Kid’s Wanna Know: Why did Jesus get those strange gifts?

Posted: June 24th, 2009 | Author: david | Filed under: music, offsite | 1 Comment »

In this month’s column for the Lake Wylie Pilot, I try to explain why Jesus received gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Read the column for yourself.

You can also subscribe to the Kids Wanna Know RSS feed for these articles.

Exclusive to my blog I mention other interpretations I found and why I selected this answer as the best.

One option comes from the christmas carol, We Three Kings. It was written by a man named Charles Hopkins over 150 years ago.

We three kings of Orient are;
Bearing gifts we traverse afar,
Field and fountain, moor and mountain,
Following yonder star.

O star of wonder, star of light,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to thy perfect light.

Mr. Hopkins gives us one idea of why they gave Jesus these three gifts.

Born a King on Bethlehem’s plain
Gold I bring to crown Him again,
King forever, ceasing never,
Over us all to reign.

Gold is the one gift we all know about. Even though this is a beautiful and expensive gift, I think you might be disappointed if someone gave you some gold- it doesn’t seem like a very appropriate gift for a child, especially a baby. But Jesus was not like every other baby- he was “born a king,” as Mr. Hopkins says in his carol. Gold is a good gift to give a king, don’t you think?

The other two gifts are not only unusual but hard to say:

Frankincense to offer have I;
Incense owns a Deity nigh;
Prayer and praising, voices raising,
Worshipping God on high.

Frankincense is a form of incense. Incense is something that is burnt in order to worship God. Although some churches still use incense as they worship God, you might have never seen it used. After someone lights the incense it makes a nice-smelling smoke. It is used to represent our prayers raising up to God, like smoke rises up to the sky.

Mr. Hopkins seems to think that the incense given to Jesus is because he is God in the flesh- just like some churches might worship God by burning incense to him. While it is true that Jesus is God, another way to think of this gift is to remember that Jesus is our priest- he prays for us and speaks to God for us.

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes a life of gathering gloom;
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
Sealed in the stone cold tomb.

This third gift is pronounced “MUR.” It is oil with a particular scent. In fact you might have something like this around your home- something that makes a room smell nice. Because of its strong scent myrrh was used to prepare bodies for burial after someone died. This is why Mr. Hopkins thinks the wise men gave Jesus this gift- because he was sent to us in order to die for our sins.

Myrrh was used for other things besides preparing people for burial. It was also an ingredient of special oil used in a ceremony to appoint some people in special service to God. For example, some people were appointed to be prophets for God- to tell God’s people what God wanted them to know. When they used this special oil they called it, “anointing” them. In the language of Jesus’ day someone who was anointed was called “messiah.” You might not have heard that word before, but you probably heard another way of saying the same thing, “Christ.” In other words when we say that Jesus is the Christ, we are saying that he was anointed to do a special job for God. In this way Jesus can also be called a prophet.

Mr. Hopkins concludes his hymn, summarizing why Jesus got these three gifts:

Glorious now behold Him arise;
King and God and sacrifice;
Alleluia, Alleluia,
Sounds through the earth and skies.

One way of thinking of these gifts is that they showed Jesus would be a king, was God, and was going to be our sacrifice for our sins. You could also think of these gifts as showing that Jesus was our king, our priest, and our prophet. However you want to think of these gifts we can agree that although they were strange to us, and we might not want to get these gifts for Christmas, they were fitting for Jesus.

While either of these two interpretations state true things about Jesus, I can’t escape my inductive Bible reading and ask why these gifts are even mentioned in Matthew’s telling of the story. As I argue in the article, I think this is because they all point to the fact that Jesus is King. The whole story is about kings- King Herod who think’s he is the king of the Jews versus Jesus the true King of the Jews who is also King of all Kings and a mere baby born in humble circumstances.

It was a struggle to conclude that these gifts point to the kingdom of God- the other explanations are not only beautiful but “preachable.” I thought about talking about all the options available, but I wanted to keep the article simple for kids. I hope I accomplished that goal while giving the best answer for the question.

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