How did your Thanksgiving go? Did everything go perfectly as planned? Did you get up extra early to go shopping?
Most importantly, did you get a chance to tell people how thankful you are for them? Remember, you still have time the other 364 days of the year to let people know you appreciate them.
Today, we start our annual Advent series. This year, we are focusing on themes developed by an organization called the Advent Conspiracy. The Christian Education Board found this information and we’re working to incorporate it in both Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights.
Our themes will be:
•Worship Fully
•Spend Less
•Give More
•Love All
There are a lot of really cool resources on the internet. Feel free to Google 'Advent Conspiracy' and you’ll see a lot of good videos. Here is one of those videos for us to think about today (show video)
What is worship?
When we say we meet for worship or our worship service is at 10:00 on Sundays, which element or elements are considered worship?
Call to worship?
Prayer?
Announcements?
Music?
Sharing joys and requests?
Offering?
Scripture reading?
Sermon?
Invitation?
Talking before and after church?
Communion?
What about “worship styles”? Have any of you ever attended a church other than Goodfield Baptist? Were you shocked to find out that other churches do things differently on Sunday mornings than we do?
Is it worship if you go to a church that…
Only sings without musical instruments?
Only uses piano and/or organ?
Only sings hymns?
Only sings music written before 1935?
Only sings songs that are written in their own particular church or denomination?
Only sings worship songs that were written in the 1970’s, 80’s, or 90’s?
Only sings worship songs that have been written in the past decade?
Uses a choir with their singing?
Uses a worship team with their singing?
Uses a worship band with their singing?
Uses videos with their singing?
Or…is it a worship service if…
The sermon is 10 minutes long?
The sermon is 45 minutes long?
They do communion EVERY week?
They sing for 45 minutes?
The service is in a language other than English?
There are 100, 500, or 5000 in the service?
The pastor wears a robe?
The pastor wears a suit and tie?
The pastor wears jeans?
The church meets in a beautiful old sanctuary with stained glass?
The church meets in a contemporary multi-purpose building?
The church meets in a school?
The church meets in a storefront?
OK…so what about worship outside of church?
Can we worship as we…
Read the Bible at home?
Listen to sermons of other churches on TV, radio, or podcasts?
Listen to Christian music on LP’s, 8-tracks, cassette tapes, CD’s, YouTube, or on your MP3 player?
Do devotions with your family?
Read a devotional like “Our Daily Bread” or “My Utmost for His Highest”?
Celebrate the creation that God has made…from a deer stand, on a fall color drive through the autumn colors, or at a zoo?
MAN!!!! That’s enough to make my head swim!
So, with all of those variables…how do we worship fully?
As we talk about the themes in the Advent Conspiracy series, how do we put aside 50 pages of ads for more stuff that you “have to have” order to focus on worshipping the King of the Universe? How do we move past just watching Frosty the Snowman and It’s a Wonderful Life to watching something about the birth of our SAVIOR?I can remember a day when I felt frustrated when “Christmas stuff” appeared in the stores before Thanksgiving…then it started coming at Halloween…and now…who knows…I think some stores started putting things out about the time school started.
Sadly, at the same time that the worship of stuff has increased, the worship of the One whose birthday we are supposed to be celebrating is decreasing! While there are more and more options for trees, decorations, special holiday purchases, and so on, it’s hard to find basic nativity scenes, references to Advent, or even decorations that celebrate Christ’s entrance into our world. Why is it that in a country that would never dare to change Martin Luther King Day into “famous minorities day” or Valentine’s Day into “Express Your Hate Day”, that we have not problem turning Christ’s Birthday into “Winter Break”, “Happy Holidays”, or that kind of thing?
It is tough to find time, energy, and motivation to focus on worshipping the Lord instead of being sucked into the cultural focus all around us.
As I was working on this week’s theme, I was encouraged to read again the familiar passage from Matthew 2 about the wise men. I am sure that they faced many of the same kinds of issues as they prepared to worship the Lord.
Let’s read this passage to see what the Lord has to say:
Matt. 2:1 Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men* from the east came to Jerusalem, 2 saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose* and have come to worship him.” 3 When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; 4 and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. 5 They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet:
Matt. 2:6 “‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel.’”
Matt. 2:7 Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. 8 And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.” 9 After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. 11 And going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. 12 And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.
One of the fun aspects of the Christmas season is that when we carefully spend time going back and reading the accounts in the Scriptures, we discover that even much of what we talk or sing about is not necessarily factual from God’s Word. While we can talk about it later, you’ll notice in this passage that it doesn’t say that there are THREE wise men. It doesn’t give them names. They visited Jesus as a child in a house…not a baby in a barn. I know…that messes up many of our cultural thoughts about the wise men…and it even messes with some of our favorite Christmas Carols. There are however, several key things for us to look at that the passage does tell us about.
1. The Magi invested time, energy, and money to worship Jesus
The magi came on a long journey from another country in the East. There are many traditions about where “from the East” means…India, China, Yemen, Iran, Babylon (Iraq), etc…. At any rate, these men and their entourage set out on a long journey to get from their country (wherever that was) to get to Jerusalem. While we don’t have an exact date that they started on their trip, we can infer from verse 16, that they had evidently told Herod that they had seen this special star between two and three years earlier.
So, the kings (oops, I almost said the three kings) evidently saw some special sign in the stars and realized that they HAD to go and worship this special King that had been born. They had to get all of their stuff purchased and packed for this trip.
We went on vacation this past week. We just went up near Starved Rock, but it takes a lot of work to get everything packed and ready to go for our family. As we were getting things ready, Karen said, can we just stop at Wal-Mart in Ottawa and buy our groceries up there instead of packing everything up here. That worked great for us…but the poor magi didn’t have that option to stop at a Wal-Mart or Kroger whenever they wanted to.
They invested their money not only in the supplies for their trip, but think about it…if it took them 18-30 months to travel from their home to Jerusalem and then back again, that was a huge investment to take all that time off of work for themselves. Also, they probably had to pay a large group of people to come along with them to make sure they were safe from robbers and others as they traveled all of those miles (thus the unlikeliness of it being just three of them). Of course, a group of kings or magi traveling across the Middle East would attract attention. And, remember, they were bringing gold, frankincense, and myrrh as gifts for Jesus, so they would have made a good caravan to be attacked.
Since they couldn’t go online and find the cheapest airfares to fly from wherever they were to Jerusalem, they ended up walking (or riding their camels) all of that way. Again, think not only of the time invested, but all of that energy. In this Christmas season, some of our friends probably will drive around the mall parking lot three or four times to find the closest parking space. So, taking the energy to walk across countries just to worship the young Jesus was an incredible feat.
How do we invest our time, energy and money today to demonstrate our true heart worship for the Lord? (Just a fair heads up…we will be looking at some of these applications other weeks too…some of us need to hear things several times before we move from applying them to our friends to applying them to ourselves!)
Can we walk, drive, or even fly somewhere to tell someone else about Christ’s birth this Christmas season? Is there someone that the Lord has been prompting you to talk with more and now is the time to do that?
Could you look at the money you plan on spending this Christmas and invest it in a different way? I’m NOT saying to withhold everything from your kids or grandkids J!!! But, could you help them worship by giving a gift to a missions agency, the Gideons, giving them a scholarship to a Christian retreat/camp/missions trip? Could you as a family pool your money and purchase something special for a missionary?
Could you invest some of your energy by going and serving others at Home Sweet Home or South Side Mission? Could you go and Christmas carol at a nursing home?
OK, not only do we see the kings from the East investing their time, energy and money as they prepared to go find the new King of kings, but we also see that they were persistent in making sure they were able to worship the newborn Jesus.
2. The Magi demonstrated diligence in their worship of Jesus
So, here we have these magi and their people who have come across the continent to worship the Lord, but when they get to Israel’s capital (where duh…new kings should be born in the capital!), they talk with the current king who is clueless that another king has been born. Talk about awkward!!! Instead of letting this deter them, they talk with Herod and the religious leaders and get some more information and get back on the road again and head on over to Bethlehem.
Can you imagine the frustration of traveling for all of those months and then to find out that MapQuest led you to the wrong place! Has that ever happened to you…you got directions to somewhere, but you discovered at some point that something was dreadfully wrong! We had that problem once when we were flying to South Dakota to candidate for a position at a church. Due to crazy weather problems, we ended up flying into Sioux Falls, South Dakota instead of into Sioux City, Iowa which was our original destination. As a result, our bags ended up in the wrong place, and the airline had a hard time getting them to us because of the bad weather. If you’ve ever had something like that happen, you know how frustrating that can be! So, put yourself into these guy’s shoes and think about how you’d feel if you didn’t get to the right place.So, being the determined kinds of guys that they were, they got back on their camels or horses or whatever they were riding on and went on their way to Bethlehem.
So, how do we show our diligence in worshipping the Lord today?
Maybe it’s making sure in the coming month to get to bed early enough on Saturday night so you can get up and come to church on Sundays. Maybe you can arrange your Christmas weekend schedule so you can join us for Christmas Eve and be here on Sunday after Christmas. Maybe if you’re going somewhere else with friends or family, you could make an extra effort to make it to a special Christmas service somewhere. As I mentioned earlier…we can worship God in a variety of ways. Maybe you know of another church that has a Christmas Day service or a Christmas Eve service that meets before or after ours. It will NOT hurt you to go to more than one service on Christmas Weekend. Be diligent and worship the King of Kings!
3. The Magi showed humility as they worshiped Jesus
Not only did the Kings give of their time, energy, and money as they worshiped; and not only were they diligent in their efforts to worship; but they also showed great humility as they worshipped Christ.
It’s different in America. We have a president who is elected by the people. But…in America, people feel free to agree or disagree with the president and we have a great latitude in complaining and not following the president if we don’t care for his policies.
However, things are very different in countries that are ruled by a king…especially in the days of Jesus! In most of these countries, what the king says is the law and the citizens don’t have the option of disobeying or complaining without there being severe consequences.
Also, kings did not bow to others. If you remember, over the past couple of years, there was a big scene made about President Obama bowing to the Japanese Emperor and to the King of Saudi Arabia.
So, for these kings or at least very important magi to humble themselves and bow before the young Christ-child showed that they really believed that He was greater than they were. They acknowledged His superiority and demonstrated that with both their words and actions. In addition to bowing to Jesus, they gave Him costly gifts that demonstrated that they had great honor for Him.
How do we show that humility today?
As we are in our homes this Christmas, what can we do to honor Jesus? Can we spend extra time in prayer acknowledging Christ’s rule in our lives? Can we give gifts to others that reflect our faith in Jesus? If I came to visit your house sometime in the next month, would I be able to tell the difference between your decorations as a humble Christ-worshipper and your neighbors as an apathetic non-believer?
OK…as I prepared this message this week, I felt a little frustrated with the vast amount of material that is out there to cover about the birth of Christ and in particular the incredibly large topic of worshipping fully!
I think that today, my task has been to raise the issue that our lives need to reflect these aspects of worshipping that we saw clearly demonstrated in the lives of the wise men/magi/kings. Most of you have been attending church for much of your lives. The concept of worshipping the Lord of Lords and King of Kings at Christmas is not a totally new concept. It’s not rocket science. It may not even be a very hard perspective to get our minds wrapped around.
Rather, I think the difficulty comes in putting into practice what we know to be true. Do we honestly want to worship God fully, or do we want to worship at the altar of our consumeristic culture?
As you evaluate this week your need to:1. Invest time, energy, and money to worship Jesus
2. Demonstrate diligence in your worship of Jesus
3. Show humility as you worship Jesus
I am praying that your Advent season will be transformed by this conspiracy to think, act and do differently the culture that is around us.
As we move forward in the coming weeks, we will be looking at the themes:
•Spend Less
•Give More
•Love All
I look forward to seeing you…and hopefully a couple friends next week.
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