We Are Family... who GATHERS in worship.

I guess I could have just come up here and told you guys that, but we want to make a cool video.

That's weird to see yourself on a video before you get up and speak for sure.

I should have thought that through.

But hey, I'm so glad you are here in worship.

It is something I reminisce about quite a bit, especially this weekend.

We celebrated my daughter Molly's 28th birthday.

And so when we moved into our first home in Independence, Kentucky, I think we were a month away from having our first baby.

And so I always connect those two things together.

And it's neat to look back on it.

And a lot has changed in 28 years.

A lot has changed in this community.

And even our worship here at Eager Grove, it looks different now than it did 28 years ago.

But what we want to look at together today in the next three weeks are things that I think are what a church is, what a family of God is that doesn't change.

Maybe the way it looks can change.

Maybe the parts of it, the way it's done, might change.

But these are things that are never-changing parts of what it means to be the family of God.

And it's based in Scripture, and that's how we know.

Like this is what we do.

This is what it means to be a family.

This is what it means to be brothers and sisters in Christ.

If you've ever witnessed one of our baptisms that we do, uh it's funny because I think a while back, one of the kids that we were baptizing, I think we were in a meeting before the baptism, just giving an orientation.

And I tell them what I'm going to say as I bury, as I, as I bury, as I dunk you under the water, I'm going to say, buried with Christ, raised the new life.

You won't hear it because you'll be underwater.

But I say before that, I will say, I will bury you, my I will baptize you, my brother, baptize you, my sister.

And one of them was like, my what?

You know, like we're brother and sister.

I was like, well, yeah, it's actually something I take for granted that I've said for so many years, but it's true that when we put our faith in Jesus Christ, we're adopted into his family.

We're brothers, we're sisters, we're we're together forever.

And uh, that's a beautiful thing.

That's what we are as a church.

And I do believe that this environment, this specific local family of faith called Hickory Grove is so unique and so special.

We love it.

I'm so glad we're getting to be a part of it.

But one of the four things that will be something we will always do, it's really cool.

We do it today, we'll keep on doing it.

When we breathe our last breath on this earth, we will keep doing this, and that is worship.

We are family who gathers in worship.

And it's what we're known for, really.

When you think about church, if someone were to say, describe what church is, some people would almost immediately say, Well, that's the thing you do Sundays.

You go on Sundays and you worship.

And that's what church is kind of known for.

It's known for, should be known for way more than that, and hopefully it is.

Um, but it is what we do.

It is a big part of who we are.

It's a big part of what we do.

Uh, every time we as a staff gather together and we're talking about things that are happening in the life of the church, there are other events, there are other initiatives we're doing, but we always know Sunday is a big day for us.

It's that one time of week when the whole family comes together and we get to worship God together.

And it's a big deal that we get to do that.

It's an awesome thing.

It's something that humanity has been doing since the beginning.

Uh, thought I would kind of trace it back a little bit.

In my mind, I thought I might nerd out with some history today and talk about the history of worship.

And I'm like, okay, I'm already bored thinking about that.

I don't know if I want to do that or not.

But I would love to trace the origins, and I'm like, it's right there in Genesis chapter four.

It's right there.

Cain and Abel, two of the kids of Adam and Eve, both brought offerings to God.

Even then, at the very beginning of humanity, the first family that existed on planet Earth, there was worship happening.

And I believe we're hardwired to worship.

It's probably a whole other sermon series to kind of talk about that.

I think that we're hardwired to worship and that if God Himself is not on the throne of our heart, we'll find something else to put there if we're not careful and let our universe revolve around that.

That's a whole other sermon, though.

We want to talk about what it means to gather together as a family to worship.

I also would argue that not only are we perhaps hardwired to worship, I think it's in our nature as humans to gather.

And the reason I believe that is that even people, family and friends that I know are extremely introverted, that maybe by their initial nature, the last thing they would want to do is get into a crowd of people.

And yet, even my introverted friends and family, I see them gathering for different reasons.

It could be for this, for sure.

Absolutely.

My dad used to joke to me when the pandemic hit, he said, I've been preparing for this for all my life.

I am so good at social distancing.

I'm great at it.

It's my time to shine, you know.

Um he was funny about that.

But yet he gathers on Sundays at his church in Harlan County to worship.

He's gathered with me to a place known as Ruperena, gathering together to watch a ballgame, the gathering of Big Blue Nation.

We could be completely not even believing that God exists, and yet by our very nature, we tend to be gatherers.

And we see that over and over again.

It's part of our nature.

But when a group of people gather at the feet of Jesus, it is a gathering like no other.

Coming together not just because we want to be together, not just to have a good time together and connect with one another, although those things do hopefully happen to some extent every time we gather.

But when we gather for the purpose and the intentionality of being at the feet of Jesus, it can be fun, it could be reverent, it could be emotional, it could be extremely logical, but it is absolutely over time transformative in our lives.

At the feet of Jesus.

It's kind of a funny phrase.

Every now and then I catch myself saying words and phrases that I think, wow, if someone has not come to church very often, they would probably wonder, why would we say that?

Like, if you're here and you're like, this is my first time ever attending church, and you're talking about gathering at someone's feet, I'm out.

I don't want to gather anywhere near someone's feet.

I get that.

But we're gonna look at a passage where this comes from.

It's in Luke chapter 10.

Luke 10 · chapter mention

And I love that this passage exists.

In a way, when we think about worship, and if some of you who are familiar with scriptures, you might already be thinking of some different parts of the Bible that we could easily go to to talk about worship, to talk about praise, to talk about glorifying God.

But I believe this moment in the Gospels where Jesus is going around teaching, doing great miracles, there's this moment that happens in a home, a home that ended up being filled with some of Jesus' best friends.

It's in this moment that I think we see what worship really is.

So let's read it together, starting in verse 38 of Luke chapter 10.

Luke 10 · chapter mention

It says, While they were traveling, he, meaning Jesus, entered a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.

She had a sister named Mary, who also, there it is, sat at the Lord's feet and was listening to what he said.

But Martha was distracted by her many tasks, and she came up and asked, Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to serve alone?

So tell her to give me a hand.

The Lord answered her, Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things.

But one thing is necessary.

Mary has made the right choice, and it will not be taken away from her.

Now there's that phrase at the feet of Jesus.

Now it could be that Jesus was standing or sitting and teaching.

It could be that they had just had a meal and he was still reclining at table.

That's a phrase you might see in some of her more literal English translations.

Whenever they would eat, they were literally on the floor with a table maybe only about this high, leaned on to the table with one arm and feet extended behind your body.

Mary could have been there, could have been sitting near Jesus during that moment, or she pulled up close as she could while he was sitting in a chair or standing, teaching in this home.

We just know that she went to the feet of Jesus.

So as we look at this passage, let me give you a few observations.

One is let's literally lean into what Mary was not only where she was, but also what she was doing.

We see that she was at the feet of Jesus, but the scripture said that she was listening to what he said.

And I know that sounds like such a simple thing, but she wasn't like, I just want to get a good seat.

She was there and she wanted to hear what he was saying.

She was leaning in, taking in his words.

And I would argue that that's what we do or we should be trying to do every time we gather here to just get into the presence of God, to just pull up as close as we can to him and listen to him.

Listen for his voice.

There, I would argue there's something about doing what we're doing right now that makes that possible, probable in our lives.

Now, I think it's also just as easy to go through an act of worship and be far from God at the same time.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't be gathering here.

I think consistency over time could end up changing that.

But I do believe that if we were to somehow, somehow, by God's strength and grace, pull up into a place like this and really try to push all the other ideas and thoughts out of our minds and just be in his presence.

It could be transformative.

The last couple of weeks, uh got to kind of have a break from being up here on the platform two weeks, two Sundays ago.

Me and my family were on vacation.

It was awesome.

Last Sunday, our students took over.

There were two great messages in a row by our staff, by the way, Travis reporting about the Mexico mission trip.

It was so, so good.

And Jack came up and preached as part of our student takeover day.

It was so great.

But I sat about over there uh last Sunday, sat with my wife and some friends, and I thought, this is nice.

Don't get to do that very often.

Just sitting and just being, and I noticed something about happened about eight minutes from now, last week.

I felt two things.

I felt hunger, and I felt cold, like physically cold.

I'm like, oh, I bet people feel that way every Sunday sometimes.

And they have to fight against that.

I don't have to fight against that because I got a little bit more heat on me up here.

I'm busy thinking about what I'm gonna say to you, so I don't have to think, I don't have to deal with that.

I get to bore you, I get to put you to sleep, but you have to fight against those things and pull up to the feet of Jesus and try to take in his word.

I thought, Jack's doing a great job, but I'm really hungry right now.

So I got my note-taking app out on our church app, and I was like, I'm making sure I'm taking notes here.

Just stay focused, Bill, just stay focused.

When you're doing that, if you have to do that too, man, that's awesome.

You're just scooting a little bit closer to the feet of Jesus and trying to push aside all the stuff and hear his voice.

And that's what we do in worship.

That's what Mary was doing.

She was at his feet, listening to what he said.

And then we have the different parts of worship that we do here that I think hopefully help with that.

It's not just one thing that's important that we do in our service.

The music, the lyrics, I'm sometimes the worst.

Especially if I know the song well, I'll just be singing it.

And I'm not thinking about what I'm singing because I know it so well that I just sing it.

But every now and then when you just pause and think about the lyrics that you're singing, man, it could be so helpful to pull you in closer to the feet of Jesus.

What a powerful name it is, the name of Jesus.

You start thinking about his name is powerful.

Dead things do come alive because of the name of Jesus.

I have new life, eternal life spiritually, because of the name of Jesus, and I've gathered with others who have had that same experience.

That starts changing the way you think about worship.

And when Missy comes up and shares different next step opportunities, man, that's just on-ramps that Jesus might be leaning us into.

You know, all of that comes together.

But especially even this time that we call the sermon or the message or the teaching.

I wrote down a sentence that I need, I know I must remember for the rest of my life.

It's on the screen right now.

Maybe you pray for this, but also hold me to this.

But the goal of our sermons is that we look directly into his inspired word and let his words pierce our hearts and our souls and lead us into whatever next steps he wants us to take with him.

And you heard Missy talk about that's our playbook, the scriptures.

We need to be in it more than just minutes a week here in this gathering.

But make no mistake about it, when we do gather in this place together on a weekly basis, the very centerpiece of what we do is the voice of God, to hear him speak to us, to hear him whisper into what we're dealing with, what we're going through, and give us what's true, what's real, what's right.

That's what we do.

So the lyrics, the next steps, the scripture, the message, it all is about listening to what Jesus has to say.

Now, we've observed Mary a little bit.

Let's observe Martha.

Poor Martha gets judged a lot, but let's look at this for a little bit.

One part of verse 40 simply says, but Martha was distracted by her many tasks.

Can we all just come together and say, amen?

Right?

Let's own that.

That is so me, and that's probably so you as well.

To fight against all the things like you've probably already been thinking about what you got to do after this, what you want to do after this.

There are tasks that I think about sometimes that I need to do so that I could do some other tasks that have to happen after that.

But before I can do that task, I got to do these tasks.

And that can get crushing at times, right?

And it's hard to get off that merry-go-round of all the things you gotta do, all the things that you gotta get done.

And that was Martha.

And we've all been like Martha.

There's no condemnation, there's no judgment about that at all.

We have many tasks.

All of us have things we have to get done.

But here's what's true: it's not the tasks of life that are the problem.

It's that we choose worrying about them over worshiping Jesus.

Now that sounds a little judgmental, and I don't mean for it to be judgmental.

I don't think Jesus was being that harsh to Martha.

I think he was trying to help her, trying to help Martha see like you're worried about a lot of things here, but where Mary is is where she needs to be.

It's what's best, it's what's most important.

And that's true of every single one of us here.

Every single one of us, what's most important, yes, there's a lot to get done.

We have to earn our pay and pay our bills.

We want to provide, we want to eat, and we need to accomplish certain things.

There's other things that are important too that we must take care of.

Our health.

Uh, we wear different hats.

Sometimes it feels like a lot of those hats are hard to wear, but I wear the hat of being a husband, of being a dad, of being a grandpa, being a pastor, and different things that I might agree to do and commit myself to.

Those are new hats that we wear as well.

And after a while that can seem very daunting.

Those things are good, not necessarily bad or evil.

I do think at times the Lord might speak to our hearts and say, you're doing too much.

You need to carve some tasks away from your life.

That's a whole other sermon, too.

But what I want you to hear today is it's not the tasks, it's the worrying about them.

It's the being upset about them that's the problem.

In other words, we need to take time regularly to do what Mary did and stop and take a seat at the feet of Jesus.

And we need to do it regularly.

It's life-giving to do that.

I would argue we will do our tasks better, more efficiently, with the correct attitude, and in a loving way if we're doing Mary things regularly too.

And so it's not the task.

It's about us choosing.

Like even here in this space, it's so easy to choose everything that you've got to get done, everything that's worrying you, everything that's upsetting you right now.

It's so easy to choose that and elevate that over the presence of Jesus.

And I would say this is probably another sermon or sermon series also, but I wonder if we get stuck in that mode all the time.

And then we're constantly saying, Well, I believe in God, but I know Jesus is real, but I know God can do anything but.

And the reason we keep putting a but at the end of that statement is because we have elevated what we're worried about and what we're upset about as higher than Christ.

And that when we flip it and say, Jesus is enough, even though I've got to do this.

Jesus is enough, even though this is going wrong in my life.

Jesus is enough, even though I'm hurt and grieving.

That changes everything.

And we get there by continually gathering at the feet of Jesus over and over and over again.

Let me read to you the two verses where Martha takes center stage.

It says in verses 41 and 42, the Lord answered her, Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but one thing is necessary.

Mary has made the right choice and it will not be taken away from her.

And I love that the word choice is in Scripture.

It's intention, it's an act of the will to stop and draw close to the feet of Jesus and say, I'm setting down my task list, I'm choosing to center my mind on the presence of God.

And that's what we too, that's what we do when we gather together in worship.

So I would ask this question: what if we choose to turn our eyes away from what makes us worried and upset, and instead turn our eyes upon Jesus and scoot as close to Him as we can with our God family?

I think that's what we do on Sundays.

I would also argue that when the worry and the upset hits you on Monday or a random Thursday or whatever day that it happens, that perhaps even in that moment, in the car drive, that you can just stop and say, I'm gonna stop right now, Jesus, you're with me.

We talked about this last week.

Jack Myrows told us we're a branch on the vine, continually connected to him.

We don't always acknowledge that because of our faith in Jesus Christ, that the Holy Spirit dwells within us.

So what we already need most is right there with us.

If we just stop being worried and upset in that moment and acknowledge his presence, say, Jesus, I know you're right here right now.

I'm worried and I'm upset, and I need to just stop right now and just know that you're here and know that you're enough.

Give me wisdom, calm my spirit, change my attitude, help me to be grateful and change this right now in my life.

And in that moment, whether it's a car drive or in the shower or wherever you are, you've entered into worship.

You've pulled up at the feet of Jesus.

We need those private times of worship also.

But man, there's something about coming together in this space as a family.

So I want to lean into that for just a few moments before we end our time doing this.

There's some things that God has been really teaching me about why this is so important.

Like I know it's important, and you you're always gonna hear me say, Oh, please come, let's gather and worship, you know.

That's what preachers are supposed to do, right?

But it's important for real reasons.

First, worship is actually not about us.

And we have to fight against that, don't we?

We make it too easily about us, our preferences.

Did we enjoy the experience?

It's so easy to go there.

We all do it.

Every single one of us do it, at least to a little extent.

But when you pause for a moment and say, why do we do this?

Why do we really do this?

If it's about us, then we can do, then you can call anything a gathering of worship.

Taylor Swift concert, uh Kentucky Wildcat basketball game at Ruperena, a Bingles game at Paco Stadium.

Like we're gathering together because we love this.

This is awesome.

We're having fun.

Well, I kind of hope we feel that way when we gather here in this space, but it's actually not about us.

It's a place where we gather and say, this is awesome because he is awesome.

And we're all here together to acknowledge just how awesome he is and how much we need him desperately in our lives.

We gather together to tell him, you are worthy, God.

You alone are worthy.

We come to give you praise.

We come to give you an offering.

And our offering is our uh our voices of praise to you, our listening ears to hear your word, and the next steps we choose to take when we gather in this space.

It's not about us.

One of my favorite books that really helped me so much in life many years ago is a book called The Purpose Driven Life, written by Rick Warren, founding pastor of Saddleback Church.

And the very first sentence of the book is it's not about you.

Real encouraging, but very eye-opening and very true.

It's all about Jesus.

And that changes everything.

When you begin to really believe that, even the bad stuff, even the stuff, the tasks that worry you and upset you, like, well, this isn't about me.

So what is God's purpose in it?

How is he going to be glorified in all of this?

And that changes everything.

Even though worship is not about us, I will say, but worship is good for us.

Because I believe God would say to us right now, yeah, yes, it's about me, but when you come and do it, it's going to bless you.

It's going to do a great work in you.

It's going to grow you.

It's going to bond you.

It's good for you.

It's good for us to gather worship.

And I think, here's what I think is true.

It's experiences that many of us have had.

I attended church on and off way before I put my faith in Jesus.

That might be some of you in this room.

You may say to yourself, I don't know that I've taken that step of faith with Jesus yet, but here I am.

And you might agree with this.

You keep coming because there's something about it that keeps you coming here.

And it's hard to sometimes put into words what that is.

But I think it's this.

It's good for us.

It's making me somehow think differently, feel differently, maybe even live differently.

And that's the power that comes from gathering together at the feet of Jesus.

And this is another thing I would add to this statement because this is why it's good for us.

Because worship makes the power and presence of God unavoidable.

Now I want to pause and say this.

It says because worship makes it.

I'm going to be this is going to sound critical.

I can say this because me being a pastor, we can be critical of what we do easily.

If we're not careful, we can say a church service makes the power and presence of God unvoid.

Because we call these worship services church services.

Like, to me, I don't want to have a church service.

I don't want to just play church or do church or go through the motions of church.

I'm using language I don't even like using.

Worship by what it's defined as worship, when that happens, when all eyes together are fixed on Jesus, when all voices are lifted up in song and praise to Jesus, when all ears are tuned in to hear the words of Jesus, when that's what we're doing, you cannot ignore that God is real, that his presence is real.

And it's unavoidable.

When you watch people taking next steps, declaring their faith through baptism, hands lifted high, people focusing in on the presence of God, that's when you can almost sense the palpable existence of the God who made you, the God who put on flesh and died for you and loves you.

I think that's why a lot of people do come to faith in Jesus in a worship gathering.

Because as they keep showing up, you're like, man, he's here.

I can't miss him.

He's here, I feel it, I sense it somehow.

That's how God uses worship.

And worship forces us out of self-sufficiency and into Jesus dependency.

I think this is where we have to make some choices here.

Whenever I get asked by other people that don't know Hickory Grove, maybe it's me doing some networking with other ministers, they don't know Hickory Grove.

They might ask, tell me about your church.

And I find myself inevitably talking about how we're just, I don't know how to explain it.

We're just a whole bunch of down-to-earth people.

There's no condemnation here.

We all know that we have our messes and we own our messes, and we just bring them to Jesus together all the time.

And that's who we are.

I think that's so true, isn't it?

Is that we just gather together saying, we desperately need you, Jesus.

We gather to cling to him because it's not about us and we know that.

We cannot do it on our own.

We need him desperately for every part of our lives: body, soul, mind, spirit, all of it.

We cling to him for all those things.

And that's what it means to worship, being fully dependent on him.

So I got a couple of next steps for you to consider.

One is this to make a commitment to gather and worship consistently.

Such an easy little next step, just to do it more consistently, just to show up a little bit more frequently.

Now I want to pause right here because I think some of y'all thinking this right now.

Of course, Bill, you want to increase our church attendance.

Because that's the thing that matters, right?

Like, hey, tell me about your church, Bill.

Well, we got this many in worship every Sunday.

How many you have at your church?

You know, that's I think that's a thing that can be easy for people to assume.

I'll tell you, I said this a couple of weeks ago.

I'm getting older.

You start caring about what matters most, I think, the older you get.

You get a little bit wiser, and it's not about attendance.

It's about you becoming everything God created you and died for you to become, and this is part of it.

I'm about to run another marathon at the end of October.

I promise there's not a long-running story coming up.

Uh, you're hungry and cold for at least 10 minutes right now.

Uh so we're winding it down.

But I will tell you, when I run this marathon at the end of October, if right now from this point on, I decide I will run when I feel like it, just every now and then.

Just an occasional run.

When I go to run that marathon, it's going to be one of the worst experiences of my life.

And I may stop and I may not finish.

But if I choose to run even just three times a week, between now and then end of October, be a little bit more intentional about it, sometimes choosing to do it when it doesn't feel good to do it.

And I'm telling you right now, the past two months, it has not felt good to do it outside.

But you choose to do it anyway, then when I tow the line at that marathon at the end of October, I will actually be able to run that marathon and finish it and insanely maybe even enjoy it.

But it takes consistency to do that.

The one of the things that God is teaching me through life right now is that it you don't have to be awesome and strong.

You just have to be consistent.

What is the one thing God is telling me to do and do it, and do it again, and do it again, and do it again, and you stack it and you stack it and you stack it.

Whether it's reading just a little bit of scripture every day, praying a few times a day, certain places you know you're always going to be, always take a shower, cool, take while you pray while you're in there, always drive from here to there.

Cool, why don't you pray when you do that?

You do it and you do it.

Show up to gather and worship like this more often, do it more regularly, and you do it over time, over time.

It stacks and it stacks and it stacks, and the next thing you know, you are different because of it.

That's why we say to do it.

And then this when you gather and worship, pull up to the feet of Jesus, otherwise, it's just gonna be like any other gathering of humans, just trying to find some enjoyment in life in a gathering.

No, no.

When you enter in this place, make an active choice to stop worrying about the tasks, being upset about what's happening and say, I'm gonna choose worship over that.

This is real.

I got a lot of tasks and they worry me and they upset me, but I'm gonna choose worshiping Jesus.

I'm gonna pull up to his feet and listen and make him first.

And I tell you right now, if you do that consistently, you're gonna start, this other stuff is gonna start looking a little bit differently.

You're gonna start finding wisdom on how to deal with those things, and he's gonna be present with you in those things, and he is enough.

He is enough.

Before we pray, there's one more step that's not on this screen, and it's to my friends that might be like I was for the first 15 years of my life.

You might be here, and you have yet to place your faith in Jesus.

I invite you to step into that faith today.

You might have been like I'd been.

I'd seen people that seem to really love this Jesus, seemed to really believe in him, but that wasn't me.

I had all my doubts, and I didn't want to commit.

I don't know what you've been worried and upset about, what's been going on in your life, but you're here for a reason.

And I invite you that perhaps that reason is that he's been wanting to adopt you into his forever family.

And it's not happened yet.

He doesn't force that on you.

It's a choice that you get to make by the grace of God.

Romans 10.13 says, For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

One prayer of faith away, and you're his son, you're his daughter forever.

So if you haven't done that yet, why not today?

As I pray aloud, you call upon his name too.

Let's bow together as we pray.

Father, I praise you and thank you that we can hear your voice in the quietness of moments of worship.

What a gift that is.

Even today, through the lyrics we've sung, the next steps that Missy talked about, the words in the scriptures you've given us, oh Lord, if we could be still for just a little bit, I think we could hear your voice telling us the next step you want us to take.

Father, may we take that step.

Give us the courage to just take it.

Perhaps someone even now is calling upon your name, saying, Jesus, I believe.

I believe you died for me.

I know that I'm a sinner, and I ask that you forgive me of my sins and make me your child today.

Lord, whoever is praying a prayer, calling upon your name, help them to know that today is the first day of the rest of their eternal, abundant life in you.

And Father, for those of us who have done that already, Lord, help us to choose worshiping you over our worries.

May our worries and our tasks be altered by our worship of you today.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.