worship at Christmas

What would you say you worship? We all worship – we all have something that gives us significance and that matters intensely to us.

Luke ch2 gives us a picture of just that in Augustus Caesar (1). What is Caesar doing? He is carrying out a census of his empire. Why? Because he wants to know how great he is, in fact my hunch is that he wanted it recorded so that he made his mark in history. Do you see what gave Caesar significance it was his empire, how many lands he had conquered, who he ruled over, the extent of his power.

You see it again in Matthew with Herod – why does he kill all the infant boys in Bethlehem because his rule, his reign, mattered more than anything else.

How about us, what gives us significance? Maybe it’s a relationship, or family, or career, or money, or things. We may think they give us significance but ultimately each of those things will leave us dissatisfied – if we centre our life on relationships we will be jealous, emotionally dependent and manipulative, unable to take even perceived criticism. If we centre our life on family we will try to live our life through theirs and what happens when they grow up and leave? If we centre our life and identity on work and career we will be workaholics and what happens to our sense of worth if we lose our job, if we centre our life on money and possessions we’ll never be content and end up envious of others and bitter because you can’t take it with you. If you centre your life on religion and doing good you will end up judgemental and proud.

I wonder what you think sin is. Most people think sin is breaking the Ten Commandments, or any other commandments, it is doing bad things, or not doing good things. But actually sin is more than that, it is seeking to establish a sense of self by making something else more central to your significance, purpose and happiness than your relationship with God. In fact the 10 commandments start out with that very idea “You shall have no other gods before me’. Sin is failing to live rightly relating to God.

Christmas is about God in his Son telling us we worship wrongly, how to worship rightly and living a life of perfect worship in our place.