Worship With The Wise Guys
Holiday Food Tips:
I hate this time of year. Not for its crass commercialism and forced frivolity, but because it's the season when the food police come out with their wagging fingers and annual tips on how to get through the holidays without gaining 10 pounds.
You can't pick up a magazine without finding a list of holiday eating do's and don'ts. Eliminate second helpings, high-calorie sauces and cookies made with butter, they say. Fill up on vegetable sticks, they say.
Good grief. Is your favorite childhood memory of Christmas a carrot stick? I didn't think so. Isn't mine, either. A carrot was something you left for Rudolph.
I have my own list of tips for holiday eating. I assure you, if you follow them, you'll be fat and happy. So what if you don't make it to New Year's? Your pants won't fit anymore, anyway.
1. About those carrot sticks. Avoid them. Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet table knows nothing of the Christmas spirit. In fact, if you see carrots, leave immediately.
2. If something comes with gravy, use it. That's the whole point of gravy. Gravy does not stand alone. Pour it on. Make a volcano out of your mashed potatoes. Fill it with gravy. Eat the volcano. Repeat.
3. As for mashed potatoes, always ask if they're made with skim milk or whole milk. If it's skim, pass. Why bother? It's like buying a sports car with an automatic transmission.
4. Do not have a snack before going to a party in an effort to control your eating. The whole point of going to a Christmas party is to eat other people's food for free. Lots of it. Hello? Remember college?
5. Under no circumstances should you exercise between now and New Year's. You can do that in January when you have nothing else to do. This is the time for long naps, which you'll need after circling the buffet table while carrying a 10-pound plate of food and that vat of eggnog.
6. If you come across something really good at a buffet table, like frosted Christmas cookies in the shape and size of Santa, position yourself near them and don't budge. Have as many as you can before becoming the center of attention. They're like a beautiful pair of shoes. You can't leave them behind. You're not going to see them again.
7. Same for pies. Apple. Pumpkin. Mincemeat. Have a slice of each. Or, if you don't like mincemeat, have two apples and one pumpkin. Always have three. When else do you get to have more than one dessert? Labour Day?
8. Did someone mention fruitcake? Granted, it's loaded with the mandatory celebratory calories, but avoid it at all cost. I mean, have some standards, mate.
9. And one final tip: If you don't feel terrible when you leave the party or get up from the table, you haven't been paying attention. Reread tips. Start over. But hurry! Cookieless January is just around the corner.
Matthew 2:1 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem [2] and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him." [3] When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. [4] When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born. [5] "In Bethlehem in Judea," they replied, "for this is what the prophet has written:
[6] " `But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.' "
[7] Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. [8] He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him." [9] After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. [10] When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. [11] On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. [12] And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
I have been wrestling with this message all week long. There have been times when I have been tempted to find something to preach about that would bring more confidence to me as I preach today. I have made a promise to the Lord since being here in Fredericton. I pray and ask Him for scripture that would contain the essence of the message that He would like to communicate and then I labor with the text that He gives. I have promised that, given the scripture that I feel is from Him, I will preach from it even if I do it without any confidence in myself. There are times when I have confidence in my preparation and other times when I stand with only the belief that this is what I am to bring as a message and then I leave the rest in His capable hands. I try not to take myself too seriously and I try to preach with a clear heart. Meaning that no one in particular comes to mind when I develop a message. I never feel that I use the pulpit as a method of propagating my own agenda but God’s agenda for His people. You are His people and I believe that He wishes to speak to you today. I am well spoken to in the process of preparation. I am convicted always by the message that I bring for it is God’s truth for me as well.
I have no desire to communicate information for knowledge sake just truth that we all can apply personally. If it is not easily applied then I choose to leave it to people to discover through a book or personal study of some sort or another. As a pastor I have a passion to see people embrace God’s truth and practice it in their daily lives. In this I believe that He is most mightily honored and worshipped. Our emotions become worship when, in response to a truth about God, we give something back to God. -- Tim Keller, Leadership, Vol. 15, no. 2. The diligent personal practice of truth thrills him more than any hymn or chorus that has ever been written and then sung.
Romans 12:1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship. [2] Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.
The scripture and the sermon today bring me to a single emphasis. We will look at that as it is illustrated in the lives of these sojourning, star-guided sages seeking the Savior. They had a simple agenda. They had come over many months and miles merely to worship the King. Nothing more and nothing less. In this quest they set for us direction that will help each one of us today to experience Him fully and to truly celebrate the Christmas season. Not with hearts half spent but full to overflowing. Let’s each one open our hearts and hear the Spirit of God as He speaks beyond the particular words and thoughts to our own souls where we desire to know Him transformationally.
1) They were not the prime candidates. There should have been wise men or wealthy men or worshipping men or watching men closer to home then these “men from the east”. Surely some others might have had the ability to anticipate the birth of the promised Messiah and the desire to locate Him and to worship as well.
a) They did not have the benefit of proximity (from the east). I remember meeting an elderly gentleman in Mexico who walked over 20 miles with his young grandson to go to church on Sundays. It was a whole day event for them. They came for one reason – to worship. If that is what a person comes for then that is what they ought to do.
b) They did not have the benefit of prophecy (Where is the one born . . .) Sometimes knowledge seems to create blindness. What is so readily accessible to people strips away their excuse for not finding Christ. I believe largely that people in North America are without excuse for their failure to find Him. I think that God places a hunger in the hearts of His creation to know Him. At some point in a person’s life they begin to search that out. Even though this is a pagan country by it’s own declaration – we are not a Christian nation – if there ever were such a thing. - Nevertheless, if you want to find Christ – you can. Jesus said “let Him who has ears to hear – hear.”
c) They did not have the benefit of position or politics. (Herod was in control – he called his religious leaders and wise men together) They had to cross political borders to search for the Christ and perhaps imperiled themselves to do so. They also undoubtedly had religious beliefs of their own and still they sought out the Christ. They never made it to the manger but they sought the newborn Christ.
2) Their visit was a potential catastrophe for the Christ child. Herod was using their desire to worship Christ as a way to alter God’s plans for the nation according to his own selfishness.
a) Insecure ruler. His insecurities kept him from the same desire as the visiting wise men. He could not afford to consider embracing the promised Messiah, he was not a Jew himself, merely a puppet king. Somehow the existence of this baby brought forth all of his fears of losing something that he felt he possessed. He could not merely let these men go on their way to worship, he had to eliminate this one who could threaten his monarchy.
I wonder how many people today are kept from truly worshipping the Christ child for similar insecurities. We are afraid to let him be the King that he was meant to be and the little despot of our hearts tries to preserve the facade of his petty pretentious kingdom. We hold onto things that we have no claim to.
q Prosperity - material blessings
q Plans for the future
q Pride in ourselves
We really have no hold on these things because they come and go so quickly. They can vanish in a moment. God doesn’t want your possessions, or your plans. He wants to lift you up if you’ll bow before Him.
The Christ did not come into this world to take control of kingdoms. He turned his back on that temptation in the wilderness. He does want you though and your love and devotion to Him. He’ll never wrestle it from you but he will receive it as you give freely to Him.
b) Intense Worshippers. They were as focused on their objective as Herod was on his own. So much so that they were blind to Herod’s true motives. I experience that same intensity most every week in our services. I don’t see anything that happens around here and I thank the Lord for that degree of blindness. I don’t notice who gets up and leaves. I don’t know who pays attention and who doesn’t.
When we are truly “zoned in” on Christ we become blind to the things that would distract us from Him. I see the world that I live in from a spiritual perspective. With all my heart I am convinced that the physical world is the dream world and that the unseen, eternal world is what is really at stake.
2) They came into the presence of Christ. What happened after that was automatic. I see in the lives of these worshippers some characteristics that would enhance our own ability
a) They had a great sensitivity to the spiritual side of life. Christmas is when God came down the stairs of heaven with a baby in His arms.
n R. Eugene Sterner in Vital Christianity (Dec 14, 1975). Christianity Today, Vol. 34, no. 18.
An ordinary night with ordinary sheep and ordinary shepherds. And were it not for a God who loves to hook an "extra" on the front of the ordinary, the night would have gone unnoticed. The sheep would have been forgotten, and the shepherds would have slept the night away.
But God dances amidst the common. And that night he did a waltz. The black sky exploded with brightness. ... Sheep that had been silent became a chorus of curiosity. One minute the shepherd was dead asleep, the next he was rubbing his eyes and staring into the face of an alien.
The night was ordinary no more.
The angel came in the night because that is when lights are best seen and that is when they are most needed. God comes into the common for the same reason.
n Max Lucado in The Applause of Heaven. Christianity Today, Vol. 41, no. 14.
b) They had a clear understanding of who the child was.
Worship is not just personal introspection, or we would worship our feelings. Worship is not even a warm glow, or we would worship that. We worship One outside ourselves. We concentrate on him, we praise him, we adore him, we hear his Word for he is announcing it to us. We listen in holy awe to the word of God, for it is a part of that "all" of Scripture which is given by the outbreathing of God and is personally necessary for "my" correction and "my" instruction in righteousness.
n Roger Palms in Living Under the Smile of God. Christianity Today, Vol. 34, no. 14.
c) They honored Him as royalty. (bowed down)
d) They loved Him as God. You cannot worship God effectively until you have wrestled intensely with the first and greatest commandment. We must worship both in Spirit and Truth. With all the facts yes – always but we cannot circumvent the heart. That notion makes no more sense to God than it would the spouse who was loved with all the head and a non feeling heart of the spouse. How does a person engage their heart in their faith?
i) Identify and get rid of the de-sensitizers. There are existing conditions, attitudes, sin whatever that somehow are robbing us of sensitivity. Much as exposure to violence makes us insensitive to it, so there are factors, past and present that afffect our ability to totally experience God.
ii) Saturate your head with the study of spiritual knowledge and pursuits. We have knowledge about the things that stir passion within us. Read.
iii) Sometimes we are guarded against our own emotions because
o We are worried about embarrassing ourselves
o We have experienced great hurt in the past
o We fear relinquishing control and we see it as a loss of control
o We see it as a sign of weakness
o We don’t believe it is necessary part of our experience.
There comes a time in our spiritual experience when we need to trust ourselves totally to God and let Him do with us what He wills in every circumstance.
iv) Tell God about the things that have created pain and frustration in your life and give them to Him. Many years ago I decided to do that very thing. I was fed up with empty words and pharisaical phrases. In my search for new meaning, I came across this brief description of prayer, which I set on my desk and carried in the front of my Bible for years. I cannot locate the book from which it was taken, but I do know the author, a seventeenth- century Roman Catholic Frenchman named Francois Fenelon. Although written centuries ago, it has an undeniable ring of relevance:
Tell God all that is in your heart, as one unloads one's heart, its pleasures and its pains, to a dear friend. Tell Him your troubles, that He may comfort you; tell Him your joys, that He may sober them; tell Him your longings, that He may purify them; tell Him your dislikes, that He may help you to conquer them, talk to Him of your temptations, that He may shield you from them; show Him the wounds of your heart, that He may heal them; lay bare your indifference to good, your depraved tastes for evil, your instability. Tell Him how self- love makes you unjust to others, how vanity tempts you to be insincere, how pride disguises you to yourself and to others.
If you thus pour out all your weaknesses, needs, troubles, there will be no lack of what to say. You will never exhaust the subject. It is continually being renewed. People who have no secrets from each other never want for subjects of conversation. They do not weigh their words, for there is nothing to be held back, neither do they seek for something to say. They talk out of the abundance of the heart, without consideration they say just what they think. Blessed are they who attain to such familiar, unreserved intercourse with God.
-- Strengthening Your Grip, Charles Swindoll
e) They brought gifts. One writer notes that:
Worship in our time has been captured by the tourist mindset. Worship is understood as a visit to an attractive site to be made when we have adequate leisure. For some it is a weekly jaunt to church. For others, occasional visits to special services. Some, with a bent for Christian entertainment and sacred diversion, plan their lives around special events like retreats, rallies and conferences. We go to see a new personality, to hear a new truth, to get a new experience and so, somehow, expand our otherwise humdrum lives. We'll try anything -- until something else comes along.
A vital part of worship is giving. We are to respond to the needs of the church and God's people in a loving, sacrificial manner. Leslie B. Flynn illustrated this kind of personal giving in his book Worship. He wrote, "A man was packing a shipment of food contributed by a school for the poor people of Appalachia. He was separating beans from powdered milk, and canned vegetables from canned meats. Reaching into a box filled with various cans, he pulled out a little brown paper sack. Apparently one of the pupils had brought something different from the items on the suggested list. Out of the paper bag fell a peanut butter sandwich, an apple, and a cookie. Crayoned in large letters was a little girl's name, 'Christy -- Room 104'. She had given up her lunch for some hungry person."
Our emotions become worship when, in response to a truth about God, we give something back to God.
Tim Keller, Leadership, Vol. 15, no. 2.
f) They remained sensitive to God’s direction beyond this point. “being warned in a dream . . .” What you do when you leave this place is as vital as what you do when you are in this place. You cannot leave God as a casual acquaintance that you meet, failing to remember any of the particulars about Him.
In this poem written some 15 centuries ago, Augustine tried to capture the mystery of the Incarnation:
Maker of the sun,
He is made under the sun.
In the Father he remains,
From his mother he goes forth.
Creator of heaven and earth,
He was born on earth under heaven.
Unspeakably wise,
He is wisely speechless.
Filling the world,
He lies in a manger.
Ruler of the stars,
He nurses at his mother's bosom.
He is both great in the nature of God,
and small in the form of a servant.
n Leadership, Vol. 8, no. 4.
We never allow ourselves the sin of losing track of time. Chuck from "Castaway" (Tom Hanks)