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Well, let's read a familiar story
of the birth of Christ, Matthew 2, verses 1 through 12. 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, saying, where is he who has been born
king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in
the east and have come to worship him. When Herod the king heard
this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when
he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people
together, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born.
So they said to him, in Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written
by the prophet, but you, Bethlehem, the land of Judah, are not the
least among the rulers of Judah, for out of you shall come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel. Then Herod, when he had secretly
called the wise men, determined from them what time the star
appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem
and said, Go and search carefully for the young child, and when
you have found him, bring back word to me that I may come and
worship him also. When they heard the king, they
departed. And behold, the star which they had seen in the east
went before them till it came and stood over where the young
child was. When they saw the star, they
rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. And when they had come into
the house, they saw the young child with Mary, his mother,
and fell down and worshiped him. And when they had opened their
treasures, they presented gifts to him, gold, frankincense, and
myrrh. Then being divinely warned in
a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed
for their own country another way. Amen. Father, we thank you
for this part of the story of your redemption that really started
in eternity past and will continue to the future. And so we thank
you for the privilege of having this recorded in the inerrant
Word of God. And I pray that as I preach it,
I would do so faithfully, and each one of us would grow as
a result. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Well, as I have evaluated my
love for the Lord, my prayers, my worship, my devotions over
the past year, I've used a couple of different tools from year
to year to evaluate that, and I think some of the most convicting
questions have come from Dewell's book, Measure Your Life. And
I've gone through that a number of times, and I still can see
lots of room for improvement. in this area of life. I think
I do score fairly high when it comes to loving God with my mind
and loving God with my service, but quality time, yikes, I think
that is an area I still need to grow a great deal in. And
it makes sense because I think that's an area that I tend to
be weak in even with my wife and with other people. It's one
of the areas I have to keep pushing myself in. So a part of my goals
for the new year is that I wanna grow in concrete ways of seeking
God's face. Not just studying about how to
seek God's face, but seeking God's face. And this morning
I wanna share just a few thoughts that the Lord has laid on my
heart from Matthew chapter two. And I've grouped these actions
in your outline under two main headings, Seek Christ Without
Excuses and Seek Christ With the Whole Heart. Now obviously
I pray every day, I worship every day, but we always need to grow. And I don't think probably most
of us can honestly say every single day in the past year we
have Love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, strength,
and mind. Emphasis on the word all. But
we're going to use the wise men in Matthew 2 as an example of
how to seek Christ with all of our heart. And it's my prayer
that all of us would grow and be challenged through this. Now,
we're going to start by evaporating our excuses. There were at least
five excuses that these wise men could have used if they wanted
to, and we'll quickly go through them. Well, maybe not quickly,
but we'll go through them. Nothing's quickly with me, is
it? The first thing that we see is that the wise men did not
use the excuse of distance and inconvenience. Look at verses
1 through 2. 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 saying, where is he who has been
born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in
the east and have come to worship him. Now, what were some of the
inconveniences that they had to overcome in order to come
and worship him? Well, they had a long trip. Commentators
point out that the Iranian origin, that's the modern name for it,
but the Iranian origin for the name Magoi, which is the Greek,
that's the plural, Greek singular is Magus, but that term for wise
men or Magi, however you want to pronounce it, means that they
probably came from the city of Babylon. Modern tourist sites
say that if traveling conditions are ideal, it takes about 54
hours, if the highways are good, about 54 hours to travel by automobile. Now they didn't have automobiles,
they didn't have modern roads, But even if they traveled on
camels, which is probably the fastest way that they could travel,
it would still take them more than 20 days to reach Jerusalem. And so I would say that's a rather
inconvenient trip that they had on their hands. And yet their
passion to worship Jesus took that excuse away. A second inconvenience
was the risks involved in traveling between countries. Now, it's
true that Rome had, you know, soldiers everywhere and they
had made their highways and their seaways much, much more safe
to travel than they had previously been, but you still had to calculate
in some risks when you traveled between countries. Third inconvenience
was that they were from a totally different country and probably
a totally different Language, though they may have known Hebrew,
I tend to think that they were probably Babylonian Jews. There were a lot of Jews that
remained in Babylon. Fourth, they probably had important
posts that they had to ask temporary leave from. And let me explain
that because the Magi, in all of the literature, secular and
religious, that we have from the ancient Near East, it seems
that they were always counselors to some government official,
very often to kings. And they are not, as so many
people assume, astrologers or diviners. If you look in the
book of Daniel, there's quite a number of references that distinguish
the Magi from the astrologers. So Daniel and his three friends
were called Magi. Acts 8 speaks of Simon, who was
a Magus advisor. Acts 13 speaks of Elymas the
Magus, who influenced Sergius Paulus, the pro-council. So Magi, they could be good,
they could be bad, depending on whether they're giving advice
from the Bible, or as usually was the case, demonic advice
that they had. But I believe that these were
converted, either converted believers, Gentile believers or Jewish believers
who served the Lord, either in Babylon or Media or one of the
neighboring countries that were to the east. Bottom line is,
it would take some special arrangements for a king's magi to get a few
weeks off to visit this newborn king of the Jews. These men had
overcome several inconveniences. Now, I think just having gone
through those five, The inconveniences that keep us from private devotions
are probably a lot less than what they had. And the excuses that we give
are probably lousy excuses compared to their own. And as I was preparing
for this sermon, I asked myself, what inconveniences have kept
me sometimes from full-hearted worship in my private devotions? Now usually I plan ahead on these
things to some degree, but I was convicted I don't plan enough.
And music is one area that I've really stretched myself in the
past few weeks. And actually I was inspired to
do this when we were invited by Josh and Angela to their home
for dinner. And they were streaming, and
I thought, huh, they're streaming words and they're streaming music.
I can use Spotify. I'm looking actually for a Christian
streaming service. If you know of one, let me know.
So that's what I've been doing in the last few weeks, and it's
hugely helped me in some of the weak areas that I've had in my
own devotional life. And so the point that I made
to myself is I cannot allow the inconvenience of planning planning
out which songs that we're gonna do in today's private devotions,
I can't allow that to keep me from growing in my intimacy with
the Lord. And you'll see in this sermon,
there's gonna be a lot of confession. But I hope all of us will grow
in loving the Lord with all of our heart, soul, strength, and
mind. Okay, a second excuse that they could have made was, we
don't know where we're going and what we're doing. We don't
know what the next day or the next month will hold. These wise
men had several uncertainties. I want you to take a look at
verse two. Verse two says that the Magi came to Jerusalem asking,
where, they don't know, where is he who has been born king
of the Jews? So God had somehow revealed to
them that what the star was for, it was his star, they had seen
his star, and so they understood the what, but there was a lot
that they were uncertain about. They did not know the when, the
where, the why, and the how. Those who like to feel in control
always wanna have more details before they act, right? And even
when we on occasion get all of the details, we still have a
little bit of, there's uncertainties. And the fact of the matter is
God never takes away all uncertainties about our circumstances and our
lives. And he doesn't give all the information
that we would want. And the reason is clear. He wants
us to walk by faith. Not by sight. We would much rather
walk every day by sight because we know everything. And God says,
no, I'm deliberately not letting you know everything so that you
are forced to walk by faith. And so these Magi, just like
Abraham, they went not quite knowing where they're going to
end up. but they were following the Lord's
lead in their lives to the degree that they knew. They did not
get deflected by uncertainty. Now, obviously, we can apply
this excuse of uncertainty to many areas of our lives, but
I've been trying to apply the passage to how fully I seek God. Does uncertainty factor in? Maybe you stumble over not knowing
the meaning of a passage that you're going through in private
devotions and say, what in the world is that about? And you
get out your commentaries. And before you know it, your
devotions has turned into a Bible study instead of devotions. And
it's not that there's anything wrong with studying. But there's
nothing wrong with saying to the Lord, Lord, I want to continue
to worship you right now and worshiping the fact that we are
never going to get to the bottom of God's infinite wisdom. We're never going to have everything
figured out. And so what I do, because this is my temptation,
I'm an academic. Anytime I come across something
I don't know, I want to start studying before I know it. I'm
not doing worship. I'm doing study. So I have a
to-do list that I will throw that thing onto, and then about
10 seconds later, I come back and I can focus, because I'm
going to deal with that at another time. I can focus on worshiping
the Lord and His vast riches that I will never
exhaust anyway. So I'm trying not to let the
academic side of me crowd out the relational side. Now another
area of uncertainty that distracts me in worship is bad memory.
So I'm praying for a family, and then I forget the name of
one of the family members, and I'm stalled in my prayer for
a period of time. Believe it or not, this is probably
the far side humor part of my thinking, but the whole time
I'm trying to think of the name of that family member, I'm thinking
of Rodney sitting on the other side of the room smiling at me
and not giving me the name. He's done that so many times. Eventually, the name comes to
me, but in the meantime, I've lost my train of worship. I've lost my train of thinking.
So how I've gotten around that, I just carry the names of our
congregation with me on my phone, or if I'm at the office, I pull
out the directory, and there it is, and I can continue on
with my prayer. But uncertainty can sometimes
get in the way of meaningful reach of the heart to God. Your
uncertainties might be totally different. They might be not
quite knowing what to say in prayer, or what others will think
of you if you raise your hands, or uncertainty about, oh man,
I've brought this before the Lord 50 times. Is he gonna think
I'm nagging? Is he going to be upset with
me? That was something that used to be an issue with me when I
was much, much younger, thinking I do not want to irritate the
Lord. For me, it was like three times. is a fourth time nagging. And then I ran across a passage
in Isaiah where he said, give him no rest until he answers
his promises. And so you're basically asking
him what he wants anyway. So it's not nagging, really.
But if you have uncertainties about how to pray, I have a booklet
that can teach you how to do 12 types of prayers, and even
has words, sample words written out for each section, except
for one section, which is the section where we're listening.
We're trying to hear from God. But the point is, don't let uncertainty
hinder the degree to which you seek Christ with all your heart. And there's many ways we can
get around those uncertainties and not let them divert us from
worship. A third excuse for failing to
be as passionate in your worship as you might otherwise have been
is that no one else around you is passionate. You look around,
you think, oh boy, I better cool it or everybody's going to think
I'm weird, you know. Nobody else is raising their
hands. Nobody else is crying. And I'm crying right now. And
it kind of dampens your spirit. Just as Jesus could do no mighty
works in his hometown because of their unbelief, it is so easy
to have your spirit dampened by the wet blanket of other people's
worship or lack of worship. So observing the status quo can
dampen our own joy and take away our energy. But here's the point
that I've had to learn. It doesn't need to dampen your
worship at all or your enthusiasm. These Magi are examples on this
point too. They sought Christ even when
others did not share their enthusiasm. Take a look at verses three through
six. When Herod the king heard these things, he was troubled
and all Jerusalem with him. They're not excited that the
Messiah has come, not at all. They're troubled. Herod's troubled
because he doesn't like anything messing up the status quo in
his nation that could foment trouble. And the people are troubled
anytime Herod is troubled, but they're not enthusiastic. For
sure, Herod was not interested in worship. Look also at how
seriously Herod takes Christ's threat. And when he had gathered
all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he inquired
of them where the Christ was to be born. I want you to notice
that Herod believes the Bible to be true. He's looking to the
Bible. Where is he going to be born?
He believes the Bible to be true, but even though he takes that
seriously, he does not submit. He has no interest in worshiping
Jesus. How on earth can people do that?
How can they know the truth and yet have hearts that are so far
from God? Well, as Calvinists, we know exactly what that is.
We call it total depravity, right? People, apart from God's grace,
will not seek after Him. You cannot account for the difference
between Herod and the wise men that the wise men had some good
in them and Herod did not. No, Romans 3 says there is none
righteous, no, not one. We cannot account for it that
while these guys have a seeking heart, Herod did not. Romans
3 says there is none who seeks after God. The only reason that
they sought God in faith to worship Him is because God had regenerated
them, given them faith, and He had not done so to Herod. It's
sovereign grace. Our salvation is all of grace.
There is nothing we earn or deserve. I want you to notice, too, that
the scribes and Pharisees know exactly where Christ is going
to be born. You don't see one of them going
there. Verse 5, So they said to him, In Bethlehem of Judea,
for thus it is written by the prophet, But you, Bethlehem,
in the land of Judah, are not the least among the rulers of
Judah, for out of you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my
people Israel. I think it's kind of scary that
people can know the truth and either oppose it or just ignore
it, as the case of these leaders. And when a society is filled
with such people, it is easy for Christians to lose their
enthusiasm as well. The wise men kept their focus
on God. on God, not on what the religious
leaders or Herod or any of the other people were doing. If you're
too concerned about what other people are doing or saying or
thinking, it can dampen your joy, your enthusiasm. It can
dampen your single-eyed pursuit of Jesus. But when your focus
is on what God thinks, you will pursue Christ without any reservations. So be enthusiastic in your pursuit
of God and of Christ. No matter if everybody around
you is thinking you're extreme, let the Bible decide that question.
And believe it or not, this is an area that I did struggle in
in years past. In years past, I didn't raise
my hands in worship, even though the scripture speaks about that
a great deal. Because I had a little bit worried
that other people would misinterpret my motives and think poorly of
me. I did not kneel in worship, even though in private devotions
I did, because I didn't want to be judged by others. I didn't
say a loud amen, even though the Bible commands everyone to
say a loud amen many, many, many times. Why? Because it was the
fear of man that was driving what I did and what I did not
do. It's so easy for this to be a problem. So the bottom line
was that in the past, the lack of enthusiasm from others rubbed
off on me. And I think I've gotten past
that for the most part, but this fear of man is something I need
to always be on guard against so that it does not hinder my
worship. But I would encourage you to not let it hinder your
worship. A fourth excuse is being surrounded by hypocrites. This
past week, I was on Facebook, and I don't know why all of these
bunched together, but a bunch of my Christian Facebook friends
were making comments on why they don't attend church. I didn't
even know some of these didn't attend church. But they said
that they didn't attend church because they didn't get much
out of it, or the church is not being salt and light, and it's
not transforming society, or they're filled with hypocrites.
One issue or another. Well, that could have dampened
the enthusiasm of these wise men, too. Jerusalem was full
of hypocrites. By the way, almost every church
has got one or two hypocrites in it, people who profess faith
in Christ, but really don't, right? They're conforming outwardly,
but their heart is not with it. Look at verses 7 through 8. Then
Herod, when he had secretly called the wise men, determined from
them what time the star appeared, and he sent them to Bethlehem
and said, Go and search diligently for the young child, and when
you have found him, bring back word to me that I may come and
worship him also. So Herod professed to be a worshiper
of the true God, but in his heart he was not. If you keep on reading
in that chapter, you'll see his whole purpose was to kill Christ,
and his attempt was to do that when he killed all of those innocents.
I don't know how many times I have heard unbelievers excuse their
careless attitudes with the expression, well, the church is full of hypocrites
anyway. And my response to them is, oh,
have you attended church? No. Well, how do you know the
church? You know, it's really weird. People who have never
been in church know that the church is full of hypocrites.
But here's the point. Let's assume, for the sake of the argument,
the church is full of hypocrites. It still does not excuse you
from your responsibility before God. Remember the church of Laodicea? Jesus was so distanced from that
church that he left the church. He was outside the church knocking
on the church door, but I think it's so cool that he promises
to anyone in that church that's filled with hypocrites He promises,
if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into
him and dine with him and he with me. So any individual in
that church full of hypocrites can have the most spectacular
fellowship with Christ, even though others are not. The last
excuse that these wise men could have made, but did not, was that
their quest was dangerous. If they were good at reading
body language, they could have seen that Herod was not enthused
in verse three. In verse 12, it was apparent
that their lives were in danger, but these Magi sought the Messiah
despite danger. Are you willing to face danger
for Christ? I mean, that's their stated goal,
right, is to worship. Are you willing to face danger?
The danger for you might be that you could potentially come down
with COVID-19. Or you could potentially get
ticketed for $25 or whatever the fine is from police. Or that you might get sick if
you keep getting up early enough to have private devotions in
the morning. Dangerous. So those were the
potential excuses that these wise men avoided. There are a
ton more excuses that we could easily have. The question I have
posed for myself, and I pose the same question for you, is
this. In our pursuit of Christ, are
we characterized by excuses or are we characterized by solutions? I mean, neither one ignores the
problems and the difficulties and the inconveniences. They
both are aware of those. But when we make excuses, we're
not approaching it by faith. When we are looking for solutions
to those issues, we are approaching it by faith. So the second major
point is that these wise men also illustrate seeking Christ
with the whole heart. This is a repeated command in
Scripture. Deuteronomy 4.29 says, you will
find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your
soul. And he's not talking to unbelievers
there. He's talking to the church. He
says, you will find him if you seek for him with all your heart
and with all your soul. Deuteronomy 28.9, if you seek
him, he will be found by you. Jeremiah 29.12, and you will
seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. So let's take a look at the seven
ways that they modeled that they were seeking Christ with all
of their heart. First, they didn't keep their
enthusiasm to themselves. They shared their enthusiasm
about seeking him with others. In verses two and seven, We see
that the wise men, they're not ashamed of inquiring at the temple
of where Jesus is and that their intended goal was to worship
him. I bet you they probably thought, oh, the whole palace
guard's gonna wanna join us in worshiping Jesus. I think people
who are sold out for Christ, they love worship, are astonished
when they look and they see others who don't share that enthusiasm. Most of you, when you first came
to Christ, probably overflowed with enthusiasm. So how does
that enthusiasm get dampened? Well, there could be any number
of reasons. Constantly seeing others who
put you in your place, well, that could dampen your enthusiasm.
Fear of man can make us shut our mouths. Even King David was
tempted to become ashamed of sharing God's word with other
kings, and the supposition is those kings didn't like God's
law, so do I share it with them? They're gonna totally disagree
with me, but he determined, no, I am not going to be ashamed.
He said this, I will speak of your testimonies also before
kings and will not be ashamed. Jesus said, for whoever is ashamed
of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him
the Son of Man also will be ashamed when he comes in the glory of
his Father with the holy angels. Now, I do tend to watch you guys'
Facebook pages just because I love you guys. I pray for you, right?
I want to know what's going on. And I am very encouraged, actually,
by the boldness with which you name the name of Christ in the
public arena. So what I'm wanting to emphasize
here is not, are you ashamed of Christ in general? Because
I think you guys are not. I've seen wonderful testimony,
but how enthusiastic are you about the relationship that you
have with Christ, the things that he's doing in your life?
You know, we could have just a testimony time every week,
but that's what the tables are for. You know, when we eat together,
share the reality of the supernatural that God has done in your life
during the past week. That's what Hebrews tells us.
We're to encourage one another and stimulate one another up
onto love and good works. And as we share these kinds of
things with each other, the reality, I think there's nothing that
stirs up enthusiasm like the realization God is real. God's
at work in my life. Now, I'll be, well, I'll get
to that in a little bit. Second thing I see here is they
were diligent in seeking Him. Verse 8 says, go and search diligently
for the young child. Of course, they'd already been
doing this. They had been looking to the Lord and to the star for
information. They traveled, they inquired,
they searched for more information that would help them. They didn't
do just what came spontaneously. They put work into their seeking. While diligence and devotions
is not the full answer, it certainly doesn't hurt to be diligent with
our time. Our thought and even our forethought,
our research and effort, putting some diligence into devotions
and worship, I think can help to improve both for our families. The English novelist J.B. Priestley
once was asked why some of the gifted writers who had grown
up with him had never matured in their art to the degree that
he had. They had the same skills and his answer was very interesting.
He said, gentlemen, the difference between us was not in ability,
but in the fact that they merely toyed with the fascinating idea
of writing. I cared like blazes. It is this
caring like the blazes that counts. How much do we care to know Christ
and to be drawn into a closer walk with Him? And you can say,
well, I just don't have the time. But the funny thing is, we always
have the time for what's important to us and what we really like
to do. So it's a reflection on our heart. If you have the enthusiasm
of these wise men, there is no one here who cannot achieve great
things spiritually. Theodore Roosevelt said, I'm
only an average man, but I work harder at it than the average
man. So make it your goal to work harder at worship than the
average person does, to be enthusiastic, diligent in your search for Christ.
Another indication of the enthusiasm with which these wise men sought
Christ is their great joy. Verse 10 says, when they saw
the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. Now I
get the impression that rejoicing with exceedingly great joy is
a lot of joy somehow. Joy. Joy should be a part of
our daily life. Do we find joy in life? If we're
too academic in our praises of God, it may not translate into
joy, but If we adore God's greatness in relationship to us as unworthy
recipients, it will begin to stir up joy. Just some examples. If we worship God for his wisdom
as being sufficient for our lack of wisdom, His power being sufficient
for our fears, His presence, you know, and His power being
sufficient for our needs. It begins to take on a dimension
of a relationship, not simply a study. There's nothing like
the realization that God is real, that He's actively working in
your life to give you this joy and enthusiasm. Now, I'll be
Honest with you, hasten to say that life is never perfect. Not a one of us has joy every
day of our lives. Well, maybe some of you do, but
I certainly don't. I've never met anybody that has
joy. Even the most joy-filled person in my life, I've seen
them occasionally without joy, and I can tell you about him.
He's an amazing guy that has ministered to me a lot. Here's
the thing. We can be totally aware of God's
work in our lives and lose our joy. Just think of Elijah. He's
a tremendous man. He has his Mount Carmel experience.
And the very next day he is depressed, so depressed he wants to die.
He has lost his joy. We can go back and forth from
this. So the very fact that I'm saying
we need to do this does not mean you should be beating up on yourselves
and saying, oh man, I'm a worm. No, it's direction, not perfection. We're always going to be pressing
into this on our lives. Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones speaks
of this mysterious loss of our joy. in his amazing book, and
I think everybody needs to have this book on their shelves, this
is an amazing book, Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, it's called
Spiritual Depression, Its Causes and Its Cures. Now he has some
profound things in there, but he also has some just very simple,
there was one chapter, it's such simple, basic advice. If you're
depressed, you lack joy, how much have you been sleeping in
the last month? I mean, simple question. Sleep loss can take
things away. Guilt can take away our joy. Physical exhaustion, stress,
there's many different things. Demonic oppression can take away
our joy. And so, as John Piper pointed
out, there are times when we need to fight for joy. David
preached himself into joy in Psalm 42 and 43. He said to himself,
he's preaching to himself, Why are you cast down, O my soul?
Why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall
yet praise Him. So he's arguing with himself
in those Psalms that he has every reason to praise God and to be
joyful. He doesn't feel it, but I have
every reason to be joyful. And especially when I have had
many, many nights of sleep loss. I have to do things differently
to maintain my attitude of joy. If my mind drifts while I'm on
my knees, okay, well, then I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna pace
back and forth in my study. I might even be shouting out
loud. You have to keep sometimes, sometimes
you have to rebuke yourself, say, no, I will rejoice. I'm
not going to get down in this cycle of depression. Those declarations
are steps of faith that God honors, but joyless worship should be
an oxymoron for a healthy Christian, and that means I have been an
unhealthy Christian from time to time, and I've had to adjust
my attitudes. Okay, so I'm not saying be perfect
like Phil Kaiser. I'm saying try to grow like Phil
Kaiser. Try to keep pressing, and even
when you stumble, move forward. Another thought I see in this
passage is that great things don't happen until we step out
in faithfulness to the Lord. You may not feel like worship
because you feel dry. But as you step into worship
by faith, you will many times find God pouring out his showers
of blessing. Here is the point. It's just
across the Bible you will see this. The Jordan River did not
part until they started crossing. The blind man did not get healed
until he asked for healing. The man with the withered arm
did not get that withered arm healed until he willed to do
the impossible that Christ commanded him to do. And he stretched forth
his hand and Christ healed it in the process of him acting
in faith. There are times we don't receive
joy until we determine to enter into joy through our praises.
Well, in the same way, these men didn't see God's supernatural
star again until they set out on their journey again in verse
9. They set out before they saw
the star, and then God met them. And it's like, okay, we don't
know quite, yeah, we're gonna go to Bethlehem, but God meets
them in the act of obedience. And I guess the point of the
passage is they didn't need the star till they set out on their
journey again. Inaction leads to stagnation. If you would have
joy, you must do as the wise men did and proceed with your
marching orders. And almost always, it is as we
step out in faith, that God supernaturally meets us, fills our hearts with
joy as he did theirs. This means that there is a connection
between serving God before worship and serving God in worship. Fifth,
their enthusiasm could also be measured by the sacrificial nature
of their gifts. Each of these gifts was costly.
I've preached on the gifts before, but gift giving, very important
part of Christmas, but here they're giving Christ their best. You
know, they're not giving away their unwanted sweaters, and
they're broken. I mean, God can use those kinds
of things, right? But they are giving the very
best, what they valued the most. Can Jesus see the expensive alabaster
box opened up and poured out on his feet? How extravagant
are we in our pursuit of God, or do you give God only your
second best? And that means our energies,
our best of our energies. The sixth thing that I see in
this passage is the complete and unreserved trust in God's
word that these Magi had. Now, we don't have recorded what
revelation they had received in Babylon, but they trusted
it. And I should point out that Magi did not receive revelation
by reading horoscopes, the way some people interpret this passage. I just do not think that they
were astrologers who saw, you know, as so many commentators
say, they saw a, what do they call it, a conjunction of Jupiter
and Saturn, and they said, okay, well that must mean that there
is a king born over there somehow. No, that's utter, sheer nonsense.
A conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter does not stand over a house.
you There's no way you could find an individual house based
on that. No, this was a theophany that went low enough to the ground
they could follow it, and low enough to the ground where it
could stand over a house and point to where the Jesus was
born. And so I believe that this theophany
was coupled with prophetic insight from the Lord as to the significance
of this manifestation. So God, by prophecy, revealed
what it was that he was doing there. And the only certainty
to this day that we can ever have is the inspired revelation,
which for us has been recorded in the scriptures, right? So
once you are grounded in the scriptures, nothing should be
able to shake us. Not frequently does. But that's
because our faith tends to wander from the scriptures. Learning
how to personalize the Word of God is really an absolute foundation
for a relational Christianity. Gary's handed out, I forget now
if everybody got them or just a few people got praying the
scriptures. But anyway, he's handed out a few of those at
least. That's an amazing book. It's basically at the nursery
level of praying the scriptures, but our prayer meetings, if you
regularly attend them, we're praying the scriptures, teaching
you how this applies to all of the different areas of life.
When you pray the scriptures, you're beginning to enter into
a relational character with the Bible rather than just an academic
one. Okay, I do want to end with the
last good mark of their hearts, their obvious desire to worship.
They tell everyone in verse two that's their goal is to worship
Christ. In verse 11, they actually do so. When they had come into
the house, they saw the young child with Mary, his mother,
and fell down and worshiped him. And when they had opened their
treasures, they presented gifts to him, gold, frankincense, and
myrrh. Worship is the goal of our lives. In fact, in Scripture, the only
thing that it ever says that the Father seeks is worshipers. Now, it doesn't say he seeks
worship. Acts, the book of Acts, in fact, explicitly says he doesn't
need worship. That's for our benefit that we
learn to worship him, but it says he seeks worshipers. Let
me read that verse, John 4, 23. But the hour is coming, and now
is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit
and truth, for the Father is seeking such to worship him. He's seeking your heart. God wants your heart. If you
have little or no desire for worship, it displays what kind
of a relationship that you have with God. Ask God to give you
a new heart that is enthusiastic for Him, enthusiastic enough
to worship fully and freely, even when everybody else is dead
as a stone. Enthusiastic does not care what other people think
of you. Give yourself an extravagance to him. Now, if John Wesley were
alive today, I definitely would not go to him to get theological
advice. He was a bad theologian, but
he loved the Lord. And I dare say, if John Wesley
were alive today, I would go to him to get some pointers on
how to deep dive into the ocean of prayer, how to walk with God
as Enoch did, how to develop a deep relationship
with God. And we can learn from our brothers
and sisters from many different denominations, even those who
are theologically messed up. And I guarantee you, you and
I are probably messed up theologically in some area. we need more unity
in the Bride of Christ. But anyway, John Wesley said
this, right tempers, that's just an old word that means dispositions,
right dispositions cannot subsist without right opinion. In other
words, you got to get your theology right first. The love of God,
for instance, cannot subsist without a right opinion of Him.
However, The right dispositions cannot subsist without right
opinion, yet right opinion may subsist without right dispositions. Basically what he's saying is,
yes, we are called to be theologically orthodox, and you can't have
good practice without good theology, but he says you can have good
theology without having a good relationship with God. That's
what he's saying, as another book worded it. We can be fantastic
data-based Christians, but the question is, having all of that
data about God, do we have fellowship with the God that we know? Do
we have the reach of the heart? Do we minister to Him? Do we
love Him? Do we enjoy spending time before His throne and in
His presence? You see, God calls us to seek
Him, to fellowship with Him, to worship Him, to love Him. And if you want a whole new dimension
to your Christianity, I would urge you to obey Paul's admonition
when he calls us to know Christ and the power of his resurrection,
or in another passage where he calls us to enter into. We've been called into the fellowship
of the Son, the same fellowship. This is astonishing. It blows
my mind. The same fellowship that the
Son and the Father have had throughout all of eternity and will eternity
in the future, we've been called into that fellowship. And the
only way we can get into that fellowship is if we have fellowship
with the Holy Spirit who gives us the ability to have the reach
of the heart. And so we need all three persons
of the Trinity if we're to be able to do what this passage
is calling us to do. It is through the Holy Spirit.
May each one of us aspire to grow in this area of a relational
Christianity with God, fellowship with God, devotions with God,
You're not going to be perfect. We're going to be going up and
down, but let's make it our desire to keep growing in this. Amen. Father, thank You for Your Word.
Thank You for the way that it shows us how shallow
sometimes we can be. Thank You for convicting me Thank you that you meet us in
our weakness. Thank you, Father, that though our hearts may be
shallow, you have promised to shed abroad your love into our
hearts, full to overflowing with love, with joy, with peace, with
all the fruit of your spirit. It really matters not how shallow
my cup of joy, my cup of love, my capacity to love is if I give
you all. And Father, may all of us love
you no matter how small our hearts, our souls, our power might be. To love you with all of our heart,
soul, strength, and mind. May we glorify you. May you be
pleased. May we have your smile of approval
upon our daily walk. And we know that just as a little
child who brings his really pathetic artwork to you, to his parents,
pleases the parents when that's the best that they have to offer.
I thank you that you receive that which really in many ways
is pathetic because nothing we bring in itself can be pleasing
apart from being perfected by your spirit, by the merits of
Jesus Christ. So help us to not worry about
our inadequacies. Just help us to keep pressing
into you, in Jesus' name, amen.
Seeking Christ With All Our Heart
Series Sermon
| Sermon ID | 12282012164125 |
| Duration | 46:06 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Matthew 2:1-12 |
| Language | English |
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