Calvary Evangelical Free Church in Rochester MN

What are the gifts, character qualities, responsibilities, and attitudes we are to look for in a shepherd-pastor?

Thank you. Thank you, worship team. This is not a sermon about Memorial Day, but it is worth taking a minute or two about Memorial Day, Memorial Day - I probably don't need to say this to this group - is not about barbecues, although there's nothing wrong with you having a barbecue on Memorial Day. Memorial Day is about remembering and Christians should be the foremost people in our society that are people about remembering. Now for Memorial Day, we remember all those who, as President Abraham Lincoln said, gave the last full measure of devotion to defend our nation, our freedom, our liberty, who gave their lives. We remember them. We remember their sacrifice. We remember as well what it was that they died fighting to defend: our liberty, our freedom, them fighting against tyranny. We remember because as someone has famously said, if we fail to remember the past, we're doomed to repeat it, that tyranny can arise at any point. And that's why we remember as well what they died fighting to defend. But Christians take it to even a new level. Christians are people of remembrance. The gospel is about remembering, is it not? We remember who we are, our identity because of what Christ has done. We remember God's redemptive work all through history to get a sense of ourselves and where God is taking us and how we're then to live. So for Christians, we remember and we honor those who gave their lives. But ultimately, Memorial Day points us forward to the one who is the supreme example of a sacrifice. I appreciate Micah addressing that as he prayed - the Lord Jesus Christ. We remember, and it points to our savior and all that he has done for us.

Well, again, this is not a sermon about Memorial Day. We are actually starting a new series that we'll be in for at least the next couple of months. And it's going to focus on a couple of texts that are either found like today in Peter or in first and second Timothy. And there will be different speakers over the coming weeks. But but we're all going in the same direction. And I wanted to kind of frame that for you and give you an understanding of of what this series is about and the timing. So let me address the timing first. Next week, the pastor, excuse me, the chairman of our pastoral search team is going to be here and we'll give a report on the progress of the pastoral search. And I'm not going to steal any of his thunder. So you'll just have to come back to hear that report next week. But anticipating if God wills that according to our planning, we may see the conclusion of the pastoral search sometime this summer. That's what we're aiming for. Again, God is in control of the timing. But anticipating that we envisioned how do we prepare as a congregation to receive a new lead Pastor? What is it that we are looking for in a new lead pastor. And the word that I'd plant in your minds about this series is expectations. I've been thinking a lot about expectations. I've been listening to this wonderful series again by Tim and Kathy Keller on marriage. They gave it in 2012. It was a seminar to many young professionals in New York City, so many single people, many people who were newly married. And it was about marriage. And they addressed very pertinently, they addressed expectations. What is it that we expect as we go into marriage? What is it those of you who are married or have been married, what is it that you expected your spouse was going to be like as you approached marriage or those of you who are are hoping to get married what is it that you expect of a spouse as you envision marriage? I am ashamed to say it, but I carried this load of expectations that I put on my wife as I came into my marriage that made the first couple of years so much rockier than it had to be. And it was only by God's grace that he worked in my life to help me see the issue in my marriage was not my wife. It was me. It was the wrong expectations that I put on her and what a wife was to be to me, Expectations driven by my family of origin, some good things from those expectations, some dysfunctional things from that family of origin and those expectations.

They were expectations that were driven by my needs, or at least what I perceived were my my needs that I placed upon my wife. And because of those expectations, God had to really do a work of grace to produce, to do the change in me, to produce the marriage I believe that we have today. Well, similarly, we carry expectations into what we envision as an incoming lead pastor. And whether you've consciously thought of those expectations that you have or not, you have them. And just as we bring into a marriage we bring from our family of origin, we bring expectations about what a spouse is to be like. We bring expectations from our church family of origin. You know, if you've grown up in a church, maybe one church or maybe a certain church culture, you bring expectations of what you are looking for, what you think the next lead pastor should be like. You bring those expectations into how you look at who God is raising up to be Calvary's next lead pastor. And just as going into marriage, we often bring in our expectations that are formed from what we think are our needs, what we perceive are our needs. So we often bring into our view of a new incoming pastor expectations that are based on what we think we need, what we perceive we need, as God had to do an adjustment in me, in my marriage, orienting me on what are biblical expectations that I should have for a wife.

So we need to be oriented about what are biblical expectations that we're to have of a of a pastor, particularly of a lead pastor, the one you're going to see a lot in this role right here in the pulpit. What is it that God's word sets as the foundation for the the proper expectations that we should have? So that's what these texts are going to move through over the course of the summer. What are the biblical foundations that form what we should expect, what we should look for in our next lead Pastor? Here's the here's the urgency of this. Just as many people going into a marriage with wrong expectations - less than biblical expectations. If there is not that work of grace or if they resist that work of grace and they cling to those expectations, those marriages don't go very well. And so many end in separation or divorce. Well similarly many pastor church relationships can can go pretty rocky and not end well as both the congregation and the pastor bring in less than biblical expectations. And if there's not that work of grace to adjust that out. So we're going to look at these texts.

We're going to see what is it that God shows us that that we can expect that we should look for, that we should pray for. I encourage you again to show up next Sunday night for the concert of prayer that as we pray for who God is raising up and that process, that even these expectations set what we pray for. The first Peter passage that we're looking today, if you have your Bible, I encourage you to turn to 1 Peter 5. We're looking primarily at the first four verses there. And it is this image of a shepherd, which if you paid attention to the songs today and the the scripture that the Bodde family read, you probably picked that up. It's that image of a pastor as a shepherd. And that's exactly where Peter goes. Now, it's not on the slide here today. I think I left the slide out. But but in verse one, if you have your your Bibles with you, in verse one of chapter five, Peter writes to elders - I exhort the elders among you. And so you may rightly think, well, this isn't really a passage about pastors. It's a passage about elders. And what we need to understand is that Peter and Paul, as he writes to Timothy and to Titus, they use these terms interchangeably, pastor and elder. In fact, there's three terms that we see often appear, and each of these terms is a little different and each of these terms brings in a slightly different perspective, and together they give us the whole picture of what we're looking for in a pastor, what I'm going to refer to throughout the rest of my time here today as a as a pastor elder or an elder pastor, and the first term that we see here in verse one, and that is the term elder. So when we think of a pastor, the first thing we're looking at is elder. And that that goes to character. Is there maturity of faith? Is there a maturity, relational maturity? Is there an emotional maturity? That's what that elder term describes, that perspective of character. But secondly, we're going to see another term that is used here by Peter and as well as by Paul, and that is overseer, overseeing. And that brings in another perspective. Overseeing brings in the perspective of the primary function, which we'll get into of a pastor elder. And then the third term that we'll see here, I've already mentioned, and that is Shepherd. There is a Greek word that the best translation of it means to tend, and that's the idea of Shepherd. And it's usually translated that way. Sometimes it's translated by certain translations as pastor. That's where we get our term pastor from and that focuses on the responsibilities. So you have the perspective of the character and the perspective of the primary function and the perspective of the responsibilities.

And we see these used interchangeably. And just so I don't confuse you today, I'll often refer to a Pastor Elder as we think about our expectations for our next lead pastor. So what is this idea of shepherd, of what it means to shepherd the flock? That's that's an image that is not only a New Testament image of of a pastor and the church. That is an image that goes all through scripture. God presents himself to the people of Israel and through us who come to faith in him, through Christ, as our shepherd, as leading us. And this image of Shepherd and the church as a flock, that is not the only New Testament image, but it has some key aspects of that relationship of, first of all, the church, the congregation to God. But secondly, the relationship between the pastor elder and the congregation. We need all the other different images. There are others that I'm not going to go in today. The church as a body, but all together, these give us a whole full balanced picture of the church and their pastor elders and their relationship to God himself. So here Peter uses this image of a shepherd to teach us what a Pastor Elder should be like. And and it's not a common image to us today, I realize. But it was a very common image.

And to his original recipients of his letter, they would have understood the image that a pastor elder as a shepherd. A shepherd is one who is responsible for the overall supervision and watchful care of a flock. We see this idea somewhat in Proverbs - Proverbs 27:32 - know well the condition of your flock and pay attention to your herds. There's that idea of that overall watch care over a flock, over a congregation. Well, who do the flock represent? I mean, you probably already deduced this, but the flock are all of us. Even the pastor himself is part of the flock. The flock represents a group of sheep. And humanly, I got to be honest with you, I don't like that image that we are sheep. But what a biblical image that is going all the way back through the Old Testament. We even sang about it today. We sang How We Are Sheep that so easily go astray. We seek, in other words, to live life our own way apart from God. That's where we naturally go like a sheep, naturally wandering or straying from the flock. And we sang about how Christ the Great Shepherd is the one that goes out and seeks us and brings us into the fold when we are lost and we are straying. So we are sheep. Like it or not, the the image fits us very well. And as you think about sheep, again, I realize we don't know a lot about sheep in our culture, but the well-being of sheep requires a great deal of care and attention, and that's us spiritually.

We need a great deal of care and attention. We need to be fed and like sheep need to be fed. We need to be fed spiritually. We need to be protected just like like sheep needed to be protected from predators, we need to be protected from spiritual predators, from false teaching. We need regular encouragement. We need regular comfort. We need regular guidance. We even need whether we like it or not, regular correction. Sometimes we even need discipline. That's all part of the responsibility of a shepherd being responsible for the care and the attention of the flock. Now, the other thing that we see in this text is the church. The congregation doesn't belong to the pastor elder. It is the flock of God. The shepherd doesn't own the flock. The shepherd is entrusted for a time with the care of the flock. The flock belongs to the Lord God. He's the one who bought it with his own blood, with the blood of Christ. And so God entrusts to pastor elders for a time temporarily the care of the flock. And the pastor elder who is wise and knows the scripture knows that they will have to answer to God one day for how they cared and watched over the flock.

Well, Peter teaches here that shepherding involves overseer. And that's what we get in that term in verse two exercising oversight. In fact, I will explain a little bit more as I show you the bigger structure. But the main verb here, the imperative the command is shepherding, exercising oversight is a participle. And what that does is it brings some clarity. It helps us understand what it means to shepherd here. Exercising oversight clarifies how it is that a pastor elder is to shepherd. Exercising oversight means to watch over. It means to oversee. It means to superintend. Again, all of this works best if we understand better the picture of shepherding, shepherding in the Near East where the land of Israel was. This is not by any means and an all encompassing description of shepherding there in the area of Palestine. But let me point out a few key things. So a shepherd who is entrusted with a flock out in the wilderness every day had to choose which direction the flock would take. He had to discern based on his wisdom and his experience, where is it that I'm going to be able to lead this flock where they're going to find food, where they're going to be able to forage? Where is it that I'm going to be able to find water for the flock? Where is it that I'm going to be able to find protection from predators and from adverse weather conditions? So every morning and every evening, the shepherd would go up to the highest hill that they could see around the flock.

And they look beyond where the flock was currently. They'd look at the land beyond them to decide what's the best course towards the best area. So there's a discerning, there's a discerning on where am I to lead the flock for the good of the flock. Where is it that I am supposed to take the flock so that they are fed and watered and provided for and protected? That's the concept of overseeing. It is discerning direction and that is implicit in what it means to be a lead pastor, to work with the other pastor elders in the congregation to discern where is it that this congregation is to go if it is to be on mission for Christ. Where is it, given our current circumstances and what's going on in our community and world around us, where is it that we can most be deployed to fulfill the mission that Christ has entrusted to us? How can we do that in a way that that equips the body to serve and be part of living out that mission? That takes discernment. That takes leadership. That's all implied in the idea of overseeing here. Shepherds not only determine the direction to go, shepherds actually had to lead the flock to get there. And this is a difference between the model of Western Shepherd shepherding of sheep that we might see even today in the United States and shepherding there in the Near East.

If you've ever had any experience. I've been out west. I've seen I grew up in Colorado. I've seen some shepherding of sheep, it's a different model than what was in Palestine, Western shepherds, shepherds herd their sheep. So they're on horseback generally. They have you know, they have sheep dogs and they from behind, they drive the sheep forward. You know, they circle behind them. They have the dogs run round and bark to move, to motivate and move the flock forward. That's not the Near Eastern model of shepherding. Near Eastern Shepherds did not drive the sheep. They led them. They led them by going before them. They led them by walking in front of them. And as the sheep came to know and to trust the shepherd, the sheep would hear the voice of the shepherd and follow after the sheep. That's the model of overseeing here. It's not exercising control. It's not manipulating or guilting or otherwise coercing or using power to drive a congregation in a direction that that the shepherd feels they should go. It's being out in front. It's going on before it's leading by example. We've been so encouraged. It's my privilege to be able to coach the pastoral search team. So I'm in on the interviews when the team interviews these candidates.

And I know we've been encouraged by several of the candidates who, as they're there talking about how a congregation that they have shepherded has grown in its ability to share its faith. We hear the stories of how they're in the front end of that, how it's not just that they're up there preaching and teaching about it, that their congregation sees them out in their neighborhoods and out in their community, sharing their faith. That's leadership by going before by walking in front of. That's leadership that draws the flock by example to follow them. So for Calvary's next lead pastor, we are looking for a leader. I know the term used to be senior pastor. I'm glad that's been changed. Lead pastor describes - we're looking for that one who working with the other elder pastors in the congregation, discerns the direction of the congregation. What is our vision? How do we fulfil the mission that Christ has entrusted to us? But as well, we're looking for in our next lead pastor, a shepherd who leads by setting the example, who leads by being out in front, who live leads by the example of his life, not by his title, not by his position, not by manipulation or guilt or coercion. That that image of a shepherd who shepherds by overseeing. Now I'm going to do something that I think is the first time I've ever done it here. I'm going to show you the structure of this verse.

This is something I do every time I study a text, but I rarely share it because it's a little dry, you know, to be honest with you. But here, the structure really helps you understand how Peter is helping us see the detail of this, just like an English sentence can be diagrammed. So the biblical Greek that the New Testament is written in here can be diagrammed as well. And here you see it, at least by my attempt to diagram it. You can see - this is also in your bulletin, by the way - you can see at the top there, you can see the main verb shepherd. That is the imperative, that is the command out of everything else in these few verses hinges. And then underneath and coming out of that command, you see the participle exercising oversight. That clarifies what Peter is talking about when he talks about Shepherd. And then Peter does this very incredibly helpful thing, because right now it's just kind of loose and vague in our minds what it means to exercise oversight. But he gives us three contrasts of what this looks like and practice. He shows us three times. He shows us what it's not to look like, what it's easy for it to drift into, but is actually harmful for the flock, for a congregation. And then he contrast that with three ways that it is to look like, that this is what it looks like when it's healthy and happening in a pastor elder church relationship.

So what are those three contrasts? You can see them there. Not under compulsion. He oversees not because he is under compulsion, but willingly, not for shameful gain, but eagerly not domineering or lording it over, but by being examples. And what he's giving us here, Alexander Strauch helpfully points out, are the the motives, the attitudes and the methods of those who lead his people, Strauch says God is preeminently concerned as he communicates through Peter here, the motives and the attitudes and the methods of those who lead his people. So even as we search for a lead pastor, this is what we're seeking to discern as we come together to pray. Next Sunday night, this is what we're praying that the spirit clearly shows us. We can't read a man's heart. But as much as the spirit will reveal to us what motivates him, what is his attitude in pasturing and shepherding and what are his his methods, his manner in doing that, let's break those down one by one. The first one is not under compulsion. If you have the new living translation, which I love, the new translation, it's not grudgingly, which really gives some definition to it. Another one, the new English translation, not as a duty. What's that talking about? Leonski, a commentator, helpfully says it's like the difference between going into the armed forces voluntarily, because you sign up, because there is there is maybe a national crisis. And so you go down and you register and you enlist or being drafted. You don't want to do it, but you're drafted into it. You're serving because you're compelled to do it. What we're given a picture of that, just how this word is used elsewhere in the New Testament within The Passion of Christ in Matthew 27:32. We know Jesus who is carrying his cross to Golgotha out of all the torture he'd been through, he stumbles at one point and can't carry the cross any further. And so the Roman soldiers we're told draft somebody coming into the city, Simon of Cyrene. And Matthew tells us the soldiers compelled Simon to carry Jesus's cross. It's that idea of external pressure that's applied by others. And you might think does anybody get into pastoral ministry because they're compelled by others. Well, yes, it may be more subtle than that. I know a young man whose father was a pastor, whose grandfather was a pastor. And so he grew up just the climate, the culture of his family that he was expected to carry on that family name and pastoring. And he went into pastoring and ultimately left the ministry because it wasn't his calling. There's a sense in which he was compelled to go in that that was not a free decision on his own.

I'd even add a more subtle form of this is people pleasing. Pastoral ministry, like other professions, people helping professions tends to attract people who have people pleasing tendencies. There's nothing wrong with a certain measure of that. But if that is the dominating force in a person's make up that they are living to please other people and keep other people happy, they're operating by compulsion because there's always going to be somebody who is unhappy with them. And if they're driven by trying to keep everyone happy, they're serving under compulsion. That is what is not healthy. But then Peter goes on to say, here's the other side of it - willingly. Willingly is the idea that we see even in the picture of how are to give in second Corinthians nine, verse seven, each one of you give, as you have decided in your heart. It's an intentional conscious decision, not reluctantly or under compulsion. There's the opposite of that, for God loves a cheerful giver. God loves you. Someone who is giving joyfully, who's giving volitionally, who's giving intentionally, who's giving willingly. And that is the same contrast that is seen here in pastoral ministry. We see the idea of that this is really a God given motivation. This isn't something that a man just stirs up in his heart by his own.

We see that in the phrase, according to God, willingly according to God, or if you have the new American standard version, it brings in a couple of words that are you can infer according to the will of God. So really what we're seeing here is this is a contrast of whether there's a true calling or not. Is this man compelled by his people pleasing tendencies or some other less than godly motivation, or is this man genuinely called by God into pastoral ministry? I need to tell you, it is very challenging to try and measure somebody's call. There's many people who say or think they're called. How do we really know whether a man has been called? How do we discern pastoral calling? I think we can ask some questions particularly, not just of the man, but particularly as we pray. Why does the man serve in pastoral ministry? What is it that motivates him? And along with that, what first drew him into pastoral ministry in the first place? What are the circumstances of how God worked in his life that initially drew him in and equally as important, what keeps him in pastoral ministry? Sadly, I've known men who have been pastoring for years who don't feel a sense of call, but they're stuck, or at least they feel stuck. They feel like, what else could I do? And rather than courageously saying I'm not called and I need to find something else, even if I don't know what that will be, they stay because they think they're stuck.

That is not the sense here of willingly according to the will of God. So even as our pastoral search team prays and evaluates candidates, this is part of the interviewing process. They're there seeking to discern. Does the path that we see in this man's, this candidate's pastoral ministry, does it show evidence of God providentially shaping him for pastoral ministry, molding him in pastoral ministry, directing him even to consider our church? Does it show evidence? Does do we see evidence of a willingness, of a desire to serve that this burns within him, the desire to preach and to serve as a pastor? How do we evaluate this? Again, if we were doing this all on our human abilities, we'd come up bankrupt really quickly. We do it prayerfully. We seek the spirit's guidance. We seek the body, the congregation of Calvary, praying around us. But we seek, especially since we're interviewing people that we don't know, we see what do other people say? We check references. What do others who have mentored perhaps this man or served with this man? What do they say about him and what they see in him? Do we see a confirmation of his calling by the church bodies that he has served in? It's not just that he feels he's called, but the church that that he serves in or the churches that he served in would affirm that calling. John Davido puts it this way.

Scripture reveals how we recognize both a desire for ministry in the man, that's willingness, as well as a confirmation of gifts and ministry by the church community around him. That's the idea of the internal call. A man generally has to feel called within his heart, but also the external call that the body, the church body, the Church of Christ, affirms this man's call and this man's gifting. Well, let me move on for the sake of time to the next contrast, not for shameful gain. And it looks like our system's coming back online there. But if you have your scripture open, it's also verse two, not for shameful game. See, the issue is there are men who serve willingly, but not for the right reasons, not for the right motives. They're excited about serving. They're excited about a pastoral call, but their motives are less than God would have them, not for shameful gain. That may give you the idea of they're in it for the money. You know, that can be true to some extent. A man who considers moving from one church to another just because it represents a better compensation package that might fall under that category. But Jesus even fleshes out even further as he addresses the religious leaders of the day. In Luke, 16, he says you can't serve God and be enslaved to money. Materialism.

It can't be your driving focus in life moving up into a better car and a better house. That's incompatible, he says, with serving God. In Matthew 23 Jesus confronts the religious leaders of that day directly. And one of the things that he condemns is, is something that may be a little foreign to us, devouring widows houses. What's he talking about? They're using their position as a spiritual leader to get the advantage over somebody in their care for your own personal gain. That advantage can be material, that advantage can be sexual, that advantage can be probably many other forms. Jesus also condemns in Matthew 23, those who are motivated in religious or spiritual leadership by the desire for everybody to recognize them. You know, this would be the person who's motivated by I want the spotlight to be on me. I want the attention to be on me. I want people to use my title and respect me and honor me. And Jesus would say that falls under the area of seeking to lead out of shameful gain. The opposite of that is eagerly. What is eagerly? Eagerly has the idea of a zeal that is sacrificial, that is without any self gain. And that doesn't mean a man should not consider whether he is going to be able to provide for his family.

But his primary driving force is God has called him to this work and he believes God is going to provide. And so if he senses God's call, he is going to obey that call going on to the third contrast, not lording it over or domineering over the flock. And that Greek word that Peter uses there, that's translated either as lording it over or domineering over it has the idea of forcefully gaining mastery over others. A good example we see of this in scripture. We see in third John, where John is writing to a church congregation and he's writing about one of their church leaders, a man named Diotrephes, who he says Diotrephes loves to be first among them, John goes on to describe how what he hears about Dioptrephes is Diotrephes challenges anyone else that he thinks somehow threatens his position of leadership. And he uses manipulation and power to keep himself in place. So this describes an authoritarian attitude. The church belongs to me. I'm Lord over the church. This describes an autocracy. Sadly, sometimes my role as as a transition pastor takes me into highly conflicted churches and almost without exception, at the center of a highly conflicted church is a leader or leaders who view their role as ruling, view themselves almost as an autocracy. I think of one church in particular where there was a small group of leaders were self selected and they thought they were the ones who selected anyone who would join that circle.

They had terms for life. They were they were not open to any input from the congregation and there was no way to remove them. That's the definition of a closed power system. That's the definition of a group of people, a group of leaders who use their role to domineer over the flock. I had one of those pastor elders tell me that it was his right to be in that position and have that role. And that alone showed me he was disqualified. Well, in contrast to the abusive use of authority to control the sheep, elder pastors are to lead by being examples. I'm not sure what's going on with the slides, but Ann will find out and catch me up on that. Again, if you're following along, you will see this in verse three. They're not domineering over, not lording it over, but by being examples to the flock. Again, that's that idea of the difference between Western shepherding a Near Eastern shepherding. A pastor elder and the model of the kind of shepherd that we're given here, Alexander Strauch says, is not to stand behind the sheep, the congregation driving them forward, manipulating them, coercing them, but to go before the sheep leading the way. And again, that's what the pastoral search team has been most impressed by, those who we see their leadership and their effect upon their congregations that they have pastored in by how they've gone before and led them by example.

Peter brings this section of this chapter to a close in verse four by reminding us of the ultimate model, the chief shepherd, when the chief shepherd appears. And here's how I'd bring it home to Calvary. We are looking for a pastor and a pastor elder who leads with the knowledge that he is only an under shepherd. He is first one of the flock. He is a sheep himself. But even in his shepherding role, he is an under shepherd. And that a term as well comes from Near Eastern shepherding and in very large flocks there in the area of Palestine, generally a large flock was made up of several smaller flocks. And each of those smaller flocks had an under shepherd. But at the front of this large flock was a head shepherd or what Peter would refer to as a chief shepherd. That's the image here of a pastor, a shepherd, pastor elder and his relationship with his congregation to the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter rightly identifies Jesus Christ as the head shepherd, the chief shepherd here. And he no doubt remembers what Jesus said about himself. What you heard the Bodde family read from John Ten today, that Jesus identifies himself as not only the chief shepherd, but he says, I have other sheep, too, who are not in the sheepfold.

I must bring them on so they will listen to my voice. And here it is. They will be one flock with one shepherd, no matter what congregation that you are part of, no matter how much you love that particular pastor, that pastor is an under shepherd, under the chief shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ. That congregation, that flock is is part of the greater flock that the Lord Jesus Christ gathers to himself. And the kind of pastor elder that we're looking for here at Calvary is a man who gets that, a man who has the same desire as John the Baptist when John the Baptist said as Jesus came on the scene, he must increase and I must decrease. We're looking for a man who doesn't point to himself, doesn't bring attention on himself. We're looking for a man who ultimately points us to Christ, who even when we hear him speak and we hear him deliver the word, we are brought to the foot of the cross, not to his feet. We are looking for a man who will keep pointing us to the chief shepherd, Jesus Christ, because only Christ is the incomparable Good Shepherd. Christ is the one who ultimately loves the sheep. He loves every one of us. Christ ultimately is the one who laid down his life for the sheep. It's in him that we are saved. Not any man, not any woman.

Christ is the one who knows his sheep and calls them by name. And Christ is the one who someday will return in glory to gather his flock to be with him. So that, in the words of John the Revelator in Revelation seven, he shall be our shepherd and he shall guide us to the springs of the water of life.

Let's pray. We thank you, Lord, for clearly giving us the grounds for proper biblical expectations as we search for the next lead pastor of Calvary, we are longing for that time to come. Lord, when you raise him up and he is called and he comes and he's here and we want to meet him and have your expectations, it is so easy just like as I went into my marriage and my expectations of my wife to bring in expectations that that are not pleasing to you and that can even be harmful to the relationship. Lord, we pray that through the words of Peter and and later, as we go through the next couple of weeks, the words of Paul to Timothy that you would reset our expectations. So when that day comes, when our new lead pastor arrives, we meet him and look for him to point us to you. Lord Jesus, the chief shepherd. We thank you that you gave your life for us. We thank you that you know us by name. We thank you that you love us. We pray in your name. Amen.

Hear how the Holy Spirit is moving and working in our Lahu and Anywaa congregations! With Dorkham See and Ojaga Okony.

(Pastor Werthman) Today is Pentecost Sunday, and it is significant to observe because there was a momentous shift in God's saving work and among all his people that started on Pentecost Sunday. The prophecy of Joel, I will pour out my spirit, God says on all people - the beginning of that we saw on Pentecost Sunday. And what that means for you and me individually is that as we come into a saving relationship with Christ, where Christ as Savior and Lord the spirit fills us, that's that's how God accomplishes his transforming work that we call sanctification. That's how God uses us. That's how God gifts us so that we can serve him as we follow Christ. But even more than that, the pouring out of spirit on all people meant that the Holy Spirit's power and presence was no longer limited just to the nation of Israel, that it goes throughout all of the earth, wherever God is saving a people for himself, that is in fulfillment of Christ's goal, of building a kingdom from every tribe and tongue and race. We recognize that even in the work that we have seen him do here at Calvary over the years. Calvary, whether you realize it or not, is one congregation. But right now we have four worshipping communities and often those worshipping communities interact with each other. But because of some of the language needs of those different communities, we have several different services that happen here throughout the day on a Sunday.

And we want you to hear a little bit about what that looks like and how specifically the Holy Spirit is moving in those worshipping communities. So, first of all, I'm going to have Dorkham See come up door, come as the pastor of our Lahu worshipping community. And would you please welcome Dorkham as he comes up?

(Pastor See) Thank you Dan. (Greeting in LAHU) No, I didn't just speak in tongues, actually in a different language, I did in the truest form of the word. But what I said was, how are you doing? And God bless you. I want to thank Pastor Dan for thinking of the Lahu people l-a-h-u. And yes, after twenty five years, we're still meeting here at Calvary. And thanks for thinking of the Lahu people and allowing us to be a part of one of the congregations here at Calvary. Dan asked if I would share a couple of things and I'm just going to read off the questions and then try to answer them. First one is how do you and the rest of our Lahu brothers and sisters see the Holy Spirit ministry among you? And how is the Spirit moving in the worship service? I would say the first thing is just being aware of the Holy Spirit, because I would say in a lot of the churches, the third person of the Trinity, we tend to forget or at least put it in the back seat.

And so one of the things that we are trying to do is just being aware of the Holy Spirit. You know, I don't know if you know this person, K.P. Yohanan, he is the founder and the president of Gospel for Asia. And one of the things that he said that really caught my attention was that he said Americans are very practical. They're so pragmatic. If they need to get something done, they could get it done easily. If there is a building project that costs a million dollars, they could get it done in one year pretty easily that way. But when you ask them to sit down and to meditate on God's word and to memorize scripture and to zip their mouth and just be quiet before God, to be less busy, it's really hard for us to do that. And I think that's a sign, an indication that we are not reliant on the Holy Spirit. And so just being aware of the Holy Spirit. See, I have 12 minutes and I forgot where we are now. Scripture says that Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit. You know, you see phrases like Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit, Jesus was relying on the Holy Spirit. And if the son of God, the creator of the universe, according to John 1, if he was relying on the Holy Spirit. Now, I know you know what I'm about to say next. You and me, simple human beings, how much more do we need to be reliant on the Holy Spirit? And so just encouraging the congregation to be aware of the Holy Spirit and to be more reliant on the Holy Spirit.

Just some practical things that the Holy Spirit is doing. Conversion. God is converting people's hearts in our congregation, I think of my friend Jamie Sakita. His dad is Iranian and his mom is Caucasian, and he's actually married to a local girl in our congregation. And he told me that he grew up watching cartoons on Sunday morning and now he's worshipping the Lord. And that's so much better than watching cartoons on Sunday morning. And so we're seeing conversion. Spiritual conversations are happening, I think of Matt, who grew up in a church but went away from the church and he said he would never come back to the church again, but he texted me about a month ago and we're starting to have these conversations now. You might be wondering all these names that you've mentioned so far, they're American names where are the Lahu people? Maybe this is more of an update. But in our Lahu services now I'm preaching and we're leading worship in English and Lahu because we're seeing that since we live in America now, people are intermarried and so we have them. But then, you know, sometimes their friends or their family will visit or they even become a part of our community. And so we're doing Lahu in English.

We've called it Lahu English service now. All right. People desire to get baptized. Actually, last year, I think we canceled church due to covid on baptism Sunday, I think. And so we still have people waiting to get baptized. And then the other thing that Dan asked was, how is the Holy Spirit leading in outreach and mission? In Acts 1:4 and 8, Jesus promised the Holy Spirit and that we would receive the power of the Holy Spirit, and they were to go out and share the gospel with the people around them. You know, when the Holy Spirit comes into our lives, you can't contain the Holy Spirit if it's inside of you. I guarantee you that because the Holy Spirit came in Acts 1 and then in Acts 8, the people were still in Jerusalem. They didn't want to leave. And then God allows this persecution to happen. And actually and they are forced actually to go out and share the gospel with people so if the Holy Spirit is in us, it will eventually get out. And so in terms of outreach, we're just encouraging people to have spiritual conversations outside of the church, outside the four walls of the church, in homes, especially your homes, train up your kids to love and serve the Lord in work in school during your play time, etc. So very simple things. It doesn't have to be overcomplicated. It doesn't have to be hard. Just have spiritual conversations with the people around you.

So in terms of outreach, very simple. But missions, how is the spirit leading us in missions? One of the things that we are beginning to talk about is supporting national leaders in Thailand and Laos. You know, mission work, I would say, has changed and it's continuing to change from sending Western missionaries to supporting national workers. And so that's one of the things that we have been talking about. Now, I'm not saying that we're opposed to Western missionaries going to these countries. For goodness, if God calls you, you must go. But if you are asking what is the most efficient and best method for doing what, for doing missions today or the best bang for your buck, as they say, we believe that it is to support national workers, national pastors, national leaders. And so that's one of the things that we are talking about. Let me just give you some numbers here. Maybe this is more anecdotal, but, you know, it costs about 50 to 70 thousand dollars to send Western missionaries. We're not even talking about the effectiveness there. But, you know, for about three thousand dollars per year, you can support a full time national pastor, a national leader, and they are very effective. And so those are the things that we've been talking about. Ninety eight percent of the people in Thailand, they've never heard the gospel before. They're still practicing Buddhist or Buddhism or Animism. Only three percent of the Laos people are Christians.

And so, as I'm thinking about these numbers, what are some things that we could be doing in the Lahu English service, as well as partnering with you guys in doing missions? And so the Holy Spirit knows where the needs are and we're simply just trying to listen and follow. So that's all I have.

(Pastor Werthman) I used an expression earlier that I want to repeat and I want to explain. And I hope this is something that sticks in your mind today. One congregation; four worshipping communities. Let me explain how that came about. As God has providentially worked in Calvary's history, he has drawn these different groups at different times to Calvary. But last fall, the fall of 2020, representatives from our pastoral staff and our leadership board met with the leaders of each of these three different groups, and they asked, what do you want to be? Do you want to be your own congregation that either may stay under our roof here as a separate congregation or go off and plant your own start your own new church someday? Or do you want to be part of Calvary in some way? And through a process of those discussions, the leadership of all three of these congregations affirmed, no, we want to be part of Calvary. We want to be part of the Calvary congregation. So we don't look at these as different ethnic congregations. We look and say God has blessed us as he's providentially worked by expanding us to for worshiping communities under one congregation.

So again, if you walk away with nothing else this morning, I hope that sticks in your mind. One congregation; four worshipping communities and it's our desire that there be more and more overlap. There is certainly a need for different services with different language abilities for the people that God is drawing. We pray that in our fellowship, we pray that in the leadership of the church, we pray that in our mission there would be more and more overlap between these four worshipping communities. One of the worshipping communities is the Oromo. We invited them today. They were slated to come and speak to us today. And this week kind of last minute, there was a scheduling conflict and they could not be with us here this morning. So we'll look for another opportunity in a future week to welcome our Oromo brothers and sisters here to speak and to tell you a little bit about what God is doing. But I want to invite a leader in our Anywaa congregation, Ogaga Okony, and I hope I pronounced the brother's last name correctly. Ogaga, what you come up and would you share? And as you come up, your congregation is a little bit newer to to many people in this congregation. So you might even add a little bit to where your people come from and how God has worked and in developing that worshipping community and then share what the Holy Spirit, what you see the Holy Spirit doing among your people. Thank you. Let's welcome.

(leader Okony) (greeting in Anyuak) Yeah, this is not a town where is a dialect in Anyuak groups. We are divided between Ethiopia and Sudan, where we are kind of like the most marginalized people. We struggle a lot, but we have a beautiful country. And when I think about all of that, I thank God that this is not all the life that we have to live, knowing that there is another life hidden in Christ. That make me so joyful because what I just said in my dialect, it was like, how are you beautiful children of God? May God's name be glorified and be praised. So I was given a greeting in a different dialect. So, yeah, like I mentioned before, we are divided in Ethiopia and Sudan, but recently in the last two decades, there was a genocide to launch against us the previous regime. There's already been like in my lifetimes, I have witnessed three regime changing in the country and the previous one were kind of like in power us, open our eyes because Haile Selassie. But then there was some missionaries who came to our country to share the gospel and they were told not to open our eyes. But by the grace of God, they were only allowed to open a class from first grade to fourth grade.

And by the time when you finished fourth grade, supposed to be a teacher, then we were kind of like cover down there. But when that regime was overthrown, the second one was kind of like a totalitarian, the Dergue that when I was alive at the time and that my time to attend school, too. So it's opened many schools and allow a lot of children to go to school and when that was overthrown. Then the next one called Meles Zenawi. Came into power. And this is an ethnic and divisive and then very cruel regime. So came because they want to assimilate us or take our land. We were kind of like marginalized and brutally assassinated or victimized. And that's why even today, there's a lot of refugees who are still coming here because of that effect was back in 2003. And a lot of us, we ran to Sudan, to Kenya, Uganda, and that's why there's still a lot of refugees. So enough about their politics. Let's come to God. So God is very merciful. And I thank God that he's a God of love, God of kindness that accept everyone, no matter where you come from, where your background is, and also hope in our heart to know that he is the creator who created all of us in different shapes, but with one vision. And when we first came here, we struggled a lot with so many denominations.

There's a lot of denominations I've been running around to find which one goes by the words of God. You go read in the Bible, you come out here, you hear different thing that makes it even more chaotic. Then we try to gather to have a fellowship or a ministry, because we don't, a lot of us, we don't speak English and our dialect is not well known or probably recently, not too long ago after I already left the country. I left the country a long time ago. It's like when I came here it was in nineteen ninety five. I was very young and I didn't know the language. So the language was printed and then was introduced to school for the children to be taught. So I only tried to learn so I can read and speak so that I can help my other communities. And that is only for the purpose of the words of God, and I did that through the time and now I'm not very fluent, but OK and but most of my readings I read in English. So through that time, most people who are coming now, they're not very fluent in any different language except the Anyuat. And here, if you don't follow the words of God, you'll get lost so easily. So we try so many different things, but sometimes because we are not rooted deep down in the words of God, chaotic always happens among the groups and things fall apart. So before coming here, we used to I think there's a Covenant church.

We used to worship there. Then things happened. Then we we went to different directions. It's like sometimes the disciples, they do have some disputes, but even though it's supposed to be the wrong thing, God will use it for good purpose. So that was when Pastor Kevin was a pastor here. And we came searching probably through the Holy Spirit was the one that leading us. And so we sat and had some meeting and some talk and eventually we were allowed to come here and I thank God for that. And then I thank all the leaders and all the members of Calvary congregation, you people are very good people. So we were accepted here. We started our ministry and now the Holy Spirit is working. My, my, my, I don't know. English sometimes be difficult; magnificently so. Anyway, through that we, our number got increased. We are doing Bible study to get deep down into the words of God because most of our people, they rely on the Holy Spirit. Since you don't have any language or a book that you can understand, the only thing that they can rely on is the words to hearing from somebody else or the Holy Spirit helping them. But through our welcoming here, we have increased that level and we do Bible study outside. And certainly last year when corona hit us, we still maintain worshipping online.

We still connecting. But for some reason, I don't know, it could be the Holy Spirit. We are not afraid of the covid. We are still gathering somewhere and nothing is happening. And to the mercy of God to thank God none of us got severely sick. Only one child that sick, but to the prayers also that healed. So this week I come here not really prepared. I had some notes, but I forgot that's on the printer because this week I was so busy I got hit with so much. My son. I almost lost him last week. I didn't know he was diabetic, but suddenly something happened. We end up in the hospital for emergency and he was in ICU for four days. But Pastor Dan knows and John and other groups and also, Larry, Larry, I sent out a message asking for a prayer, but God is indeed is a good God. Our prayers got answered. My son survived. And we came back home last Saturday and no, not last night, this past Wednesday. So I spent about eight days in the hospital. So I didn't really prepare for all this speech because I was so distracted and so busy. But anyway, I'm not the one that's speaking, the Holy Spirit is one doing this job. So all of this could be like a temptation to the testimonies. But I know with God everything is possible and we could prevail and indeed we were victorious because of God.

So our mission and our ministry is now growing. And we have other people, too, who are moving to this area because of the ministry that we have here. Sometime we posted online our service and other groups who are not here like Askaris in different states because of what they are seeing here and the love and the and all these strong words that they see. Everyone wants to move here to join us. So that is wonderful. And we also our heart is aching, too, for other groups who are scattered a little bit in northern Minnesota and some St Cloud. There need to be some reach out to for those groups. The other one recently came from Africa, immigrated here. They kind of concentrated over there because of jobs. But yet still the words of God need to be preached to them, because knowing that we are here temporarily and our time is limited by God, we need to surely worship and put our faith in God. Should something happen to us peacefully we know that we will go and be together with our father. And also understanding and knowing that when you accept and worship God is not for the purpose of the life of this earth, but knowing that it's for salvation, the new life that is coming, that's hidden in Jesus because Jesus is risen and is alive. So those who are with him too, even though they are dead, they shall live again with them.

And that is a very encouraging, very important messages that we share among our congregation to increase our faith, to be committed to God, that since we have already seen so much atrocities on this earth, what else do you need? If somebody promised you a life that would be far more than all the joyful life that the rich people who are on this earth happened to enjoy, but is even far more than that, that should be a God to run to. And I was so humble and grateful that I'm so grateful that Jesus came into my life and the life of my family and the life of my brothers and sisters whom I know and missionaries for the mission. Like I said, I probably would be bouncing back and forth because it's not really organized in notes. We have some other groups who are still refugees in Kenya. They are worshipping over there, but sometimes they need a little bit help and we do reach out to them too and help them. And back home where we originally came from, we still do reach out and help them. They're there, too. So without forgiveness, life would have been even more bitter. But when you forgive, God, I mean, the Holy Spirit will help you move forward. And we are just so happy to be part of the Calvary congregation. And we, through the help of God, we want to move on and do what God put in our hearts.

So one testimony that I want to share by the Holy Spirit, The Holy Spirit is really it's like like a person you can talk to and then can also answer your questions. There was a time that one of our sisters was going through a lot of foreclosures and losing the house, but we were praying and the Holy Spirit gave the House number, but not the street. It says eventually you're going to get a house and the house number is four three, three three. And we were like, wow. So we waited to see that and through four years later, she got a loan and she got a house and that house, we were like, wait a minute, the house is four three, three, three - the number. Going back and see the documents because usually when there's like a dream or a message that God delivers, we write it down because we want to confirm that this is really from God. And indeed, we did confirm. So that is very, very encouraging that God is not just like image or somebody somewhere out there. God is real and encourage everyone to put their faith in this God who will not let you down will not shame you, but always you will be victorious with that. And I thank you for this time. And then may God bless all of you, you know.

(Pastor Werthman) Would you pray with me? Father, first of all, we want to lift up Ogaga's son and with this recent diagnosis of diabetes.

Lord, we pray for healing and maybe by your will, that is complete healing or maybe by your will that is healing through insulin and the other ways that diabetes is treated. Either way, Lord, we pray that you would heal in a way that this young man and his family and all those in the community around him would would see that you are real and your loving kindness is great and that you are faithful. Father, we're so thankful for these different worshipping communities that are part of our congregation. We're so thankful, Lord, for the Lahu brothers and sisters who've been here over two decades. We're thank you more recently for our Anywaa and our Oromo brothers and sisters. Lord, I pray, Lord, for us here today. I pray for us as the the fourth or however you count them, the fourth worshipping community. Lord, I pray that we would get a greater vision this Pentecost Sunday of the same spirit living and moving in all of us and Lord, that you would give us a greater desire for unity, for a brotherhood and sisterhood, for becoming one in soul and spirit with these brothers and sisters. We pray, Lord, you give us not only that vision, but that hunger for one day being around the throne, worshipping the lamb who was slain, who has drawn himself people from every race and tribe and people and language saying Glory to the lamb. We pray in his name. Amen.

God calls us to follow him, to cast our net and become fishers of people.

Good morning. We are looking at a fishing story this morning because I've been thinking a lot about fishing. I don't know if you realize it or not, but this is fishing opener weekend here in Minnesota. Actually, probably if that was really important to you, you wouldn't be here this morning, right? I pastored for many years up in Brainerd, Minnesota. Brainerd, located in all of those lakes up there. Brainerd being kind of a fishing center, largest ice fishing tournament in the world is in Brainerd every January. This kind of weekend would approach. And it would often, by the way, be on Mother's Day weekend. What kind of cruel joke is that? But we'd suddenly see attendance take this big dip on fishing opener weekend because that's the culture up there. Maybe not so much here. But anyway, we are looking at a fishing story, and I think it's even appropriate as as we'll see in a little bit as we look at really one of our new core values here at Calvary. But let's dig into this fishing story a little bit and see the application to us. I need that back screen on, please, just so I can track. There we go. So we read at the beginning of the story that Jesus appears again to his disciples, OK, this is this is after his resurrection. And where is this particular appearance? We're told by John, it's by the Sea of Tiberius. That's the Sea of Galilee or the Lake Genesaret.

It's the Sea of Galilee in the northern region of Galilee and Israel. So just to set the setting, why is it that they are there and Jesus is appearing to them there? Well, Jesus has hinted this to them before. But then at the tomb, perhaps you remember in Matthew Chapter 20, what is it that the angel tells the disciples? The angel tells the disciples he, Jesus has risen from the dead and here it is. And he is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him. So there has been a really an instruction to these disciples, go to Galilee, wait for Jesus. And that's what they do. And as the story opens, we find that they have been out fishing for the night. See if my slides will catch up with me here. If you to advance to the next slide, please. Early in the morning, we are told in verse four, Jesus stands on the shore. And what happens is, even though he's standing on the shore and they're out in the boat fishing, they don't recognize that it was Jesus. Are we not getting an advance? All right, wonderful. OK, as long as it's back up there. So you can all see that again. What's happening here is they have been waiting. They've obediently gone to Galilee, but they're not sure when he's going to show up. They probably at some point got tired of sitting around and remember who these men are.

They're fishermen. That's their vocation. And so they do. I don't think this is about saying we give up, we're done with following Jesus. I think this is they're there. They are obediently waiting. They're not sure when Jesus is going to appear. So they do what comes naturally to them. They go out fishing and that's where we find them. And they are fishing. As Jesus does appear, Jesus appears on the shore. But again, this is one of those occasions where when he first appears, those who see him don't recognize him as Jesus. Now, we're not told exactly why that is. It very well could have been because it's early in the morning. They have been fishing all night. This may have been just at dawn before there was enough visible light to recognize somebody from a distance on the shore that could have been it. Or this could have been a situation like the two disciples on the road to Emmaus where what are we told in that story that for a period of time when Jesus appears with them, they are prevented, providentially prevented from recognizing that it was Jesus. One way or another as this scene opens and Jesus is on the shore, the disciples don't recognize that it was Jesus. So, again, here is the setting of this fishing story. These men have come to Galilee looking for Jesus.

But when he appears to them, they don't recognize him. Now, what would you do if you were Jesus at this point, if you wanted to open their eyes, how would you go about doing it? I can think of a lot of ways I can think just humanly, you know, I might be tempted to cry out. It's me, it's the Lord. But that's not what he does, is it? How is it that we see him in this story opening their eyes? Verse five. It's subtle, but here comes. He calls out to them friends, haven't you any fish? Again, the story already tells us in verse three that they had gone out fishing. They fished all night. That was typically when fishermen did their fishing on the lake, the Sea of Galilee. And so they went out. They did all the things that they knew to do that they were experienced to do, that they were good at doing. And still, at the end of the night, as morning dawned, they had caught no fish. They had caught nothing. Now, that may have been, as we'll see a little bit later, a spiritual lesson that apart from him, they can't do anything. We're not sure exactly why, but but providentially, it sets up this encounter with Jesus because Jesus goes ahead and calls them in verse six, throw out your nets on the right side of the boat and you read over that.

And that seems like, you know, you may think of a little fishing net or something like that. Like that's a fairly simple exercise as we're going to see in a few minutes. This is no small request. As I'll explain shortly, the net that they were using was very, very large. The net that they were using took a whole team of men over an hour to deploy in the lake and tow back in. Normally, they did this over the course of an entire night, maybe eight times, because it was a lot of work. So he's not asking them for something insignificant and little. This entire process is a big process. I wonder if it's beginning to dawn on them that they have been here before. Deja vu. You know, the story that early at the beginning of the ministry of his ministry, we are told, and Luke Chapter five about a very similar incident. I won't read the whole thing to you, but let me just read the account. This is again at the beginning of Jesus's ministry when these same men first encountered Jesus. We're told this - one day Jesus was standing on the lake of Genesaret. That's the Sea of Galilee, same place, with people crowding around him and listening to the word of God. He saw at the water's edge two boats left there by the fishermen who were washing their nets. And he got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, Simon, Peter, and asked him to put out a little from the shore.

And then he sat down and he taught the people from the boat. And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, again, that's Peter put out into deep water and let down the nets for a catch. Simon answered, Master, we worked hard all night and we haven't caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets. And when they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. Do you see the correspondence between these two stories, the one at the beginning of his ministry with these men and the one now as he appears in his resurrection appearance to them? It's the same place, the same lake may even been near the same part of the shore because that's typically where they brought their boats and their nets into. It's the same men or substantially the same men. It's the same set up. They've been out fishing all night long and they haven't caught any fish. And it's the same miracle they caught such a large number of fish that in this case in Luke Chapter five, their nets were breaking. There were so many fish. So again, Jesus is revealing himself to these men by bringing them back to what he had shown them about himself all the way back at the beginning of the ministry.

This is the way now in his resurrection appearance that he is opening their eyes. Why is it that he does it this way? I think personally, we find the answer in verse ten of again, Luke, chapter five. What is it that he tells them that the combination of this miracle from now on, you will be fishing for people. This is where he's been driving this miracle to. He tells them, here's why I have done this. You have been vocational fishermen and now I'm calling you to be spiritual fishermen. Now I am calling you to fish for people. And now here in his resurrection appearance, he brings them back to that. It's a reaffirmation of his calling to them. It's a reinforcement of here's what I'm calling you to be if you follow me, if you begin to follow me, if you were a follower of Jesus, I want you to fish for people. And by the way, that's not to just this small group of men. That call is to all of us, to any of us and all of us who follow Jesus. He calls us. It's not just a matter of we're saved. We got our fire insurance. We're good to go for the rest of our life. No, he calls us to follow him and become fishers of people. Now, I think if you've been in church any length of time, you know what that metaphor is a picture of? It's what we call evangelism.

And I know evangelism in our culture has very much fallen out of favor. Evangelism is very much looked down on in our culture. My youngest son, Grant, started his service with Avant missions. He is a missionary to the Tlinglet tribe in Alaska and Southeast Alaska. And it's over the last year that he completed his training and at the culmination of his training, he posted a picture where he's being presented with his commission. He posted that on his Facebook page. And he got a friend who I know, this young woman. She grew up with him in elementary school and in Brainerd, Minnesota. He's been in her house. She's been in our house. But of course, over time, they drifted apart and she went her way and he went his way while she went away. That's very far from the gospel. They hadn't had any contact for years. But when she sees that Grant is going to become a missionary, she uses that posting on Facebook and she responds on his Facebook page, pretty much blasting the concept, the idea that anybody would presume that what they believe should be pressed in any way on someone else. It's almost if you take the metaphor of fishing and you take it too far, you know, we're trying to hook someone. We're trying to hook someone and reel them in and catch them.

That's not the picture at all, is it? In fact, think of the physical picture of fishing. What are we doing? We are after something that is alive, a live fish. And as a result of our fishing, it becomes dead. Right. That's the metaphor or that's the actual picture of fishing. What is it that we do when we are spiritual fishermen? We are after people who are dead. We are going after people who are spiritually dead. And through the power of the gospel, they become alive. That's what spiritual fishing is all about. So so this whole idea that we are called to be fishermen, this is going to be something that is increasingly harder and harder in our culture. But it is part of Jesus's call, and he brings them back to this at this at this pinnacle point and his ministry. He has resurrected he is about to go to the father. What is it that he wants to leave them with and he wants to leave us with? I call you to fish for people. I call you to pursue spiritually dead people and be used by me, be used in the power of my spirit to bring them to life. Now, let me just touch on a couple other details of the story. First of all, this jumps back a little bit in the text, but in verse three of John twenty one, we see Peter taking some initiative.

Peter says to the other men, you know, I'm tired of sitting around. I know the Lord's going to come, but I'm tired of sitting around. I'm going fishing. And the other disciples with him says will come to now. Now, this may be stretching the metaphor a little bit, and I'm cautious about that. I don't want to take Jesus metaphor further than he intends them. But I've just thought through some application to the church, if Jesus calls us to fish for people, he doesn't want us sitting around on the shore. If Jesus calls us to fish for people, he wants us to go out on the lake. He wants us to cast our nets. Too many churches have either lost interest in fishing entirely. They become something else - they may do good things, but they're not fishing for people. Too many churches have either lost their interest in fishing or they act like they expect the fish to swim up and jump in the boat. You know, that's that that is the model that I was raised with. I've had to go through a real shift in my thinking. And I went to seminary and began pastoral ministry in the early and mid nineteen eighties. And at that time we had what is known as the attractional model just generally in evangelicalism. What's the attractional model? The fish will swim up.

If your boat is attractive enough, the fish will swim up and jump in the boat. And so that was the emphasis. That's the way that I was trained. You do your services creatively enough and you have the right kind of programs and people will come flocking to you and that's how they'll get saved. And whether that actually worked or not, I'm not here to debate that. What I am here to tell you today, that I've had to really go through a revolution in my thinking is the culture is changed. We don't live in that world anymore. The culture has become increasingly anti Christian and anti church. And if we think that we're going to effectively fish by drawing people to what we do on a Sunday morning, some will come. I'm not debating that. But if we think that our main strategy is to get the fish to come up, swim up to the boat and jump into the boat, we are going to shrink and shrink and shrink. We're not going to catch fish. That is not the model that works in an increasingly secular culture anymore. We have to, as Peter and the disciples did, we have to go out on the lake and we have to cast our nets. We have to we have to push beyond the attractional model that says our whole strategy is to draw people here. And instead we must gain a new vision for going out on the lake, going out into our neighborhoods, going out into our community and casting the net, building relationships with people, meeting real needs, meeting people where they are, and establishing the relationship from which at some point we are able to speak the gospel to them.

There were two ways of fishing on the Sea of Galilee. One of the ways was a single person could use the kind of net called I'm not good with Greek pronunciation. So don't don't quote me on this here. Here's my best try and amphiblestron. So an amphiblestron is a one person net. The net has a circumference or an opening of somewhere between 10 and 20 feet. So it's as big, but it's still not so big that that it takes more than one person to handle it. And around the circumference of the net are weights, are leaded weights. So the way you would fish with an amphiblestron is you would cast that net off from from your boat and the weights would make the opening sink down to the bottom, trapping fish in the net. And then you have a rope that's attached to the opening and you'd pull that net in and hopefully you'd get a few fish. And it was an effective way of of fishing with a few fish or of catching a few fish. Now, I want to suggest to you that this is the way many of us have typically think about evangelism, we think of evangelism as an individual effort, and for for many of us who don't have the gift of evangelism, I thank God that there are people in this church body who have the gift of evangelism.

But for the rest of us who know we're still called to evangelism, but we don't have the gift of evangelism, it's quite intimidating to think of evangelism as primarily an individual effort. I remember my own experience with this. I was in seminary. I had an evangelism class taught by Robert Colman, which if if that name means anything to you, he's the one who wrote Master Plan of Evangelism, just this tremendous evangelist. I had the best instruction possible. And yet when he would take us downtown to the streets of Chicago and have us approach people one on one, I was just shaking in my shoes. It was an incredibly intimidating experience for me to individually make those efforts one on one. Now there is a place for individual evangelism. All right. But that is actually not the picture here in John 21, the word for net here that John uses is not amphiblestron. It's diktyon. It's another kind of net. It's actually the kind of net and the kind of net fishing technique that was most commonly used at that time on the Sea of Galilee. This net was much larger. Think of a tennis net, you know, long but narrow, but much longer.

These nets could run up to a thousand feet. And along the top of the net, along that rope, there were cork weights and the cork weights would keep the top of the net floating on the top of the lake and along the bottom rope at the bottom of that net where lead weights. What would that make it do? It would make the bottom sink down. So you can imagine how this might work, the team is using this kind of net, a diktyon, would take it out on a boat and they'd deploy it in the middle of the lake and they'd spread it out and you'd have this long vertical wall of a net and then they'd have these tow ropes to either end of the net and they would either using one or two boats, they would begin to tow that wall, that moving wall of net in towards the shore. And it would trap as it as it moved into the shore. You can imagine it would trap if it was done at the right time, it would trap all kinds of fish. And so a team of men working in one or two boats over the course of about eight hours, doing this seven or eight times could bring in a large catch. Actually, they could bring in a much larger catch than somebody working individually with a net during that same time with a smaller net.

Well you see how this image is a different metaphor for evangelism? It takes a team of men to fish with a diktyon, but they can catch a lot more fish if they're working together. So how can we fish like this? Maybe, maybe evangelism is not your gift. And maybe when you think about doing it individually, you know that you should and you know that is God opens opportunities to you. You need to act upon those. But how is it that you could actually partner with other people as a team in casting the net in evangelism? How can you how can we work together to build relationships and meet needs in our neighborhoods and our community that lead to opportunities to share the gospel? I want to come back to that thought just as I close in a minute or two. But two more details of the story at the end of the story. We read that as a result of this miraculous catch, there was one hundred and fifty three fish that were caught in the net. Two observations that I would make from that. Here are these men, skilled men, trained men, experienced men and on their own, working all night. They catch nothing. It doesn't matter how much experience we have and how much training we have. Something else needs to happen if we are effectively going to fish for people. These men did not catch fish, but for the divine intervention of Jesus. And I think this is a reminder to us that, again, we can have programs and we can have strategies and we should. But apart from the spirit of God going ahead of us as we pray, we will catch nothing. Or more positively put this; as we pray and as we seek to follow the spirit. When we come together as teams of people to cast the net in our neighborhoods and our community, God will produce the fish. God will bring men and women who are spiritually dead to spiritual life. One other observation from the number of fish. I'm struck by the specificity. One hundred and fifty three fish. This is one of the few times in scripture where a specific and somewhat unique number is given. And I have to ask myself, why did somebody why is it that John recorded this? Obviously, somebody counted the fish, maybe to divide them between the fishermen? I'm not sure. And somebody remembered it. But John thought it significant, John, influenced by the spirit of God to record it for us. Why is it that it is significant that we know there's one hundred and fifty three fish? I don't have a definite answer here, but could it be that every fish being uniquely counted reminds us that every person that we we encounter in our relationships, in our neighborhoods and our workplaces, in our community is a unique person that we have to pursue relationship with them and conversation with them according to their uniqueness and the uniqueness of the relationship that we are building.

Could it be that God is even signifying to us that every year every fish, just like every fish, is uniquely important here? Every person we encounter is uniquely important to him. Anyway, that verse goes on at the end to say, even with so many fish, the net was not torn. And this is in contrast to the earlier account. And Luke, chapter five verse six, we're told us that there were so many fish that came in in that miracle that the nets began to break. Why is it that the nets were breaking and Luke 5 and the nets, even though there may be even more full here and John 21, they're not breaking? I think the difference is the resurrection. I believe it was the power of the risen Christ who kept the nets from breaking. And that, again, speaks to us as we fish as we go out and we build relationships individually and in partnership in teams. And we do that led by the spirit and in the power of the spirit we have because of the resurrection of Jesus, we have the power of Christ going before us. We have the power of Christ impacting those relationships and influencing the catch, so to speak.

So let me close with this. How does net fishing fit our values at Calvary? You may be aware of this one or not, but this is this is the first of our five new core values. This is what we hope we are. This is certainly what we aspire to be. Love the lost and proclaim the gospel, proclaim the hope of Jesus Christ. Now, I think that's consistent with the DNA of Calvary. So I think that is who we are. I also think there's an aspect in which this is something that we aspire to be. This is something that the flame is still burning, but the flame can be turned up quite a bit. And this is why it is. And now a stated value. We aspire to be a church that loves the lost, that wants to fish and what we aspire to be, a church that says we're just not going to sit on the shore. We're not going to wait and hope that the fish swim up and jump in the boat. We're going to get out on the lake because we love the lost and we're going to cast we're going to cast the net. We're going to proclaim the hope of Jesus Christ. So I want to challenge you to think and pray about how you can obey Christ's command to fish for people through this approach of net fishing. And maybe this will be helpful to you, as it has been for me.

Maybe if individual evangelism has been intimidating to you, this idea of fishing as a team of people, net fishing, maybe something that's new that the Lord wants to push you forward in. What would it look like if you did net fishing as a family? What would it look like if you took your kids with you as you pursued conversations with the neighbors as you served at a soup kitchen, as you did other works of outreach? What would it look like for you to do this as a family and use the different people in your family with their different giftings and different personalities together as a team to cast the net? What would it look like if you did this as your small group? Many of you are in small groups here at Calvary. And you open the word together, which is wonderful, and you pray together, which is wonderful, and you serve each other and you have fellowship with each other. What would it look like if you added the component of how could we cast the net together? How could we as a small group, how could we adopt someone, so to speak, go after someone that we're aware of that's a need and build relationship with them and meet needs and slowly begin to set the table to to share the gospel with them. What would it look like for us to do this in our neighborhoods? Our new neighbor, we moved into a new home in the other Rochester, Rochester, New York, became friends with our neighbors, found out they love Jesus.

They're very committed believers. We're already talking about. We live on a cul de sac. Hey, let's plan something near the end of the summer or early fall where we put our barbecue grills out in the middle of the cul de sac and we invite all our neighbors and we begin to build relationships with them and get to know them. What would it look like to cast the net like that with somebody else who is a believer in your neighborhood thinking of your neighborhood? What would it look like for us as a congregation to cast the net? I know we do that in some ways. What would it look like to do that even more intentionally, to come together as a church body and say, how can we use all of us with our unique abilities and gifts to reach out? I want to close with just one way. This is not like the way this is just one way, but this is something that the pastoral staff is dreaming about and taking active steps to plan. So I want you to actually put this on your calendar, August 1st through eigth neighbor fest week, maybe two years ago. If you were here at Calvary. I wasn't at the time.

You remember Neighbor Fest. That was a one day event. It was great. We invited all the neighborhoods around us to come on our property. We had inflatables. We had all kinds of great stuff. And the idea was to build relationships. We want to do that again, although we want to build on that. What about a whole week leading up to that culminating event? And during that week, you intentionally because you've been praying and the spirit has put people in your neighborhood or at your workplace on your heart, you are building relationships, you are serving them. You find maybe a way that you as a family or you as a small group can serve them and lead to not only opportunities for conversation, but opportunities to invite them to a culminating event on Sunday, August 8th, neighborfest. You're going to be hearing more about that. The pastoral staff has begun to dream about that. Maybe in God's timing, we may even have our new pastor here in time to be part of that and and participate in that. If God wills the plan for that. Put those dates on your calendar. Even if you can't attend, even if you're out of town, I leave you with the challenge. How can you go about net fishing? Does your heart burn for the loss burn or the love for the lost? Do you have an interest in fishing? Jesus calls us to fish for people. That's who we want to be as the Church of Calvary. We want to love the lost and proclaim the hope of Jesus Christ.

Let's pray. Father, we know that this love for the lost and only comes, first of all, when we first have experienced your love to us through Jesus Christ. So maybe there's some even here today, Lord, who who do not know you in this way yet. And I pray even this morning through your word and through the Spirit's activity as we worship together and now as we come to the table, that you would draw them to the foot of the cross and they would see Jesus as savior and Lord and embrace him as such. Lord, for those of us who that has happened at some point in our lives, perhaps this morning, what we need most is we come to the table is we need the renewal of that fire. We have maybe been people who have lost interest in fishing. We know we should do it. We rarely do it. We don't think about it much, reignite that fire and reignite Lord God, that love for the lost in us individually and us collectively as a church. Give us that vision, Lord, to fish for people. Give us that vision to get off the shore and get out on the lake in our neighborhoods and our communities and cast the net, build relationships individually and together, meet needs that will set the table to have conversations where the gospel could be shared. We pray this Lord in Jesus name. Amen.

Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there expecting thank you, because without you, we would not be here today. That's my dad joke. So now we have a complete Mother's Day. Thank you so much for entertaining that. Hey, happy Mother's Day to you online as well. Mom, if you're watching, I'm in a room full of awesome mothers and you're still the best. So happy Mother's Day, Mom. I love you. Can't wait to see you soon. Hey, if you have your Bibles, open to Psalm 121. Psalm 121, we will be there for the majority of this morning and we'll be doing some flipping back and forth from passages. There's pens in front of you. We'll be doing a lot of scripture. So if you want to write down those references, because time may be a little short today, Psalm 121. Hey, I'm going to start out with a question. What did you guys do to pass the time like a long road trip? A lot of people today will turn on a podcast or sports radio or an audio book. My go to back in the day. I had mixed tapes. Yeah. You know, the time where you would listen to the radio and you got to push record as soon as that song came on. Otherwise you missed it. We would go on vacations and listen to these mix tape. And I of course, my parents control the radio.

So it was late seventies and eighties and nineties music. I grew up listening to. I'm still very fond of all the memories we created on our road trips. Well, this song right here, Psalm 121. All these songs were sung to music and it's called the Song of ascents. From one twenty to one thirty four tradition holds that pilgrims traveling back to Jerusalem would sing these songs. And I remember Judah and Israel were taking over. They were captured and they were dispersed throughout all the land, the subjected people to their captives. And so they'd come back to Jerusalem three times a year for certain festivals. Every able-bodied male and his family, if they could make it, they'd come. And as they got closer to Jerusalem, they'd see more pilgrims. And sometimes they would take weeks, days, depending how far away they lived. Some would come from other countries. They weren't just locally as they got closer and they saw the the hills, the sounds, maybe the temple, they begin to sing these songs of ascent. And it's called songs of ascent. It's not the best you can see here. It's better because of where Jerusalem was situated. Jerusalem is situated twenty five hundred feet above sea level. Case in point here, Jericho down here. Jericho is actually below sea level. Seven hundred and twenty feet. And so you're hiking up this ascent, if you will, even if you came from far away countries from taller mountains when you landed near Jerusalem, there's valleys surrounding it.

You could go down into the valley and then climb this ascent up to the mountain, up to Jerusalem. And so the songs of a sense is what they're called. Well, perhaps these were not originally composed for this purpose. These songs were later grouped together for use in traveling towards Jerusalem for their yearly Jewish festival. They became known as the Pilgrim Songs and really the songs for all believers. Are we all pilgrims traveling from this world to the next? This song was not only song for traveling mercies and protection. It was also a song of salvation as we'll read later on of our eternal destination as in verse eight, we just read talks about God being today and forever with us. It's a beautiful song of God's providential care and protection for his children. It's a reminder that God actively is involved your life, that he never, never sleeps nor slumbers always with a watchful caring eye on you. I call this message from the Vale or the Valley to the Summit, because we're all on this journey, this spiritual journey of life. And we know whenever we gather to worship like we are today, in essence, we are ascending to him because God is otherworldly. He's holy, which means he's set apart distinct, different above us, literally holy.

Just, perfect. So different. And so like we are ascending to him on this journey as pilgrims from this world into the next. And so before we continue, I'm going to ask you guys to join me in prayer. Father, we we come to you today and and ask that you would open up our hearts and minds and give us understanding into your word. Father, I think of Moses when he ascended the Mount Sinai and you told him this was a holy place to take off his sandals. We're in your direct presence through the blood of Jesus Christ. That temple veil has been rent in half from top to bottom. And we stand before you. God we are in the presence of your spirit. We have access to you, our great keeper, provider, protector, shield, high tower. So Lord would you make my words Your words. May they be edifying, encouraging, uplifting. In Jesus name I pray. Amen. So these eight verses and Psalm 121, I'm going to tackle them two verses at a time. I think they go really well together. So let's go over the first two verses. I lift my eyes up to the hills from where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. If I could summarize these two verses, it's that God saves us. Now, picture yourself in this journey that you're a pilgrim coming from, let's say, Jericho.

Seven hundred and twenty feet below sea level and you're trekking up this terrain now. You would need supplies for the journey, water, food, protection. Most times the pilgrims are traveling with other people, friends and family, maybe other villagers. You're actually a target for robbers. In fact, the Good Samaritan was on his way down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he found the man who was robbed and beaten and left for dead. Same journey, same trek that he's taken. So your a target kind of like a tourist who goes to a tourist town and that person sticks out. They got money. That's what the robber's looking for. In addition to that, you saw that trek, the thousands and thousands of feet of different elevation. You're going uphill. Not only that. It's hot, it's desert, sun stroke. Make sure you bring enough water and food for the little ones even. And at night, the desert can even have these wild range of temperatures and you can be cold if left unprepared. So you gotta carry maybe extra tunics or coats. The Psalmist understands the danger that lies before him and asked for help recognizing he needs it. This officer is not only referring to the physical dangers that I mentioned and the elements, but also the spiritual dangers as well. In Hebrew culture, the hills or the high places, maybe in your translation, were locations of worship.

And unfortunately, there was places of idolatry even in Israel during that time. Jeremiah Chapter three, verse six says this During the reign of King Josiah, the Lord said to me, Have you seen what fickle Israel has done? Like a wife who commits adultery Israel worshipped other gods on every hill and under every green tree. The hills symbolize the treacherous journey both ahead of the physical dangers, but also the spiritual ones. The hills in this context and Psalm 121 are the source of the trouble and the reason for the question where does my help come from? And as pilgrims ourselves journeying from this world to the next, we can look around in the high places of our culture in broad daylight and seen people worship false gods. The pressure, the temptation to bow down to these idols even exists for us as believers, maybe you are here today asking the same question, where does my help come from? Life is tough already as it is with all the physical challenges, let alone the spiritual warfare behind the scenes. Like the Psalmist, we're asking, where does our help come from? Well, who made these hills? This Psalmist answers - the Lord who made heaven and earth. That's where our help comes from. If he has the power to create the earth, he has the power to defend his people as well. When you realize that the maker of heaven and earth, the hills that are situated on top of these places of idolatry, that he himself has sovereign and control and powerful and created that, these hills become a little less menacing.

See, I think this song is much bigger in perspective and talking more than just a road trip to Jerusalem while were singing these songs. I think he's talking about the bigger all over picture, of the big overall picture of salvation in Jesus and salvation in God. Read Psalm 56:11 in God. I trust I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me? Again Psalm 27:1. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? At the end of a beautiful chapter Romans eight. This promise stands. If God is for us, who can be against us? And then Isaiah, fifty one. Listen to me, you who know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law, that's us, fear not the approach of man, nor be dismayed of his revilings for the moth will eat them up like a garment and the worm will eat them like wool. My righteousness will be forever and my salvation to all generations. What the Psalmist reminds us here is that even though there's earthly threats, opposition against us, maybe a physical and both spiritual, that these threats are temporal and short lived because God holds our salvation in his hands.

So these first two verses speak of how God saves us physically and even more so spiritually from the dangers and toils that lie ahead of us. Verse three and four. He will not let your foot be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber and behold, he keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. If I can paraphrase this it would be that God studies us in our walk. He's vigilant. He's watchful. The dangerous road ahead. As the pilgrims get closer to Jerusalem, maybe they would get a little more crowded be excited to see the Pilgrims, maybe the songs to start earlier. But as they went up those steep ascents, the roads were like today. They weren't paved and were a little more narrow. And as traffic was coming down, there could be a caravan, an ox drawn cart. There had to be space. And with those sleepers, with those steep ascents, one false step, if your foot wasn't secure, you could fall not not suffering an injury, maybe even suffering death. So having your foot steady, so let's not move is important here. In fact, the phrasing foot be not moved or not slipping is a euphemism for judgment in scripture. Check it with me. Deuteronomy Chapter three to five. Vengeance is mine and recompense or repayment for the time when their foot shall slip for the day of their calamity is at hand and their doom comes swiftly.

They're talking about judgment here, when the foot slips, the psalmists would be familiar with this kind of euphemism or language. And he's writing something greater than just road hazards on a pilgrim's journey to Jerusalem. This is God's eternal deliverance he's talking about. You see the Psalmist here is not saying that believers will not suffer physical injury. Maybe some of us here are suffering from physical ailments, even today. But what he's saying here that the believer will never suffer loss of his eternal foothold or footing in God because it's God who is our help and God who secures our salvation. Dear brothers and sisters, more important than our physical safety is our spiritual security. Let me give you an example juxtaposed against this. You remember the story of the paralytic. Jesus was in a town and he was healing people and there was droves upon droves of people coming to visit. And these four friends said, hey, we have this guy, he can't walk, he can't get there. So let's carry him. They get there. The doors are blocked, just jam packed. Let's go up on the roof and let's remove the tiles and we'll lower him down. What's Jesus's first words to this man who obviously can't stand, who obviously is wanting physical healing. He says the most unexpected thing, your sins are forgiven.

It would be like someone coming all the way to Mayo Clinic because there's a new type of procedure that can heal this disease that's very rare and and has no cure. But getting to the physician and he's about to fire up the machine, he says, you know what, I know you made this long trek. Your sins are forgiven. What? How much do we value physical protection, our well-being and healing over that which is more, maybe more important? Let me let me personalize if I can give an example, John, you think that you need that broken limb fixed? You think that that disease or that ailment that you're carrying around, that's kind of a thorn in your flesh. You think that would bring you the relief and joy set you free? No, son, before I fix the brokenness outside, I need to fix the brokenness within. Jesus gives a better gift than healing the paralytic. He says your sins are forgiven. That's why Jesus is the great physician, because there is no other doctor, no other God, no other religion that can forgive your and my sins completely and then keep our foot from slipping. You guys get that. He should not let your foot slip. Check out these encouraging verses from Psalm 91:11-12, for he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways on their hands.

They will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone. And Daniel 2:9, he will guard the feet of his faithful ones. But the wicked shall be cut off in darkness, for not by might shall man prevail. And this is from Proverbs 3:21-26, which is on the screens, my son did not lose sight of these keep sound wisdom and discretion and there'll be life for your soul and adornment for your neck. Then when you walk in your way securely and your foot will not stumble if you lie down, you will not be afraid. When you lie down, your sleep will be sweet. Do not be afraid of sudden terror or of the ruin of the wicked when it comes for the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being caught. What these verses here are saying in verse three and four is that God steadies us in a spiritual sense. Jude twenty four. Now to him, who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless, holy, forgiven, perfect before the presence of his glory and with great joy. If you don't have that underlined in your Bible memorized or highlighted, I would encourage you to do so. That is a great promise that any pilgrim would want to hold on to. He studies us, forgives us and keeps our foot from stumbling. Romans 14:4 says this who are you to pass on judgment on the servant of another.

It is before his own master that he stands or falls and he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. How is God able to make us stand? It's because he never sleeps, he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel whill neither sleep nor slumber. The reason why God keeps us from falling is because God is never not awake. He's always vigilant, ever watchful, ever graciously looking upon providing for protecting and guiding his beloved. You may be saying to yourself, you know, sometimes it feels like God asleep on the job. There's occasions where it's silent. I don't hear him. There's an instance in Jesus ministry where he's after a long day of service, he is in a boat in the middle of the ocean and the waves and the winds are picking up and he's sleeping at the bottom of a boat on a cushion fast asleep. And I mean, the disciples think they're going to die. They wake them up. Don't you care that we're perishing? And the creator of heaven and earth stands rebukes the wind and he stills the waves. He does this because he transcends creation, because he is the creator, he's able to still and calm the waves and the wind in our life.

This speaks of God's eminence. Definition for you guys: God's eminence holds that God is present in all of creation while remaining distinct from it. In other words, there's no place where God is not. His sovereign control extends everywhere simultaneously. So even though he's above and beyond us, he controls nature. He's outside time and space. He's also near. He's eminent. He's Emmanuel God. With us in the middle of the muck, in the middle of the storms, he's sovereignly in control, guiding and protecting us every step of the way. The slumbering Jesus, even in the bottom of the boat knew more about their situation than the alert disciples. One 17 speaks of this, and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Speaking of God's eminence verses five and six of one twenty one psalms, The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. This is the key verse, that the Lord is our keeper. And the key part is to keep your eye on the keeper. Isaiah 26:4 says you will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you? That God is watchful. He's a steward. The same word here for keeper is used elsewhere in Scripture and speaks of shepherds and door keepers, prison keepers and vine dressers. All these occupations are employed as metaphors for our God.

They are a picture of God closely tending his people, ministering to their needs and guiding them in their journey, protecting them along the way, caring for their afflictions and even atoning for their sins. God himself is our shelter and he says that he's at our right hand. Back in the day, the Roman soldiers predominantly would carry their shields on their left and their swords on their right. So their most exposed side was their flanks. And to increase the defensiveness, the soldiers said I got your right and God is on your right, protecting and boosting your defenses, watching you, caring for you. It was strategic. Psalm 109:31 says this: for he stands at the right hand of the needy one to save him from those who condemn his soul to death. The last two verses seven and eight, the last two verses psalm 121, the Lord will keep you from all evil. He will keep your life. The lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time and forever more. These last two can be summarized as God safeguards us, God safeguards us from evil and he preserves us. Here all these points that God saves us, God steadies us, God shelters us. are summarized in these last two verses, verse seven reiterates all we've been saying that God securely holds our salvation in his hands. In the last two verses

are a beautiful promise or the last verse, excuse me. Now the Lord will keep you from going out and if your coming in from this time forth and forevermore, even the day to day details. He's invested. In my closing I want to share a personal story about how God has revealed this to my life personally. Years ago I used to work on straight commissions as a salesman, and I if I wasn't selling anything, I wasn't bringing home any money. I wasn't buying food and groceries, wasn't paying for bills. And so it was a pretty stressful job. I did it for a couple of years. High stress sales. There was a season where things weren't going so well. And the way it worked is I would get the commission of my sales half of it up front. And once the job was completed, which could range anywhere from a couple of weeks, even months, I would receive the later half. I remember vividly in my apartment with my two young children changing my daughter's diaper, going to my wife and saying hey. Can you throw another one so I can change real quick? And she looks at me really quietly and says, we don't have any more. I said, All right, I'll go get some. Like, No, you don't get it.

We don't have anymore. And we're out of money. It's like the worst thing you can hear as a dad, I can't provide diapers for my child, I kind of got angry and discouraged and I said, fine, give me the laundry, I'll go do laundry. At least we have detergent and I'll go wash clean clothes. So in case an accident happens, my daughter can at least have clean clothes. I never checked the mail. I went downstairs, started the load of laundry. I was just beside myself. I think I even cried. I was like, what kind of dad am I can't provide for my kid? I walk up the stairs, back to our apartment. My wife is in tears. What's going on? She says, let me guess it. She said in the mailbox that day was a check for three thousand dollars from a job I did. I did six months ago, the biggest job I've ever did for that company. And it was there exactly when it needed it. When we talk about God is imminent or eminent, eminent in our lives and we think that he's silent or that he slumbers, it's not that he's silent or slumbering. No, our perspective is that we're in the vele, we're in the valley and we see the hills around us and we get overwhelmed by them. And we ask, where does our help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven, earth.

From that day forward, I've never questioned God's Providence provision, protection and guidance. I've been up and down since then, but he's always come through. This beautiful song reminds us that we need not fear life or death today or tomorrow time or eternity for we are in the loving care of our heavenly Father. Let's pray. Lord as a song that we just sang, you are a good, good father. That's what you are Lord. Lord, we being evil give our kids when they ask for food, we give them bread. We don't give them a stone or serpent God, and you being even greater than us. How much more do you provide? And Lord sometimes you take us through the storms while you appear to slumber God. While you appear to not be involved, but it says here you're always awake and alert. I know Jesus was human and his humanity He was resting. But God it says now in Hebrews that he makes intercession for us. That never slumbers, that he lives to pray for us even today, even now. What a great promise. What a great reminder of who's for us. Your timing is perfect, and it teaches us, God to trust you and to be content. And God, that you won't cause our foot to stumble, to move, that our salvation is secured in the blood of the lamb. We thank you for that greater promise, Father, in Jesus name we pray. Amen.

You belong to a people, and you were designed for purpose.

Well, hello and good morning. The greatest sports organization in American history, the Green Bay Packers. Hey, hey, I'm preaching up here. How rude. How rude of you. The greatest franchise in American sports. The Green Bay Packers have had success at the highest levels. They have won more NFL championship titles, 13, than any other team. That is nine NFL championships and four Super Bowls. That's right. It's very good. They're the only NFL team to also in the AFL NFL championship. If you didn't know their second all time in pro bowlers. And they've even had some recent success with two trips to the NFC championship game. For a photo comparison, here's a slide of all the Vikings championships. Hey, I might get fired for that. It's fun. Thankfully, the board president's a Bears fan. OK, so this past year, though, they had a motto and the motto was one 11th. And when I heard that for the first time, it really struck me as very poetic. There's an economy of language in this little phrase, this idea of one 11th, you know, you're only one of 11. So stay humble. You're one of 11. So stay connected. You're responsible for this part of the play. If you do your job, it's probably going to be successful. You have a role that's specific to you. You need to do that role. People are counting on you. We need each other. All of that is wrapped up in this this very tight little phrase, this idea of 1 11th.

There's responsibility, there's connection, there's team, there's oneness. Have you ever been a part of a great team? You know, maybe it was a team at work that just really crushed it on a project or, you know, maybe it was a sports team that you were a part of, that you feel this real strong connection or maybe it was a choir or a band or a group of sorority sisters or whatever it was. If you've been a part of a team, you know the thrill of that, you know, the feeling of accomplishing something that you couldn't do on your own, that you needed others to help you accomplish that was beyond you. And so today, what I want to examine is this idea that, you know, you are already if you are a follower of Jesus, you are a part of a people, you're a part of a team, a family, a nation. And there's something supernatural that happens among the people of God. And maybe it doesn't always feel like that. Maybe we need to increase our sensitivity and understanding to what this really means in reality. But I think, I think we should feel the weight of that one 11th mentality that we are a part of a whole as the people of God. And if we do, we'll begin to understand as well our purpose. And so you are if you are a follower of Jesus, you are a people and you were built for a purpose.

And that is exactly our bottom line today. You belong to people and you were designed for a purpose. And that is a beautiful and a wonderful thing. So let's explore that together. We heard this passage read, but I'm going to review it in a little bit shorter format. 1 Peter 2, first Peter Chapter two, and I'll be reading from the ESV here. You can follow along on the screen. So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation. If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good and then skipping to verse eight - others stumble because they disobey the word as they were destined to do. But you are chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. What a passage there's so much to dig into here. It's so exciting to see God speak to us in this way. So let's focus in on verse one. We need to put away malice, deceit, hypocrisy envy and slander. What are these things? You know, these are sicknesses of the heart.

That's what they are at their core. I mean, if you really think about what these things are and further, when Jesus was asked, what's the most important thing, he said, love, loving action. And if we look at this list, we can see very clearly this is the opposite of loving action. So what exactly are these things? Well, malice is this idea kind of tied up with bitterness, resentment, hate. And so the question that we should ask ourselves is, do you feel yourself feeling anger, resentment toward individuals or groups of people? Bitterness maybe? Do you do you feel that in your heart or have you become numb to it? Do you watch the news and it triggers you and makes you angry with a certain group of people or certain individuals? If that's the case, there's a chance that that malice is festering in your heart or maybe deceit. I really like the word deceit because I think sometimes we think that honesty is simply not telling lies. I think it's more than that. I think deceit speaks to not only speaking truth, but making sure that if we don't want to be deceitful, then we want to be the truest version of who we are. We want to be honest in what we present to the world. And a world of social media makes it pretty easy to create deceit, doesn't it? But it's not like that's a new thing either, is it? That's not just a social media problem.

That's a people problem. We try to put forward a version of ourselves that isn't the true, authentic version of ourselves at times. And so I think we try to deceive each other in lots of ways. Maybe that's just one of them. Hypocrisy. You think the church has a problem with hypocrisy ever? I think we might. In fact, landmark study done by the Barna Group in 2007 said that 85 percent of non church people see the church as hypocritical. And it's one of the top three reasons why they're not interested in engaging with the church. I've always wondered if we could do the opposite study, though, like what would Church people think about non church people? I wonder what that percentage would be, because I think there's hypocrisy across the board. I don't think that's a Christian thing. I think that's just a thing thing. I think that's a humanity thing. But I would also agree the church has a hypocrisy problem, too. We see it in ourselves, don't we? I'm a hypocrite. Sometimes you probably are, too. I think hypocrisy is a real heart issue and we need to think deeply about whether or not that's taken root in our heart and in our soul. What about envy? You ever find yourself jealous of what other people have? How about slander? You ever find yourself exaggerating other people's failures just to try to feel better about yourself? If you're a follower of Jesus, these things have no place in your heart.

They have no place in your life. And if indeed we belong to a people and we're built for a purpose, then I think what Peter's trying to declare to us here is he's saying this isn't the way it's supposed to be. This is not the way the family of God is to behave. This is not the way the people of God are supposed to behave. And I agree. It reminds me of my basketball coach growing up. Sometimes he would get so mad, he would know what to do and then he would just yell, that's not Pirate basketball. We were the Bayport Pirates. That's not Pirate basketball, you would say. And it was this idea that there's a standard that we're supposed to be living. There's a way we're supposed to be doing this. Why aren't we doing it that way? And so this is what I think Peter is writing about here. He's saying, look, if you're a follower of Jesus, none of this has a place in your life. That's not the way that it's supposed to be. This isn't the loving action that Jesus was talking about. And so you belong to people and you were designed for a purpose. And these things aren't the way you're supposed to do them. And that's what Peter's reminding us. So I'd actually like to do something a little bit different right now, which is this. I'd like us to take a moment and I'm going to pray and I'm going to let there be a moment of silence here.

And I would like you to personally reflect on these words and ask God to speak to you whether any of these things have taken root in your heart and whether you need to identify that sin and begin to repent for it. So I'm going to pray right now for that. Father God, we pause here in this moment as we are studying your word to ask that you would use your word to work on us, work on our hearts, every single one of us in this room. And Lord, there's a list of things here that in your word, you are declaring to us this is not the way that it's supposed to be. And so, God, in the silence of the next few moments, would you speak to any of us about the sickness of our own heart and whether there's a sin we need to identify and turn away from now?

Amen. OK. So, maybe God spoke to you in that moment, maybe he's going to speak to you later. I don't know, maybe there's something you need to turn from. But here's the beautiful thing about God and his plans. Whenever he identifies a problem, he also helps with a solution. And I think this passage speaks directly to that. If we've revealed a problem, then then we have to know how we're going to fix it. What are we going to do about this? And it's not a it's not a formula.

It's not a simple solution. But I do think there's something here for us. And I think it's right here in verse two. Like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation if indeed you've tasted that the Lord is good. Look, if you've tasted what it means to have a relationship with God, then you know, that's the good stuff, isn't it? If you felt that closeness in the spirit with Jesus, then you know what this is talking about. In the metaphor, this is an interesting metaphor, right? Because Paul writes about, you know, don't be immature like a child in your faith or you'll be tossed around by the wind. Right. So it's like, oh, wait, I thought we weren't supposed to be like babies. I didn't think we were supposed to be like children. No, no, no. This is a different metaphor altogether. Don't confuse the two. If you've ever cared for an infant, you know that, you know, babies can't talk, but they can make their opinions known, you know. Right. They can express themselves. And when a baby's hungry and just wants to eat, whether they're using a bottle of their nursing or whatever it is like, they they get the ravenously hungry and they're like, I need food right now. Get me some food. And then and then what you get is this just like ravenous is drinking.

Right? Where they're just like slurping it down with all of their might. And then as parents or as caregivers, we do this thing where we're like, oh, she was so hungry. And we like get excited because she gets it. She gets that she has a problem and it needs a solution in the milk is the answer. And that's how we're supposed to be with God. We're supposed to desire deeply a relationship with him. We're supposed to drink deeply from our time with him in worship and study in prayer, whatever it might look like. We need to crave that relationship with God. Now, babies, I don't think, have to acquire a taste for milk, but maybe we have to acquire a taste for the word. Maybe we have to acquire a taste for worshipping on our own, things like that. You know, there's a lot of things that people can acquire a taste to and maybe that's what's going on here. Maybe that's what Peter's calling us to. He's saying, look, you have this problem. I think what you need is you need to crave a relationship with God more. And I think he's right because you belong to a people and you were designed for a purpose. And part of that purpose is to want a deeper intimacy with Jesus. So maybe, maybe practically for you, that looks like you need to read a verse a day, maybe it means you need to read a chapter a day.

And even sometimes when you don't feel like it, you work on that practice so that you are like an infant who just wants to guzzle that milk down. OK, so skipping down to verse eight, not that the ones in between aren't great. They are. Time is a factor. Others stumble because they disobey the word as they were destined to do so. Part of being a people is that a people is distinct and different from other people. That's part of what it means to be a people. There's a cultural distinction between, you know, us and them or between that group and that group, and that's what it's supposed to be like. The best metaphor I can come up with is this. We have a lot in common with our Canadian neighbors. Like we both have a regional love of hockey. We're both known for over-the-top niceness. You know, we both live in places too cold for humans to actually live, but we do it anyway, you know, I mean, there's a lot of similarities between us and our Canadian neighbors so much that there's a campaign to make Minnesota the 11th province of Canada. I don't know that I would vote for that. But I'm just saying, you know, we have a lot of similarities, but we're not the same, are we? I mean, there are distinct cultural differences between Canadians and Minnesotans. There are differences, to be sure, you know, Tim Hortons versus Dunkin Donuts alone.

I mean, there are different things going on here. Part of what it means to be a people is that we are different. We're different from the others. My pastor growing up used to say something a lot that I thought was very profound. He would say something along the lines of don't carry tension that isn't yours to carry. And I think this verse speaks to that in an interesting way to followers of Jesus. It says that, you know, people are going to stumble and disobey the word because they were destined to do that. And sometimes sometimes I think as followers of Christ, we begin to carry tension that isn't ours to carry because we look at the world and we say, why are they following Jesus? Why aren't they behaving the way that we know Jesus has called us to live? Why are they doing that? Because they were destined not to and because their culture is different than our culture as followers of Jesus. Those are different things they have to be. And so should you, you know, stand up and say that something is false when it's false or say that something is wrong when it's wrong? You should. But should you carry the tension that other people aren't behaving the way that the people of God are supposed to behave if they're not people of God? No, that's not our intention to carry. The people of God are meant to be different, and that's part of what it means to be a part of his people.

And be clear, though, behavior isn't at the core of the cultural difference. It's not just about behavior. It's something deeper. It's about a deeper identity. And that's what verse nine speaks to and it speaks so eloquently to. It says, But you are chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into marvelous light. One of the things I love about this passage is that it doesn't say this is a kind of suggestion I am making for you. No, no, no. It says this is who you are. You already are these things, you are a chosen people. You're a royal priesthood. You are a holy nation. You are God's special possession. OK, so what does that mean? So let's start with chosen people. Followers of Jesus were made for a purpose and they were chosen to fulfill it. So, yeah, again, it means that we're not the same as others. But I think this this form of choosing indicates value. I grew up on the playground playing kickball. You know, the whole class would play - the boys, the girls. It was awesome. I love kickball. One time, Nate Thompson kicked it all the way to the to the swing set. It was amazing. OK, that's a whole other story for another time. But we would line up and pick teams.

And part of what you're doing when you pick somebody is you're saying, I think you bring value to the team. I think you can help me win. If you have been chosen as part of the people of God. God thinks you have value until he calls you home. You still have a purpose. And there are specific things that maybe to you that are specific and there's general things to the people of God. And if you don't know what your purpose is, I've said this to teenagers for years. If you don't know what your specific God ordained purpose is then care for orphans and widows, because we know that that is pure religion. So if you're like, I don't know what God wants me to do, find an orphan, find a widow and take care of them, because we know for sure that that is a good thing to do. So while you're trying to figure out the rest, do that. OK, you got me on my soapbox on that one. Sorry. All right. Next, royal priesthood now. And there's a lot of ways we could think about this. But, you know, the first thing we maybe have to do is deconstruct for a moment. I grew up in a very Catholic community. And so when I hear priest, I automatically think of the guy with the white collar who's a Catholic minister. That is not what this is. So let's remove that from our brains. This is about the temple priests.

And they had a very different kind of role. And in the passage even says that their job was to offer sacrifices. You remember reading about this, that was part of their job, that the people would bring their sin offerings and their their wave offerings and all the different things that they would bring and that the priests would create this important function. They were the bridge, the go between between God and his people. And so if you are a part of the royal priesthood, your job is sort of twofold. It means, number one, you are to serve God ministered to God, serve God. And secondly, you are to minister to to serve people. I mean, that lines up with a lot of things. Jesus said, doesn't it? You serve God and serve people. But you also get the beautiful job of being that go-between, of being that ambassador of Christ to a world that may not know him. What a privilege it is to serve God by telling other people the truth about who he is. It is a beautiful and a wonderful thing, but it's also a big responsibility to be the representative of the kingdom. So we can find joy in that. But we also have to find responsibility in that. You're also a holy nation, that a nation is not just a bunch of individuals, it's a nation. It's connected with a shared identity. And God's people are distinct partially because they're part of a whole that is connected in unity in Christ.

See, nations are typically connected by other factors, by geopolitical factors, by racial factors, by rivers, by linguistic factors, by socioeconomic reasons. These are typically the things that determine a nation. But God's nation of people is a different determination. It has a different kind of border and it transcends all of those categories. The thing that makes the people of God, the people of God, is that they follow the same leader and that leader is Jesus. That's the thing that makes the people of God, the people of God, and friends I hope that allegiance to this nation, the nation of God's people, I hope your allegiance to that nation is greater than the one you live in. I hope you feel more of an affinity with Christ followers who live on a different continent and look different than you and speak a different language with you than you. I hope you feel a greater connection with them than just somebody who happens to live down the road from you because your primary identity is in Christ Jesus and it needs to be more important than your citizenship of any country. Secondly, a holy nation does not mean a perfect one. And praise God for that because I don't know about y'all. I would not qualify for a perfect nation. Right? We all make mistakes sometimes. It can't possibly mean that. Most of the Old Testament is telling us stories about how the nation of Israel failed.

I mean, that's pretty much what the Old Testament is. And most of the New Testament is warnings against how bad the early church was failing. So, you know, it can't it just can't mean that it can't mean perfect people. But I do think that the nation has a holy purpose to serve God and to serve others. And because it's led by a holy leader, Jesus himself. It's not a president or a prime minister or anything else. It's led by God himself. And that's why it's holy. Fifth. Fourth? One two three. Fourth, God's special possession. You're also God's special possession. What does that mean? Well, for one, I think animals are great. I think you should love your dogs and cats and parrots and hamsters and things. They're wonderful. But it's very clear in Genesis, when God created the animals, he was like, those are good. And then he created people. He's like, those are very good. People are more important than animals. I know. I'm sorry. That was a scandalous thing to say, perhaps in some circles circles. But to God you were special among creation, and that's part of what it means to be God's special possession. But further, it means his people, his nation is special to him as well, and if they're special to him, they should be special to you too, shouldn't they? The things that God gets excited about are things that we should get excited about. It has become pretty popular to say things like, oh, I love Jesus, just not the church.

That could be said a lot. And look, if you want to compare church scars at any time, like I'd be happy to, I find that conversation fascinating. I've been hurt very deeply by churches, you know, over time. I mean, the capital C Church, by the people of God, by the organizations that are local churches have been cut pretty deep. And you probably have too at times. It's OK to be hurt. It's OK to have issues, it's OK to critique. It's not OK to not find special, important - as special and important what God finds special and important. We can't reject his people if he says that they're important, so this is who you are: you're a chosen people, you're a royal priesthood, you're a holy nation, you are God's special possession. If you are a follower of Christ, this is who you are. So what I mean, so what? Oh, that's nice. It makes me feel good. I get to leave church feeling better now because somebody said nice things. No, there's a responsibility. It goes deeper, doesn't it? And it's right there in the passage. This is who you are, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Yeah, that's so what? We get to proclaim the Excellencies, all right. So that's kind of a strange phrase we don't use in normal vernacular.

What does that mean? It basically says we should praise him for his goodness. And there's some practical ways that I think we can do that. First, worship, worship. I mean, spend time with God. You can do it individually. You can do it as a family or a small group. You can do it corporately like we've been doing here this morning. Those are all valid and beautiful expressions of worship. In fact, I would recommend having all three in your life at any given time. We should worship. We should make that beautiful holy waste of time where all we're doing - we're not trying to accomplish anything else - all we're doing is basking in our relationship with God and exalting his name and thanking him for what he has done. That's worship. And what we pay attention to is what we worship, isn't it? So we should pay attention to God. The second thing I would say is serve and teach by serving not out of a sense of duty or guilt, but out of a love for your creator or proclaiming his excellencies. And so I just want to make this point. I appreciate movements in the church that have helped us understand our spiritual gifts. I think that's a good thing. Don't hear me wrong, but is one of my spiritual mentors used to say a lot. It's not about your ability. It's about your availability. You know, there's a lot of things people don't feel called to that need to be done in the Kingdom of God.

And maybe it's more important that you show up than that. You're perfectly aligned with your giftings. I think this is especially true in areas of teaching. If there's a void of teaching, somebody better step into that, even if you don't think that's your gifting, because it's extremely important, especially with children. Okay, look, I know, and when I make a case that we need to teach children, it might sound self-serving because of my role, but I would say two things to you. One, because I'm so passionate about this is why I have that role. But two, I don't care where you do it. I mean, sure, we need help in AWANA, Sunday school and all those things. Yeah, fine. I don't care. Proclaim the excellencies, teach children about Jesus, because the best research we have right now says if they don't get it by 12, there's a very small percentage of chance that they will get it at all. It's exceedingly important that we speak the truth about Jesus to our children in a way that they can understand in a way that they can appreciate. We need to proclaim the excellencies. So if you want to serve and teach to children at the same time, you get like a double gold star. I think in proclaiming the excellencies, it's not a commercial, it's a real conviction. Go serve somewhere else if you need to. I don't care.

OK, third share. I don't need to say a lot about this one. If the good news is actually good, wouldn't we want to share it? I contend that yes indeed we would. We should share the gospel. We should tell people the truth about Jesus and why. Because it's the way the people of God behave. And you belong to a people and you were designed for a purpose. So I want to land the plane here if I can. God cares about your life. Really, you, personally. He actually cares about you. He loves you. He wants a relationship with you. He has called you to himself. And I could say a lot of reasons why I believe that's true. But verse ten says it beautifully and succinctly. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. You know, in a spiritual sense, there's no silver spoons in the family of God. Nobody is just born into the family of God. That's not how it works; you're not born into his grace and mercy. He chooses who he chooses. One of the things that has profoundly impacted me and my family is being a part of this church family and its high value of an appreciation of adoption. There's a lot of people in this room whose families have been touched by adoption. And when adoptive parents make the choice to adopt, it's very similar to what's being said here, you know, there was a point where not literally, but sort of metaphorically, I was able to say to my adopted kids, once you are not a Martin and now you're a Martin.

And that's a beautiful thing to be able to say. And there's a unique thing even about, as I was thinking about this in our story, you know, older child adoption is a little bit unique because there's this person who they already exist. You know, they have a name and they have a history and they have a life and they have memories. And you just, you just decide to love them and make them yours. And it's this really unique thing. You just decide and you make the decision completely disregarding anything having to do with their behavior. It doesn't matter. You don't even know about it. Yet you just decide to. And I think that's God's heart towards you. You know, God's not surprised by your shortcomings and your sin. He's not unaware of all the ways you've rejected him in the past or spoke against him. He's not blind to your baggage. God knows all these things. And he loves you anyway because your sin and failure is not even factored into it. He just chooses who he chooses. His love is perfect. So, OK, so now what? Now, what do we do with that? Well, there's kind of two ways we can go here. I mean, some of you listening today, maybe you're not in the family of God and you know it.

You're not a part of the people of God. You've not crossed over from death to life. And that's OK. We're so glad you're here. Your next step looks like this. You need to receive it. I mean, if nobody's ever said it to you this way before, just know this. God knows exactly who you are, exactly where you're coming from. He knows everything about you and he loves you. And he wants you in his family. And the beautiful thing about the family of God is that there's always room for more. And so he is inviting you into his family right here and now in this space. And you can choose to receive it. You can choose to trust Jesus and join his family. On the other side of it, maybe you are a part of God's family, maybe you are a part of that one 11th already, and if you are, then you have an opportunity and a responsibility. So you need to do maybe one of three things. I would argue you either need to remember, repent or respond. If you're part of the family of God and you're sitting on this truth today about your identity, then you either need to remember, repent or respond. If you need to remember, maybe your operative question is this. Do you believe that you belong to the people of God? I mean, do you just believe that it maybe it starts there? Maybe you need to remember that God declared over you.

This is who you are. You are special to me. And you matter. If you've been having a lot of hateful self talk, for example, if that's part of the way that you've been operating in your life, maybe you need to remember. This is what we do at Passover. We remember the goodness of God and we remember how it applies to our life. We remember his faithfulness. So maybe your next step is remembering. Maybe your next step is repenting. Are you living outside God's design for your purpose? Did God speak to you that you have one of those heart sicknesses going on and you need to turn from that and you need to take some next steps. You need to be digging into the word more. You need to pursue spiritual milk. Maybe there's a repentance thing that needs to happen and you need to come before God with that. Or maybe you need to respond. Maybe you need to think about practically how you're proclaiming the excellencies, not just like waiting for that perfect God ordained opportunity to hit you, but to actually go seek out a chance to preach the gospel, to teach the good news, to serve somebody actively. So the worst team is going to come back out and we're going to have a chance to sing in response here. And I would encourage you to think about which of these things it might be received. Remember, repent or respond.

In II Samuel 6 we find David dancing as he worships the LORD, while his wife watches with scorn. What can this text teach about our own worship?

Thank you, worship team. If you have your Bible, I invite you to turn to 2 Samuel in your Old Testament, 2 Samuel 6. This is the fourth and last Sunday and this month's emphasis on the Christian practice of worship. And this morning, we go back into the Old Testament to a story. It's not one of your more well-known stories in the Old Testament. If you've done an Old Testament read through, you may have come across it, but you may not have been sure of what was going on in the story. And we're going to unpack that story this morning as part of looking at what does it mean for us to be more and more engaged in worship? I'm going to pick up the story at verse 12 of Second Samuel, Chapter six. There is some content before it, of course, that is relevant, but we'll try and fill that in as we go. So let's hear God's word. So David went down to Gath and he brought the Ark of God from the house of Obed Edom to the city of David, that's Jerusalem, with a great celebration. After the men who were carrying the Ark of the Lord had gone six steps, David sacrificed a ball and a fattened calf, and David danced before the Lord with all of his might wearing a linen ephod.

So David and all the people of Israel brought up the Ark of the Lord with shouts of joy and with the blowing of Ram's horns. But as the Ark of the Lord entered the city of David, Michal, the daughter of Saul, looked down from her window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, she was filled with contempt for him. They brought the Ark of the Lord and set it in the place inside the special tent that David had prepared for it. And David sacrificed burnt offerings and peace offerings to the Lord. When he had finished his sacrifices, David blessed the people in the name of the Lord of Hosts. Then he gave to every Israelite man and woman in the crowd a loaf of bread and a cake of dates and a cake of raisins. Then all the people returned to their homes. When David returned to home to bless his own family, Michal, the daughter of Saul, came out to meet him. She said in disgust, "How distinguished the King of Israel looked today, shamelessly uncovering himself in the sight of the servant girls like any vulgar person might do". David retorted to Michael, "I was dancing before the Lord. I was dancing before the Lord who chose me above your father and all his family. He appointed me as the leader of Israel, the people of the Lord.

So I celebrate before the Lord. Yes. And I'm willing to look even more foolish than this, even to be humiliated in my own eyes. I will be honored by those servant girls you spoke about." So Michal, the daughter of Saul, remained childless throughout her entire life. What is the context of this story, the people of Israel, at least the people who lived in the city of Jerusalem, the city of David, were celebrating the bringing of the ark of the Covenant, the ark of God into the city of Jerusalem, really for its first time. And the ark of the Covenant is described in Exodus 25. You can go there a little later if you want, and you can look and you can see how God describes how it's to be made and its purpose and what it's for. And then if you flip ahead a few chapters to Exodus 37, you can see the how it was actually accomplished and how it was built. Now, this ark, as you may know, if you've studied the Old Testament, at all it contained the tablets that had the Ten Commandments on it. It contained Aaron's rod. It contained a jar of manna. And 70 years earlier, 70 years before we pick up this story here in second Samuel six, the ark was captured by the Philistines. And for a short time, the Philistines kept it with them in their nation, their territory with disastrous results.

God brought plague and sickness on the Philistines to the point where they finally repented and they sent the ark away. And then for about the next 50 years, the ark resided in the home of a man named Abinadab. And during this time David becomes King. Saul is no longer king, David becomes king, and David desires, rightly so, to bring the ark into the city of David, Jerusalem, the capital city, to restore it to its place among its among the Covenant people. So he attempts this. We didn't read these verses, but you can read about his first attempt in the first 11 verses of second Samuel Chapter six, but again, with disastrous results. He did not follow God's instructions for how the ark was to be moved. And so God's judgment comes down and someone dies as a result of that. And it strikes fear into the heart of David and all the people with him at that time. They don't bring the ark into Jerusalem. They store it for, at least for a short time, nearby Jerusalem in the home of a man named Obed Edom. And that's where we pick up the story when David hears about the blessing on the household of Obed Edom because of the arks presence, and then he goes to rightly bring it back to Jerusalem. Now, what is significant about this? Well, the ark is the symbol of the Lord's presence among his people.

God is everywhere. God is omnipresent. So you can't confine him to one place or one area. But God in his graciousness, God, in order to be understood by his people, he manifests his presence. And for the people of Israel at that time, he manifests his presence around this symbol, this ark of the covenant. The ark itself wasn't God, but God chose to make his presence known. And so it was entirely appropriate that David bring in the ark of the Covenant, that symbol of God's presence into the capital city, to be there among the covenant people. So you can understand why bringing the ark into Jerusalem finally, after all this time, it erupted in worship. It created this event, this celebratory event of worship and it's worship that we see that all the people of Israel join in. I mean, we see David reacting and leaping and dancing. But the text makes it clear it's all the people of Israel, really all the people in Jerusalem at that time. We see it especially in David, though, don't we? In verse fourteen, we see that David was worshipping unrestrained. It says that he was dancing with all his might before the Lord. And then there's this interesting reference that he was wearing a linen ephod while doing that. Now, what's a linen ephod? Again, if you know your Old Testament, there's a special ephod that the priests wore. That's not what's being talked about here.

There's a more common ephod. It's almost an undergarment, but not in the way that we think of when we think of underwear. It's a very common garment that would be worn by the Levites, the men who assisted the priests in worship. It was the garment of the common people. That's not all that he was wearing at the beginning of this event, we don't see this here in second Samuel, but if we look at the parallel account in 1 Chronicles 15, we see 1 Chronicles 15:27 that as this began, David was wearing a robe, a linen robe over his ephod. What's this robe? This is his kingly robe. This is his his uniform. You might say that that indicated that he is king of Israel. But First Chronicles 15 tells us that at the beginning of this event, he takes off his kingly robe. He lays it aside. So as this worship is happening, he's wearing what everybody else is wearing. He's wearing a common linen ephod. That's even implied in Michael's comment in verse 20, when she accuses him of shamelessly uncovering himself, she's talking about the fact that he took off his kingly robe. What's going on here? Well, David is humbling himself. David is not coming before God to worship him as the king of Israel. He's humbling himself before God by laying aside his kingly robes. Store that in your mind, we will come back to that.

Verse 16 describes David leaping and dancing before the Lord. There is nothing unrestrained about how he's worshipping, is there? He is he is not reserved. He is worshipping God with his full heart manifested even in his bodily actions. Why? He's filled with joy. He's filled with joy that the presence of the Lord is being brought into Jerusalem. He's filled with joy as he reflects upon all God has done for him and all God has done from Israel. And it's that joy that bubbles up in him that that he doesn't restrain. He lets it come out with leaping and with dancing. David abandons himself, we could say, in the worship of the Lord. There is nothing restrained about his enthusiasm. He lets his zeal loose. Now, notice the contrast between David and his dress and his behavior and Michal or Michael. And let me let me make a note on that pronunciation. I'm going to I'm going to say, Michael, throughout the rest of this time, the Hebrew name, we're not exactly sure how to pronounce it. And it's got this guttural in it. It's like Michal or Michal and I don't know how to say it. I'm not going to say it well. So I'm just going to go with Michael for the rest of the sermon. But that's that is who I'm speaking about. But look at how we see of Michal or Michael now.

I'm catching myself to it. Look at what we see Michal and how she reacts to what's going on here. Again, verse sixteen, Michal, the daughter of Saul, looked down from her window. Now, that's an interesting observation, all of Jerusalem are in the streets. They've known the ark is being brought into Jerusalem and so all the people of Jerusalem gather in the streets to worship and celebrate the ark being brought in. But even though she has the choice Michal for whatever reason. We'll see. Maybe in a moment she stays in her or her palace. She stays and she just looks down on what's happening from her window. The way I would put it is this. Michael observes the worship, but she doesn't join in to the worship. Michal is is is withholding herself, she is she is detached, she is calm and collected or cool and collected. She is she is unmoved by the enthusiasm and the passion of the people. Michal observes the worship, but she doesn't join in the worship. Hold that thought as well. We'll come back to it. But what is I think most revealing is what we see about the way that Michal reacts to David's worship. She reacts to David's worship, we're told in the text with scorn, with contempt. Verse 16, when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, she was filled with contempt for him. You know what contempt is. John Gottman, Dr.

John Gottman, pretty well nationally known marriage researcher, counselor and marriage researcher, did this extensive study of married couples, particularly married couples that were struggling. Watch them study them over time, which couples made it and their marriage survive, which couples ended up breaking up and getting divorced? He found four factors four factors that he could routinely see in some pattern in all of the couples that didn't make it, that ended in divorce. And one of those stood out more than any other factor. And that was contempt when there was contempt in a marriage, one spouse towards the other or both spouses towards each other, he said virtually the marriage is over at that point. Hard to recover when there's contempt in the marriage. Contempt in a relationship is that way that we look down and we judge somebody else. We in some way, even if we wouldn't say this, we think that we're better than them. And so we look down on them with scorn. We speak to them sarcastically. Well, that's what we see here of Michal towards her husband, by the way. I haven't mentioned that yet. But this is her husband. Michal has contempt towards David as she sees him worship. Now, there is a complicated marriage between David and Michal, and I don't have time to go into it all. But Michal was actually David's first wife. He married other women, but she was his first wife. Michael, as we're told over and over again in this text is the daughter of Saul and very early and God raising David up.

Michal becomes infatuated. She she falls in love, I guess we could say, with David, the great hero. And so Saul gives Michal to David in marriage. But then, you know, if you've read through the stories of Saul that Saul quickly turns against David, Saul pursues David and tries to kill them. And in turning against David, he takes Michal back from David. He actually gives her to another man in marriage. And Michal remarries, marries this second man. Well, sometime later in the story, after much time has passed and there's been a lot of water under the bridge, David takes Michal back and her husband, her second husband isn't dead. He rips her really from his arms and and takes her back. And so this is a complicated relationship. This is a woman probably who, again, in early infatuation and then a lot of water under the bridge and and controversy and conflict between her husband and her father, that probably led to some distancing. And then we'll give her credit. She may have genuinely come to love her second husband and then being forced to leave him and come back to David. It's a complicated relationship, but I think what we see the most about her is in the author's reference here. And second, Samuel six to he doesn't refer to her as the wife of David, does he? He refers to her several times as the daughter of Saul.

And I think that tells us a lot. She likely resented David succeeding her father's throne because she's the daughter of Saul and she knows if David becomes king, then Saul's lineage, Saul's house is going to come to an end. And she probably had some bitterness about that. She probably, as the daughter of Saul, felt that she was a king's daughter. And yet here is her husband, who is embarrassing her by his behavior. She likely thought, as the daughter of Saul, that for any king to lay aside his his robe, that's just utterly appalling, to lower himself, to put himself among the common people like that. She likely, as the daughter of Saul, thought that his behavior was unbecoming of a king. And so she looks at contempt. She looks with contempt upon his his zeal. For her maybe, you know, we don't know if the full extent of her heart, but for her, maybe when you worshipped it was about how you appear to others. It's formalism, its appearance for her. If you are the king or the daughter of a king or the wife of a king, there is a pride that you must uphold. And all of this spills out in this poisonous contempt that she has, that she demonstrates towards him. Listen to the scorn and the contempt in her words, in verse 20 and just it's dripping with sarcasm, is it not, "how distinguished the king of Israel look today, shamelessly, shamelessly uncovering himself in the sight of the servant girls like any vulgar person might do?" Vulgar - don't read that word necessarily as profane read that word is common.

She she has scorn towards him, contempt towards him because he's made himself who - he's a king and he's made himself like all the common people. And then the reference to servant girls, you know, we can infer from that that what bothered her most is, is all these servant girls that she had there, they're going to be whispering about David, laughing at him behind her back. And so that is what is most upsetting to her. Michal's focus was on how David's worship appeared to others, not to God, but to others. To her, outward appearance was extremely important. And so she's embarrassed by his actions. Why? Because she cares more about what others think about him and therefore her as as the queen than she does about God. Freddy Fritz, a preacher I like, said this, Michal reminds us of people who attend worship, who come to church and attend worship and and really their primary motive is to be seen by others. And so they're all about outward appearance. They're all about what do other people think of me as I worship? There's no heart relationship with God. What do we know is important to God, 1 Samuel, 16, God says, yeah, man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.

That's what's important to God, not what what you look like in worship. Contrast that with the complete opposite response that we see in David as he responds in verse twenty one, I was dancing before the Lord. I will celebrate before the Lord, what is David acknowledging there by using that phrase over and over again, his worship is for God's benefit. He worships for an audience of one. His actions are all about what is pleasing to God. David's worship is not intended to please others, he's not performing for the crowds. He's not trying to make his wife happy. His focus is not on what other people think of him. Again, store that away; we'll come back to that thought. We see this further in verse 22, he says, yes, and I'm willing to look even more foolish than this, even to be humiliated in my eyes. And David's acknowledging there that even if the servant girls laugh at me behind their backs and before I finish that thought, my guess is the very opposite happened. My guess is that all the servants and all the common people, they see their king worshipping just like them, not as their king just worshipping as a man who loves the Lord God. They see the genuineness of his expression and they're drawn in, I think. But David's saying here, even if I'm humiliated by what the servant girls and others think of me, it's still - I have an audience of one.

I'm not doing it for them. And so I will worship even more like this to please the Lord. He will not focus on himself. His focus is on the Lord. That's the story. What does this story speak to us today about how we worship, I believe it illustrates the truth that that what is important in worship is not about how we dress. It's not about how we sing. It's not about the quality of our voice. It's not about how we act, whether we raise our hands or don't raise our hands. Worship is all about the state of our heart. Now the state of our heart may produce things externally, but what matters to God is the state of our heart, and that's the picture I think that we're given here. This is a real historical story. And it had consequences historically. But even so, or maybe over and beyond that, it's given to us because both David and Michal, they illustrate something for us. Both witness the ark of God coming into Jerusalem. This event that should produce worship, but both respond in very different ways. And the way they respond reveals their hearts. And maybe one of the ways that you can think about this as we go a little further here for these last couple of minutes is: Am I more like David or am I more like Michal as I come to worship? So allow me to guide you in examining your heart, and I need to tell you, I've done this first with my own heart.

This pierces me. And so I've asked these questions of myself first. But let me ask you these questions. First of all, this first question is a little more abstract, but I'll explain it. Do you desire that the ark be restored to its proper place among God's covenant people? OK, that's that's a little vague. So let me let me bring that down to the level where we live. Remember what the ark is. The Ark is the visible presence, the symbol of God's presence among his people. That's under the old covenant. How does God make his presence known to us today through Christ? Christ, Christ Jesus is not only the symbolic presence of God, he is God incarnate, he is God in the flesh, he is Emmanuel God with us. So when we come to worship, just like David's focus was on restoring the ark to its proper place, is our focus in worship, if we are followers of Jesus Christ, is to raise up Christ to his proper place among his people. Is our focus more on - is Christ being lifted up and glorified than it is on whether I like the music or don't like the music or whether I'm comfortable or not comfortable or whether we're standing too much or we're sitting too much or whatever it is.

However, you define whether you like a particular worship service or not. Is it the heart of us; is the center of our heart that Christ is to be lifted up. Christ is to be restored to his proper place among his people. The more we can maintain that focus, the more it brings everything else about worship, about our public worship into perspective. Does your heart desire to see Christ lifted up and glorified? Second question. Will you watch from the window? Or will you join in the celebration? You can come to worship week after week and be watching from the window. You know what I mean? Think about Michal. Michal had the opportunity. She was there in the city, but she didn't join in the worship. Is that you you're here, but you're kind of on the edges, you don't really let yourself get drawn into the worship. Michal was was detached. Michal was unmoved by the enthusiasm and the zeal that she saw among the other people that you? Do you look around and and see other people worshipping and being drawn into worship at you for whatever reasons or whatever is going on in your heart, you know. No, no, you're going to maintain a distance. You're going to be collected. You're going to be calm. You're not going to let this move you. Michal was contemptuous towards the enthusiastic, zealous display of worship. Is that you? Do you look at other people, whether however they're acting, however they're behaving, maybe tears in their eyes, and you look down on them, do you judge them? Do you think that somehow you're better than them? What weak people they must be to be reacting like that? Are you watching from the window or are you joining in the celebration or are you coming down to the street and joining in the celebration, you can come to church Sunday after Sunday and you can watch from the window every one of those Sundays.

Thirdly, will you lay aside your robes and humble yourself? Remember what David did? He removed not just his outer garment, which happened to be a robe, he removed the symbol of his kingship. He took off what distinguished himself from the common people there that day and he laid it aside. What does that tell us, David, wasn't there to be seen as the king, David wasn't there, so that in the midst of worship, everybody gave deference to the king. David was there to join in the worship with all of the other people. He laid aside his kingly robe, humbling himself. What about you? What's your robe? You know, some of us come with a robe of our status, maybe it's status that we gain from our vocation where we work, maybe it's the status we have in the community, maybe it's status that we've accumulated from what we've earned and what we possess. Some of us come wearing the robe of our accomplishments and maybe our educational degrees or all these wonderful things that we've accomplished in life.

Those are not bad. But do we wear them like a robe? Do we wear them in some way to set ourselves apart, to distinguish ourselves? How does that robe, if you insist on wearing it, insist on distancing yourself from other people? How does that robe remove you, hold you back from worship? How does that keep you from joining in? How does that robe even continue to a heart where pride is growing? A.W. Towser says this about worship, worship humbles you. The proud man or woman can't worship God any more than the proud devil can worship God. There must be humility in heart before there can be worship. And this morning, if you're convicted, that in one way or another, you wear a robe as you come in to worship your status, your accomplishments, your position, maybe it's the spirit telling you this morning you need to lay aside your robe. You need to come in your linen ephod. Come and like everybody else, everybody equal at the foot of the cross and worship in that way. Next, are you willing to even look foolish? Remember that phrase that David used, are you willing to even look foolish as you worship? And by that I mean not concerned about what others think of you. That's David. David's actions aren't intended to to please anybody else.

They're intended to please only the Lord. His focus is not, what's the crowd thinking of me? What are those servant girls thinking of me. His focus is only upon the Lord. When you worship, are you performing for other people, whether you are fully engaged or whether you hold yourself back, is what's driving you there? What are the people around me thinking? What's my family thinking? Or as you worship, are you focused on Christ? What pleases him, what brings him glory? Will you offer your worship before the Lord? Remember that phrase that David uses? I will worship before the Lord, I will celebrate before the Lord. Will you offer your worship before the Lord - another word for his pleasure, for his approval alone? Do you perform for the audience or do you perform for the audience of one? Finally, will you celebrate? That's the word that David uses to to describe his what this worship, this day of worship is. Will you celebrate? Will you celebrate with enthusiasm and joyful expression? Not every act of worship is a celebration. There's there's times for for grieving in worship, there's times for repentance in worship. But overwhelmingly in churches all across this nation, celebration is not descriptive of what worship is. And that's what we see. That's what we see in and Psalm 150 that we read today. It's a celebration. And for David, that celebratory spirit, that zeal and that enthusiasm, it bubbled over in leaping and dancing.

That may not be you. But again, what would your heart, if it is genuinely engaged in worship, what would your heart cause your body to do if you let go of the restraint, if you've quit thinking about what other people thought about you, do you hold back in worship avoiding outward expression? Again, I'm not saying that the standard is everybody should be raising their hands, but do you hold back in any way from what God the spirit moving in you would prompt you to do because you're concerned about what other people would think? As you examine your heart, let me close with these comments about worship by Douglas Stewart. This actually comes from a commentary of Exodus not second Samuel, but a commentary on Exodus where the sections where God is prescribing how he is to be worshipped? But it fits so well here. Stewart says this - worship is the first most basic response of a true believer to the true God. It should begin immediately upon conversion. Our worship should continue with regularity and consistency throughout the rest of life, and our worship will be continued forever in heaven. He goes on to say, It is clear in scripture that God enjoys being worshipped and he expects his people to find joy in worshipping him as well. Worship should bring pleasure and benefit both to the worshipper - that's us - and to the true divine object of his or her worship.

That's Christ, that's Christ. Is that your heart? It's not fully my heart, that's what I want my heart to be. We can pray for that. We can ask for that. Let's do that now. Let's pray. We thank you for this story, Lord, in your word. In the midst of where this fits in the history of the Old Testament, it speaks today to us. And Lord, we see in David and Michal, we see two different states of heart as they come to worship. And Lord, it's two different states that help us examine our own hearts. Oh, Lord, I pray that my brothers and sisters here today, they with me would say, I want my heart to be like David's. Too often my heart is like Michal's, make my heart like David's Lord, make worship my first my most basic response to all that you are and all that you have done for us in Christ. Lord your word here, it gives us many ways that the spirit may desire to convict us and to cause us to repent and then change us and transform us. We pray that you do that work. We we open our hearts for you to do that, to examine our hearts and change our hearts by what you've revealed in your word here today, we want to be a people who worship you, who worship you as a celebration. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

How do we "worship God acceptably" (Hebrews 12:28)? What are the dangers of indifference, and how do they affect our worship?

What a blessing to have our youth worship team leading us and worship this morning. Don't you agree? And I am so glad to be back with you. I have a son who is a missionary in Alaska and he was home for a brief couple of days at our home in New York. So I flew back there to get a little time with him before he spends the next six months up there in Alaska. We are in the subject all this month of worship. And let me just frame that for you again so you you have a feel, especially if you are new, what we're doing. We as church leadership, we have worked through how do we even begin to measure and therefore encourage someone in their growth as a follower of Jesus Christ? And we've come up with some definition of a maturing follower of Jesus is growing in certain core beliefs - that's head - and certain core virtues - that's hearts - and certain core practices - that's hands. Two months ago we we took one of the beliefs and we worked through it all that month. Last month we worked through one of the virtues. This month, April, we are working through one of the practices and that particular practice is worship. We began that on Easter Sunday with that glorious scene in Revelation 5, the worship around the throne. Last week Josh picked that up, speaking about what it means to worship in spirit and in truth. And today we're going to look at another text of worship that comes near the end of Hebrews: Hebrews 12:28. Let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe. What does it mean to offer to God acceptable worship? Now, if you look at that verse in isolation all by itself, what is acceptable worship? You probably naturally, like I do, start to answer the question, what is acceptable worship? You answer it from the framework of your upbringing, what kind of church experience, if any, that you've had in your past. You answer it from your culture because culture here in the United States and how that affects worship is very different than other places in the world. You answer it even to a certain extent by your personal preferences, the kinds of music you like and don't like, the kinds of of service elements that you like and don't like. We all do that. We all bring our own definitions to what makes worship acceptable. The issue is if we look at this verse in isolation and we begin to do that, we really miss; it's a swing and a miss because you may be aware of the old maxim, a text without the context is a pretext. To take this text without understanding the bigger context of the letter to the Hebrews. And why this verse appears where it does is to make a pretext out of acceptable worship. And I've seen too many people do that. I've been guilty of it, of myself Using this verse to justify certain kinds of dress, certain kinds of musical styles, certain elements and practices and worship service. So in order not to make that mistake of making a text without a context into a pretext, we want to look at the bigger context of the letter to the Hebrews. Why does this verse appear as it does near the very end of the letter to the Hebrews? To understand this, we need to understand. first of all, this verse appears in the final warning of five warnings that are given throughout the letter to the Hebrews. Hebrews, if you're not familiar with that book, Hebrews was written to those who came from Hebraic Judaism. They were genuine believers. These are first century men and women who'd embraced Jesus Christ as savior and Lord. But they were Jewish. They came out of Judaism into following Jesus. And in that time, in those those situations, that was not an easy thing to do. There was a lot of pressure to go back into Judaism. There was a lot of pressure on these early believers to resume temple worship. And so it rose even to the level of outright persecution for you to be somebody of Jewish heritage who now followed Jesus and had given up temple worship and given up the sacrificial system. And even though the circumstances are very different then than they are today, I think in many ways there are similarities to what we face today. If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you know Christ as savior and Lord, you live in the midst of a culture - I don't even really have to tell you this - that is becoming increasingly hostile to you faithfully following Jesus Christ. It's becoming increasingly hostile to saying that there is absolute truth given to us in the word of God, the Bible, and that we are actually to pattern our lives according to what the Lord speaks to us in his word. It is tempting for us like these early Hebrew Christians. It is tempting for us to compromise. It is tempting for us to just let go of some of the things that our culture says. Things are going to get harder for you if you hold on to those things. So in some ways, we know the tension that the Hebrew believers were facing here. And in that way, this letter by the Holy Spirit speaks to us. Now, a couple things that you just really need to understand. This letter was written to genuine believers. There are people out there who think that that this is written in some cases to spurious believers, people who who proclaim faith but were not really believers. I don't have time to go into it now, but the language used throughout the letter indicates these people are genuine believers who are under persecution and temptation to return to Judaism, What the writer does under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, speaking to those first century Jewish believers, speaking to us today, the writer encourages them and us to faithfully persevere, even to press on to greater spiritual maturity. And he shows them what's at the core of why they would want to do this. He shows them how Christ, how the gospel, they are superior to Judaism, how the whole Old Testament actually points to Jesus, points and prepares us for the revelation of Jesus Christ. And in doing this throughout the letter, he punctuates his argument in five different places with warnings. He gives a warning five different times based upon what he has just said. And I'm going to give you just a brief overview of the warnings - the actual text today comes in the middle of the fifth warning. That's where we're going to spend our time. But I want to give you just the bigger picture very briefly. Now, what are the warnings about? These are not warnings, as I study and understand this, these are nNot warnings about the danger that you can lose your salvation. He's writing to genuine believers who who God has promised will cause to persevere in their faith. But the warnings are about what can happen, how we can actually face God's chastening in this life if we don't heed the warnings, We can even, probably more serious - there is a possible loss of rewards at the judgment seat of Christ, rewards in the coming kingdom of Jesus Christ if we don't heed these warnings. R.T. Kendall has said it this way, R.T. Kendall, British evangelist, I've quoted him before, about a century before us. Here's what he said. See if this applies to you. The devil wants to get Christians to think that all that matters is being saved or lost. You hear that the devil would like you to think that you made that decision to follow Christ at some point in the past, you're done, you're good. It doesn't matter how you live now, you've got your insurance. Kendel goes on to say, though, the devil doesn't want you to know or to think about the truth that there is reward or loss to be meted out at the judgment seat of Christ. That being saved and you're not going to lose that salvation, how you live now, how you follow Christ directly impacts whether you will receive reward or whether you will experience grief when you stand before Christ at the judgment seat of Christ. That's what these warnings are all about. Let me just briefly go through the first four and then we'll spend the remainder of our time on the fifth one. The first warning that we see appearing at the beginning of Chapter two is about the danger of drifting, the danger of slowly drifting away from the truth and drifting away from the truth of the gospel. But in the context of this letter, specifically drifting away from the truth of the reality of Christ's kingdom, the reality of what we actually live for, of our inheritance. And how how we live now impacts that drifting away from it, he warns us. The second warning we find starting in Chapter three and extending into Chapter four. This is the danger of disbelieving. This is this is the danger of our hearts actually becoming callous to this truth, of of hardening to this truth of Christ's future reign, of Christ's future Kingdom, of letting all the times that we hear about that and read about that in scripture just to go in one ear and out the other of becoming callous to it. The third warning we find beginning in Chapter five and extending into Chapter six, the danger of degenerating, In other words, in the context in which he writes here in Chapter five and chapter Chapter six, he says that there are opportunities for you and I as believers that we can actually lose if we don't faithfully follow Christ. There are blessings, particularly future kingdom blessings, that we actually forfeit if we don't press on to maturity. You know the temptation of that, don't you? I certainly feel it. That temptation just to coast. I know I'm saved, you know, I know I'm going to be with Christ in heaven. It's kind of hard to live faithfully for Christ. So I'll just go along with the flow. I'll just coast because I'm good, right? I've got my salvation. You know, that temptation to coast. This is exactly what he's warning against. He's saying you're not going to lose your salvation by coasting. But there are opportunities. There are our future rewards that you will forfeit, that you may forfeit just by living a life in this time, in this earthly life, of coasting. The fourth warning we find in Chapter ten near the end of Chapter Ten, it is the warning about the danger of willful sin. What is willful sin? That is when we do something, knowing, you know, that that is not what God wants. And in the context the writer is talking about, when we know the truth about the reality of Christ's coming kingdom and how we are to be faithful servants now, found ready and waiting and faithfully serving when the master returns, when we know that. But instead we make choices. We make life choices to be comfortable. We make life choices to be accepted by the culture. We make choices that feed our desires, our fleshly desires. And in so doing, we willfully sin against the knowledge that God has given us of the future coming kingdom of Christ. Well, those are the first four warnings. Don't have time to go into those. They've been incredibly convicting to me as I've studied this over the last couple of weeks. But now we get to the fifth warning where our text for today, really our whole subject of worship today comes from. We find this fifth warning in Chapter twelve. It starts roughly at verse fifteen and continues through verse twenty nine. It is the warning about the danger of indifference, the danger of indifference. It is a warning against carelessly neglecting the truth that we hear about the kingdom, about our future inheritance. What do you think of when you hear the word indifference? You know, I don't care much for modern dictionaries, They seem to change all the time and add new words that I really have issues with. But I go back to the very first dictionaries by Daniel Webster, a faithful follower of Jesus Christ, And he started publishing his dictionaries in the early eighteen hundreds. My favorite is the eighteen twenty eight edition of Webster's Dictionary. He brings in scripture in his definitions. They're so meaty and pithy. And here's how in the 1828 Webster's Dictionary, he defines indifference. Indifference he says is unconcernedness. I had to practice saying that word unconcernedness being unconcerned. Indifference, he says, is a state of the mind when it feels no anxiety, no interest in what is presented to it. Think about that definition when you think about worship, indifference into worship is being unconcerned, maybe you're here on a Sunday morning, but you're really unconcerned about what's happening. You're really unconcerned about whether your heart is prepared to worship. Indifference to worship is that state of mind where we really were here maybe, but we have no interest really in what is being presented and what is happening as we come together to worship the savior together. That is the kind of indifference that we are warned against that this phrase offer acceptable worship appears in and that we need to understand it in. Here's maybe another way to think about it. You may or may not know who this is. Elie Wiesel survived the Nazi extermination camps. Auschwitz and Buchenwald, I believe, went on to to write and speak extensively throughout the world since since he survived the camps. And he said this, quote, maybe you've heard it. It's well known. "The opposite of love is not hate. It's indifference." I'm not speaking about love today, but I want to apply that same logic to worship, I would borrow his words and I would say this as we think about worship, the opposite of worship is not blasphemy. it's indifference. The opposite of worship is being indifferent to it. And it's this that this final warning and Hebrews 12 speaks to as it explains how you and I can become indifferent to worship, even if we're here, even if we're we're participating in the service, how our hearts and our minds can become indifferent. Let me take you briefly through the high points of this warning in Chapter 12. In verse 16 of Chapter 12, we are warned about the indifference that is seen, that is in the example of Esau. Esau, if you if you remember, if you've read through Genesis before. In Genesis 25, what does he do? He is the oldest son, has the birthright he's going to inherit from his father, but he really doesn't care. And in a moment where his physical desires, in this case, his hunger motivates him more than than anything that he can't touch yet because it's in the future. He trades away, well, what the scripture says he sells his birthright in exchange for one meal. He trades it to his brother for a bowl of soup. Basically, what's going on there? Esau in his worldliness, he sees no value in this birthright, this future thing, this inheritance that he can't yet touch and put his hands on. He doesn't recognize the significance of the privileges that he was forfeiting until it was too late. And after he trades it away, even though he realizes that later and he wants it back and he wants his father to rectify the situation, it's too late. It's gone because of his indifference, because of his thoughtlessness. And so the writer to the letter of the letter to Hebrews, he raises this as an example so that we are warned not to become indifferent to the coming kingdom that there is if you follow Christ, there is an inheritance. There is an opportunity to rule and reign with Jesus Christ and his millennial kingdom. and yet we can't see that yet because it's in the future. But we are warned not to become like Esau and to trade that away to forfeit that because in our worldliness, we're more concerned about what is going to meet our needs and our desires and make us comfortable in the present life. Don't become indifferent to the coming kingdom the writer of the letter to Hebrews is saying. In verse twenty two he goes on, and this time he uses, as part of his warning, the symbols of Mount Sinai and Mount Zion. and those are actual literal places, but he's using them symbolically here. Mount Zion, the place and in Exodus, where God appears to the Israelites and wants to speak to them, But they are fearful of him. They are fearful because of the lightning and the clouds and the thunder and the warning not to touch the mountain. And so they tell Moses, we don't want to hear from God directly. Moses, you go and you hear from God and then you come and you speak it to us. So Mt. Sinai, that that old covenant of fear and terror, we can approach God. But the writer of the letter to the Hebrews reminds us that if we are in Christ, if we know Christ as savior and Lord, we don't go to Mount Zion symbolically or Mount Mount Sinai symbolically anymore, we come to Mount Zion. Mount Zion was where Jerusalem is, where specifically where the temple was. And again, he's using this symbolically, but we see it here. We come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem and the countless thousands of angels in a joyful gathering. We have access to God. We don't have to go through an intermediary of Moses anymore in the law. We had this incredible privilege of access to God and yet it is so easy for us to treat that great privilege casually, indifferently, to become indifferent to our access to God. He warns us again against becoming indifferent to the access to God that we have through Christ. In verse 25, he goes on and he warns us further. We're warned by what happened to the Israelites in the wilderness in Exodus 19 and 20. Remember, that is God has rescued them from Egypt and is taking them through the wilderness. But they grumble. Why? Because their desires are not being met. They grumble because life is not comfortable and secure as they would like it to be. And so in grumbling, what does God do? God doesn't wipe them out as the nation of Israel, but all those in that generation who grumble, they don't see the promised land. They forfeit their ability to have that privilege of entering the promised land. Well, think about that as it applies to us. God, who spoke to them through Moses, he now speaks to us directly through Christ, his son. And so we're warned as the writer to the letter to the Hebrews says here, be careful that you do not refuse to listen to the one who is speaking. Is that, it's a temptation I feel, is that a temptation that you feel? That you know, when we come to worship, you know we can become indifferent to hearing God speak. Oh, we got to do that responsive reading again. Why are they picking such a long text to read? Do you have thoughts like that? The word spoken, the word read, the word preached is God speaking through Christ and his word to us. And we are warned, don't become indifferent to that. Don't be like the Israelites grumbling in the wilderness. Verse 26, the warning goes on, verse 26, connects the earthquake that shook Mount Sinai there in the wilderness and Exodus 19. It connects it with the prophecy that God speaks through Hagai in Hagai 2:6, that there is coming a day when God will shake not only the Earth, but also the heavens. What's being discussed there? This is the great physical judgments of the Earth that the Earth will experience when Christ returns, when Christ returns in the glory of his father with all his heavenly angels. And the writer warns us not to be indifferent to that because it is so easy for us to just live like, you know, today is what really matters. Lunch is what really matters. What I'm going to do this afternoon or next week or this coming week is what really matters. It is so easy to become indifferent to the return of Christ to live - Yeah, we know that, but to live not in watchfulness, not not seeking to be faithful servants, awaiting the return of our master, but just those who live for today. Verse twenty nine. Kind of the culmination of these warnings reminds us of the holy character of God that requires the need for judgment. Our God is a consuming fire. And what is the reality here that in Christ, yes, God has has showered us with his grace, God has shown mercy to us, we have access to God and know his loving kindness and his faithfulness. But that doesn't eradicate his holiness. There's nothing contradictory between God's grace and God's holiness. And so the warning here is if we trust in Christ that we don't need to be filled with terror at God's coming judgment, But we should have a healthy respect for it. We should know that God calls us in his grace, with his Spirit in us. He calls us to to live holy lives, to be holy as he is holy. And so the warning here is in our worship and in all of our lives, not to become indifferent to the holiness of God. I really have thought about doing a whole series at some point and Hebrews, because as I've gone through these warnings these last two weeks, they're incredibly convicting to me. They caused me to check my heart. They caused me to really examine how I think and how that impacts my life and my worship. They're a wake up call. They're a wake up call to all of us. And that brings us back to what is acceptable worship in view of these warnings, particularly this last warning about the ways that our hearts can so easily become indifferent. What is it to worship acceptably? What is acceptable worship? What is what is worship that is the opposite of indifference. Well, that's what the writer of Hebrews now shares with us in the last couple verses of Chapter 12. Verse twenty eight: therefore, let us be grateful. Let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken and that kingdom that cannot be shaken. That's not one that we can't see yet. It is the coming millennial reign of Christ. It is the coming kingdom that we are heirs of. But you know what it's like to be an heir. You've got that inheritance, but you can't put your hands on it yet. So sometimes it's hard to believe that it's there, that it's coming. But this kingdom, unlike our present life, cannot be shaken. It is eternal. It is firm. It will not pass away, whereas this life will be shaken and everything will pass away. What does he say for us to do? He's saying that this glorious privilege of our of our coming inheritance of the future kingdom, this glorious privilege that as followers of Christ, we may rule and reign with Christ. That is that is so incredible that our minds cannot even fully conceive it. I know mine can't. And he's saying that should overwhelm us with gratefulness. The opposite of indifference in worship is gratefulness, is being overwhelmed by what awaits us, overwhelmed by the privileges that we have, overwhelmed by the possibility that we may reign as a companion of Christ in his kingdom. And that gratefulness leads us - here's where it brings it into context - to offer acceptable worship. The acceptable worship, if you've heard those two terms before, they appear in Romans 12:1 Be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is good and acceptable and perfect in your service of worship. It's the same idea. It's viewing worship as as bigger than what we do here on a Sunday morning. It is viewing worship as how I offer my life to God in every sphere of my life, how we live at home and at work and in our neighborhoods. It is bringing worship into its true sense. In fact, the word here used for worship, latreuōmen, means worshipful service. The opposite of indifference and worship is worship of service, it is viewing every area of our lives as believers, as an expression of worship. It is seeing everything that we do and speak and choose and even think as a potential. Some offering to God and worship. The opposite of indifference is worshipful service. And our grateful worship must always be offered with reverence and awe. Reverence speaks of an appropriate demeanor, It speaks of how we how we how we view coming before God in worship. Awe speaks of having a godly fear, an awareness of his holiness that gives us circumspection, even caution. And reverence and awe together, it is the natural response to seeing God as he really is. If you've ever read through Isaiah, perhaps you've been caught like I have. And in Isaiah chapter six, where Isaiah is given a vision of the Lord Almighty. And what is it? What is seeing God as he really is and all of his holiness? What's the response that's naturally evoked in Isaiah? He falls down on his face in fear and reverence. It is the natural response to seeing God as he really is. Think of the three core disciples of Jesus in Matthew 17 on the Mountain of Transfiguration, when they see Jesus in all of His transfigured glory, what is their response? They fall on their faces because they see God as he really is in the person of Jesus Christ. The opposite of indifference in worship is reverent awe. So how do we bring these together, even especially when we think about a worship service at Calvary and what we do at Calvary, all the ways that we worship at Calvary, how do we bring together that that sense of of gratefulness, that sense of reverence, that sense of awe, that sense of all of our lives are to be lived as worship for service. I appreciate how Ligon Duncan puts it. We ought to aspire to congregational worship that is characterized by true heart worship of the living God according to his word, that is reverent, substantial and joyful. Yeah, that's what I want, that's what we desire, True heart worship like Josh preached last week, what it means to worship in spirit and in truth, True heart worship; worship, that is, according to his word, not cultural preferences, not even our own personal preferences, but according to his word worship. That is reverent worship, that is substantial, not fluffy worship. That is joyful. Joyfulness and reverence are not contradictory. True worship brings those together. Where is your heart this morning as you worship. We have an opportunity even going forward into the service. We're going to sing some more. How will your heart offer your singing as an expression of worship? We're going to come to the table. How will coming to the table and celebrating the Lord's Supper, how will your heart use that as an offering of worship? Let's pray. We thank you, father. We thank you for all of your word. Lord, it is easy to love the parts of your word that are comforting to us, especially comforting to us where we're hurting, where we're lonely. Oh, Lord, we thank you. Even though it doesn't come naturally, we thank you for the parts of your word that are warnings to us as well. And Lord, we want to hear, we want to be impacted, we want to be really given a wake up call about this warning of indifference, Lord, we don't want our worship to be indifferent. We want our worship to be in response to seeing you in all of your glory, we want our worship to be Lord certainly filled with gratefulness and reverence and awe and even joy. We need your spirit, Lord, to do that continued heart transformation in us so that we can worship like this. We ask you now, Lord, even as we continue to worship, singing and worship at the Lord's table, that your spirit will move among us and produce worshipful response that lifts up the name of Jesus Christ And brings you glory. Amen.

What does it mean to worship in spirit and in truth? How do we practice that sort of worship in our daily lives?

Good morning and welcome to all of you who are gathered here together with us in person and to those who are gathering with us online. Last week we had the joy to celebrate both the death and then the resurrection of our lord and savior. And what an appropriate time, I believe, for us to begin this new series, a new part of our series that we're going to be looking at: the hands of worship. And if you've been with us for a time, you notice that we've we've begun to do this longer term series, looking at three aspects

Of discipleship, our head, what we know about God, our heart, how that changes us or how we feel about God and our hands, what we do about that. And so I'm excited to see where God takes us in the next couple of weeks as we look at what it means to be active worshipers of our God. Today, we're going to begin this series by looking at this story that was just read for us, the woman at the well.

And, you know, it's a popular passage, one many of you probably already know pretty well. And as you think of that story, what is it that comes to mind?

You know, do you do you think of Samaritans mixing with Jews or racial issues?

Do you think about water coming from wells?

Do you think about the humanity displayed by Jesus? Do you think about marriage?

I think about my own marriage and I think about the place of worth that I've put my marriage in in my life. And my wife Kate is so important to me. And I've spent time reading books like The Five Love Languages and time talking to her and asking her, How can I help you to feel more loved? How can I show you the value that you have in my life?

And as we look at this particular story, we're going to see that that Jesus is drawing this woman to an idea of something of more importance that she's not placing on in her life. And so we're going to look at this conversation where Jesus shows this woman ultimately her need for him and the worship that must follow.

So to me, true worship that God seeks is about more than time. It's about more than a place or a worship service or a song, but rather, it's about a total devotion of our lives to our God.

And on the story, Jesus leaves Judea and he goes back to Galilee and it says that he had to go through Samaria. For those of you that don't know the story, this is actually historically and geographically untrue. In fact, most of the Jews of the day would take this long route around adding days to their journey so they could avoid going through Samaria.

And yet here we see John saying Jesus had to go through. And so here is our God who knows he has this important appointment to meet this woman where she is and to show her how her life can change.

So he arrives at Sychar is tired, so he sits down by the well and his disciples go into town to buy food.

And the Samaritan woman comes out in the middle of the heat of the day to draw her water. A time when no one else would come out to draw water; it was hot. They would usually draw it at a much cooler time of day and they would they would go together. And here she is all by herself.

And Jesus is sitting here and he says to her and he asks her for help. He says, Can you draw me some water? Can you give me something to drink? And immediately, this woman is shocked. She said, How can you ask me for a drink? Don't you know that you're a Jew and I'm a Samaritan woman? We don't mix. And in fact, if Jesus had drinking water that was drawn by her and had been touched by her, he would have been considered unclean by his own people. So she thinks this is shocking. And then Jesus goes on to tell her something even more shocking. He says, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. So these words suggest that there's something more at work going on here than what she is focused on. Instead of a racial or religious divide, Jesus says this is more about a gift from God and the one sitting in front of you, the man here, Jesus, has access to this gift. All you need to do is ask for it. Now, of course, the woman being practical immediately spots a problem with this. Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father, Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock. So here's Jesus sitting here. And not only does he not have a water jar or anything to draw water with; a moment ago he had just asked her for water himself. So how can he now offer me something that it seemed a moment ago like he didn't even have, so she seems to start to gather this idea. There's something going on here. If you can really offer me water that you a moment ago didn't have, then you must be greater than Jacob who gave us this well. And Jesus says everyone who drinks this water, the well, will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of waterwelling up to eternal life.

The woman immediately says, Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming back here again and again to draw water.

So Jesus says to her, Yes, I am greater. What I offer is greater. So much so that what I'm offering you now will fill all the need that you have in your life, not just now, but into eternity. So Jesus coming to this appointment already knows all about this woman. He knows who she is. He knows about her life. He knows the ways that she's trying to fill the empty void in that life and the ways that that attempt is not working. Even now, she is still thinking of this physical result. She's thinking of not having to come to the well in the heat of the day, not having to lug this heavy water. But the emptiness that Jesus is offering to fill is not a physical emptiness. It's one that nothing in this whole world can fill. I don't know about you, but as humans, I think we often try to fill emptiness in our lives and we try to fill it with all of this stuff that we think is going to finally make us happy is going to finally make us feel complete. And so we we fill it with good food and with entertainment. And, you know, I think about the the time that I spend reading books and going out to restaurants and watching Netflix and keep thinking that at some point, is it going to be enough as some point? Is that going to make me feel full? But even if those things do make us feel good or fill us temporarily, they're never going to satisfy. They're never going to bring us to a point where we can say, I don't need anything more than this. It's all temporary.

I like the way poet and priests from the Church of England, George Herbert, born in the late 1500s, says it. He says the whole wide world is not enough to fill the heart's three corners. But yet it craveth still.

Only the trinity that made it can suffice the vast triangled heart of man.

In other words, you and I can search this whole world over. We can experience every single thing that this world has to offer us and it will not be enough. In fact, Solomon tries this being the man known for wisdom given to him by God, he he tries every pleasure and tries rulership and authority tries all of these different things. And when he gets to the end of it, he says, meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless. And this then is the conclusion that he comes to. Now, all has been heard.

Here is the conclusion of the matter. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of mankind.

For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil. So out of all the earthly things we might seek after every single thing we do is wide open before our God

And only our relationship with God, the things used to glorify him and the life lived for him and through him is going to mean anything to us in the end. So if we choose him to be the one to fill our need, then he promises here to well up in us a wellspring of water that will satisfy us not just for this life, but forever. This is what we need. It is the only thing that can fulfill us completely. Yet before we can seek it, we must realize our need. We are all sinners seeking after what is meaningless until we encounter our God, who shows us our need and offers us the only gift that can satisfy. And Jesus does this for this woman at the well, gently, but clearly he points out the need in this woman's life. Go call your husband and come back. I have no husband, she replied.

And Jesus says to her you are right when you say you have no husband, the fact is you have had five husbands and the man you have now is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.

I don't know about you if you've ever done this, but sometimes when I'm ashamed about something and somebody asks me,

I'll tell a bit of the truth. That kind of hides the fact of the full shame of what it is that I've said or done. And this woman tries this here.

And our God immediately says, no, we need to bring the whole thing out into the light. The whole of it must be exposed. And there, exposed is where I can wash it away.

Jesus knows that the only way you and I can move forward is if we can let go of our own attempts to fill our lives and if we can let go of the shame that's holding us back.

And so he brings this all out into the light. And yet, even so does not take away his offer of living water that can well up in her.

Instead of the judgment this woman fears, he continues to love her and to listen to her, even knowing what he does about her. He has offered her this living water. And with this, she begins to see maybe there's something more going on with this man than meets the eye. So she gives him the place in her mind that makes sense. Sir, I can see that you are a prophet. Now, if I have believed that a man that I was talking to was a prophet,

I have to be honest with you. I would probably ask him about my future. I would probably ask him how I could be successful, how I could be happy, how it could be any of those things. But I love the woman's response here. Her first thought is to question now that I believe this, how can I worship? Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain Mount Gerizim. But you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem. I read a deeper question here than which place do I go?

I read a question of how do I get to this God that you're talking about?

Can I meet him here or must I go there? Where do I go? Where is the right place? And Jesus says, woman, believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the father, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. It's not the place. Neither place is exclusively where you will worship God. And the places of worship are not the path to get to God any more. I think this is a trap that many of us churches often fall into. We can feel like because we go to a certain denomination, because we go to a certain church or kind of worship service, that we are more saved or that we have a better connection to God. It can be tempting to feel like that it's our place and that's what's most important. But while the Jews offered one temple and the Samaritans offered another, Jesus is saying that neither is what the worship God desires is about.

He tells her you Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come in me when the true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the father seeks. God is spirit and his worshippers must worship in the Spirit and in truth. You know, there are some that say that all religions are good and lead to heaven. But here we see that's not the case in God's mind. He tells her that the Samaritan's way of worship is not authorized or approved by God or by scripture. And, instead of even though she's excited to worship, instead of just telling her, keep doing what you're doing, he says, no, I have I have a better way for you. I have the way that God seeks for people to worship him. And the Jews, they may worship what they know, but their worship falls short, too. They have parts of the truth. And in fact, up until that time, their temple was the place to get to God. That was the only place. But even so, their hearts aren't right. Neither one is worshipping in spirit. And in truth, both are focused on the place and the kind of worship. Both are convinced they have it right and yet that the other is wrong. And the the thing that ties them the most together is something that suddenly occurs to this woman. We're waiting for something both the Samaritans and the Jews were waiting for something. It begins to occur to this woman that maybe prophet isn't quite the right label for this man. The woman said, I know that Messiah called Christ is coming. And when he comes, he will explain everything to us.

And then Jesus declared, I, the one speaking to you, I am he.

In the face of this declaration and the fact that Jesus was right there, the time has now come. This woman must decide whether or not she wants the gift, whether or not she wants to be a true worshipper the way God seeks. She is confronted here with Jesus, who appears to be a man, and yet who told her everything she did and now claims to be both savior and by his words, I am, God. So Jesus goes through this whole conversation to ultimately declare who he is and to present the kind of worship and worshippers it is that he seeks, those who worship in spirit and in truth. So if you're listening to this and you haven't made that choice, if you haven't encountered Jesus and decided you want to be a worshipper of him, this message is for you. God knows you completely inside and out. Just as he knew this American woman. He knows every bit of your weakness and your sin and your shame. And he loves you any way. He wants you to bring all of that to him, to expose it to the light so that you can leave all of it behind and join him for eternity.

He wants to know you and wants you to know him. So if you want to be truly known in a way that no one on this earth has ever known you and you want to be truly loved in a way no human has ever loved you, there's no other name under heaven, no other person in all of existence who can provide that to you, accept Jesus. So whether you've been attending church your whole life or whether you're still seeking and this is your first visit, if you have questions, if you are seeking to be known and loved in this way, please don't hesitate to speak to me or to one of the pastors here. We'd love to talk with you. We'd love to help you begin that journey. But it's not just for those who have not said yes. This message is also for all of us who have said yes, it is a call for those of us who believe in Jesus to worship him truly in the way that he desires. And I believe Psalm 103 really gives us a

Beautiful glimpse of this. I love how David starts the song Praise the Lord, My Soul, all my inmost being.

Praise his holy name. For David here, worship just isn't about the words. It's about praise that flows out of his deepest, inmost being out of his heart. And it's about praising God not only for who he is, but for what he has done and what he continues to do in our lives. Most of the rest of the psalm goes on to describe some of these truths for us. He forgives all of our sins. He heals us. He redeems us from the pit that we deserve for our sins. He crowns us with love and compassion, works, righteousness and justice, he makes his way known to us and I love this part. He knows us even from the very dust that you and I are formed out of and to the brevity of the lives that we live here. His kingdom rules over all things, and he has established his throne forever.

And so when we choose to accept this living water, the name of Jesus and are born again by the spirit, the same spirit within our inmost being, within our hearts and the truth of who God is and what he has done should inspire in us worship that just flows out of us that we cannot help but to live and be in a way that demonstrates Jesus inside of us. And to not do that, I think, is foolish. To know who Jesus is and to know what it is that he's commanded and not to do it is foolishness. Listen, this is what James says. James 1:23-24. Anyone who listens to the word, to Jesus, but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. What is the point of going to worship, of singing songs of praise, of listening to the word if it's not going to change our lives, if it's not going to change who we are and how we respond. Now the Pharisees of Jesus' day fell into this trap. Jesus says they worshipped what they knew, but then goes on to say, yet more is coming. There's something that's missing here. They knew the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They knew the statutes he had commanded and followed these and made many more. But yet Isaiah still says this about them and Jesus quotes him. These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain. Their teachings are merely human rules. They had the right God and even said the right things many times. But knowing that truth did not change their hearts. They did not truly approach God or want in their lives what he wanted from them. They were worried about the ceremony, about the right song, about having the place of honor at feasts, about being recognized for being good worshippers. They presented the truth on the outside, but it did not penetrate into their hearts.

Religion was for them pride and a way to get what they wanted. There have been times in my own life when I've struggled with this.

I have behaved as though what I know about God makes me better than somebody else believed that it is in the knowing that makes me good, makes me better. But I have to face the truth that this is not worship that pleases God. This is not attitude that pleases God. What he wants from me is an inner heart that desires him, that desires to face him.

And a heart that desires to put him in his place of worth in our lives. You know, I think about how I worshipped in the past. There have been times in my life when I've given God an hour on Sunday morning and an hour of some kind of a discipleship group, and then the rest of my week have gone back to living my normal life the way I felt I wanted to live it.

And if you do the math on that an hour on Sunday morning and an hour for a discipleship group versus the rest of the hours in a week, that's barely giving God one percent of my week versus a God who has given me all of himself. And the opposite kind of worshiper is also not what God desires.

There are people who are devoted to what they believe about God and filled with zeal, people who are extremely spiritual and spend most of their time devoted to doing what they believe is right. But they don't seek out the truth. They don't come to know fully what it is, even that what they're worshipping or doing wants from them. I think Paul, when he was still Saul, is a wonderful example of this. He has so filled with zeal that in the name of his faith, went to the point of being willing to persecute and even kill Christians. And then one day, our lord and savior confronts him. And in that moment, he has to make a choice. Do I want to keep worshipping the way I want or do I move my life to be the way my savior wants?

And Paul makes the right choice. He keeps that zeal, but now follows it up with truth. And if we look at the life of Paul after this, we see a common theme. He's constantly praising the father and Jesus in song, in word and in action. He's found singing songs of praise, even in prison, sharing the word of truth with others and sacrificing his whole life to the king of his life. He goes across the known world, not really even knowing where he's going to end up or what's going to face him there, but even then puts his whole trust in what it is that Jesus has for him. Psalm 103 says from everlasting to everlasting, the Lord's love is with those who fear him and his righteousness with their children's children, with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts. So here we see wrapped up in an entire psalm about praising God for who he is. This passage shows that true worship must contain action. It must contain obedience just as much as it is about singing or about praise. James 1 continues a little further down, wording it in this way: to God, pure and undefiled religion is this to visit orphans to widows in their trouble and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. Jesus is saying to us that our faith and our worship must be both based in spirit and in truth, must both be based in who our God is and and in a reaction, a response to what he has done for us.

And I think the woman at the well takes this perfectly. Her immediate response after she hears who Jesus is, she immediately, leaving her water jar, went back to the town and said to the people, come, come and see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be, could this be the Messiah? And they came out of the town with her and made their way toward him. She rushes so quickly to live out this truth and this spirit that are now within her and from Jesus, that she leaves behind the entire purpose for which she was at the well in the first place, leaves behind her water jar and she leaves behind her shame. And in fact, not only does she leave it behind, she now raises it up as a reason for them to believe in Jesus, just as it was a reason for her to believe. I believe it's time for us to stop hiding, too. I believe it's time for us to stop waiting. It's time for us to worship our God in the way that he desires, not just with a small part, but with our whole being.

And our lord and savior, he is at the well right now waiting for each one of us. Please join me in prayer. Father, we're so grateful for the life that we have in your son, for the hopethat we have in you. Please help us to to draw near to you and to to be filled in a way that will last forever, not in a way that goes away temporarily.

Father, help us to be worshippers who worship you, not just with our lips, but with our whole hearts are in most being. Help us to praise and to live in a way that praises you. We thank you for this life that we can have. In your name we pray. Amen.

Worship the Lamb

Thank you worship team. You may not have thought of that last song as an Easter song, but actually that's one of my favorite Easter songs. And I wonder if you caught the image, the dominant image at the center of that song Worthy is the Lamb. Worthy is the lamb who is slain holy, holy, is he. The dominant image of that song, an Easter song, the dominant image, as I think today of the risen Lord Jesus Christ is a lamb, even though that may not be intuitively what we think about. We worship today the risen Lord Jesus Christ as a lamb. Now, where do we draw this from? This is not drawn from our culture, this is, of course, drawn from how we see him revealed in scripture. And Dan, just read some of this, but we are introduced to this picture, first of all, in Revelation chapter four John the Apostle is given a vision of heaven. He says, I was in the spirit on the Lord's day. And that means that God is revealing to him something that human beings cannot normally see. And he says there before me in this vision is a throne in heaven with one seated on the throne. It goes on in verse three to say the one who is sitting on the throne has an appearance like jasper stone, like sardius in appearance. And there's around this throne a rainbow like an emerald type of appearance.

What John is trying to do here is he's trying to put in human language something that no human being has seen. He's trying to describe the indescribable. He is describing how he how he attempts to see with human eyes the glory and the majesty and the splendor of God. But then the vision continues on into Chapter five and here John's attention now in this vision is narrowed down. His focus is drawn to a center point in this vision. We see it in chapter five verse six. Then I saw a lamb, a lamb looking like it had been slain standing in the center of the throne. This is the very focal point of this vision. In the center of the throne is one who bears the appearance of a lamb. And the next few verses describe how all the heavenly beings around the throne, they they prostate straight themselves, they throw themselves down on their faces before the lamb and worship. And then the scene widens out over the next few verses and we read in verse 11, then I looked and I heard the voice of many angels numbering thousands upon thousands and ten thousands upon ten thousands. And what is it that all these heavenly beings and all these angels are saying? In a loud voice they sang Worthy is the Lamb. Worthy is the lamb who was slain to receive power and wisdom and wealth and strength and honor and glory and praise.

The scene widens even even more broadly now in verse 13, then John hears the voice, he says, of every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea and all that is in them. And what is it that again now every voice is proclaiming to him who sits on the throne and to the lamb be praise and honor and glory and power forever and ever. And that is, of course, a picture not only of what is going on in heaven now, but what one day will be reality, that every living being, everyone who has ever lived, everyone who lives will proclaim the lamb to be the king, to be the Lord, will proclaim the risen Lord Jesus Christ, to be Lord and King. But I want to take you back to the center of that vision again that we see in verse six standing in the center of the throne. In other words, the focal point, the most prominent place of this vision, the center of this worship is the worship of a lamb. That is not something I would intuitively think about when I think about the glory, the worship that is going on in heaven. I would think more. Something like what Dan read earlier, Dan read from Revelation one, where Jesus, as he manifests himself among his churches, he appears in a white robe and a golden sash, and he has eyes like flames of fire and and hair that is so white that it glows.

That's the image I would think of. But that's not the image here. The risen Christ in all of his heavenly glory at the center of heavenly worship reveals himself as a lamb. Why? I mean, my mind will not let me go of that that question, why is it that at the center of how the risen Lord Jesus Christ is to be worshipped, he appears as a lamb, a lamb that we might think of lambs in our human associations as humble, as as gentle as dependent. But actually the lamb is one of the images that is most prominent about the Lord Jesus Christ. We read through scripture and we see scripture speak of the lamb slain, the lamb overcoming, the lamb conquering. We read how scripture speaks about the song of the lamb. The Wedding Feast of the Lamb, the Lamb's Book of Life, the followers of the Lamb. And notice, this is not just a lamb, but it is a lamb looking as if it had been slain, it bears the marks of having been killed. Although it's standing, it is not dead. It is standing. It is very much alive, but it bears the marks of its crucifixion there. Even at the center of worship, the risen Lord Jesus Christ still bears the signs of his crucifixion.

Why? Why would the Risen Christ choose this image, the image of a lamb bearing the marks of crucifixion as the image to be at the center of worship? Why would he take this picture of what we call in theology, his humiliation, his crucifixion, his suffering, his death, and make that the image that we are called to worship him by? Because the image of a crucified lamb is the image of an atoning sacrifice, and that is the center of the gospel. And so when Jesus appears in heaven for us to worship him, how does he want us to focus on him? He wants us to focus upon him as the gospel bears out that he is an atoning sacrifice offered for us. And all of scripture points us forward to this image, points us forward to what he has done for us on the cross as an atoning sacrifice. We can trace back in scripture, which I want to do briefly in these next few minutes, we can trace back in Scripture and see how God has prepared us to see this image of the lamb who is slain at the center of our worship. We see a lamb slain from the very first sacrifice going all the way back to the beginning. In Genesis Chapter four, we see that that Abel, the son of Adam and Eve Abel, offered to God the best of his firstborn lambs from his flock.

He offers a sacrifice to God of a lamb. And the writer of Hebrews tells us in Hebrews Chapter 11 that God found that sacrifice of Abel of the Lamb to be acceptable. It satisfied, God, it created a right relationship between he and Abel. Why? Because it was offered in faith. So from the very beginning, when we were first introduced to the concept of sacrifice, we see that a sacrifice is offered in faith. What does it mean to offer a sacrifice of a lamb in faith? It means, first of all, to believe that a sacrifice is required, first of all, to believe that God's law has been broken, that as a human being, that I, that we have tried to live life our own way apart from God. And secondly, it means to believe that because of that, we have made ourselves enemies of God. The animosity has been created between God and us, and therefore we need some way to cover that. And it means to believe that God has provided that way through what we call atonement, the ability to offer an innocent life in the place of us. And of course, no human being is innocent. But a lamb is innocent, a lamb commits no willful sin, and so God provided that a lamb could be offered in the place for for Abel, for his sin, his rebellion against God, and that offered in faith God would accept that is covering his sin.

Well, the lamb is seen not only in Abel's sacrifice, but by moving a little further forward in the Old Testament, in Genesis we see a lamb at the center of the sacrifice that Abraham offered. You may know the story in Genesis 22 that God called Abraham to offer his son, Isaac, the son of promise, the son that God had said all of the nation of Israel will come from you. And now God is telling Abraham in Genesis 22, I want you to take the life of your only son, your precious son and Abraham not understanding perhaps what God is doing goes to Mount Moriah, takes Isaac. And along the way, Isaac asks the question, you know, I see that we have the wood for the sacrifice and I see we have the fire. But Father, where's the lamb? Isaac even has an understanding that a sacrifice calls for a lamb. And what is it that Abraham says in faith to his son, Isaac, God will provide for himself a lamb for the burnt offering? And that is exactly what we see happen on Mount Moriah, by the way, the same the same hill that the temple was eventually built upon the same hill, the same part of the hill that Christ was ultimately sacrificed at Calvary upon. We see God provide a lamb in the thicket, a ram that that Abraham is then instructed to sacrifice instead of his son.

And while some have seen Isaac as kind of a type of Christ pointing to Christ there, it's actually this promise of a lamb. It's that the God provides a lamb as a substitute for the life of Isaac. And in there there's a picture for you and me. Already there is a picture of God providing a substitute, God providing a lamb, the lamb Jesus Christ as a substitute for us so that by faith in him, we would not have to die as Isaac did not have to die. Well, the lamb as we go on in the Old Testament becomes the prominent image of the exodus and in exodus, Chapter 12, when when God is rescuing the the Hebrews from their slavery in Egypt, he does it through a succession of plagues and the last plague is going to be in every house in Egypt. He will kill the firstborn son by a great plague, but he provides a way for the Israelites, the Hebrews, to escape. And it's through the Passover lamb. Sacrifice, slaughter, a lamb. And take the blood of that lamb and paint it on your doorframe. And when God's angel of judgment passes over all the homes in Egypt, the homes upon which he sees the blood of the Passover lamb, he will pass over, he will not bring judgment and wrath, although he will do so for every other house in Egypt.

And it's through that provision of the Passover lamb that God passes over in judgment and brings Israel out of their slavery in Egypt. Well, just as the blood of the Passover lamb protected the Hebrews from God's judgment and wrath, so the blood of Jesus shed on the cross is our protection. God covers over our sin because of the blood of the perfectly righteous lamb, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And again, as we work our way forward to the Old Testament, we see that even in the Old Testament temple system, in the daily sacrifice is what's at the center of the daily sacrifices, the way that men and women can maintain a right relationship with God. It's a lamb. Exodus 29 tells us that two lambs are to be offered every day, one in the morning and one in the twilight. And it's through these sacrifices that men and women, it makes it possible for sinful men and women like you and I to approach a holy God, a holy righteous God, and to be made right before him through this sacrifice. Again, here is a picture of how all these sacrifices are made day after day, week after week, year after year. Think of how many animals were slaughtered in this temple system on just a yearly basis. And yet it was never enough, more had to be sacrificed and more had to be sacrificed.

But what was this all pointing to? What are we told in Hebrews? All of this points to the ultimate sacrifice, the final sacrifice Jesus offered himself once for all as the final, as the complete, as the perfect sacrifice. We see the lamb again in the sin offering the sin offering is a way that is provided in Leviticus Chapter four, when a man or woman becomes conscious that they have broken God's law, that they, whether intentionally or unintentionally, they have gone their own way. They have departed from what God said, this is the way that I want you to live. They can bring a sacrifice offering. They can bring a lamb as a sacrifice offering, as a sin offering, to cover their sin. And notice the particular detail here in bringing a lamb as a sin offering, the offer is to lay his hand on its head before he slaughters the animal. And what does that symbolize? That symbolizes that the guilty offerers are bringing that sin offering. He is transferring. He is conveying his guilt upon that innocent animal so that when that innocent animal is slaughtered the guilt of the offerer dies with the lamb. The guilt is conveyed to that lamb who is the perfect sacrifice. And again, this points to Jesus, the ultimate lamb. So Jesus, we're told in the New Testament, bore our sins in his own body on the cross.

They are by faith, conveyed on to him, transferred to him if we look to him as savior and Lord. All of these sacrifices and ones I haven't even had time to touch on this morning, all of these sacrifices of a lamb, all these sacrificial lambs, what do they do? They point us. They point us forward to the ultimate sacrificial lamb, the one whom John the Baptist identified when he pointed to Jesus and said, behold the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. William Bacon Stevens said it this way, all these sacrifices that were offered by God's command, all these bloody sacrifices of lambs all through the Old Testament, they derive their value only as they typified and they illustrated this one great sacrifice of Jesus Christ on Calvary. In other words, all of these sacrifices that I've just briefly taken you through, all these sacrificial lambs they were effective only as the ones offering them looked forward in faith to the promised messiah that God said he would send, to the ultimate lamb, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Let me ask you this morning, as you contemplate this sacrificial lamb that all these sacrifices point forward to: Do you like an offerer offering a sacrificial lamb in faith? Do you recognize your guilt before God? Do you understand even that you need a sacrifice? I had to come to that place in my life of acknowledging that I was trying to live life my own way apart from God.

Have you come to that place? A sacrifice is only efficacious if first of all, we recognize we need that sacrifice. Have you come to the place where you understand that apart from a perfect sinless sacrifice, you stand under the condemnation and the judgment of God that you will bear the penalty for your rebellion against God? And do you understand the value of offering a perfect sacrifice that God in his mercy and his grace has said if you offer a sacrifice, a perfect sacrifice in place of you, I will impute your sin to that sacrifice. I will impute the innocence of that sacrifice to you. Here is the promise of Easter morning that you and I, we can be redeemed, we can be saved from our guilt by trusting in the precious blood of Christ, a lamb, a lamb without defect or blemish. The only perfect one. The only spotless one. The only sinless one. The only guiltless one. And that is why when we worship the risen glorified Christ today, we worship him as a lamb, we worship him as he is in heaven now as a lamb, looking as if he had been slain, standing in the center of the throne of God in heaven. And as the lamb slain, he is the object.

He is the object now, and he will be the object forever of heavenly worship. Why? Because by his blood, by being slain, by being that perfect sacrifice, he has ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. Do you notice it's not just for some groups, it's not just for some races or some ethnicities or some nations in the world that the lamb has died, the Jesus Christ has offered him as the perfect sacrifice for every race and every ethnicity and every nation that all colors and all ethnicities and all nationalities will be part of this great crowd around the throne worshipping the lamb because he has ransomed them by his blood. And it's not only that. That image of a lamb continues in heaven, in fact, in the strange mixing of metaphors, we're actually told that this lamb will become our shepherd. Chapter seven, verse 17 for the lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd and he will lead them the springs of living water. He is not only the lamb that sacrifices himself for us, he is the lamb that shepherds us. That leads us to where there is life in its fullest, that cares for us and loves us and leads us. And not only that, this image of a lamb as being powerless, as being dependent, as being somehow too humble to really be something that is effective.

I haven't shown you the text here this morning, but this is now a horned lamb. He has seven horns, which as you read in Daniel and other places in Scripture is actually not only a symbol of power, but there being seven horns, it is perfect power. It is ultimate power. And so this is a lamb now that is being worshipped revealing his ultimate power. And though we're told in revelation that there will be those who oppose him, that there will be those who try and defy his reign, we read in Chapter 17 that there will even be those who make war against the lamb, but the lamb will overcome them because he is Lord of Lords and king of kings. So however you were brought here this morning to worship with us on Resurrection Sunday. I hope you've been brought to the foot of the cross. And as you look up, you see the risen lamb, you see the lamb who was slain standing at the center of the throne. And as you look at that image, as you contemplate that this is how the risen Lord Jesus Christ would call you to worship him at the center of heaven, I need to ask you, have you turned in faith to the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world? Do you worship this lamb, do you recognize his reign? Do you recognize him as the one who sits on the throne? Do you cry out with all of the voices of heaven with all of the heavenly beings, do you join them in singing to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power forever and ever? When we say he is risen, we worship the lamb, the lamb who was slain standing at the center of God's throne, let's pray.

This is an awesome image, Lord God, that you've given us in your word. Jesus, we want to see you more clearly, like how you reveal yourself. And I am so thankful that that the image that you choose as the central image at the throne is the one of you sacrificing yourself for us. Your offer of yourself for our sin is at the center of heavenly worship. And Lord, as we worship you today, as we worship you as the resurrected one, that's what we want to keep coming back to, we needed you as a sacrifice. Lord Jesus, we worship you as a sacrifice our Lord Jesus. And so even as we conclude today, Lord, as we sing these next couple of songs, may we do so as an offering of worship? May we like these heavenly voices around the throne? May we sing? You are worthy. You are deserving of all of our worship. You are worthy and deserving of all our praise, our honor, our love, our devotion, our surrender. Worthy is the lamb who is slain. Amen.

The final sermon in our series on Joy. Romans 5 tells us we can rejoice in the midst of suffering. How do we do that? What do we gain?

Thank you, worship team, and thank you all for participating in that Palm Sunday reading, that's the Palm Sunday expression, how appropriate today, the Sunday before Easter and yet how appropriate it is this coming Friday where we commemorate that five days, just five days after that triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the same crowd or at least mixtures of that crowd that had claimed him were now calling for his his crucifixion. So Palm Sunday prepares us for Good Friday, which ultimately leads us to Easter Sunday. Well we are looking at - this is the last Sunday in this month's emphasis on joy. We've been looking at the the Christian virtue of joy all through this month. What does it mean that as we become aware that, from the first week in the month, that the father, as he looks at us through what Christ has done, taking our sin upon himself, covering us with his righteousness, that God, the father, delights over us with singing - the ultimate basis for our joy. And from there, the second week, we looked at joy in contentment, how Christian contentment, a totally different thing from worldly stoicism, but how there is great joy in Christian contentment. And last week we looked at the joy that we experienced following Christ as we heed his command to bear fruit by abiding in him. But this week - this is the last week of joy. But it is also the hardest. At least that is my experience with the topic for this week.

But again, an appropriate topic as we look forward to Good Friday. And it is joy in tribulation, joy in tribulation. And our text is going to be Romans Chapter five, the first five verses. But I will tell you again, Joy is not something that is natural to me. I don't think it really comes natural to any of us. But some of us, some of us, our personalities. Maybe it's a bigger transformation in our lives. And that's me. And this is the hardest week. This is the hardest week for me personally. I'm imagining some of you will be able to identify that as we go into this topic. So I just want to pause at this moment and ask for the Holy Spirit's help. Would you would you pray with me? Lord, we come to you acknowledging that this work of transformation is totally of you, we can't will ourselves to be joyful. Our attempts to do so are artificial. We want this work, Lord of true joy, to be borne out in our lives. And again, as I've already said, Lord, this is the hardest week for me personally, facing joy in the midst of tribulation. So we ask for your Holy Spirit to do what you promise that he he will do that he will take this word, your word, and he will use it like a sword to pierce to the very center of us, pierce beyond our thoughts, pierced beyond our feelings.

Pierce to our will, pierce to the very center of our soul. Do your transforming work through your word, by your spirit. We ask you in Jesus name. Amen. Joy and tribulation. When I think of that word tribulation, it's also sometimes translated as trouble, I think of the words spoken by Job's friend Eliphaz and Job Chapter five. Eliphaz says afflictions do not come from the dust. It's not just chants, in other words, that we encounter trouble in our life. Neither does trouble sprout from the ground. But mankind is born for trouble, as surely as sparks fly upward. I don't know what that image of sparks coming up conjures in your mind, it brings me back to raising three boys, being around campfires, either on a camping trip or in our backyard, having a campfire in the summer or the fall. And one of my sons who will remain nameless, but there's always one pyro and every family is there or not, they really enjoy taking sticks and stirring up the fire, which, of course, releases showers of sparks, or occasionally he'd bring a big log. And when nobody was watching him would throw that log in the middle of the fire again, shooting up sparks and sparks come any time there's fire. But you do something like that. And what happens? You shoot not just sparks, but embers burning embers up into the air, often embers that land on clothing and burn holes in clothing or land on tents and burn holes in tents.

And that's the image I think of here, because really what Eliphaz is saying it's an observation of of life that surely, as sparks fly up from any fire, even when nobody's stirring it up, sparks fly up as surely as that happens. So surely does trouble in some shape occur in our lives? And there is the sparks of trouble that just generally comes up. There are the sparks of trouble that, like burning embers, burn holes in our life. They leave permanent impressions. They do permanent damage in our lives. And that's just not an Old Testament observation. That's the truth that Jesus himself says. He's he says it this way in John, 16:33 In this world, and he's speaking, by the way, to people who follow him. He's not speaking to people who disregard him, in this world you will have tribulation. That word tribulation is the Greek word in the original text is thlipsis and bring that out only to say that you can search in a Greek concordance, you can search for thlipsis and see how many times tribulation in some form or another appears in the New Testament alone. I've counted at least forty three times. I would say it's a theme. I would say that tribulation thlipsis is a theme all throughout scripture.

And in that theme we see it used to indicate situations of pressure, whether it's external or internal pressure situations where where we experience distress, situations of trouble, situations of affliction. In fact, if you go through all the different occurrences of oh, well, let me let me let me unpack a little bit where the word comes from. The word at that time, the most common usage usage of it was to describe what happens when they make olive oil. They use a olive press. You see here a modern recreation of this. This is in Nazareth Village in Israel, where they recreated some of what life was like. An olive press involved a large stone wheel that was turned around again and again in a hollowed out bowl. The olives were put in that bowl and that wheel think again of the meaning of thipsis as pressure pressing down is the meaning of thlipsis that we all that heavy stone, wheel would press down those olives producing the olive oil. You can even see if you can make it out in the picture on the screen there, you see how it's darkened in the bowl there and around that center post. That's the olives that's being pressed down. So that's the image of thlipsis, the image of being pressed down, the image of a weight of some form on you, pressing you down over and over and over again. As we go through the New Testament and we see all the different ways this thlipsis, this this pressure is used, it describes a whole variety of situations.

And my guess is, one, if not a number of these you may be experiencing this morning. There is the thlipsis, of sickness and accidents. There is the thlipsis of disabilities that may result from sickness or accident. There is the thlipsis of worldly losses, maybe a business failure, maybe the loss of material possessions due to events beyond your control. There is the thlipsis of financial struggles, even of poverty. There is the thlipsis of relational griefs, not only broken relationships, but the pressure that we feel when we have a loved one who is going through a painful situation or a loved one who is turned away from the Lord and how that is like a weight, a burden, a pressure upon us. There is the thlipsis of bereavement, of losing somebody that we love to death. That can be a form of tribulation. There is the thlipsis of persecution of when people in the world oppose those who follow Jesus and do so by persecuting them, including even killing them. In fact, as you go through those forty three occurrences, the majority of those occurrences of thlipsis apply to some form, some reference to persecution. But I want you to see this because really the reality that we see, both voiced by by Job's friend and by Jesus and the reality borne out by our experience in life is that everybody experiences thlipsis.

And maybe, you know, your first decade or two of life, you don't quite appreciate that, but you get into that third decade and beyond and you begin to understand that as sparks fly upward, there's just a constant flow, some small, some large, a lot in between of thlipsis, of tribulation, of situations that come into our lives and press down on us. And I wouldn't ask for a show of hands this morning, but if I did, I imagine that if I asked you to indicate in some way that even as you sit here this morning. Yeah, you're mind is is filling with something that you are under right now that is pressing down on you. That is some form of thlipsis, I might imagine that would be, if not most of you, all of you or if not all of you, most of you, it is a reality. you don't escape thlipsis. You don't escape tribulation by having enough resources, enough money. You don't escape it by by being of a certain social class. It is a reality in life as sparks fly upward. So we encounter thlipsis we encounter trouble. Thlipsis tribulation is the word that Paul uses in our text today. Romans 5:1-5 when he writes that we rejoice in our tribulations, our thlipsis and Paul. Here, let me just read the text. If you have a Bible, I'm going to read the first five verses of Romans Chapter five.

Therefore, Paul writes, Since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace and which we now stand and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. But not only this, rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God, we also rejoice in our thlipsis in our tribulations and our troubles. Why? Because we know that tribulation produces endurance, perseverance and endurance or perseverance, produces proven character and proven character produces hope. And this hope, this hope does not disappoint us because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us. Paul says that we rejoice in our tribulations. It is easy for me to rejoice, to find joy in the fact that because of what Christ has done for me, taking my sin upon him, imputing his righteousness to me, God rejoices over me with singing. It is maybe not quite as easy, but still easy by comparison to take joy in the contentment that following Christ can bring. there is even a sense of ease compared to this in which I can rejoice. I can take joy in as I abide in Christ, that I bear fruits and the joy that can be derived from bearing fruit, but finding joy in tribulation, rejoicing in tribulation, that seems to push us over the edge.

As a young believer, I was under the mistaken delusion that beginning to follow Jesus, recognizing him as savior and Lord, that that would somehow bring this bubble over me. You know, that the tribulations, the problems that I was wrestling with at the time of coming to Christ would suddenly dissolve and I would be protected in some way by from trouble, from thlipsis. And I'm sure if you relate to that at all, you've experienced the same thing that I have experienced. No, in some ways, it turns up the heat, doesn't it, to follow Jesus. I think of a young man in our extended family, I learned just this week, somewhat of a distant relative, but I know the this part of the family well, who a young man with a promising athletic career could have even potentially led to professional sports. And yet through being involved in an auto accident, not his fault, sustained a disability where that dream in one day went away like that. And now I was just told this week by family members that this young man is saying he is angry at God. He has turned away from the church. He's turned away from from the faith that he was brought up into because he's angry at God. And can we not relate? Have we not all been there where we have lost something, where some tribulation has been allowed to come into our lives? And the immediate response is, God, why did you let this happen? So this is common to all of us.

In fact, John Calvin said it this way. Tribulations provoke a great part of mankind to murmur against God and even to curse him. How easy it is when we get in situations like that to say, well, God, you must not love me, God, you must not be powerful enough, God, I don't understand this. And in that situation, that is hard allow it instead to harden our hearts. Now, in the case of that family member God has providentially lined up that Cindy and I are going to actually be able to perhaps have some contact with him. And over time, I pray the story is not over, that his heart is not permanently hardened, and that God may even use us in some way to help him walk through that to the place where he can actually rejoice in his loss. Rejoice in his tribulation. So I want us to see this, Paul is not simply saying here when he says rejoice in tribulation, he is not simply saying don't complain about it. He is not even saying just stoically it. That's two weeks ago we looked at why Stoicism is not Christian. He is actually going beyond that to call us to rejoice in our tribulations. The word rejoice as he means it there or as he uses it there, that term means actually to glory almost to the sense to the sense of to boast in we glory, in perhaps academic achievements, or we glory in sports achievements, or we glory in other achievements in life, vocational achievements.

In other words, as we reflect on what has been achieved in our life, we take joy in it. Paul is saying rejoice in tribulation. Paul is saying that it is actually a ground of glorying. And now Charles Hodge helpful to me says this. That does not mean that we glory in the midst of tribulation. And I may still have I know I have a long way to go in my spiritual maturity, but I'm not at the point where in the midst of tribulation, I find a reason to rejoice in the midst of it. But Hodge goes on to say, what it really means is that we rejoice on account of them as we reflect what God can do is doing has done in the midst of our tribulations. That is a cause for rejoicing. How? Well, Paul says, we rejoice in our tribulations knowing that. And let me stop there just for a moment. Many commentators say that's like the most important verb in the verse there, knowing that it is not just a matter of feeling that key to everything else in this verse is what we deliberately focus on.

The truth that we know that God's word has said is the reality of facing this tribulation, that we rejoice as we deliberately focus on what we know to be true. And that knowing creates a deliberate focus that can overcome our feelings again, Christianity is not about denying our feelings in the middle of hard circumstances, in the middle of tribulations, but Christianity is saying, I am despite how I feel, I am going to deliberately focus on what I know to be true and what do we know to be true. Well, Paul begins to set out here a chain reaction of what we know and how it leads to rejoicing. Here's the first link in the chain, knowing that tribulation produces endurance. And again, I just want to unpack that word for a moment for you, because in unpacking it, you see the meaning of it, the Greek word that that Paul actually uses there is hupomone. It's a compound word. Hupo means under. Mone means to live or to remain. So think of that in regards to a hard circumstances. Some form of tribulation thlipsis in your life to remain under that, to live under that, not just for a momentary time, but to live under that as long as God allows it in our lives without trying to crawl out from underneath it. I have this picture on the screen that I think of when I think of endurance remaining under living under the hiking that I do, I've seen this a couple of times, a tree growing out of a crack in a rock.

And if you could see the wider picture there, you would see this tree, this Ponderosa pine all around it or other trees. And they're just growing out of the soil. They're just growing out of the rich soil that's around it. You know, if that tree had conscious thought, can't you imagine that tree looking around at all the other Ponderosa trees thinking, why do I have to grow out of this rock? Why do I have this impediment of this rock in my life when all these other trees just like me around me don't have this burden don't have this impediment, get advantage of - to take advantage of this rich soil? Isn't that how we often look at our tribulation, we look around us and we perceive that what we're going through, no one else seems to be suffering from that. Of course, the knowledge we don't have is of the particular forms of thlipsis that they're experiencing. My life experience is borne out that everybody is wrestling with something, but we don't see that in the midst of our tribulation. And so we look around and say, why does everybody else get that good soil? Why do I have to grow under these conditions of this pressing rock around me? Rejoicing comes Paul is saying here, When we remain under whatever tribulation that God has providentially brought about in our life where we live under it, as long as he has it in our life without trying to crawl out from underneath it, accepting that this is his providential

will, we and rejoicing comes when we can come to the place where we can pray like Jesus. Lord, here's my will that you free me from this, but not my will, but your will be done. That's the prayer Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane on Good Friday before he went to the cross. Rejoicing comes when instead we remain under it by turning to his grace for the ability to endure it. This is the first link in the chain reaction. The second link. Paul goes on to say, We rejoice knowing that that endurance, that growing ability to live underneath it produces proven character. And again, I just want to bring out the meaning of the word, I think it's helpful for us to understand it proven character actually comes from one word in the Greek dokimos. And dokimos was a word related to the currency of that day coins were not as neatly minted in that day as they are today. We have nice precise molds that our coins come from. It was a little rougher in those days. And so you get coins that have varying shapes and sizes and the edges. It may have had some extra silver to them and some enterprising individuals quickly figured out, well, I could just take a knife and I could scrape off that edge, that irregular part of that edge.

And if I do that to enough coins, I'd have all these shavings that I could melt down and I could take in and and I could actually have silver that I could sell and profit from. Well you can imagine as this caught on that coins could get whittled down further and further and further. And so there was a recognition at some point a coin becomes not worth its weight anymore. Dokimos was the process of of recognizing there is a standard weight. And if that coin gets below that standard weight from people carving it off or anything and just just by wear it's no longer genuine, it's no longer authentic. But dokimos meant that coin was worth its weight. It was authentic. It was genuine. Now, carry that over into what it means to have proven character. You are worth your weight. You are genuine in your faith. You are authentic. Or maybe another way of bringing it out a little more of a modern example is think of what it means to be proven, proven character. What does it mean to be proven? Pastor Stephen Cole gave me a wonderful illustration of this. He lives in Kingman, Arizona, and Ford Motor Company has a proving grounds there in Kingman, Arizona. What they do is they bring in the new models that they have been developing and they subject them to all kinds of stress tests in that hot Arizona heat.

And they learn, is this vehicle going to last? Is this vehicle going to endure? So that's where even the campaign that Ford has Ford trucks are anybody know? Ford trucks are built to last. All right. They are proven they are going to last if you buy a Ford truck. This is not a Ford truck commercial, but that's the idea of being proven. You are enduring. You're going to last in your faith. You are authentic and your faith. And that's the cause of rejoicing that when you endure through tribulation, your faith becomes proven. You know, now by experience that your faith is genuine, that it is real, that it is weighty. And there is a wonderful sense of authenticity that you can rejoice in, one you would never experience if you had not been tested, if you had not born that tribulation. So. Tribulation produces endurance and endurance produces proven character, and then the third link in the chain proven character produces hope. Now, this hope is of a little different nature than the hope back in verse two, in fact, I, I could do no better than to read to you from the words of the great preacher Martin Lloyd-Jones, the hope of the glory of God. What we saw back in verse two, that comes from the understanding of the blessing of being justified by faith. That is something that every new believer should experience as we begin, as they begin to follow Christ.

But then Paul goes on here in our immediate text today to address how when we go through life and we experience tribulation, it has an effect if we allow it to make us cling to God like we've never clung to God before. And the outcome of that is that we experience his faithfulness to us and in experiencing that he develops proven character in us as we endure. And so we come out the other side of all of that, more certain of the hope. It's a deeper hope even that we experienced as we came to faith. It is the hope of an eternal glory that we could not even fully know before our trials. So our hope becomes stronger. Our hope becomes tempered by the fire of tribulations. You know, that process where a blade, whether it's a sword or a knife, is finally prepared to be used. It's not enough just to forge or sharpen that blade. The blade has to be tempered. It has to be submitted to high, high heat. And it is only through that heat. It is only through the flames that that blade becomes tempered so that it won't break. There is a confidence that it won't break, it won't bend as it's being used. That is the process that God works in us. Paul goes on in verse five and this hope, this hope that has been tempered by the heat of tribulation, it does not disappoint us.

It will not leave us ashamed that we have followed Jesus. Instead, it will bring us the experience that God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. Knowing that God intends for our tribulations to produce endurance, that in turn produces proven character, that in turn strengthens our hope, that is his way of increasing our awareness of God's love and grace in our lives and towards us. We look back at our trials. This is my experience in the middle of trials and tribulations. Hard to find, joy. But as I look back and I think about some of the difficult things the Lord has brought me through, I wouldn't want to go back there again. I wouldn't want to wish that on anyone else, but I wouldn't trade it away for anything. Because of the effect that God has used it for in my life and as I reflect on that and I realize both his sovereign hand and his loving kindness using that difficult thing in my life, it fills me with joy. There's great rejoicing, recognizing how he has worked something so hard for my good in his life. I want to close with two examples of this rejoicing even in the midst of tribulation because of the effect of tribulation. This is Pastor Wang Yi. This is a pastor that I pray for every week, numerous times during the week.

And he's there with his wife. Pastor Wang Yi is the pastor of Early Rain Covenant Church in China, which I have mentioned before. And for reasons that we don't have time to go into, the Chinese communist government is intent on eradicating this church. And they have gone about it by all kinds of measures. And in Pastor Yi's case in 2019, just two years ago, they interrupted a church service and they hauled him off in handcuffs and put him into a mock trial and sentenced him to seven years of hard labor for preaching the gospel, for preaching the good news of Jesus. They arrested several of his elders as well, who've been in and out of prison. They arrested his wife, who is in prison for a short time and now is under house arrest. Any time they find groups of believers from Early Rain Covenant church or even gathering in homes to meet, if they learn of that, the Chinese government clamps down on that, breaks it up, hauls them in for questioning, sometimes puts them in jail. Think of tribulation. We haven't experienced anything like that. And yet in the midst of that, as letters from Pastor Yi are smuggled out from his prison, they're filled with joy. He recognizes God is actually strengthening not just him, but strengthening its church through this tribulation. I think about that we don't face hard to totalitarianism here in this nation, but I think we're facing an increasing soft totalitarianism.

I think through what we see through social media and other structures in our culture, there is a growing soft totalitarianism that is coming down harder and harder on anyone who wants to live an authentic life following Jesus and the Lord can change anything overnight. The Lord can return. But if that doesn't happen first, we may be in that situation where that soft totalitarianism may make it so difficult for us that that we have to choose. Am I going to faithfully follow Jesus or are we going to faithfully follow the gospel? Are we going to compromise or are we going to walk away from this? Will we rejoice? Will we recognize what God is doing in the midst of it? Will we endure? Will we be able to remain under it and stand up under its will our faith be proven? Will it be established that our faith is genuine, that we are not shallow ground Christians that dry up when the heat of persecution comes out over us? And then an even more severe example, sometimes God permits his children to go through terrible persecution and even martyrdom. And I think of Graham Staines, an Australian missionary in India who in nineteen ninety nine ministering among Hindus in India, a group of radical Hindus surrounded his vehicle. He was in the vehicle with his two young sons who you see in that picture there, and they set the vehicle on fire and burned them to death.

He suffered giving even his life. Any reasonable person would ask, how can you rejoice in that, how can you rejoice in the death of those two young boys, much less this adult man who's made this choice to be there? And you know what? If heaven is not real, if Christianity is a myth, then, yes, this is nothing but a waste. But if heaven is true, if what Jesus did on the cross at the empty tomb, if that is true and that's what we celebrate next Sunday, if we truly believe that that is true, then it proves that this hope does not disappoint us. We will not be ashamed for taking a stand even where we're called upon to give our lives, because even if we don't experience it in this earthly life, in eternity, we experience that hope of the glory of God. That's what Graham and his sons are experiencing even now for all of eternity. That's what men and women have given their lives all throughout church history, are experiencing even now. And so we rejoice in our tribulation, knowing that, focusing on setting aside our feelings and deliberately focusing on what we know to be true, not allowing our feelings to cloud this perspective. And what is that perspective? That eternal perspective? Paul says it in Second Corinthians 4:17, that this momentary light affliction, whatever it is in your life and my life, is momentary light affliction.

God is actually using to produce for us an eternal weight of glory, a weight of glory far beyond all comparison, far beyond what we can imagine. And knowing that deliberately focusing on that, we look not on the things which are seen the temporal, we focus on the things that are unseen, the eternal. And then finally, one more piece of the perspective, really, the piece that puts it all together, the piece we celebrate on Friday and Sunday, we look to Jesus, who the writer of Hebrews says Hebrews 12:2 knowing that deliberately focusing on that Christ, Jesus, our savior, our Lord for the joy, awaiting him for the joy that he could see that the father had waiting for him. He endured the cross. He endured the tribulation set before him, disregarding the shame we look to Jesus, the author, the finisher of our faith, who models for us what it means to consider it joy that we may be led through tribulation. We look to Jesus, the one who gives us grace, to go through whatever the Lord lays before us. That is tribulation, knowing that for the joy that awaited him, he endured the cross he despised. He disregarded the shame. Let us pray. Father, I of course, I cannot know what each person sitting here is experiencing, what you even bring to their minds about the thlipsis, the tribulation that they're in the midst of. And for some, it might be sickness, it might be disease, it might be accidents.

Others it might be financial struggles. Some might be relational grief. Some may be here grieving in bereavement for the loss of someone beloved. Some may even be experiencing some form of opposition or persecution. I think of the brother from Africa who came up to me after the first service expressing the actual persecution that he and his family experienced there because of their faith in Jesus Christ. Whatever it is, Lord, I would imagine that really, if not all of us, most of us right now are wrestling with some form of thlipsis in our lives. Would you, by your word, as your spirit works your word into our hearts? Would you by the truth of your word? Would you help us to focus on to know that in the midst of it, in the midst of our tribulation, you are producing in us endurance the ability to remain under it? And in doing that, you are producing for us proven character the genuineness of our faith. And in doing that, you are making our hope grow. You are giving us an even greater hope than we had when we came to faith in you initially. And that you do that all Lord, that we would have an even greater view of you when you do that, Lord, that we would glorify you and worship you. And we do that now. We pray this Jesus in your name. Amen.