Reaching Beyond Ourselves

Thank you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Well, good morning.

Happy Thanksgiving weekend.

I tell you, this is just one of the uh most thrilling times.

My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving.

And as great as Easter and Christmas are, uh, I just uh it sort of all focuses on the family mood and spirit of Thanksgiving.

And uh to be here the week uh the Sunday following is just a part of uh great seasonal joy for me.

So uh thank you for the warm welcome.

Thank you, Robert.

It's true, Robert and I have uh come to enjoy a very meaningful relationship, but I need to confess to you.

I was a little troubled about uh this particular uh weekend invitation from him.

Um I I hope you'll put up with my bewilderment.

Uh he he has been uh well first uh I should say and will in a moment a little more, spoke at our Autumn Leadership Conference, an annual event, great event, of course, made a great contribution.

But he's also come just to be with a group of pastors that I will meet.

It's a different 45 pastors every month, nine months a year, one week a month.

I spend with 45 different pastors.

And been over 3,000 participants over the last few years from over 60 denominations and interdenominational representatives, and it's uh been a joy to have pastors come who just want you to talk to them about pastoring.

Well, Roberts, come to that.

And one of the things that occurred to me, and this did not even occur to me till yesterday morning, I was feeling really excited about being here, and suddenly kind of a pall came over it.

And this is the reason that I remembered talking with the pastors about how in building a strong biblically based curriculum with your congregation, you have to plan out two, three years of basically where you're gonna go, thematic materials.

Of course, you do more detailed studies, you get closer to it, and uh laying it out, you it's it's where it fits in the calendar too becomes very significant.

And I was talking about the series preaching that you, you know, you but you come, there's things in Interrupt series, and holidays are among those things that are so dynamic in their own right that they, you know, they kind of cloud everything else.

Not to mention the fact that Thanksgiving weekend, you don't have the usual congregation because so many people are away with relatives and there are relatives that are visiting that are there, and it's a wonderful Sunday of celebration.

So it's not meaningless, but you cannot use it to really accumulate the building of ongoing uh something with the congregation.

It's a kind of an interruptive week.

And I said, and that's a week you can't get that much done.

And I said, This is what I always do is I don't speak that week because it's not much you can do with it anyway.

And it suddenly occurred to me yesterday morning, and I, you know, sometimes you come with an inch of making a phone call and say, I don't think I can make the plane, you know.

No, I would never do that, but it was kind of amusing to me to think about that, and it's a delight to have you here because here we are bright and alert and ready for the word of God.

And uh also I'm pleased because Robert, having been with us at our autumn leadership conference just three weeks ago, he and I had a chance to talk about what's been going on, the teaching, and uh he said he'd been doing this series on worship.

And he didn't tell me the title of the series, which of course you you know is beyond.

And uh he had mentioned, though, and I said, Listen, I'll I'll just fit right in with that, and I said a kind of thing I thought I would do along the general lines I'm in fact doing.

And you know what really moved me, and I say this with real sincerity.

I I was preparing my notes and I thought, I'm gonna title this message, I think, Reaching Beyond Ourselves.

And I didn't even know that beyond was the name of the series.

And it's one of those things when you arrive and you'd make the discovery, you feel like the Lord really has been guiding you, notwithstanding the fact that Roger Robert saw it as a useless Sunday morning.

And uh so uh here I am to serve God in my own weak way this morning.

And I'd like to ask you to open your Bibles to the 12th chapter of Romans.

And in a moment I want to tell you why I turned to this verse from among the scores of verses you could turn to in the Bible that talk about extending hands or lifting hands or raising hands or reaching with our hands in praise, either adoration or prayer to God.

I don't want to talk to you about why, but we're going to read this.

Romans 12, verse 1.

Romans 12:1

I beseech you, therefore, brethren.

Please note the word therefore because it means we're drawing a conclusion on the basis of what's gone before.

I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies, a living sacrifice wholly acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service, my translation reads.

Some say spiritual worship.

There's different ways this is expressed.

And let me quickly tell you the dilemma that translators have with the word that is translated there.

And there's a combination of the intellectual soundness, the reasonableness of something, but also the spiritual dynamic that there is.

So it's both spiritual and it's rational.

And how many times people think of these as separate qualities?

Things are spiritual and they're kind of mystical, but they're really not.

There's few things, in fact, there's not anything more practical than true spirituality, and functional, and sensible, sane, and of course, rational, which is your reasonable service or your spiritual worship.

Present your bodies, not being conformed to the world, but transformed.

As really by that worship, your mind is constantly being sharpened, honed, and you thereby begin to discover the unfolding of the good and acceptable and perfect will of God in your life.

But it's born out of worship, which is predicated by the word, therefore, on everything that's gone before.

Romans 12 is a turning point in the book.

Those familiar with the outline of the book of Romans know that the theological portion comes to this part point and the practical moves from there.

Doctrine always becomes practical, or it's not really doctrine.

Doctrine is not just a con a combination of ideas.

Doctrine is behavioral guidelines that are rooted in the nature and the truth of the living God.

And when you come to the uh this this pivot point of chapter 12, it's flowing out of such great things as that we have been saved, justified by faith, regarded as perfect in Jesus Christ, that we are without condemnation, that God has poured out his love in such a way it's inseparable.

Nothing can separate us from the love of God.

And then it's dramatically illustrated by chapters 9, 10, and 11 of how even the rebellion against their Messiah does not separate the Jews from God's ultimate purpose in them, as that great theological revelation of the 9, 10, 11th chapter of Romans unfolds.

And out of the context of all I just recited, very quickly, there comes, therefore, I beg of you, everybody, praise God and use your bodies to do it.

Using our bodies in praise is something that is uh a little difficult for some people to fathom, and I want to reference my own difficulty with that and what got me to this verse years ago, to say the things I'm saying about it right now.

But uh the first I have to tell you about uh uh an experience that so beautifully illustrates that our the the most natural thing in the world for us to do is to use our hands to express ourselves.

There are many uh parts of our culture, humanly speaking, and especially different ethnic groups, are very expressive with their hands, and among the most expressive are the Jews.

Having taken groups to Israel 30 over 30 times and taught people there, I've had great exposure involvement with Jewish people, and uh the guide that I've worked with for years, Ami Levy, uh Ami has a story he will tell each group because he's he gestures a great deal with his hands, very expressive with his hands, which of course all of us uh have a measure of that, but there's this unique idiosyncrasy of Jewish people that it just seems, and he says, we we we can't talk without our hands.

He says, we we Jews have to do this.

He tells a story about a a man who was pulled over to the side of the road and he'd spread a map out on the hood of the car, and he was on some country road in Israel and couldn't find his way to Haifa, and he was leaning over the map, and uh uh an Israeli farmer came walking along, had a watermelon under each arm, and as he was walking along, came in, and the the guy turned to him and says, By the way, could could you could you help me?

He says, I can't find my way to the road to Haifa.

The farmer walked over to him and says, Here.

The guy took the watermelon and put it under his arm.

And he says, he just asked him, you know, I says, how did can you tell me how to get to Haifa?

When he got a watermelon out, he says, I don't know.

I was raised in uh a number of denominational environments, which has an interesting story behind it, because it wasn't because of uh passive commitments or you know being church hopping and uh like hallelujah hobos of some kind.

But our family moved frequently when I was a boy.

I'm a depression baby, and uh the family uh was finding places where my dad could work.

And I remember uh my upbringing, which I benefited me in many ways, because we always went to the house closest to where the the church closest to our home, where wherever we landed, that the church had preached the gospel, whatever it was.

So they were always churches that preached the word of God, and where the word of God was authority and Jesus Christ is Lord.

But many of those years were in Presbyterian churches.

And Presbyterians traditionally are not uh perceived as being especially expressive, and while we were involved in Pentecostal churches too, and I grew up with a certain liberty, most of the influence, especially going in my teenage years, was Presbyterian.

And when the Lord called me to go into spirit-filled ministry as uh Pentecostal, to train for Pentecostal or charismatic ministry, I came to a college where I began to train, and as I came there, I was in an environment that was not like the church I'd come from.

And everybody, among the most visible things they did when they'd praise and worship was lift their hands.

And I I was not unfamiliar with the idea, and I didn't object to it, but I really, it was just not part of what I did.

And uh I it didn't make me angry.

Sometimes it makes people angry, and I but I I was fine.

I I could I could go with this, but I but I didn't want to do it.

And one day I thought, what is it that that's resistance in you?

So I I got out concordance and began to study to find out.

And I was astounded how often the expressiveness of our hands is called for in worship.

It's God's idea.

It's as though he said, I gave you hands for a lot of reasons.

Among them is to present yourself to me.

That it is one of the most natural things we do, as we'll see in a few moments, and I want to get you ready right now because you're I'm going to invite you to write down five words.

And the beginning letter of each of those words will conclude by with the word raise or raise your hands.

And uh I'm I want to go there in a moment.

But when we when I studied that, I found the scriptures full of this, and Robert's probably in the last few weeks taught you about the fact that both praise and bless, or excuse me, thank and bless, to give thanksgiving and to bless God, bless the Lord, oh my soul, that the word in the Hebrew language literally means to extend the hands.

And we extend our hands when we bless.

So why should that be so surprising?

But I'm not bringing this message because I think there's any resistance to upraised hands, certainly in this congregation, but because I think that everything that we do should transcend merely reasons of our choosing to accept a tradition.

There'd be something that is imbued with significance in our understanding.

And so I wanted to leave you this word and to go there with that, but in this passage of Scripture, the foundation of it is everything that's been done from you for you, present your bodies holy and acceptable unto God.

At the time I was studying that through and found it was not only biblical, but it was so practical, it's so it's so right.

It's the the way, you know, nobody says to someone who's given them a beautiful present, oh, thank you.

You know, we say, Oh, thank you.

Oops.

You know, you know, I don't want to get fanatical about this.

The sense, the sense of sanity, practicality, just plain the humanness, that is not carnal humanness, but truly natural way we're built.

I said one time in prayer to the Lord, Lord, why do you make so much in of hands in the Bible?

There's the laying on of hands for any number of reasons, from praying the sick to seeing people delivered to commissioning people to ministry.

There's see people filled with the Spirit.

There's there's so much of laying of hands involved in the Scripture, of raising hands, extending hands.

I said, Lord, why is that?

And the Lord said, What what do you use the most?

What do you use the most in your life?

And I realized the busiest member of my body and yours too is our hands.

And what is more sane than regularly, as we come to the Lord, say, Lord, these hands, I want to bring them to you because they've got a lot to work to do this week.

Gonna be, you know, taking care of our kids this week and going to be uh working in my in tasks that there's things that are beyond my capability.

Everything, loved ones, is beyond our capability.

It's not a commentary on our intelligence, it's just on our finiteness and our limits.

I need to constantly be reaching beyond myself.

Reaching beyond ourselves.

And when we come in worship, not just when we gather in assembly, but come before the Lord, raising our hands is practical for at least five reasons.

Jut down these, will you?

The first is because it is the way to reach and present your heart to God.

Reaching.

And each of the words will be like that reaching, asking, inviting, surrendering, embracing.

I'll say them again.

Reaching is the first one.

The Bible says in the third chapter of Lamentations, let us search and try our ways and turn again to the Lord.

Let us lift up our hearts with our hands.

In fact, could I ask you to just do like this with your hands?

And just to form a kind of a cut.

And just saying, you know, we obviously the physiological heart is right here.

But presenting myself to the Lord, here, here, here I come and say, Lord, I want to.

In fact, we sing, Lord, I give you my heart.

I give you my soul, Lord.

I come to present my heart to you.

The Bible says that the extension of my hands, reaching to God, is reaching in a presentation of my heart.

Let us lift up our hearts with our hands, reaching beyond myself in order to present my heart to the Lord.

Secondly, write the word asking, if you will.

The word asking.

Psalm 63, David's running for his life.

And it's an unjust assault that is coming, and he cries out to the Lord and he says, Lord, says, thus will I bless you as long as I live.

He's in a cave, by the way, writing that psalm.

It's a song brought in a moment of darkness and pressure.

And he's calling out to the Lord, says, Lord, thus will I bless you while I live.

I will lift up my hands to your name.

He's basically saying, I don't even know if I'll have another day, but I'm asking you to be my deliverer.

And of course, he was delivered marvelously by God's grace from Saul's unjust chasing him.

But uh that request, asking of the Lord, I come to ask.

I've thought of it in this terms too, not just asking for things we need, but asking for counsel from God, asking wisdom.

Many times I think of myself, and I there's you have no idea.

I don't say this for any reasons of ostentation or attempt to verify something of unique or profound humility.

I cannot tell you the frequency that I will say to the Lord, Lord, I'm just a little boy.

I'm just a little boy, and I need you in this matter.

I feel like sitting in the schoolroom of heaven and lifting my hand and asking, Father God, what do I do about this?

And none of us in this room are superior to another in the fundamental needs of the counsel and the wisdom of God in our lives, asking, and I come and just lift my hand to say, Father, I come to ask.

Inviting.

Solomon was dedicating the temple, and the Bible says he knelt.

There was a huge platform that had been prepared, and he he knelt before the people of Israel, the royal king of the nation, down on his knees in his royal robes, with his hands, it said, and Solomon spread forth his hands, and he issued an invitation and said, Lord, the heavens of the heavens can't contain you, much less this building that we have built.

But God, would you come and dwell here?

And among the most moving scenes in Scripture is the fact that the priests were unable to minister because the presence of the glory of God filled that temple.

And there's not one of us that don't need the profound presence of God in our daily life.

Can you say amen to that?

We need, we need his presence.

And it comes by invitation, and Solomon models that with hands extended, saying, Lord, I want to invite you into not only this place, but this place right here.

And I want to in a moment tell you a story in conclusion that talks about this stretching our hands and saying, Lord, come into this place, and this place being the every place of our lives on our human circumstance.

When there came the uh call to surrender that uh we you see in any kind of an environment, the next word is surrendering, the yielding, the most the the uniform, the universal signal of surrender is upraised hands.

Just I give up.

I give up.

You wonder if there's somebody here this morning that's where you are this morning, but you're ready just to give up, period, rather than come and say, Lord, I give up to you.

I'll tell you, there's a world of difference between just giving up and giving up to God because He will take over whatever we surrender to Him.

And many of us learned long time ago and some more recently, and perhaps some today, that something you're wrestling with right now, bring it to Him in surrender.

This time of worship before His throne.

In fact, you may never have lifted your hands to the Lord, not so much because of resistance, but fear, sometimes intimidation, as with me in that college situation where it was new to me, and I decided I better go find out what the Bible says, and I just decided I need to get over it.

And so lifting hands is not something I came by in some superficial exuberance, and no one is asked to do this out of mere excitability.

It's the reason for the message, it's to see the reasons behind it.

Come in surrender to the Lord, and then finally, e, embracing.

Because in surrender, it doesn't just end there.

I come and say, Lord, I want, I want to submit to you your way, but then to reach out, and as the Bible says in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, that these great heroes of faith, having seen from afar what God had promised, embraced the promise.

And in worship we come and embrace what God says.

And the beautiful thing about embracing the promise is it isn't just an idea, it's the Lord Himself.

For in Christ all the promises of God are yes and amen.

And so this reaching, asking, inviting, surrendering, embracing all of these things are the things that are the perhaps as simple as summary, just to raise our hands to the Lord with understanding.

It is the most sensible, practical thing, and it aligns with everything that is in us.

I I'm asking a question.

I'm coming to embrace what God has offered and promised.

Several years ago, I was uh I had a moment of real remarkable uh discovery, and uh it was related to the fourth chapter of the book of Revelation, where the Bible says the angelic creatures called the cherubim, there's four of them, and they're around the throne of God.

It says they're in where the throne of God is, you can read about it in the fourth chapter of the book of Revelation, where the throne of God is, it's central to this huge, huge worship center, which really looks like a gigantic atrium.

There's a there's a a lake there, a small sea, and hosts of angels and innumerable people praising God.

But at the center of it are the four creatures around the throne.

The four living creatures, they're called the cherubim.

And when they begin to worship the Lord, then the next tier begin, the elders, there's 24 elders around the throne, they begin to worship, and then angels near the throne begin to, and then the whole host of angels, and then by the time you go through the chapter four and five, it ends with everyone praising and worshiping God.

And so this worship that begins with them.

They're basically the worship leaders of creation that they worship and everything else like ripples going out from a common center just begins to spread.

Something about that scene was drawn to my attention some years ago as a result of an evening in which we had gathered as we had come to the place in our uh on a Saturday night with the pastoral staff.

This was early in the church's life, we were only about 700 in the church at the time, 700 in attendance.

On Saturday night we would go over, two of the pastoral staff members and I, and we would just pray through the sanctuary.

And this one evening while we were there praying, we would go at 10 o'clock.

I'd have the guys, I said, look, stay home with your family, just when the kids have gone to bed, then come on over, we'll pray for about an hour and go home and go to bed.

We'd be in bed by 11:30, I suppose, and we'll be ready for the next day.

So we uh uh were there, and there was a knock on the front door.

We were just we weren't praying as a unit, we would do that at the end.

We'd just walk around and each one pray as we felt impressed, all walking around the room.

And I went to the front door, I was closest to the door and opened the door of the church, and it's just like 1015.

And uh there was one of the college kids in our church who I didn't know that she lived across the street in a condominium, and she'd seen the lights on, and she said, Pastor Jack, she said, I saw the lights on from my apartment window.

Is there a service?

And I said, Well, no, we're just here praying.

And she said, Well, could I come in and pray?

Well, you know, I really didn't want her to, but you don't say, No, you can't.

You know, you you you we were kind of hung with it, and I so I said, Well, come on in, Gail, and she came in.

And uh so I said, We're just praying around the sanctuary, so go ahead.

Well, she did.

It was just a few minutes after that that I felt very impressed to do something that was not any contrived thing I'd never done before.

But I said to the other three in the room, I said, I really feel very moved that we're to each go and stand in a corner of this small sanctuary.

And this little building only seated about 220 people.

So just that right here in the easily in the center, you probably put it six times in this room.

And so I went over to this corner, and and Gail was over there, and John was there, and Paul, our youth pastor, was over in that corner.

And I want to emphasize Paul, our youth pastor, because he's going to say something.

I'm not talking about the Apostle Paul when I say that, but the uh Paul, the youth pastor.

And I said, I feel like we're supposed to extend our hands as though we are creating a tent.

And to just come before the Lord with worship and create the phrase that had come to me, build a canopy for my presence.

Build a tent for my presence.

It's not unlike what the Lord said to Israel as they came out of Egypt.

And so we we we were doing just very simple action.

And uh everyone knew I wasn't doing talking about something weird, and I tell you that because you're gonna hear something weird in just a minute.

When we extended our hands, we began to sing.

Just hallelujah, praise your name, O Lord.

And many minutes went by.

We didn't keep track of it, but it was amazing how worship just seemed to flow without any any effort.

And then we all just seemed to stop just at once.

And we did.

Paul, our youth pastor, Paul stepped forward from the corner and he said, When we felt that unique sense of the presence of God as we had extended our hands and said, Lord, come and dwell here, he said, the Holy Spirit whispered to me that this seemed so right because we had where we were standing in each corner of the building, we had aligned with uh there's an angel at each corner of the building, and that's that's all there was to it.

That's all he said, and because we, of course, believe that angel's presence is often places where we are, that he gives these angels charge over us.

It's not anything that's unusual, so it didn't seem mystical, but didn't really give it much thought until next week.

I'd come to a morning prayer meeting, and the men in the church had come on their way to work, and it was about six o'clock in the morning, and while I was praying there, the Lord spoke to me while I'm on my knees, and I'm not even I hadn't even thought about that Saturday night encounter earlier that uh just a few days before.

And the Lord whispers this to me, get ready, here it comes.

Nudge the person next to you, say, This is gonna get weird now, right now.

The Lord uh the the whisper came to my heart, the four angels that I spoke to Paul about, Paul the youth pastor, that I spoke to Paul about are the four living creatures or the four cherubim around the throne in Revelation chapter 4.

Revelation 4 · chapter mention

Well, I didn't say this to the Lord, but I don't want to tell you what I thought.

When I this comes into my mind.

And I thought, well, of course, Lord.

I mean, I knew that all the time.

I was.

I mean, where else would they go but 1434 Sherman Way, Van Ice, California, the Four Square Church, little congregation there, why would they not be here?

But I didn't say that.

What I wanted to say was, God, do you realize that there are entire cult systems that have begun with less material than this?

I was really puzzled by it, I knew it was the Lord, but I didn't know what to do with it.

I opened my Bible there, just the geyser praying, and I opened the to Revelation chapter 4, and I read it, and I didn't know any more then than I did before, and I just let it go.

Revelation 4 · chapter mention

The creatures around the throne.

And it was a little over a week later that I was, you know, that I brought that book out here and didn't uh bring it, thank you.

I brought this for this purpose, they didn't carry it to the platform.

And all of a sudden, walking in from the parking lot this one day, again, not having to, I did not try to figure these things out.

Let me tell you something.

If you have something unusual the Lord speaks to you, and you believe it's the Lord, and you say, I can't figure this out, it seems weird, leave it alone.

Just leave it alone.

And though there's something here to learn, it'll get clearer later, but don't go around kind of just, oh boy, I just struggle with this.

Forget it.

You know, if there's if something's true, God will get it through to you clearly, and it'll be in alignment with the scripture, and alignment's the key word here, because all of a sudden I saw it, and I didn't see it by reasoned analysis.

I saw it as I was walking in from the parking lot that day, and there it was, just like that.

Came back to my mind.

The Bible says the Lord, the Lord's throne is settled forever in heaven, and that his word and his authority, the rule of his kingdom, what he determines and declares, what he wills, what he will prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God that is talked about in Romans chapter 12 that we began with this morning, that that rule of God in your world and mine, in your family and mine, in your business and mine, in the details of my soul, the issues of my life, that his throne is settled in heaven.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

And as I worship him, and as we did that day, as I worship him, here I am in my place on earth.

And the Bible says, when we draw near to God, that he draws near to us, and that as we that night had given ourselves to say, Lord, we worship you in this house, that we had come in alignment as you or I will anytime we extend ourselves to come into the presence of God and say, Lord, I want your presence here.

I want your grace upon my life.

Today's decisions, the matter I face now.

You step out of an office, out of a conference room where something is beleagering your own mind and you don't know what decision to make.

And say, excuse me a minute and get alone and extend yourself before God and just say, Lord, I come and I say, let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And you get alignment with God, and the four angelic creatures around his throne become right around where you are.

And it's not that we're after angel presences, but it explained the proximity to which we are brought when we come with worship and reach beyond ourselves.

This morning I want to ask you if you would just open your hands in front of you, just like this.

And as you do, loved ones, in just a moment, the meeting's going to be dismissed, and uh, I don't know which of the pastoral team is coming to bring us to conclusion, but as they come, I'm going to ask you to let me lead you in a prayer.

But would you just with me reach your hands upward?

And the sensibleness of this is so clear.

And while this may be something you've done a thousand times before yourself, or maybe it's the first time, just very simply, let's pray together.

Would you say with me, Father God, I lift my heart with my hands, according to your word.

Take my heart, all that I am.

I want to be aligned with your rule.

I want to keep your hands right there, and I want to pause a moment if there's anything right now you want to bring under his dominion, his rule, his guidance, his direction, his healing, his entry of his kingdom power.

And right now, let's continue.

And so, Lord, I present to you all that concerns me, that for your glory, by your power, my life of worship may find the release of your will in my world through Jesus Christ my Lord.

Just go ahead and speak praise to him for just a moment right now.