Good News of Great Joy: Matthew 2:1-12
I hope you all had a memorable Christmas celebration with your loved ones. Many of my childhood memories of Christmas past are about gifts I received – like that special bicycle or the electric bass guitar and very large amplifier I still can’t believe my parents ever allowed in our tiny house! As I grew older, the best moments were more about the gifts given and the excitement of their opening, especially by my children when they were little. With time, those memories have become remembrances of shared joy more than the exchange of gifts.
I now understand my parents a little better. Long before I had any money of my own, they would give me a few dollars and say “get us something for you to give us on Christmas morning.” I can remember slipping away from them at the store to shop and finally ending up with something like another bottle of Old Spice for my dad and some dust-collecting figurine for my mom. I mostly remember how thrilled they seemed to be to open it in front of me. I now know they were busy watching me watching them.
All of this reminds me of C.S. Lewis’ discussion of faith in his masterwork Mere Christianity. In it he tells the story of the child who received sixpence from his dad so he could do what I described and buy him a birthday present. Lewis makes the point that the father is pleased by the present he receives but in no way thinks he is sixpence better off than before he received the gift. It was never about the gift but more so about the child.
Our giving of gifts on Christmas goes back to the wise men from Matthew Chapter two. It’s a familiar story we all love to remember incorrectly. You know - they weren’t kings, and we don’t know their names and there might or might not have been three of them. We only know where they are generally from, and can only make an educated guess about how they actually knew about Jesus by examining the stars.
With all of that mystery and lack of information, why study them in the first place? Well, apart from the fact that they are in the Bible, their lives teach us much about the glory of God and our best response to His incarnation. It helps if we take a close look at the four gifts they presented to Jesus.
READ MATTHEW 2:1-12
The main message of this timeless story is the overwhelming value of Jesus, God’s gift to us. His incarnation was God’s fulfillment of His promise to Abraham that in him, all of the families of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12:3.) His love extends to all people, and the heavens declare His glory. The beautiful 19th Psalm begins by saying “the heavens declare His glory” as surely today as they did that Christmas, and it ends with wisdom for then and today:
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight,
O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.—Psalm 19:14
What did you give Jesus for Christmas this year? Like the magi’s first gift…
BIG IDEA: What God really wants is our heart. It’s the only thing we own.
Those other precious things we lay at his feet were gifts, attributes, skills, talents and material blessing that were His to begin with. He loves that we are good stewards of those things, but when He receives them from us, He is sixpence none the richer. What He really wants is our heart.
Discussion questions:
I now understand my parents a little better. Long before I had any money of my own, they would give me a few dollars and say “get us something for you to give us on Christmas morning.” I can remember slipping away from them at the store to shop and finally ending up with something like another bottle of Old Spice for my dad and some dust-collecting figurine for my mom. I mostly remember how thrilled they seemed to be to open it in front of me. I now know they were busy watching me watching them.
All of this reminds me of C.S. Lewis’ discussion of faith in his masterwork Mere Christianity. In it he tells the story of the child who received sixpence from his dad so he could do what I described and buy him a birthday present. Lewis makes the point that the father is pleased by the present he receives but in no way thinks he is sixpence better off than before he received the gift. It was never about the gift but more so about the child.
Our giving of gifts on Christmas goes back to the wise men from Matthew Chapter two. It’s a familiar story we all love to remember incorrectly. You know - they weren’t kings, and we don’t know their names and there might or might not have been three of them. We only know where they are generally from, and can only make an educated guess about how they actually knew about Jesus by examining the stars.
With all of that mystery and lack of information, why study them in the first place? Well, apart from the fact that they are in the Bible, their lives teach us much about the glory of God and our best response to His incarnation. It helps if we take a close look at the four gifts they presented to Jesus.
READ MATTHEW 2:1-12
The main message of this timeless story is the overwhelming value of Jesus, God’s gift to us. His incarnation was God’s fulfillment of His promise to Abraham that in him, all of the families of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12:3.) His love extends to all people, and the heavens declare His glory. The beautiful 19th Psalm begins by saying “the heavens declare His glory” as surely today as they did that Christmas, and it ends with wisdom for then and today:
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight,
O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.—Psalm 19:14
What did you give Jesus for Christmas this year? Like the magi’s first gift…
BIG IDEA: What God really wants is our heart. It’s the only thing we own.
Those other precious things we lay at his feet were gifts, attributes, skills, talents and material blessing that were His to begin with. He loves that we are good stewards of those things, but when He receives them from us, He is sixpence none the richer. What He really wants is our heart.
Discussion questions:
- How do we give God our whole heart? What does it mean to withhold some of it?
- Read all of Psalm 19. How does our response to creation lead us to the final verse?
- Can the meditations of our hearts point to idolatry? How should we deal with that?
- Read Hebrews 13:15-16. What is a sacrifice of praise? Is this also related to the gifts we give to the Lord?
Posted in Sermon Notes