls us to die to sin. Number two, it calls us to embrace worship that costs us something. Right? It has to cost you something. Now, what do I mean by that? I don't mean money. Money's great, but that's not what we're talking about. I I watched this Facebook video and I became slightly obsessed with it. I probably watched it 150 times. And it was this pastor who was talking about um it he didn't use the word gossip, and I wish I could remember exactly what he said, but he said basically, your gossiping mouth compliments their gossiping ear. Right now, listen. And your gossiping mouth compliments their listening ear. Then all of a sudden, all we're doing is complaining about the things around us, and we're not being excited and joyful about the good things that God is doing in our lives, and the next thing we know, everybody hates everybody else because all we've done is said bad things about one another, right? Listen, you can complain all day long, but I'm telling you, if you're complaining, if all you're doing is nagging, if all you're doing is, well, this isn't right, and we should have done this instead. I don't understand why. Let me tell you something. If joy is not living in your heart, if joy is not living in your heart, it is filled with disdain. You know what you're doing? You're poisoning yourself. I'm not gonna listen, I'm gonna tell you a secret. Maybe you don't know this, maybe you do. I don't know. I'm not gonna die if you talk about me. You can talk about me all you want. And chances are I'm gonna hear it, right? Somebody's gonna say, Did you know they said this about you? And I'm gonna say, I don't care. Do you know why I don't care? I don't care because I don't care what you think about me. I care what Jesus thinks about me. I care about what I look like in the eyes of Christ. Now I can't say that's been my entire life. There was a time, there was a time, there was a season when I wanted everybody to like me. Now I think, you know what? I am not for everybody. I am not for, and that's okay. It's okay. I ain't gonna rub it in, right? I'm gonna say, that's fine, and I'm gonna walk away, and I'm gonna do what God has called me to do. Not what God wants, not what I want to do for you. Not what, not so that you will think that I'm nice or I'm kind or listen. I can be all of those things. I can be nice, I can be kind, but I can also be cold. Right? I'm not cold because I don't love you. I'm cold because I have to protect myself and my family. Right? God didn't call me to be accessible to everybody. It's the same with you. If they're calling you and they're complaining, hang up the phone. If they're calling you and they're trying to get you to complain, hang up the phone. Why? Because what good is it to the kingdom of God if all you're doing is complaining? If you're negative, if you're hateful, let me tell you something. We have to embrace worship that costs us something. Maybe it costs you that conversation, maybe it costs you that relationship. You know, I've cut off quite a few relationships in the past couple of months. Not because I don't love you guys, but there's a level of safety in this ministry that we have to keep. Somebody said to me not long ago, it's lonely at the top.

unknown:

Amen.

SPEAKER_00:

That's the worst thing to ever have to hear. Let me tell you why. There are so many people in this building that I consider friends, right? Not just you, I've known you guys since before I was pastoring, right? I loved you then, I love you now. But the thing is, is sometimes friendly conversations are taken out of context, and they're used and weaponized against the pastor. And let me tell you something, we don't have time for that. All that does is cause division, it sows discord inside of the ministry. All I want to do is see the kingdom grow. Listen, it's a snow day. How many Pastor Roger, how many people here today?

unknown:

53 adults.

SPEAKER_00:

53 adults, and that's not bad. That's not bad at all, right? All things considered. Thank you, Jesus, for continuing. Listen, at one point, this was a full house. This was everybody. Thank you, Jesus, for growing this ministry. Now, I don't take that lightly. Coming into that worship cost me something. It cost me something, it cost me friendships, it cost me the ability to speak my mind. Sometimes I just have to put a lid on it. It simmers for a minute, but eventually it boils off, right? I'm thankful that God has brought along strong leaders in my life. Pastor Holly and Pastor Roger. When I need to blow off steam, I can call them and say, listen, if you don't intercede, I'm gonna kill somebody. Right? Listen, if you don't intercede, I'm gonna lose my mind. Pastor Holly was up at 6 30 this morning praying for me on my drive in. She wasn't actually praying for my drive in. She was praying for my arrival. Now let me tell you why. Text our snow plow guy said, just need the lot cleared by 7 a.m. when the volunteers start to arrive. 7 01, I pull in the parking lot. He's just starting to plow. I sit in my car for 20 minutes, waiting to be able to pull into the parking lot. Lord give me patience. Stuff to do, stuff to do, stuff to do. And finally, the plow driver changes directions and starts clearing the other way so I can get in. And I was like, Thank you, Jesus. That wasn't me. That was Pastor Holly, right? I am blessed to have that. Listen. Find worship that costs you something, eliminate it, and then surround yourself with people who will intercede for you. Because you're gonna do and say things that aren't right, and you need people who will hold you accountable. Myrrh was expensive, and that worship costs them dearly. All right, number three. It calls us, pans out, everybody ready, it calls us to live with an eternal view. Jesus' death wasn't defeat. Hear me. It was deliverance. His death did not defeat sin, it delivered us from sin. If it defeated sin, sin wouldn't exist and we wouldn't do stupid things. Right? Listen, I think about the world right now and how accessible adult content is in the world of our children, right? How fast and easy it is to get your hands on. And I think to myself, why, Lord? Why do you allow this to happen? And he says, we can never outlaw stupid. We will never get people to say, you know what, God is good all the time, and all of it. The world is never going to agree with that. The world will continue to condition our children to live in sin. But we are called to live with an eternal view. Hebrews 2.14 says he destroyed the one who had power over death. The mercy would remind us that his death is our life and his sacrifice is our salvation. His suffering, hear me, is our freedom. Thank you, Jesus, for whom the Son sets free is free indeed. And can I tell you something? That you were set free when he hung on the cross. Right? Listen. He conquered all of the sins of the world so that we could have everlasting life, not that we could live and sin some more. I will remind you that he said, Go and sin no more. He didn't say, hey, you can go and sin this afternoon. Just give me a week. Right? Go and sin no more. That means none. Right? Stop. Cease from doing. How many of us can do that? You know, the Lord's been working on me with some stuff, and you know, I'm so blessed to have the cutest little daughter in the whole wide world who really just is a lot like her mother and doesn't take my stuff. So I'm not bragging about this and I'm not saying it's okay. I'm t I I feel convicted, so I'm sharing it, okay? Okay. I have always, I blame my parents for this. At 39, can you still blame your parents for things? Does it work like that? Okay, it does? All right. I have always, my entire life, had a terrible potty mouth. Say things that I shouldn't say. Yeah, it's not good, right? Like I'm not excited about it, but it happens. My daughter, if I say one and she hears it, daddy. I'm not joking. And there are some times that my daughter says, Daddy, far too many times. And one day when she did it, I said, Lord, I know you sent her to me so that I could break this habit. And Lord, shut her up. She drives me crazy. And God said, I ain't gonna do that, but we're gonna double down. And I try every day because it's not just about my salvation, it's not just about being in relationship with Jesus, it's also about raising disciples, right? And I look at the world and I think, you know, Jesus did so much for us to do so little for his kingdom. So little. He doesn't ask much of us to go and spread the gospel. Now I'm gonna ask a question. I and now I've read this a couple of times. I've read through it a couple of times, and each time I read it, I don't really find any swear words in here unless you're reading the KJV and you get to the word donkey. That's that's the passage my kids like to read, right? At no point do I read if I want to be Christ-like, why would I why would that take a hold of me? It's because in that moment I'm not being Christ-like. I'm not showing Jesus. I am not trying to raise disciples, and I've got to fix that. Lord, stop me now because I'm gonna get myself in trouble. I know that if I want to do better, I have to have that eternal view. It is not about me, and it's not just about my children, it's about my children's children and my children's children's children, right? Because I've always said if your daddy doesn't deal with his stuff, his kids are gonna. And if his kids don't, their kids will. At some point, generational curses are created by the sins that we choose. If we are truly living as disciples of Christ, those generational curses become null and void, right? We break those chains of generational curses, not put on new ones, not put on new ones. Why am I why am I bogging my kids down with something so silly? Right? Hallelujah. I don't know if this is appropriate or not, but I'm gonna do it anyway. Uh what I do. Lauren and Bobby, I just wanted to tell you this morning I was watching uh Addy Flag, and I called Pastor Holly back and I made her watch her because I can tell that there is an anointing that rests on her in that. And now here's the thing that gifting, that anointing has to grow, right? But here's the thing, it doesn't grow in this building, it grows at home. Parents with level heads encouraging their kids to worship in spirit and in truth. They can come in here and they can they can do all of those things, but it doesn't grow just in this building. It grows so much more in our own homes and in the people we keep company with, in the places that we spend our time. Amen? It's our choice to break generational curses and to live with that eternal view. I was reading a story of a of a lady, and when I read this story, I always I always question how true any of these stories are anymore, right? You guys ever watch those videos? Like uh Mike sent me a video yesterday, and I've watched it probably four times. I haven't figured out if it's real or not. Because that's the problem with today, right? So it's a picture of these people holding their cats. Mike sent me the video. No, you know it's got cats in it, right? So they're holding these cats and they've got like those stickers on their floor that look like a fake hole, and they try to sit their cats down, and their cats are doing all these crazy things and flipping around. But here's the thing, I couldn't tell if it was real or not. I was like, is this AI or is this real? It's gotten pretty good. But so when I read these stories, I'm like, is this real or is this made up? Either way, it's a good story. It was about a pastor who had visited been visiting small churches overseas, and during worship, a woman poured a bottle of incredibly expensive perfume at the altar, and the whole room began to be filled with the fragrance. And later he learned that it was all that she had. She had saved and saved and saved in order to buy this bottle of perfume, and it meant her security, it meant the safety of her future. But she said, I wanted to give Jesus something that costs me everything. A bottle of perfume doesn't seem like a big deal. But when that perfume prophetically speaks to the death of our Savior, it has to mean something. The pastor went on to say that the church uh had begun to smell like that fragrance and it lingered long after the service had ended, and every week when they would come back, they would still be able to smell that perfume. And he said it made him think about the fact that when Jesus was resurrected, the smell of that myrrh would have followed him everywhere. Anointed with that oil before being buried. That smell would have followed him everywhere. And every time he would pass people by, certainly they would smell the fragrance of the Lord filling that space. Amen. And just the beauty of thinking we still experience that today. The fragrance of the Lord filling a space. The Magi brought the myrrh because God had declared that this child will break the power of death. He will break the power of death. Do you understand that? If the Lord decides to wait to come back, should he tarry, each and every one of us will taste of physical death, right? Maybe you're buried, maybe you're cremated, I don't know what you will be, but you will taste of death. But can I tell you that death did not win? Death has no victory when we believe in Jesus Christ. The Bible tells us that we will be joined up in heaven, right? Do you know what that means? That means that although my flesh is dead and buried, the spirit man that I have fed all of these years will be alive and well in heaven. Now I can't tell you what heaven's gonna look like. I haven't been there yet. But I know that when I get there, it will be beautiful, and it will be everything that I could have imagined and far more. Because God is good in all things, and I know that He is not going to tell me about this wonderful place where I will spend eternity and not give me exactly what He has told me. It is going to be far more than my body can imagine, than my fleshly man can imagine. As we stand here and sit here and read today about the cradle of Jesus, we have to understand that we're not just seeing that baby. It's not a baby that we're looking at, it's a safe It's a king, it's the Messiah. All of those words, all of those things that we speak of Jesus come not by happenstance, but by the fulfillment of prophecy. The fragrance of sacrifice and salvation. That should be what we're thinking about every time we think about the gifts of the wise men. I don't know how they pick their gifts. I don't know if I'm sure there was divine intervention. But I'll tell you, the wise men that came with the myrrh carried it so that you and I might be able to rise with mercy. That we can stand on the Word of God, knowing that by His grace and mercy we will be saved. Not by our works, not by the things that we do, but by His grace and mercy. If you've been living far from God, if you've been trying to numb your pain, I want you to just imagine the sacrifice of those wise men as they made that trek, as they reached Jesus, handed over the most expensive of gifts. And I want you to realize all of those things spoke to who Jesus was going to be. They carried the myrrh so that Jesus could carry you. They carried all of the prophetic gifts so that Jesus could carry us. Let's bow our heads and pray. Father, I thank you and I praise you for the blessings in this house, Lord, for the anointing that rests. Lord, for your word. Father, I pray that you continue to lead us and guide us. Father, that as we move into this Christmas season, that we find a way to worship you with something that costs us. Father, I pray that as people move in and out of your house over this holiday season, that we continue to be blessed abundantly. Father, lead us into the right path. Don't allow us to get stuck up in the things that don't matter. Don't allow us to become idle, Father, and don't allow us to walk into conversation that is not edifying and glorifying unto you, Lord. Father, we know that through you all things are possible. Father, that you give us strength every day to plant our feet on this earth, to walk and to praise the name of your Son Jesus Christ. Father, guide us in the coming weeks. Lift us up. Show us what you would have us do. I thank you for the extension of our time, Father God, that you would just continue to stretch our time. It's a busy time of the year, Lord, and I know we're all stretched thin, and I pray for an abundance of just time for your people. I thank you for the sacrifice of the cross. I thank you for the birth of the Savior. Lord, I thank you for grace and mercy. Lead us, guide us, and direct us this week, Father. We pray all of this in your precious son Jesus' name. And the church says, Amen. Love you guys. We'll see you next week.