The Gift
A Gift Worth Giving
Matthew 2:1-12
INTRODUCTION:
Please turn with me to Matthew, Chapter 2 for the reading of the story. It’s one that we’ve read and heard hundreds of time. And yet, true to the, not only to the story of the spirit of Christmas, but to the tradition that I think we’ve had at Skyline for the last few years, these messages will be very simple.
The beauty of Christmas is that it’s a profound message, yet so simply given.
We will seek to take the obvious and then pull truths for daily living out of it.
Matt 2:1-12
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.
NIV
The wise men started it all. When I talk about starting it all, I’m talking about gifts. Giving gifts, receiving gifts.
their gift was personally given.
These were wealthy people.
They were from another country. In fact, they were from Iraq.
They could have sent the gift.
they were on a mission and they personally wanted to bring these gifts to the Christ child.
When you read this story, the personal part kind of pops out at you. Look at verse 2, "We saw His star in the East and have come to worship Him." Look at verse 9, "They went their way." Look at verse 10, "And when they saw the star, they rejoiced." Verse 11, "They came into the house. Opening their treasures, they fell down and worshiped Him. Opening their treasures they presented to Him gifts." It personally was given.
The second thing I notice is that it was properly given. More than just gold, Frankincense and Myrrh. But it was a gift with worship and adoration and glory, and honor and praise to Jesus.
T.S.
Jon Maxwell noted that there are
COMPARE: THREE KINDS OF GIFTS THAT PEOPLE GIVE AT CHRISTMAS TIME.
1 -- THE GIFT FOR A GIFT, GIFT.
Every one of us has done this before. It’s the gift for a gift, gift. And, basically, what the gift for a gift, gift is that we get a gift from somebody and so we kind of figure out how much it was and so we go down to the May Company or somewhere and we buy a gift of about the same kind of a price and it’s a gift for a gift, gift. And every one of us has given a gift for a gift, gift, gift.
Now, the characteristic about a gift for a gift, gift, gift is, this person that does this keeps a long mental picture of what that value of that gift was. Have you ever heard anybody say, "Oh, yeah. I got them something nice and they didn’t get me anything in return." They keep long scores. This approach feeds the cash registers of our department stores.
"Oh, my goodness we’ve got to get a gift because they gave me a gift and I wonder how much it costs. And I hope this is about the same cost."
Kind of a tit for a tat.
The same way with Christmas cards, by the way. Every time you get a late Christmas card, it’s probably because the person that you got the late Christmas card just didn’t expect you to Sunday them a card.
Nothing’s worse then getting a Christmas card on Christmas Eve from somebody that wasn’t on your list. And, "Oh, my goodness. What do I do?" It happens every year. We do it. It’s called a gift for a gift, gift. And we’ve all done that.
2 -- A GIFT FOR A FAVOR GIFT.
What a person is that gives this gift is they don’t expect a gift in return, they just give you a gift and boy, by giving you that gift they expect you to do some nice things for them.
This is the kind of person that loves to keep score. They love to have I.O.U.s out.
Every year, companies do that. You know, at the end of the year they give the employees a ham or a turkey, or a cash bonus or something and they don’t expect the employee to turn around and give them a turkey in advance, although wouldn’t that be funny. Now, they don’t do that. But they give you the gift and, basically, they give you the gift and they pretty much say, "Okay, I don’t expect a gift back but I do expect you to well, keep your mouth shut, would you? Be a good employee, be nice, be positive. Be smart."
We’ve given gifts before and we didn’t really expect to get back but, boy, we just did expect to have some kind of a little favor down the road sometime somewhere.
T.s. Well, there’s another kind of gift and it’s a third gift I want to talk to you about today. It’s a gift that the wise men teach me.
3 -- THE GRACE GIFT.
The best way I can describe a grace gift is, it’s unrepayable. You can’t pay back a grace gift.
Now, I take that term, obviously, from God through his son, Jesus Christ, who loves us so much he gives us eternal life which is a gift of God and it’s a grace gift and we don’t work for it and we can’t work for it and we could never, ever, repay it. And so when we think of God, we think of grace and we say, "There’s no way I could ever repay."
Transplant
Let me mention a couple of the ways to give a grace gift and a couple things about it. When I think of a grace gift:
A -- It’s impossible to measure the cost of this gift.
Examples:
You see, this whole thing, I’m here to tell you, folks, I don’t know what we’ve done with Christmas, but we need to turn this thing around. We need to quit running down to the department store every time we think of somebody. We need to begin to pass on some grace gifts that will really last. Let me tell you something else about these grace gifts.
B -- The impact of a grace gift lasts
C -- The uniqueness of a grace gift is that it is personal in nature.
1) Togetherness gift.
2) Sometimes it’s not only throught maybe being together, but sometimes it’s a service gift.
The greatest gifts I’ve ever received are not gifts that would have a price tag on them. They’re those kinds of gifts.
CONTRAST: THE WISE MEN TEACH ME 4 THINGS ABOUT GIVING.
1. GIVE A GRACE GIFT
2. GIVE AN UNEXPECTED GIFT TO SOMEONE.
The wise men teach me to give an unexpected gift to someone. You see, no one’s going to expect a wise man to give this gift. They’re not Jews. They have nothing in this. All they have done is heard about -- they’ve been studying the skies. I mean, you talk about a surprise. When the wise men came to Jesus, I mean, you would expect; in fact, when they stopped at Herod’s house, you’d think that Herod would go down to see Jesus. No. Totally unexpected, this visit of the wise men. Nobody would have ever said that three Maji would come and work their way, literally, weeks and months to the place where Jesus was born to bring -- no one expected that.
I’m here to tell you that the best gifts are unexpected gifts. There’s been somebody that’s done something for you in your life and maybe it’s been way back. You know what you need to do? You need to think about it and you need this year; in fact, I have a little place in there for you to put a name, you need to think of somebody and you need to say, "This year I’m going to do something for somebody that it’s going to come clear out of the blue. I mean, they’re not going to expect anything from me. And when they get it it’s just going to be a grace gift. And I mean, it’s just going to be me doing something for somebody and I expect nothing in return and they wouldn’t never expect me to give to them."
So the best gift that you ever received and some of the best gifts I ever received, were those unexpected gifts. Let me give you another one.
3 . GIVE A GIFT WITH GENUINE JOY.
When they gave this gift, they did it with such joy. I mean, they rejoiced when they saw the star. They rejoiced when they saw Mary. This gift was burning, boy. They could hardly wait to give it to the source to which they were to present it to.
Richard Foster is one of my favorite writers and I read this out of one of his books. Listen carefully. "Giving with a glad and generous heart has a way of routing out the tough old miser within us. Even the poor need to know that they can give. Just the very act of letting go of money or some other treasure does something within us. That something is it destroys the demon, greed." Isn’t that true? I had one guy pray, "God, you can have anything that you can pry out of my hands."
They gave with genuine joy.
4. GIVE A GIFT THAT WOULD LAST.
The gift that they gave that year. That story’s been told now for two thousand years. People still know the gift that the wise men gave. Give a gift that will last. And when I talk about a gift that will last, again, you can’t go down and buy one of those gifts. Those gifts wear out. They break, they get lost.
Let me say one more thing about giving before I wrap this thing up. The last thing I would say about gifts is:
CONCLUSION
