Structure • Worship

- Welcome to the Willow Ridge Sermons Podcast.

This is where you can find audio

from Sunday morning messages and more.

Make sure you're subscribed

so that you don't miss future episodes

and thanks for listening.

- Good morning.

Glad to have you guys with us.

If you have your Bibles, and I hope you do,

wanna invite you to join me in Genesis 1 and Ephesians 2.

These are our main passages that we look at.

This is our last week in our messages

that we've been walking through together

as we talk about structure,

why we do what we do here at Willow Ridge Church.

Next week, we're gonna have Pastor Sam John.

He's gonna be here with us to be sharing with us.

If you don't recognize that name,

Sam is the pastor that we partner with

and work with in India.

And so he'll be here sharing,

sharing out of God's word, preaching for us that morning.

And of course, as he always does,

wonderfully building into the message,

the ministries and the things that are going on there.

And so you wanna make sure that you join us for that.

Well, I didn't have you turn here,

but as we've done these last three weeks

as we've gone through this series,

is I do want us to read Acts chapter two.

This is the passage, this is the heartbeat

of what we believe in scripture

that leads us to the why we do what we do

in our church together, as we gather together as a church.

And so I want us to read this

for one last time in this series together.

Acts two, verses 42 through 47.

And it says, "And they devoted themselves

"to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship,

"to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

"And awe came upon every soul,

"and many wonders and signs were being done

"through the apostles.

"And all who believed were together

"and had all things in common.

"And they were selling their possessions

"and belongings and distributing the proceeds

"to all as any had need.

"And day by day, attending the temple together

"and breaking bread in their homes,

"they received their food with glad and generous hearts,

"praising God and having favor with all the people.

"And the Lord added to their number day by day

"those who were being saved."

And so this is the earliest account

of what we get in scripture of the snapshot of the church.

Jesus has died on the cross.

He's been resurrected from the grave.

He has ascended and in that process,

he's promised the coming of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit comes.

Believers are indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

They begin to share the gospel,

some of them even in languages they do not know.

And we see this massive group of people get saved,

become followers of Jesus,

and we see the birth of the early church.

And this is the church that we look to

to draw from as God gives us in the scripture

to ask the questions of why we do what we do.

And so they give us a model here

of what we can draw the truths out,

but there's a little bit different context

and an ax to narrative than what we get in the context

where we find ourselves today.

But what we do see, we think there are these big three

that kind of draw out from that.

Obviously, there's other things that are happening

and taking place, but we see these big three

of these foundational aspects of this early church

as they gather together.

And so we see discipleship,

that's what we talked about week one,

to grow more like Christ.

We see fellowship amongst the believers there

to love one another, to love the body of Christ.

And then we also see worship to exalt the name of Christ.

And we believe as a church that everything we do

kind of comes out of those.

And so you're like, but Bo,

'cause there's things that we're called to do

that we're a part of that we don't see in there.

We don't see evangelism, we don't see missions,

we don't see serving, we don't see giving.

And what we believe is we focus in on discipleship,

fellowship, and worship is that from those flows

all the things that we're called to be about

as a body of believers is we're unified together

underneath the gospel of Jesus Christ to glorify him

and to see the message go to those who do not know him.

And so what we've done and what we will continue to do

is take this model and then put it in the context

of our church of who we are.

And a couple years ago we started really praying about this

and thinking about this or are we doing this

in the context with which we find ourself today

that helps reach men and women and expose them

and offer them the opportunities to do this.

And we live in the world of busy.

And I remember we're sitting at a staff meeting one day

and I made this comment.

I said, I understand busy and I'm tired

of fighting against busy.

And so let's be better.

Let's think outside of the box.

Let's ask ourselves what can we do as a leadership team

so that we can provide opportunities for men and women

and kids to engage in discipleship,

to engage in fellowship, and to engage in worship.

And that's why we have the schedule, the model,

the ministry plan that we have every Sunday morning.

So you can come at nine for discipleship,

you can stay around 945, 950 for fellowship together

where we gather in this room together.

And then you can stay after that and we can worship.

It's why we have that for our kids,

for our teens, for our adults across the board.

This is what we have, this is what we're part of

'cause we're all a part of the body of Christ.

And then on top of that, we'll continue to offer more.

And continue to challenge and press people

to take another step of obedience

in their walk with the Lord.

So that hopefully that church doesn't become,

well you know I went on Sunday, checked the box

and I move on from there.

But in every aspect of our life,

we're continuing looking at,

am I taking another step of faithfulness,

am I taking another step of obedience,

and am I doing this with other believers

so that we can challenge one another

to grow in the image and likeness of Christ.

So week one we looked at discipleship,

we talked about discipleship,

and we're asking our question like,

how do we grow more like Christ?

And what we see from God's word

is it's not just about like classes,

it's not just about Bible study time together,

but Jesus as he would call those

to follow him in discipleship.

The challenge was devotion.

Devotion, would we be devoted to Christ?

Last week we looked at fellowship,

and how do we grow in our love for the body of Christ more?

And the challenge is that we need to have a deep

and intimate relationship with Jesus,

and then from that,

from that deep intimate relationship

that we have with Christ,

what comes from that is a deep

and intimate relationship with each other.

That it's not a have to, it's a get to,

and it's a growing to love more and more and more.

And so this week we're gonna look at worship,

and here's the win, like we're already all here for this.

But I wanna ask some questions like what do we do

when we gather for worship?

I want you to think about the intricacies

and the pieces of a worship service.

One of the things that Joel Berger is tasked

to be a part of is to build within the dynamic

of what we do and what we plan for every day,

what we call our flow of service.

And we have through that these intentional markers

in the pieces that we've put together.

Maybe you've just kind of got accustomed

to the flow that we have, but every week,

intentional, and I thought about this,

what do we do when we gather for worship?

Well, we greet one another, right?

We love seeing even as people are coming in,

even as worship is getting started,

where we're having this, and then we build in these times

from the stage where we say it is important

to make sure that we are greeting you,

and especially if you're a first time guest.

If you're a first time guest, we want you to know

that we are so excited, and it is an honor

that you are here to worship with us.

We wanna do that.

We wanna share important church information.

We know that, like, no one dislikes announcements

more than like us, right?

But when we announce something, we announce something

'cause we're doing something because we believe

in this moment what we're doing matters,

and it's important, and it's valuable for you

to help you grow and take a next step

in your walk with Christ.

We pray together.

We pray.

We have intentional times where we dedicate

in our service where we pray, and even within that,

those prayers are intentionally done in a certain way

as we pray to God and ask God to work and move

in the lives of the individuals who are here,

including us as we lead you in worship.

But when you think about this, and I did some math this week,

we largely do two things.

We sing and we preach.

That's largely what we do.

When we gather in here together, we have announcements,

we have time of prayer, we have time of greeting one another,

but largely on a week in and week out basis,

what we do together is we sing and we preach,

every single service.

Even the one time of year when we kind of step out

of our normal service flow, and that's our New Year's

breakfast where we gather together for a meal

as a family and we spend that time intentionally

praying for the upcoming year.

I don't know if you noticed this,

but we always open it up with worship,

and as I'm going through, I just can't help it, right?

We gotta preach and we gotta explain why we're praying for,

what we're praying for, why we're doing what we're doing,

and we always come back to God's word.

So even in those moments, we still value the scene

and the preaching.

Here's the math as I went to Planning Center this week.

We reserve in a 75-minute service,

so that's what we're banking on.

If it goes over that, it's always Dave's fault, all right?

It's always Dave's fault.

We reserve, of a 75-minute service,

we reserve 61 minutes, I'm sorry,

61 minutes for two actions.

61 minutes are locked in of what we have planned for,

for singing and for preaching.

Why?

Why?

Why do we take this time that you've dedicated,

this time that you've given,

and in an overwhelming majority,

said that we're gonna do these two things?

Here's a couple interesting facts.

If you travel the world and you go to any Bible-believing,

Jesus-exalting Christian church,

they will do some things differently,

but the two aspects that will continue to be the same

is they will sing and they will preach.

In 2005, Aaron and I got invited.

We'd been married for about a year.

We actually celebrated a one-year anniversary on this trip.

We were invited to go with a part of a team

to go to Zimbabwe to be a part of a city-wide revival

in the capital city of Zimbabwe,

and we were very excited to go.

I was very young in ministry.

I had only been in full-time ministry about four months

when we were invited and said yes,

and so the guy that invited us to go,

I said, "What do I need to do?"

And he's like, "Well, here's what I want you to do."

He knew, he had older, experienced pastors.

He's like, "But we're just gonna give you

"some opportunities to preach and share God's word."

He says, "What I need you to do is prepare three messages

"and bring those three messages with you,

"and I will put you in churches, and you will preach,

"and you will share the gospel, and Aaron will come,"

and she was a part of a choir at that time,

and so she sang with a choir some,

but then she also came and she led worship

in some of the places where I was speaking,

and there was one night, there was an opportunity

for me to go preach somewhere, and this was a new place.

They didn't even really know

that this was gonna be an opportunity,

but the guy that was overseeing this,

you know, the key for international mission trip

is be flexible, and he said, "Bo, there's a church,

"and they're gonna gather tonight,

"and we've got all of the singers

"kind of dispersed everywhere,

"but we would like for you to go and preach.

"Their choir's gonna take care of the worship,

"and you're gonna preach,

"but you're gonna be there by yourself

"for you, okay with that?"

And I was like, "Sure," and so we drove

about 45 minutes outside of town into this village area,

and I was there, the driver was from Zimbabwe,

and so he said, "All right, we're here,"

and I said, "But where's the church?"

He's like, "Well, there's the church,"

and it was a cinder block building with no roof,

and he's like, "Well, so you can get out

"and you can leave now," and I was like,

"But there's no one here."

He's like, "You're good."

So I got out, standing there by myself,

stood there for about 45 minutes by myself,

and I begin to wonder, like, is this the practical joke

that we're playing on the new guy, right?

Like, I'm beginning to get a little bit terrified,

and then two guys come walking up,

and so I introduced myself, and they said

that they were there, in typical fashion,

it was the audio, it was the media team was there, right?

The media team, that's what they said that they were due,

they were gonna let me in, and they were the media team,

and so they let me in, and we talked for about 30 minutes,

and so we were talking about,

they had never been in the United States,

they knew a lot about the United States,

I'll never forget this, the guy asked me,

here's one of the guy's questions,

I said, "Do you wanna ask me anything

"about the United States?"

Like, ask me, and I can give you my perspective,

and I can tell you about this, and he said,

"Well, have you ever met Michael Jordan?"

(congregation laughing)

And I said, "No, I've never met Michael Jordan."

And he looked at me and said, "Well, why not?"

I was like, "Well, it doesn't really work that way,

"like, it's not how it happens."

So I go there, and the building, I'm gonna guess,

was about as big as this stage,

if we rectangled this stage out, it was there,

they packed about 150 people into this room.

And the media team, they made sure

that the one light bulb that was duct taped

to the center block wall behind me, turned on.

And they gathered together, with no instruments,

with no AC, with no screens, with no hymnals,

and they worshiped for about an hour,

just singing, just singing.

And then they said, "It's time to preach."

And I walked up there, and I grabbed my message

out of my Bible, and I preached for about 30, 40 minutes,

and I went and sat down, and then they sang some more,

for about an hour.

And then the pastor comes up to me,

and he's like, "We're ready for the rest of it."

So I got up and I took the second message out of my Bible,

and I preached it.

And then I went and sat down, and then we sang some more,

about another hour's worth of singing.

And then he said, "Well, we're ready for some more."

And so I took the third message out of my Bible,

and I preached it, and then we sang some more.

And he came up to me, and he said,

"All right, well, we're ready for some more."

And I was like, "Buddy, that's all I got, right?"

At this point, I'm just gonna start reading out of my Bible,

and I probably just should have done that.

But for five hours, we gathered together in a room,

and we sang, and we preached,

in every Christian church in the world.

Whether it's programmed on plan and centered for 75 minutes,

or they're gathering over, and over, and over again.

It's preaching and singing, preaching and singing,

preaching and singing, why?

Every other world religion does not hold to this

when it comes to their worship.

Muslims do not do this, Hindus do not do this,

Buddhists do not do this, Sikhs do not do this.

2018, I went to Taiwan to work with some church leaders,

and training them in discipleship.

One of the things we did during that

is we visited one of their temples.

There's different religions or practice in Taiwan,

and what happens usually is they've been morphed into one.

And so we went to one of these temples

to kind of watch their worship.

And here's what I observed.

Like to go into the temple,

first you had to kind of like pass through a store.

It honestly looked like a little store,

like when you go to the hospital and they've got

at the gift shop, and they had little things that were there

but it was like fruit, flowers, and candles, and incense,

and it was all of these things.

And I thought like, oh, I mean, like, I don't know,

like churches have these sometimes,

like out in their foyer, like maybe that's what they had,

and you can like get this temple's like candle scent,

I don't know.

And so, but I watched people like buy the stuff

that was there, I watched them buy these little statues

and things, and then they came in

and there was these little shelves

all throughout the temple.

And they would take their statue

and they'd put their statue up there,

and then they'd begin to bow to their statue.

And they would hold like in place for a long time.

And then they'd put a candle and they'd light it, they'd bow.

And then they would take their fruit,

their flowers that they bought.

Found out the reason why is all of this

had been blessed by the priest.

So any other sacrifice was insufficient

unless you bought the sacrifice.

And they laid it there, they laid it there.

There's no singing, there's no preaching, there's no joy.

It was this cycle over and over and over again

of people who within their life have a void

that only Jesus can fill, not filling it with Jesus.

Instead, in this cycle of religion, why?

Why?

Why in we of the observation in our faith

do things strangely different than the rest of the world?

Take every other world religion in what I just described

to a context is what they do.

Looks differently, feels differently

based off of the different faiths.

But when we gather together as a body of Christ,

would you stand and worship with us?

And we're gonna sing songs.

And we're gonna open up God's word.

And we're gonna preach the truth of what's there.

I think we can understand this looking at Genesis one

and looking at Ephesians two of why we do what we do

and why it is so important for you to do this.

So let's look at Genesis one first.

And we're gonna look at this,

call this like image over instinct.

Image over instinct.

Why are we doing what we do?

It's 'cause it's our image over our instinct.

And here's what I mean.

Start in verse 24.

And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures

"according to their kinds."

And this is the creation account.

Livestock and creeping things and beast of the earth

according to their kinds.

And it was so.

And God made the beast of the earth according to their kinds.

Do we get that?

According to their kinds, according to their kinds.

And the livestock according to their kinds.

And everything that creeps on the ground

according to its kind.

And God saw that it was good.

So we're talking about according to its kind.

That's not a negative.

That's what God did and God saw that it was good.

But then, verse 26, then God said,

"Let us make man according to its kind."

Nope.

"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,

"and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea

"and over the birds of the heavens

"and over the livestock and over all the earth

"and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."

So God created man in his own image.

In the image of God, he created him.

Male and female, he created them.

And I think this is some important things that we see

from these few verses of Scripture.

God made animals according to their kind,

or what we can understand as this,

within setting within them what is instinctual to them.

Animal instinct.

What do they drive?

What do they do?

So a dog is a dog.

A dog can be taught, trained,

shaped, motivated,

but when it's all said and done,

a dog is a dog.

It is what it is.

An animal is an animal,

and they respond in the instinct according to their kind.

But humans, we are not made according to our kind

of what we see in this creation.

We're made in the image of God.

So God places within humans the ability,

so what does that mean?

To reason, to love, to problem solve,

to imagine, to care in a way

that no other created thing can.

And human beings, male and female,

have a capacity for relationship

that reflects the character of our creator.

And God created us with a reason to know him,

to be known by him, and to worship him.

And when we're saved,

when we're brought in to that relationship with Christ,

we begin to get this.

And now, I would say if you grew up in church

and got saved later in life like I did,

like I remember that light switch coming on in my head.

I remember going to church and thinking like,

oh, one more time just as I am, right?

I remember sitting there thinking like a 25 minute message,

when is this guy going to stop?

Over and over.

And then I got saved, and that light switch flipped on,

and I got it.

This isn't about me.

This is about my creator, this is about my savior.

And what a privilege, and an honor, and a joy it is.

But why do we see worship in other dynamics?

With other values, with other practices,

outside of Christianity?

Because if we keep reading in Genesis,

we see sin came in, broke the relationship

between God and man, and now there are people

made in the image of God.

But their relationship with him has been broken.

And we see this play out in scripture

over and over and over again,

and we see it playing out today.

When that person walked into that temple

with their oranges, their candle, and their statue,

they were not worshiping their creator.

They were not worshiping their savior.

They don't know him.

What they're worshiping is their religion.

Religion says name your prophet, pray your prayers,

give your alms, keep your fast, make your pilgrimage,

be good enough, do it yourself.

And the problem with that is this.

This religion worship can't save you.

They either worship religion or they worship themselves.

When they worship themselves, be enlightened,

satisfy yourself, seek your truth, determine your way.

And the problem with this worship is,

you can't save you, and if you think that this life

is all that there is, then one day you're gonna stand

before your creator and find out there's more.

And there's eternity.

So, why do we get together and sing?

Why do we get together and preach?

Why do we get together and praise?

We gather because God created us to know him,

to be known by him, and to worship him.

So if discipleship is to grow more like Christ,

then fellowship is to love the body of Christ.

Then worship, when we gather in here together,

worship is to exalt, to lift up the name of Christ.

And we exalt him in here.

And here's the tension of why we do what we do.

Here's the tension of why we sing the songs that we sing.

Here's the tension of why we preach

in the way that we preach.

Because we're gathered in here to exalt him

and the tendency within us is we wanna go back to religion

and guess what we wanna do?

We wanna exalt ourselves.

So we sing songs about him, we preach messages about him.

Here's who we are.

Exodus 15, two says this.

The Lord is my strength and my song

and he has become my salvation.

This is my God and I will praise him.

My father's God and I will exalt him.

Psalm 99, nine, exalt the Lord our God

and worship at his holy mountain

for the Lord our God is holy.

So we see the call that we have is to lift him up.

That's why in our songs, you and I are not the subject.

You and I are not the focus.

You and I are not the point.

It's why in our messages, you and I are not the focus.

You and I are not the point.

You and I are not the solution.

Only God is because here's the thing.

Here's what drives it all because God alone brings

what no religion can bring.

God brings us good news.

The gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ.

Isaiah 52, seven, how beautiful upon the mountains

are the feet of him who brings what?

Good news.

Who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness,

who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, your God reigns.

The apostle Paul with this scripture in mind

in Romans 10, 15 and how are they to preach

unless they are sent as it is written.

How beautiful are the feet of those

who preach the good news.

Today's August 25th, four months away from Christmas.

Just let that hang out there for a second.

Dollar General has already started, right?

Luke two, and the angel said to them,

fear not for behold, I bring you good news of great joy

that will be for all the people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David

a savior who is Christ the Lord.

The good news.

The good news in Jesus.

So we're here to sing about the good news.

We're here to preach about the good news.

But what does it mean?

And go ahead and jump over to Ephesians two,

we're gonna look at this,

we're gonna wrap up with this passage.

What does it mean that Jesus Christ is the good news?

We find that here that the good news of Jesus Christ,

what he has done for you and what Jesus Christ does

for everyone who puts their faith,

their hope and their trust in him.

We'll read Ephesians two starting in verse one.

Apostle Paul starts with a very blunt reality.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins

in which you once walked following the course of this world

following the prince of the power of the air,

the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience

among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh

carrying out the desires of the body and of the mind

and were by nature children of wrath

like the rest of mankind.

Paul doesn't draw it in with some sweet silliness

of a falseness of who you and I and mankind of who we were.

But he's gonna draw us to the explanation

of who we are before Christ.

Look at it, you were dead.

What were you dead in?

You were dead in your trespasses and sins.

Who do we walk, who do we follow, who would be in good?

No, no, no, we were following the course of this world.

We were following the prince of the power of the air,

the spirit that is in work in the sons of disobedience.

And we all live this way.

We all function in this way.

And the only thing that we wanted in life,

what Paul says is a craving for the passions of our flesh.

Every single day, carrying out the desires of the body

and of the mind and here's who we were by nature,

children of wrath.

Standing in the inevitable and promised wrath of God.

And everyone who does not know Christ,

this is their reality.

This isn't who they were, this is who they are.

Dead, wrath, desires of the flesh,

sons of disobedience.

So here's the point.

When we gathered for worship, it's about him

because this is who he is,

because this is why it's good news,

because in this, what we understand

is there's no self-help that can fix this.

There's no determination within me

that can make the bad me better.

There's no determination of my own mind

that can take the dead me and make me alive.

There's no character compass within me prior to Christ

that says I need to move and here's what I need to do

to get out of the wrath of God.

This is who we were.

Look at verse four.

But God, pause there for just a second.

When you see but God in scripture,

here's what you know is coming.

Oh, there's good stuff about to happen.

There's good stuff about to happen.

And what Paul does here is he says this is who,

this is how miserable, rebellious, offensive

every single one of us were.

No hope but God.

But God.

But God being rich in mercy

because of the great love with which he loved us,

even when we were dead and our trespasses

made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you have been saved

and raised us up with him and seated us with him

in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus

so that in the coming ages he might show

the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness

toward us in Christ Jesus.

For by grace you have been saved through faith.

And just in case Paul's like,

just in case you're missing this.

And so church, just in case you think like,

but there's this part of my goodness,

like my grandma told me that I was a sweet boy, right?

And this is not your own doing.

It is the gift of God,

not a result of works

so that no one may boast.

So we move from who we were

and then this is what Paul brings us to,

what God did.

He took dead people and he made them alive.

He took sons and daughters of wrath and disobedience

and made them sons and daughters of the living God.

God bridged the gap from our rebellion

to our salvation with himself.

But God.

So the good news is God's story and our story.

All of you, when Jesus Christ has saved you,

you all have a verse one through three testimony

of your life.

Here's who you were.

And then on that day of salvation,

VBS, at a small group, at a revival,

in a worship service, at a Starbucks,

sitting there having a cup of coffee with a friend,

you had a but God moment.

You had a but God moment where what God did,

God saved you.

And God's story is in your story.

For a purpose, for a reason,

for motivation, for desire, for verse 10.

So with this, for we are his workmanship,

created in Christ Jesus for good works.

Oh, which God prepared beforehand.

That we should walk in them.

So it's who we were, it's what God did,

and now it's what God has for us.

It's the calling that God shares with us.

Of the Holy Spirit who lives in us and now has us.

Don't just go sit and wait for God to return.

But here's the work that I have you to do.

It's why God saves you and doesn't take you.

It's why God saves you and he leaves you.

And God saves you and he leaves you with a purpose

and for a reason.

For we are his workmanship, we are his story.

We are his opportunity to go out and share

and to reflect the goodness and greatness of God

and who we are and in the message that we share

and how we treat people and how we love people

and how we serve people and how we share

compassion with people.

We are created in him.

Not for the rebellious works that we pursued before,

but for the good works.

Which God prepared that we should walk in them.

I love this, it doesn't say that we should just go

and do them, but that we should walk in them.

Anytime the Bible talks about walking in something,

the imagery that we need to get is this continual pursuit.

So from the time that we wake up to we hang our head,

right, we'll sing of the goodness of God.

Of the purpose of who we are as we walk in.

So here's the thing.

This is why we gather and this is why we sing.

Because we have good news.

So we sing about the good news.

We preach about the good news

because this is what he has done.

And so worship becomes who he is.

And not about simply who we are.

When worship becomes focused on us,

of what we long for and what we desire.

Why should I go?

This is all about me.

When I do change, then I have to thank myself.

When I don't change, then my hope is lost

because I have failed me.

When I experience difficulties,

then the reason for that is this must be punishment to me

instead of understanding that this is the story

of the good news of God.

And so that we gather here, not as people without hope,

but we gather here because we are people of hope.

We are people of the gospel.

To sing the gospel, to preach the gospel,

to sing of who he is, to preach about who he is.

And so our eyes are not locked on ourself

but are focused on him.

And when worship is about God and what he has done

and what he promises to do,

we see how our story, every bit of it,

the highs and the lows, the good and the bad

fits right into the story of God.

How he's working and what he's doing.

Would you pray with me?

God, thank you that we can gather in here.

Thank you, Lord, that we can come together

and to sing songs of who you are, of what you've done.

And Lord, you hear us.

God, that blows my mind to think

that the creator of the heavens and the earth,

as all churches are gathered all over the world,

all over the state, all over this city.

Lord, as we gather, as we sing, Lord, you hear us.

Like your name is exalted.

We sing praises of who you are.

We sing praises of what you've done.

We sing the promises of what you say you're going to do.

And God, that we open up your word.

And that we are not, we are not the focus.

It's you.

But the beauty of the gospel is not to exclude us from it,

but the beauty of the gospel is to bring us in

where we find us in this.

That in your story, our story is placed.

And so God, Lord, I thank you.

Lord, and I praise you that those of us

who were found in Christ, Lord, we were dead,

we were lost, we were without hope.

We stood, Lord, our very being,

anticipating your wrath.

And God, we deserved it.

But you, but you acted.

You worked, you moved.

Not because we were good, not because we were right,

not because we were loving,

but God, you worked and you moved

because you are the one who's rich in mercy.

You are the one with great love.

You are the one that makes us alive.

You are the one that extends us grace.

You are the one that changes our identity.

You are the one that raises us up.

You are the one that seats us.

And you're doing all of this, Lord,

to show the immensity of your kindness

and your love toward us in Christ and Christ alone.

So Lord, we gather not to boast in ourselves,

but we gather to boast in you and in you alone.

And God, I pray if there's anyone in here today,

and Lord, maybe they followed their religion.

Maybe they followed their identity.

Maybe they followed their ideology.

But that God today, through the power of your spirit

and your spirit alone,

Lord, that they could have a but God moment of salvation.

They're a sinner separated from God,

a holy God who loves them.

And the only way

is to put their faith, their hope, and their trust

into Jesus Christ, our Savior,

who died on the cross and who rose from the grave

to pay the penalty of our sin

and to promise us the gift of eternal life with him.

God, I pray that we, this week,

in who we are, as we're found in you,

will live in the power of your spirit

to be the story, to share the love,

to remind people of the hope,

to share the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And that, Lord, we would not look

to how can we go do something,

but God, as your word says,

that we would walk in the reality of your salvation.

God, I thank you.

I thank you that we are not a people

that come to an altar with shallow prayers,

meaningless statues,

looking at or clinging to the religious works

that we've done,

but understanding, Lord, what you've done.

And so, Lord, may our worship please you.

Lord, may our preaching glorify you.

And may we, as a people, in all that we do,

live to exalt you.

This is Jesus, and we pray, amen.

- Thanks again for listening,

and be sure to check back next week for another episode.

In the meantime, you can visit us at willowridgechurch.org

or by searching for Willow Ridge Church

on Facebook and Instagram.