Don't BELIEVE better BEHAVE better

Hi, this is Dave Olson. I'm the senior leader of

Heartland Church located in Ankeny, IA.

I hope the following message challenges, encourages and

ultimately changes you. Thanks for joining us.

Amen. Good morning, man, God is good.

Amen. All right, this is Pentecost

Sunday and I am not going to preach on that.

I know it's disappointing, but I want to make a few comments

because we're in a vein. I, I feel like the Lord has a

word for us, but because it's Pentecost Sunday, we want to

touch on this Pentecost Sunday. You know, we, we think of as New

Testament believers, we are Pentecostal.

We believe in the outpouring of the Spirit.

We believe in the continuation of spiritual gifts.

That's what that's what people mean when they refer to people

as Pentecostal. But it really goes back to a

Jewish festival, the Feast of Pentecost.

And the Feast of Pentecost was, it means literally 50.

It was 50 days after Passover. So like Pastor Adam was talking

about the Passover lamb at 50 days later, the children of

Israel were at Mount Sinai. Moses ascended the mount of the

Lord, got the stone tablets, and brought down the law.

In the New Testament, Jesus is our Passover lamb.

Everything that Pastor Adam said sets us up for 50 days later

right here, we Jesus didn't ascend Mount Sinai, but he

ascended the hill of the Lord, literally stepping.

He's enthroned in heaven. He ascended, and now he's at the

right hand of the Father. And what did he do?

He poured out his Spirit on all flesh.

He, he poured out his spirit on his church.

So here's the deal. We don't have an external law.

We have the internal spirit living within us, enabling us,

strengthening us, empowering us to live up to the righteous

requirements of the law. So much so that what we see in

the Old Testament, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount said, you

have heard it said, and he would refer to the law.

You have heard it said, you're not, you know, do not commit

adultery. But I say unto you, if you look

lustfully upon a woman, you have already committed adultery in

your heart. So rather than lower the

standard, Jesus raised it in the new covenant because we now have

the indwelling spirit that enables us to fulfill the

righteous requirements of the law according to Romans chapter

Romans 8 · chapter mention

8. So the spirit filled life is

literally him living his life through US.

Years ago we had a when I worked at Teen Challenge, we had this

guy. He was an old biker that got

saved and started a boy's home. He's now with the Lord, but he

he used to talk about his theology wasn't real deep.

He was very effective as a minister, but this was his

theology. I met Jesus, he came inside, sat

down in my heart and he looks out through my eyeballs and that

was his theology. Jesus is looking out through me

and living his life through me. And that's good theology.

It's not real deep the way he explained it, but it's good

theology. And so we'll, we'll give an

opportunity for people to have hands laid on him If you want a

fresh touch of the spirit at the end of the the message this

morning, if you need to be filled with the spirit.

But I want to continue on in the vein we have been in, especially

in light of what we were just singing.

So turn with me to Psalm 149, Psalm 149.

In Psalm 149, we've been looking at this whole concept of praise.

And in Psalm 149, he, he and lists these groups of people.

So we've been looking. I'm hold on.

I'm a guy. I can't multitask, OK?

I know women can, but I can't. I'm a guy.

OK, so this is what we've been looking at.

Psalm 1, Psalm 2, and what? Psalm 149, Psalm 2, the second

book in the Book of Psalms, and Psalm 149, the second to the

last chapter of the Book of Psalms.

The Psalms, were they? They were really the records.

They were scribes, psalmists and seers.

OK, these are functions of Old Testament individuals.

There were seers who would literally see things in the

spiritual realm. They were prophetic.

They would go into encounters and they would deliver to man

what they saw. They were seers.

What it was a it was a form of prophetic or prophets.

Being a prophet, they were seers.

Samuel was a seer. David and Asaph were both seers.

David was a prophet. He was not only a king, he was a

prophet. And so you had these prophetic

people and they would capture the word of the Lord in song.

And they were recorded by scribes as Psalms.

And so we have these in this book of Psalms.

And they're not just nice little ditties that we sing.

They are the tracks. They are the footprints that we

can follow into our own encounter so that we can

experience what David and Asaph and the others experienced.

And so David left us a trail. Now here's the really

interesting thing to me is that David, matter of fact, the the

movie Braveheart was on the other day and I caught just the

end of it. So I got my phone and I filmed

it because I love this end where Braveheart, William Wallace, who

was William Wallace, the real character, William Wallace had

carried the Psalms with him into battle.

And his one request when they were murdering him, when they

were killing him, was that he could carry the Psalms in front

of him. He laid them open as they killed

him because that was his battle book.

That's how he won freedom for Scotland.

And then Robert the Bruce, who's also in the movie, Robert the

Bruce, actually had a prophetic ministry and had a healing

ministry. The real guy, Robert the Bruce.

Fascinating at the end it says that there's this scene where

they're they're standing before the hordes of of England and and

Robert the Bruce says we're going to we're going to, we're

not going to just acquiesce to them.

We're going to go into battle. And so the one dude throws the

sword and it dramatically flies through and then over the

narration, it says they were warrior poet.

They fought like warrior poets. They fought like Scott Mcsman

and they won their freedom. You know what, oh, bagpipe

music. And it's it's a guy flick man.

It's inspiring. But he called them warrior

poets. And David was a warrior poet.

David was a worshipping warrior. He was a man of war.

But his his battle plan was written down in the form of the

Psalms. And that's what we see in Psalm

Psalms 2 · chapter mention

chapter 2 and Psalm 149. Listen to what Psalm chapter 2

Psalms 2 · chapter mention

says. It says the the title over the

ESV is the reign of the Lord's anointed.

Why do the nations rage? The people plot in vain the

kings so he says the nation's rage, the people's plot in vain.

The kings of the earth set themselves and rulers take

counsel together against the Lord and is against his anointed

one, saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast their cords

from us. So there's these groups of

people, there are the nation's, the peoples, the kings and

rulers, and they try to set themselves against the purposes

of God. Now turn with me to Psalm 149

and listen to what this says. Look at verse 7 or look at verse

6. Let the high praise of God be in

their throats and A2 edged sword in their hands to execute

vengeance. And it enumerates those four

same groups of people, a vengeance on the nation's

punishments, on the peoples to bind their kings with chains and

their nobles with fetters of iron.

It is not a coincidence that the same ones that chapter 2 says

are trying to oppose the Lord's purposes.

Psalm 149 says that we literally bind them and we bend their neck

into the Lord's purposes through worship and the vivid language

it says with the praise of God in their throats and A2 edged

sword in their hand. Literally in the Hebrew it's a 2

mouthed sword. And the reason it says that is

in ancient times initially swords were curved and they

called it the mouth of the sword and you'd be consumed by the

sword. And then over time they began to

manufacture double edged swords. So they literally were called 2

mouthed swords and in the New Testament we see A2 edged sword

coming out of Jesus mouth. It's the word of the Lord and so

it's a picture of you and I in worship.

We're declaring him. We're enthroning Jesus over our

circumstance through worship, and then we're releasing the

word of the Lord and literally bending the neck of rogue rulers

in the world. We need to understand that there

is tremendous power that is released in worship.

And so let's look at chapter 149.

And then we're going to get into another Psalm as well.

So let's pray. Father, Lord, help me this

morning. I ask God that you would speak

to us and you would deliver your word.

Lord, that it would strike the mark.

Lord that it would be a flaming arrow.

God that would set our hearts on fire in Jesus name, Amen.

Psalm 149, praise the Lord. It's a command.

It's a call to arms for all of us.

Sing to the Lord a new song. It's that that word, a new song

literally means something that's never been heard before.

He's talking about touching the prophetic in worship.

Prophetic worship is catching what the Lord is doing in the

moment. And you can see that in worship

at times. It's like, you know, Scripture

says we see through a glass darkly.

We see in part, we prophecy in part.

So we're, we're, we're searching for what the Lord is doing in

worship and then we'll hit it. And those of you who are more

perceptive will sense that we'll hit that spot.

Oh, man, that's it. That's what the Lord's doing

right now. Prophetic worship is nothing

more and nothing less than the right song for the right moment.

We're releasing what the Lord is doing, just as Jesus, it says,

only said what he heard the Father saying and only did what

he saw the Father doing. In prophetic worship, we're

seeking what is the Lord saying? And we're putting that to song

and we're releasing that into the atmosphere.

We're trying to catch the word of the Lord because when we do

so, we literally begin to impose it on the enemy.

Now we need to understand that worship really has there's in

one sense 3 theaters in which that battle is fought or three

theaters that it affects. Yes, we're worshipping God

because He's worthy and we would.

We can worship for all eternity for that one reason.

He is worthy. But that's not the only reason

we worship. Do you know God's pretty secure

in His identity. You know, he wasn't feeling

insecure this morning. I think I hope I can just make

it to worship so that they'll reaffirm who I am.

It's not what's going on. Worship is not for God, It's for

us. We're declaring who he is.

We're we're recalibrating our mind.

But what what Scripture says, we're going to look at it in a

moment in Psalm 22 that literally God enthrones himself

in the midst of our praise. Our worship is a coronation

ceremony where we crown Him Lord of all, and we're getting our

minds aligned with that. So we worship him because He's

worthy, but we also worship Him because we've got to recalibrate

our mind and get our mind in the right place so that we crown Him

over our circumstances. In fact, let's let's turn to

Psalm 22. I've gotten stuck in Psalm 22

this last week, and in fact, the Lord spoke to me during worship

last week and it just fits in with the theme we've been on and

I've not been able to get out of Psalm 22 all week.

It's this is a very famous passage.

There are several prominent scriptures that you'll be

familiar with. What many believers don't

realize, however, is how close these opposite themes are in

Scripture. So look at what it says in verse

2022. One my God, my God, why have you

forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving

me, from the words of my groaning?

My God, I cry by day but you do not answer, and by night but I

find no rest. Now, of course, this is the

famous Psalm that Jesus himself quotes on the cross.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

But again, like we were looking at Psalm 2 a few weeks ago, we

need to realize that this was first a Psalm of David, then

it's a messianic Psalm, and then there's an application to you

and I God's, God's always playing 3D chess.

He's releasing revelation. David is going through something

and he's leaving the tracks for us.

He lays them down so that we can enter into what he entered into.

But also he was, he was not only articulating his present

circumstance, he was also tapping into the Spirit and

prophesying of what Jesus would do.

And the reason these messianic Psalms applied to David and to

us is because God has his ways, his templates by which he

operates. So God operated the same with

his Son as he operates with you and I.

And so if we can look in the book, you can find yourself on

every page and you can find how to navigate your circumstances.

And in this passage, it's, it's an amazing thing.

David says this, he's complaining in prayer.

And then the very next verse, verse 3, listen what it says.

Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel, and you,

our fathers trusted. They trusted, and you delivered

them. And he goes on.

He begins to remind himself of the testimonies of Israel and of

the history of God's people so that he can recalibrate his mind

to get his mind lined up with what God is doing.

But David begins with a complaint.

You know, David is a man after God's own heart.

God refers to David again and again and again centuries later.

And he would say things like, for the sake of David, I'm going

to do this thing. I don't know about you, but that

makes me jealous, makes you feel like, Lord, can I really live in

such a way that centuries later you'll refer to the light, the

short life I lived, and say, because of the way that man

postured his heart, I'm going to act in this hour of human

history hundreds and hundreds of years later.

And the answer is a resounding yes.

David was not meant to be an anomaly.

David is meant to be an example and a door for us to walk

through and to recognize that David discovered things and left

the tracks for us in the form of Psalms.

And this man that is called the man after God's own heart, what

does he say about him? This guy that pursues God?

David was a complainer. The difference between David and

other men were not that he didn't have doubts and

complaints and frustrations and even made some accusations

against God. The difference was not that

other people did and David didn't.

It's where David took those complaints and those even

accusations. You see, David understood that

prayer and praise are ways that we process our trials.

That is the area that we work these things out.

It's when we we get caught up in this life and and David's

feeling like God, why have you abandoned me, Lord?

I've cried out and you're not answering Lord.

But then David said, he says, yet you are the God of Israel,

you and throne yourself in our praises.

And all through this Psalm 22, David jumps back and forth.

It starts with a complaint and then verse 3 it says yet you are

the holy one of Israel. And then in verse 6 then he

says, but I am a worm and not a man.

And so David is being pulled back and forth between 2

narratives, 2 stories, 2 interpretations of what's going

on in his life. And David is working this out in

prayer. He's working this out in praise.

He's going to God. He's not ignoring his

circumstances. He's not pretending this isn't

his reality, but he's not. He's not satisfied to stay

there. He's getting in God's face,

getting in God's presence, and working this thing out.

It's not a sin to be frustrated and to have complaints.

It just depends on what you do with them.

Our complaints are not to be shared with each other.

It's to be shared in prayer and in the secret place.

We're hammering those things out and we're crying out to God and

saying God, what's going on? David was trying to find his

way. And if you read Psalm 22, it's

he has a complaint, but then he says yet Lord you are and thrown

in Israel and you delivered your people all the time.

But I'm a worm. And what he's saying is I'm

disqualified. I can't.

And then he said yet, and there's yet and butts and pulled

back and forth. And by the end of the passage,

David has found himself in victory, so much so that he not

only has the victory between his ears, he's now begin to, he

releases it over others and he begins to make these

declarations of the people of God will do these things and

they will see the deliverance of God.

And that's the way you and I are to live.

We've talked about it before. When you follow Jesus, he will

invite you into battle. If you really want to follow

God, get ready for a ride. I can't help but think of

Jonathan, Saul's son. And he says to his armor bearer,

they're all just kind of taking it easy under a tree.

And the Philistines, there's an outpost a ways away.

And Jonathan says to his armor bearer, hey, let's go pick a

fight with the whole outpost, just you and I.

He said, OK, whatever's, whatever's in your heart, we're

going to do it. And then they throw this crazy,

crazy fleece before the Lord. They said, OK, what we're going

to do is we're going to talk smack to these guys at the top

of the Cliff. And if they tell us to climb up,

then we'll know the Lord's in this.

I mean, if the enemy's lazy and they don't want to come down to

you, you know, it's God. They made it pretty easy on God.

But the picture is this, that the Son of the King has invited

you into battle and he's going to use your life as the bait to

take more ground and to overcome the enemy.

So if you really want to follow Jesus, just understand there's

going to be some battles. And so you're going to have to

be like David and get in God's face and say what is going on?

I know what your word says, but I know what I'm experiencing.

And he's pulled back and forth and through the Psalm, he's

processing his problems until finally, halfway through, he

settles it. God is in this thing.

I'm going to get through this thing.

And then he's able to release the victory to others.

And you and I are no different. See, we have a tendency, if

we're not careful, to think that David had some secret sauce.

Some special grace that he was he was a special one and we're

just the normal normal ones and but David had this elevated

grace that he could pull on and that's not true David that what

what made David stand out among the rest was David knew what to

do with his problems. He would take him to the Lord

and at times even say outrageous things to God.

You ever said anything outrageous to God?

If you haven't, you need to start because I guarantee you,

you're thinking it. Don't look at me that way.

I know you've had those thoughts.

And so we take them to the Lord and we process and God, this is

what it feels like. And I don't understand.

And David's processing his problems in prayer, in worship,

and he gets himself to the point of victory.

So David says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my

groaning? It's like you're distant Lord.

Later on he says be not far from me.

So he's first convinced God is far, then he's saying be not

far. And by the end of the Psalm, he

knows he's he's walking with the Lord and he's got the victory.

And we need to sharpen though it that skill set to hammer out our

frustrations in prayer. We talked about it a couple

weeks ago, but it's that we live between two narratives.

There's the narrative of the enemy and the narrative of

heaven. And again, a narrative, a

narrator, is the voice that gives meaning to what's

happening on the stage. We have our experiences, and the

enemy is trying to impose his interpretation of what's going

on, and God wants to impose his interpretation.

And you will find God's interpretation of your

circumstances in His Word. And we cannot afford to listen

to any voice that violates the word of God because it's the

word of God that's going to give you the accurate perception of

what you're going through. And so David is working his way

through and crying out and he's like, God, what's going on?

It feels like you abandoned me. He didn't hide those feelings.

He got right in God's presence and began to pour out his heart

to God. And through that, God began to

bring him online. And he he moved himself into the

truth, recalibrated his mind not just with prayer, but with

praise. And so David said, Lord, you

enthrone yourself in the midst of the praise of your people.

Again, when when we praise him, we are crowning him.

There is an element of God's presence that he reserves to

praise. It's when we come together and

and the context here, by the way, is corporate praise in

Psalm 149, Psalm 2, there's there's this thing that we

worship him together. There is an element of his of

who he is. He will not commit to the

individual. It's very clear Psalm, Ephesians

rather chapter 1 and chapter 4. Ephesians chapter 1, the last

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

few verses says God has put everything under Christ's feet,

comma for the church, and then it says the church is this the

fullness of Him? You will never walk in the

fullness of God alone. In chapter 4 it says you have

been given a measure of the gift of Christ.

You have a measure. I have a measure, and the only

way to discover the full measure is to get with someone else in

their measure, because wherever two or three are gathered in His

name, there he is. And so there's something about

availing ourself to corporate worship, and we begin to lift up

His name, and he begins to settle in there.

And from there he begins to extend his scepter and rule in

the midst of our situation. But if we become those people

that say, well, I'll believe in God's deliverance when I see it,

you'll never see it. We have to win the battle

between our ears before we win the external battle in our

circumstance. And with David here, David wins

the battle in these passages. By the end, he's declaring the

victory over his situations, but nothing has changed physically

yet. We come in here and we

recalibrate our minds and we exalt Him, and we begin to make

declarations over our situation. But for the most part, when we

get in our cars and leave this parking lot, our circumstances

themselves have yet to give way to the word of the Lord.

But the beginning of the that victory is the victory between

your ears. And so we've got to learn that

worship is a way that we train our minds, we recalibrate

ourselves, we begin to align ourself with the narrative of

heaven. And you see David doing that in

Psalm 22. Lord, you've ignored me yet.

You, you have. You deliver your people, but I'm

but a worm. And he complaints more yet.

And he reminds himself, and he keeps working back and forth.

He's pulled back and forth until finally he settles into the

victory. You ever been there?

If you ever, if you haven't ever gone through something like

that, you haven't been walking with the Lord very long because

the Lord will take you. He'll lead you into impossible

situations and through your heart cry.

He'll turn those situations around.

The way that God takes ground in the earth is through your life.

You are the bait. He will pick a fight with the

enemy, with your life and then use you to get more ground.

And if you don't understand that, you'll think, well man,

Lord, my life was pretty smooth till I got saved.

It's because you were flowing with all the other flotsam in

this world. You want to go up up against the

against the stream. You want to see God do some

things and you've got to align yourself with him.

So let's look at Psalm 149. This is this is so, so very

important. Psalm 149 and we don't have time

to get into everything. I would love to release to you

this morning, but we want to get to 1 part.

Listen to what he says here. So in Psalm 149 there are 5 or 6

rather let there's let's he says chapter verse one.

It's the command. Praise the Lord, sing a new

song. It's a prophetic song in the

praise in the assembly of the godly.

The word assembly in the Septuagint is the ecclesia.

So you release that in the ekklesia.

There's a command for us to gather and lift up his name,

because that's where he's going to enthrone himself.

And then he says this, Let Israel be glad in his Maker.

Let the children of Zion rejoice in their king.

Let them praise his name with dancing, making melody to him

with tambourine and lyre. So there's this full body sport,

contact sport called worship that we're to get involved in.

And it's not this I'm telling you, God is so good that when

you see him, it says in Psalm 22, he says, Lord, you are the

source of my praise. What he's saying is when I

finally broke through and I got a vision of you, I couldn't help

myself. I had to worship.

So we press through until we see him for who he is.

And once you see him for who he is, praise will erupt from your

being. God is more worthy than a golf

clap. Oh, isn't he wonderful?

There's this thing within us that God, you're amazing, and

that eruption of praise. It's a command in Scripture, but

it has a source. He tells us let's do this, let's

do this, let's do this. He says verse 4.

This is the motive for our worship.

This is the why behind the what you see in the New Testament,

Paul and his epistles, he will go into the doctrine on the

front half of the book so that he can go into the practical

stuff in the back half of his book.

Ephesians chapters one through 3 all doctrinal.

Then in chapter 4 he says now walk worthy of the calling in

light of that walk worthy of the calling.

And then it's things like husbands love your wives, wives

meant to your husbands kids obey your parents, parents don't

embitter your kids. It's real practical.

I don't know about you. When I got saved, I spent all my

time in the last half of these books because I didn't know what

Paul was talking about. Ephesians chapter 1.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath

blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in

him. Like what I understood, Obey

your parents. But here's the thing.

Paul was brilliant. He understood that if you don't

understand the first part, the doctrine, this was the basis of

our ability to carry out the second part of the book.

And David's doing the same thing He's saying praise him, dance,

go wild, worship the Lord. I was, I was telling the first

service, you know, we talk about that prophetic worship.

I was up in Mason City, Chuck Moline and I went up there to

hear Joe Bieber this last weekend.

And the last song they sang was I'm Trading My Sorrows.

Anybody know that song? Yeah, Great song.

And you know where that song came from?

It was Spur of the Moment written in the moment by Darrell

Evans and Joel and Linda Budds Church.

Joel was on the front row in worship and the Lord told him

Joel had had really bad foot problems.

I don't remember what it was, but he had really bad foot

problems. And the Lord spoke to him and

said Joel get up and dance and I'm going to heal your feet.

And by the way, you're going to offend 2 families in the church

by dancing and they're going to leave your church.

So Joel's response, he jumped up and said, yes, Lord spun around,

His feet were instantly healed. Darrell Evans heard that and

said that's it and wrote the song on the spot.

That's prophetic worship. It released the power of God and

two families got offended and left because Joel was living up

to this passage. Extravagant worship.

Don't be Michael or Michelle or whatever her name was.

You know, David's wife, the daughter of Saul who did

despised him because he was undignified in his worship.

David said, oh, you haven't seen anything yet, girl, I'll be even

more undignified than this. And he just, he began to worship

and she became barren. Telling you he's worthy.

And there's something about when we see him for who he is.

And this is the key here. Listen what he says He says, why

do we worship him? Verse 4 it says for this is the

reason for the Lord takes pleasure in his people.

He adorns the humble with salvation.

Let the godly exalt in glory. Let them sing for joy on their

beds. Let the high praise of God be in

their throats, and A2 edged sword in their hand.

And he began in verse 6. It shifts into the corporate and

they begin to X to impose it externally because He first got

it settled between His ears. Here's the key.

This is verses four and five is the key to this whole passage.

What does he say? Why do we worship Him?

For the Lord takes pleasure in His people.

He adorns the humble with salvation.

Do you realize that God takes pleasure in you?

If you do not, you're going to be hard to sustain a life of

worship. But if you really begin to get a

vision for how God sees you, you will not be able to keep the

praise down. It will erupt from you.

There is a war in hell against your identity before the throne

of God. The enemy is out to convince

you. There's a lot of believers.

They have this low grade sense of divine disappointment that

they live in. They're continually feeling like

God's just kind of disappointed. He got stuck with me.

My son bought this guy and now I got to, it's like the ugly tie

your kids buy you at Father's Day, you know, when they're real

little big old thing, you know, ugly.

So you wear it, you know, but you don't like you're kind of

feeling conspicuous because it's ugly, but you're doing it

because your son bought it. A lot of people feel like that's

what they are. They're the ugly tie that the

father wears because the son bought us and they're kind of

embarrassed, like, oh man, you know, here's Dave, like Jesus

bought them. And we're, we see ourself as

merely tolerated rather than celebrated.

But this verse says God takes pleasure in his people.

I'm telling you, if you get a vision for this, it will change

your life. It will change how you approach

him. You won't you, you, you won't be

able to wait to get in his presence because God is

celebrating you. He's taking pleasure in you.

But if you have this nagging, even unconscious thought in the

back of your mind, God's disappointed.

He knows I'm the screw up son that can't pull it off I can't.

I can't do what He's called me to do.

I can't live the life right. I'm telling you the reason you

can't live the life right is because of how you see yourself.

Theologians talk about original sin in the Garden of Eden, but

original sin was the result of an original lie.

You're believing determines your behaving.

And the original sin was twofold.

There's two sides of it. God can't be trusted.

God's trying to keep the good stuff from you.

Don't eat that fruit. Oh, yeah, that's.

He's saying that because he's afraid you'll be like him.

You're going to take over his office.

You better take matters into your own hands.

God can't be trusted. He's not really good.

That's the lie. But there's a flip side.

There's a secondary lie. It's not theology.

The first one's your theology. The second one's your identity.

You're not good enough the way you are.

You're a cosmic accident. Other believers may be able to

do this, but man, you just keep messing up.

And there's this sense of disappointment that we walk in

and it robs us of our identity. And David tells us, listen, the

source of your praise is when you discover God takes pleasure

in his people. He takes pleasure in you

personally. He really does.

You know, I used to preach this. Curtis and Teresa, stand up real

quick here. This is Curtis and Teresa

Barnes. They're the directors of the

Women's Teen Challenge program out in Omaha, or not in Omaha,

but Nebraska. And yeah, so and Curtis went

through the Pro Teen Challenge back like 27 years ago.

We're both getting old. It's so good to see him and to

see these guys walking with Jesus.

I know you feel the same way, Curtis, seeing people that are

walking with Jesus all these years later, man, there's

nothing. John said.

My greatest joy is to see my children walk in truth, to see

people you poured into still walking it after all those

years. But Curtis, I've had to repent

of a lot of stuff I taught back then.

I used to preach that we are valuable because of what Jesus

did on the cross. You know, the the idea that

market drives value and well, you know, we weren't really

worth it, but Jesus was willing to pay with his lifeblood.

So that kind of raised our our standing in the economy, the

spiritual economy. You know, now we're worth

something because he, but he kind of got ripped off.

That was my theology. But that's not true.

Jesus died for you precisely because you're valuable.

We were the lost coin. The coin was still valuable.

It was simply lost. It still had the image stamped

upon it. And so he died to retrieve the

value. We have created value, not just

redeemed value. God made you and he takes

pleasure in the way he fashioned you.

And in fact, self rejection is an affront to God because you're

accusing him of making some kind of defective thing.

You have created value that yes, sin caused us to be lost, but we

still had value. And Jesus came after us and paid

the ultimate price. And if we don't understand that,

we can relegate ourselves out here like, like we're some kind

of reject that God got stuck with.

And that is not true. And what it does is it

undermines your ability to really have intimacy with God.

Who wants to hang out with someone who's constantly

disappointed in you? Have you ever known someone

that's always critiquing you? You're not real excited to have

coffee with them, are you? That is not God's heart towards

us. God takes pleasure.

He he. The The Hebrew word means just

what the English translate. He has a high degree of delight

in His people. He loves you.

He's not merely tolerating you. You're not the ugly Thai.

He is celebrating you and what you've got to do in worship.

What's going to ignite worship in your life is when you begin

to agree with Him. It's not pride when we agree

with our value. In fact, it's arrogant not to.

Because let God be true and every man a liar, including

yourself. When we agree with what he says

about us, it is liberating. I tell you, when you see how God

sees you, you want to hang out with them because there's no one

that loves you like God does. He knows you best and loves you

most. And when you see that, you want

to be with him. But many of us, we live under

this kind of shadowy disappointment, feeling like

we're just we're this cosmic disappointment like God is like,

oh, I wish I would have skipped that one.

And that is not true. And God is not waiting for you

to live up to some standard before he's he takes pleasure in

what he created. In fact, when you enter into

that is when you'll be able to walk it out because you cripple

your ability to draw on the grace of God when you constantly

feel like he's already rejected you anyway.

But as you realize that Jesus redeemed as simple precisely

because of the created value put within us.

I, I am created in the image of God, and God longs to see that

that unique facet of his image shine through me and shine

through you. And so we've got to get our

minds around this thing. There is a reason that Jesus

didn't enter ministry until he heard the heavens open.

The dove descended and there was a voice.

You are my Son, in whom I'm well pleased.

If Jesus, the sinless Son of God, needed to hear that, how

much more do you and I? You say, well, yeah, but it was

true of Jesus. He was sinless.

It's true of you, the psalmist said.

So let God be true and every man a liar.

Align our minds with what the word of God says.

God celebrates you. He really is crazy about that

quirky little personality he gave you.

And those years ago Bob Hazlett was here and he was teaching on

the prophetic and he said, OK, you know, pray right now.

Ask the Lord about someone in the room and and ask the Lord

about them and share it with them later.

My my bald headed brother Christopher, come to me later.

He said, hey, I asked the Lord about you.

I said, really? He said, yeah, do you want me to

share? I said yeah.

And I'm telling you some of the things he shared that the Lord

shared with him, it just broke me.

It tenderized my heart because there were things that to me

were very insignificant about my life that the Lord highlighted

and things nobody knew that to me weren't a big deal, but they

were a big deal to the Lord. And I knew it was God because He

didn't know about those things. I'm not unique.

It's true of all of us. God created you.

You are fearfully and wonderfully made.

He put His image in your personality and it's to shine

out in a very unique way. And God is hungry for that to

happen. But you've got to be convinced

of that before you can release that.

There's a reason that it's Psalm 149.

We don't get into releasing the word of the Lord through the

double edged sword over the kings of the earth until first

we come to this conclusion. He takes pleasure in His people.

Jesus himself didn't enter ministry until he heard the

Father's affirmation. And if he needed it, how much

more to you and I that the psalmist tells us the source of

your worship? What will ignite it and erupt in

praise out of your belly? He's literally the high praise

of God in your throat. It's just kind of a manly way to

say it. But what's what what ignites

that is that we see God takes pleasure in his spirit.

And then there's this other, OK, I'm going to take two minutes.

It says he adorns the humble. What does it say adorns the

humble with salvation. So there's two things he takes

pleasure in your in this people and he takes he adorns the

humble with salvation. The in the Old Testament, when

we talk about humble, it's more circumstantial than

psychological. What do I mean by that?

It means humble circumstances, our situation more than our

heart posture. Now, our heart posture is an

overflow of our circumstances. And when we see our

circumstances correctly, that will be humbling because what we

realize is we can't save ourself.

I'm not talking about eternity. I'm talking about we can't

figure out the most basic things in life apart from Him.

We can do nothing. And the quicker we come to that

conclusion that Lord, all of this thing called life and

parenting and pastoring, and it's all above my pay grade.

I need you every day. And matter of fact, I'm just

going to settle into my weakness and realize that that is the key

to access your salvation, that your power is made perfect in my

weakness. And if I'm going to settle in my

strengths and try to put pose, be a poser, you know, and try to

act like I got it all together, I actually forfeit the grace of

God through that pride. But if I'll humble myself and

say, God, I need you, I need your wisdom, you've got to speak

to me. There is a liberty in that.

And those are the two criteria for erupting praise in your

heart. He takes pleasure in you, and

you can settle in your weakness and just know God.

I am a man of humble circumstances, and if you don't

intervene, it'll only be humble circumstances.

It will be humiliating because I'll make a mess of things and

there's a liberty in that. God loves you and delights in

you. Where you're at.

He does. He doesn't want to keep you

there. There's all kinds of things in

you He wants to bring out. But the beginning is that

foundation, the beginning of the work of God in your life is to

know that He takes pleasure in His people.

Amen. Go ahead and stand.

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