We Have Come to Worship Him

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Well, ever since I was a little boy, and even up until now, some of my favorite days in church have been those days when missionaries have come to visit and to speak. And, you know, I try to still get somebody in here to speak whenever we can get somebody. I love hearing from our missionaries.

I love hearing about what God is doing in other parts of the world. And I always tell the missionaries, Come talk to us about what God’s doing where you are, but also kind of charge the troops up here and remind us about our great commission calling here as well. But of all their stories, some of the ones that have stuck with me, of all the things I’ve heard from dozens of missionaries over the years, Some of the stories that have stuck with me the most have been their stories about the zeal, the commitment of some of those that they have led to faith in Jesus Christ. I remember hearing a missionary talk about some Christians in a remote village in the Philippines that had to walk three hours to get to church, you know, through the mud and through the mountains.

And so they would walk the three hours. They’d leave on Sunday morning before it was even light out. They’d get to church.

They’d bring their food all prepared. They’d have their lunch at the church. They’d have their nap at the church.

You know, they’d break in between for a couple hours for everybody to eat and take a little rest. And then they’d have church again. And then they’d eat and take a little rest and have church again. And they would be there all stinking day.

Y’all think I preach now. Did I hear an amen back there? I thought I did.

And they just have church all day because these people had to walk so far. But they do it because they were that excited about coming together to worship Jesus Christ. I’ve heard about believers in Nicaragua who have churches that, you know, barely four walls there and a tin roof and split logs and no air conditioning. And yet people come and they jam-pack the building and people stand outside by the windows wanting to hear the gospel preached.

I’ve heard of similar churches in the former Soviet Union. Barely four walls and a tin roof and no heat. And people will sit there all day.

I’ve heard about believers in West Africa who don’t have a building at all to meet in. And yet they come together and they sing songs and they worship Jesus under a large tree. And that’s their meeting place.

And these people are excited about worshiping. And keep in mind what I’ve been telling you through this series on worship, that worship is not just what we do together on Sundays. It’s not just what we sing.

That’s part of it. But worship has a broader meaning of how we live our lives in submission to God and trying to glorify Him. That’s what worship is.

And so I think, too, about the believers this morning in Vietnam and China who are risking their lives even to get together. It’s not Sunday morning there anymore, but you understand the point I’m making. They risked their lives even trying to get together.

There are believers in North Korea who risked their lives just to read a portion of a page of Scripture and worship God and learn about Him. That there are believers today who are putting everything on the line. They are committing everything they have up to and including their very lives for the privilege of worshiping Jesus Christ. And then I think about me.

and how is spoiled the right word? Coddled maybe? I am.

And really, I don’t mean this as a slam toward anybody, but all of us are in comparison to these people. In comparison to these people. I think about how sometimes I just don’t feel like going to church.

Do you ever feel that way? It’s okay, you can be honest. There may be days you just don’t feel like it. And I know this goes on all across America, oh, I can’t go to church.

It’s just too ugly outside today. The weather’s just too nasty. The next week, oh, the weather’s so beautiful.

I’d rather stay out and do something else. What does the temperature have to be for us to go to church? I’m not going to go to church.

It’s too hot in there. It’s too cold in there. The music is too loud.

The music is not loud enough. It’s so boring. We have our reasons.

I read something this week that a church had taken a survey of it. It was going through a transition from one type of, one style of worship music to another, and they’d done a survey of the members, and they came back and said, this is what we’ve discovered, that we want more loud songs during the opening, and fewer loud songs during the opening, and we want less of those dry, dead old hymns, and more of those dear old hymns, and nobody’s just ever going to be content, you know, when we make it all about what we feel like. When we make worship all about what we feel like and our preferences, whether we’re talking about worship as a time together of music, or we’re talking about worship together as a time of studying God’s Word, or whether we’re talking about worship in the way we live our lives, some days we’re not going to feel like doing what God told us to do.

We’re not going to feel like worshiping God with our lives every day. Some days there are things we’d rather do besides what God told us to. And that’s where commitment comes in.

Because some days you don’t always feel it, but you’ve made a commitment. And a commitment out of love. I don’t mean we follow God because I guess I have to.

But God, I don’t feel like doing this today, but I love you and I said yes to you long ago, and so I’m going to. Some of you may have heard that my wife and I are expecting baby number four. You may have figured that out by now.

And she is tired, justifiably tired, because she’s turning food into a human. That takes a lot of energy. You know what, sometimes after all the kids are passed out for the night, we’ll kind of pass out in the living room, not asleep, but just kind of veg out, and then she’ll need something.

Last night she needed several things. Would you refill my water for me? You know what?

I was tired too and I didn’t feel like it. You know what? That’s where commitment came in where I said, you know what?

I love you and I’m going to do this anyway. We need to have a commitment to our worship and not just, we all can very easily fall into the trap, into the routine of treating worship as though it’s something, you know, we’ve just got to get through. It’s not really a priority.

And maybe if we’re going to do that we can give the bare minimum effort. And again, I’m not just talking about coming to church on Sunday. I’m talking about the way we worship God with our everyday lives.

We can treat it like it’s just something to get through. It’s just something out of obligation. I’m going to give it the minimum effort.

And again, this stands in stark contrast to the way believers act in other countries. And it stands in stark contrast to one of the stories in the Bible. God’s Word records for us a series of events that I think we can look to as an example of how you and I are supposed to be committed in our worship.

So if you would, if you haven’t already, turn with me to Matthew chapter 2. Matthew chapter 2, and we’re going to look at verses 1 through 12 this morning. Matthew chapter 2, verses 1 through 12.

We’re actually going to just start with verses 1 and 2 for starters. It says, 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 the king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him.

Now, we know from other passages in the Gospels, you’ve probably, I would assume, everybody in here has heard the story, how Jesus was born in Bethlehem because Mary and Joseph were sent there to be taxed, to be counted by the Roman government. They were there for a census. And while they were still in Bethlehem, excuse me, I hope I’m not coughing all through this morning.

While they were still in Bethlehem, verse 1 says these wise men came from the east. Now, these were going to be high-ranking priests or scholars from the Persian court. These were men who, it was their job to study literature so they could advise the king. They would study the texts of other religions.

They would study philosophy. They would study probably astronomy. All the information they could get so they could be the wise men, so they could give wise counsel to the king.

So they traveled all this way. And by the way, they didn’t show up on the same night the shepherds did. We don’t know exactly when they showed up.

I’ll go through this in a little bit. I think it was about 40 days after Jesus was born. But it was not the night that the shepherds arrived when Jesus was born.

They showed up later. That’s why it’s always bothered me when I see the wise men in the nativity scene, and yet they’re in my nativity scene in my yard because I don’t have the shepherds. And you know how you don’t realize how irritating you are until you see it in your children?

My son is now bothered by the fact that there are wise men in our nativity scene because they weren’t there yet. So next year I’ll plug them in far off into the east, I guess, in another part of the yard. There you go, put them in the backyard.

They came a little later. They traveled. We need to know that because we need to understand they traveled a long way.

So they traveled all this way, and they came from the east to Jerusalem, and they came to Herod in verse 2 saying, Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? Now, what we also need to understand, they come to Herod thinking a king of the Jews has been born. He’s going to be born in the family of the existing king of the Jews.

So they went to Herod’s house. Where’s the baby who’s been born? Herod looks around and says, nobody’s been born in my family.

Who is this king of the Jews you’re talking about? See, king of the Jews was a title that the Romans gave to Herod, that they really had no authority to give. He was just the one they put in charge over Judea, keep the Jewish people in line over here.

King of the Jews meant something else according to the Old Testament. When the Old Testament would talk about the King of the Jews, it was prophesying the Messiah that God would send to save the Jewish people. So they’ve got their wires crossed here, but they come to Herod and say, where’s the King of the Jews?

He said, nobody’s been born here. And suddenly Herod smells a threat. Just like any tyrant would do.

You know, I heard a quote from Saddam Hussein. Actually, I can’t remember the exact quote, so I’m going to paraphrase. But he’d rather make the mistake of killing somebody than make a mistake in keeping somebody alive.

So it’s sort of an ideology of if you see a threat, kill them first and ask questions later. So that’s where Herod’s mind is already going to when he hears that there’s another king of the Jews. This is the promised Messiah who was going to come from the house and lineage of David.

So Herod spells a threat. But in verse 2 he says, Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east, and we have come to worship him.

They had seen it in the east, not meaning to the east of them, but while they were at home in their country in the east, they had seen the star. And what we can see about this star, you know, people have racked their brains and argued and debated for centuries about what the star of Bethlehem was. Probably not an actual star like we think about it, Because verse 9 says they not only followed it to the east to Jerusalem, but then it sort of changes directions and leads them south into Bethlehem.

And the Greek word that’s translated as star, you know, allows for any kind of phenomena in the sky. It doesn’t necessarily mean a burning ball of gas light years away. And some people have said maybe it’s a comet, maybe it was an asteroid.

I’ve never known those things to move in a certain direction that slowly, where it takes them 40 days to follow it, then it turns at a 90 degree angle and heads south to Jerusalem. I just don’t know anything that acts that way. So my theory on it is that what they were seeing, my theory on it is that what they were seeing was the glory of God.

The Bible talks about how in the Old Testament, he led the people of Israel with a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day. And that pillar of cloud even exuded the glory of God. It was visible from a long distance away.

I’m not saying that this was a pillar of something, but it was some kind of miraculous sign that doesn’t fit anything we have an explanation for where the glory of God was present and led them in that direction. That is all I can come up with. So there’s this miraculous sign that pointed the way to Jesus.

It was a sign from God. They’d seen it from their own country and he said, We have come to worship him. Now if you were with us last week, I explained to you what the word worship meant in the passage that we read about Jesus and the woman at the well from the book of John.

And I also told you that I’d never thought to study what the word worship actually meant until last week. And I gave you the definition, because Jesus in that passage used the word proskuneo several times, the Greek word proskuneo, which describes the relationship of a dog to its master. And I thought, well, that’s really interesting that Jesus would use that word.

So we get to Matthew chapter 2 this week, and I said, I wonder what Greek word is used for worship here? Because sometimes there are multiple words that can be translated the same way in English. I wonder what word is used here.

And by golly, it’s the same word. It’s the same word. And I haven’t studied yet to see if that’s every instance of the word worship in the Greek New Testament.

But here they are talking about the same relationship Jesus was describing, where we worship God the way our dogs worship us. You know, they love us. They only have eyes for us.

They’re excited to see us. They just want to be in our presence. That’s the way a dog acts toward its master.

And that’s the way we are supposed to be toward God. And they’re saying, you know, we’ve come this way. I think about my dog.

He’s basically deaf at this point, or he may just be acting. I really can’t tell. But he’s basically deaf.

But before he started losing his hearing, you know, occasionally he’d get out. He’s a small dog, a rat terrier. He’d get out and he’d run down the street.

And I’d go stand in the yard and I’d yell, Max! Wherever he was, those ears would perk up and he’d come running. And he’d run, you know, he could be down at the other end of the block, down by First Baptist. He’d come running all the way to me.

Because there’s my master. He called me. He was excited.

And that’s sort of what the wise men have done here. They’ve seen a sign from God. The master’s called and they’ve picked up everything and they’ve gone.

They’ve gone. So many times, again, I don’t know if it’s every time, but many times when the Greek New Testament uses the word worship, it’s describing that relationship of the dog to its master. And they said, we’ve come to worship him.

They had come to show him the worship, come to show the new king of the Jews the worship he deserved. But we see also that Jesus deserved their worship because he was the Messiah sent by God. We see that the wise men traveled from a far eastern country for the sole purpose of worshiping Jesus, but we also see that he deserved that worship because of who he is, because he’s the Messiah.

Let’s look at verses 3 through 6. 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.

That word Christ is not part of his name. It means Messiah, where the Messiah was to be born. So they said to him, Herod’s wise men 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.

So we see that when he heard this message, when he heard that there was another king of the Jews, Herod was, he was troubled by this. His power might be undermined, and so he was stirred up by this, and everybody else was too, because if Herod wasn’t happy, nobody was happy. And so he was upset.

He asked them where the Christ would be born. They’re discussing where the Messiah was going to be born. And we don’t ever see anywhere in this passage where Herod disputes the fact that this child who was born would be the Messiah.

He just wants to know where this Messiah would be. And we see later on he’s going to want to kill the Messiah. And when you think about that, Herod’s not just concerned.

He’s not just bothered by a threat to his throne. Herod accepts the fact that this is the anointed one sent by God who’s been promised for hundreds of years. He doesn’t care.

He wants to kill him anyway. I’ve missed that for a lot of years. I just thought Herod was bothered by threats.

Here you realize Herod knows this is the Messiah of God, and still, it doesn’t matter to him. He wants him eliminated. And so they consulted Micah 5.

2 from the Old Testament. And in Micah chapter 5, this verse they quoted is part of a wider passage that foretells the coming of the Messiah. So even there, they’re going back to a passage about the Messiah, saying that he would be born in Bethlehem.

Herod is willing to kill the Messiah. Herod is willing to side against God, if that’s what it means for him to keep power. And so he acts like he wants to worship Jesus, but his actions show that he wasn’t about worshiping Jesus, And he wasn’t willing to let any Messiah or anybody stand between him and power.

So we see that instead of wanting to worship him, Herod sought Jesus for his own selfish motives. See, the wise men sought him so that they could worship him, give him the worship that he deserved as the Messiah. Herod sought him for his own selfish motives.

We see this in verses 7 and 8. Then Herod, when he had secretly called the wise men, he called them back in, 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.

Now again, I think that Jesus had been born about 40 days before this. That’s not doctrine. That’s my opinion based on my study.

You research that for yourself. But apparently they told him when they had seen the star. It doesn’t record for us exactly what they said.

And Herod later on says, you know what, just to be on the safe side, kill every boy under two. Okay. Not a nice guy, Herod.

He calls him back. He wants to know what time the star had appeared. He asked them questions about Jesus, trying to figure out where Jesus would be.

He didn’t want to worship Jesus. He wanted to eliminate Jesus as a threat. And later on in chapter 2, you can read that for yourself.

When he can’t pinpoint Jesus’ exact location, he says, all right, just kill everybody. And now, by the way, some skeptics have said, surely if there was this slaughter going on, surely there’d be some record of it in history. And so that demonstrates that the gospel accounts are not trustworthy because we don’t see that in history.

Bethlehem was not a big community. There wouldn’t have been that many children. There wouldn’t have been that many children under the age of two, besides which the history of humanity is a pretty brutal story.

And Herod was pretty brutal himself. So the idea of Herod coming in and killing maybe a dozen or less children probably wouldn’t have even made the headlines if they’d had newspapers back then. So that to me doesn’t say anything about the trustworthiness of the Gospels.

But it does tell us that Herod was a pretty brutal man that he’d just say, go kill all the babies, I don’t care. Because I’d rather kill some innocent ones than let the one I’m looking for go free. And so he’s called the wise men.

He said, let me know where he is so that I can come and worship him. But, you know, they were not going to be dissuaded from seeking Jesus. Even a crazed tyrant like Herod wasn’t going to keep them from seeking Jesus so they could worship him.

And so the wise men, what we see in the remainder of this passage, is that the wise men did not stop seeking Jesus until they had found him and worshipped him. That’s what they had set out to do. And there was nothing that was going to keep them from doing what they had set out to do, to worship him.

Let’s look at verses 9 through 12. It says, When they heard the king, they departed, and behold, the star which they had seen in the east went before them until it came and stood over where the young child was. And when they saw the star, they rejoiced.

They rejoiced with exceeding great joy. They celebrated. And when they had come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down and worshipped 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. And by the way, we don’t know how many wise men there were.

People have assumed throughout history that there were three because there were three gifts, but there could have been two, there could have been 17. We don’t know. We just know that there were some wise men.

So the star, after they left Jerusalem, led them to Bethlehem. It led them to Jesus, and they celebrated when they found him. That was the whole purpose of their quest, was to find him and to worship him.

And so when they got to, they celebrated. They were so excited. They went into the house to bring him gifts and to worship him.

And their actions, I think their actions give us a great example of what worship is supposed to be like, of the commitment that ought to be involved when we worship the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, God deserves to be worshipped without reservations. God deserves to be worshipped without reservations. What does it mean to be without reservations?

They didn’t hold anything back. They did whatever it took. They sacrificed whatever was necessary for them to be able to worship God in the way that he deserved.

There were no reservations. There was no point in the story that I can see where they said, we’ll go worship him unless it becomes inconvenient, unless the king is a total psycho, unless the journey’s hard, unless it’s expensive. I see people who were committed to go and worship the Lord Jesus Christ, whatever it took.

These wise men went through a lot to worship him. Just to give you a few thoughts about what they went through, we can see their commitment to worship in their sacrifice of time and effort to go and worship Jesus. Such a long journey.

I had to look up and see where, because most historians think that they were Persians. They were from the Persian court. I said, okay, where was the capital of the Persian Empire at this time?

And it’s a name that starts with a C and a T and an S, and I can’t pronounce it. I’m not even going to try. But I then went to Google Maps and tried to figure out how far it was from there to Bethlehem.

And it was just a little over 700 miles, a little over 700-mile journey. So I did some research, said what was the average speed that a caravan at that time could travel? They said 15 to 20 miles a day, roughly 18 on average.

So I said, okay, I’m going to divide the number of miles by the number that the caravan can travel. Keep in mind, 700 miles, I don’t care how quickly you travel it, it’s a long journey. Divided those things out and came to 39.

8 days, right at 40 days. Now, a lot of Bible scholars think that Mary and Joseph and Jesus would have stayed in Bethlehem until after her 40 days ritual of purification required under the Old Testament law, when they would have made a quick day trip from Bethlehem up to Jerusalem to the temple. And I thought, well, that can’t be coincidence that they were still there at 40 days, and the wise men’s journey would have taken them about 40 days.

That’s why I say I think it was about 40 days. I could be wrong in that. So it was probably around a 40-day journey, probably 40 days after Jesus was born.

But I can’t think of anything that I would walk 40 days to go see. I don’t like to wait that long. I don’t like to walk that long.

It’s just not worth it. I mean, we walk into a restaurant and they say, oh, there’s going to be a five-minute wait. Why?

There’s another one right across the parking lot. I don’t wait to eat. I realize how bad that makes me sound right now.

I can’t imagine waiting 40 days, traveling 40 days to go see something. That’s how committed they were to going and finding Jesus. It was a significant investment of time and effort to go and worship Jesus.

We can see their commitment to worship him in their sacrifice of resources when they brought these expensive gifts to Jesus that reflected his status. And each of these gifts means something when you think about how they were used in the ancient world, you would give gold as an offering as a tribute to a king. Jesus was the king of the Jews in his role as Messiah.

And so they brought him gold that reflected his status as a king. They brought him frankincense, which is an incense. It was an offering that was burned and smoked and given as an offering to a god.

And so by bringing him frankincense, I believe whether they understood it or not, They were bringing him gifts that were fit for a God, because Jesus Christ is God in human flesh. And when they brought him myrrh, kind of an odd gift for a baby. Myrrh is something that they would use in burial preparations, in embalming somebody.

They didn’t have the embalming fluids, the formaldehyde, the things like that that we have today. They would use spices to prepare the body for burial. And I don’t think they even understood what they were bringing. I think they understood they were bringing expensive things for the king of the Jews, but I think God in his providence and in his foresight was causing them already to recognize who he was going to be.

Not only a king, but also God in human flesh and a sacrifice for sins who would die on the cross. Those gifts are incredibly meaningful and reflect his status when you think about how they were used in the ancient world. And they would have cost the wise men quite a bit of money as well provide those things to Jesus.

So they were willing to sacrifice their resources to worship him as he deserved. And we can see their commitment to worship Jesus and the reaction of their hearts toward him in verses 10 and 11. When they even got near the house, they were overjoyed.

They stopped and celebrated just at the side of the house. And when they came into his presence, they were so overjoyed that they fell on their faces and worshiped him. Think about this.

These were advisors to the Shah of Persia, and they were bowing before what from the world’s perspective looked like a carpenter’s son. And I wouldn’t think that these advisors to the king, to the emperor, to the Shah, whatever his title was, that they would have bowed before anybody but their king, and yet they fell all the way on their faces before Jesus. They fell and worshipped him.

So I think these men are a tremendous example of what our worship ought to be like. I’m not saying you have to bring gold and frankincense and myrrh to church. I’m not saying you need to find a church 700 miles away and walk there.

But I’m telling you, our worship of God, God deserves us to be willing to give our time and our effort and our resources and put our heart into it. Whether it’s convenient for us or not, whether it fits with our plans or not, God deserves for us to go all in when it comes to worship and worship Him without reservations, without holding anything back. God deserves infinite worship.

Even if God had never done anything for us, God deserves our worship just by virtue of who He is. God is the strongest. God is the mightiest. God is the wisest. God is the most merciful. God is the most holy and righteous.

God, you take all of the positive attributes we can think of and God is all of those things to an infinite degree. He deserves all the worship, all the glory we could ever give Him. Even if He had never done a thing for us, He would still be deserving of worship.

But how much more do we have to worship Him for because He was loving enough and gracious enough to send us a Messiah in the first place? God could have looked at us in our sin and our sin that separates us from Him. And God could have looked at us and said, you know what, enjoy that sin.

You don’t want me, that’s fine. You don’t have to have me. And God could have written us off, and God could have just consigned us to an eternity without him in the fires of hell.

God could have done all of that and would have been completely justified in doing so because our sin separates us from him. And yet God is loving enough. He doesn’t offer salvation because we’re good, because we deserve it.

He offers salvation because he is loving, because he is gracious, because he is kind, and because he was kind enough. He sent a Messiah to come and be the perfect sacrifice for us, to come and bear the weight and the responsibility of our sins on the cross, to shed his blood, to take all the punishment that we deserve, to pay all the penalty that we owed so that we could be forgiven and so that we could be reconciled to God. That’s why he sent a Messiah in the first place.

Now, even if God had never done anything for us, he would still deserve all the worship we could give him. But he deserves so much more because o