4 Spiritual Laws of Praise and Worship - Worship in Spirit and Truth

You're listening to the road, but Pastor Teacher Steve Holton.

The focus of fighting worship is a victorious God.

God is in control and is on the front.

It's not an unoccupied front.

It's an occupied front of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, and no matter what you're going through, he's still on the front.

And there's no Congress.

And there's no Senate.

And there's no NASDAQ.

And there's no UN.

And there's no EU.

He's not up for re-election every four years.

He's victorious.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on the road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Everyone's familiar with Handel's Messiah and the Hallelujah chorus, but not everyone may be familiar with the backstory of how God inspired Handel to write what is arguably the greatest praise and worship chorus ever written.

Handel's life was anything but inspirational.

He was a hot-tempered and frequently fought with other musicians in his time.

He had a low point in 1741 at the age of 57, hopelessly in debt and deeply depressed.

One day a poet named Charles Jennings appeared unannounced at his door and delivered to handle a handful of biblical passages under the title A Sacred Oratorio.

Half-heartedly, Handel began to read the manuscript.

As he did, the prophetic utterances of Isaiah and John concerning the coming Messiah and the second coming of Christ began to move him out of his depression.

And these words began to reverberate through his soul, wonderful counselor, mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

Handel began to compose.

He remained in virtual seclusion for twenty five days, often going without food or sleep for days at a time.

At times he would leap into the air and proclaim, hallelujah.

And at the end he wrote of that time, quote, I think I did see all of heaven before me and the great God himself.

And he filled over 260 pages of manuscript in those 25 days.

On April 13, 1742, the following year in London, it was performed, and King George II was so moved with the hallelujah chorus that he stood up.

The audience followed, and this response has been customary ever since.

The musical piece may be the most loved, cherished, and inspired ever written.

It may just be the most charged praise and worship chorus ever composed.

So what moved Handel to write it?

What inspired him?

What could be seen or heard or felt that led Handel to the most charged praise and worship chorus ever written?

Was Handel's reading of the praise and worship service depicted in Revelation chapter four and five that so moved him.

Today we're in Revelation chapter four.

Probably the greatest depiction of a praise and worship service ever depicted in Scripture.

Certainly, for those who have kids who've children have asked, Dad, mom, what is heaven like, you can turn to Revelation 4 and 5 because no other passage in all of Scripture gives us an understanding of what heaven is like.

And when Handel saw that version from John on the island of Patmos of heaven, it so moved him to write Handel's Messiah.

It's important to realize that John, when he wrote this, is exiled on the Isle of Patmos in the Aegean Sea.

I've been out on the Aegean Sea.

Um, flying over the Aegean Sea.

Probably the scaredest I've ever been was we were flying back from a trip to Israel.

We had done a tour of Israel, and we hit a storm over the Aegean Sea, and we dropped 5,000 feet in about five minutes.

And I mean, I remember my mom was sitting next to me, and we were everybody, people were throwing up all over the place, and we're dropping and dropping and dropping.

Now down where you could see the caps on the water.

You could see the waves on the water.

And she said, Are you ready to go?

That's my memory of the Aegean C.

But maybe not unrelated to what John is feeling on the Isle of Patmos.

He's been boiled alive in oil.

He's been beaten times without number.

He's the only apostle left.

He wrote it in the mid to the late 90s A.D.

All the other apostles have been martyred for their faith.

The Christian church is under duress, living in caves, meeting secretly in the catacombs of Rome.

Domitian is the emperor.

And everything, listen now, everything externally in the three-dimensional world of the times of Rome and Israel and the area all around the Aegean Sea and then across Asia Minor is under persecution, and Christians are being fed to the lions.

And yet, in that context, God gives John a vision of a different reality.

And there's two realities happening as we open up our passage.

One is the reality of this earth, and the other is the reality of what's happening in the spiritual realm of the fourth dimension of heaven.

And some of you may be in that place.

That place where your world is crumbling and your hopes and fears are being realized in negative ways.

And we're going to see here that God has something going on in the heavenly realm.

24-7, all the time, that when we learn to worship the Lord, when we learn to praise Him, we can exit out of this three-dimensional world into another reality that's more real.

Listen, more real than the reality that you're currently experiencing on earth.

Matter of fact, we're going to see that it's the fourth-dimensional reality that controls the three-dimensional reality.

Jack Taylor writes of Revelation 4: all of us are faced with these two rims of reality.

All of our troubles with depression and hopelessness rise at the point of our conviction as to which rim is more real.

We deal with the tangible, the visible every day.

We know that it is real.

Bills must be paid.

Sickness and death are a part of life.

There are fears and doubts and rejection.

But there's another world, another rim of reality which vies for our attention.

The spiritual, the heavenly, and the eternal.

We tend to think of this as foggy, misty, and unreal.

Yet this is the true reality.

The invisible is the real, and the invisible controls the visible.

Now, this is no lowly savior riding on a donkey or crucified on a cross, but this is a victorious, powerful king.

So look in your Bibles at Revelation chapter 4.

Revelation 4 · chapter mention

Turn with me there.

Many of you know that I got saved in college through a ministry, Campus Crusade for Christ.

I think the new name is Crew, through a little booklet, a little mustard color booklet called The Four Spiritual Laws.

Many of you have been led to the Lord through the Four Spiritual Laws.

Well, I'm calling this the Four Spiritual Laws of Praise.

It's funny, when I was doing my research and I was preparing this message, I realized I had four points.

Oh, we'll call it the four spiritual laws of praise.

So that's what it is.

Here's law number one.

Look at verse one.

After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven, and the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me, saying, Come up here, and I will show you things which must take place after this.

Now, the last several weeks, now Ryan spoke last week, but before that, we were in Philippians, and we hit this cryptic verse in Philippians 3:3, worship in the spirit.

Philippians 3:3

And with what God's been doing within our fellowship in the area of worship, I felt like I was on, I want to take several weeks and talk about worship in the spirit and worship in truth.

So, you know, it's like the fourth time I've spoken on this.

But here's law number one as it relates to praise and worship.

Listen to this, don't miss this.

The invitation of praise and worship is an open door to everyone.

This is an open door to everyone.

John is in the spirit.

So I guess I could say that praise and worship is an open door to those in the spirit.

Now I would say this: I'm not sure John was in the spirit until after he saw the open door.

When he saw the open door, he was in the spirit.

And some of us, when we come into our fellowship on Sunday morning, you're not in the spirit.

I know you.

I'm not in the spirit.

I get paid to do this.

It's hard to be in the spirit, is it not?

It's hard to stay in the spirit.

Praise and worship, though, is an open door.

It is always available.

At home, it's available.

At your work, it's available.

In your relationship with your spouse, it's available.

In your singleness, it's available.

It's an open door all the time.

Has nothing to do with your socioeconomics.

Has nothing to do with how tall you are, how short you are, whether you're on the, you know, this or that diet.

It doesn't matter what's happening in your relationships or if you've lost your job or you've got cancer.

It's an open door that's available from God to everyone at all times.

And men and women, when we come into the road on Sunday morning, I challenge you that there's no other time.

Even if you have the most beautiful praise and worship at home that you have, there's no other time in the life of our congregation and our fellowship as a church family to worship together.

God invented this whole thing.

God created this whole thing called the local church.

Man, I would have done it a whole lot of better ways, I think, if I was God.

But God created the local church to be a family where we worship together.

And it's a law.

It's a law of the kingdom.

Nothing can hinder praise and worship in your heart but you.

It's a choice to rejoice.

It's a choice we make to enter in.

And he says, come up here.

This is all the time.

We're going to see in a moment.

This is happening all the time.

And so what happens when we enter, which I which I shared a few weeks ago, God's living room.

When we enter God's living room, the door's always open.

It's always available.

And I'm going to talk about this next week.

I'm so pumped about next week that I'm just going to cascade into this week a little bit.

But here's the deal.

And I'll and I'll and I'll talk about this next week.

But I want to talk about beholding him, beholding the Lord, and how it transforms you when you do.

You take a believer that's been a Christian for 40 years, and their worship, their praise and worship of their life has primarily been where they really encounter God the last three minutes of amazing grace on Sunday each week.

You take another believer who's been a Christian for six months, and they've made a choice.

I'm going to spend time in the Word and in the Spirit in worship 20, 30 minutes a day.

And they're doing it five to seven days a week.

Who is going to be transformed faster?

That's next week.

But it's an open door for us.

God stirs our heart.

And here's what I love about it.

Look at this.

After these things, I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven, and the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me, saying, Come up here, and I will show you things which must take place after this.

Now here's what's been happening at the road.

As we're gaining ground in gazing at the Lord, as we're learning to stare at the Lord in worship, he stirs our hearts.

It's when we stare at him that he stirs our hearts, and many of you have been getting prophetic words.

Remember two weeks ago, I came up to give all the words because we've been writing them down and then we've been kind of filtering them because there's so many coming that I came up and I hadn't read them when I got up and I went, okay, this is the word.

And the description of one of them was exactly me.

I said, is this does this speak to anybody?

And like three or four hands, and I went, whoa.

This is an exact description of my neck and my shoulder and my back.

Now I wish God just, you know, when that happened, I'm gonna tell you right now, I went down, Holy Spirit fell upon me, and I felt this sensation running through my back.

I fell to the floor, I was completely healed.

Didn't happen.

But here's what did happen.

And I think this is the way God most of the time works, is that God prayer along with others about my neck issue, and one of the physical therapists in our church came up to me.

He says, I can fix that.

I said, What?

And he had been at the uh he had been at our men's retreat, the uh whole heart advance, and he told me back then I'd forgotten.

And so I went and saw him.

He did, I think it's called dry needle therapy.

He put these uh electrobes on me too.

I I became Frankenstein for like five minutes.

It's amazing.

I didn't even feel the the needles.

I mean, I guess they're so sharp and so small, but I'm it's probably 50% better.

I think through prayer and through, you know, the scientific advances that we've made.

So God sometimes does those things just dramatically.

I'm gonna tell you a story at the end that's pretty dramatic that happened to me this week.

I'm I'm a walking like catastrophe.

Um, but it's an invitation.

I love Psalm 100.

Don't you love Psalm 100?

Let me read it to you.

Make a joyful shout of the Lord, all you lands.

Serve the Lord with gladness, come before his presence with singing.

Know that the Lord, he is God.

It is he who made us and not we ourselves.

We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving.

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise.

Be thankful to him.

Bless his name.

Making a choice to rejoice in negative circumstances is supernatural, church.

The natural way is depression.

The natural way is blaming.

The natural way is, you don't have to do anything to get that, right?

Just be normal.

Just be your normal old self and you'll go into depression, despair, but listen, despair and depression is an incompatible roommate with praise and joy.

You have received the Holy Spirit.

So we have Jesus living within us that if we will begin to have this exchange with him where we ask him for his power to be able to praise him, whether we feel like it or not, something mighty, miraculous, and supernatural will happen in your life.

And it may not happen, like I said, it may not happen immediately, but practice and you practice, you practice the presence.

You practice praise, you practice praise, you practice the presence.

Watch what God will do.

So, in the midst of this, in the midst of this situation that John is in, look what happens next.

Immediately I was in the spirit.

So the indication would be that in verse 1, he might not have even been in the spirit.

He was just waiting on the Lord.

God's given him these words about the seven churches, but now immediately I was in the spirit, and behold, a throne.

You have a little circle throne, highlight throne, underline throne, throughout your Bible in Revelation 4 and 5.

It's there 14 times.

Immediately I was in the spirit, and behold, a throne set in heaven, and one sat on the throne, and he who sat there was like a jasper and a sarda stone in appearance, and there was a rainbow around the throne in appearance like an emerald.

Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and in the thrones I saw twenty-four elders sitting, clothed in white robes, and they had crowns of gold on their heads.

And from the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices.

Seven lamps were burning before the Lord, before the throne, which are the seven spirits of God.

Church, there's so much here, but here for our message today is the focus.

Law number two is the focus of praise is a victorious God.

The focus of praise and worship is a victorious God.

God is in control and he's on the throne.

It's not an unoccupied throne.

It's an occupied throne by the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, and no matter what you're going through, he's still on the throne.

And there's no Congress, and there's no Senate, and there's no NAFTA, and there's no UN and there's no EU.

He's not up for reelection every four years.

He's victorious, church.

And there's authority and there's a power and there's an anointing within each one of you.

If you know the Lord in a personal way, if you're growing in intimacy with him.

God has put in you the ability to see that throne, to experience that throne in your life.

He's a victorious God.

And for most of us in our lives, is it not true?

We get caught up in job situations and sickness and arguments and debates and just issues.

And there he is, victorious on the throne.

And when we learn and we start to renew our minds, we start to get in a habit of praising him, we should see him high and lifted up, omnipresent, omniscient with his manifest power and his manifest presence in heaven.

Because here's what's happening.

When we begin to praise him, we're lining ourselves up with what's already happening in heaven.

We're just lining ourselves up with that reality, because this reality sometimes sucks to use a theological term.

And yet, when we take our minds off of this world in which we get bombarded with so much stuff, and we take our eyes off that and we lift ourselves up into praise and worship in our den, in our closet, with our spouse, alone, taking walks, wherever it is, driving to work, lunch breaks, worshiping, taking your right, God, this transformation.

I'll talk about this next week.

There's gonna be an exchange, a divine exchange, where what's happening in heaven starts to get on you.

It starts to get on you.

And the more you gaze at a victorious Jesus, a victorious king, even a lamb that was slain, that is victorious, you start to believe it.

You start to believe it about your life.

And he transforms us from glory to glory.

That's why Paul prayed this for the Ephesians.

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for those who believe.

That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.

That's what we're looking at.

Far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, which by the way means that there are rulers and authorities and powers and dominions in the fourth dimension, in the kingdom rim, demons, spirits, spirits of depression, spirits of despair, spirits of sickness.

They're out there, and he's above all of that, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age, but also in the one to come.

And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

We're gonna take communion at the end of this message.

And we are going to proclaim the new covenant.

We're gonna proclaim together the life and the death and the resurrection of Christ, and it says right here that when we as a church do that, principalities, powers, dominions, authorities, and rulers in the heavenly realm see it.

It's a militant proclamation that in Christ I take authority over all these rulers and all this sickness and all these powers that want to drive me down.

Verse 6.

Before the throne there was a sea of glass and like crystal, and in the midst of the throne, and around the throne were four living creatures full of eyes in front and in back.

This is where Spielberg gets some of his characters for his movies.

The first living creature was like a lion, the second living creature like a calf, the third living creature had a face like a man, and the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle.

The four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes around and within, and they do not rest day or night saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.

Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, who lives forever and ever.

Church.

Remember one time we were driving to church.

Um, had the kids in the car, they were all real young.

And we were listening to this broadcast on the radio by a decided persuasion on issues of praise and worship.

And these two guys are talking, and they're just hammering what they called 7-Eleven worship.

You know, seven words repeated 11 times.

Ah, these new choruses and how great the hymns are, which you know, we we let out with the hymn today.

I love hymns.

Hymns are awesome, but I love contemporary stuff too.

I love the latest stuff, but anyway they're hymns out.

So they're just going on and on about how bad it is to have this kind of praise and worship instead of the hymns.

And one of my kids said, Dad, that's what we do.

And I said, Well, when we get to church, let me just open the word.

Let me show you something.

So when we got to church, I said, This is called the Psalms.

It's in the middle of your Bible, it's called the Psalter.

And actually, it means the praise book of God.

It's God's praise book, the Psalter.

So I turned to Psalm 136.

For his mercy endures forever, is repeated 25 times in 26 verses.

And I said, now who's more biblical?

Men and women, let me show you something.

This is really interesting.

Look at verse 8 again.

Now, on some of your Bibles, now I have a study Bible that I do most of my stuff as far as during the week preparing for this message.

This is my teaching Bible, so it doesn't have it.

But some of your Bibles may say holy, holy, holy, and it's got a number next to it.

And if you follow that number in the middle column, which is usually it's the middle column, it might be a side column, middle column of your study Bible, it's gonna say early manuscripts different, or early manuscripts omitted, or something like that.

And what it's saying is in the early manuscripts, if you have a study Bible that gives you a reference to go to, which mine does, my Spiritful Life Bible, guess how many times holy, holy, holy is really repeated in the earliest manuscript we have in the New Testament.

Holy, holy.

This is what actually, this is what actually is in the earliest manuscript.

Holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy.

Just a mere nine times.

Law number three.

Law number three.

The purpose of praise and worship is to give glory and honor and thanksgiving to God, and I don't care how you do it.

And I don't think God does.

So it seems to be here that there is this, these four living creatures with six wings, full of eyes around and within.

They do not rest day or night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.

That's pretty good 7-Eleven worship right there.

That's one-nine worship.

One word, nine times the fixation and the joy of the honor and the thanksgiving to God.

Men and women, that's what we do.

Make up new songs, make up new stanzas, do it any way you want, but worship him.

Learn to praise him and give thanksgiving.

Give thanksgiving for the home that you have, give thanksgiving for the job you have, give thanksgiving for the spouse that you have, give thanksgiving for whatever's on your heart, thank him for it, and it lifts you out of the mire and the clay of this world into a new realm of reality, which is Christ on the throne, victorious, controlling your three-dimensional world.

Things can begin to happen.

Things can begin to happen in our lives on earth if we'll take our eyes off of our lives on earth sometimes and press in to what's happening in the throne room in heaven.

It's a purpose of praise and worship and glory.

Twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, You're worthy, O Lord, receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they exist and were created.

Law number four the power and the result of praise and worship is unhibited joy.

Uninhibited joy.

24-7, day and night.

My good friend Sam Storm says of this passage, our personal preference notwithstanding, in heaven, affections are ablaze for God.

Bodies are prostrate in his presence, praise is passionate, enjoyment is extravagant, there is little or no fear in his presence.

It's David before the ark, unclothed.

Now keep your clothes on around here, please.

But it's David in extravagant worship before the Lord.

So joyfully, uninhibitedly excited about Jesus.

So last night I was unhibitedly joyful for Duke.

So Duke is in the NCAA.

First time in a hundred years, probably, for baseball.

My dad's at the game in Athens, and the and it's the it's the regional games are in Athens, Georgia, University of Georgia, where David's at, and as many of you know, that's where I graduated from.

So George is in it, but also Duke is in it.

Duke is down eight to one going into the eighth, then eight to three in the ninth, and they win the game 16 to 8 with one out in the ninth inning.

And I mean it's hit after it because these guys, these guys could not hit a softball before that.

I watched most of the game, and I texted dad's at the game, and I texted him and said, Dad, would someone order Red Bull for that dugout?

They look comatose.

And so you look over at the other team, I can't remember the name of it.

It's Campbell.

Campbell's in North Carolina.

Never even heard of Campbell.

Anyway, it's in North Carolina somewhere.

Anyway, Campbell, they're like fired up, and you look at Duke, and you're like, Well, something happened, man, in the ninth, and Josh and I went nuts, and we're giving each other high fives, and we're dad and I and David are texting back and forth stuff.

That's uninhibited joy.

Why not that at church?

Over the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, who went to Calvary, shed his blood.

You're completely forever forgiven.

We are set free to a joy that comes no other way but through him.

Isaiah 61 to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

Depression and praise, incompatible roommates.

So which one do you want living in your house?

Depression or praise?

Well, I don't want depression.

Nobody wants depression, but that's, you know, that's my lot.

And you ought to, Steve, you don't even know what I've gone through and all the stuff that's happening in our life.

I don't.

I absolutely don't.

I'm not going to pretend that I do.

But you do have a rejoice, you do have a choice to rejoice.

And I can promise you this: the first time you do it, nothing's gonna happen.

Zero.

And the second time you do it, nothing's gonna happen.

And the third time you do it, nothing's gonna happen.

But somewhere, about a dozen times, and if you get there before that, then man, you're super anointed.

But if if somewhere around the 12th or 13th time of you making a choice to rejoice, God's gonna show up.

Because he's gonna go, oh my goodness, this saint's serious.

He really wants my presence, and he really wants his power, he really wants my joy in his life.

And I can just see God in heaven, of course, he's just kind of going back and forth.

He's going, oh my goodness.

Domitian's on the throne in Rome.

I didn't even vote for him.

And all the Christians are in caves, and everybody's getting killed, and I've only got one left.

John.

That guy won't die.

They threw him in boiling oil, and he's still alive, and he's on Patmos, and man, that wasn't in my plan.

No.

God in his sovereignty and in his majestic plan, even in our negative circumstances, is working something glorious out in our lives.

Nothing happens to us.

Everything happens for us.

God is working out a work in our lives through the most dismal, difficult situations.

And as we begin to praise Him, we will begin to get a vision for what God in His sanctifying, supernatural, Holy Spirit work, is forming in you a wholehearted disciple.

And God would say, if he were here today, I just love you.

I'm excited about you.

Will you be excited about me?

Because when we begin to praise and worship him and see him for who he really is, we will praise him as we really ought.

And I shared this a couple weeks ago, and I found another quote by C.S.

Lewis that I wanted to say, similar to the one I gave before.

C.S.

Lewis, in his discovery of the Psalms, said this.

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment of it.

It is its appointed consummation.

It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are.

The delight is incomplete till it is expressed.

It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not be able to tell anyone how good he is.

To come suddenly at the turn of a road upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur, and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in a ditch.

So C.S.

Lewis is saying that it's when you praise something that the consummation of your own personal joy is released.

So listen, everybody, everybody listen to me.

Everybody look at me.

Until you learn to praise him, you will not experience all the joy that God has for you.

God made you for praise and worship.

God made you to be thankful.

And if you don't have anything to be thankful for, then you've got to ask God, God, show me things to be thankful for.

I'm gonna spend time in your word.

I'm gonna be in your word, and I'm gonna begin a dialogue from the word and praise to you that if you want joy.

Now I am convinced there's many a believer that doesn't even want any joy.

I can't believe it, but I've been in this pastorate and this missionary work for so long.

I'm convinced, especially in pre-marriage counseling, that some marriages they don't want joy.

Now they'll say it up here, but they will not take the effort for the 12 inches that to get from here to here to here.

So if you don't want it, then don't go for it, please.

Just keep listening to messages and just listening to messages and listening to messages.

Oh, it was such a nice message.

And just be depressed.

Fine.

That's the reason I can stay in the past route because I don't care.

I don't.

What I mean by that is if I cared about every person that wants to live in their depression, I'd go nuts.

I'd go crazy.

But you know what I love?

This is what I love about my job.

First of all, it's a lot of job security in it.

But secondly, out of ten people, eight actually want it.

Eight people out of ten, I think 80%, they want to change.

They want to be transformed.

They want to break the power of that despair through learning to worship God, learning how to spend time in God's Word, learning to have intimacy with Him.

Isn't that exciting?

That's why you're here.

That's why you're here in June.

In Colorado.

There's a million other things you could be doing, but you're here because you're hungry and you're thirsty for the things of God, and God's gonna meet you there.

And that's exciting stuff, folks.

That's what I signed up for.

So you've heard me use this term from time to time.

I got it from John Piper years ago, 1989, I believe, in Japan.

Christian hedonism.

Christian hedonism.

I'm a Christian hedonist, and I want to do a whole series on it.

So this is, I'm just gonna give you a little bit of my understanding of Christian hedonism, and then we can get into it another time.

But John Piper writes this God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

Augustine said, You made us for yourself, and our hearts find no peace until they find their rest in you.

Here's my definition of worship from a Christian hedonist perspective.

God loves us with all of his heart, and when we love him with all of our heart, we are lining up our hearts for him with his heart for us, and thus we experience the greatest satisfaction of our heart.

Men and women, that is what worship is.

It's a consummation of love.

It's the consummation of love.

God loves you with all of his heart.

You start loving him with all of your heart, you line yourselves up with God's heart, that's the consummation of love.

You turn into worship, and that's where the joy.

That's where the joy comes from.

Amen.

I want all of us to turn to 1 Corinthians 11.

And this is the first Sunday of the month.

And I just seemed, it felt like to me this was a good segue into communion.

Turn to 1 Corinthians 11, just turn to the left until you come to Corinthians.

In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul is speaking to the church in Corinth about some issues and problems.

We won't go into that.

But then he begins in verse 23 to talk about the Lord's supper.

There's something of spiritual warfare that I think is somehow tied up with taking communion together.

It's warfare.

You're celebrating the new covenant.

We are celebrating together.

The power of Christ by which his blood forgave you of all your sins and it set you free.

But it's also done as a local church.

Look at verse 18.

Verse 18 of chapter 11 says, first of all, when you come together as a church.

Isn't that interesting?

He says, the first thing you do when you come together as a church is you take the Lord's Supper.

Now we're saved by grace through faith.

But then the scriptures also say you work out your salvation by fear and trembling.

So in one sense, we're saved by the grace of God through the faith that we have in Christ.

But on the other hand, there's things we do that releases that salvation and that celebration into our hearts.

And I believe the Lord's Supper is one of those.

For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, verse 23.

But the Lord Jesus on the same night in which he was betrayed took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, Take eat.

This is my body which is broken for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

Verses 23 and 24 are so interesting.

When he was betrayed, he gave thanks.

Every one of us in this room had been betrayed.

Part of the Lord's Supper is to give thanks.

Even in betrayal, Christ didn't just say it, but he did it.

And in the same manner, he also took up a cup after supper, saying, This cup is a new covenant in my blood.

This do, as often as you drink it in remembrance of me, for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till he comes.

So it is a proclamation of the new covenant.

Church, you have a new heart.

We have the Holy Spirit living within us.

We have a new heart, we have a new spirit, we have the mind of Christ.

You can walk in the supernatural.

You can walk in this new covenant.

Let me tell you what happened.

So this week, I'm chainsawing a tree down.

This tree's about this big.

It was actually only this big.

No.

No, it was actually really big.

And so I cut this thing and I dropped it and it got hung up.

I always have this vision of how I'm going to lay something down.

So I've been known to take a can, lay the can back in the woods, and see if I can just drop the tree right on the can.

So there were the two trees, two other pine trees about that far apart.

And I said, I'm going to drop this sucker right down the middle of that thing.

And I did, but it got caught about 30 feet up.

So it got hung up.

So I thought, well, there's two other trees that I had marked that I wanted to cut.

So I dropped those two trees on top of that tree, hoping it would knock that tree down to the ground.

It didn't.

So now it looks like jolly green giant pickup sticks.

Okay?

So just so I start cutting, and I start cutting the way I think would be the best way to drop this thing.

And then I did an idiot thing.

And I got up under all of the trees, and I'm cutting this one branch that I didn't know was the branch that caused it all to be hung up.

I don't know, thousands of pounds hit me straight on the head.

Just boom.

And I and as I go down with it, I throw the chainsaw out of the way, and I go down.

Fortunately, I pull out and they all drop and I wasn't under it.

I'd be we'd be having a funeral today.

So I go, so I'm sitting there, I'm going, wow, I feel great.

Nothing happened.

Actually, my neck feels better.

Maybe we'll sit there.

That's what that prophetic word was all about, you know.

I mean, I thought that.

Okay.

So I'm sitting there, but I put my gloved hand up, and I mean, my gloves just soaked in blood.

And blood's just running down my neck and everything, and in my hair and all that.

So I decided I better walk home.

So I walk up to our house and say, Liz, I don't really want to come in right now, but would you come look at something?

So she looks at it.

I hate ERs.

ERs are from the enemy.

And so I don't want to go to the ER, you know.

So I call Ethan, my son-in-law, who's an emergency room nurse, and he so he gives me all the different aspects of what I need to be aware of.

And they washed out my hair and everything, and so it's it's all and I'm also they're gonna shave all this.

This ass is gonna be a mess.

And I feel fine.

So then he says, Well, look, if you start to get dizzy, if you start to feel nauseous, you'll probably have a concussion and you need to get in really quick.

So I go out on the porch, I open the word, I'm there with the word, and nausea just starts to rise up within me.

Not good.

Then everything starts to spin, and I just, something in me was really ticked off.

And I just said, in the name of Jesus, I rebuke a concussion.

I have the authority of Jesus Christ and the blood of Jesus.

Heal this head right now.

I want a day off.

I do not want to be going into ER and all the things they're gonna do with me with the CAT scan and MRI and all that stuff.

So in the name of Jesus, be gone.

And it went away.

It just went away.

And it's never come back.

And this thing healed up really fast.

You have authority.

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