Louie Giglio - Jesus is King (09/23/2025)
The message today is titled «Jesus is King.» Can you say that with me? Jesus is King. This is the whole point of the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all had different reasons for writing their accounts of Jesus. If you’ve ever wondered why we didn’t just get one account of the life, teachings, work, death, and resurrection of Jesus, but instead have Matthew’s version, Mark’s version, and Luke’s, each one of these authors is writing through a different lens. Matthew, in particular, writes with the lens of the Jewish people to help them see that Jesus is, in fact, King.
So that’s the message today: Jesus is King. By the end of this message, I hope each one of us is closer to a place in our lives where we would say, «You’re my King.» You’re not only our King, but you’re my King. Today, I trade in my kingdom for your kingdom. I relinquish any idea that I’m running my show fully for the idea that I want you to be running my show. I don’t want you just to be born a king; I want you to be my King. That’s why I’ve loved this tagline in this collection of talks: «When wonder erupts in worship.»
All through the Christmas story, we see this, whether it’s Mary, who had the angel appear to her, and she stored up all these things and wondered and pondered them, erupting in her song of worship to God. When wonder erupts in worship, I’m praying today that the result of the teaching of Jesus and the revelation of Jesus would result in more worship in our hearts and in our houses today. We want to be a house of worship; we want to be a place where, upon walking through the door, you feel an atmosphere of worship in this place. Life and you may be, thank you so much—I’ve got one person with me, and that’s really all I need. It’s really all that a preacher needs, just somebody. So thank you for being a somebody and not a nobody; thank you for being a somebody and not everybody. Praise God!
The text today is Matthew chapter 2, and we’re going to see wonder all through it. Beginning in verse 1, it says: «After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea during the time of King Herod, Magi—or your translation might say wise men—from the East came to Jerusalem and asked, 'Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews? We saw his star in the East and have come to worship him.'» You see right at the beginning, we’ve already got it. They say, «We saw this star; we didn’t know exactly what it was. It was unlike anything we’d ever seen before; we followed it to hear, having heard that there’s a King, and we’ve come to worship the King.» That’s really where we’re going to land today. So maybe we should start there: Why are we here today? Are we here in church together to worship the King? To acknowledge there’s a King? God opened my eyes; he put a sign in my path. He led me to see the Savior, and now I want to worship Jesus as King of my life. This is where these wise men are coming from.
Verse 3: «When King Herod—the other king in the story—heard this, he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born.» «In Bethlehem in Judea,» they replied, «for this is what the prophet has written.» Then they quoted the prophet Micah to him: «But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.» Then Herod, this other king in the story, called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared.
We’ll see a little bit later why he wanted to know when the star appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, «Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report back to me so that I too may go and worship him.» After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the East went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, incense, and myrrh. And having been warned—here’s the key line—in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
We don’t know a ton about these wise men; we’ve got three of them at the manger. Well, they’re not at the manger—so that’s one thing we don’t have right in the story—because now Jesus is a little older. They’ve made a long journey; they’ve arrived, and he’s at the house, not at the manger. He’s grown a little bit; he could be four months old, six months old, nine months old, or a year old. We’re not sure. There could have been two of them, five, six, or even twenty of them; we’re not really sure. We just know there was more than one of them because they were the Magi, plural. We’re not sure how many.
Tradition says three; all our nativity sets—whether on the side table or at the top of the television—have three wise men, but we don’t really know. We don’t know exactly where they came from. The best guess would be from Persia, from Babylon, coming to the east on their way to see Jesus. We don’t really know all the details about the star. It could have been a great conjunction, like the one we recently observed here in Atlanta, Georgia, with Jupiter and Saturn—something so stunning and amazing. A great conjunction happened around the time of the birth of Jesus, so it could have been that or another astrological phenomenon. Or it could have just been a miracle of God putting some glorious light in the sky for them to follow until it stopped over the house where Jesus was with his mother Mary. We can’t really fine-tune all the details.
What we do know about these wise men is that they are teaching us the very first thing that God wants us to see today about the fact that He’s King, and that is that He is King over all the Earth. In other words, He wants us to wonder today at the reality that Christ’s birth has global significance. I want us to stay in that mindset today. Matthew’s gospel—if you just open your text, if you have it, and look at Matthew chapter one—is one of those really compelling passages. It opens with this: «The genealogy of Jesus,» that’s the header above Matthew 1, «a record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.» Then it begins: «Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah.» It goes through the entire lineage. Down in verse 8, we see, «and Jesse the father of King David.» So now we’re getting our King concept, and that’s where this talk is really stirring up today.
If you come down to the very end in verse 16, «and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.» Thus, there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile in Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ. So what is Matthew doing? He’s taking the Jewish reader or listener on a journey from Father Abraham all the way to Jesus, emphasizing King David in the midst. The prophecy is that this baby born in Bethlehem is going to be in the line of David and sit on the throne of David, that he’s going to have a kingdom and be a king.
So it’s really an insider story in Matthew’s gospel; it’s really about the Jewish people. In Luke’s gospel, we saw that in a way it’s really about Mary and Joseph and Elizabeth and Zachariah—it’s a very personal story, a very insider Jewish story. But now, Matthew is going to open things up a little bit and say that not long after the birth of Jesus, here come wise men, and they’re not insiders necessarily in the story of Jewish history. They definitely aren’t insiders because they didn’t get a word from God that they were going to be the ones who brought forth the miracle child. These people are coming from far away in the East because the birth of Jesus isn’t just a Jewish story, not just a Mary and Joseph story; it’s a global story. He is a global King, and I want us to be a global church. We want to rally around this idea again: It’s not Fifth Avenue; it’s not Macy’s necessarily—oh, there’s nothing wrong with Macy’s. Please go there and shop until your heart is content—but this is not an Atlanta story; it’s not a Western story; it’s not an American story; it’s a global story.
It’s not a small town, Christmas tree, and manger story; it’s a global story. It’s good news of great joy for all people. So here’s where these guys came from. This is a more ancient journey—if you can see this coming up on the screen—from Babylon, going through the ancient day to what would be present-day Turkey, making a turn south, coming through Damascus, down to Jerusalem, ultimately to Bethlehem. If you lay over this a more recent map, you can see the reality; they’re coming from Iraq. We’ve got wise men, Magi, coming out of Baghdad, journeying across to Syria, coming down through Damascus to Jerusalem, and ultimately coming down from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. We’ve got people in the Middle East seeking a king, and they say, «We’ve come to worship him.» Christmas and Jesus is a global story.
That’s why you heard in the giving that we are launching a new initiative at Passion City Church called «To the Ends of the Earth.» It’s not a Christmas initiative; it is our house’s initiative. We will be talking about it all through 2023, into 2024, and into 2025. Our goal is to help fund the translation of God’s word into 3,000-plus languages that don’t have even one verse of Scripture in their heart language. That’s why at every location, when you came in today—at Trillith, at Cumberland, and 5:15—you walked past a big, blank Bible. It’s there to remind us of what God’s word looks like for a billion people on Earth. This global story of the birth of Christ cannot be read by one out of every eight people on the planet because we haven’t gotten the word of God translated into their heart language yet. But we’re working on it at a rapid pace, and progress is being made in incredible ways.
Passion City Church has been a part of God’s word coming to the nations and will continue to be a part of God’s word coming to the nations. Passion Conference has been a part of God’s word coming to the nations and will continue to be a part of God’s word coming to the nations. Our goal is that every person at Passion City Church would personally be involved in funding Bible translation through the 12 Verse Challenge. The 12 Verse Challenge is simple: you commit to giving $35 a month for 12 months, and in one year, you fund the translation of 12 verses of Scripture into a language that does not have a verse of Scripture at this point in time.
Last week, we launched this whole initiative. Our goal was to be able to fund the translation of the four gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—so this text we’re reading today could get translated into a language. Four Gospels into one language, $132,000—that was our initial goal. We have this little live tracker going on right now, and it shows you where we are in real-time. So far, we’ve passed our goal; we’re at $364,920 given or pledged from Passion City Church, and that all basically happened during the gatherings last Sunday morning. Three languages are now being funded for four gospels, and we decided we would just keep going because we’re going to keep going for a long, long time. You can see that 799 people are involved, so obviously, there are more people than that in this room right now and at Cumberland and 5:15 in multiple gatherings throughout the day. So there’s plenty of opportunity for more people in our house to come on board with the 12 Verse Challenge. Maybe you prayed about it since last week; maybe you weren’t here last week and you’re just hearing about it this week, and maybe for you, you don’t even need to pray about it. You’re like, «Oh man, I didn’t even know there were that many people on planet Earth without access to God’s word in their heart language. I want to be a part of that.»
Then we’re going to put up a QR code; it’s going to come up on the screen. You can scan that with your phone while I’m preaching, and you can get involved right now and be a part of what we’re doing. You can see what we’ve done as a house and as a conference historically; we’ve already given or pledged $3.8 million to Bible translation. Passion City Church and Passion Conference, over the years, have contributed enough to translate the whole Bible into three-and-a-half languages, and we’re going to keep going. I want to see this number go extraordinarily high. I want us to make a massive investment in what God is doing because we know that the birth of Christ is a global story.
So we’re not just going to sing «We Three Kings of Orient Are»; we’re going to understand that God is reaching for the world, and we’re going to be a part of seeing this word come to life for people all over planet Earth. So you can join us today. I don’t know where we’ll stop. I don’t even know how to guess where we’re going from here. I’d like to say we’re going to do a fourth language, but that’ll probably happen today. Then we’ve got next Sunday before Christmas, so maybe five, six, seven, ten languages—I don’t know where we’re going, but I’d love to invite you on the journey with us. We’ll give a little update maybe at the end and see how we’re doing.
The first thing today is that we’re wondering at the reality that Christ’s birth has global significance. The second thing I want us to see today is that the message of Christ’s birth is that Jesus is King. He’s not a king because he was born into a line of kings, and when the king above him left the throne, he ascended to the throne. He was born a king; he’s the only King who’s ever been born King. His earthly father was a carpenter; his heavenly Father was Yahweh. The moment they laid him in the manger, he was, at that moment, King. We’ve come to see this King who has been born among the Jews.
The third thing I want you to see today is that this King, Jesus, was fiercely opposed by the darkness the moment he was born on planet Earth. As soon as Jesus was born, all kinds of buzz went through heaven. We talked about that last week—the angels to this day still fully don’t understand the redemption of Jesus and how God would come to Earth for someone like you or someone like me. The angels don’t fully understand how Jesus would lay aside his glory, majesty, righteousness, rule, and authority, enter into a human body, come through a human womb, and be laid in a manger for people who essentially turned their backs on the righteous, holy God. They don’t fully comprehend this mercy of God, this love of God, this grace of God, the pursuit of God, the desire of God to restore and rescue all people to himself— even at the great and perplexing price of his own Son. But I’m telling you, once Jesus entered the human story, all of Hell began to stir, wondering what in the world heaven was doing by sending this King into the world in Bethlehem. Instantly, there was intense opposition.
King Herod said he wanted to come and worship the King, which he obviously didn’t. He was merely trying to play the wise men, but God gave him a vision in a dream and said, «Hey, don’t go back to Herod, and don’t tell him where you found Jesus,» because King Herod was only wanting to protect King Herod. He was only wanting to protect his rule and reign. King Herod had been put in power as the king over Damascus and Judea through Caesar in Rome. Roman rule came through King Herod in the region of Christ’s birth, and King Herod was a wicked king—a powerful tyrant.
As soon as he heard that there was a star that led people all the way from the East to come and find King Jesus, he told all the Jewish scholars together and asked, «What’s going on here and where is the king going to be born?» They said, «Oh, the prophecy says he’s going to be born in Bethlehem.» «Okay, great. You guys go to Bethlehem, find this King, and then report back to me when you see the star.» Why? Because he wanted to know how old this baby was—how old he was, how long they had been on their journey, and who exactly they were looking for. And when the wise men didn’t come back and report to Herod, he took matters into his own hands and said, «Every baby in this area under two years old is to be killed.» He kind of calculated out from the time they saw the star because he wanted to eradicate this King.
You say, «Man, that sounds brutal.» What it shows us is the intense opposition of the darkness to the kingship and the kingdom of Christ and how, on day one, Satan tried to snuff him out. I was listening to part of a conversation that happened on a college campus where someone was there to talk about Jesus, and it was an open mic moment. One of the students posed a question, with I think some sincerity but a little bit of scorn as well: «How is it possible that one man suffering on a cross for just a few hours could somehow mediate all the evil, darkness, and sinfulness of all the billions of people living on planet Earth? It seems a little preposterous that one man suffering just for a few hours on a cross could somehow mediate all of that.» The person to whom the question was posed replied, «Well, I just would ask you this question: Who is the man? Because if the man is God in human flesh, if the man is sent from heaven, and if the man is so worthy at his birth that they would bring him gold at his very birth, bring him incense at his very birth, bring him myrrh— you’ve never been to a baby shower, not one time in your life, where anybody brought gold. You’ve never been to one where they brought incense; you never have been to one where they brought myrrh.
What was the myrrh? It symbolized the death and burial of this baby. What was the incense? It symbolized the worship and the fragrance of this baby. What was the gold? It symbolized this child is a king. You haven’t been to that baby shower where they bowed down and worshiped him because this man is not just any man; this is a heaven-sent man whose one breath of life is worth more than all the billions of lives who’ve ever been born. In this instant, all the darkness tried to snuff him out at the very beginning, but I love how the angel of God appeared in a dream and told these Magi, „Don’t go back the way you came.“ You could translate that into our language in the church today: „Not today, Satan.“ No, you’re not taking him out today; we’re not ready for that yet. This little baby boy has to grow up, become strong, and utter the words, „Not my will, but your will be done,“ and then you can take him out.
It wasn’t that God was afraid of Herod taking the life of Jesus; it just wasn’t God’s time yet. It wasn’t that God was in some kind of power play with Rome; He had Rome on a string like a yo-yo. He said, „Not time yet.“ When the time comes, I’ll let you know. When the time comes, I’ll orchestrate things, and when the time comes, you can do what you’re so determined to do. I love this text in Acts that we’ve read many times at Passion City Church, but it’s one of the most powerful statements of the sovereignty of God. You know, I can’t explain how all these people went through the sorrow and heartache of losing their babies. Can you imagine the mourning going through Judea in this one act of a wicked king? But it’s a mirror of what we’re living in, where the entire world has gone wrong. We call evil good and good evil.
We’re living in a world where there’s suffering on every side of us and even inside of us. Why? Because there is an opposing force to the person of Jesus Christ. Our own sinful choices have put us on a broken planet, and on the broken planet, there is an evil force at work. But God is greater than it all. That’s the story of Christmas. Amen? God is greater than it all. This message in Acts 2 says, „Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs.“ That’s why I didn’t let you take him out when he was a baby because I wanted him to be accredited to you through miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did among you through him as you yourselves know. „This man was handed over to you by God set purpose and foreknowledge, and you, with the help of wicked men,“ there come all the powers of Rome, „put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him up from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.“
The fourth thing that God wants us to see in this text is that to this King, every knee will bow. Notice in chapter 2 of Matthew, coming around to verse 9, „After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the East went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him.“ You know, Daniel was taken to Babylon—many of the best and brightest from Jerusalem were taken to Babylon, and some remained there. So maybe there had been word that had reached these wise men that there is a prophecy about a Messiah; there’s a prophecy about a King. Something had stirred in them. You’re like: How did they come all the way from what is present-day Iraq and end up in Bethlehem at the house where Mary and the baby were? Maybe the word of God was still stirring in the remnant of the people of God left in Babylon. God was working and orchestrating things in such a way that they had a degree of revelation that God was at work.
Then, when they arrived and saw the baby, they didn’t just say, „Wow, this is amazing.“ Their wonder turned into worship the moment they saw the child. There’s a theme from the movie „Son of God“ that I’ve always loved, and it did something to me the very first time I saw it. It was this moment depicted in „Son of God.“ This little clip will show us what this felt like in that moment. „Thank you, please. Lady, I believe your son is the promised King of his people. What is his name?“ He says, „His name is…“ Wow!
It took me to Paul’s words about that baby: „Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. But Jesus made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man. He humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore God highly exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow—those in heaven, those on the Earth, and those under the Earth—and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.“ To this King, every knee shall bow.
So this long journey brings these wise men to Jesus, and I’m telling you today: Wise men still seek him. When they hear his name, at the end of all, that’s where we’re going to be. Why? Because Jesus is King. Right now, right now, we’re in the middle—we’ve got King Herod going, and we’ve got King Jesus going. We’ve got King me and you going, and we’ve got King Jesus going. Even under the sound of my voice today, there are people who have never bowed down to Jesus. There are people who’ve come through the door of a church, who have crossed themselves, who may have given a little clap, who may have said a prayer, who may have folded their hands, may have given one of these but have never bowed down in total surrender and submission to the King of Kings. But that day is coming because every eye is going to see him. When we do, every knee is going to bow, and every tongue is going to declare he’s Lord. For some people—without mercy and grace, which God has freely provided—that will be their last confession of Jesus.
And so, today is Christmas all over again; it’s God all over again, putting a star in the sky and saying, „Come and see what I have done. Christ has been born King,“ and he’s a good King; he’s a good King. He is the King, but he’s a good King, and wise men and wise women still seek him.