The Birth of Jesus—A Revealing Response - Part 2

Welcome to this weekend's In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley. Today's podcast takes us beyond the facts of the birth of Jesus in Matthew chapter two. Let's see how the arrival of the wise men challenges us to genuinely worship Jesus. I love this part of the passage because this group of people are those who worshiped Him.

They come looking specifically for Him, and when they find Him, here's what happens. Verse ten says, When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. After coming into the house, they saw Christ with Mary, His mother, and they fell to the ground and worshiped Him. Can you imagine in the absolute dead stillness of the moment? They found themselves standing, kneeling, lying, prostrate before God incarnate.

Now, let me ask you a question. If I should ask you, define for me what worship means to you. What is worship? Somebody says, if I go to church, I sing with the choir and with the fellow members.

I give when they pass the offering plates. I pray, I pray at home also. I read the Bible, and so you would tell me all these things that you do. So, you'd say, that's how I worship.

But I want you to think about something. You can belong to a church and not worship. You can read your Bible and not worship. You can pray and not worship, especially if all you do is just ask. In other words, all of those things are activities, but they're not necessarily worship. Because worship is what I do. Worship is an attitude.

They believed Him, fell on their face in humility before Him. So, let me ask you a question. When would you say is the last time you actually worshipped the Lord Jesus Christ? You say, well, if it's not going to church and reading the Bible and praying, I'm not sure I ever have.

Well, I'll tell you something that happened to me. Several years ago I was studying one morning. I remember, not necessarily the passage, but I remember I was thinking about my relationship to the Lord and what God was teaching me and so forth. And for some reason I thought, well, Lord, You're teaching me the Word and I'm very grateful. And You're teaching me how to explain it to other people so they understand it, and I'm very grateful. And You've given me the privilege to do it.

But I came to the conclusion there was something missing, and that was this. I thought, Lord, I don't think I've ever learned how to worship You. I've been saved. I love You.

I care. But when it comes to truly, genuinely worshiping You, I don't, I'm not sure I know how. But when it comes to truly, genuinely worshiping You, I don't, I'm not sure I know how.

That was the beginning for me to understand what true, genuine worship is all about. I preached a whole lot of sermons. But worship isn't preaching. It's preaching. It's preaching. It's preaching. It's preaching. It's preaching. It's preaching. It's preaching. It's preaching to all that I'm about to say. But I think for the most part it does, really.

Because there are certain things that are necessary to have true, genuine worship. And the first one is a pure heart. I want to tell you a little bit about this. And I want to tell you a little bit about this.

And I want to show you something that you need to fully understand. He says in His presence is like light that man cannot describe. There has to be purity of heart. So, I'm going to give you a little bit of time to think about what God's going to do for you this time facing Holy God. There will have to be the spirit of humility because imagine any kind of pride or any kind of lifting of oneself in the presence of Holy God.

No. There will have to be the spirit of obedience, the spirit of obedience, the spirit of obedience. Abandonment, that is, whatever God wants is what matters.

Everything else I have to put aside. And there has to be the spirit of obedience. Think about this. You cannot worship God with sin in your life.

It's like a wall. It doesn't happen. You can't worship God and have self-will in the throne of your life. You may ask Him for a lot of things. You may pray, but that's not worship. Worship demands something inside of us. There's a sense of awe when you think about being in the presence of Holy God. This overwhelming sense of the awareness that you're in the presence of God who loves you enough to come to earth in the form of a human being and die on the cross for you. Overwhelmed by the fact that all these years of our life He put up with us.

Think about how long you lived in sin before He saved you, how patient He was. And think about how good and gracious and kind and loving He is to us every single day when we don't deserve it. Think about what it means to be so overwhelmed by His presence that you're speechless. Worship isn't necessarily talking. Worship can mean absolute, total silence because there's nothing to say. It's a moment in time when you're not doing the talking.

It isn't a talking going on, He's doing the talking. Quietness, silence, or it can also mean weeping and weeping and weeping. And if somebody asks you why you were weeping, you can't tell them. It's just the awareness of the presence of God. It is the awareness that you are in the presence of Holy God who loves you enough to make Himself known.

Not seen, but known enough as if He were seen. You're in the presence of God. And there is a spirit of humility, of unworthiness, of submission, of commitment. Whatever He wants, that's what you want. He may say something to you in that time of worship, some command or something He wants you to do or something He wants you not to do. But true, genuine worship is what He does in our life. You can't work it up.

You can't make it happen. You can put yourself in a position where you're willing to listen to God, you're willing for Him to speak to your heart and your soul and your soul and your soul and your soul. And listen, He never turns that down. You can worship Him indeed. But most of the time, you're not doing the talking.

That's what He's doing. Now, you can worship in church. We can worship, for example, we sing.

And what happens? Every single one of us has done this, including me. I could stand here right now and sing Amazing Grace to you, and you can sing, oh, come, let us adore Him. How sweet the sound the Lord, how sweet the sound the Lord, how sweet the sound the Lord, how sweet the sound the Lord. I'm not thinking about it, what a wretch I am.

I'm not, in other words, you can think about other things. So, you can sit in church and sing songs and have absolutely nothing worshipful going on. Or you can sing, oh, come let us adore Him. But I ask you a question. When is the last time you think you ever truly worshiped Him? Well, the only thing that mattered was Him, not you. You see, you can't worship God with your mind on yourself. It doesn't work that way. And I think about times that I've sat at my desk or be doing something else and just break out weeping. You ask me why, I can't tell you why. Was I talking to God?

No. Oh, what were you doing? Most of the time I'd be sitting there or sometime I'd just been shaving, getting ready to go to church on Sunday morning.

Just break out weeping. And the awesome awareness of the presence of God just like clothed in it. You cannot explain that. But let me just say this to you, that isn't limited to a person because of your vocation. God is willing to get into and all over your life, whoever you are, when your heart is hungry to know Him.

Now, let me give you an example of something. This young lady who was a Romanian young lady, she stepped up here to give a testimony. And you know, we'd just been fulfilling our desire for all these Christmas boxes, shoeboxes, filled with all these things for children we sent all over the world.

You heard about all that. And she told the story. She was a young girl in Romania, and the only thing she got for Christmas was a banana and an orange.

That's it. And they put them in a boot rather than a basket or something. And they only got that once a year.

This was communist Romania, had a terrible leader. And so, her shoes were so worn, her father had to wire them up so she could wear them. And what she wanted above everything else when she heard about that was a pair of shoes. And when she opened her box, she had a pair of shoes.

Now, think about this. These are people like us all over America filling up shoeboxes. So, that means that most of the time, probably the women, the mothers, went to the store and bought things. So, what can I put in this shoebox? I can put a pair of shoes or I can put, now remember, whatever the size may be, I could put a toothbrush, I could put a handkerchief, I could put a little doll, I could put a truck, I could put this and that, whatever it might be in a shoebox. And then that shoebox got wrapped up and then it was piled up among millions of other shoeboxes. And then that shoebox got sent all the way across the ocean. And when it got over there, some went to this nation, some went to this nation, and some went to Romania. And it got handed through here and so forth. So, she opened the shoebox and exactly what she wanted was in the shoebox.

Now, I'm going to tell you what worship is for me right now. When I was seated right back there and she told that story, I felt the most awesome sense of the presence of God. It translated beyond her because here was what I saw and felt. Holy God, who loved this little Romanian girl, was so loving towards her that He spoke to somebody out of the millions of Americans who went to the store and bought enough stuff to put in the shoebox. And He guided the hand of the mother who did it. And He guided the plane that took it there.

And He guided the hands of those who separated and shared the boxes. And when it came to her, there was what she wanted. You see, it wasn't about shoeboxes and the little girl.

It was about this awesome God who loves us enough to be that specific and that caring to meet a little girl's need. If that won't evoke worship from you. If that, you see, it's not all about her, it's all about Him. It's what He did. It's how He did it. It's how in His sovereign control of all things, He made all the events come to pass. Now, if that won't make you worship Him, does that not say something to you about who He is? Worship is all about who He is, not about who you are. So, when it comes to Christmas, it's all about Jesus.

And you see, you can't really separate Easter from Christmas for this reason. If you and I could see what the Father saw, across that manger was a shadow of a cross. That's why He came, to die for your sins and mine. And listen, what He did for that little girl on that occasion, He did for you and me every single day of our life in ways that we will never know until we get to heaven. So, let me ask you a question. Maybe you're not a Christian and you say, well, what's that got to do with me?

Here's what it has to do with you. Until you humble yourself before the Lord Jesus Christ, acknowledging your sinfulness and placing your trust in Him and His death at Calvary, to pay your sin debt in full, once and for all, in one momentous eternal act at the cross. Until you are willing to confess your sins, repent of your sins, and receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, humbling yourself before Him, you will never know what real, true, genuine peace or security or joy is all about.

Because it only comes through Him. You can have everything in the world you want. You can go anywhere in the world you want to go. You can be probably most anything you'd like to be maybe. But until first of all you come to Him, you will never find what you're looking for in life, because He's what life's all about. The wisest thing you could do right now is to ask the Lord Jesus Christ to forgive you of your sins, remembering that He's holy and righteous and the sovereign God of this universe and we're just sinners. Asking Him to save you from your sins, surrendering your life to Him, humbling yourself before Him and saying to Him, Lord Jesus, I do accept You as my personal Savior. I surrender my life to You in all that I am.

And I want You to live Your life through me and help me to become the person You created me to be. Why is this decision the most important decision? It is an eternal decision. It isn't just an idea, it's an eternal decision, because that decision will determine where you spend eternity. No matter what someone tells you, no matter how much they try to convince you of something different, that is the eternal, irrevocable, unchangeable truth of the living God who one day will be our judge. So, I want to encourage you to make that decision.

You may be listening to the radio, as soon as it's over, cut it off and get on your knees wherever you may be. Or you may be driving down the highway, pull over to the side, park, He's worth it. And you certainly need to submit yourself to Him and trust your whole eternal future into His hands. Why is this decision you'll ever make? Our goal is to help you to grow spiritually, to become godly in your walk, that your life will be such that you impact the people who are around you.

So that they'll want the same Jesus that you want. Listen, first of all, not because of what they've heard you say, but first of all, because they've watched the way you live. So, I ask you this question, how many more days will you go through this Christmas season before you talk to somebody about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, your Savior, and our hope of eternal life? I pray that before the nighttime comes, you'll talk to somebody about Him.

Not hesitatingly, and not because I suggested it, but just because you love Him enough that you want to talk about Him. And you are not ashamed of who He is in your life. Amen? Thank you for listening to The Birth of Jesus, a revealing response. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.