“What Should I Give the King?”
Text: Matthew 2:1-11
I. Welcome
II. Introduction
I am – and I hope you are too – doubly blessed this morning. Not only is this my favorite day of the entire year – Christmas Day – a day of Santa Claus’ presents, stockings, other gifts and time with family, it is also my favorite day of the week – the Lord’s Day. Most importantly, it is the first day of the week when we assemble to worship our Creator and the giver of every good and perfect gift – especially to honor Him for the gift of His Son. And this is our primary purpose for being here this morning. But, I’m also a child when it comes to Christmas and I love giving and opening gifts. So, like so many of you, I’m a little anxious to get back to a scene such as this – a Christmas tree and presents. Since I knew our minds would be on gifts this morning, I chose for our text the account of the wise men bringing gifts to the baby born King of the Jews. While there are many unknowns about these men from the East – their exact identity and number, Jesus is estimated to be between six months and two years of age when they visited Him. They came to worship the Child and to bring gifts suitable for royalty. We come this morning to worship not the baby Jesus but the risen King of Kings. But what gifts should we bring this King? That is the question I’d like for us to examine for the next few minutes – “What should I give the King?” Isn’t this the same dilemma we often face in gift giving: What to get the person who seems to have everything? I hope you’ll open your Bibles as we study together and then I plead with you to keep on searching your Bibles this week to make sure I’ve told you the truth.
III. Lesson
We must first understand that God doesn’t need anything from us. Notice Psalm 50:12 – “If I were hungry, I would not tell you;
For the world is Mine, and all its fullness.” The apostle Paul made it even clearer as he preached to the men of Athens in Acts 17:24-25: “God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things.” Yet God desires certain things from His creation and these are the gifts we want to talk about this morning. First of all, God desires us to be holy. Sin destroyed the intimacy between God and man in the Garden of Eden but God continued to call men to righteousness as He did Noah and Abraham. As we begin reading the book of Exodus, we are introduced to the concept of holiness and then Leviticus prescribes practical ways to live in holiness. Notice the words of Leviticus 20:26 – And you shall be holy to Me, for I the LORD am holy, and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be Mine. To be holy is to be separated and dedicated for service to God. While holiness was expected of the Israelites, it is also desired in us. The apostle Paul quoted from Isaiah to the church at Corinth in 2 Corinthians 6:17 – “Come out from among them and be separate,” says the Lord. Church, that’s the clarion call we need to hear today! As Peter wrote fellow Christians, he penned these words in 1 Peter 1:13-16 – Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy.” We are to be different from the world about us! Peter goes on in the next chapter to describe the church as a holy priesthood and a holy nation. Are you and I holy? Not perfect in the sense of sinless but set apart for God’s service. That’s what God desires from us – for us to be holy! We wrap this gift with a warning from Hebrews 12:14 – Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord. Secondly, God desires us to be penitent. When we sin, we damage our holiness and need to be reconciled back to God. But that requires a penitent attitude. For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death. (2 Corinthians 7:10) And since we are prone to sin daily, penitence needs to be part of our Christian attitude. The 51st psalm is a beautiful description of this attitude – especially verse 17:
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,
A broken and a contrite heart—
These, O God, You will not despise.
It is this attitude that Jesus describes as He begins the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:3 – “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
We must always be aware of our spiritual poverty without the grace of God. We should be thankful for each additional breath we are allowed to take because it gives us additional opportunities for penitence. Let’s take heed to 2 Peter 3:9 – The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. God desires us to be penitent. I hope you’ve noticed that none of these gifts costs us anything monetarily, just humility – and that is a third gift God desires from us. God wants us to be humble. While there are many OT passages that bring this out, I especially like the wording of Psalm 149:4 – For the LORD takes pleasure in His people;
He will beautify the humble with salvation.
Again, this was one of the characteristics of kingdom citizenship as Jesus described them in the Sermon on the Mount – Matthew 5:5 – “Blessed are the meek,
For they shall inherit the earth.”
God wants us to be humble or meek or gentle people. Humility quite naturally translates into the action of serving. Jesus taught that lesson well to His disciples in John 13 when He washed their feet. Humility is an attitude that puts the interests and needs of others above our own. I believe it is one of the most counter-culture attitudes Christians must have in today’s society. Notice how the apostle Paul describes it in Philippians 2:3 – Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. And, just in case anyone thought this was an optional frame of mind, Paul further explains by way of example in verse 5ff: Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Now what possible excuse can we have for refusing to be humble as God desires? Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up. (James 4:10) God wants His children to be humble. Fourthly, God wants us to be sacrificial. Not too long ago, I preached on giving and I know that God expects us to give back to Him from the material blessings we enjoy and that includes sacrificial giving. Perhaps one of the greatest examples of that type of giving is found in 2 Corinthians 8:1-4 where the churches of Macedonia gave liberally out of their deep poverty. Let’s read these verses: Moreover, brethren, we make known to you the grace of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia: that in a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded in the riches of their liberality. For I bear witness that according to their ability, yes, and beyond their ability, they were freely willing, imploring us with much urgency that we would receive the gift and the fellowship of the ministering to the saints. But the key to their sacrificial giving is found in the next verse: And not only as we had hoped, but they first gave themselves to the Lord, and then to us by the will of God. We must first sacrifice ourselves to the Lord before we can sacrificially give of our means. Jesus certainly expounded on this in the Sermon on the Mount – especially in Matthew 6:24 when He stated that you cannot serve both God and earthly riches or mammon. God will provide us the necessities of life as long as we “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” (Matthew 6:33) The inspired apostle Paul summed up what God desires of us in Romans 12:1 – I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. Fifthly, God wants us to be loving – not only to Him but to others. While there are many characteristics of love beautifully described in 1 Corinthians 13, I want us to narrow our focus to love as God loves us. God desires the highest good for us without considering His own Self. This is how He could love us enough to give us His only begotten Son that we might have everlasting life. Just consider all that is wrapped within His love – grace, mercy, kindness, compassion, humility and forgiveness just to mention a few. May I suggest this morning that when we begin to love others – even our enemies – as God loves us, we will seek their highest good without considering our own needs. This will revolutionize every one of our relationships because the highest good we can seek for another is the salvation of their soul. This is the great commission in a nutshell. Is that not how God loves us? To seek the highest good for our children would restore discipline in the home. Our primary goal would not be to make our children happy or nurture their self-esteem – it would be to make sure they get to heaven. Our relationships with spouses, friends, family, co-workers would all take on new meaning. It’s simply part of seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. I want to share two passages – one from the OT and one from the New – that put a little flesh on how we love God and Christ in return. First is from Deuteronomy 10:12-13 – “And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the LORD and His statutes which I command you today for your good?” And now from John 14:15 – “If you love Me, keep My commandments.” God wants us to be loving but, finally, He wants us to be faithful. You know the words from the last part of Revelation 2:10 – “Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.” I want to wrap this last point in the context of a very familiar parable found in Matthew 25:14-30. The Lord entrusted His servants with talents or gifts. You’ll remember that the first two servants – given five and two talents, respectively, doubled those talents and pleased their Lord. But the one talent servant buried his talent – he failed to do anything with what his Lord had given him. For his failure to do anything, the Lord cast him into eternal punishment. But I want us to notice the words of the Lord to the two faithful servants in verses 21 and 23: “Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.” The Lord has so richly blessed each of us with the necessities of life and various talents. He wants us to be faithful stewards of what has been entrusted to us and that includes giving back to Him.
IV. Conclusion/Invitation
This morning we have looked at six things God desires from us – gifts, if you will. These are to be holy, to be penitent, to be humble, to be sacrificial, to be loving and to be faithful. Considering the gift He gave to us, how could we give Him any less? This morning, perhaps you need to give your life to Christ by repenting of your sins and being baptized into His death for the forgiveness of your sins. Or, maybe you need to rededicate your life to God’s service and ask for the prayers of the church. He gave His life for us – what will we give to Him as we stand and sing?
