Scripture: Matthew 1:23 & Various Other Texts
Theme: More than duty or sacrifice or religion, more than the things we can do for God, he wants
our presence, a relationship with us.
celebrate the birth of Christ we must let our hearts be changed by Him.
Seed: Personal Study
Purpose: To invite the listeners to examine what it is they offer God when they come before him.
Introduction:
Some people don’t like birthdays. They don’t like birthdays because their birthday reminds them that they are getting older. For some reason we hate the idea of getting older. It reminds us that our beauty fades. It reminds us that we can’t do what we once could. Mostly we don’t like it because it reminds us of our mortality.
This past week parents were here to visit and Kaitlyn said to my mom, “Grandma, I’m going to die.”
My mom responded, “Kaitlyn, what are you talking about?”
Katy said, “I’m going to die when I get old. When you get old you die.” Then she said, “Grandma, you’re almost there.”
No, most people don’t like the fact that their birthday reminds them that they’re getting older, but that’s not the case with children. Children love birthdays. They love birthdays because it is a celebration of them. They are the focus of attention, they are honored, they are celebrated and they are given gifts.
That’s what we do in our culture; we give the birthday boy or girl gifts to celebrate the event. But at Christmas we do it differently. At Christmas we celebrate the birth of the Messiah. We celebrate Jesus’ birthday by giving each other gifts. Since it’s his birthday, don’t you think HE deserves the gifts? I do, but when it comes to gifts for God, he doesn’t want your presents. He wants your presence. That’s what he gave us, his presence.
"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel" —which means, "God with us."
Matthew 1:23 (NIV)
Presence refers to nearness. Presence means that we are near by. We are currently with him. God wants our presence, our nearness to him. In presence there is a sense of closeness. More than the things we can offer him, God wants for us to be near him, but how?
So often the gifts we offer are not the gifts that are needed or wanted. Maybe you’ve heard the radio commercial that’s been playing lately here in the metro area. The dad gets his son a sled instead of a snowboard, his daughter a gerbil instead of a dog and his wife a cubic zirconia instead of a diamond. He says, "It’s not quite what they asked for, but almost."
That’s kind of what we are with God, isn’t it? Rather than give him our presence, which he so desperately wants, we give him presents that are really just a cheap imitation.
Let’s look at the difference between the presents we try to offer God, and the presence he desires from us.
What We Offer: DUTY
One of the presents we offer to him is DUTY. We do so much for him that we feel like we’re supposed to do, but don’t really want to do. We offer our words and actions to him but we don’t give him our hearts.
The Lord says:
“These people come near to me with their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship of me
is made up only of rules taught by men.”
Isaiah 29:13 (NIV)
This verse makes it painfully obvious that we have a tendency to offer God that which is cheap and easy rather than what is costly and difficult. He wants our hearts and we give him a few words of honor and attempt to meet a few obligations that we feel he has placed upon us.
How many of you, when you sit to eat a meal, feel like you cannot eat, you cannot move forward without praying. You’ve tried and you have actually felt guilty when you ate without praying first. Maybe you have been corrected or maybe you have corrected someone else who sat down to eat with you and didn’t pray first. That sense that you “must pray” that sense of guilt when you don’t pray before you eat a bologna sandwich or a Big Mac is caused because you are praying out of duty.
I’m not saying that it’s wrong to pray before you eat. It is good and right to give thanks to God for providing you with the nourishment you need to survive. But praying before a meal is not a biblical command. Praying before you eat is not required by God and it’s not a sin if you don’t. But most us feel obligated to do it. It’s a religious practice, a duty we have been taught. Most of the time when you pray for a meal, you don’t even think about what you are praying. You are simply observing a religious duty.
This message is not for the sake of making comment on the tradition of praying at meal time. The point here is that, like the dutiful prayer we offer at meal time, many of us do not offer our presence to God in a heartfelt way. Rather we simply offer him our “Christian duty.”
So often we are guilty of offering nothing more than our duty God. Be it praying at meals or attending church services or serving in some ministry in the church, or even in being kind to some people, we tend to do what we’re supposed to do, not what we want to do. We do what we do out of a sense of duty. Because we feel like we are supposed to, not because our heart desires to do these things.
A present of duty is not pleasing to God. He wants our worship of him and our service to others to be done because we love him, and because we love others through him, not because we feel obligated. Begrudging duty done out of fear or a sense of obligation is no present to give the king of the universe.
What He Desires: DEVOTION
We offer him “Duty.” But what he desires from us is a sense of devotion; genuine love for who he is. Devotion is not the same as duty. Duty is done because it is expected of us. Duty is done because “we’re supposed to.” But in devotion we choose to follow him out of love and loyalty.
Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment of all is to love the Lord
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
Matthew 22:37 (NIV)
If you love me, you will do as I command
John 14:15 (CEV)
Jesus longs for us to follow him because we love him, not because we have a sense of duty or obligation. It’s much like a husband and wife who love each other dearly. They stay together year after year, even with all of the struggles and disappointments that life and marriage can bring, not because they have a duty to each other, but because they are devoted to one another out of love.
I’ve seen couples who didn’t love each other. I’ve seen couples who were together, not out of devotion, but out of a sense of duty. These homes are not warm, comforting places. They are usually filled with pain, and bitterness and distrust. This is a tough environment for a child to grow up in. But a home where the parents truly love one another and are devoted to one another out of that love is a safe and enriching environment to bring up a child. You see there is a big difference between duty and devotion.
God wants our devotion. He wants us to be dedicated to him because we are in love with him. He wants us to serve him because he is worthy to be served.
[BLACKHAWK DOWN ILLUSTRATION]
What We Offer: SACRIFICES (money, time, things, etc.)
Another present that we tend to offer him is our sacrifices of money or time or things as if God needs what we have. Now before I go any further here, let me very clearly state that there is a place for offering our financial and material resources to God in worship. The Bible clearly calls us to tithe. We are clearly directed in scripture to give of the best that we have to our God and King. Please do not assume I am saying giving is bad or that I am saying it is un-important. It is both good and important and, when done with a right heart and a right spirit, it is pleasing to God.
However, too often we attempt to give God our sacrifices of money or things without ever really giving him our hearts. We throw our stuff his way but we don’t draw near to him. We feel like if we give God enough of our finances or our material blessing then we don’t have to worry about the whole relationship thing. But God doesn’t want our stuff. He wants what our stuff represents: our hearts.
Jesus said,
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Matthew 6:21 (NIV)
You’ve heard me say it many times, but if you want to know what a person’s priorities are, look at their calendar and look at their checkbook. The way we spend our time and our money reveals a great deal about where our hearts are. That is why tithing is so essential. It helps us to focus our hearts on Christ. Again it’s not our hours or our dollars that God wants, it’s what they represent. He wants our hearts to be fully his, but often we only give him the sacrifices without drawing near to him with our hearts.
When we offer God the present of our duty or our sense of obligation, the natural result is that we stop thinking about true obedience and begin to offer him our stuff. Too frequently we are like King Saul in the Old Testament. He had disobeyed God and then tried to make up for it by offering sacrifices to him instead of offering his heart in repentance. In response, the prophet, Samuel, told Saul,
"What is more pleasing to the LORD: your burnt offerings and sacrifices or your obedience to his voice? Obedience is far better than sacrifice. Listening to him is much better than offering the fat of rams
I Samuel 15:22 (NLT)
Simply offering our “stuff” to God is a poor substitute for offering our hearts to him. Giving him our duty and giving him our resources because we believe it to be a duty required of us makes for a weak present. God does not desire our sacrifices.
What He Desires: OBEDIENCE
We offer him money, things, hard work…we offer him the sacrifices we can afford or even the sacrifices that cost us nothing. What he desires is our obedience born out of our love for him.
God wants our obedience, not out of duty but out of love. Obedience to God out of a sense of duty or obligation is the same thing as offering him empty sacrifices. He wants no such presents from us. But when we obey him because we love him and we desire to please him and be like him, well, that is a gift he loves. That is the gift of our presence before him, our hearts opened and our hands lifted to bless him. Obeying him because we love him is the gift he desires. Look again at John 14:15 with me.
If you love me, you will obey what I command
John 14:15 (NIV)
Far too often, we try to prove our love for God by saying, giving, or doing certain things that we consider righteous, yet he never commanded us to do.
Take, for example, the celebration of Christmas. I think it’s great that we celebrate Christmas. We’re having church this morning while many others have canceled because I believe that the best way to celebrate the birth of Christ, the Messiah, is to come together as HIS BODY and worship him and celebrate the fact that in Jesus, God became a man, the Word became flesh.
However many people believe that how you celebrate Christmas, or even celebrating Christmas at all is a matter of your spirituality. But it is not. Christ never once commanded us to, or even hinted that we should, celebrate his birth. He gave very clear directions regarding the celebration of his sacrificial death, but any celebrating we do regarding the birth of Christ is a human tradition.
Jesus doesn’t care how we celebrate Christmas; he gave no instructions regarding it. He does care that we obey him. It is our obedience, not our religious sacrifices that he desires. Christmas is only one, very obvious example. There are a myriad of ways that we give God sacrifices born out of duty and yet fail to obey him.
When you stand before Christ on Judgment Day he will not ask how or even if you celebrated Christmas, but he will ask who you gave a cup of cold water to. He will ask who you ministered to. He will ask what you did to aid the plight of the poor and downtrodden.
He does not want us to present him with gifts of duty and sacrifice. He wants our presence, made possible through our devotion and obedience.
What We Offer: RELIGION
When we offer the presents of “duty” and “sacrifice” to God, the natural outcome is that we begin to offer him religion, but religion doesn’t work. If religion worked there would be no need for Jesus. If religion worked every person who ascribed any religious practice would be right with God, regardless of the religion.
Religion is not what God wants from us, he has never asked for religion but that is what we offer him. Religion is nothing more than “a cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.” Given that definition, football, baseball, reading, or cleaning your toenails can be a religion. Religion does not require nearness to God or to whatever it is you are worshipping.
In fact, rather than draw us nearer to God, religion often creates a wall of formality that further separates us from God. Religion causes us to focus on what we can do, on what we can achieve, what we are capable of and what we are not capable of and it does not require us to develop a relationship.
Religion has no need for a relationship because there is no need for the object of worship, the center of the religion, to be alive. Thousands upon thousands of religions throughout history have focused on the worship of an inanimate object.
Religion does not require our hearts. Religion only requires a portion of our minds and a willingness to adhere to a list of regulations. That’s not what God desires, but that is what many of us offer to him.
What He Desires: RELATIONSHIP
We offer him religion. We offer our observance of a list of human rules and regulations that are supposed to draw us closer to him and make us more like him. What he wants is for us to offer him a relationship that will draw us closer to him and through which HE will make us more like himself. In religion we are in control, but in a relationship we give up that control.
Jesus tells us if we want to have true religion, then we must work on our relationships.
When Jesus shares the story of the sheep and the goats he makes it clear that, on judgment day, the test of true love for him will not be in how well we followed religious observances and customs, but on how we treated others – relationships.
"Then the righteous will answer him, ’Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
"The King will reply, ’I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’
"Then he will say to those on his left, ’Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
"They also will answer, ’Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
"He will reply, ’I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."
Matthew 25:37-46 (NIV)
In the book of James we read,
If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
James 1:26-27 (NIV)
Both of these passages focus on relationships with others. And what Christ wants from us more than any religious practices is a relationship with Him where we are obedient and devoted to him. He wants our presence. He doesn’t want what we can send. He wants us to be near him.
Conclusion: Jesus came so that we could be free from the burden of obligation and duty. He came because no amount of money could pay the debt we owe. He came because religion doesn’t work. He came to be Emmanuel – God with us. He came to give us his presence. Should we do any less for him?
Presence is a much greater gift than presents. This morning there are thousands of men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan; separated from their friends and families by miles and by danger. Many of these men and women have received packages in the mail from their families. These packages will have presents for the Christmas season. But I assure you, every single man and woman would rather have the presence of their family, than all the presents their families can send.
So it is with God. He doesn’t want what we can send him. He doesn’t want our presents. He wants us, our hearts, our presence. But we withhold. We give a little bit for him instead of giving ourselves wholly to him.
And here’s the irony of it all; because we with-hold from him the very thing he desires so much, our presence, we prevent ourselves from receiving the one thing we NEED more than anything else in the world, the one thing he specifically came to give to us…His presence.
"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel" —which means, "God with us."
Matthew 1:23 (NIV)
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
John 1:14 (NIV)
Give him your presence this year.
Let’s pray.
