Healthy Church - Strong Church | Passionate Worship (January 5th, 2020) - Mike Armstrong

All right, well, if you would get your Bibles open, I am going to do this right now to Mark chapter 12.

Mark 12 · chapter mention

And I don't know about you, but it feels like I don't know, it feels like I haven't seen you in like a month, right?

We had service uh kind of canceled, our permit got canceled because of projected bad weather last week.

I think everything ended up being fine in terms of weather.

Uh, but I was gonna be away anyways, but it's just kind of weird how not seeing you for a week makes it feel like we haven't seen each other uh forever.

It's like, hey, I feel like I haven't seen a staff over the holidays and uh and elders and all of that.

So, anyways, just feel like I need to give you all a big hug, and this is kind of my way of doing that uh to you.

Um, but definitely I know it has been uh at least a month uh since we have been into our uh healthy church, strong church series.

And so we're gonna get back into that uh here this morning.

Uh this is really something that we began uh the day that we became Redemption Church uh back in November.

And and the idea behind all of this is really to mine down on uh the six distinctives that make up our DNA or or our focus and kind of establish the culture of our church.

Okay, these are the the core values, if you will, that we believe that God has called us to uh to pursue and and to commit together, together as a local church community.

And so really what we're doing here as we're as we're kind of entering into this series is we're asking uh uh a simple yet yet all-important question, and it's really this uh what's the kind of church that God blesses?

Right?

What is the church that God blesses?

What are the things that we see kind of rise to the surface, so to speak, in the pages of Scripture that we can look to and kind of like grab hold of and see and say, okay, okay, that's okay, that's what God wants us to be about.

Right?

That right there.

Or, you know, you know, where when we commit to those things, that's what that's what brings God's glory down uh on this place, and we're never the same after that.

All right, so these are these are the six things.

Let's take a look at these now.

These are the six things for us uh that get to that.

Let's take a look at this.

Now we've of course we've done uh three of these now.

We're halfway through the series.

We started off in November with purposeful disciple making.

Purposeful disciple making.

We are called to make disciples.

That's what the Great Commission is about.

And so we are essentially, one way to think of it is that the church, the local church, it is a disciple-making factory.

We are to be discipled, we are to make disciples.

And so we talked about that, and what is our what is our philosophy for that, and what are we going for in all of that?

Of course, you can go back and listen online uh if you haven't uh heard that message or need a recap on that.

The second one we looked at was fervent prayer.

You know, any church that's gonna be strong must be a church of prayer, a church that prays fervently, expectantly, uh dependently.

We must pray.

And of course, a shout out to our prayer night that's happening uh this week.

Hope to see you there for that.

Okay, the third message that we went through uh was bold preaching.

Okay, at the end of the day, uh it doesn't really matter what man thinks, there's a million different opinions that man might have.

Uh, what really matters is what God thinks.

And so we want to open up the scriptures, we want to open up this book and just tell it as he says it.

And so our preaching is exegetical, is it's expository.

We want to work through it word by word, verse by verse, and really mind down on what God actually say and what does he want for us as the church.

All right, the next thing here, of course, is passionate worship.

That's what we're gonna be looking at this morning.

Uh, next week will be courageous uh evangelism and sharing the gospel with the lost, and then we'll follow it all up uh with strategic church planting, what the Lord has to say about that, and what we're excited about when it comes to seeing uh churches that that uh that show these six distinctives planted locally and planted uh all over the world.

And so, again, like I said, today we're gonna be exploring what it means to be a church committed to passionate worship.

Okay, what does the Bible have to say about this?

Right?

What does this what does this mean?

What does it even mean, right?

And and how can we grow in this kind of individually as as families and as a church community again, so that so that God gets more glory, receives more glory from us uh than ever before.

Yeah, that's what I'm excited about.

I I hope you are too.

Looking forward to starting uh the new year off in this way.

Why don't you uh join me?

We'll pray, and then we'll jump into some verses here.

Lord, we thank you again for this time this morning, God, to to gather and worship, Lord, to sing uh your praises, Lord, to exalt the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

And so, Father, this morning, as we uh look at some of uh what you have to say about this matter, Father, I pray that you would uh plumb this into the depths of our hearts and give us a joy and a passion uh to exalt Christ.

And so, Father, I pray that we would glory in you and the gospel.

This morning, I pray that we would sing, I pray that we would obey, I pray that in everything that we do it would be worshipful to you, to Jesus Christ our Lord.

We pray all of this in your name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, so first thing this morning, uh, if you are a note taker, is this two things uh we're gonna look at today.

But here's the first one we are committed to glorifying God through passionate worship.

And then here it is, stemming from a wholehearted love for Him.

All right, wholehearted love for Him.

And for this, we're gonna take a peek at Mark chapter 12, uh, verse 30.

Mark 12 · chapter mention

And so again, if you have your Bibles open, you can turn to that.

But we will also have this uh on the screen for you today.

We're gonna look at a couple of different passages, and so we thought we'd make it real easy.

Uh, if you're not uh too comfortable flipping around in your Bible, you can see it all there.

But just you know, it's the start of a new year, so I think I'll just kind of remind you and encourage you that we do uh encourage you to bring your Bibles uh each and every week here, right?

Have that open with you.

Bring a bring a pen.

Don't be afraid to mark it up and take notes and highlight things, and you know, you've got those sermon notes that you're handed on your way in, or that you can uh you can take notes in again, jot down, what is what is the Lord kind of saying to me in this?

What how is the Holy Spirit kind of going after my heart?

What are some things I need to be studying and looking up later this week in an effort to apply God's word uh to my life?

And so again, I've said that to you uh many times.

I wanted to make sure to remind us all, but here we go.

Uh Mark chapter 12, uh verse 30.

Mark 12 · chapter mention

And this is Jesus speaking here, and we know this verse uh quite well.

He says, You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.

You know, this uh command here uh from Jesus was actually the answer to a question that was posed to him uh by one of the scribes uh just a couple of verses earlier in verse 28.

Now the scribes, you might remember from our time of going through Mark's gospel, uh the scribes were part of uh the Jewish uh kind of high council called the Sanhedrin.

So the Sanhedrin was made up of scribes, like I just said, of Pharisees and of Sadducees.

They were they were the religious leaders of the Jews uh in uh in this day.

Now the scribes, uh they kind of got their start uh through the prophet uh Isaiah, or sorry, uh Ezra, Ezra, rather, and they were they were guys who who kind of wrote down the law.

But eventually, in in this time, in Jesus' time, uh they were ones who taught people God's law.

And specifically, uh they actually taught youth.

So you can kind of think of them as youth pastors uh in a way, but they were very, very highly educated and uh and bright and uh and fairly wise people.

And so this scribe, he he asked Jesus here, this is the question in verse 28.

He basically asked him, what is the most important command in the entire Mosaic law?

And he wants to know, like, what's it really all about?

Right?

There are there are 613 commands in the Old Testament law, in the Mosaic Law.

The Mosaic Law is the law that God gave to Moses.

That's why we call it Mosaic law.

Okay, it was given to him, first of all, through the Ten Commandments uh on Mount Sinai.

If you've ever read through the Old Testament, you've you've kind of worked your way through Leviticus.

I've been doing that a little bit uh throughout the fall.

Jeremy and I have been kind of like encouraging each other to like work our way through all of that.

And so uh if you've worked through that, you've seen that there are there are a lot of laws in there.

There are a lot of rules and statutes and and commands.

And so uh he asks him, hey, listen, what's the most important one?

What's the one that really rises to the top here?

And so Jesus answers him in our in our verse here in verse 30 by essentially saying, Love God.

Love God.

That's what it comes down to.

Love him with absolutely everything you've got, right?

Love him with your heart, your soul, your mind, and and your strength.

Okay, now I think you gotta think about this.

Now, why would Jesus say that this is the greatest commandment of them all?

Like, did Jesus just kind of you know have a bunch of commands in front of him and kind of you know close his eyes and just sort of pick a card out of the deck and say, oh, it's it's love.

Yeah, this is the greatest one, right?

Well, no, it it's he says this because love is literally what the entire law boils down to.

It boils down to love.

Okay, because failure to love God is is at the root of all sin and all disobedience.

Do you realize that?

Anytime you and I sin, anytime you and I miss the mark of one uh of one of God's commands, it is a failure to love God.

I mean, you think about the ten commandments again that were given to Moses, right?

All of them represent really to love God, right?

Love God or love neighbor.

I mean, even in Mark 12 here, he he Jesus would go on to say, a second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself.

Right?

And so each of those ten commands, and really all of them after all of that, were really about loving God and loving neighbor.

I mean, you could even say that though that the commands about loving neighbor, that when you break that, that's really to break loving God as well, because he told us, he commanded us to love our neighbor.

Right?

So all of it comes down uh to really loving God.

Every time we break God's law, every time we sin, every time we disobey, we're failing really uh to love the Lord.

And so it's the it's the old testament that that unearthed this this depth uh of failure on our part, the this inadequacy on our part to love the Lord.

Okay, and then it's the it's the New Testament that that shows us that that loving God properly, loving God rightly, is something that only Jesus Christ did.

He's the only one that that ever did it well, right?

And he did it for us as our representative.

Okay, so the good news of the gospel is that Christ obeyed the entire law to a T.

Okay, He did it as a demonstration of perfect love for the Father.

And later we know this.

Later, he would go on to die on a cross in a death that would satisfy God's righteous wrath towards our sinfulness.

Okay, so Jesus' unblemished record of perfect love for God, okay, his obedience to the law, and then him dying in our place, all of that that he did made up for our failure to love God correctly.

Okay, and when we admit our failures, when we admit our our sin, our shortcomings in in all of these types of ways, these failures to keep God's law, which is really a failure to love him, right?

And then when we trust that in what Jesus did by faith, we receive forgiveness from God.

Right?

We receive right standing with him again, and that's all a gift of grace.

It's all given to you out of a gift of love.

This is God's love towards us, people who are simply rebellious, right?

Loveless lawbreakers at heart.

That is what we are.

Right?

This is why we say that as a church, we're committed to glorifying God through passionate worship.

Because, because worship is our response to all of this, all of what I just shared, right?

The gospel.

Worship is a is an expression of our of our love for the Lord and what he has done for us.

Okay, and so uh life for the Christian, for any of us who are Christ followers, is is really day by day, bit by bit, growing to understand all of these things uh a little bit more.

How how how how deeply God loves us, right?

And to have that penetrate our hearts and then and then to love him wholeheartedly back in a lifestyle of worship to him, right?

Where we give him praise and where we give him glory.

Now, let me say one very important thing about that.

When we talk about you know loving God back as a response to what he's done, it's not to pay him back.

Okay?

You're you're not like, well, he's given me a lot and I've got to pay him back now for this.

No, that that's that's actually that's actually offensive to God, to kind of think of it that way.

Because you and I could never pay God back for what he has done for us through his son Jesus Christ.

We simply do it as a response of just love and adoration and gratitude for what he has done.

We want to worship him, we want to praise him because he is amazing and he has done great things.

Now, our our expressions of worship and and how all of that comes out, well, it comes out in in different ways, various ways.

Now, perhaps the most obvious one that kind of comes to mind for us is kind of in terms of an example, is just our times of singing together as a local church, right?

Corporate singing.

We've done uh some of that already this morning.

We've got uh more coming later on.

All right, and this is where through through song we we reveal that we value God's worth, right?

That's really what worship is.

It's valuing God's worth and ascribing to him worth, right?

So we sing songs that that remind us of of God's character, right, and who he is.

We we think about his attributes and and and his nature.

Of course, we think about what he has done for us through Christ Jesus, and you know, where through song we we praise him and and we thank him and we you know we marvel about all of these things, and and through song we we we demonstrate our our dependence on him.

Like, Lord, I need you.

That's actually a song that we sing.

We demonstrate the joy that we have uh from being saved, right?

For having our sins forgiven, knowing that eternal life is waiting for us, that we have received forgiveness in Christ Jesus.

Right?

We express our love to him in all of these things and allow our affections to be to be stirred up in these ways.

Right?

Our our corporate times of of singing are just they're so important because of how easily our our hearts and our minds uh stray from these things and forget about these things.

I've shared the line with you from Paul Trip that we all suffer from gospel amnesia.

Have y'all ever noticed in your life or you remember God's grace and you're reminded of that through something that you read or through something that you heard at church or something that you've sung, and then you know the very next day it's like you're trying to go out there and earn it.

Trying to go out there and earn God's love and prove myself.

That's not what it's about.

We have gospel amnesia.

We forget that the gospel is of grace.

Christ earned it for us.

We can't.

And so that's why singing is so important, because it reminds us of all of this when we sing, and it acts as a bit of a kind of like a reset button uh for our for our hearts, right?

For our for our souls, for our for our minds, and certainly for our for our strength.

We come in, and and I don't know about you, but I come and I gather together with the church, and I'm kind of like I'm fired up and I'm ready to go out and face the weak again, uh, with the strength of the Lord with me, of course.

Right?

Because we live in a in a fallen world.

We live in a sinful world, and we just get you know punched in the mouth all the time, it feels like, through sin, and and we fall apart and and we come back to church to get put back together again, it seems like.

And a lot of that happens through through our singing, right?

Because we're reminding ourselves that, oh yeah, God is awesome, right?

He he's amazing, he does love me.

Okay, and his grace is sufficient for me.

This is what's getting you know pressed into our hearts and our minds all the time when we gather and sing.

It's like in in Christ's power I stand, right?

Not in my own power, not in my own ability, it's in it's in his power.

Right?

Singing songs together essentially is kind of like you know, warming yourself up against a fire.

We got people that like uh doing that here in the wintertime, right?

Warming yourself against a fire.

Worship, worship softens our our sometimes cold or or hard or or sometimes just discourage hearts as we're reminded again of his love and then express our love for him as a response.

Okay, but of course, worship, we talk about this quite a bit too, our worship extends further than than just singing or or or music.

If you think about it, we've touched on this a bit already this morning, but if you think about it, we demonstrate worship anytime we obey God.

Because again, when we obey him, we're expressing a love for him, we're showing love for him.

That's what 1 John 5, 3 kind of gets at, right?

It says, For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments.

Okay, so when you obey God really in any way, a couple of examples here.

Maybe it's through you know caring for a sick relative.

Maybe some of you had to do that over the holidays.

When you obey him in that way, or when you obey him by by praying courageously, when you are fearful, or or when you discipline or disciple your children, or or when you live a life of sexual purity, or or when you give generously, when you obey God in these ways, and in any number of ways, you're loving him, which is always an act of what?

Worship.

Right?

Where you're essentially communicating to him that you value him and what he wants over and above what your flesh might value and want.

Right?

These are expressions, these are these are acts of worship.

Now notice again, let's circle back to this to this verse here, how how loving the Lord, which again is an act of worship, right, it's to all stem from the heart.

Do you see that there in the verse?

Right?

Done with with all your heart, it says.

Okay, so so wholeheartedly is kind of the word we chose, right?

Passion, right?

There should be passion and and and joy in this.

There should be desire, there should be pleasure in the act of worshiping, in the act of obeying the Lord.

He says, with with all your soul, meaning that your expressions of of love or worship uh are to come from the deepest part of yourself, right?

In your soul.

Outward-only acts of love and worship that you know done that are done from kind of a stagnant soul.

I mean, that that's not what God is looking for.

That's not what he requires of us.

He's not interested in you know, kind of external or or showy performances that that appear on the surface to be you know love or and worshipful.

If if really it's coming from a detached heart and a detached soul.

Right, sure, those those outward-only acts of uh of worshiping, they they might kind of pass the eye test.

Right?

They might they might fool people around us, they might even fool ourselves.

Okay, but the Lord sees through all of that.

He he requires that our love be genuine and our worship be authentic and and that it really come from within us, deep inside of us.

Right?

He goes on here in the verse to say that love or you know, or worship should be done with your mind, with your mind as well.

Don't shut your brain off.

Okay, meaning that you know we we must think rightly about God and worship him according to what is true about him.

Okay, more on this uh in a little bit here.

Okay, but the bottom line is that you know when you put all this together, um, is there any room for faking it?

No, not in God's mind.

We're not we're not to fake it, we're not, we're not to mail it in, we're not to be half-hearted when it comes to our love for God, when it comes to our our expressions of worship, which I think uh in many ways, I think that just makes sense that the Lord would want everything.

He gave us everything.

Right?

Think about it this way.

If I if I stood up on my uh on my wedding day, okay, to uh my lovely wife Ange, and I just kind of went through the motions.

Right?

Like let's say I, you know, I kind of shuffled up to the altar and I stood there and I gave her kind of the the the The dead fish handhold thing, you know, and and I just, you know, I pulled out some some some words that I wanted to say and just kind of read them to her, my my vows to her in kind of monotone type voice.

Right?

If it was time to kiss the bride and I just kind of stood there like this and I didn't lean in.

You better believe that's not how I kiss my wife, by the way.

Okay?

But if I did that, okay, do you think that she would probably realize that something's missing here?

Right?

Something is a little bit off.

Right?

She would not be satisfied with what I was bringing to her on our wedding day.

Okay, well, neither is God satisfied when we are less than wholehearted in our expressions of love and worship.

So, hey, you know, as as we're you know, kind of thinking here about you know being a church committed to glorifying God through passionate worship, okay, let's remember here that this is to stem from a wholehearted love for Him.

Again, it's not just about external commitments to maybe show up earlier to church services or sing more loudly, or I'm gonna try and raise my hands once in a while.

Okay, all of those things are great, but they're to be genuine, right?

They're to come from a desire to glorify the Lord.

Okay, so as you as you're thinking about kind of where you're at with your own personal worship, you know, what you're bringing into the new year spiritually and kind of where you're headed this spring, as you think about your worship, has it all maybe become a little too detached from a genuine heart of love for Christ?

Right?

That's something that we all gotta kind of think through for ourselves.

Now you might be wondering, well, how can I tell if that's really the case?

Well, remember, you and I, we have all been designed, every person has been designed by God to worship.

Okay, we've been designed to worship something or or someone.

We all worship.

Okay, so if your worship has grown a little bit stale, okay, it's cold, it's it's a little too mechanical or maybe you know, kind of non-existent, you know, a far cry from being wholehearted and from my you know, heart, soul, mind, and strength, then we really have to do some some digging here a little bit, don't we?

We have to do some detective work, I think, and we kind of work to identify what is the thing or what are the things that my heart actually is worshiping in place of God.

Because again, you're worshiping something right now.

You worship something every single day.

It's probably more than one thing.

And again, it could be pretty much anything.

Things that in our minds we might think are kind of ridiculous, but things that our our hearts get attached to and we want so bad, and we go after that thing, and they become our objects of worship.

So, really, a good way to kind of start here is to ask yourself this question.

We're gonna have it uh up on the screen.

Okay, what does my heart really want deep down?

You need to jot that down this morning and think about that uh over the next few days or weeks.

Okay, what is it that your heart really, really wants?

I'm telling you right now, it takes some thinking.

Don't be afraid of that.

It takes some prayer, it takes some consideration, some meditation.

What is it that my heart truly wants?

I'll give you a couple of examples.

Some of you, maybe you maybe you're thinking as you realize this, you're like, man, I just honestly, what my heart really wants is to look good physically.

Right?

For a lot of us, that's that's it.

That is what our world is is super all about, right?

And we have this drive, this desire that's so strong in our hearts to look good.

And some of you have these New Year's resolutions to like get in the gym, right?

Or or to start a diet.

And and maybe you've even fooled yourself into thinking, well, you know, it's so that I can I can be more healthy, so that I can serve the Lord better.

Right?

But deep down, you're like, no, I just want to look hot, right?

That's what you're thinking, I want to be ripped, right?

I want to I wanna look good.

And so you gotta you gotta think through that a little bit.

Is that what your heart really is screaming for?

Maybe for you it's it's something like food.

Maybe in the new year you're like, I just want dry lettuce.

Like I'm kind of done with all of the mega eating.

But honestly, food, food is a huge drive for people.

I just I want the comfort that comes from food.

And you work your whole day around meals, and I I want to eat, I want to eat, I want to eat.

And that is what brings me comfort.

That's a big one.

For a lot of people, it's it's wealth.

I want wealth because I feel like I feel I feel powerful when I have money.

I feel comfortable when I have money.

Some of us we just want, we just want a life of ease.

That's what our our our our heart really desires.

I don't really want to put work into life.

I don't really want to do much.

I just want to kick my feet up.

I just want to relax all the time.

Maybe, maybe uh the sign of laziness suggests that that's what your heart wants.

Again, for you, maybe you just want control.

I like to control a situation.

I like to feel like I'm on top of it.

Right?

And so maybe for you, you you manipulate people or or you overwork because I just I want control.

Maybe a desire that your heart has deep down is I just want people to like me.

I want people to approve of me, and so I will cave, no matter what, to get that person's approval.

And I will do whatever it takes to get that.

Listen, what your heart really wants is the thing that you worship.

Okay, so once you've kind of identified what that thing is, you might have one, two, three, ten, I don't know, uh, top things.

Begin to think through now how how is the gospel an antidote to that?

Right?

When you're like, my heart wants to find satisfaction in something like people's approval, right?

Think through how the gospel basically tells you that you already have God's approval.

Right?

He he he's given you his love fully.

Right?

When you get saved, you have a hundred percent of his love.

You don't need to go find some person's approval.

You already got God's, right?

And the more you think about that and you realize how how God demonstrated his love for you by sending his son to die for you when you were a rebel, when you were when you were a sinner, and you realize, wow, his love for me is amazing.

And the thing that he cares for me in this way, as you as you plumb the depths of that over time, your your heart will will start to change.

Right?

You'll consider these things and and and and your love and your desire for him eventually will begin to grow.

Now, maybe you're thinking, well, I've tried that before, I've tried thinking about the gospel, and it didn't work.

Okay, well, listen, that that's just like being the guy who says, you know, I'm gonna get jacked in the new year and then does 12 push-ups, looks in the mirror, and goes like, meh, didn't do anything, I'm gonna quit.

No, like go after this, be patient with this.

Pursue the Lord, pray about these things, study the scriptures, study the gospel.

Continue to think through what my heart really wants, and then seek within prayer, by God's grace, to have that transferred to God, that I would know and love Him and worship Him above anything else that my flesh might want.

Right?

Your desire for Him will begin to grow as you do this.

Right?

And that worship that we've been talking about here this morning and are committed to going after as a church, that that'll start to bubble up in your heart.

Right?

That'll bubble up in your soul, in your mind.

You'll think about these things, in your strength, you'll find new strength to serve him and worship, and it will be real, right?

It will be passionate, it will be wholehearted.

Here's the second thing this morning.

We're committed to glorifying God through passionate worship in a blend of spirited desire and rock solid truth.

Okay, in John uh chapter 4, verses 23 and 24, we pick it up here uh with Jesus having a conversation uh with a woman uh at the well.

Do you remember this story?

She was a Samaritan woman, and then they get into a discussion, and it starts off about a kind of a physical thing, starts out about you know him wanting a uh basically a glass of water, which eventually leads to this discussion about uh worship.

Right?

She and her fellow Samaritans, they had kind of like some understanding, certainly, of uh of kind of what worship and what that was all about, but but they were focused, you know, she was certainly focused more on external things, more on physical things when it came to worship, uh specifically like the the location of worship.

Take a look at um, well, you know, let me just kind of read this for you in verse 20.

You can look at it if you're there, but this is what she says.

She says, our fathers, her ancestors, worshipped on this mountain, okay?

But you, referring to Jesus, right, the Jews, okay, you say that in Jerusalem, okay, in the in the temple is the place where people ought to worship.

Okay, so Jesus responds to her here in verse 23 by kind of rerouting her focus and and her understanding by driving her to what true worship uh really entails.

Okay, verse 23.

Again, this will be on the screen for you.

He says to her, but the hour is coming and is now here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.

You see that?

For the Father is seeking such people to worship him.

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

Now, when he says there that we must worship in spirit, okay, this is a this is a reference to uh the human spirit.

Okay, we must worship him in in spirit.

Now, now, while it is absolutely true, okay, hear me on this, that Christians are enabled and empowered to give meaningful praise to the Lord, you know, through the Holy Spirit, through the power that he gives us.

That's absolutely true.

Okay, Philippians 3, verse 3 says, We who worship by the Spirit of God.

Philippians 3:3

Okay, well, that's true.

John 4 here is speaking more to how our worship is to come from a place of emotion.

Okay, it's to come from a place of desire, it's to come from the heart.

Again, spirits, right?

Human spirits.

Because remember the context here of the verse.

We talked about it, right?

The Samaritan woman, she's caught up with what?

This idea that worship is about kind of being in a certain spot, right?

Being in a in a physical location.

It's is it on the mountain?

Is it is it in the temple in in Jerusalem?

And Jesus, he's correcting her in this.

He's gentle.

He says, he says, God is spirit, right?

He says that right there in verse 24.

Right?

God is immaterial.

He is He is non-physical in essence.

And so the essence of true worship is that, you know, at its core, it's it's an immaterial, non-physical desire that that comes from within our spirit, right?

From within our within our heart.

Okay, so again, this really just goes hand in hand with what we've been already talking about uh this morning in Mark chapter 12, and that and that worship is to be wholehearted, okay, heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Mark 12 · chapter mention

We worship in in spirit, Jesus says here.

You know, on top of all of this, okay, Jesus says a little bit more, doesn't he?

He says that true worshipers must worship not only in spirit, but also in truth.

Again, I touched on this a bit briefly, uh, but it means to worship God in accordance with what is true about him.

Okay, that is why you can't really overstate the importance of knowing the truth of the scriptures, right?

Of knowing the gospel.

Okay, doctrinal, you know, theological precision and accuracy is such a crucial component in worshiping God well and and actually giving him glory.

Okay, think about it this way.

I'll use my wife as an example again.

Don't worry, I got her permission for this.

Okay, but if I if I go to my wife, okay, and and I complimented her this morning on her really, really long red hair, how do you think that's gonna go?

Not real great, right?

Right for for either of us.

Right?

It's a weak compliment.

Why?

Well, because it's just it's just not true, right?

It's not it's not factual.

Likewise, if if we attempt to to worship God, but it's not grounded in factual truth about him as found in the Bible, then our worship is weak.

Okay, or if I could put it even more strongly, it ceases to be worship at all.

I mean, entire denominations and and and churches and and and even countries and and people groups subscribe to things that are not true uh all the time.

Right?

You think about uh the prosperity gospel, right?

The largest church in America.

It's like 45,000 people that attend this church.

It is all about the prosperity gospel, which is really about how how God essentially wants you and I to be uh healthy and and wealthy.

Incorrect, okay, according to uh the scriptures, right?

Now that doesn't mean that it doesn't mean that the the having money is wrong, it doesn't mean that that that Christians shouldn't have it or or money itself is is evil or or whatever.

That's that's not it at all.

Okay, but there's just the it's just that there's a lot of verses in the Bible that talk about suffering, right?

That talk about being poor.

Christ Himself experienced these realities, okay, and he calls us to share in these things for the sake of the gospel.

Okay, so if we believe that at the end of the day, God just wants us to be to be healthy and and and have money, we're no longer believing what's true.

Right?

And therefore we we we fail to worship him rightly.

Right?

And I'm not here to just you know rip on other denominations and and and other megachurches and and all of that.

This is something that you and I can easily get ourselves kind of caught up in all the time.

I'll give you an example from just this past week from my own life.

I've been kind of dealing with this, like with this hip issue for a better part of a year, and it constantly aches and it hurts, and I'm trying to get some physio and some rehab done on it, and it's just not getting better.

And at one point just this week I was praying, like, Lord, like I I need to be healthy here.

Right?

That like, don't you want me to be, don't you want to heal this?

Right?

And I was thinking that, like, I it's from this, from in my motive, I was thinking, like, I deserve this, and this is what it's really all about.

And I had to like, hold on a second, right?

That that that's not exactly it.

Now it's not wrong to pray for that and to believe that God can do that absolutely.

But at the end of the day, it's you know, I can serve him whether or not my hip is in perfect working order or not.

And so, even in just kind of a kind of a small way, but but it was a significant way, I think, I was kind of subscribing in some ways to a prosperity gospel.

So we have to work to kind of realize where our hearts struggle with this and replace that uh with truth.

I mean, there's all kinds of false doctrines and and wrong beliefs that churches and and Christians subscribe to all the time.

I think another huge one is just legalism.

Right?

We believe that if I'm not if I'm not performing for God, he's gonna punish me and he doesn't love me.

Right?

I've struggled with this most of my life.

Right?

It's just not true.

How do I know that?

Well, because the gospel tells me that Jesus performed, so to speak, for me.

He did it in my place, he obeyed the law perfectly when I couldn't.

And his perfect record becomes mine the moment I get saved.

I don't need to perform for God to get him to like me.

He already does, he loves me.

I need to rest in that and glory in that and give him worship for that.

Now listen, as we kind of continue here in all of these things, I think it's good for us to remember that we worship in truth.

Right?

Whether it's the prosperity gospel, whether it's it's legalism, we need to right our our minds and hold to that so that we can worship the Lord rightly.

And so as redemption church, we want to make sure that we are intentionally going after worship that is a that is a proper blend of spirited desire, okay, uh, you know, emotions and affections.

We shouldn't be, we shouldn't be scared of all of those things, but but they need to be grounded deeply rooted in rock solid biblical truth.

Okay, so which means we need to be careful, and and again, I think intentional is a good word here, about about avoiding kind of the the two common extremes that that people tend to swing towards.

Okay, one being a dead orthodoxy.

Okay, have you heard of that before?

Dead orthodoxy uh really is where we you know churches can have a heavy, heavy emphasis on truth.

Right?

We we proclaim the truth, it's about the truth, we you know, we're very cerebral, we we study, it it's you know, we we go after all of that, but but in our expressions of that, there's very little spirit, there's very little affection being shown.

And it can be kind of dead in that sense.

Okay, so we don't want to be about that, but the other extreme would be zealous heterodoxy.

And that is just really the opposite of all of that.

It's it's where in churches and in Christians there's this heavy emphasis on spirit.

Okay, and and I and I want to just I want to feel the Lord moving.

And there's there's a lot of emotion, and it's about this experience that I want to have as the Spirit of God flows, so to speak, throughout our time together, and it's about you know, really just kind of this high, this feeling that we're going after and chasing after.

And it's not really tethered or anchored to any any truth.

Okay, so we don't want to swing to one side or the other.

We want to have a proper blend of these things.

Okay, so as you think about that and we consider kind of our own, you know, individual responses to uh what we're hearing today in all of this, let me just ask you a couple of questions here, and then our time will be done.

Here's the first one, it's on the screen.

What truth about God do you need to focus on to kickstart spirited worship in your life?

What truth do you personally, individually need to focus on?

Is there a truth that you have maybe uh been straying from recently, or or maybe deep down you you don't believe it?

Or maybe it's just something you don't have much knowledge of and you need to do some some further study.

Right?

Perhaps for you it's a you know it's it's God's holiness, right?

It is true that God is holy, that He is He is perfect, He is pure.

And maybe for you you've you've kind of drifted from that, you haven't focused on that, you haven't allowed your soul to be stirred up with the holiness of God, and and as a result, you've gotten kind of you've gotten kind of lax when it comes to sin.

And you've started to pursue uh your own pleasure and your own flesh, and you haven't been shaken enough by the holiness of God and and what it means to be in a relationship with Him.

Maybe God's holiness is a truth that you need to focus on.

As you do that, worship will start to bubble up in you again.

Perhaps for you it's God's goodness.

I'm amazed at how many of us, when you get talking with people, so many of us don't believe deep down that God is actually good.

Right?

We sing about it, we talk about it, we may even speak with our with our words, our mouth, and say that God is good.

But maybe perhaps for you it's through the presence of trials and and suffering in your life where you've you've really questioned that.

You know, like how how would the Lord allow me to go through this if He was if He was truly good?

Right?

Have you have you have you identified that?

Have you wrestled that down?

Have you studied the scripture?

Have you have you have you looked at how God is good and He is kind?

And even in the suffering that we go through, it is, it is in many ways, it is His goodness, it is His kindness, He is drawing us closer to Him.

Perhaps for you, the truth of God that you need to you know kind of focus on here is God's power.

Do you believe that God can move and work and do mighty things?

Do you believe that?

Or do you believe that was for a long time ago?

Perhaps you need to, you know, kind of do some reading and some studying and some prayer around the idea of God's omnipotence, the fact that He is all powerful and He can answer prayers and He does.

Maybe it's God's grace.

Again, maybe legalism is the struggle for you as it has been for me.

You need to remember that God has earned your salvation through Christ for you.

Okay?

You don't earn it.

You need to understand God's grace and the gift of love that He has shown to you.

Okay, stop trying to perform for Him.

There's nothing left to earn.

Maybe for you it's God's justice.

You know, you look out at the world and you're like, man, this place is like, this place is burning up quick.

Okay, and you're like, is there any justice in the world?

And it's reminding yourself of the truth that yes, God, God is He's not.

He's gonna right every wrong.

He's gonna do that.

He's gonna come in power and glory.

And he's gonna take care of all of that.

And sin will be punished.

And maybe that for you is something that you need to remind your mind and your soul and your spirit.

You need to find strength in that and remember that God is a God of justice, and allow that, or one of these things we've talked about to lead you to passionate worship.

These are these are these are rock solid truths that provide the foundation for spirited and passionate worship.

And then on that note, here's the second question here.

What holds me back from worshiping God with spirited passion?

Is there something that holds you back?

Is there?

I recognize that in Canada we are a fairly reserved culture.

I think that's true in Ontario.

And and maybe we need to think that through a little bit.

I don't think all of that's wrong or bad or anything, but is there is there something that's holding you back from just expressing joy and passion for the Lord?

Maybe for you, you're just like, well, I don't really feel like it some days.

I just don't, I don't feel like singing.

I don't feel like obeying the Lord.

I don't I don't feel like it.

Alright, so I would just kind of challenge you with that.

Are you gonna let your feelings lead you?

Because that's not that's not a great plan.

Okay?

I love how the psalmist, he's just so honest and so real.

And I love how at one point in there he asks himself, why are you why are you downcast, my soul?

He realizes that he that he's down, maybe he's even maybe he's depressed even, or he's just dealing with the with kind of the nonsense of life and the difficulties of it, but he's not allowing himself to kind of just stay there.

He's challenging himself.

Why, why are you downcast?

The Lord is awesome, and even though my circumstances aren't great, I'm not gonna allow my feelings to hinder my worship of the Lord.

Maybe that's something that we need to think about there.

Coach ourselves to the point of desire.

Invite the Lord's Holy Spirit into helping us with all of that.

Some days we don't feel like it.

I get it.

I I waltz in here as well sometimes with that.

The cares of the world are weighing on me, but let's work through that.

Let's not say that that, oh, okay, therefore I won't worship and it's all good.

Maybe for you, you're the thing that holds you back from worshiping is you're like, well, I just don't really like this thing.

Honestly, or I have a brutal voice, right?

Or I don't like to pray, or I don't like to give, or I don't like to serve.

Right?

Well, if you read the scriptures, these are all, these are all wonderful things that at the end of the day aren't, they're not optional.

Right?

But I think sometimes we kind of we pick and choose.

We we naturally grab hold of the things that come naturally to us and and that we're maybe we're we're kind of good at or that we like to do.

And some of the things that we we don't like to do, uh, we just don't do.

I don't like to do it, and and so therefore I won't.

But at the end of the day, we don't, we don't get to kind of pick and choose what we want.

Instead, if there's an area where you don't have a lot of desire or you don't really like to worship in a certain way or obey God in a certain way, that's really an opportunity for you to invite God's God's grace and God's strength, God's Holy Spirit into your life to turn that into a strength.

Something like that holds you back?

Maybe for you, you're just kind of what's standing out in your mind today is that I don't sing, I don't worship, I don't obey, because I'm frankly, I'm I'm not that captivated by his greatness.

I'm not that fired up by his worth.

And I think this is something that we all wrestle with at times.

And I think that's probably the sign that uh some other idol has taken over, taken over my affections.

And I've I've allowed that to happen.

You see how we have to think through these things?

What holds me back?

Invite the Lord into these things and pray.

Identify all of this, drill down into these things, seek God's forgiveness where it's become a sin issue for you.

Seek his strength to grow as a passionate worshiper this year.