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Anger
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We are in advent series entitled “Come to Worship”.
The series is all about ways that we worship God.
The theme verse is from the story of the wise men who came to worship Jesus.
In this message series, we have looked at three different postures for worship.
The first week we looked at where the Bible teaches us to lift our hands.
The second week we talked about bringing our gifts to God.
Last week Pastor Felipe talked about pouring out our hearts to God.
Today, we are going to talk about bowing our knees.
The Bible speaks often about kneeling before God as an act of surrender and worship.
Before I go into this message, I want to have a disclaimer.
I know, for some, physically bowing your knees is either impossible or very hard.
I don’t want you to feel as if you are doing something wrong if you physically can’t bow your knees in worship.
I think for the majority of us, this is not the case, but for others, you will need to do something different as you come to worship.
The main point is to come to God in humility.
Humble yourself before the Lord.
Open your Bible to .
We are going to be looking at the story of the wise men.
Matthew
The wise men saw the star and they were overwhelmed with what?
They were overwhelmed with joy!
For literally centuries, magi had been looking for the promised one.
They came from the land of Persia and I wonder if it wasn’t Daniel’s witness that preserved the idea of the coming Messiah in the land of Persia.
They were looking for him.
They knew one day God would send the Messiah, the Savior of the world.
The wise men saw the star which indicated the Messiah’s arrival and they were overjoyed!
Then, they entered the home and they saw Mary with Jesus and what did they do?
They fell to their knees in worship.
They bowed down and worshiped Jesus.
Before we move too quickly from what is going on here, consider what is happening.
I don’t know what pictures come to your head, but probably something like this...
<show picture>
I think we visualize the wise men kneeling down before little baby Jesus.
Just about every picture you see is of the wise men kneeling down to a tiny little baby.
Most nativity scenes even include wise men at the manger; however, this is very likely to be completely inaccurate.
The vast majority of scholars think that Jesus was not a baby when the wise men arrived to worship him.
Likely, Jesus was a toddler when the wise men arrived; maybe about 2 years old or so.
Remember, they would have had to travel for several months to get to Israel.
They would have had to make preparations for their travel.
Also, when Herod gave the order to slaughter all the boys in and around Bethlehem, the age was 2 years old and under.
So, when the wise men arrived Jesus would have not been an infant.
He would have likely been between 1-2 years old.
Now this changes the picture in my mind just a little bit.
How many of you have children who are two years old?
How many of you have raised a two year old child or been around two year old children?
Before I had children, I was pretty hard on parents of infants.
I would totally judge you.
We would be in a restaurant and some parents were desperately trying to control their demon spawn, but the kid was just having none of it.
He was banging on the table, throwing food, and acting like the mere presence of anyone around him was an international act of terrorism.
Then, the parent tried to pick the child up and he just goes limp.
They tried to get him to walk out the door, but his legs turned to noodles and he just dropped to the floor.
I was looking at this scene, thinking to myself, “When Karen and I are parents, we are going to be so much better than those people.”
Then the day came and we had two of them.
Everything changed.
I remember the first couple of times we went out to eat with them.
I think I promised them everything.
I was like, “What do you want?
I will give you whatever you want, please just be quiet!”
Do you want candy?
Fine, here’s candy.
Do you want toys?
Fine, here is all the toys.
Do you a pony?
Fine, I’ll get you a pony.
Just please let us eat in peace!
Finally, Karen and I swore we would not go out to eat with them until they were old enough to not put crackers up their nose.
If you have been around small children, then you know how unpredictable they can be.
A 2 year old will look you in the eyes, never break eye contact, stare you down, and they do something completely unexpected.
They will run from you and they are faster than you think they are.
You tell them it is bed time and you would think they just downed a whole can of Red Bull.
You never think is going to happen to you, until you are trying to potty train your child and he figures out how to get the door to the house open.
There he is running down the street.
No bottoms.
Just running down the street in all his glory.
Yeah that happened.
Back to our story, so the wise men are bowing down to a toddler.
Changes the way you see the story or maybe that is just me.
Jesus was a toddler doing all the toddler things.
Anyway, today we are going to talk about kneeling in the presence of God.
Guys, how many times have you kneeled in your life?
Maybe twice?
Maybe you got down on your knees when you were proposing to your wife and maybe for a sports picture where you are on the front row?
Ladies, how often have you kneeled?
I don’t even know on what occasions girls would kneel.
Culturally speaking, we don’t kneel very much.
I mean, we are a nation of rebels.
We bow before no man, am I right?
We don’t bow to our presidents or congress people.
They aren’t special and we don’t bow.
We have no king.
Yet, when you come to the Scriptures, we see over and over the concept of coming before God in humble submission and getting on our knees before God.
The Bible speaks about kneeling before the awesomeness and splendor of God.
The Hebrews word for worship is the word shachah.
The word is used about 170 in the Bible.
The word means:
Shachah - worship - “bow down low, to kneel”
The word is a word of physical posture.
We are told, and really commanded, to physically kneel before God in worship.
Perhaps we don’t kneel before God in worship as often as we should because we don’t comprehend the holiness of God.
If we understood how holy God is, then we would naturally bow low before him in worship.
God is so holy, so perfect, that mortal man cannot look upon him and live.
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