Why Should We Worship Jesus?

12/25/11

Scripture:

I’m the luckiest man alive.  I got to tell you about Jesus last night and I get to speak about our Savior again this morning.  My hope is that as we reflect again upon Jesus and we hear about him in the word that we will have captured in our hearts the joy that we’ve been singing about.  

Our scripture this morning is from Matthew’s gospel.  Matthew and Luke are the two gospels that tell us something about the birth of Jesus.  Here we focus on some of the tension that arose with a virgin now pregnant in a small town and what that meant and what the gossipers would think.  And so as we read the scriptures I hope you’ll capture the sense of angst that Joseph had about marrying this woman because what it meant was that she was not a virgin, she in fact had been with another man, and he wanted to put her away.  But by taking her as his wife the rumor would start that Mary and Joseph couldn't wait and they got together, and so Joseph would have carried in his life this reputation that somehow he was not a holy person.  But he did this because of his willingness to follow Christ.  So let’s listen to Matthew’s account and think about this story again. 

Matthew 1:18 - 25 ¹⁸ Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.  ¹⁹ And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.  ²⁰ But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.  ²¹ She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."  ²² All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:  ²³ "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel" (which means, God with us).  ²⁴ When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, ²⁵ but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.   

May God bless this reading from his Holy Word. Amen.  

So for the last few weeks here at Eden Church we’ve been in a sermon series called Come and Worship, and we’ve built it around the hymn that we sang this morning, the carol “Angels From the Realm of Glory.”  And if you remember the refrain it’s simply this:  Come and worship, come and worship, worship Christ the newborn king.  We’ve been looking at how Jesus is calling us into worship.  So today I want to talk to you about why we should worship Jesus.  

Let me start off by saying that in keeping with the teaching of our Bible, the only person that should ever be worshiped is God.  Now there are times in society when people have turned their worship and devotion to other things...to money, to popularity, to false deities, in fact even to people.  But the Bible says we are to worship the Lord God and him only.  Let me share with you something that I just found out about a recently toppled modern idol, and that’s the dictator Kim Jong-il that just died.  I don’t think we realize what it’s like to live in a country where you are taught regularly that your leader is god and is to be revered and worshiped.  I think if we could only step into that nation for a week and hear the propaganda and hear the things that they were taught about this dear leader of theirs...they were really taught to worship him.  Let me give you an example.  This is something that I just found out about regarding him in light of his death.  Do you know that the North Korean news agency reported that Kim Jong-il shot a 38 in a round of golf?  Now 38 is me on the first three holes, okay, but this is all eighteen holes that he shot a 38.  That is 34 below par.  And on that round of golf he had 11 holes in one.  Quite amazing!  This was taught as the truth in North Korea and if you questioned it, if you spoke against it, you were gone.  Now to put it in perspective, the PGA tour record is a 59.  So here is the dear leader beating the world’s best golfers by 21 strokes.  Amazing!  So, yes, there are people that want to be worshiped and the Bible tells us we are not to worship anyone but God.  In fact, that is one of the problems that Islam has with Christianity, that we want to worship a mere man, Jesus Christ.  A holy man, a prophet nonetheless, but not someone that we should worship because God alone should be worshiped. 

So let’s talk about worshiping Jesus this morning.  Why should we worship Jesus?  Why would the hymn writer write come and worship, come and worship, worship Christ the newborn king?  If Jesus were only a man, we shouldn't worship him.  We might respect him, we might listen to him, but by all means we are not to worship him.  But we worship Jesus for two reasons.  One, because of who he is and two, because of what he’s done, and so I want to talk to you about that this morning as we look to Matthew and let the scripture speak to us.  

Last night in the Christmas Eve sermons I mentioned when Paul in Philippians taught that Jesus was in fact God, that he was in the form of God, that he was equal with God, that all of the attributes that belonged to deity...being all powerful and all knowing and ever present...that those were things true of this man from Nazareth that we celebrate his birth, we celebrate it today.  But is that really what Jesus thought of himself?  Did he really believe that he was in fact God?  Or are those who question Christianity simply right that the first followers got it wrong, that we made up these stories that we, in fact, make Jesus out to be more important than he truly is?  Well, just a simple survey of the teachings of scripture show us that Jesus both explicitly in the gospels teaches that he is God and implicitly by his actions and his choices.  Let me just elaborate a little bit on this for a moment.  

In case you ever wonder whether Jesus taught that he was God, simply turn to the Gospel of John.  Look there in the tenth chapter and you find that Jesus is talking to the Jews, the people of his own nation and ethnic background.  People who have the scriptures that say clearly there is one God and you are not to worship anyone but this one God.  Anything else is idolatry.  And as Jesus is teaching them one day he states to them, “I and the Father are one.”  Now what does that mean?  We look to the response of the crowd to get an answer.  It says the Jews took up stones to stone him.  They were ready to beat him to death with stones because of what he said.  And Jesus asked them for which bad deed are you going to stone me and their answer is not for any bad deed but because you claim to be equal to God.  And so Jesus there on that occasion and in others made statements about himself that clearly led the listener to believe this guy thinks he’s God.  But Jesus not only taught that on occasion very clearly, he did a lot of things that gave you the impression he saw himself as more significant than simply a holy man or a prophet.  

For example, Jesus established a community to follow after him, to listen to his teaching.  No big deal.  Rabbis did that in the day.  Jesus decided to appoint certain men to be leaders in that community and do you know how many he appointed?  Do you remember the number?  You’re right, Ida, 12.  Jesus after a period of time appointed 12 men to be his apostles.  Why 12?  Why not 10, why not 15?  Does anybody remember how 12 is a significant number in the Bible?  There are 12 tribes of Israel.  So if we go back in the Old Testament and we look, we see that when Jacob had his 12 sons they went to Egypt, they came out as a nation, and they were divided into 12 groups called the 12 tribes.  And if you study that history...and those of you in confirmation, we’re going through that right now...we know that God is calling himself to be the centerpiece of this community of the 12 tribes.  So here’s Jesus appointing leaders in his community.  He appoints 12, and he’s not one of the 12 himself.  They’re the 12 and he is the centerpiece of their community.  Just as the Lord the God of Israel was the centerpiece of Israel, Jesus is the centerpiece of the church of the new Israel.  

So Jesus explicitly taught and implicitly taught that he, in fact, was more than a man, he was God incarnate.  And this is something that we find in our scripture today from the Gospel of Matthew.  What did the angel say to Joseph?  He said, “Do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”  And then he went on to say, “This took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet,” (Isaiah) and it’s a quote from the seventh chapter of Isaiah:  “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel" (which means, God with us).”  So the scriptures teach us that Jesus is to be worshiped simply because of who he is.  But Jesus is to be worshiped also because of what he’s done.  

How many of you recognize the name Dakota Meyer?  If you’ve been a student of the news recently maybe you recognize him, but my guess is he doesn’t stand out to you as a name.  If I told you what he did you would go oh, okay, I know this story.  Dakota Meyer was a Marine sergeant who just recently received the Congressional Medal of Honor, a living recipient.  He was honored of course by President Obama at a ceremony at the White House for heroic action in the line of duty.  Here’s what happened.  It was September 8, 2009.  Sergeant Meyer was one of 13 American military trainers that were embedded into an Afghan unit of 80 soldiers.  They were heading on a routine meeting with the local elders in a village called Ganjgal located in the valley along the border with Pakistan.  They came under fire.  Of those 13 American military trainers, 4 were in the front of this movement of almost 100 people, and they were attacked by heavy enemy fire from at least 150 Taliban enemy.  Sergeant Meyer was at the rear when this ambush began and he and the members of his unit disobeyed direct orders to remain in place.  They used a Humvee to rush ahead into the kill zone to try to rescue the four trapped at the head of the column.  He manned a gun turret on the top of a Humvee and killed himself at least eight insurgents in the battle.  He rescued in that conflict 36 Afghans and American troops in his first four attempts to reach those four trapped trainers.   So think about this.  Four times he’s fighting his way through a hail of bullets to rescue people up there that are pinned down.  He can’t get to them but he gets the ones he can, and he brings them back and he goes again.  And of those four trips he rescues 36 individuals.  Finally on the fifth time on foot he and his team move through a hail of gunfire to find that these four trainers had been killed in the fighting.  And so there under fire Meyer retrieves their remains so that they can come home to be buried.  It was a crucial battle, a brutal battle, but Meyer was heroic and courageous and sacrificed his own well being for the sake of those men.  And because of that our nation has said we want to honor such behavior.  We have decided to bestow upon him the Congressional Medal of Honor.   Now most of us, we probably saw that on the news when it came up and that he got it, but you know we can’t appreciate what he really did.  He was a true hero but that significance of his valor and sacrifice only becomes appreciated by those who were there, who were snatched from danger and death.  

So we come here today to honor Jesus Christ for what he’s done, and what has he done?  Well the scripture tells us that even at his birth, even at his naming we’re told what Jesus is to do.  “She will bear a son,” the angel said, “and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”  The word Jesus, or the Hebrew word Yeshua or Joshua, means ‘God saves’ and even in his very name we see exactly what Jesus does.  He saves his people from their sins.  A greater danger than dying on a battlefield is dying in your sins, facing God for the wrong that you’ve committed, but Jesus died to save you and me from our sins.  And if we’re going to honor someone like Sergeant Meyer, which I believe we should for his courageous actions, how much more should we honor the king of the universe, the God incarnate who has come and died for you and me that we might live. 

Throughout this Advent Season we’ve been focusing on worship.  Come and worship, worship Christ the newborn king, and so next week we’re going to conclude this sermon series by looking at some other people tied into the Christmas story.  But the issue of the day is worshiping Christ, and so as you come to the end of year and the beginning of another one I hope that you will resolve in your heart to make everyday a day that you will worship the Lord Jesus Christ with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind and with all of your strength.  Let’s worship him, our God and Savior for who he is and what he’s done for us.  Let us pray. 

Lord, God, we know what the scriptures tell us about Jesus.  We know that he is taught to be God incarnate.  We know what the scriptures say about his death on the cross and his rising in victory over the grave.  Lord, what we often fail to know is how deeply Jesus impacts us, how much our sin needed to be dealt with on that cross.  Lord, I pray for us.  I pray that your Holy Spirit would awaken in our lives a real consciousness of our sin, of our falling short, of our need of our Savior Jesus Christ.  And Lord I pray that as we ponder afresh what we’ve been rescued from and how we are free, forgiven, loved, accepted, how we are called your own, Lord may that knowledge of who we are in Christ inspire us to worship not only here at church, not only with our voices in song, but with our very lives.  May we serve our king.  May this year be a year of great spiritual growth for us.  May we experience the life of Christ in our midst and then Lord help us to share him.  May our church serve as a beacon of glory for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, for we ask this prayer today in His name.  Amen.