Summer of Psalms - Part 4

Psalm 15 - Asking the Right Question

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

I just got back from a trip. It took some time this week to go to visit some of my wife's family up in Washington State. It was a great time. I met some family that I hadn't spent a lot of time with on her side, which was really fun. Part of this trip was getting to her cousin, who works at Disney Studios in Vancouver, Canada. So, we got to take a little trip. She has one set of family that lives on the American border, and then the one set right on the other side and so we spent most of our time in Washington but then we took a day trip over to Canada and he gave us this private tour of the Disney animation studio there's only two there's one in LA and there's one in Vancouver and it was really cool I was overwhelmed with how much we had a sign something that says I won't share about what I saw so I can't do that but I will say I mean it was just so cool to walk around and I was just overwhelmed as everyone in their cubicles working on you just saw characters you're like oh "Oh my goodness, that's that character and you're working on that movie and you're working on that movie. This is so cool!" And it was a really quick tour, but all of it just made me... I just had so many questions at the end and we had to kind of go through and there was a couple moments to ask some questions and I didn't even know where to begin. I was talking with my father-in-law along the way and there's just so much. There's so much that I want to ask. There's so much things like, "How does this process work? How long does it take the animators to do one scene where the person throws their hands up in the air?" You know, that could take weeks. We also obviously wanted to ask, what are the new movies coming out? What are the new shows? And can you give us a sneak peek on any of that information? But that part of the trip really reminded me of how important it is to ask good questions, and how a good question can unlock a big answer or a deep answer. And depending on who you are and how you're wired, sometimes asking questions may be easy for you, and sometimes asking questions can be really hard. My daughter at this point finds it easy to ask a lot of questions. She's five years old, and on the hour-long drive from Washington to Vancouver, it was just one question, I'm sure you can guess it, it was, "Are we there yet?" Over and over again. I think on this trip, her two most frequent questions were, "Are we there yet?" and "I'm hungry, do you have a snack?" Which I think those are just her most frequent questions, regardless of being on vacation.

But asking questions is so important, and I think it's probably a learned skill that we develop in life to ask good, important questions, to be able to discern the context and the information that is known and unknown, and then asking a question to make a person think. In conversation, you probably know this, a good question makes someone pause, makes a person reflect for a while, and go deeper than just a surface-level answer. Maybe you've been asked a good question, You know that experience of like, "Oh my goodness, that's great. I don't know. Let me think about that for a second." Or maybe you've been on the receiving side and you've heard that, and you're like, "Oh yes, that was a good question. They had to think about it for a second." For me, someone who constantly asks good questions is my counselor, my pastoral counselor. Whenever I have coffee with him, I get frustrated because he asks questions and I say, "I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. Let me think for a second. I got to process." And oftentimes it means thinking about an experience in a whole new way or discovering some emotions I didn't know I felt about something. And so he just asked really good questions. But we need people in our lives that ask good questions to us, and we also want to be people that ask good questions to others. And not just with the people in our lives, but also in all of our relationships, including the most important relationship, which is with God. If we think about our relationship with God and our conversations with him, our prayers, I want us to do a little bit of a prayer inventory right now. So just in your own heads, you don't have to say anything that's out loud, but I want us to break down what our prayers look like. And so, if you were to give a percentage, maybe you have your pie chart, if you're a visual person, you have a pie chart in your mind, how much of your prayer time is praise to God? Come up with your percentage. Maybe it's 10%. Maybe it is 100, maybe all you do is praise, whatever that percentage is. All right, so you have praise. How much of it is confession and repentance? How much of that pie chart are you asking God for forgiveness? Coming before him and saying, "Hey, I did this wrong. I need... Please forgive me." And then how much of it, of your prayer time, is questions to God? I know for me, that is the largest portion of the pie chart there. And if we were to go further about those questions, How many of them are requests to God? Asking God for things, asking God to do something in my life, asking God whatever it is. How much of those questions that we have to God are more self-interested? And God, I need something. Can you do something for me? What are the quality of the questions that we ask Him? Are they the right questions? Are they self-serving? Do they bring us closer to Him? Or, like I just said, do these questions come from a heart that is more self-serving, self-interested, self-absorbed?

The questions that we ask God are important, and they reveal a lot about what is inside our hearts. You know, there can be this thought that asking questions is a sign of weakness or ignorance with this negative connotation, but I fully disagree with that. I think someone who asks a lot of questions is someone who wants to learn, who understands and has humility that they don't understand at all, and so they are seeking to understand more. We might feel that pressure as Christians to know as much as possible, or to come across as people who know everything about God and everything about the Bible. And while there is good and we should strive to know more, we don't always have to put up that front that we know everything. We often think of the Bible as a book that has a lot of answers, which is true, but do we also think of the Bible that asks a lot of questions? The Hebrew authors wanted readers and listeners to wrestle with the text, to ask more questions about who Yahweh is and what He does. Because they understood that wrestling with the text and asking questions was that invitation to a deeper understanding of God. It's just like in a relationship or a friendship, when you're getting to know someone, you ask a lot of questions. You find out who they are. You find out how they operate and what they do in this situation and how they feel about this. And even though the Bible tells us all those things, we also want to be asking God about who He is.

Many of the questions in the Bible are found in the book of Psalms. And as a reminder for our Psalm series, the first half of the book of Psalms skews more towards lament Psalms over praise Psalms. And today, our Psalm may be somewhere in between lament and praise. I think of it as a reflection Psalm. This psalm informs us of who God wants us to be, but it also holds up a mirror to our hearts to see if we are being the men and women of God that He wants us to be. So we're going to be in Psalm 15, and I'd love to read it for us today. You guys can turn in your Bibles, or you can follow along on the screen. This is a psalm of David, and he writes, "Lord, who may dwell in your sacred tent? Who may live on your holy mountain? The one whose walk is blameless, who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from their heart, whose tongue utters no slander, who does no wrong to a neighbor, and casts no slur on others, who despises a vile person but honors those who fear the Lord, who keeps an oath even when it hurts and does not change their mind, who lends money to the poor without interest, who does not accept a bribe against the innocent. Whoever does these things will never be shaken." So there it is, right at the beginning.

David begins this psalm with a pair of questions, and really one question. "Who may dwell in your sacred tent? Who may live on your holy mountain?" And as we'll unpack this, we'll just see that this is such a good question. David was king, and so the temple is not around yet. We think of Israel and we think of the temple, but his son Solomon built the temple. And so for David, he's got the tabernacle. And this tent was with Israel for so long. It was from post-slavery in Egypt when God delivered them, and they brought them out into the wilderness, and God instructed them to have this tent, this dwelling place for him. They call it the tabernacle. And so this is the tent in verse 1. "Lord made, who may dwell in your sacred tent? Who may live on your holy mountain?" And that now that they are in the Promised Land, that holy tent was on a mountain. And so he's really asking, the root of these two questions is, who can live in the presence of God? Or who can dwell with God in his presence? This is David asking the right question. And Christianity has a unique answer to this question. Other religions may have this similar question of who is worthy to be in the presence of their deity or their God. And oftentimes for other religions, it is all about what the person has done. What acts they have done, what are their actions, are they worthy to be in the presence of that deity? But God goes a step further and he looks at the heart, because he understands that someone could do technically the right thing, but be absolutely rotten inside. And so the Christian faith, God puts the utmost priority on the heart. And the answer to this question speaks to a person's heart and what's inside. Now a little bit more about this tent, this sacred tent. We know that God's presence is very powerful. No one has been in the full presence of God and lived. We know that from Moses on the mountain, and Moses was desperate to be in God's presence. He said, "God, I've been following you, we've got a good relationship, we've got a good thing going on. Can you please reveal yourself to me?" And God said, "You can handle it. If I show myself to you, if I reveal my full self to you, you will die." And so even in the temple, in this tabernacle, sorry, in the tabernacle, there was a section called the Holy of Holies, which is where the presence of God was. And only specific people who had done specific things to get ready could go into that Holy of Holies, and if they didn't, they would die. And this person, this priest, there was only one allowed at a certain time, the Bible tells all about these details, but even they would walk in with a rope around their leg, because if they died, they could pull the body out.

So again, the presence of God is powerful and it is mysterious. And this question that David is asking is a heavy question. Who can withstand, who could live, who could be in the presence of God? It's a loaded question and it's a great question because it's not a self-serving question. "God, can you do this for me? God, can you please give me this? Could you provide?" Whatever it is, those are not always bad prayers. I don't want to say that there's a time and place for that, but we got to be careful in how we approach God. We don't want to treat him like a genie or a vending machine. Just always asking God, I need this, God I need this, and I'm expecting this. David's question of who can dwell in the presence of God is such a great question because it addresses the accounts at the very beginning of our Bibles, the rebellion in the garden, and the rebellious heart of sin in all of humanity. And that rebellious thought is the thought that life can be lived for humanity apart from God. That humans could live a life that they know how to live a better life than what God had intended. It's the sin that Adam and Eve thought. They saw that fruit and they knew that God said don't do it, but they thought, "You know what? I think I know better than God. I'm going to take that fruit. I'm going to eat it. And so through that garden experience though, through the fall, we know clearly who is not worthy to be in the presence of God. And it's those who are marred by sin. Example, Adam and Eve. As soon as that happened, God kicked them out of the garden. So you can't be here anymore. So the question, who can dwell in the presence of God, who can be as close as possible with God, It's huge. And David mentions these two places, the holy tent and the mountain, to bring up certain things in the Israelites' minds. Now, we can't go back to life in Eden before the fall, before sin entered the world, but there are places where we are closer to God, and for Israel, physically closer to God. That's that tent, that holy mountain is exactly where God was. And those two places bring up a couple points. One, those are places where heaven meets earth. God, who is God of the heavens, is there on earth. And so that place is where his presence, where God is perfectly recognized as king, and where his reign is existing as it was meant to. And then secondly, that place is a place that stands in stark contrast to the world around it. You think of the tent and the tabernacle, and you think of that mountain, and you clearly see God's presence there. And then if you visualize with me old Israel, you just look around, and I think you would clearly see the effects of sin in the world, and the corruption and the injustice and the sin that would just run rampant. And so the temple or the tent and this mountain provide such a clear picture of life that God intended and the life that reality of sin around it. And so David, in this moment of clarity, asks a very important question, "Who's worthy to be in the perfect presence of God dwelling with Him?" And thankfully, we get the answer, which is the rest of the Psalm. What is God looking for in a person?

Well, verses 2 through 5 give us that. And we know through the teachings of Jesus and the mistake of the Pharisees that we need Jesus to be the person that He lists in 2 through 5. We can't do it on our own effort and our own strength. And so, with that foundation, let's look at what David informs us, what David tells us about who this person is. And so, first, it's a person, a woman, or a man of integrity. Verse 2 says, "Whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous." This is a phrase that is often used in the Old Testament to describe a person who followed God, and often in contrast to the people around them who didn't. So we think of someone like Noah, who at that time the whole world was evil, following sin, "Except for Noah who walked with God and did what is righteous." There's that phrase where we think of Abraham, and as God chose Abraham, it gives the example of the rest of the world who was living in sin, except for Abraham who is blameless, walking with God, doing what is righteous. And so this brings about this phrase here. This is the person whose walk is blameless, who does what is righteous, someone who is living out their faith in God. And then David writes, "Who speaks the truth from the heart." I love this. This is someone who speaks with conviction, someone who doesn't just say the right thing, but truly believes it. Truly believes it. And I think, I know that this happens within a person who is in the Word of God regularly. When you are reading God's Word, there is power, transforming power in His Word, and it changes us. It changes our hearts. And it has this effect on what we say. There's a prayer by George Herbert, and it's a beautiful prayer that I think we should all pray, and it says this, "Oh, make your word a swift word, passing from the ear to the heart, from the heart to the lip in conversation, that as the rain returns not empty, so neither may your word, but accomplish that which for what it was given." I love that prayer. In that prayer there's expectation and anticipation that God's word is going to change us. It's going to have an effect on our lives. We are transformed by his truth. Now through the work of the Spirit and through the reading of his word, a new heart is formed within us. And then And from that, we'll have a tongue that utters no slander, who speaks the truth from the heart. So, so far we have this person who is described as someone who's living a life of integrity. And then David writes, "It's a person who does no wrong to a neighbor and casts no slur on others." We might recognize this as part of the greatest commandment, to love God and to love others, to love our neighbor. It's a reminder that how we treat those around us is a reflection of what's inside of our hearts.

Another way of saying this might be a person who doesn't condescend to other people. Because someone who is constantly condescending others thinks of themselves as better. They speak from a place of higher status thinking, and they're literally, the word kind of, you're looking down on everyone around you. "I know better, I am better, let me tell you how you're wrong, how you could be doing it right." That's not the way that God intended us to speak to other people. It's not a way of speaking out of love. That would be evidence of a sinful heart, evidence of pride and of selfishness. David continues describing this person, "As someone who despises a vile person, but honors those who fear the Lord." Now, this isn't telling us to hate people or to judge other people, but to be forthright with our loyalty for God and his people. It's a declaration of where our loyalty and allegiance lie. And again, this is written to Israel, who had this habit, this bad habit, of being enamored and falling in love with the surrounding cultures and their deities and their gods and their ungodly practices. And Israel would just find a way to start incorporating those practices, even though God had given them strict rules. And so David is saying, "Israel, if you keep doing that, don't expect to be dwelling in the house of God. Don't expect to be in His presence." He continues again and he says, "Who keeps an oath even when it hurts." I love this one, because this is so hard. This is a very God-like attribute, to be keeping your word even when it is hurting you. I don't know if you've ever had to do that, but it's hard. It's really hard. And think of God who honors his covenant to Israel, even when they rebel against him, even when they break his heart over and over again. You think of the covenant that God made with Abraham. He said, "I'm going to give you lots of descendants. I'm going to make them into a great nation. I'm going to give you a land." And God, in that time, making that happen, endures all these rebellious acts. And Israel, again, commits time and time again just sin against God. Yet God remains faithful, just like He promised He would. And so David is saying that God honors a person who makes sacrifices in order to love other people. Someone who is faithful and steadfast, just like God is, that's a person who's going to dwell in the presence of God. And then he writes, "Someone who does not change their mind." So another way of saying this is sticking with the hard things. Not just taking the easy road, but sticking with it even when it gets hard, Even when it's painful, it hurts.

I think a great example of this was the youth last week, on Monday, went and did a high ropes course in Lake Tahoe. And I don't know if you've ever been 60, 70 feet high up in a tree, but it is terrifying. Some of the kids, some of the students were just like... I'm getting glared at right now by one of the students who was up there in the tree. Some of the students loved it, and they were just like... looked like they had been born in a tree, and they're just hopping around. They were in full harnesses, by the way, so don't... I don't take the students up and just they were in full harnesses. They were roped up it was all very safe and some of them were flying around just like you're going on skinny planks or things that Are just like on a wire going from tree to tree And again, some of them was amazing and then others including myself but others had a very hard time and they're facing fears of heights and balance and everything and They could have there was an option to get out of that tree if they really wanted to But I'm so proud to say, Lauren and I were so proud of them, that they all pushed through. They stuck with doing the hard thing. They faced their fears. They persevered. And they did it. And it was incredible to see them in that moment not change their mind. Take some time to take some deep breaths. And they just, one step at a time. They did a hard thing. And I think God, that's an example of the Christian life, right? There are some times where we can choose an easy way just to back out, to not be involved, but there God would desire that we not change our mind, that we stick with it, that we remain faithful to Him through difficult circumstances.

God wants that for His people. He doesn't want us to quit living the faithful life of integrity, to change our minds, and to start serving ourselves, start living for ourselves. The last couple are a little bit specific. He says, "Who lends money to the poor without interest?" This is like, "Okay, David, that's very specific, but what is that about?" Well, David is saying, "It speaks to a person who cares more about others and their prosperity than one's own gain." When someone who is in need, it's not saying, "How can I make a buck off of this? I can help them, and I can also help myself in this. God's saying, do we have a care for people purely for the sense of loving them, and giving them what they need in that moment, and not being selfish at all, and just saying, yes, let me be able to attend to your needs, and trust that God will take care of you, and He'll take care of me. It's evidence of a faithful heart, and one who is living in God's will. And then in that same verse, in verse 5, it says, "Who does not accept a bribe against the innocent?" And this is describing corruption that happens on all levels of life. We think of corruption and maybe we think of bigger corporations and businesses and politicians, but we can also, we can also live a life of corruption, of injustice. And God cares deeply about justice. If you were part of our community group this past spring, we went through a book of the Old Testament that spoke to how much God cares about justice and how upset he was with Israel, as Israel had let these practices creep into their everyday life that were unjust. God said, "You're going to face the consequences for that." And if God's own people are lying and cheating and being deceitful, What kind of reflection is that on God's character, on who He is? So this is not a character trait that God wants for His people who will be in His house. The person who dwells in the presence of God is someone who cares about justice, just as God does. So, there we have it. Easy enough, right? If you want to be in the presence of God, verses 2 through 5, go for it. As we said, we can't do this on our own. We do not have the capacity, the ability, without Jesus to live a life like this. As we take a step back and look at this list, we see a person who embodies the heart of God, someone who encapsulates a heart that cares for what God cares about and lives in a way that is pleasing and honoring to God. the way that God meant for humanity to live, and the way that Jesus did live years after this was written. I love that David asks a great question and we get the answer. In 15, the last part of this verse, David writes, "Whoever does these things will never be shaken." The Bible loves to use this analogy to describe someone who is protected by God, in whatever circumstances they go through. So in the New Testament you might think of Jesus' teachings in the parable of building the house upon the rock. Or Paul's teachings in Ephesians, where he's talking about a person who is not thrown around by the waves. Again, it's not saying that you won't go through difficult, challenging, painful experiences, because you will. But when you do, God will protect you, He will hold you fast, and keep you secure. And you will go through whatever it is in the presence of God. It also speaks to a consistency. You will not be shaken, but you will remain with God through it all. I think that's part of the Christian life, that we often start younger in our faith, and we have moments where we feel really close to God, and we have moments where we feel really far away. And hopefully the prayer is over life, that up and down becomes a little bit less and just consistent, and we just have a constant strong relationship with him. Whoever does these things will never be shaken.

David, the author, again, to his credit, was very self-aware of his heart, of his own shortcomings, and he had some pretty big shortcomings. And he prayed often to dwell in the house of God. And I think he realized it's because of the sin that he committed and those moments where he felt so far away from God, it stirred in him that hunger to be, "I want to be as close to God as possible. I want to be in the house of God, in the Holy of Holies. I don't want to be far away. I want to be as close to Him. I want to dwell with Him." We should have a similar heart. I said at the beginning that this psalm informs us of who can dwell in the presence of God, but it also holds up a mirror to our own hearts. And so now it's time to hold up that mirror. I want to ask a few questions of us, just some things that you can think about today and this week. First is, what kind of questions are you asking God? Are they questions that expect God to do something according to your will? Or are they questions that will bring you closer to His will? Just as David did, it might be a good exercise to ask those burning questions of faith that we have about who God is and what He does. We all have questions about that. And maybe it's a good exercise to write that down and try to answer them, and then go to the Bible and try to find those answers. Whatever those questions may be, "God, why am I going through this situation in life? God, why did you do this? God, why do you tend to..." Whatever it is, I don't know, why is there suffering? God, who's going to be with you in heaven? You can ask the biggest of questions, you can ask the smallest of questions, but ask them. Take time to figure out those answers, and I think that process, I know that process can bring you closer to Him. It will make you wrestle with hard truths and tensions in the faith, but it'll be so good. There's a lot that we're meant to wrestle with.

As I said in the beginning, God, the authors wanted us to be...there's just tension in the faith. There just is. My Hebrew professor told me that there are rabbis who study one psalm for their entire life. And so they'll have 50 years of study on one psalm, and they just continually learn. They never think that they have arrived, and they think that they know it all. They are saying, "Oh, in year 48, here's the new thing I learned from this same passage. And so we should have a similar heart. God, there is more to know about you. I need to ask these good questions to find out these answers." And then secondly, lastly, our last question, do we desire to live in God's presence? Are we taking moments in life to ask God, "How can I be in your presence right now?" And I would say, let's be specific. It may mean praying, "God, in my place of work, how do I work in your presence? God, in my family life, how do I be a father, a mother, a husband, a wife, a friend, son, daughter, whatever it is in your presence?" Are we trying to be with God, or are we trying to have God just be with us in what we're doing? And there's a difference. It's important to find out how we're living our lives. We may not have thought about it that way before, but we can, by default, just start to bring God along with us. "God, I'm going this way, please follow, come with me." When really, we need to be asking, "God, where do you want me to go? Where are you leading? Let me follow you." Are you trying to be with God? Are you trying to be this person who can dwell in the house of God, in the presence of God? Is this list of characteristics present in your life? In what areas of your life do you feel the Spirit calling your attention to, to submit and to undergo further transformation by the power of God and his Word? David, like us, didn't always get it right. But in this moment, I'm so thankful that he asked the right question. And so I want to encourage us to be like him and make a habit of asking the right questions to God.

Would you guys pray with me right now? God, we come before you thankful for your word, and the power of your truth to transform our hearts to be made more like you. And that is our desire, that is our prayer, that you would be purifying us, transforming us, taking the sinful habits away, and instantly putting in us godly desires, godly character. So I pray that this week through your Spirit you would help, you would speak to us about areas of our life that need to change, where we are being selfish and self-absorbed. And I pray that you would help us in our prayer life as we converse with you regularly. That I pray that we would take time to pause and think about what we're asking. And while we still may have requests for you, I pray that our hearts would also start to see how we can ask, "God, how can I be in your presence? How can I live a life where I am with you in everything that I do?" Go with us this week. Guide us this week. We trust you and we love you. We pray this in your name. Amen.

Summer of Psalms - Part 3

Psalm 122 - Our Approach to Worshipping God

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

All right, we are continuing in our series in Psalms. I want to start by bringing us back to, I think, a common experience that we've all had. I want you to think back maybe to your childhood at some point, and maybe around Christmas or birthday, and the excitement that you felt about something that you were going to get, that gift, whatever you had in mind, and maybe it's a specific Christmas or birthday for me. I loved Legos growing up, and I only got Legos at Christmas. And every Christmas, there was a new, like, big set, and I was like, oh, this is the best. So, you know, the weeks leading up, I just started getting excited like I know there's a big Lego set that is gonna be underneath that tree And that was my Lego set for the year, but there's a process that as you anticipate something first is this Anticipation right this excitement that's building as the days get closer to that thing happening. You just get more and more excited And then maybe it's Christmas or your birthday But when you actually get that thing whenever you got it just the excitement was at its peak you're like it is here I this is it. I finally I get to enjoy this thing and And then for the next couple days, maybe weeks, the excitement is still up there. You're waking up like, "Oh, I can't wait to play. I have this new thing. This is fantastic." And then weeks or months go by and the excitement starts to dwindle. Maybe the enjoyment is still there. You still love to play with... You used to play with that thing and it was there, but you don't wake up with the excitement anymore. It's just like, "Oh yeah, I have that. I love it. It's great." But the excitement is gone. I say that thinking back to it, kids, but I still have things in my life right now that make me feel that way.

So maybe you do too. It's a feeling that we have, and it is, you know what it's like to have that excitement at one point, and then that initial infatuation or excitement just tapers off. And I think that happens not just with things in our lives, but also in our Christian life. Maybe you've experienced something similar in your walk with Jesus, where if you think back to when you were saved, and there's this initial excitement and just obvious joy that you feel, it's almost tangible. As you come to know and accept Jesus and this initial life change is invigorating, you have new habits, new rhythms that you are just welcoming into your life. And it's almost effortless of like, what else is there? I want to do it all, this is great, being a Christian. And then after a time, maybe it's months or years, the aspects of the Christian life can become routine and maybe not in the best way. You know, reading your Bible, you're attending church, but you're just kind of going through the motions. You're just doing it and it's there, it's good, but you're not excited. You're not excited about it anymore. Why does that happen? If you've experienced that, maybe you can think back to when that is, or maybe you're in the midst of it right now. Why does that happen? Well, I believe it's a heart issue. Initially, our hearts are being reoriented and they're being devoted and we're committed to God. And there's a desire and a commitment to worship God with our everything. But eventually, the heart begins to lean away from God, to stray and to get distracted, begins yearning for other things. Another way of saying this is that our hearts want to worship something else or someone else. It's really a matter of the heart. Our hearts are initially so focused on God, straining towards God, being transformed, but sin is still a reality. It's still present in our lives. It's still present in the world around us. And initially what was so effortless and so easy to be devoted, to be committed to God now takes more effort and more intentionality.

So how do we get that excitement and that joy back as we walk with Jesus? How should we approach a life of following and worshiping God? That's our question for today. You may be encouraged to know that it's not a new issue. This is not something that just the local church in the last couple of hundred years has been experiencing. No, this was a reality for the Israelites in the Old Testament too. Back then, for the Israelites, their life looked different than ours, but they also had spiritual practices of worshiping God, and some of those could become routine. And so David writes this Psalm as a reminder to help paint the picture of the ideal heart, the ideal approach for the Israelites as they come to worship God. We're gonna be in Psalm 122 today, and this is a Psalm of ascent, which means this is a Psalm that was meant to be sung as Israelites made their way to Jerusalem to worship God. Jerusalem was the center of worship. It's where the tabernacle was until they built the temple and then the temple was there. And so this Psalm has a lot of Jerusalem descriptions and language. It's a Psalm that if you can kind of picture this on a day where, you know, maybe some kind of feast where everyone had to go to the temple, you could just see everyone from outside the city to inside the city making their way, getting outside their homes, closing their doors and joining in the streets and walking to the temple. And they're all doing it together. And they could sing this song out loud as a chorus. And it would help them as they approached where God's presence was in the tabernacle, help their hearts get in the right place. So I think it can do the same for us today.

Let's go ahead and read. You guys can follow along on the screen. It says, "I rejoiced with those who said to me, Let us go to the house of the Lord. Our feet are standing in your gates, Jerusalem. Jerusalem is built like a city that is closely compacted together. That is where the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, to praise the name of the Lord according to the statute given to Israel. There stand the thrones for judgment, the thrones of the house of David. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. May those who love you be secure. May there be peace within your walls and security within your citadels. For the sake of my family and friends, I will say, Peace be within you. For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your prosperity." So this psalm, and I think it helps us, reminds us about our approach and where our hearts should be as we worship together. And that first reminder comes from the first couple verses. And it's that worship comes from joy. It's like that kid on Christmas who's excited about their gift, anticipation about what they're receiving, we should have this similar excitement, anticipation about worshiping God, about going to the place of worship. Now I know in other series we've talked about how worship is a more general term, and it means like all of our lives, Paul writes about this in the New Testament, that all of our lives are worshiped to God. But today I just wanna use that term like David is intending it, the place of worship, the house of worship. So we're talking about the temple or the tabernacle, or today we're talking about church.

And so that joy of going to church or going to this house of worship, and it first and foremost comes from recognizing who God is and what He has done. And for the Israelites, they praise God for being their savior, saving them from slavery in Egypt. And they recognize the grace that God had given them as He protected them and sustained them in the desert and helped them get into the promised land. They have all this in the back of their heads as they come to God, they say, "We couldn't have any of this. They were in the promised land with the tabernacle and the temple. We wouldn't be here without God." So many times Israel rebelled against God and yet He remained steadfast and faithful to them. The Israelites who were selfish and prideful, hard-headed, naturally bent towards serving themselves and who often got it wrong, they have been saved. And for a moment when they were at the tabernacle, they were accepted into God's presence. And that moment, as they approached, just thinking of that moment of being in God's presence, brought them so much joy. Now, today, for us, how much more joy do we have, knowing that we don't have to go to the tabernacle or to the temple, that we have the Spirit within us, God with us all the time. And that we, Jesus, gave us salvation and the grace that He gives us daily. He saved us from eternity in hell, gives us everlasting life. And we who are selfish and prideful and hard-headed and often bent towards serving ourselves, we were saved. And God loves us. And the Spirit is with us always. Just that, just that reality is enough for the believer to feel joy. Joy from God for what He has done for us. That reason, that joy comes from the truth. It's an act of redemption that Jesus has done for us so great that we will be rejoicing in heaven for eternity for what he has done. And so we believers, we can walk through anything. We can go through anything in life. A hard day at work, losing a loved one, shattered dreams, and we can stand firm, maybe even with tears in our eyes, and just say, "But I am saved. But I am a child of God loves me and I still feel joy.” We need to be reminded of that because as soon as we grow callous to the grace of God our hearts will begin to wander. Pastor and author Paul David Tripp says, "What a tragedy when we grow used to that grace. What a tragedy when it no longer has value to us. What a tragedy when we we begin to think that we actually deserve acceptance with God. And how important it is to remember that I will never have any other standing with God, but the standing I am given by means of His grace.”

As we approach church, as we approach God at any point, I hope that we feel this sense of joy as we remember what God has done for us. And the fact that we are even believers in the first place is owed to him, we owe him that glory. So we have joy because of God. David begins this Psalm with this all time important reminder that as we approach the place of worship, let us be filled with joy. And this is, all these points are kind of a chain reaction. So first we begin with joy, and then secondly, Our second reminder comes in verses three through four, and it's that we worship out of obedience. The Israelites were given a structure and a routine for them to obey. It says in verse four, "That is where the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, "to praise the name of the Lord "according to the statute given to Israel." This is referring back to in the desert, in Exodus and Deuteronomy, Jesus, or God, sorry, gave them instruction of how to be a nation, And part of that was how to worship Him. Israel had this history of being in Egypt. So they had seen how other nations had done. They'd seen how Egypt had worshiped. They've been in the desert, they've seen shins and how they worship their gods. And God is saying, "I don't want any of that. Do not worship Me in that way. I will tell you how to worship Me. And you will worship Me at this place and in this way." So Israel worships out of duty and out of obedience and responsibility, and it's because it's what is due God's name for what he has done for them. And at the root of this law is the command to love and worship the Lord their God and to keep his commandments. But as God gave this law to Israel about worshiping him, this isn't a new idea for the people of Israel, this idea of worship. Again, Paul David Tripp says, "Worship is your identity before it is ever an activity. You are by very nature a worshiper." See, God created humanity to worship Him. That's what He intended. Adam and Eve, He intended for them to worship Him, but then sin comes in, as we know this story, sin comes into the world and changes everything. And now, humanity can now, starts to worship the creation and start of the, instead of the creator. And whether we think about it or not, we, as worshipers, we are worshiping something or someone. And from that worship, we are drawing our purpose, our identity, and our security.

Those things are meant to come from God. God intended that you find your purpose, your identity, and your security in Him. But people who start to worship other things, that's where they draw their identity from. Oh, I'm really about this and I want you to know that. And so I'm gonna share this all about you. Everything about me revolves around this other thing. And I only feel secure if I'm good at this thing or if that is a success in my life and my purpose is to serve this other thing. That's how the heart naturally works. God intended that he would be that focus, that he would be that for our life and that we would find our purpose, our identity and the security in him. The Bible calls this having other gods, having idols in our lives. And we naturally, we're just good at making idols. You may not have heard that before, but you're good at it. And it's not a good thing to be good at. Pastor said this about John Calvin, theologian, says, "John Calvin saw that the human heart is relentlessly efficient, is a relentlessly," oh my goodness, sorry, let me start over. "John Calvin saw the human heart as a relentlessly efficient factory for producing idols. People want things to work better. They want a life that is more interesting. They want help through difficult times. They want meaning and significance in their ventures. They want a God in a way, but certainly not a jealous God, not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Mostly they want it their way. They want to stay in control, but have ancillary divine assistance for the hard parts. I read that and I mean, spirit started convicting right away. We want God, but we have these other idols that we still want to be attached to. These other things in our life that are drawing, we're giving our attention, we're giving ourselves too, but when life gets hard, we want God to intervene. God, now I need your help. I've been doing this other stuff and I kind of got myself into a pickle here. Can you please, can you help me out? We tend to make idols out of things in our lives, sometimes even good things. Idols don't have to be bad. We can make idols out of family, out of providing for our family. We can make idol, whatever it is, we can make an idol out of it. But a great way to avoid that is to be obedient, to remain consistent in our regular worship of God.

And so we do that out of obedience. And it's not a begrudging obedience. I don't like this. we think of obedience as contrasted to something we want to do. We can want to be obedient. We can find something good and just, I don't think there's people out there like, "I don't steal because I'm begrudgingly following the rule that says I can't steal." No, we just don't steal and there's joy in that. It's like, "Yeah, that's not something I should do and I don't want to do that and I'm happy to not do that." And we can obey God in worshiping and have joy as we worship Him. And again, this is a chain reaction. So first there's joy, and out of that joy comes obedience. Thirdly, the next thing, so we have joy, we obey, and then in verses five through seven, we see that worship of God leads to a caring heart. If our hearts are filled with love for God, if our hearts are aligned with God's heart, then we will care about what God cares about, His people, His kingdom, and to see His perfect will carried out here on earth. Israel was meant to be a nation that carried out God's love and truth. And first and foremost, people would see that in how they loved God and also how they loved each other. As that was happening, other people would notice, man, this Israel is different. and this God that they worship is different than any other gods that we have. And it would be a distinct reflection of who Yahweh is. And the church today is meant to have a similar role. As we love each other and care for each other and worship God, people will take notice and be like, this is different. But how do we do that if our hearts are naturally selfish and there's this focus on our own lives, our own success, our own advancement or comfort, our own peace. Well, David says elsewhere in the Psalms, in Psalm 51, he says, "Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me."

So we know that it's the work of the Spirit within us. It's the work of Christ within us to lift up our heads from our own lives, from our own circle, to look up and to see others in the way that God sees them. How are we caring for those around us? Do we pray for them? Do you pray for the people in your life, not just your loved ones, which hopefully you're praying for the loved ones, but your neighbor who maybe is a cranky neighbor? Are you praying for your coworkers who you may not enjoy working with all the time? Are you praying just for the people in your life that need God? Do you meet their needs? Do you walk alongside them through whatever hardships they face? Do you pray for their peace and their prosperity that God would bless them? I know for me sometimes I prayed for them, but in a way that benefits me. God, can you help them be nice to me? Can you help them? Like my life is hard, God, so just help other people to make my life better. But that's not the prayers that David's talking about here. saying, "I want them. God, just bless them. Give them peace. Give them what they need to be closer to you." And so as we approach the place of worship, we should be reminded of those in our lives who we need to care for. Or for those as we are literally maybe even driving to church, as those who are passing. Those people need prayer too. Do we care for them? When we think about attending church on a Sunday, do you think about the people you are attending with? Do you kind of lift up your head from your, sometimes what we can do, just go to church by myself, I'm gonna say hi to people and do the small talk, but I'm just gonna go in, gonna worship, gonna listen, I'm gonna leave. We kind of keep our head down the whole time. Or maybe we should lift our heads up and interact with the people and care for them and pray for them and take an interest in their lives and want God to be a part of their lives. So maybe the prayer needs to start with, God, soften my heart towards other people, create in me a desire to care for your children, God. And this care for others also wonderfully fights against the consumer mentality that we have. Again, just slipping into church or these thoughts that are like, I just need to hear the sermon and the worship, just get the necessities and I'm gonna head out, I'm gonna be on my way. Got a busy week, I got a lot of stuff to do, so I know I need to do this, but it's about me. The church, if we're at the center of our church experience, we have a problem.

Part of true worship means seeing others. First we look at God and we recognize God, that's the joy, then we're doing this out of obedience, and then we're looking at others. God's people caring for them. And for the record, I think this church does a great job of that and I say this as encouragement of keep doing this. Let this be a strength of Spring Valley that people who visit would know that we genuinely care about each other. Not just in a, hey, I'm glad to know what's going on, but we are a part of each other's lives. So worship starts with joy. We do it out of obedience and it leads to a care for others. And lastly, worship of God creates community. Hopefully you see these dots connecting here. It says in verses eight through nine, "For the sake of my family and friends, "I will say, 'Peace be within you.' "For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, "I will seek your prosperity." David ends this psalm with the hope Jerusalem will prosper, that his people will prosper, and not for Jerusalem's sake, not for their sake, but for God's glory. And that can be our prayer too. There is unity and commonality found as we share our love for God. We all have this love for God. We are all being obedient to God. And if we all care for each other, we naturally are just, we're together now. We are a family. There's a community that's been formed. For Israel, that was the entire nation, the nation, all the people were heading to the temple. And as they look around, you can just imagine a very crowded space with smiles on their face as they get to be near the presence of God. This is a very unifying experience for them. Again, this is the reminder of what God has done for them from slavery to freedom. God has brought them blessing and fortune. God had given them the blueprint for how to live righteously together as a nation. And today we have the church, we have this family of believers from all different backgrounds, united in our love for God. And there is a deep sense of belonging, of family, of having a place and having a people. Some of you have a great support system outside the church. You have amazing family and friends, and that is truly a blessing.

For others, this church, this room, this is your biggest opportunity for community, for family, for connection. And this is why we love having moments like Morning Blend and Family Meals or the Popcorn Bar, just other opportunities for us to interact. But really, our desire is that it's beyond Sunday. It's beyond Midweek Group. We want you guys, we want all of us to be a family together that's interacting throughout the week, texting each other, grabbing coffees, grabbing meals, inviting people over for houses just to talk, going on walks around the neighborhood together, share life together, be a community together. And I guarantee you, people don't care if your house is messy 'cause of the kids, or if you have a dog that barks at every car that goes by. Welcome them in, bring them in, have people over. Be a community, be a family together. We wanna be a part of each other's life. as we worship God together. And it's not for our sake, it's not for selfish reasons, but it's for God's glory. So as we think about church and the Sundays and belonging to this church family, it's more than just one weekly occurrence. So much more than that. It's about a joy that comes from God's salvation and love for us. about being obedient to the life that God has called us to live. It's about caring for others as God cares for them. It's about living in community as a family.

I wanna paint this scene again. If it's helpful to close your eyes, close your eyes. Just imagine Old Testament Jerusalem and people from outside the city and there's a family waking up early and they're all excited because today they're going to the tabernacle. They get to go be near the presence of God. And as they leave their tent or their house, they see everyone else doing the same thing. And all of a sudden there's just this huge crowd. Every street is filled with people heading to the tabernacle. And there's a buzz around the city. And they start to sing this song. I rejoice with those who said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord. Our feet are standing in your gates, Jerusalem. Jerusalem is built like a city that is closely compacted together. That is where the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, to praise the name of the Lord according to the statute given to Israel. There stand the thrones for judgment, the thrones of the house of David. And as they're walking up, they're seeing these people, all of them, together, and they care for each other. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. May those who love you be secure. secure him, or there be peace within your walls and security within your citadels. For the sake of my family and friends, I will say peace be within you. For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your prosperity. They can't help but smile because they know that God has saved them, that he loves them, and so it's out of their obedience, not a chore, but just a joyful obedience that they come to the presence of God. And they worship him. And now we today don't have that same scene. We're not walking, if you walk today, that's fantastic, but we don't often walk to church, we're driving, we have a busy life, but it can be similar. And so I wanna paint this scene for you.

Maybe this is helpful. This is simply just an exercise that helps you in your walk with God great. But what if our weekly routine was this, Saturday night, and yes, it's important that church starts the night before, Saturday night, you start to think about the next day and what you're doing and attending church. And that gets you thinking about God and about what He's done for you. And all of a sudden that joy starts to grow within you. And as you're going to bed or waking up in the morning and you're thinking about church, you start to think about the people that you attend church with, the people in this room. You start to wonder, how's this person doing? I remember that person said this, and all of a sudden we just find ourselves praying for them now. We're caring for them. And then we're thinking of people who aren't here. The empty seats, the people who need to be here, who haven't gone to church yet. We start praying for them and we care for them. I pray that my coworker, man, I've been having those conversations about Jesus. I hope that he shows up. I invited him, I hope he's here. God, my neighbor, they need Jesus a lot right now. They're going through a hard time. So we're caring for people together. And then as we're here and out of joyful obedience, we praise God. And these songs that we sing, I mean, this is why we sing these songs, is to praise Him for what He has done for us, for the salvation that He brings. And we can have a deep joy, even if we've had a hard week, I think it's rare to come here and the week has gone just pure good. I mean, life is complicated, it's a mess, it's chaotic. So we can come here just as we are with all of those feelings and emotions, but within we have a joy, of a deep joy that comes from God. That's our prayer. That's what David desired for Israel and that's what God desires of us.

Summer of Psalms - Part 2

Psalm 19 - The Heavens, The Word & the Glory of God

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

I have the pleasure today to continue in our Summer of Psalms series. We kicked it off last week, Pastor Andra did, and we're gonna be in Psalm chapter 19. So if you guys wanna flip, tap, click over to that this morning, we're gonna be in Psalm 19, but I love Psalms. And there's been a couple seasons now, I think we're in our third season of, in a rotation of summers of doing summer in Psalms. And what I love about the summer in Psalms is it's just, this is time to kinda take a little bit of a step back. I know we got a lot of people traveling, we got a lot of graduations, we got people going here and there. And I love about the Psalms is it's still kind of a giant overarching series, but at the same time, we just kind of dive into one chapter at a time and there's 150 of them. So it'll probably take us a couple summers to go through all of them alone. We could do a summer in Psalm 119 by itself if we wanted to one year. But the book of Psalms is so much different than any other book in the Bible. And what I mean by that is there are 150 chapters of Psalms. and divide it up into five different parts, or maybe you could call five different subgroups. And that they are over 40 to a dozen in each of these sub books in the Psalms. And there are so many different authors. That's what I love about this. There's so many different people's perspectives. There's so many different people's hearts and experiences they're having with God Almighty, from Moses to King David, King Solomon, to Asaph, to the sons of Korah, to Ethan, to Herman. And there's actually over 50 Psalms that there is no author attributed as well. And this time of this book actually spans about a thousand years, which when you think about that, you think, man, that's pretty incredible to have a book to cover over a thousand years of life. Big themes of praise, God's power, forgiveness, and it all sums up in a perfect little bow that I just absolutely my type A personality love. In Psalm 150 verse six, last verse in the entire book of Psalms, it says, "Let everything that breathes sing praise to the Lord." Praise the Lord.

That's what it's about. That's what life in itself, if you were to boil down everything that we in our life would just breathe praise to God almighty. That our life, how we live, how we love one another, how we care for each other, how we serve one another, how we go to our job, how we do school, how we go from places, how we grocery shop, how we go to Costco and deal with that parking lot, how we do everything would just bring honor and praise to God. There is this level of raw emotion in the Psalms that I just absolutely, sometimes we think maybe we have to pray a certain way. We're talking to big G God, right? I get asked all the time as a pastor, how do you pray? Teach me how to pray. And I was like, you're having a conversation with me, right? They're like, yeah, teach me how to pray. I was like, have a conversation with God. And they're like, well, you know, if I don't have like, if I don't speak in those right words, if I don't speak in King James, sayeth, loveth, shalleth, Lord blesseth, meeth, pleaseth. Like if we don't talk in King James and God doesn't hear me and I go, no, no, no, no, no, that's not how it is. You're having a conversation with a relational, loving, caring God who deeply knows you in the ways that even your closest confidant doesn't even know you. And we're gonna see that today in the book of Psalm 19, but this raw emotion, sometimes unpolished, sometimes not polite, sometimes not even PC. We see these Psalms in this book and I want us to remember and to be reminded that God's not afraid of our real life. God's not afraid of what we're going through that we can't get real with Him. He's a big God. He can take it. He can take it. And when we might find ourselves in life, and I've been there before when I just wanted to just punch God, 'cause I don't understand why He's doing what He's doing. He's just right there just to wrap you up in the midst that He loves us. And we see that in Psalms and specifically songs of men that we'll get to later in this series, but this honest, true, personal conversation that we get to kind of peek behind the curtain of people's personal relationship with God is such an incredible, incredible guide for our life in how we can have this relationship with God ourselves.

Last week, Pastor Andre kicked us off with Psalm 29. And he talked about this idea of reminding us to listen for the voice of God. And that we might find ourselves with people in our life that are trying to tell us that they are God and that they know the best for our lives. And they wanna either with hopefully good intentions, maybe not steer us in the right way, but that we know that there's people with bad intentions that try to pull us away, especially it talks about the enemy being one of great disguise, trying to pull us away from the truth of God's voice. In the Psalmist in 29, King David, he says, "Listen for the voice of God." Push in, fight with everything you have to hear that voice from him because only in him can we find the true voice of God, which brings strength and peace. And this kind of peace that we've said before that just is beyond understanding. This peace that we can only have when we rest in the truth of God.

And so today Psalm 19, this is a really unique Psalm. It's unique in the way that it's written in three different parts from three different authors spanning three different time periods. And yet has the same cohesive thought and theological truth drawing us in to the character of God. These three sections in verse one through six talk about creation and how creation speaks and gives praise to God. And then verse seven through 10 talk about this idea of the instruction for life, the speech of God and His word. The original Hebrew word here would be the Torah, the original Hebrew scriptures and how that speaks to God's truth for our lives. And then verses 11, 14, there is the shift that the author itself then becomes the reader servant in finding speech in a prayer to God on our behalf. And what I love about this is this big theme of this entire Psalm is on creation and God being the creator. This first part of the Psalm describes creation in praise to God. And it talks about this idea of joy that comes when we look at the created world around us. And then it pulls us in to the joy that is found in God's word. And then ultimately into the joy that is found in a deep personal relationship with God himself. And it talks about this word of God being our rock, kind of coming full circle of this idea of nature being revealing who God is himself. And we can understand God in so many facets in life. I think sometimes we think of this big dude upstairs, this God of heavens that is disconnected or as far from us, or is so impersonal to who our life is here today.

But the Psalmist here wants to remind us that that's not who God is. That God is not a hidden God, but he is more a revealed God in so many ways, whether it's the created world around us, whether it's his scriptures that he gives us in the Bible to read, and in this deep, honest, personal relationship that we have with him. And that is in this personal relationship that we find communion and relationship and intimacy through prayer. I wanna jump in this first section of Psalms. So you wanna turn Psalm 19, starting in verse one, it says this, it says, "The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech. Night after night they reveal knowledge. Yet they have no speech. They use no words. No sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens, God has pitched a tent for the sun. This first section here is so interesting because it takes us to this place where there's this beautiful duality and back and forth play between artistry and theology. and theological truth. The heavens is being the subject declare or are resounding being a verb, the glory of God who is the object of this entire Psalm. The work of his hands being God's hands, the object proclaim or is declaring verb, the skies, the subject of this. There's this theological balance and these two colas of this opening verse that go back and forth about how God dwells in the heavens and yet the heavens praise God glory. And at the same time, the skies, the created, the lower firmament, as you might know, or the level beneath the heavens, the sky, the moon, the stars, actually in turn praise the work of God's hands. So it's like this beautiful dance back and forth, all resounding on the glory of God. And then in verse two and three, there's the beginning to be this continued statement of repetition day after day, night after night, emphasizing that creation speaks a message about God and passes on this knowledge of God forever and ever and ever and ever, amen. It's only then in verse three that we shift to state that though this message is sent back and forth for all eternity, it cannot be interpreted in the traditional understanding.

What do I mean by that? Well, I mean, it's this fundamental paradox of God's creation actually resounds with a speech, but it is in a way that human beings can neither hear nor understand. There is no speech, there are no words, There is no voice particularly heard. And yet this knowledge of who God is in creation is personified and expressed. But not just any type of knowledge, it's knowledge specifically of the Lord God Almighty. I struggled to understand that at first. I was studying, I was like, how does this all this work? And I was reminded of that feeling you have maybe when you just sit on the beach and you just stare into the waves. To sit there and just to look out into complete total abyss. Or maybe you prefer when you find yourself sitting by the lake and the cool waters lapping on the shore and being surrounded in the shadow of tall, tall trees. There's just something there that speaks to our soul. There's something there that says we're not alone. That there's something else out there that put this together and put this on earth and made it happen in such a unique, intricate, specific, orderly, not a happenstance fashion. And there's just this peace that comes over us. My wife and I had the opportunity to sneak away for a few days, thanks to Papa and Mimi, to watch the kids for us for our 16 year anniversary. And we got to go up to Lake Tahoe. And we were able to be out there for two nights, but I remember the morning of the first day after we'd been up there. And I just got this chance to sit on the little deck outside of our hotel and just to be in the presence of just God in his creation and the cool breeze and the shadow of the trees and just the peace of God was in that space. And yet it spoke words to me and yet there were no words. You could just feel something there. And as the Psalmist said, we'll read a little bit, it refreshed my soul to just sit in that place with a cup of coffee and just talk to God. And honestly, not much was said. It was just a moment that I was able to have in that space that God knew my soul was growing weary and I needed His refreshment in me. And I just found myself sitting in this space without words, without verbal communication, just something that I knew He was there. And this is what the Psalmist is saying, that in space we can find something that is felt, that is experienced, that is heard deep within us. This is actually a little bit in contrast to the culture of the day when the Psalm first section was written because Israel's neighbors actually worshiped the sun, the moon, the stars as divine beings themselves. And the poem here of the Psalter is stressing that the created things that are the sky are not God, but they are merely something, a phenomenon of the creator God Almighty Himself, whose true end is to praise God, the one true God. and this voice and this tongue of nature as it may speak, not in the words that human beings that we can discern, it is something deep down in our soul that connects us to God himself.

The psalm continues in verse five. It is like a bride coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and it makes it circuit all the way to the other. Nothing is deprived of its warmth. The second stanza takes a little bit of a shift, even though still part of the first section brings us a narrow focus to the sun specifically. This idea of rising and going is this measure of the day and the night. In Hebrew culture, it is said that the sun was to have its tent in the heavens, that the sun was to rise and it was the sun was to go down and it was to have its tent in the presence of the heavens of God almighty. This going out and running its course or its circuit and to return home. In the ancient near East, the sun was worse, the God of justice. And the Psalmist here is playing on this cultural idea that a Sumerian hymn calls the sun god a hero, a strong man or a warrior, and that it goes out and it conquers all, and it returns home victorious to his wife. The writer here is playing off of these cultural polytheistic ideas that these gods or the sun being a god himself, but it isn't polytheism that the Psalmist is talking about, but rather reminding us, the reader, that the sun is not a God, but something created by God. And it is God who sets the sun in the heavens, not the sun itself. The sun runs a circuit, not for itself, as the ancient Near East would believe, but runs the circuit that God has appointed to it. And that the sun is said to rejoice as it runs its circuit in the songs of praise directed towards God himself. The son or the created is giving worship to its big C, creator. Verse six says that nothing is deprived from its warmth. I think this word warmth here is a little bit deceiving. It's the original Hebrew is actually talking about this idea of heat or wrath. If you're thinking the terms of the sun and the culture, that the sun god would be this god of justice, one that just tears through everything and it kills and it conquers, it consumes with fire, everything set before it. I felt that this week when the sun, anybody else? The wrath of a hundred degrees is upon us. This idea or imagery of extreme judgment, devouring thirst that nothing, even the ends of the earth as it says, can escape it. But there's a subtle message wrapped here in this stanza. The writer wants to remind us that God being above and over all of creation, including the Son, who the surrounding cultures see as a God, is actually declaring that God is in God's glory. And that God's glory comes to His holiness, sometimes seen as themes in the Old Testament of Hebrew scripture as a fire. We see that in the Israelites when they're first out of Egypt, that God is a pillar of fire by night. that this fire as seen by most cultures as this horrific, terrible thing that wants to kill and destroy you is actually seen as something that is holy, is refining, is a light guiding us darkness. And that sometimes even in the church, it's been misrepresented as the God of fire and brimstone. Repent or go to hell, preachers yelling at you. But there's this duality of this fire that yet, yes, it is burning and hot and consuming, but also at the same time, I think of a warm fire on a cold night that warms, that sustains life, that helps us, that cooks food for us, that sustains us, brings nourishment. And this idea of, yes, God is both judge, judge in his permanent, hard, there's no compromise. But at the same time, he is caring, he is loving, he is guiding, he is life sustaining. And the Psalmist here is playing on as we see a verse and we think, man, that's so harsh. How can God be so hard? I thought God was supposed to be loving. And yet there is judgment. He calls us out on the carpet at times, but it's only because He loves us and He cares for us and He wants the best for our lives. I see this in the fact that the sun doesn't change. God doesn't. Rather we, in our circumstances, our choices, Our decisions, our moments in life change. But God is there day after day after day, always coming back around.

The Psalmist continues, verse 7 through 10, “The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The three steps of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. the commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The decrees of the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous. They are more precious than gold. They are more than much pure gold. They are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb.” This is where we shift into the second section of the Psalm, and the tone here changes, right? We just go from the sun being consuming and harsh, and just burning to this idea of then the scripture, the word of the Lord is refreshing to our soul. Like a drink of cool water on a hot day, just that ah moment. This is the word of God. There's also a change in the original word for God here. It goes from a generic L, meaning God of nature, to this more personal relational God that the Hebrew people did as Yahweh. To go from a God of just nature that is around us to a personal God who loves us. The word of God is said in these first six lines full of synonyms. Did you catch those? It talked about the law, the statute, the precepts, the commands, the fear, the decrees. Each of these in reference to the word of God better knows we had today the Bible and these verses and words and chapters and books are all instructions for us for right living. There is this connection now between the law or the nature of God and his created order into the law of God, His Word, the Torah, the Scriptures for our lives. There's connections here between talking about rejoicing as it circles the earth and at the same time the precepts of the Lord. The Scriptures are right giving joy to our heart. Joy is seen in created order and joy is seen in His Word for lives. The Sun shines over all creation, talking about light, and the commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to our eyes. The light from the Sun continues throughout all a universe. It doesn't just shine past earth and then just fade off, but light continues on through the vast expanse of the universe, and so do the fear of the Lord is pure and during forever. This beautiful imagery of the created order and and particular set emotion details isn't just creation but we find ourselves too in that creation being created in the image of God ourselves and God giving us his word to know who he is not just from a generic knowledge of the created order around us, but a more head knowledge of who God is in his character. Verse 10 closes this section. It says, "They are more precious than gold, much more pure gold. They are sweeter than honey than honey from a honeycomb." This verse continues to echo God's creation in the first six verses, affirming that the word of the Lord is more desired than anything in creation. Playing off of this imagery of the sun becoming both gold and honey, sharing this golden hue of the sun. It's beautiful picture here of this, but speaking more so of gold and honey as status in that day. If you had gold, you You were set. You were wealthy. You were beyond ready to eat on a regular basis. You were first class. You were top of the top. And the Psalmist here is reminding us that even the word of the Lord is greater than the greatest desired of life itself. Not just gold, but absolutely pure gold with no imperfections, which I don't even know if they were able to refine it that pure in that day. But talking about honey being something that does not spoil, does not fade, does not go bad, it lasts almost forever. And to have that to be consumed in sweetness and to have this joy and pleasure in eating that the word of God is even greater than any of all of that. Anything that you would want to pursue as the thing in life, God's word rises and sets above it all.

The Psalmist finished in verses 11 to 14. "By them, your servant is warned, in keeping them there is a great reward. But who can discern their own errors? Forgive my hidden faults. Keep your servant also from willful sins that they may not rule over me. Then I will be blameless, innocent of great transgression. May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.” The shift in poetic style as well. And that here the Psalmist himself becomes our servant to the reader in praying for us in his words and in his speech towards God. this beautiful shift and this idea of this coming from abstract speech from nature into the speech of God's word for our lives, into the speech of the scene for us in the way that we live out our life. Verses 11 and 12 there discuss the rewards. What does it say there? It says, "Great reward is found in the instruction of God." This isn't talking about this cause and effect of, "Okay, if I obey everything in the word of God, then there will be great reward for me. I will prosper. I will have everything perfect in my life. Nothing bad will happen to me." No. Talking about the fact of the opposite of that, when we follow the instruction of God, there is great reward in the life of God that is given to our soul. I think sometimes in life, we want God to bless us and then we'll be obedient. But God doesn't work like that. God asks and calls for our obedience and then his intimacy comes on to our life. That's how God works. And the Psalmist here is reminding us and saying this way that protect us in your salvation, God. See, we have on the backside of this, the great reward of knowing the story of God after this, Jesus coming to earth, dying for our sins, rising again, ascending to heaven and sending upon us, those who have accepted him, believe in him, the gift and leading of the Holy Spirit in our lives. This is the greatest thing that we ever asked for. The Psalmist here is praying for something like that, but not knowing what that thing is like. And yet we have that. So for us to see the revelation of God in this unspoken knowledge of God, to then see His word given to us to revealing who He is, God's character, His nature, His son, the Holy Spirit is then infused into our lives how we go about our daily life, living the way that God has called us to in ways that we know we need to make a right decision, talking about the willful choices, the willful wrongdoing, the willful right doing, but also as it says in here, these hidden places, these hidden spots where we might not know the details of God in this moment, we know because of who God has revealed himself in nature, who his scripture is and the truth and the word that he's given us, we know how we are to act and live and fulfill the life and calling that he has for each of us.

This author's prayer, I kind of rewrote it in my own words. And it would be, God, let your word of your truth speak over not just me, but also the reader. Let your holy light illuminate our errors as the sun, both hidden and unknown, willful and known. Let your freedom be found in the almighty God and not our sinful nature, in the desire to be blameless, removed from innocence of any transgression, to be holy God as you are holy, bringing you Father, Lord almighty, into our entire being through our words of our mouth, our souls, our hearts, thoughts, even before they become words. May we all do in our speech, finding revelation in the unspoken speech in your creation and your word become pleasing, something that you God would find full of rejoicing that my life would be a pleasing sacrifice, bringing glory, honor, and praise to you God, acknowledging that you God truly, The one and only is this character and this nature that you Lord are my rock. One where I can find refuge, safety, security, and freedom. And even the greater is the character of God, my Redeemer. The only one by which we are saved from being lost, gone, tossed out without any value. God picks us up, dust us off, even brings us back into value. we are called a child of Him. He is given our name. We have an inheritance in Him. We become a child of His. And when all hope seemed to be lost, God shows again and again and again and rescues us.

That's Psalm 19. In creation, the Creator that was once hidden is seen in plain sight. And in God's word, the Lord Yahweh comes to us in a personal way. We meet God in this gracious and merciful who is slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, showing faithfulness to the thousandth generation. The heavens, the Word, the glory of God. So the question for us is what do we do with this newfound knowledge? Will we pursue God as as more precious than the greatest desires of our heart, more than gold, more than honey. God's not a hidden God, as some believe. God is a very revealed God in everything that is around us. We can know God in a vague, impersonal nature connection, but the good news is it doesn't stop there. We can have a personal knowledge of God in deep, deep intimate relationship. That's the God that I want. That's the God that I need. That's the God that I serve. Let's pray.

Jesus, thank you for Psalm 19. God, I'm so grateful for the sermons who wrote this Psalm for us to be reminded today that you, God, are revealed all around us. There isn't a place on this earth that we can go where we do not see or experience or see who you are. But it doesn't just stop there, God. You've given us the knowledge of your word, your scripture, your holy, holy instructions to show us how to live our lives, to show us how to worship you. God, I pray that we would be reminded today of who you are. You're not just the big guy upstairs, you're not some impersonal God looking to strike us down when we first mess up or to just have smash us because you can just for your own pleasure. God, you desire deep relationship with us. God, I pray for those who today might not have made that choice, that they would say yes to you, to say yes to God, come into my life. Forgive me of the things that I've done wrong and that I've messed up. Remove my sin, go in my place, redeem me, make me whole. Have your spirit come upon me, have your new life pour into my heart. and God that I would live in the calling and the purpose that you have for my life today and forevermore. Jesus we thank you for today. God we worship you, we praise you, and give you all the honor and glory that nature does as you being our great creator. We thank you Jesus. Amen.

Summer of Psalms - Part 1

Psalm 29 - Listen for God’s Voice

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Going to introduce a new series. One of the values here at Spring Valley Church is we have this goal of covering the entire Bible over several years. And primarily, we do that on Sunday mornings through covering different books of the Bible and also in our community groups. But we cover-- we want to cover the entire Bible. And one of those rhythms that we have is to cover the Psalms over the summer. And so we'll be doing this for many summers because there's 150 Psalms. So we've done it the past few summers. We're going to keep doing it. but we love this goal of just we want to cover all of God's Word and so summers in Psalm are great it's such a joy to be here in this book as we begin this series I just want to give a general overview again of the book of Psalms and I would encourage you if you want to know more go home YouTube Bible project Psalms and there is a great video it's like seven eight minutes long just summarizing the entire book and they do a far better job than I can do and There's cool animations so you can kind of see what they're talking about. But I'm going to do my best to kind of share what they say.

So Psalms, like I said, 150 ancient Hebrew poems, songs, and prayers that come from all different eras of Israel's history. And there's many different types of poems in these collections, but generally they can be sorted into two categories. Those of lament and those of praise. Poems of lament in psalms are poems that express—or songs or prayers— express pain and confusion and even anger of the poets, of horrible things that are happening to them or horrible things that are happening around them. And they draw attention to what's wrong in the world and ask God to do something about it. And there are a lot of lament poems in the Psalms, which shows, and shows us today, that it's an appropriate response to the evil and the darkness that we see in our world today. An appropriate response is lament, and to take that lament to God. So, lamentation can play an important role in prayer. Now, lament poems make up most of books one through three, which, by the way, in Psalms there are five books. It's kind of separated into five sections, and the first three are heavily, there's praise and lament, but they're mostly laments. But in books four and five, towards the end of the Psalms, you can see that the praise poems are more frequent. And these poems of joy and celebration draw attention to what's good in the world. And they retell stories of what God has done in the lives of his people, and they thank him for all his works and who he is. And so books four and five, praise poems outnumber the lament poems. And it culminates at the very end of Psalms in this five-part Hallelujah to God. And the shift from books 1 through 3 and 4 and 5 in Psalms, they show something about the nature of prayer according to what God wanted the people to go through and what they went through. So there were a lot of hard times, but in the end there should be this praise to God, and there should be this peace that God has worked, and his work is coming to a culmination of good in the world. So, hoping for the Messianic Kingdom, as the book teaches us to do, creates a lot of tension as we live in a world of tragedy, but we know that God is at work and there's a future of hope. And I'll quote this directly. This is from this video, this Bible project. They're very amazing scholars. It says, "The Psalms teach us to neither ignore pain, nor let it determine the meaning of our lives. Biblical faith and prayers is always forward-looking, anticipating the day when God will fulfill His promises and praise Him for the things that are to come. The Torah and Messiah lament and praise faith and hope. This is what the book of Psalms is all about. And so today, I know that we hold a lot of tension in our lives of things that are very hard, things that are hurtful or painful, or we're just around a lot of darkness, And yet we have Christ, who is a light and who is a hope. And there is a future that we look forward to that is hopeful. And so the Psalms really helps us to manage that tension and gives us instruction on how to walk through our day-to-day lives, holding both things as realities.

I want to go ahead and pray before we get into our Psalm. I just think we need - there's never too much prayer. I need prayer. Let's pray one more time. God, if we come before you, We come before you with all that we have, and sometimes that's not a lot. But we know that you accept us just as we are. And so I pray that in this time, through your word, God, that you would fill us up with your spirit, with your joy, your love, your compassion, your grace. And God, that you would give us what we need for this moment, for this day, and we'll just take one day at a time. We don't need to worry about the days to come and all that, all the details and chaos that may lay ahead, but just for this day, we pray that you would provide us with what we need. And in this moment, as we're gathered to hear your truth, that it would be empowering and encouraging for us. Give this time to you. in your name. Amen.

All right, there is tension. I talked about tension. There's tension of the sin in our lives, the sin in the world, and there's tension even in the voices that we hear. So when God created Adam and Eve in the garden, there was no tension. It was Adam, Eve, and God, and it was just a beautiful relationship, and it was perfect. It's what God intended. And as sin entered the world, then there there became all these sorts of tension. Tension in the human heart of what to follow. To follow sin and to follow selfishness and pride or to follow God. We can put that in another way of what voices to listen to. Do we listen to the voice of God? And when sin entered the world, now there are other voices, the enemy, and other things of the world that are vying for our attention and for our hearts. So the voices of the world, even for us today, can be very loud. things like money, success, worldly values, keeping up with appearances, social media, all these things that are speaking to us, whether we realize it or not, they want our hearts. It may not be a specific voice, as if Satan is just talking to you all the time, but really, Satan, the enemy, is content with any voice that is talking to you that is not God. Any voice that is grabbing your heart, getting your attention, He's fine with that as long as it means that you're not hearing God's voice. Whether it's something neutral or really evil, or maybe even something that in and of itself is actually good, but if we have too much of that good thing that keeps us away from God, Satan is saying, "That's fine. I don't have to work that hard. There's so much noise in your life, you're not able to hear God." In our community groups, we've been covering different spiritual practices, And in all of them, there's this focus of hearing God's voice. So whether through prayer, or silence and solitude, or fasting, or even Sabbath-ing, they are all providing more opportunity to hear the voice of God, to lessen or turn down the volume of all the noise and all the other voices in the world, so that we can hear God’s.

Another way of thinking about this, about the voice of God and the voices of this world, or are we taking time to hear God's voice? Do you hear the voice of God? Now, this is not to guilt trip anyone, and I think it's rare to actually hear the audible voice of God in our daily lives. But if we just think about our day and our routine and our week, do we leave intentional times of quiet where we are just listening for God? Or do we kind of just believe and think that if it's important enough, God will interrupt my schedule. He'll get my attention somehow, and He'll make it clear to me. But I'm just going to go about my day. I got a lot of things to do. And so God, if it's really important, just, you know, make it amazing and make it, you know, I can't ignore it. Which, by all means, He can do, and He does. But shouldn't we, if our relationship with God is just that, a relationship where we speak with God, but we also want to hear from God, do we leave time in our day to hear His voice? Would we even recognize the voice of God in the midst of all the other voices that we hear? In the midst of all the other noise that we have in our day. You know, from getting up in the morning, to going to work, to getting kids to school, to checking emails, social media, to reading the news, keeping up with family and friends, texting, and all those conversations that happen, to getting dinner ready, to getting the kids to bed, to watching the shows that you got to keep up with. Do we leave time in all that day to just say, "I listened for God"? Or is it we look back at the end of the day and we're just kind of saying, "Good night, prayer to God, God, great time today, that was fantastic. Hope you had a good one too, good night." I'm guilty of that sometimes. I'm just like, "God, I should connect with you," but I'm literally falling asleep right now. Like I said, it may not be commonplace to hear the voice of God, but the Bible lets us know about the voice of God, of who God is, and how He speaks so that we can recognize God. We can have this relationship. We can know who we are in a relationship with. And it's so important. The Bible, God wants us to recognize Him and how He might speak to us.

And so that's our Psalm this morning. We're going to be in Psalm 29. You guys can turn there. It'll be on the screen. I'm just going to go ahead and read our entire psalm first, and then we're going to go verse by verse and break it down. So Psalm 29 says, "Ascribe to the Lord, you heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name. Worship the Lord in the splendor of His holiness. The voice of the Lord is over the waters. Or the God of glory thunders. The Lord thunders over the mighty waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is majestic. the voice of the Lord breaks the cedars, the Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon leap like a calf, Syrian like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord strikes with flashes of lightning, the voice of the Lord shakes the desert, the Lord shakes the desert of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord twists the oaks and strips the forest bare, and in his temple all cry glory. The Lord sits enthroned over the flood, The Lord is enthroned as King forever, and the Lord gives strength to His people. The Lord blesses His people with peace. This psalm is divided into three sections. In the first section is a call to praise God. This is written by David. Like I said at the beginning, there are many different authors of different psalms. David, I think, is a third of the book of Psalms is written by him. And so this is one of His. And He wants us, He wants the readers, He wants Israel to approach God with a certain heart, a proper view of the Lord, which is praise. We should come to the Lord praising Him. And again, just more questions for us today. How often do we praise God? I know we praised Him this morning. We were singing songs of praise to Him. We probably praise God when things are going well in our lives. Something great has happened. We're blessed and it's good. We should have this reaction of praising God. But how often do we praise God unrelated to the good things that happen to us? And maybe a different way of asking that is, is our praise to God transactional? "God, because you've done this, now I offer my praises to you." And again, we should be offering praise to Him when good things happen, but not only when good things happen. Do we live with the belief that God is good all the time? Unrelated to what state we may be in or how we may be feeling, do we still believe in praising God? This is a lesson that David learned over and over and over again in his life, as he had the craziest stories of hiding in a cave from someone who's trying to kill him, or being on the run from the king trying to kill him, or being in enemy territory, surrounded, completely surrounded, and just trying to survive to being king, and having very bad days in the office as king, and still having to come before God with praise, even when things were terrible. And so the point of these verses is to show us that the Lord is deserving of our praise. Even the angels owe their praise and worship to God, the Creator of all, the Lord over all. All the time. And are we able to, no matter how our day went, no matter how tired we are, or how frustrated or angry or hurt or grieving, we may feel or maybe be going through, can we still see God as Lord of all? And have a moment of praising Him? It should be one of the main starting points as we approach God in that conversation with Him. Now, He accepts us, He wants us. If we're hurting, He wants us to just express that hurt. But in there somewhere, are we still praising Him for who He is and what He does? So, in these first verses, David invites us to praise God, and then he goes on to describe just how powerful God is, reminding us of who Yahweh is. Again, the hope, His hope is spurring greater relationship with the one true God.

Psalms 29:3 says, "The voice of the Lord is over the waters. The God of glory thunders. The Lord thunders over the mighty waters." I love this. Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm sorry. Hold on. Keep that in mind. Keep those verses in mind. What we're about to read, what I just read, is in comparison, David, the people of Israel, He writes this this song because he knows that his people are starting to hear other voices around them, the other false gods that are in the surrounding nations, and their hearts are starting to be pulled to especially this false god named Baal, or Baal, of other surrounding countries. And Israel just has this tendency, you'll see it over and over again in the Old Testament, where they just, they're there, they're with God, they're following God, it's going great, and all of a sudden, just slowly, they just start drifting, and they're like, "God's great," but also this other God could be awesome. And they start bringing that God into their lives. And so David sees this and he writes this psalm about the voice of God so that he can tell them, "This our God, Yahweh, is greater than any of the other gods that are out there. You need to remember this voice, this voice of God." So that's why some of these descriptions of God over the thunder, we'll get to this, is trying to help the people contrast. Like, you think that God is great, that God of the sky, or that God of this land, or the God of the waters. You think that they have power, but they have nothing compared to Yahweh. All right, now I read the verse about God. "Of glory thunders over the mighty waters." And again, in Hebrew, in the Hebrew mind, all these verses, we read this in English, and it is beautiful in English, but in Hebrew, the beauty of it is more complex, and it's very deep, and it would challenge the listeners, the Israelites, to recall certain things in their history. So it may just seem very poetic, and it's like, "Oh, God is the God of nature to us. He's in control of everything.”

But in all these examples, David is recalling very specific situations that the Israelites would know and recognize. And so we hear the God over the waters, thunder, and a couple things would come to mind. First is creation. And in Hebrew, we have the Spirit hovering over the waters at the very beginning of time. And so we see that God, David wants the people to see that God has power over creation, as the Creator. Not just power over creation because He's that powerful, but because He is the Creator. He created everything. And then as thunder, the God of glory thunders, thunders over the mighty waters. This idea of thunder would bring the Israelites to God's voice in the desert with Moses. And in Exodus 19, 19, you won't turn there right now, you can go back and check out this whole scene where the Israelites were gathered at the base of Mount Sinai, and God called Moses up to the top of the mountain to give Moses the law. This whole scene in Exodus is Israel becoming a nation. They had no really law, they had no distinction to make them, besides they were all of the same family and their family was huge. But in this moment, at the base of Mount Sinai, God is giving them their identity. He says, "You are mine, here is my law, which if you follow this, it means that you are living rightly. You are living in the way that I intended you to live." And so he's hearkening back to that moment as Moses went up to the mountain, and as God was speaking to Moses, it says that the thunder grew louder and louder as God spoke. And so the people at the base, Moses is up on the top and the people are all gathered. And it's a very scary moment for Israel. They've never seen this before as God. Just the thunder on that mountain is like trumpets, loud, loud trumpets. And it's the voice of God. So as David writes this, they're recalling this. And so it's a voice that has authority. And it's a voice that demands obedience. And instead of just saying that, they're like, "Hey, God's voice demands this." He recalls this whole moment so that Israel is thinking of, "Oh yeah, God gave us a lot. God gave us, instructed us on how to live, and that was a terrifying moment. This God, Yahweh, was up on that mountain, and his voice was thunder." God's voice has authority and demands obedience.

Next, verse 4, it says, "The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is majestic." So again, continuing to draw on God's power, but also this word "majestic" makes us think of the royalty of God. To the people of Israel who desperately wanted a king, there was a time, there in the desert, through the judges, that God was effectively Israel's king. They had no earthly... Moses was their leader, Joshua was their leader, but God was their king. And then, as we know in the Bible, the Israelites grew tired of not having a king. And they looked at all the other nations, they're like, "Hey, they have human kings, we want a human king." And God's like, "I am the king, and I'm better than any human king." They're like, "That's not good enough. We want a human king." And he's like, "Fine." And he tells them, "It's not going to be good. You are going to suffer. You're going to go through pain. These kings will not make good decisions. I am perfect. They are not." And they're like, "Yeah, we get it. We still want that human king."

And so David had a beautiful heart, and this is why David is one after God's own heart. He recognized his own failures as a king, and God was perfect, and he knew his shortcomings. And so He's reminding the people of God's royalty that He is the King. And first, how awesome God is. I don't mean that in like the surfer way, like, "Oh, so awesome." Like, it makes us full of awe towards God. His voice has a reaction in us as He is King. And we don't really get this, I don't think, in our Western culture, and definitely not, I wouldn't say, in America, but think like medieval times or even before that. The king's word was law. Whatever he said was truth. And that's the language that David is using here, that when God speaks, it is truth, it is law. It is something that we are to live by, and it is good. Unlike the earthly kings who, it could have been terrible, but because it was law that you had to follow it, God's word is true, it is good. And so that's all wrapped up in this word "majestic". And 5 and 6 say, "The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars. The Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon leap like a calf, Syrian like a young wild ox." Now I read this, and I'm like, I don't know what's happening. What are we talking about here? Cedars making Lebanon leap like a calf. But we dive further in. It's again just referencing God's power, His power as Creator over creation. The cedars of Lebanon are trees that maybe we can think of the redwoods that we have in California. Just known for standing the test of time. They're huge. They're strong. Cedars of Lebanon are the same thing. Whenever the Bible says it was like something was made from cedars of Lebanon, it's supposed to help us be like, "Oh, that thing is like finest quality. That is up there." And so it points to God's power as Creator that He has power over His creation. that even the strongest thing on earth that we can think of, these trees, God has power over them. It's nothing for him. Or he makes Lebanon leap like a calf, searing like a wild ox. Again, just things that humans have no control of. No human could make that happen. God could make that happen. That is how powerful he is.

In verses 7 and 9, read, "The voice of the Lord strikes with flashes of lightning. The voice of the Lord shakes the desert. The Lord shakes the desert of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord twists the oaks and strips the forest bare, and His temple all cry holy." David, again, is thinking of that foundational moment in Israel's history, of being in the desert of Mount Sinai, in that pivotal moment of Israel getting to know God. And he's reminding the people, again, of just how much higher and more powerful Yahweh is than any of the other gods that the surrounding nations worshipped. Then he brings in this place of Kadesh. And this is the place where the report of the Promised Land came back. Moses had come to the edge of the Promised Land, and he sent spies in to say, "Hey, are we able to go in? What does it look like? Let's see this land that God has promised. Let's see what it looks like." And the report came back, and you may know 12 spies went in, and only two said that God would give them the victory. The other said it's not possible. Too much. The people are too big. The fortresses are huge and they didn't believe. And so this moment of God shakes the desert of Kadesh, I think can be interpreted in a couple different ways. But I like that it's just bringing back this moment where God's voice wasn't listened to. God spoke to two of them strongly and said, "No, tell Moses that we can do this. That God will provide whatever is needed to go and conquer the Promised Land." But ten didn't believe and kind of ignored the voice of God. And then Israel's future was changed. They had to go wander in the desert for 40 years. And so we have this contrast of it's a voice that demands authority, or demands obedience and has authority. But we also have a moment of seeing the consequence of when it's not listened to, there are consequences. If God's voice is instruction, if you don't believe in who He is and what He can do, your life is going to be worse. And it brings to mind the wandering of the desert for 40 years. It's also a voice that brings judgment. And so as they wandered the desert for 40 years, and that was a punishment, God continued to sustain them. He didn't just leave them out there to die and say, "Now you got to go wander, and if you make it great, but if not too bad." No, He sustained them. He started bringing manna and quail, and He helped them in those 40 years.

And so it's a voice that, yes, brings judgment, but it's also a voice that sustains and provides and saves. Verse 9, there's a couple different translations here. Some say, "In the strips the forest bear, and in this temple all cry holy." And other versions that say, "The Lord makes the deer give birth." And this is a reference to Job. And God is just trying, David is trying to say that God has control, again, in ways that humanity does not have control. God has power over His creation in a way that as humans can become such experts in things, and especially today where we have a lot of control over things, and science is amazing, and does so many things. God is far beyond that. God has the Creator. This can't be stated enough, and I think Israel, this is why David just keeps harping on it. As Creator, God has control, complete control, and it's effortless. It's of such ease over all of creation. Nothing stresses Him out. Nothing gives Him like, "Oh, this was a really hard one for me." No, God has complete control. And all those who are in the temple, all those who are living in right standing with God, can recognize this, can see this, and the response is glory. Glory to God. Once you see God at work, once you see what He's doing, the response is one of praise. Glory to God. And so after describing God's power and the power that His voice has, now David describes Yahweh as King.

And in verses 10 through 11, "The Lord sits enthroned over the flood. The Lord is enthroned as King forever. The Lord gives strength to His people. The Lord blesses His people with peace. David puts in the reader's mind, in the listener's mind, Yahweh on the throne as King. And he says, "King over the flood." And now this word is only used in the Bible one other time. In the flood, back in Genesis, with Noah. And that flood experience, that flood story for the Israelites, is a mix of God's terrifying judgment and also his plan of salvation. The power that God had to flood the entire earth is scary. The fact that everyone could die and that God had control over that is, I mean rightfully so, that's a lot to take in. And at the same time, in that same story, we see God's rescue plan, his salvation plan at work by saving the family of Noah. And so He is, again in the Hebrews mind, they're saying, God has control over the most, like one of the most terrifying judgment experiences the earth has ever experienced. One of the most destructive forces, God has control over that. And yet He also works salvation through anything. And unlike earthly kings, David writes that the Lord is enthroned forever. Every earthly king has an end, has a beginning and an end. And David's writing this as a good king. He had a time of flourishing. His kingdom was a good one. And he even recognized that, well, this is going to come to an end. But God is king forever. We see David say that God gives people what they need. He gives them strength. and He gives them peace. So even though He brought up this flood, which would bring up maybe some anxiety for Israel, so like, "God, is God going to judge us? What kind of judgment are we going to face?" God also gave peace to Noah, and God gives peace to His people. It brings to our attention that God causes us to look towards God. It causes us to look heavenward, with awe. It helps us to look forward with faith, as we know that God is good and He'll give us everything that we need. And it reminds us of who God is, so that as we go about our day, hopefully we can recognize the voice of God. Whether it's through what He does, or things that are happening around us, all of that can be God speaking to us.

So I just want to remind us as we close, that Psalms is a prayer book for the people of Israel and for us today. And sometimes the point of prayer or a psalm Is simply to draw our minds back to God just to draw us closer to Him as life Really pushes us away from God and we feel that tension of I feel distant from God. I've been so busy And so the point of psalms and a prayer is just to simply bring us back to Him And so today and this week my encouragement would be for all of us to listen for God's voice For our minds to be drawn towards him and for us to praise god for who he is. So if there's a couple things It's can we approach god with praise despite how our day is gone when we've had the worst day the worst week Can we still praise god? And then are we making time to listen for god's voice? We want to be able to recognize it we may not hear an audible voice of god if you do Amen, praise god, please share. I would love to hear that Truly, that'd be amazing. But we will probably hear God's voice in other ways. Maybe through other people, through the reading of His Word, in the silence, just the nudging of the Spirit within us. We want to be attuned to that. We want to be ready for that so we can follow God with everything that we have. Let's go ahead and pray. God, thank you again for your Word that guides us, that is true, that is steadfast and faithful and never changes. And God, I pray that this week truly that you would speak to us. And really we know that it's really on us. We need to make time to listen. So I pray that you would help us to do that. That you would make that a conviction, a priority in our hearts. That there would truly be desire. And that we would make time, whether that's quiet time in the morning, or on our drive, or just a moment where we're just silent and listening. God, I pray that we would all hear how you are leading us and guiding us, calling us to live for you, to love others. Maybe it's just a voice that provides comfort as we're going through hard situations and difficult times. But God, I pray that we would feel closer to you, that we would feel in your presence, and the love and the peace that you provide in that time. Sustain us God, carry us this week. We trust you and we love you. We pray this in your name. Amen.

Philippians: Part 8

Philippians: Part 8 - A Caring & Content Heart

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We are wrapping up our series in Philippians today and I'm so thankful for the Spirit's leading through this series as he's provided us with truths that we needed to hear, and reminders that guide us through life and guide us to endure. And clearly, God knew what he was doing as he gave us. He led us to this series and led us to these words that I think we need more now, yeah, more than ever. And so it's a series that has, through it all, through the four chapters, has encouraged us to rely on Christ in every situation, to see the joy in all things, which means trying to see things from God's perspective. It's helped us to recognize the need we have for spiritual examples and spiritual role models in our lives, while also at the same time recognizing that we may be that for other people. It's encouraged us to shift our perspective to see the positive, to see the good, to see the work that that God might be doing. And it's a series that has called us to be honest with God and to lay before him our desires. As Paul wrote to the church in Philippi from his prison cell, we can be thankful that God gave him the clarity and the words to encourage the church that needed to hear the truth and the fact that we need to hear that truth today. So as we mourn through these times of sorrow, I think the words of Paul will help us in grieving and offer a glimpse of Jesus in the darkness.

Paul is wrapping up this letter, giving his final encouragement, signing off. As we know from the Apostle Paul from this series and really also from Romans, he likes to talk. He is a talker. He's a bit of a rambler. I learned in my marriage that when leaving some kind of function, my wife and I had different approaches. And at one point, it caused a bit of tension. We're very much now on the same page. But if we were to be somewhere and she said, "I'm ready to go," she could be in the car in five minutes. And what I didn't know is that she had already done all the prep to leave at that point. I would hear that and say, "Great!" And I would talk for another hour, and be there and be there and talking and wrapping up and all this stuff. And so I would linger, I would say goodbye, because I hadn't done that prep work. I would just--and even if I were to say, "Hey, I'm ready to go," I wouldn't mean right then. I would mean later on, I'd be ready to go. So I think Paul is kind of like me. I think he says something earlier. He's like, "Hey, we're coming to the end of this letter," but he just keeps going. He just keeps writing and he's getting more thoughts. And so we--even though we're wrapping up this letter, there are some new ideas, even in this conclusion that we're gonna dive into today. And so just pray with me one more time as we focus here on God's word. God, again, we come before you, Lord, and our desire is to know you and know your truth. So be with us as we read your word, give us insight and understanding. And God, I pray that you would help us to see how this truth right now is needed for our lives, for our church, but also for where we are individually. So God, we give this to you. Amen.

Alright, we are going to be going verse by verse through the rest of this chapter. We're starting in verse 10. You guys can follow along. I'm going to go ahead and read just this first verse. It says, "I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it." Pause right there. "Some of us are great at being ready. We leave the house and we are prepared for anything." I was a Boy Scout for one year, so always be prepared. So I'm kind of ready. I'm not super ready. I didn't go all the way, Eagle Scout or whatever. But some of you guys know you're ready. And so Paul is saying, you know, it is important to be ready as we walk by faith with Christ in our lives, to be ready to respond to God in any way that He may bring before us. And he's encouraging the church who was ready, who had the desire to help Paul, there just was no opportunity. So as we think again about this scripture and applying it to our lives, do you have desire? The first question is, do you have that desire to help? If God were to put an opportunity in front of you, do you have the desire to step up and meet that need? He says, "Now after desire, you still need that opportunity, right?" The church in Philippi didn't have that. Eventually they did, we'll get to that. But as you think about your life, again, just do a quick survey. Are there opportunities in your life that you're passing by, that God is bringing before you, to say, "Hey, you have the opportunity to help someone, to provide for someone, to be there for someone." And then when the opportunity did arrive, and we'll get to this in a little bit, the church did act, and they did step up. And as Pastor Chris said today, I want to encourage you, you have done this. You have done exactly this. And if Paul were writing about you, he would be full of praise, that this week you stepped up immensely for the Morgan family. Be encouraged. Feel the appreciation. And I also want to say with all grace and love, don't become complacent. Stay ready. When that next opportunity comes about, be just as ready as you were this time to give in whatever way that would mean. Don't become so callous that we no longer want to provide when God brings about that opportunity. Don't think, "Last time I did something, so someone else has turned to be God to those people, to be Jesus." Or, "Don't think, 'God, I'm dealing with so much stuff right now, so I just can't do that.' Can you have someone else provide for those people in need?" Again, we'll get some more of what that looks like, but I just want to encourage you to be ready. Stay concerned with God's people and caring for others, and be ready to step up when the time is right.

Paul continues in verse 11, he says, "I'm not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. Paul shares some of what God has taught him through his own life, which is to be content in all situations. This is back to back weeks now of really difficult positions of the heart that Paul is calling us to have as believers. A couple things about being content in all situations. One, it is learned. I want you to have grace with yourself. I think oftentimes we can beat ourselves up when we say, I'm just, I'm not content and therefore I'm a failure and therefore I'm not doing what God is calling me to do. But Paul says that he had to learn how to be content in all situations. This means going through experiences that will leave us feeling unfulfilled, empty, broken, confused, desiring more, and it is a process. Just as Paul talked about last week, as we lay our desires at the feet of Jesus, and we learn to surrender, and we walk with Him with those feelings, then we can learn to be content. But it's a process, it is learned. Secondly, he says, "Whatever the circumstances." This is an all-encompassing list. These could be the hard times, the bad situations that we face, like financial issues, mental health, poor friendships, loneliness, tough work situations, persecution, faith issues, loss of loved ones. And Paul's writing from experience, I mean, to his credit, in his time of following Jesus, He has experienced so much of this. But it's also in the good times, in the good experiences, in all situations. So this could be a better work situation where you got to raise a promotion, a better living situation, successful friendships, a new car, a vacation, a growing family, or a growing faith. And you may be wondering why would we need to be content or to learn to be content in the good times. Well, sometimes the good times grow that desire for more. And we're never content. We're never thankful. We're never praising God for what we have, but we're just continuing to reach and say, "This isn't good enough. And I want more of this." See, whether dealing with a lot or a little, the temptation of discontentment can be present, can be very real. And it can start so subtly, but it grows and grows quite rapidly. Paul knows this. He grew up in affluence and abundance, and after coming to saving faith, his life changed, but he still had moments of having a lot, but also having very little. And he learned to be content because he knew that God was everything that he needed, and would give him everything that he needed. be it physical food or spiritual guidance or mental fortitude or just provisions that he needed, Paul had experienced the love and the compassion, the provision of God, and had come to such a deep-rooted faith and trust in Christ.

To the point where he writes verse 13, which says, "I can do all this through him who gives me strength." You probably heard that verse before. It is well referenced, sometimes out of context. But we understand now reading this passage that that context is through all things, especially the hard times and especially in times when you have to endure. Paul lives with this assurance that he will get through anything because of Christ in him. the Creator of all, the King of kings, the giver of life, God the Father, Holy Spirit, the Comforter. Like it says in verse 9, "The God of peace is with him." God is with him through all those situations and has taught him to be content. But again, to reach this place of contentment, Paul had to endure some of the most difficult situations here on earth. And so it's just such a good reminder for us that as we strive to be content in Christ, one, we need Christ. We can't do it without Him. We need Christ to be content. And it will mean going through some of the hardest things we will ever face. And our goal at the end is, as we walk with Jesus, to become content. So as He endured, there was more and more opportunity for God to provide for Paul.

Let's continue in verse 14. He writes, "Yet it was good of you to share in my troubles." This can be so hard, because for Paul, he first had to share his troubles with the church. In order for the church to then respond and provide, Paul had to share, "Here's what's going on with me." And this is really hard, because, as you know, I know you have shared what's on your heart before, it can take a lot. There are often reasons why we don't want to share. And those voices can be really loud and sometimes we wait too long to share before we really enable others to reach us. But it requires us to be vulnerable, to be honest, and to trust with those whom we share. Because in our minds, there can be this fear, there can be this risk of being judged, of being ridiculed, of being condemned, of losing face or losing a friendship. And oftentimes, those things where we feel the affliction or the struggle are just things that we don't often talk about. Maybe it's finances or maybe it's relationships. It's usually some area of weakness or insecurity within us, where we don't want to appear weak. We don't want to appear in a certain way, and so we just hold it within. We say, "God, you and I can deal with this. I don't want anyone else to help me deal with this." And yet Paul recognized the need to share his troubles. So as we talked about earlier in the passage, by doing that, it provides an opportunity for God to work and to provide through other people. There can be miracles where just out of nowhere God will give something, but oftentimes He works through other people. And part of that may mean that we have to share. He continues to praise the church and Philippi that they had a desire to help. And as the opportunity came about, then they acted. And it was so good for them to practice being in a church in that way.

And so in verses 15, let's read about Paul's testimony of what happened. It says, "Moreover, as you Philippians know, in the early days of your acquaintance with the gospel, when I set out from Macedonia, not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, "Except you only. For even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me aid more than once when I was in need. Not that I desired your gifts. What I desire is that more be credited to your account. I have received full payment and have more than enough. I am amply supplied now that I have received from "Paphroditus, the gifts you sent, they are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God." So Paul shares that he's so thankful for the gifts that the church provided. He's being careful not to infer more. We read this and we were like, "Great, he doesn't need anything." In other cultures, once you compliment someone, they may have the response of just giving it to you, because maybe you would only compliment by saying, "I actually want that." And so Paul's just being careful to say, "Hey, thank you so much for the gifts. I don't need anymore. Don't send me anymore." But he's just trying to encourage them in the evidence of their growing faith. The fact that they did this shows evidence that the gospel took root in their lives and that God was working through them to provide for Paul. And at the end of verse 18, Paul describes all this support, all this provision, as a fragrant offering and acceptable sacrifice pleasing to God. And this language is pulled from the Old Testament in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Ezekiel, of moments of sacrifice. Moments in the Old Testament where they would have to slaughter an animal, put it on the altar, and burn it. It's a moment where the people in the Old Testament were making a sacrifice for their sins, coming before God to follow Him. And those sacrifices are an act of obedience and worship. And that smell of a burning carcass, which may not have been pleasant to anyone around, was so pleasing to God because of what it symbolized and what it meant. That His people, who were meant to love Him, who had gone away and sinned, we're coming back to Him and wanting to make right their relationship with Him. Obedience and worship to God. It's something so pleasing to God. It brings Him such joy. So Paul is reminding us that sincere Christian service, which at times means sacrifice for us or self-denial, not only spreads the gospel, but it strengthens those who serve. It's an act of worship to God. It's this picture of a moment where everything is right, where we are in God's will, doing just as Jesus did. Loving others, sometimes at the sacrifice of ourselves. It's accepting that partnership with Jesus on earth, and loving for God's kingdom.

Paul wrote something similar in Romans 12:1 which says, "Therefore I urge you brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship." And so we no longer are in the Old Testament. We don't have to go to a temple and bring an animal and sacrifice it on the altar. But the way that we live our lives, the way that we love other people, the way that we sacrifice and serve others and serve God is our way of worshiping and our way of making an aroma that is pleasing to God. So we should strive. We want to live a life that as we go about our day to day in our work, in our families, in our neighborhoods, the way that we're talking, the way that we're interacting, All of it is just a rising scent to God, an aroma that He's looking down saying, "Yes, that is pleasing to me. That is a life that is sacrificing for the gospel, for me, for my kingdom.”

Verse 19, Paul writes, "And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of His glory in Christ Jesus." I love this because Paul gives the assurance that what God has done for him, God will do for the church in Philippi. We read this today and we know that God will do the same for us. Even if it means continuing to give, when we don't have a lot to give. It doesn't say that explicitly in our passage, but referencing other passages in the Old Testament, we come to know that the church in Philippi wasn't well off. They weren't giving from this like storehouse of excess saying, "Well, we got a lot. Just go ahead and take whatever you need." They were also struggling and yet they continued to give. It's that part of sacrifice. It took sacrifice on their part. And Paul is saying that God will meet your needs. I think we often struggle with that today. That we want to give from a place of security. We want to give when it doesn't mean a lot to give. We have a lot. We have extra. Yeah, it's easy. I got some extra things to give for the food pantry. the food pantry, that's fine, I'm not using that anyways. That's not the kind of giving that God talks about. There's no verse in the Bible that you'll find that says, "Hey, once you have extra, then I want you to start caring for others." He says, "Give, I will bring opportunities in front of you. I need you to step up. And as you do that, and as you trust me, I will also provide for you. You will give and you will still have need. Let me provide for you." Trust me that I will provide for you. That's hard. That means that we're not in control anymore and we often wanna be in control. I know that if I don't give, I will have enough, so God, I'm not gonna give. And maybe we can even justify it with some spirituality of saying, God, you wanted me to be a wise steward of what I had. So that means saying no to someone in need because I gotta take care of myself. I think Chris, Pastor Chris used this analogy earlier in the series of being on a flight, and I just flew this week, and I heard the safety protocols, and they say, you know, in case of when the mask drops, and you have someone that you take care of yourself first, and then put the mask on the person next to you, the child. You don't put it on a stranger, but the child. And I think that's how we go about our spiritual life. "God, let me make sure I'm good first, and then as I see need, I will then take care of other people." And that may work on a plane, but it does not work for the Christian life. Give. Be generous. Step up when God provides the opportunity. And watch God provide for you. I'm sure you know this or maybe have experienced this. I think some of the most generous people in life are those who have very little. I was talking with Becky this week and she brought up the point that it's probably because once you're in that place of having little, you know what it means to have very little. And so when you have anything to give, you know what it means to receive. And what a blessing that is. And you're just more likely to say, "Yes, I know that you need this right now." And what a blessing this will be for you. And I know that I'll be taken care of. will somehow provide for me. I think of a family at a previous church I worked at who just always lived within their means, but their means were very small. But whenever an opportunity at church arose, whether it be a meal train or someone was in need and we collected something to give, they were first. And they didn't necessarily give a lot, but they were so faithful to give. And it was just such an example to me that I knew that they had worries. We were praying for God to provide for them on the prayer team that we had for that church. And they were concerned about rent or whatever. And yet, whenever the call came in, they would be first to give. And it just exemplified a trust, a deep rooted faith, just like Paul, that God will provide. God is their biggest need. They need Him, and by their need in Him, they'll experience and witness God providing for them.

So this is what Paul wants us, this is how he wants us to live. To be generous no matter what we do or don't have, and as we give, that we can trust God and trust that He'll meet our needs. According to the riches of His glory. Because we know that He is sovereign, and He knows what we need and when we need it. There's this common thread through Philippians that as we go through our own hardship, we have to learn to trust God. And as we go through our own hardship, we are also still called to care for others. And if we're all doing that, despite what we're going through, we're still reaching out in whatever capacity we have. It may be very little, it may be a lot, but as we continue to rely on Him, love others, That is a beautiful picture of the church. That we're coming together, gathering on a Sunday, knowing that everyone here in this room is going through their own things. And yet we're receiving love from people, and we're giving love to others. And Christ is in the midst of all of it. And as we each, we have to each rely on Christ, because our tanks are finite. We'll run out of energy. We'll run out of love. We'll run out of just whatever to give. We'll just say, "I don't have anything to give." But if we are all relying on Christ as we walk, we can continue to support each other, to be there for each other, to encourage each other, and to just be the church for each other. I think that's happening here, and I love being a part of it.

As we end today, and as we end our series, I just want to ask a few questions. From verse 11, "What situation are you going through that you need to learn to be content in? I'm not saying you can't voice your frustration to God or to others, you can't share your discontentment with God, but are you continuing to work on surrendering and trusting Him? I shared about this last week that this is my situation, I'm learning to be content. And once we learn to be content in one situation, Sure enough, there's another situation where we're going to have to learn it all over again. But hopefully as we learn and more and more it becomes easier, and maybe we reach that place of surrender quicker. So what situation are you in where you are needing to learn to be content? Secondly, from verse 14, what trouble are you facing that you might need to share? Maybe you need to share with the church. Maybe you need to share with your spouse. You haven't even shared it with them yet. Maybe you need to share with that close, trusted group of friends. Maybe you need to share with some pastors. But it's going to require you to be vulnerable. It's going to require you to be honest and to trust. But then by doing that, you'll be opening yourself to seeing how God can work through others in your life. So what do you need to share with someone? Maybe this week your spirit is prompting you to say, "You've been keeping this in. You've been thinking that you can handle it. You didn't want to share. You don't want to be embarrassed. But now it's time. It's time to let other people know and let other people by the work of God come to support you." And lastly, from verse 19, where has God met your needs lately? It is so important to take time to pause and reflect and thank God for what He has done. The needs will be never-ending in life. We will always be in need, and so we'll always be praying, "God, I need this. God, there's another thing." But if we don't ever pause, if we don't ever just look back for a second and reflect, "God, I have seen how You have done so many things," those prayers become heavy and there can be doubt that works its way in and say, and say, "God, I don't know if you're working." But if we pause just for a moment and say, "God, I still have a lot of things that are concerning me, "but I have seen, I do recognize that you met this need, "that you loved me in this way, "that you met me in this place," it's so good for our hearts. It brings us closer to Him, and we're more likely to recognize the work of God in our day-to-day lives. Those mercies that are new every morning. I mean, that can be a prayer, just, "God, let me see you work today. Let me recognize something today, just one thing that is of you, and I can give you praise for it, as evidence for the faith that I have. That can be an encouragement, that can be an affirmation of following you. So as you reflect back on your week, on this month, on this last year, where has God met you? Where has He provided for you? And give Him praise.

Our goal in this series, as we just finished Philippians, was by the end of it, that we'd be able to connect and reinforce in our minds that being a Christian means in some way participating in the life of Jesus. Through every aspect of our lives, whether joy or sacrifice, that it could all be used for God's kingdom. And in that, that God would use whatever we go through, enduring hard times or the best of times, there's joy that we are a part of God's plan. That as we serve, as we give, as we're generous, that we are deeply transformed by the work of the Spirit. And so even though we're done with this series, there is an ongoing invitation to us to participate in the life of Christ, to partner with God and the work that He's doing. And so we started this series with a question, and we'll end with this question. Will you accept that invitation from Jesus to partner with Him in the work that He's doing in your life and in the lives of those around you? And that way we can endure with joy. Let's pray. God, Again, we come before you with probably a lot racing through our minds. And I pray that you would cut through all the noise to make clearly your voice and your truth. And God, through your spirit, you would put on our hearts so clearly the truth that we that we need to focus on, that we need to remember, that we need to grow, that we need to be more like You, or maybe that we need to implement this week.

God, I pray that You would make it clear to us the work that You've done in our lives. We do want to praise You. We want to see the things that are of You, so that we can recognize that You are at work. And God, I pray that you would help those here who are feeling alone, struggling with bearing the weight of their life all by themselves. It's not what you meant. That's not what you intended. So I pray that you would, through your Spirit again, that you would encourage them to share that burden with someone this week. Give them the confidence, the courage to share, knowing that they won't be judged, that they won't be condemned, that they won't lose face, but that they will be met with love. That they will be embraced and say, "Yes, I'm so glad that you said that. I would love to help you." And maybe we're on the other end of that, God, and maybe we're going to hear someone say that they need something. I pray that you would encourage us to step up and to provide. Granted, we have our own needs, and we may not know how those are going to be met. But as we serve others, as we meet others, God, I pray that you would encourage us and give us a peace, a deep, deep peace, that it will all be okay, that you will provide for us. God, we want to be your church. For each other, for those who are not yet believers, for those who are not yet in this church, we want to be Christ to others. So help us, guide us this week to do so. We love you and we give you all the praise and glory because you are deserving. Amen.

Philippians: Part 7

Philippians: Part 7 - Learning to Ask and Trust God

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Welcome this morning. Glad that you're with us. My name is Andre, I'm one of the pastors here, and excited to be together. Missing everyone who's streaming from home. I know there's a few of you, so welcome from afar. I want to begin today by going back in history for a second. November 22nd, 1873. Would anyone randomly know why that date would mean anything to anyone? I don't expect to. I didn't know this before this week. So it's a date that, on this date, a steamship was heading across the Atlantic, and on it, this man, Horatio Gates Spafford, had his family besides him, his wife and four daughters on this steamship. And tragically, another vessel, an iron vessel, collided with this steamship, and 226 people perished, including all four of Horatio's daughters. A couple weeks later, he finds out because his wife sends a telegram when she arrives at her destination across the Atlantic, sends a telegram back to Horatio that says, "Saved alone." He goes to fix another ship a couple weeks later, and he goes out to meet his grieving wife. And while he's on his journey, his ship crosses the point where his four daughters perished. And he was inspired in that moment to write the hymn, It is Well with My Soul. I wanna read the second verse of that hymn. It says, "When sorrows like sea billows roll, "though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, "let this blessed assurance control "that Christ has regarded my helpless estate "and has shed his own blood for my soul. "It is well with my soul." How could someone enduring such grief write the words, "It is well with my soul"? I believe it's only possible for Spafford to have written those words because of his deep, deep trust and faith in God. A faith that endured one of the most challenging moments of his life up to that point. And I'm sure Spafford had to ask God to sustain him daily, to carry him through each moment as he was grieving the loss of his children. I don't know if you've ever had to do that. If you've ever been in a place in life where you have to ask God daily just to get you through that day because of what you're going through, because of how little you feel you you have of your own energy, strength, confidence, whatever it may be, and you are depending on God saying, "I don't feel like doing anything, "so God, I need you to get me through the next minute, "the next hour." Have you ever, think of a time in your life when you've had to ask Him for that and then trust Him. You've had to ask and then wait in that trust that He will provide. Paul definitely has, the apostle Paul, who has written the book of Philippians, I think has gone through that multiple times in his life. We're getting to the end of our letter in Philippians, and he's wrapping things up. And as a reminder, our series is called "A Joy That Endures." Paul knows what that's all about from experience. He's in prison, unsure of his future, whether he's going to die soon, or if he's just gonna be kept in prison alive. But he's writing to the church of Philippi, persevering through his difficulties to continue the work of the gospel.

And I began with the story of Spafford, it is in this hymn, "It is well with my soul," because I wanted to preface this morning with the uncomfortable truth that for many of us, at some point, there is tension in our lives as we are devoted to following Jesus, and how that interplays between the realities that we face and what it means to follow Jesus. There can be tension in different seasons. Or maybe there's just, you're thinking like, I felt tension ever since I've been conscious and I just feel this tension of following Jesus and the world around me all the time. We are people who tend not to like tension. I don't know about you, I avoid it at all costs. I am very uncomfortable when it comes to tension, whether it's between another person or a situation is making, I feel the tension, I have to resolve it, or I have to do my part to get away from it, remove myself, or whatever it may be, but I don't like tension. Sometimes tension is good because it informs us that something's off and something needs to be addressed. But the uncomfortable truth is that other times, God wants us to just sit in tension. I think of the Psalms, and so many of the Psalmists have tension in those passages. There's deep despair and anguish, and yet they're also praising God. We'll get to more of that in a bit. If I'm being honest, one of the most frustrating parts of following Jesus in the day-to-day life is dealing with this tension. By the way, Jesus felt tension throughout his life, being fully man, fully God. There's a moment that I'm sure we recognize of when that tension becomes unbearable. It's in the Garden of Gethsemane. when he's praying to God, if there be any other way than what has to happen tomorrow or that morning, please let that happen. Jesus felt the tension. The tension in our Christian life too, doesn't have to be between just a bad thing and a good thing that's probably less tension. We just know that there's a clear cut right answer. There's a direction that God wants us to go. But sometimes the tension comes in two good things and trying to discern, God, What do you want me to do? Maybe you've been in situations where you're wondering, "God, is this a moment to humbly suffer for your kingdom, or do I stand up for justice here?" Or maybe it's, "God, are you calling me to my dream job across the country, or do I stay put in my community with my family?" Those are two good things. What is God calling you to do? There's tension in that. "God, do I continue in my friendship with a person who's not a believer, and I know that I am the only Christian friend they have, or do I distance myself because it's unhealthy for me?" "God, what do you want me to do?" Or maybe it's more focused on what we want to happen, like Paul might have prayed as he's sitting in prison. I think God had - or Paul had many prayers to God, thinking, "God, can you just either - can I join you in heaven? I'd rather be dead, can you just have them kill me so I can be with you in heaven, or have them release me so I can go about fulfilling my gospel mission. I don't like being here in prison. But sometimes the tension means sitting in silence, waiting to hear from God.

And although we feel the absence of clarity or direction, we can know that He is in the waiting with us. Oftentimes, our hearts experience the most transformation, the act of being molded by God in the midst of tension. So as we'll find out today, even in the midst of tension, of having to endure things, there is a call on our hearts to rejoice. What does that mean? Let me go ahead and pray. We're gonna dive into Philippians 4, and we're gonna find out what Paul's talking about. So would you guys pray with me again? God, thank you for our time this morning, And as we come before you, we pray that your word would illuminate our hearts to your truth and that we would understand better the life that you are calling us to. Speak to us through these words in Philippians, God, and I pray that we be encouraged and empowered to follow you with everything that we have. We pray this in your son's name. Amen. Well, if you have your Bibles, you can turn to Philippians 4. We're going to start in verse 2, or you can pay attention to the screen. I'm going to read the first couple of verses here. Paul writes, "I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, I ask you, my true companion, help these women since they have contended at my side in the cause of the Gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the Book of Life." Paul is here admonishing them to seek and strive for unity. Again, this has been present throughout the entire book, But he wants the church, again, to understand that the biggest threat to God's church is divisiveness that comes from within. And one of the best ways to unify people is to get them together around a common cause. To unify them, have them have the same target in mind and say, "Hey, I need you to all to focus on this because you understand how good this is for the church." And so Paul tells them to have the same mind, there's unity, and then to help the women who have helped him. There's also a beautiful reminder here and request by Paul for the church to work out conflict as a community. And I love that picture and that idea.

The modern church for the past several decades has really emphasized an individual faith in Jesus, which is good. But sometimes they've emphasized it at the point of losing this communal aspect of our faith. And there are things that need to be done as a church, as a community. We just finished our community group about fasting, and in there we had a beautiful reminder too of the need to fast together as a church, and how that's different than just fasting alone. Jesus meant for the Christian life to be done in community, and so that includes conflict resolution sometimes. This is a part of bearing each other's burdens, of exercising love and compassion and understanding and forgiveness. So I want to remind us today that we at Spring Valley believe that, that if the situation were to arise and it was needed, we would be a church that would want to resolve whatever conflict together as a church. So that's Paul's little snippet there. And then we go into another final encouragement, summarizing the point of this whole entire and it's a lesson that is easier said than done. Let's go ahead and go to verse four. It says, "Rejoice in the Lord always. "I will say it again, rejoice." Guys, we could have a whole sermon on just this verse. I can't, I have to go through more verses, but this is, there's a lot to unpack here. This is easier said in the good times, right? Rejoice in the Lord. If you're in a good place in life, you're like, amen. I can do that. God's been blessing me, I'm in a great place, I'm feeling his provision, life is good, I'm gonna praise him. And you should, we should be praising God in the good times. But the reality is, the good times, I think, are one of the smallest percentages of our life. Pure, just great, a great time where there's nothing else that's going on in your life that's bringing you down, that's a very small percentage of your life.

The reality is, for many of us, it's not often - I would venture to say it's not often - that we just feel like rejoicing and praising God. More often, I think more likely, life is complex, full of difficult-to-parse situations where there is good, but there's also something else going on. All of our lives are connected, And so, when you feel stress, anxiety, disorder, or chaos in one area of life, it often affects the other areas of life too. So the question becomes, what does it look like to rejoice always in those times? How do I rejoice when maybe there's seemingly nothing to rejoice over? Hence the tension that I was talking about at the beginning. Well, I want to restate what we've talked about earlier in the series that rejoicing is not just being happy, having a smile on your face, though that may be what happens sometimes, but that's not what Paul is talking about here. Paul is saying to rejoice always and not in everything. He's not sitting there in prison saying, "Man, I'm a rejoicing guard. Can you give me another lashing? This is great. Love it here in prison." It's not what Paul is saying. He's saying, "Rejoice always." So what does that mean? And before you may quickly have this answer of like, "This is what it means," and that's good, hold that answer. I want to throw some scenarios at you, and I just want you to wrestle with maybe how you would answer. If this is someone you knew, and they were saying, "This is my situation. How should I rejoice?" So what does it mean to rejoice always when someone you love is slowly dying? What would it mean to rejoice always when a relationship in your life continues to cause you pain and hurt over and over again? What does it mean to rejoice always when your job is no longer feeling fulfilling and you're starting to feel the sense of loss? And just what am I supposed to be doing? What's my purpose? How do you rejoice always when you look at your budget and you're wondering how you're going to afford the necessities of life or how to provide for your family? What does it look like to rejoice when your faith in God starts to feel full of doubt and questions? I'm sure you have your own situations that you can fill in the blank there. How am I supposed to rejoice always, whatever you're going through or have gone through? Can I confess something to you? I'm still figuring this out. I mentioned tension in the Christian life earlier, and this is one of those areas that I feel tension. I don't always know what it means to rejoice always. There are situations we face where we may know we're supposed to rejoice, but as much as we want to muster it out of our own strength, there's just not, there's nothing there. Sometimes we may ask, "How do I bring myself to do that?" We may feel like we have conflicting emotions or desires within us. I do think we often think of emotions as all or nothing, in the sense of, "If I'm feeling happy, then I shouldn't be feeling sad. If I'm feeling this, then I can't be feeling this other thing." But you may already know this. I did some research this week. We, our human bodies, God created us to feel multiple emotions at the same time, hence more tension in our life.

For me, one of these situations where I feel this tension, People will ask how my dad, who has Alzheimer's, how he's doing and how I'm doing with it. And I love, I always appreciate people caring for me, but that is one of the hardest questions to answer. Because it's a mess inside for me. While I'm feeling so sad and grieving the loss of someone who's slowly dying and forgetting everything, I am also so happy and grateful to be getting time with Him, for that my family, my daughter, can be getting time with Him and making memories with Him. So the sadness I feel does not mean that there isn't any happiness, and the times that I am happy doesn't mean that I'm not deeply grieving. It's just both, and there's tension there as far as what I'm supposed to be feeling, and what I feel the most, and what I want God to do about it. I think rejoicing often means sitting in the tension of multiple emotions or desires and realizing that we aren't in control, that God is, and that the outcome that we may want, we can express to God, but ultimately we'll have to surrender it to God. most basic level, I think it means trying to see things from God's perspective and resting in His sovereignty. That's a working definition for me, so in a year I may have a different definition.

But there's so much and there's so much more we don't have time for. There are people, amazing pastors and theologians who write books on this about rejoicing always. So this is a very condensed version, but again down to its essence, I think a part of rejoicing always means rejoicing in the fact that we're trying to see God's perspective and we're resting in his sovereignty and the fact that he's in control. I think that could include praising him in that moment for who he is and what he's doing in our lives. It could mean rejoicing in the sacrifice that Christ made for us and the provision and the and the salvation that he offers us. It could mean rejoicing. Rejoicing could look like, well, we cannot see and understand everything. We serve a God who does see everything and understands everything. Rejoicing always could mean rejoicing in the temporary duration of this life and knowing that eternity is spent with God. Or rejoicing always just may mean thanking God for this day and that we're looking forward to the very next day. And that's it. And I understand that some of these things during the hardest times, if you were to say this to someone, it might sound cliche. It might sound like lip service. But at the very least, when someone hears this, hopefully, and even the mere attempt to do any of these things, to look at God's perspective, to try to see what God is doing, to try to rejoice, The mere attempt of this is turning our eyes and our hearts to Jesus. Even if we aren't successful in the sense that we don't start singing, maybe we don't start singing, maybe we don't become very happy in that situation, but we're at least looking in the right direction towards Christ. And we may not be bounding to Jesus, running to him, being, "Praise you, God, love you, everything's great." We may just be crawling. But even a slow crawl is us heading toward the Almighty. The implication of this verse, when Paul writes, "Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice," the implication is that we will be suffering in this life. He knows, that's why I think he says it twice, right? He's, "Rejoice always." They're like, "Yeah, yeah, good times, we're gonna rejoice." Again, I say, "Rejoice." See, your life as a Christian means suffering. Another pastor spoke on Matthew 16:24, where Jesus tells his followers to take up their cross and follow him. And the pastor pointed out that people don't often think about what that really means. If we were to pause and think about the journey that Jesus took with the cross, after being tortured, beaten, then he had to carry his own cross to the hill that he would die on. And Jesus says, "Take up your cross and follow me.”

That's not life is gonna be great, we're gonna be Christians, it's gonna be so happy. He's inviting us into suffering. He's inviting us into trials, difficult times. 1 Peter 4:12 says, "Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange was happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when His glory is revealed." It's encouraging to know that both Peter and Paul are on the same page here. always, no matter what you are going through. Alright, we're not even close to halfway done. That was just one verse. The rest will go quickly, I think. Verse 5 says, "Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near." Paul is instructing the church in Philippi to continue in their compassion and love towards other people. It's one of the markings of the church, it should be something that stands out about a Christian, a follower of Jesus, is that they are prone to gentleness, to caring for other people, extending grace and mercy, as opposed to maybe the chaotic spirit as one who is prone to selfishness and stirring up strife and is all about their own pride and their own gain. Paul says, "Continue in gentleness. Be compassionate. Have a godly approach, a Christ-like approach. And he says the Lord is near trying to spur on urgency saying this is so important. We don't know when Jesus is coming back but you need to, he's coming back soon, so you need to live your life, this Christian life, with urgency. Don't slack off on this. Don't think you can push this off until like let me get some stuff figured and then I'll start being gentle and compassionate and gracious.

I think we need that reminder today. That this is, that life that we are called to live needs to be lived right away. All right, the next two verses bring us right back into the tension that we can feel as we walk with Jesus in the midst of difficult situations. It says, "Do not be anxious about anything, "but in every situation, by prayer and petition, "With thanksgiving, present your requests to God, "and the peace of God which transcends all understanding "will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." I hear this verse, and it makes sense to me on a head level. Like up here, I understand. I even have a piece of art over my desk that has Matthew 6:26, says, "Look at the birds of the air. "They do not sow or reap or store away any barns, and yet the Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Meaning God will provide. There's no need to worry because God will provide for you. God is in control. Do not be anxious about anything. That's what Paul says. That is so tough. That is really tough. Paul is writing this from prison. So it's not like I can say Paul you don't understand. He's in prison. He's got a lot going on. I think he's battling anxiety. Our series is about a joy that endures through all things. Oh man, Paul is writing this and he's well aware of the hardships that the church of Philippi is going through, just like God is very much aware of the things that we are going through. And yet, we are to trust and depend on Him daily. Another plug for the practice of fasting is part of the growth that I experience, I think others experience too, is in this practice of fasting, you're learning to trust God with something small. You skip a meal or a couple meals, and you are trusting that when you're hungry, when you're feeling low energy, He will provide for you. He will give you what you need. And by doing that, if you do that over and over again, it's like a muscle, right? It's easier for us to depend and trust in God so that when something difficult in life happens, We are ready, we are more prone to trust and depend on Him in that situation. So I think it's kind of what Paul's talking about here. Don't be anxious about anything. Trust in Him. As you do this more, it's going to get easier to not be anxious because you're going to realize all that you can trust Him with, which is everything.

The end of verse 6 instructs us to present our requests before God. Now, this is, again, I'm confessing a lot to you. I start to have trouble here. This is hard for me. I grew up learning to trust in God's sovereignty, like that Matthew verse, trust. God knows everything that I need, so why do I need to tell him? Why do I need to err? Like, "Hey, God, you know, you see me, "and you are gonna look out for me. "You say you're gonna provide for me. "I don't really need to tell you what I want "or what I need because you know. "So God, please just give me what I need." But recently in the last six months, in the last month a lot, I've been challenged with the thought of being specific with God in our prayers. Let your requests be made known to God. Now I know that God answers specific prayer. There's so many examples. I love being a part of the prayer chain here at this church because we see God answer prayer. I mean, just this morning we were talking about Arthur's housing situation. How God provided a place for him. Shelley, who's not here with us, but prayer came in that she was given notice for 90 days that they were going to have to move. And within five days of that notice, they found a new place, a better situation. Amazing! I know that God answers specific prayer. I even think of, we go back in church history, George Mueller in England who ran an orphanage And he started this orphanage and he didn't have anything. And daily he would pray, he's like, "I have no food for all these kids tomorrow. God, we're going to pray right now that you would provide a meal." And over and over again, the next day, someone would show up who had no relation, he had no idea, but there would be money or food to provide for these children. countless stories of God answering specific prayer. Even in the Bible, and this is a passage that I've just been dwelling on for a month now, it seems, Matthew 20:29, Jesus and the crowd are leaving Jericho, and he's walking along the path, and there's two blind men, and they cry out, "Jesus, have mercy on us!" And the crowd hushes them, says, "Hey, can you stop, knock it off? We're trying to listen to Jesus here." and they cry out even louder, "Jesus have mercy on us!" And Jesus says, "What do you want me to do?" And they answered, "We want our sight." And the verse says, "Jesus had compassion on them and healed them." Now I read that, and I say, "Why?" Jesus, you of all people would know what two blind people want. They probably want to see. Why are you asking them what do you want? And it starts to become clear to me, even though I'm wrestling with it, that it's a heart issue. God cares about our hearts and getting us to this place of trust and surrender. See, but putting all this is difficult for me.

We're not supposed have any anxiety and yet we naturally have expectations of what we want for life and what we want God to do for us. We hope that God will provide certain things. We are to pray for what we want and yet we are to trust that and surrender that He will just whatever God sees best. And mixing that all together is so difficult. God I'm supposed to pray specifically what I want and yet at the end of this prayer I'm supposed to come to a place where I just surrender if that happens or not I'm going to praise you?" I think the answer is yes. And some days I'm okay with that, and other days that's really frustrating to me. So how do we surrender our will and our desires to God? Trying to exercise trust and yet present requests before Him. Well, He says in verse 7, When you do this, when you present your request to God, it's like Paul knew what people are going to be wrestling with, then the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts. I love that phrase "transcends all understanding." I think that's a really fancy way of saying you're not going to understand. You're not going to get it. It's not going to make any sense to you. God's going to work in a way that you will not comprehend. I like to comprehend. I want things to make sense. This is challenging for me. But it is true that the peace of God will guard our hearts. See, I'm just formulaic. I want 2+2 to equal 4, and that's not how prayer works. It's not, "God, if I pray this, then I will receive this." If I present this request, and I surrender, then God will give me ultimately what I wanted. I think of Solomon and I'm like, "God, can I just have that? You offered him money, you offered him power, you offered him wisdom. He was supposed to choose wisdom and he got everything else. God, can I do the same thing? Can I get the wisdom and everything else if I got to that?" No. It's about this process of learning to trust God with our hearts, of surrendering our wills and saying, "God, your will be done," just as Jesus prayed. And as we voice our hearts when we're vulnerable with God, and we trust him that he'll provide however he sees fit, whether it's what we wanted originally or not, the peace of God will guard our hearts. Paul is bringing the imagery of a soldier guarding our hearts against fear, anxiety, and doubt. So when we pray, petition, we reach this place of surrender, then we trust Him, and then we can praise Him. Because we know that only He is in control, and we know God's character. And there is no one better to be in control of everything than God. And in there, there is room to praise Him. There is reason to praise Him. All right, I hope and pray that that made sense. Because that was a lot and it is still stuff that I am processing in life right now. as I wrestle with this passage. But we have this pattern developing here. Don't be worried, rejoice in all things. Don't be anxious, God will give you peace.

And then to help remain in Christ, Paul says do the following and we come to verse 8. "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, If anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me or seen in me, put it into practice and the God of peace will be with you." Oh, we don't have enough time. There's so much good in here. Okay, this list, "True, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, praiseworthy." This is a good list. it has been proven that the most successful way to stop doing something that you don't want to do is to set yourself a new target, to focus on something new. For example, if you were to eat a donut every morning, and you want to stop eating a donut every morning, you couldn't just not eat anything. You need to replace that with something else and say, "I'm no longer going to do this. I'm instead, I'm going to do this." That's this list right here for Paul. He's giving us something new to focus on. If when you are living like Christ, if you need something, you're going to stop, you're going to refrain from doing these other things, here's what you want to try to do now. And he's also saying, "Look at how I have followed Jesus. Do as I do." Not in a boastful way. He's not saying, "Look, I'm really great at this. I'm kind of awesome at following Jesus." He's just saying, "I know it's helpful to have someone to model it for you." Jesus is ascended, He's in heaven. Look at me as an example of what it means to follow Christ, to live like Christ. And then it says, the most amazing part is that He assures us that God will be with you. Did you notice this? That earlier in our passage, it mentions that the peace of God, the peace of God will be with you. And now He assures you that God Himself will be with you, who we know to be the Holy Spirit. How amazing is that? Now we can have comfort and peace in our hearts knowing the Holy Spirit God is with us in everything we go through. Even more reason to not be anxious. God knows what we need and what we need is Him and He gives Himself to us. So in the midst of this tension we have the God of peace with us and as we wrap up I want I want us to reflect on what God is calling you to do and what areas of your life need to be re-centered around Christ.

And so I just have a couple of questions I'm gonna ask you. Just think of these things this week. Number one, what situation are you in right now that you need to rejoice in? Whether it's a good one and you need to praise God for what God is doing or whether it is one of the most challenging situations in your life. What is that situation? And what does it look like to rejoice always in that situation? Second question, what requests do you have that God needs to hear? Are you being specific with God? I'm asking myself that question every day. How can I be more specific with God? And then as you ask that, Are you trusting and surrendering your will to His? Saying, God, this is what my heart desires. I hope that this desire comes from you, that this is a godly desire, but ultimately your will be done, God. Third question is, who is your model? Paul was talking about him being a model. And I love that last week, Pastor Lauren brought up this idea of spiritual godfather God and mother, that we are an example to other people. I'm gonna flip it this week and say, who's your example? Who is your model of the Christian faith? If you don't have one, this week, this is your specific prayer, ask for one. God, give me someone I can follow in life. God, give me someone who has walked with you longer than I have, that will help encourage me, that I can go to in times of trouble, of anxiety, that I can lean on and depend on. And if you have one, I would encourage you to connect with them this week. If it's been a while, just ask them out to coffee. Text them, thank God for them. But who is your model? And then lastly, which one of this list from verse eight, the whole list of just good things to focus on, which one do you need to focus on in life this next week? Right, our hearts are prone to wander. And so we need to focus our hearts on something good, excellent, praiseworthy, noble, true, whatever that list. Pick one, pray about God, which one do you want me to focus on? Our prayer as a church, as a staff, as pastors, knowing that so many of you are going through difficult situations, is that you walk with Jesus in that tension, whatever tension you're feeling, and that you are trying to see things from God's perspective, and that you're able to rest in His sovereignty, and the fact that He is in control, and that ultimately that you can rejoice.

Let's go ahead and pray. God, we are so thankful for who you are, what you've done, and how gracious and patient you are with us. So much of this Christian life of trying to live like you, we don't do perfectly, we're trying to figure it out. We're wrestling with things of, what does this mean? How do I do this? And yet, I think that you love that we are trying our best to live like Jesus. And so as you empower us through your Holy Spirit to live like you, I just pray that you would also encourage us, God. There are so many things that are happening in this world, in our lives, that easily just bring us down, that bring discouragement, that bring discontentment. And God, we pray that as we surrender our expectations, that we lay our desires before You, that You would give us a peace that surpasses all understanding. and that You, God, that we would feel You with us. God, be with us this week in every situation. We love You and we trust You. We pray this in Your name, amen.

Philippians: Part 6

Philippians: Part 6 - Our righteousness only comes through Jesus

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Happy Mother's Day to all the mamas. I know that today can be difficult for some people for a variety of reasons, but I do want to make sure that we celebrate the moms and the grandmas and those that have children in their care. You all are amazing. And to those of the moms that aren't here, maybe you're streaming with us this morning, welcome, happy Mother's Day, or you're catching up later. We're just so glad you're here, and we hope you feel loved and honored and celebrated today. I got chosen to preach on Mother's Day as the resident mom here, I guess. I'm just kidding. It was, I volunteered. But I'm excited to be with us, be with you all today. It's not gonna be a traditional Mother's Day sermon. We are back in our Philippians series. So that is gonna be our focus, but I'll try to wrap in some mom stuff for us today.

So, Philippians, our series, The Joy That Endures. we're talking about, through this whole book, about how we can have joy in Christ and what that looks like. What does that look like for our everyday lives? The book, or Paul specifically, talks a lot about this throughout, how we can live this out, how we can find joy in Jesus, regardless of our circumstances. So we've covered chapters one and two. We're gonna be in chapter three today. So if you wanna get ahead and pull that up on your phones or your Bibles, There's Bibles underneath your seats. We'll also have it on this screen. And you can go to Philippians 3. But our buddy Paul here, the early church leader who wrote Philippians and much of the New Testament, packs a punch in this book. All right, we have only covered two chapters in the five weeks that we have been in this series. And we have already gone over partnering with God to spread the gospel, choosing joy and positive attitudes despite difficult circumstances, falling after Jesus, becoming more like him, pointing other people to Jesus, being an influence to those in our lives, and more that I'm sure that I miss. And that's just the first two chapters, all right? There's only four chapters in this book, but it is a lot.

Paul has a way of doing that. He just kinda just packs it in, has a lot of run-on sentences, if you've ever noticed, lots of therefores. He wants to get his point across. In chapter three, we're gonna cover the whole chapter today. We won't read it all, but we will cover it. And so just a little synopsis of the beginning verses. He is calling out legalism in this early church. Now, I'm a rule follower by nature. I don't know if it's just personality or being a firstborn or maybe a combination, but I am a rule follower. I like to police people. I like to know what is what, where I'm supposed to be. I want to do it the best. I want to be the best at it. And usually that requires following the rules. But I will say there is one particular area where I do not follow the rules. And that is my driving. I get it from my father. Completely honestly. But I like driving in the left lane. And if you are not going at least five over, please get out of the left lane. Can I get an amen? Okay, all right. Now here's the thing. The people in the left lane, we got places to go, right? I'm usually late, all right? So that's probably why I'm driving in the left lane. And I'm still a people pleaser, so I don't wanna be that late. So I'm trying to get there as least late as possible. Okay, so that's why I'm in the left lane. I'm just trying to get there quickly. People in the far right lane, I think you're holier than the rest of us, because you're following the rules, you're practicing road safety, we love you, we need you, do you? The people in the Middle East, I'm not sure what you're doing. I don't know. That's fine. I just don't understand it. But I just struggle to follow the rules. I haven't got a speeding ticket, though, so praise Jesus for that. (Laughter) Maybe I need one to learn my lesson. I don't know. The problem is not following rules. That's not a problem. That can actually be really beneficial when it comes to learning how to live rightly. There is a right and wrong way to live in a lot of issues that we see in the Bible. And so being a rule follower can be really helpful with that. The problem comes when we fall into legalism. Legalism is essentially where we are trying We need to follow the rules so closely that we lose sight of the end goal. It's to the detriment of the end goal. And the end goal as believers is to have a relationship with Jesus. And so if we are so caught up in legalism and following the rules that it is at the expense of our relationship with Jesus, we're missing the point. Paul here is addressing an issue where Jews at the time, Christian Jews, were telling Gentiles, these new Christian believers, that they had to become circumcised in order to be a Christ follower. They weren't truly a Christian if they weren't circumcised. And essentially they were saying, "You have to become a Jew before you can become a Christian."

They were adding to scripture, if you will. Now here's the thing, God used, in the Old Testament, when he was developing this nation of Israel, he chose circumcision as a way, as a sign, that the people would be set apart. Why he chose this particular sign, I am not really sure, but this was the sign, that they were a set apart people. They were different than the nations around them. So there was nothing wrong with the Jews choosing to follow that and be circumcised. The problem came when they were saying that it was required to be a Christ follower. were falling into this legalism. And Paul is flipping the script here and saying that those who follow Jesus who are Christians are the circumcision. They don't have to be circumcised, they are the circumcision. They are the ones set apart. They are set apart to God, Jew or Gentile. If they are a professing follower of Jesus, they are the circumcision. They are the set apart ones. See, what Paul knew is that if anyone could claim that following the rules would save you, it was him. He was like the best Jew. He grew up this good Jewish boy. He was a Pharisee, which was like the cream of the crop of the Jews, and they knew scripture inside and out. They followed all of the rules. They told everyone else how to follow all the rules. He was so passionate about following the law that he persecuted Christians in the early church because he believed they were going against the law. went to their homes and pulled them out to the street to be stoned, persecuted them. That's how passionate he was. That's how in line with the law he was. So he's saying, "If that doesn't earn me my salvation, if that doesn't earn me my righteousness, you have to understand that that's not it. No amount of legalism or keeping the law will justify us. We're not made right with God by anything we do, but only by the blood of Jesus. And that's just the first six verses of this chapter. Okay, three to jump into verse seven.

All right, so follow along with me. We'll have it on the screen. Verse seven of chapter three. "But whatever were gains to me, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith." Our righteousness, our right standing with God comes from God by Jesus, by the sacrifice of Jesus. Paul knows that everything else, compared to being in Christ, everything else is trash. And that's the kind word, the kind version of that word. He uses a much stronger word in the Greek, but it's garbage. It means nothing compared to being in Christ. He's not trying to make rule followers out to be the bad guy, 'cause that's not the issue. The issue is not following the rules, it's when it's the only thing that's important. That's when it becomes a problem. We miss the mark when we are so focused on following the rules that we miss the relationship with Jesus. Romans 5:9 says, "Since we have now been justified by His blood, "how much more shall we be saved "from God's wrath through Him?" It doesn't say been justified by our works, been justified by circumcision, been justified by how good we follow the law, by how closely we follow all the rules, by how good of a Christian we look like, it says, "By his blood." Friends, that is good news, 'cause it's not on us. The thing is, if we believe that we can save ourselves, if we believe that legalism and following the rules to a T can save ourselves, we're gonna be in a world of hurt, 'cause one, we're gonna fail miserably and still not be reconciled to God. And two, we are in effect denying the sacrificial work of the cross of Christ. If we, we may not say we believe that, we may not actually even think we believe that, but our actions speak loud. And if we are living in such a way that we are saying that we believe that we can earn our justification, we can earn our salvation, we're saying that what Christ did on the cross isn't enough. I don't think we want either of those options in the Christian life. That's not what we're looking for. So how do we do this? How do we move away from legalism into the freedom that is found in Christ?

Well, Paul goes into this in verse 10. I want to know Christ, yes, to know the power of His resurrection and participation in His and suffering, becoming like him in his death. And so somehow attaining to the resurrection from the dead, not that I have already obtained all this or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do, forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." Paul's whole goal was to know and love Jesus, full stop. Nothing else mattered, nothing else compared to knowing Jesus. As Christians, we can be a Christian, we can say we follow Jesus and say we can know a lot about him without knowing him. We can look like a good Christian. We can go through the motions and follow all the rules and do all the right things and still not have a relationship with Jesus. Paul had his priorities straight. He knew that becoming more like Jesus was more important than just checking a box and following the rules. He knew his calling. He knew where he was going, and he understood the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Here's the thing about this power. This resurrection power is what justifies us. The debt has been paid. The sentence that we are supposed to, that is put on us for our sins has been served. It's done. Can I get an amen? That is some good news, people. Thank you. Okay, we're awake. The sentence has been served. We are justified by His blood. That resurrection power has been given to us. The same power that rose Jesus from the dead is in us because if we profess Jesus as Lord and Savior, we have Holy Spirit in us. And so no amount of legalism, no amount of doing what we think is right will justify us because the work's already finished, friends.

Have you ever tried to give directions to someone who just took things a little too literally, maybe didn't quite understand, maybe it was a child, maybe it was a coworker, maybe it was your spouse, no judgment, I don't know. I think of my kids sometimes, I try to give directions, and it just doesn't quite go the way I hoped. Imagine you're giving directions on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. To someone who's never made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before. So you say, "Okay, put the peanut butter on the bread." So they put the peanut butter on the bread. And then you realize, okay, you're gonna need to back up a little bit. So then you say, "Okay, no, take the bread out of the bag." So they take the bread out of the bag. Didn't actually tell them how to open it. Well, so next time maybe give the instruction to open at the seal, but it's fine. They follow the rule, right? So then you say, "Okay, put the knife in the peanut butter." Doesn't work so well this way. So you gotta tell them to take the lid off, and then they can put the knife in the peanut butter. And then you tell them to spread the peanut butter on the bread. And then you say, "Okay, now it's time for the jelly. "Put the jelly on the bread." So they do the same thing, 'cause you didn't give the explicit directions to take the lid off the jelly. "Yeah, will they make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? "Maybe eventually, but it's gonna be messy. "It's gonna be harder than it probably should be." But here's the thing, they followed all the directions. You said, "Put the peanut butter on the bread." They put the peanut butter on the bread. Now, okay, every analogy falls apart at some point. So, you know, God is much better at giving us directions than we are. But the point is that if we are following the directions to a T, but losing the forest for the trees, it doesn't do us any good. It's gonna be messy, it's not gonna be perfect, and there's no freedom, and the end result isn't what we thought it would be. 'Cause when we follow the rules, we live a good life. We live a right life. But at what cost? Are we getting the end result that we hoped we would? Might look a little messier than we thought.

The reality is that we are sinners and that sin separates us from God. God is holy. He is perfect. And so in order to be in relationship with him, we must also be made righteous. And we can't do that on our own. but thankfully we serve a God who loves us enough to send that sacrifice for us. And he sent Jesus to be that sacrifice. He was sinless, so he could pay the price. He served our sentence. The sacrifice has been made so that we could be reconciled back to God. Legalism can actually, contrary to what we may think, Legalism can actually keep us in bondage. But Jesus offers us freedom. Legalism is not freedom. Legalism is an obligation. It puts the work of salvation on us, which is a heavy load to bear. We can't handle it. We may think we can. We may try sometimes, but we cannot handle it. In fact, legalism can create so much bondage because it leads to other sins. It can lead to pride, thinking that we got this, we can handle it. It can lead to idolatry, that we are putting the rules up on this pedestal, or we are putting ourselves, we're making ourselves these little gods, if you will, that we are the one doing the work. Now, this doesn't mean we do whatever we want. This doesn't mean we just have free reign, forget the rules, throw them out the window. That's not what I'm trying to say here. And that's not what Paul's saying. But it means that our relationship with Jesus, out of that love for Him, we naturally start following the rules, because we want to, because we love Him so much that we want to live the way He tells us. We want to live the way that He commands us to. It's not out of obligation, but out of love and out of freedom. The joy, our joy is not found in following the rules or being the best Christian. There's no award for best Christian. Sorry. But our joy is in our relationship with Jesus. That's where we find our joy. And let's be clear, we get to live abundantly.

We get to live in freedom and abundance within the boundaries that we have been given. There's so much freedom there. God gives us a lot of free reign. And it's wonderful, we are promised an abundant life, not an easy life, not a carefree life, not one without hardship, but abundant, full, full of joy, full of peace, full of Him and His presence within those boundaries that He has given us. And when we walk in freedom, when we are walking in this abundant life within those boundaries, we look different naturally. We naturally look different and we point people to Jesus. Paul talks about this. So let's go on to verse 15. He says, "All of us then who are mature "should take such a view of things, "and if on some point you think differently, "that too God will make clear to you. "Only let us live up to what we have already attained. "Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, "and just as you have us as a model, "keep your eyes on those who live as we do. "For as I have often told you before, "and now tell you again, even with tears, "many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their God is in their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things, but our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. And then he ends with chapter four, verse one, saying, "Therefore, my brothers and sisters, "You whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, "stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends." We get to be examples of Jesus to the world. And that may seem a little scary sometimes. I say we get to, some of you are like, "Do I have to? "Is that a requirement?" Yes, it is. We are all called to be ministers of the gospel. We are all called to be examples of Jesus to others. And Paul is saying here, I'm following Jesus and I've had some experience, I've had some real encounters with Him, so follow me as I follow Jesus. Let's figure this out together. Naturally with today, I think of mothers. Mothers are a great example of this. Christian moms disciple their children, they raise them up to follow Jesus. Their children model after them, for good or for bad. Sometimes it doesn't always work out the way we hoped, but we are modeling Jesus to our kids. I'm very blessed to have a mom that loved Jesus and taught us to love Jesus. I learned what it looked like to walk with Jesus from my parents. I was homeschooled, so I was with my mom more, but with both of them, Both of them love Jesus and modeled that for me. But whether you're a mom or not, whether you have biological children or not, you can still model that for others too.

Author and speaker Lisa Bevere calls these people godmothers or godfathers, these spiritual parents. Now, the idea of godparents is not unusual in our culture. many through the Catholic faith tradition or even just in close relationship with people, choose godparents for their kids. They identify them as someone that they want to pour into their children's lives or be there if something happens. But we can be spiritual godmothers and godfathers. We can model our faith to those who are maybe not as far along in their faith. Maybe they're not actually younger than us, but maybe they just are newer to their faith. And if you are newer to your faith journey, may I encourage you to find a godmother or a godfather. Ask them to lunch, buy them a coffee, spend some time with them, ask them questions. Watch them live their life. Watch them parent, watch them interact with their spouse. Watch how they talk to people, do life with them, and model after them. You're not worshiping them, you're not idolizing them, you're not putting them up on a pedestal because you and I both know they're not perfect and they know they're not perfect. But they've had some more life experiences, they've had some more encounters with Jesus. And sometimes as we're navigating life and learning to walk in faith the way Jesus did, it's helpful to have someone who's practically living that out, so we can learn how to do that ourselves. Paul wraps up this section of Philippians by acknowledging that there are enemies of Jesus. We know this. There are enemies of God. Take five minutes on social media and you will see it too. There are those that want to lead Christians astray or push their agenda. There are evildoers, as Paul called them earlier on in the chapter. They're ones that, maybe it's as simple as encouraging legalism, like the Jews were around circumcision, or maybe it's something more extreme, like things we're seeing in the Middle East. but there are enemies of Jesus. So he tells his people to stand firm. Stand firm.

Going back to the very end, chapter four, verse one. "Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, In what way? In the way He just laid out for them in the whole chapter. Choose freedom over legalism. Walk in the power of the resurrection and model a biblical and faith-filled lifestyle. That's how we stand firm. It doesn't have to be complicated. It's not always easy, but it doesn't have to be complicated. We have been given the word of God. We have been given a fellowship of other believers. We have been given everything we need for a godly life. And we just have to choose to stand firm in that. So this is how we stand firm. We won't do it perfectly, but we will do it out of freedom. Amen? Amen.

Pray with me. Heavenly Father, we thank you for who you are. We thank you for the way you have given us everything we need for life and godliness, your word, your people, your spirit. God, we are so grateful for the sacrificial blood of Jesus that has justified us, that has saved us, that has taken the burden off of us so that we can be reconciled to you, not out of anything we do, not of our own strengths, not of our own efforts to earn, but simply by accepting your gift. God help us to walk in that freedom, help us to live in this abundant life that you have given us, and help us to model that for others. Lord, we thank you for moms. We thank you for those who have gone before us and who love us so deeply. May they be honored today. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Your "Yes!" & Baptisms

Your “YES!” & Baptisms

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

So we have, today there's a big piece of Pastor Shane and what's happened this past year, but more so kind of like what God is taking you on this journey this past year and where he's taken you and he's grown you and so many amazing things that God has done and we're gonna get to see some photos and to celebrate with you guys. But tell a little bit for kind of the newer crew here, who you are, where you come from, your life, your situation, and then kind of share a little bit of kind of where we're headed this morning.

Well, now I hail from Florida, so there's that. But I'm originally from here, actually was part of a church plant that came out of here called Hub Church. That is no longer an existing church, but have known a lot of you guys. And if I haven't met you before, it's awesome to be here. This is a phenomenal church. There's so many great God stories that come out of this place, mainly 'cause I get to hear it all from this guy. So a little background for me, I was not raised in the church. Anybody not raised in the church and now in the church? Okay, I like that. So that's kind of my story. My wife was actually raised in the church and so we have a cool mix and background of like church history versus no church history. And for me, a lot of my family's here today because my niece is getting baptized today. Woo, woo, that's awesome. So excited about that. So a little backstory. So I grew up in a non-Christian home, I would say. My mom actually is a cancer survivor. - Let's go. - Come on. My brother also has a heart condition. He wasn't supposed to live past five years old and he's currently old, I'm not gonna tell what he is. But he's got two of his own kids and two step kids, and I love it because his life is pretty awesome right now. And my dad was an alcoholic, he's actually gone home to be with Jesus. But I was this kid growing up that, I didn't have any problems. So I made my own up as I went along. And I did, I made a lot of my own problems up. And I'm gonna say it this way, I didn't know what I was doing, but I wanted attention. So has anybody ever done something for attention just out of curiosity, we should all raise our hands. It's something that we do often. And here's the thing is I kind of caused my own problems. I got into problems because I think I wanted some sort of attention. And I just wanted to be seen, valued, loved, heard. I wanted all these things, and I was seeking all the wrong places. I know I needed God, but I didn't want to admit it. And so through kind of being duped, I finally got invited to go to a church, actually one of our sister churches here. I got duped 'cause I was told that I was going a car show and the car show was happened to be actually at a church and he just kind of suckered me into it. But anyway so I fell in love with the people at the church. I got invited into this men's discipleship group and I was a young business owner and I was kind of an entrepreneur. Any entrepreneurs in the room? Anybody that actually likes to go out and make some money, have a job, you know, buy their own things, have nice things. Yeah, I was doing that at a young age and I was actually at the age of 13 I had my first job. At the age of 16 I I was managing the place and then at the age of 17 had the opportunity to buy it with my family and then went on to start another company and then went into business management. Really enjoyed all those parts of life but I was just kind of entrepreneurial. And have you ever been, and I'm just curious, have you ever been on the right path for the wrong reasons? Like you know that you're on the right path because it definitely fits your bill, it fits definitely who you are as a person but it's for the wrong reasons.

So here's the thing, for me, that's kind of my story. I was on the right path to entrepreneurship. I was on the, I think on the right path to make an impact, to do something, but it was for the wrong reason, it was for me. Like I wanted to go make money, I wanted to go make a name for myself. And when you wanna go make a name for yourself, sometimes God kind of blindsides you, or sometimes just blinds you. Really similar to a story that we see in scripture, actually in Acts, we see this conversion story of Paul. Right road, wrong reason. And that's kind of my story. And so we're gonna, I wanna share a little bit of scripture today, if that's cool. I think, you know, Pastor Chris and I talked about what we wanna talk about today. And today is not actually about shame, which is really good. It's actually about Jesus. And it's really important to hear that. And we're gonna end with baptisms, which is also more about Jesus in people's lives. But the reason I'm sharing the story with you is that there's kind of been a series of saying yes that I didn't realize I was saying yes to until I said yes to Jesus. I didn't know what that looked like. I just had no idea. So.

That's great. No, we're, and I don't want to share that story from Saul into Paul. And we're gonna start in Acts chapter 9 if you're gonna be following along with us today. Acts follows the story of Jesus here on earth and what we call the Gospels, the four books and records of the New Testament. And here we are in Acts and it says, "Meanwhile Paul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. So Paul here or Saul here at this moment is out trying to off Christians. He doesn't like the teaching of Jesus. He doesn't like what they stand for. He doesn't like that they have come following the leading of Jesus to shake up what was then the religion of the day. And they don't like what he is doing. So Paul here or Saul is actually out trying to right their wrongs. He sees them in a way that they're not doing what's right. And so the only way to do that is to kill them, is to get rid of them. And it says, "He went to the high priest," so the top religious dude of the day, "and he asked him for letters to the synagogues," the local church in that moment, "in Damascus. So there, if he found any of those who belong to the way, or Christians or followers of Jesus, disciples of Jesus, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners back to Jerusalem, ultimately to be killed. So as he neared Damascus on his way, the road there, it is journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground, he heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" "Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked. Saul knew, who are you, Lord? "I am Jesus, who you are persecuting," he replied. "Now get up, go to the city, "and you will be told what you must do." The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless. They heard the sound, but didn't see anybody. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes, he couldn't see nothing. So they led him by the hand into the city of Damascus.

Now, this is a pretty radical conversion, right? Like, does anybody have this? Like, they just got blindness and then, like, you know, Jesus spoke to them? Most likely not, like, but you've probably had a situation. Like, has life ever thrown you a curve ball? You're like, what is happening right now? What are you doing, God? Like, and even people that don't believe in God usually ask the same question over and over, which is, why God? And the reason I love this story, actually, and the conversion is that he's on his way to Damascus for a very like sold out reason. Like he's going there to persecute Christians. Like that's his mission. And he believes it's for the right reasons, you guys. He's not like questioning, like he's on his road, right on this path. And he's a pretty ambitious fellow. Like if you learn a little bit about Paul as you probably learn a little bit later, you're gonna see that Paul writes pretty much half the New Testament for us to understand and read. He's a pretty ambitious guy. And I'm gonna tell you this just like in a contrast, in that story, Saul is still getting up and going, led, like humbled, led by the hand into Damascus, was headed there to persecute Christians. All of a sudden Jesus shows up and is like, dude, that's not cool. Like this isn't my plan for you. And I'm telling you in a very similar story, I was on this road to entrepreneurship and God kind of blinded me. Anybody remember the financial crash of '08? Anybody lose anything? House, cars, status, anything? I lost everything. So, like to the point where I was literally living on, like, my best friend's couch for a while. And that wasn't a great feeling, to go from making a lot of money to, like, having nothing. It's really humbling. But when you realize that God didn't do that to me, but he was trying to get ahold of me, sometimes it's a humbling experience to understand why. And I'm gonna tell you, it came from a series of yeses. that actually those yeses weren't my yeses. And so I'm gonna tell you this, actually to me it's really important, even in this story, you'll see that he got up and was led by the hand. Led by the hand 'cause he was blind, right? And it took somebody's yes to say, listen, I just heard some voice talk to this dude that we've been following, we were about to go persecute some Christians, and they actually grab him by the hand and lead him back into Damascus for very different reasons.

Paul continues on in here in Acts and said, placing his hands on Saul, he said, oh, sorry, excuse me, "Lord," Ananias answered, "I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people." So as Paul is in Damascus, Jesus actually goes and speaks to a guy named Ananias. And this guy is leading the local church. He's leading the Christians. He's making disciples. He's furthering the spread of the gospel in the area. And God comes to him and says, "Hey, you know this guy who's harming you? I need you to go to him." Like, I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where you heard God audibly say something that you do not want to absolutely do. And you probably sit there okay, excuse me, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, I got water in my ear, I don't think I heard you right in what you said. And he says, no, he says, I want you to go and to this man. He has come here with authority from the chief priests, the religious leaders, to arrest all who call on your name. And I was just like, God, do you know why this dude's here? Do you know why He has traveled? Like, the word spread fast that, hey, heads up, the Jesus-following police are coming and they're going to arrest all of you. And then God says, "Oh, no, you need to go to Him." And I was just probably thinking, "There's no way. I need to protect myself. I need to protect my friends. I need to protect my brothers and sisters. I need to stay as far away from this dude because if I go there, he's gonna arrest me." But the Lord said to Ananias, "Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name." So then Ananias ignored God and went home and took a nap. That's the alternate. - That's the alternate ending? Yeah. No, it says, "Then Ananias said yes "and went to the house and entered it.”

I think the important part here is you're seeing somebody else's yes in the story of Paul. See, we know Paul, but we probably don't really pick apart who Ananias is very often. But God shows up to Ananias, and then Ananias gives God his yes. And it's really important because he's looking for obedience in all of his followers, not just one. It's not, the whole story is not about Paul. And I'm gonna, we're gonna continue on in this, but I just wanna peel back a couple layers here. I only know Jesus today because my grandparents prayed every single day for me. I'm telling you right now, I'm sold out and believe that. There's no way that I know Jesus without them. And then when I went into a church, through what I thought was actually gonna go back and prove them wrong, that they just wanted my money, and I was, seriously, that's the reason I went back to the church. And I went back and I found people that loved me for me and I didn't even realize why. And until someone said, "Well, it's not that I love you, "it's that Jesus loves you, "and he's called me to love you too." And I was like, "Your authority to love me is not yourself?" Like that's like the most selfless love I've ever heard in my life. And it was at that moment I was convinced, and I came back. And so I just want you to know that the series of yeses is not, it's not about Paul actually, but Paul gets to continue, and so we're gonna kind of continue on in this, but it's really awesome to hear that it started with someone else's yes.

Yeah, so Ananias goes, probably a little anxious, stressed out, worried, not knowing what's gonna happen when he goes to see this guy. And so Ananias goes to him, and then it says here in Acts, placing his hands on Saul, he said, "Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, "who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here, "has sent me that you may see again, "and you may be filled with the Holy Spirit." Immediately, something like scales fell off of Saul's eyes, and he could see again. He got up, he was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength. Paul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus, and once again, he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God, And all those who heard him were astonished and asked, "Isn't this the man who raised havoc," I love that word right there, "raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on his name? And hasn't he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests?" Ananias goes to Paul and says, "Okay, God, if this is what you're calling me to do, I'm gonna do it." And he gets there and he prays over him. I don't even know what Ananias is thinking in his head. Like, to be a fly on the wall in that room in that moment. - I imagine he doesn't have a steady hand at that point. I think he's probably shaking a little bit. - He might have to change his robe a couple more times after that moment. But he prays over him, and he sees this radical transformation in Paul. And then he goes and he takes him to his other disciples. Probably the best April Fool's joke in the world to show up with Saul. Surprise. But then he starts talking and teaching and all these people are coming to Jesus and being saved and life transformation is happening because Ananias stepped out and said yes. And because of that, then Paul has a chance to say yes to Jesus through Ananias faith and his yes. And these yeses just begin to start to compound one after another, after another. And then it changed the city courts. It changes people there in Damascus, and it starts a movement in Damascus that continues to this day.

I mean, it's insane. I think to think about the series of yeses, like first of all, most of us don't make a decision to say yes to Jesus and then get baptized like the next minute. And then after you're baptized, start preaching in the temple courts. Like, I mean, it would be like in Spring Valley, but whatever, you know what I'm saying? Like most of us don't do that. And I'm here to tell you that the series of yeses, God's just waiting on you. He's just waiting on your yes. And after this yes, right, it takes a minute for a little conversion for Paul because Paul obviously was breathing out murderous threats. And so like maybe three days was just an ample time, but like lots of people go longer than three days with some trials. And he was just blinded and didn't eat for three days. So that's pretty, I mean, it's pretty phenomenal to see the kind of life transformation. But here's the thing that I love is after this series of yeses, we come into knowledge with a number of other people about in scripture. And some of these names, I'm just gonna throw some out. Like, does anybody know who John Mark is? How about Barnabas? How about Timothy? Right, how about some of these names that we see throughout the Bible? And then we learn about city names and locations. And you see how the gospel is growing and the way is taking off, all because of the one person who is out killing Christians and persecuting them, actually turns to him. Like clearly there must be something going on there. Like all the conspiracy theorists in the room, I'm gonna tell you right now, if you're a conspiracy theorist today, the time in that moment right there would have been, I mean, maybe just maybe there's some truth then, maybe about this whole God thing, because I mean, if they got a hold of Paul, maybe there's something real or tangible about this that I need to consider. And so where are my married people at really quick? 'Cause I just need to know where I'm talking to. Okay, so here's the thing about being married, all right? At some point in your relationship, you said yes, but did you know you were saying yes to snoring? How about dirty socks on the floor? - No. - Okay, how about-- - Mine or hers. - Yes, absolutely. How about the fact that you were saying yes to in-laws? Okay, hold on a second. Listen, oh, I might have struck a chord for a second. - Careful, careful, bring it back, bring it back. - Bring it back, okay. Here's the thing, like, I didn't know I was saying yes to picking up Starbucks so much. Like, there's lots of things I didn't realize I was saying yes to, But I still said yes. I still said yes. And you still said yes. I didn't know I was saying yes to three kids. I didn't know that those three kids were gonna talk back as much as they do. I had no idea. But I'm telling you that there's something important about your yes and you would still go back and do it again. And here's the reality. The reason I'm painting this picture is sometimes saying yes isn't about knowing the details. Saying yes isn't about knowing the details.

Sometimes we wanna have it all figured out before we can say yes. Sometimes we wanna have a full financial plan before we can say yes. We gotta have our careers fully dialed before I can say yes. I need to make sure that if I'm gonna say yes, I'm not committing to showing up to church every Sunday. Like there's lots of things, but it's like sometimes you just gotta commit. God's waiting on your yes, not your maybe, or I'll think about it to get back to you tomorrow. He's waiting on your yes now. And here's the reason I say that. See, when I got called into full-time ministry, I didn't know what I was saying yes to. I showed up to a church, right? And I kinda got saved and I got baptized and some things. I just kept on saying yes. I didn't know what I was saying yes to. I just thought I was going to a life change and I wanted eternity in heaven with Jesus. And then one day I walk into an Ash Wednesday service at Faith Legacy Church down in Sacramento, sister church of this church. And I said yes to a full-time call into ministry. And I was like, I don't even know what I'm saying yes to, but I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to be having a career and making six figures and ministry doesn't do that. So where am I going here, God? Like, I'm pretty sure you made it clear that I'm called into this ambitious life and Jesus comes to me and says, "You're no longer gonna be ambitious for me," or, "No longer be ambitious for yourself, "but you're gonna be ambitious for me." See, I didn't know what that meant. I didn't realize that was gonna be a call into ministry. But see, God has given me kind of an ambitious personality. And I was on the right path for the wrong reasons. And so in the series of a number of yeses, I got called into this ministry position. So I kind of came in as like an assistant youth pastor, I was already volunteering as a youth leader. Any youth leaders in here? Youth pastors, anybody who worked in youth? Nobody? Okay, get into it. It's awesome. Andre needs your help. I didn't say that because he, yeah, anyway, I love you, Andrei.

So I wanna say this, that it's important, is that you step into something and you don't know the details of what you're saying yes to. So I said yes to youth pastor, then I said yes to some district youth president thing that I didn't even know what that meant, but I got to get to know a lot of people who became really good friends with Pastor Andre through that same exact cohort. I didn't know that, but that led into another series of yeses and saying yes into a senior pastor position at Hub Church. And then I said yes to selling our house, which was so dumb of an idea, but it was such a God call on our life. And we sold our house and went to a 400 square foot trailer. Like that sounds pretty dumb, like I'm not gonna lie, but yet it was just another series of yeses that I didn't realize was gonna happen. And so what I wanna share that like in this, the series of yeses, there was like a really big yes. And it's not my works, it was all God's. Like God was just interested in my yes. And so as you've probably heard me say the word yes a thousand more times today, I'm gonna ask you a question, begin to think about what God is asking you to say yes to. Ask the question, maybe it's big, maybe it's small, right? There are things that we're really, really like to hold on tight to, our time, our money, our hobbies, our identities. There's so many things that God is like trying to pull away from us saying, I've got a bigger identity and purpose for you. You're ambitious, but I need you to be ambitious for something bigger. It's not just you. And so in that, we bought this RV thinking we were just gonna get closer to the church we were pastoring at. And then we ended up falling in love with this community of people that I didn't know I was gonna say yes to. I'm not gonna lie. We just said yes to an RV. I didn't realize that it came with an entire community of people that we hadn't met yet. I'm telling you, I had no clue. And last year I shared some stats with you. I'm talking about just in the state of Arizona alone, there's a million RVers that show up for winter. That's just Arizona. It's unreal how many people live in RVs and vans and buses across the nation. And we started to ask a question, how are we going to plant a church? How are we going to build a church or build some sort of ministry in a community without a zip code? And it kind of began to kind of unfold. We had no idea what we were saying yes to, but this is what it looked like. And so if we're gonna plant this church, maybe we're not gonna use the word church, we're gonna just call it a ministry name. And instead of calling them like gatherings, we're gonna call them chapters. And we're gonna have extensions where we all work together, very similar to a church, but when you have no zip code and you basically sprawl across the entire United States, Canada and Mexico, you begin to have to think different. And God said, "See, remember those ambitions? "Right path, wrong reasons. "I sent you to figure this out. "And I need you to go out and do this. "There are people that don't know me "and they're living nomadically "and you're gonna go find them." I didn't know what that meant. I just was like, "Hey, this sounds like fun. "Let's try it. "Throw some things at a dartboard and see if it lands." I don't know. But God began to reveal some things. And so in this last year, I think it's really important to understand this. our ministry is called Gathering of Nomads, and that's really what we're doing. We're all about finding nomads and gathering together. And sometimes it just looks like hanging out.

But Hebrews 10:24 actually says, "And let us consider how we may spur on one another "toward love and good deeds, "not giving up, meeting together, "as some," and I'm gonna say in America, "a lot of people are in the habit of doing, "but encouraging one another and all the more "as you see the day approaching." And there's something to be said, like sometimes we show up to gather here on a Sunday morning and it's a check in the box, but I'm telling you, don't forsake the gathering. Like the fruit of the gathering, the purpose of why you're here, to break bread with one another, get to know other people's stories and actually dine and get close with one another. See, the easy thing to do when you're out in the middle of a campground and people don't have any community is they wanna join you for a fire. Or you wanna go, "Hey, we're just doing a potluck. You wanna come over on Tuesday?" And there's like an instant, "Yeah, we're not doing anything, why not? Come on over." And community becomes just to start falling into place. Things that we couldn't even, I couldn't even tell you that we don't even try that hard, but I'm gonna tell you that we just say yes and then God shows up. So it's not even about how hard you wanna try, it's about saying yes to it. And so in this last year, actually this last week, this number's a lie on my notes here. This last week we've had 13 people say yes to stepping into full-time ministry and being a chapter. 13 people. I'm telling, that's not me, that is just 100% Jesus, but it just came with a yes and then one invitation to say it. Do you wanna say yes? And this last one actually, I'm just kind of a sidebar rabbit hole. This last one who just said yes, they were so skeptical of the ministry. They were like, I don't know who you are, we're gonna wait till you show up and we show up, we spend three weeks with them, they see us pray for hundreds of different people and doing different types of things, and they go, "I just wanna do that. "That looks like simple ministry, and I'm in for that." And then they called me like a week after we left, and they said, "Hey, we wanna be a chapter. "We wanna do what that is. "Whatever that looks like, I'm in for that." And because they just didn't understand what they were saying yes to. So sometimes you need a glimpse of what you're saying yes to, and I get that. but that's the luring love of Jesus, not you. We've had 12 baptisms, we've had tons of reconciliations, and just in all this within 16 minutes, we've had hundreds of different families, we've paid people's groceries bills, we've repaired tires, replaced air conditioners, bought refrigerators. I couldn't tell you all those different stories the way we just help different people in different ways, but at this point, we are reaching well over 1,000 people every single week. And that is all because of Jesus and a simple yes. But I didn't realize that it came down to a hitch point of Shane's yes. And all these other people are beginning to say yes. And so I'm inviting you into this. I'm gonna show some pictures here, if you can, just for gatherings. I just want you guys to kind of see, like pictures-wise. Like, these are what our gatherings look like. You go, "Dude, you don't even have folding chairs?" Like, "No, they gotta bring their own." It's simple, I'm telling you. This is how it works. I mean, imagine if you had to bring your own chair to church. or your own chair to church. And so, yeah, so this is what some of them look like. I think there's a couple more here. These are just some of our meals. You know, this is actually Mother's Day. This is a year ago, exactly on the far right here, of us actually just doing Mother's Day with three families that we met in Tennessee. And you know what they wanted? Fellowship and someone to break bread with. You know, don't forsake the gathering, my friends. And then here, and this is what it looks like sometimes to gather when it's cold. We got inside of our little tent here, it's called a clam. We're not sponsored by them, but we should be, because we talk about the clams all the time. But then on the left-hand side there, I don't know why my son's wearing a Christmas beanie, but that was actually Thanksgiving in the Florida Keys. - He was ready. - He was ready for Christmas, apparently. - Make it happen. - But that's Thanksgiving in the Florida Keys, and we had a number of families that just didn't have a place to go. And it's just a small conversation, the next thing you know we're breaking bread together. And then the very following week, I think we got some pictures of a night gathering here. Oh, this is another, these are more gatherings.

They're just, I'll tell you, I can't tell you how many different gatherings. Sometimes it looks like just inviting people out to the beach so that way the very next day you can invite them over for Bible study. Like they just want to hang out and get to know one another. We had Easter Sunday inside of an office there. This top picture here, this is our very first French Canadian couple. I've never met a French Canadian couple. I don't even want to try their accent. I could try, but I would botch it up. Chris is better at his Hispanic accent. And so anyway, this couple, they actually gave us their spot because they were leaving in two days and their spot was bigger and fit our rig better. And so they were generous enough to give it to us. And then we prayed for them on their travel day. They had never prayed before. Never, like never in their life have prayed. And we prayed for them. And it was such a weird experience as we prayed for them. They're like, in Jesus' name, amen. And they're like, thank you, thank you. That was the first for us. It was like, okay, well, I guess, I'm glad it was first. And they follow us on social media. We've connected with them a couple times on there, which is awesome. But one of the things that we love to do on here, you can see, this is actually some of our chapters in us. We pray for people on their travel days. Like if you're ever telling like a 45-foot fifth wheel or 30-foot trailer behind you or driving like a 40,000-pound bus, it's kind of nerve-wracking on travel days, I'm not gonna lie. And one of the ways we wanna offer peace is not the peace of us, but the peace of Jesus. So we just offer to pray with people. I know it sounds simple you guys, but those are just the little yeses. And the reason I'm sharing these stories isn't, it has less to do with us and more to do with the fact that he's interested in looking at your yes. He's interested in you saying yes in your context. Like what does it look like for you just to go and pray with your neighbors? What does it look like for you to go and pray with people that are at the store? You can seriously see struggling. Maybe instead of saying, hey, here's five bucks out the window to the guy asking for change, looking at the guy at the grocery store and saying, hey, before I give you this money, I just wanna pray for you that God would do more with it than what I actually can give you. Like imagine if we just said yes to those uncomfortable moments, it's simple. I'm not saying it's easy, but I can tell you it's simple. And he's just looking for your yes.

And I wanna talk about this, Chris, I'm sorry, for, we'll make sure we have time here. Ephesians 2:10 is such an important part of this. In Ephesians 2 10, it says that you, you and me, but you are God's handiwork. You are God's handiwork. I'm gonna tell you right now, and actually in the Passion translation, it says you are God's poetry. Like you are such a unique component in creation that you are considered God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works. Are you ready for this one? This blows me away. Which God has prepared in advance for you to do. The work is there, He is just waiting on your yes. Holy buckets. Man, that takes a lot of pressure on us because like, I don't wanna say yes 'cause I don't know what I'm saying yes to. My friends, my family, I'm telling you it's important because you don't know what your yes is gonna translate to. Actually, what I love about this story is, and I'm gonna just kind of boast a little bit, and then we're gonna get into some really cool baptism pictures. I want you guys to know this on a Shane story. I see, this is my family right here in the center table. But listen to this, what I love about all this is that Jason Donald said yes to inviting me to some stupid car show that I got duped into going to, and then years later, my brother actually ends up marrying his sister, and that family, who actually led me to Jesus, is now my family. It's just a yes. I'm just gonna tell you because a yes is so important to understand that you don't know what it's gonna look like. And actually, if you did know what it's gonna look like, you wouldn't say yes. You wouldn't. So try to practice saying yes. And the series of saying yes is what I love about this is that baptisms happen. I didn't realize that baptisms were gonna happen. I thought I was just gonna go out and love people for Jesus. And in some way, some reason, people started really saying yes to Jesus and like, I wanna do it and I wanna self-proclaim it to the world and let everyone know that I'm gonna say yes to it. I wanna show you some pictures here really quick, 'cause you just don't know. See some of the baptisms that happened while we're on the road. Both of these are actually in Texas, very different locations. Texas is a huge state. And so the two bottom pictures here is a family, actually after getting to know them for like a week and a half, they invite me over to their trailer and we're talking, having late night conversations. And the dad goes, "You know, I've never been baptized. "My kids have definitely never been baptized, "but I know they know Jesus "and they wanna know him like forever." And so we had this long conversation over the course of the next couple of days. We basically unpacked what scripture says about them. And they said, "Yes, I want to accept Jesus." And then they proclaim it. I said, "Well, do you guys wanna get baptized like you thought about that?" And they're like, "Well, we're gonna get baptized then." I said, "Well, there's a lake, it's kinda stinky, but like we can go out in the lake and it was cold." And so we got out in the water, we just baptized them. And there was literally, it was just the family and one other family there to witness it. And it was so intimate, it was so awesome. And it was such a celebratory moment. This top picture here actually is, there's another picture in there somewhere, but there was two young ladies, part of a family who grew up in a Catholic church and stepped away from the church and have been trying to find and rediscover their faith on the road. And the parents actually said, "Well, we're thinking about doing like the, you know, the thing with the water and where they, you know, like they were like, you know, they're gonna like get like whatever that's called." I'm like, "Baptized?" They're like, "Yeah, baptized, that's the one." And they had no idea what they were talking about, but their kids have been talking about God for so long that they were finally introduced to Jesus, that God wasn't just a concept, but he was a reality and there's a relationship. And so two of the kids got baptized and then one of their kids actually got dedicated, which was super cool, Teddy. And so anyways, we'll go one more picture here. This is what it looks like sometimes to baptize people when there's just nothing but a spa 'cause there's no lakes around. So you just use whatever water's around you. Sometimes it's a horse trough and it's here, just so you guys know, the water's warm. But this is what it looks like, you guys.

This is just a series of people who said yes, and they had been waiting to get baptized because there was no one willing to say yes to baptize them. How crazy is that? And so I'm telling you guys all this now. What's important as you see baptism pictures is that you just don't know what you're gonna say yes to, but you need to say yes where you live, learn, work, and play. Like you have to say yes where you live, work, learn, and play. It's important for you to do that. And so no matter what, I know this, because of the yes I try to give God every day, there are people's lives who are greatly being impacted. And with your yes, you don't know how God may use you to actually reach the lives and families around you. And you don't know, like if God's called you to say yes to any capacity to supporting people, like for us, we're a fully like fundraised ministry. And so I just encourage you, like if God's calling you to partner with us on a financial level, like we wanna keep doing this. And we don't ask a lot of it because we're just a simple, you know, really low funded ministry and we're all good with it. We actually love that. And a lot of that money goes in and goes right back out and saying yes to helping people. So anyway, that's a lot of that. And really excited about baptisms here in a second. So if you need to say yes to some baptisms, like if you're curious, like today's the day 'cause the water's warm.

Absolutely. You're gonna hear the stories here in a moment of people who said yes, and people who said yes to Jesus. And they wanna share that yes with you today. And this is what this Sunday is about. I know some of you in here, I had the pleasure of baptizing recently. And I know a lot of you have been baptized in your life. And as we get to celebrate, I told the team this morning, as you get to watch these people celebrate their yes with you and you saying yes to them and encouraging them and being in life together as a family, remember the yes that you first chose. Remember the yes that you had the opportunity to say to God because somebody else said yes, 'cause you wouldn't be here unless somebody else shared it with you, right? And so I want to encourage you as we see these people get baptized and as the kids come in to witness this and we're just celebrate as a big family, that remember that yes that you had. And then to think about, as Pastor Shane said, who in your life do you need to say yes to, to then have the opportunity to share Jesus with them? And so Alicia, how you guys wanna come forward, we got a couple people. this morning that we're gonna be baptizing. And I'm gonna have, let's have Alicia go first real quick. And this is exciting, this has been, I would say, a couple years in the works to be able to have this with you. - 16 years in the works. - 16 years in the making. And for you, for them to understand, how are you guys connected? - This is my niece, I understand that she looks like she's taller than me, but that's because she's wearing boots. Oh wait, no, I'm wearing boots. I have no excuse, I'm just short. But yes, this is my niece. I've known her entire life, but if you can, can you give us just like a short little testimony?

Yeah. - So I went to camp for the first time two years ago, and at camp it was a very emotional experience, and I was able to start opening up and develop a relationship with God. And then last year it hit me hard. It was very perplexing and I just had a really rough time and I kind of lost my way, but going back to camp, I was able to reignite my relationship with God and completely commit to my faith and say yes to God.

Yeah, I'm just gonna tell you, I need to piggyback on that. You guys, I have known this girl obviously her entire life and I have seen her go from every stage of life that you could imagine, but lately, even just to the moment where she says she wants to call and pray with her friends. Like, are you kidding me? Those yeses are so profound. Like, her entire friend group is gonna change because of this yes. Like, the generations of family will change because of her yes. And so, I'm so proud of her, and so this is kind of an emotional moment for me, so I'm just gonna turn the mic off and stop talking. Love it.  That was awesome. Congratulations, this is amazing.

Hao, Come on, buddy. Oh, man. So I'm gonna say, I got to meet this guy probably, what was it, last, the Christmas time, right? And you guys moved over in these condos, and you were looking for a church, and you looked across the street, and here we were. And you walked in one day, and we got to hear your story. And I know you want to share some of that today, but God is doing so many things in your life right now. And we got to-- Pastor Andra, I met with you this week. And we got to hear your heart and what God is calling you to as you lead your family with your wife and your kiddos here. But yeah, share a little bit, kind of your story, where you're at, and why today is your day you want to get baptized.

Hello, everyone. My name's Hao. I already used Steven because it's easier to remember. And then today I went to declare my faith in our Father God and in Lord Jesus Christ, and to fully surrender myself to God through baptism. So a little bit story about myself. So I spent the first 25 years of my life in China, which is a country with high surveillance and observed restrictions on religions. So I was never fully exposed to Christianity until 2021, which is pretty recent. So in October, 2021, my mentor and my best friend at work, whose name is Alex Kim, he left the firm, unfortunately, and he gave me a bilingual version of Gospel of John. And I don't know if any of you have ever had such a moment or a period of time, maybe, and when you feel just so useless and so aimless and powerless that no matter how hard you try, no matter what you do, you just cannot make it. Unfortunately, or fortunately in some sense, such a hard time hit me really hard in 2022. At that time I was a new father to two born infants who are standing there with their mommy. And then as young parents, as you can see, we are pretty young and we had very limited financial resources at the time. And then it was right at that time I become unemployed. And not because of anyone's fault, I was definitely above average employee and my boss wanted to keep me there, but the Army agency, the USAS, was simply overwhelmed and unable to grant me the work authorization timely, so I lost my job there. Well, I was more than devastated. I had my pride. I graduated from best university in China and I often regarded myself as the top 0.1% students in China and I was definitely the kind of person I fight really, really hard to gain control of my life. But I failed. I had never failed so hard. And the worst part of the failure was that I couldn't do anything to fix it. There's not anything inside my control to fix it. So it was right at that time I finally decided to open and read the gospel that Alex Kim, my friend, gifted me. And I had nothing to do anyways at the time because I was important, right? So I spent a lot of time and put a lot of efforts in reading, actually studying the Gospel of John. I made my notes, I made my marks, and wrote my questions, and asked a lot of questions to Alex Kim, my friend. And he was really nice and patient. He answered my questions. And we set a meeting, actually, and I could still vividly remember that Alex told me during the meeting that even if the Lord asked me to die right now, At this moment, at this time, I think I'm ready. So, you know, there at that time, that starts my journey of Christianity. As for over the past two years, with a lot of love and with a lot of help, I think I finally reached this point to say that I am ready too. And I'm ready to submit my life to God and to our Lord Jesus Christ. And I want to surrender myself to God and live the rest of my life to serve God. And I praise God that he has found me when I was lost, that he has shown me his great mercy and love and he has led me to faith and brought me to here to be baptized, to declare my faith. So thank you, Lord Jesus.

Amen, amen, thank you. So Hao, here in front of everybody, your friends, your family, you're telling us that Jesus is Lord and leader of your life. - Yes. - And you are telling us today that your proclamation of faith, for now, forevermore until you meet Jesus face to face in heaven that you're gonna follow Him every single day and every single moment.

Yes! How amazing is that? How amazing is God? Amen. So I wanna pray for us real quick and I'm gonna pray for lunch. I know you guys are hungry. Everybody's excited. We're excited for tacos. Grab these guys afterwards. Tell them congrats, give them a hug, tell them you love them, tell them you're praying for them. And because right now them making this decision that they just put a target on their back because Satan doesn't like what they just proclaimed. And so they're gonna be walking through some hard stuff and they know it, we've talked about this and we're encouraging them, but they're gonna need your prayers. They're gonna need your prayers every single day. So when you think about your week, think about them, lift them up in prayer, lift them up before Jesus. And as they keep walking forward, you see them next Sunday and the week after that, and the week of that, continue to encourage them, continue to give them the words that they need to keep walking on this faith, 'cause we all need it, right? We're all figuring this out. We're all trying to take it one day at a time, one step at a time. And their yes today has changed all of us, right? Amen, so let's live our yes out.

Jesus, we thank you for this morning, God. Thank you for so many people and generations before us that said yes to allow us to come to this point that we get to celebrate Alisha and How's yes before us. God, encourage us as we go out, give us the boldness to step out where we live, learn, work and play to say yes to God, whatever you want us to do. Whether that means you're praying for somebody, you're doing a random act of kindness, you need to call somebody, text them, just tell them you're thinking about them and you're praying for them. Reach out. God, you have people in our lives specifically that you have placed there for us to share Jesus with them. Not in a preachy, bang them over the head, in their face kind of a way, but just to show up in their life and give them the love that you have given us. Jesus, let us go with boldness and go with our yes. We love you, Jesus. We pray over lunch. Continue to help us. Have a great week and a great time together. We love you. And everybody said, Amen.