Herod appealed to the hearts of the wise men. After all, they had come to worship the new king, so why wouldn’t they want to help others to get to worship Jesus as well? As we read on in Matthew, we’ll discover the true heart of Herod, and this “appeal” is just bait for his trap. But for now, let’s just agree that traps only work because they’re attractive.
This series, we’ve come to terms with various traps we’ve fallen into and we’ve been shown how to recognize red flags which expose such scams, so we can avoid them in the future. As you may have noticed, this series has focused on the time, talent and treasure the wise men gave in their worship of our Lord, and it’s encouraging us to “follow the same star” or worship Jesus with our own time, talent and treasure. And specifically, laying our treasure at Jesus’ feet in tithes and offerings, has been a major theme with good reason. Money, while tangible and easy to focus on, helps point to less tangible parts of our life in which we get trapped by worldly thinking into holding instead of giving.
Tithing requires faith; trusting that God will do what He says. For example, let’s say you give 10% of your income as a tithe in your worship of our King. You know from experience that God has been faithful to give you a better quality of life with 90% than you could buy yourself with 100%. But, as stated before, if I can’t trust God with this promise - if I’m holding out on Him with “my” money - it’s a red flag that I’m not trusting him with other things in my life. I may be an electrician, but have I ever tithed “my” talent? I have 24 hours to spend today, but do I tithe any portion of “my” time? The world says that trusting our resources to God gives us less and we get attracted, or drawn into that thinking. The true heart of the world is that it wants all of your resources and can’t have what you give to God. To make matters worse, the world doesn’t care that we were trapped into missing out on the blessings that come to us by being generous and just trusting completely in God’s promises.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not trust in your own understanding. Proverbs 3:5 NLV
