Not Your Ordinary Church Service: In One Ear | Part 3

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

We've been in a series called Not Your Ordinary Church Service.

Asking, what does a not ordinary church service look like?

And after a year plus of not being able to gather, of not being able to do this in person, and for those who aren't yet quite comfortable, we can't wait for you here and grateful that you get to uh at least be with us, you know, in spirit and online.

But but don't you want to move beyond just kind of the ordinary after not being able to gather for so long?

And and really go, okay, what would it look like if we were the people of God gathering together to meet with God, to have a fresh encounter from Jesus, and then we move out into our world on behalf of our Savior?

Like that's the type of church I want to be a part of.

That's the type of church Jesus dreams for the Silicon Valley.

And so we've been asking, what does a not ordinary church service look like?

The first week we we did a series, uh title of the sermon is called Cool Socks, if you remember that, and just talked about that we need new wineskin for the new work that Jesus is doing, that there's some structures and some habits of the way we're going about church that we need to change.

And then last week we're actually literally talking through the church service, like what we do, worship and preaching, the community and uh communion and all of those things.

So last week we talked about worship, the afterglow.

Like what would it look like if we moved from a church with just you know worship music to a church filled with passionate worshipers?

That we'd become that type of church.

This morning, the sermon title is called In One Ear.

We're talking about preaching and teaching and the word of God.

Would you go ahead and say that to your neighbor in one ear, turn to them and say, in one ear.

And it went out the other ear, didn't it?

Um, and that's kind of that's kind of like what happens with sermons, right?

Ryan, you you spend 30 hours or so on a sermon and we come and listen to it and it went in one ear.

And if I didn't recap the last two weeks, you may not have even known what we talked about for two weeks, because it just sometimes goes in one ear, doesn't it?

And then out the other.

And the question is really, why do we sit under the preaching of the word of God?

We gather together, right?

We can podcast this, right?

Why do we sit under the preaching of the word of God together?

You know, a few weeks ago, I saw right before we're going on vacation, I got this Amazon alert.

You get this, like what packages are arriving at your house?

And I saw my wife Jenny ordered this book, right?

And I saw the title of the book and said, She doesn't need this.

Why did she order this book?

This is silliness.

And then uh right as we're headed to vacation, she hands me a book.

I'm like, wait a second, that book was for me.

And the minute I read the title yet again, I was deeply offended that she saw this book, ordered it on Amazon, and thought, man, my husband could really use this book.

The title of the book right here is uh Younger Next Year, live strict live strong, fit, sexy, and smart until you're 80 and beyond.

I turned 40 this year, but I'm not exactly sure what my wife is thinking or what I actually maybe am needing.

The opening line begins this way.

So look, you're 53, 58, somewhere in there, great guy, pretty successful, good energy, you're a serious man in a serious life.

And besides that, you're in decent shape, thank God.

Solid, weakened athlete.

Well, fairly solid, maybe a little overweight, and a bikesman in the garage a little.

Like, why did you get me this book?

Unbelievable.

Now, to be fair, my wife was listening to a podcast by uh Rebecca and Gabe Lyons, and Gabe said, Man, his mentor gave him this book.

He loves it, and he recommends this book.

And so on vacation, I started reading it, and though deeply offended, soon became very fond of it.

I was like, I love this book, this is awesome.

I started telling friends about it, offending them.

I'm like, no, you need this.

Hello, uh, this is good for you.

Um, and now I am a fan, and so you come up afterwards, I'll get you.

This is my copy, you can't have it.

Uh, there, younger next year.

But here's the question like, why do we sit under this book and not this book?

Or why do why, you know, this isn't on Sunday a book club where we just kind of choose whatever book we want or whatever is going on?

Why do we sit under the teaching and the preaching of one particular book?

This is a good book.

Why do we sit under this book?

And how do we move?

This is where I want to go.

This is what I believe God has for us.

This is the not ordinary.

How do we move from being informed about God to being deeply formed by God?

How do we move from coming and gathering new tidbits of information, things that titulate our intellect?

Maybe something that you can post or somehow, you know, impress a friend with?

We would never do that, but how do we be deeply formed by God, not just simply informed?

Well, to do this, I want to pick up a time when the Israelites had a regathering of a church service, if you will.

If you have your Bible, would you open up to Nehemiah chapter 8?

Nehemiah 8 · chapter mention

And it was this regathering here.

Uh, and let me give you a little bit of background and the context of why they're regathering and this particular worship service.

Uh the people of Israel, um, typically uh more technically Judah, uh, they were uh conquered and taken into captivity by the Babylonians in 586 BC.

Uh Babylon comes against Jerusalem, sieges the city, uh, they tear down the walls, they destroy the temple, they take all of the best and brightest of the land into captivity to Babylon.

And here is where Israel is for 70 years living in Babylon as exiles.

And then under uh Babylon gets conquered, and so under the new uh reigning uh empire, the plan is okay, how do I bring stability and peace?

I'm gonna begin to send all these people who are disgruntled in my kingdom back, they'll like me better.

And so he begins to send people back, and Israel begins to make their way back to Jerusalem.

Zerubbabel is the first leader to take some of the exiles back to Jerusalem.

And he bring comes back and they rebuild the temple of God.

And then another guy quite a few years later, named Ezra, he's a priest, and he comes back with some people, and they be he's a priest, and so he looks at the the spiritual climate and the chaos and what's happening, and he's he's working to bring spiritual renewal.

And about 13 years later, Nehemiah, who's a businessman who worked for the king, he is hears about the disarray and and the hardships of the people of God because their walls had been torn down.

So though they have a temple, though they return, they're unprotected and they're constantly being taken advantage of by the surrounding nations.

And so God puts it in his heart, Nehemiah, to come back, and he had favor with the king to build the wall so that they could then build a new community and nation together.

And this is something pretty cool, by the way.

When a businessman and a priest teamed up, you saw civil renewal and spiritual revival.

I'd love for that.

Oh, wouldn't that be not ordinary that we see that in the Silicon Valley where we're seeing the best and the brightest say, hey, as we're coming, we're bringing together the best that we have for God's glory to restore what he wants to do on this planet.

His kingdom come, his will be done.

This is the context.

And so the wall had just been completed of the building around Jerusalem, and the people gather together for a worship service.

And we pick it up in Nehemiah chapter eight.

Oh, by the way, in this chapter is where a practice for the Jewish people and the church really kind of we see its first origins, if you will, meaning that the practice that happened here is they would stand in honor of the reading of God's word.

And so this happened for the Jewish people, and then the early church took up this practice, and you'll find many different traditions of Christians who will stand in honor of the word of God.

And so the public reading that is.

Would you stand with me and I'm gonna read Nehemiah, our teaching text for today?

Nehemiah chapter eight, verse one.

When the seventh month came and the Israelites had settled in their towns, all the people came together as one in the square before the water gate.

They told Ezra, the teacher of the law, to bring out the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded for Israel.

So on the first day of the seventh month, Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, which is made up of men and women and all who were able to understand.

He read it aloud from daybreak till noon.

This is about five to six hours, by the way.

As he faced the square before the water gate in the presence of men, women, and others who could understand, and all the people listened attentively to the book of the law.

Ezra, the teacher of the law, stood on a high wooden platform built for the occasion.

Beside him, on his right, were a bunch of names that I couldn't pronounce, so I put in your notes thirteen other leaders.

So you can go look that up.

Ezra opened the book, all the people could see him because he was standing above them, and as he opened it, the people all stood up.

This is why we're doing this.

Ezra praised the Lord, the great God, and all the people lifted their hands and responded, Amen, amen, or let it be so.

Then they bowed down and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.

The Levites, and he gives another list of Levite leaders, instructed the people in the law while the people were standing there.

They read from the book of the law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people understood what was being read.

Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest, and the teacher of the law, and the Levites who were instructing the people, said to them all, This day is holy to the Lord God.

Do not mourn or weep.

For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the law.

Nehemiah said, Go enjoy choice food and sweet drink, and send some to those who have nothing prepared.

This day is holy to our Lord.

Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

The Levites calmed all the people, saying, Be still, for this is a holy day.

Do not grieve.

Then all the people went away to eat and drink, to send portions of food, and to celebrate with great joy, because they now they understood the word that had been made known to them.

This is the word of the Lord.

Amen.

You may be seated.

And so, how do we move from being informed about God to deeply formed by God?

In this text, I believe there's three elements of a deeply formed church.

What's amazing is as we read that, uh, scholars will tell us that uh all the elements of synagogue worship are in place here, from the reading of the text to the interpreting of it, to the gathering of the people to worship and prayer.

And even the post-uh synagogue practice was that you ate and drank and shared a meal together after you had church.

And then the early church took on those very things, and so they began to incorporate that's the ways of worship.

And so we're seeing the very first church service, if you will, and a deeply formed church.

I want to give you just simply three things from the text for us today, if we want to be kind that kind of church.

First, understands a deeply formed church, understands the Bible is more than a good book, it is God's word.

Like there's a difference between these.

This is a good book.

I highly recommend it.

I love it.

Um, changed my life, and I'm gonna be sexy and smart until I'm 80 and beyond.

Hello.

Um, but it's a good book.

That's all it is.

It's just a book.

This is more than a book.

And you know, back in the day we used to call this book something.

Maybe you don't even remember.

It's kind of fallen out of uh trend, if you will, but they we used to call it the good book, right?

And I think part of that then starts to relegate it into no, this is a good book, this is a nice book, this is something, you know, uh yeah, I can get some good things out of it, but what if it's more than a good book?

What if it actually is God's word to you and to me, and he longs to speak to you specifically, and he wants to say things to you and help form and shape you, and it's not just like, oh, this is nice.

I mean, if God really wrote you a letter, just think about it.

No, we'd be afraid to open it, I'm sure.

But think if he like actually wrote you a letter, wrote you a note, had something to say to you, what would you do with that letter?

You know, we keep notes and letters from people that have written things that are really meaningful, right?

I write on napkins all the time when I'm meeting with people, and people save those napkins.

Because I'm a visual learner, and it's like, oh, God showed up in that, and like this is God's word to you.

It's not just a good book, it's not filled with nice ideas.

He wants to speak to you, and and we need to have a reference for his word.

I don't know if you noticed throughout the reading, it said the book of the law, which is the Torah or the first five books of the Bible in the Old Testament, the writings of Moses.

They stood in reverence to the reading, they stood for five or six hours.

I'm not gonna go that long today.

I know we're speaking on preaching, I was tempted.

Uh, but they stood, there's a reverence about it.

We've lost the reverence of God's word.

It's kind of flipping, it's kind of nice.

Yeah, if I get to it, great, huh?

It was wonderful.

No, no, no.

God wants to speak to you.

He took time to write it down.

Notice how the apostle Paul thinks about God's word.

He says in 2 Timothy 3:16 and 17, all scripture is God breathed.

2 Timothy 3:16

The old and the new.

Like the Spirit of God worked in cooperation with man, and he brought about the very words that he intended to bring about for our good.

What he wants to say to you.

All scriptures, God breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, training, and righteousness so that the person of God might be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Like most of the time, we don't feel equipped for anything.

I I flew in this morning because my wife's grandmother had a 98th birthday in um Bakersfield.

And so I was in Bakersfield this morning, took a flight home this morning, and some of our lovely people at Awakening came pick me up.

One of them is doing a career change right now.

And um, in his career change, he's trying to step into the uh user interface side of things.

Guess what he did?

He went through a boot camp and studied to be thoroughly equipped for this career change.

Paul's saying, listen, if you want to be thoroughly equipped for life, do you feel like life has thrown you a curveball?

Do you feel ill-equipped for COVID?

Do you feel like, hey, I can't make it through this?

I don't know.

He said, It's all here, it's already written down.

I've already got it taken care of.

By the way, people of God through history have gone through way worse than what we're currently going through now.

They and God has wisdom for us here.

All scriptures, God breathed.

What if?

What if we as a church, a deeply formed church, is like, no, it's more than a good book.

It is God's word.

Did you know that Jesus viewed God's word as authoritative and true, and he quoted it often?

Like, I'm just gonna take Jesus' word about God's word.

Don't take mine, take Jesus'.

I want to, as we step into this, this Bible is more than a good book, as we begin to lean into God's word.

I think there's three temptations in our day as we begin to lean into this together.

Three things that we see quite a bit.

The first is the first temptation is apathy from accessibility.

Apathy from accessibility.

Here's, and this isn't this is crazy.

Your phone has more access to the Bible, to podcasts, to commentaries, just this right here, than most people have had in all of human history ever.

Like it's in your pockets.

You're walking around in your pockets.

The UVersion app is right there.

You know, you can do the blue letter Bible, you can do whatever.

You have so much access to everything.

And yet our default, my default can just be this kind of death scroll Instagram.

You know that um believers in closed countries, that is um countries where it's illegal to be a Christian, they don't have a full copy, many of them.

And if they got caught with a copy, they they would be killed for it.

And so they'll pull apart part of the Bible and share it with other people, and they'll just trade it in and out, and they might have one part of a letter, or they might have one part of a gospel, and that's what they have, and they cherish it.

And we have everything on our phone, and we're just apathetic.

So accessible, it's like, oh yeah, you know.

First temptation, apathy from accessibility.

I loved how Nehemiah responded because by the way, the word of God was not accessible to this group.

He didn't do it in the temple court where you can only have a select few of people.

He did it at the water gate where you could have everyone.

And did you notice he said, men, women, and children, anyone who can understand, it's accessible to everyone.

And culturally, in that day, hey, what would have been acceptable was, hey, we're just gonna have the men learn over here.

And he said, No, we want everyone to get it.

I'm gonna put it up on a platform so it's not like the people who showed up early can really hear and see, but everyone else is getting a discounted view and they're gonna have to hear kind of someone else say it behind them.

It's like, I want everyone to be able to access it.

The first temptation, apathy from accessibility.

The second is a pick and choose theology.

Because when it's a good book, we just pick the parts we like and don't like.

I can't, that's what I'm kind of doing with this one.

There's parts that I like.

Uh this comes from uh really evolutionary biology uh perspective, and it's got a lot of great things, but I'm like, you know, I don't necessarily agree with his conclusions on certain things, so I don't, you know, do that part, but I like some of the other things.

It's like really good.

And we do that with God's word.

Like, I like this part, I don't like this part.

Um, you know what, this is nice, or that's nice, but uh that's a little uncomfortable.

I don't really like that part.

Ezra, by the way, read from the law five to six hours and did that for seven days.

Like, no, we're gonna do all of this.

When you pick and choose, by the way, you are then the ultimate authority, not God.

And you're basically saying, I'm God, and I'm gonna pick the parts that I like, and you're not God.

One of the temptations is to pick and choose theology.

Third temptation is chronological snobbery.

Isn't that just fun to say?

Just go ahead and say that right now.

Chronological snobbery.

C.S.

Lewis coined this term.

He wrote that it's the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age, and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.

Going on, he says, the most recent is not necessarily the best, it is still on trial and has yet to be assessed properly.

Said another way, the way we think about it, new is true, old, obsolete.

And then we begin to come to the Bible and the teachings of Jesus and what he talks about how are we to love our neighbors when he talks about uh what it looks like to be a person of integrity in all areas of our life, including our sexuality.

We go, ah, you know, that's kind of old and outdated.

We're conditioned to assume that new is better.

Be aware of three temptations.

A deeply formed church says first, the Bible's more than a good book.

It's God's word.

There's reverence to it.

Secondly, a deeply formed church, they understand that preaching is not for us to feel good, but to form Christ in us.

Like what I'm doing right now, and there's even a part, and I had it in the very first service as well.

There's a little bit of uncomfortableness as I'm talking about the Bible and the Word of God because there's some conviction going on in here, and you're going like, oh my gosh.

And it's like, I know, and I just would love to make a few more jokes just to ease the pain a little bit.

And I don't want anybody to feel condemnation, but there is needing for some of us conviction.

See, preaching isn't about making us feel good.

What I'm doing, and when we have people come and preach here, it's not like, hey, how do I get the latest self-help younger next year?

And certainly when you read the scripture, it will help you in life.

But that's not the aim.

The aim is to form Christ in you.

The aim is because of the gathering of the church of Jesus Christ, as we gather, we sit under the preaching and teaching of God's word.

And as we do that in community, we are gradually being formed more into the likeness of Jesus.

Where our responses just start to naturally become the way Jesus would respond.

That's spiritual maturity, by the way.

Is when our responses start to naturally become the very responses that Jesus would have.

Where we would forgive those who have hurt us, where we'd love our enemy, we would pray for those who persecute us.

We'd be people full of grace and truth.

The apostle Paul said it this way in Colossians 1, 28, 29.

He says, He, speaking of Jesus, is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom.

Why?

So that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ.

That's the aim.

That's our goal.

That's why we have groups, midweek groups, that you are growing together to become more like Jesus.

That's why we gather.

I don't know if you notice in the text, and you'll notice that I put the full teaching text in your notes, and I put highlights and I also put um italics and different things, and you'll notice some of the italics was making it clear and giving the meaning.

Well, why would they need to make it clear and give the meaning?

Why would they need to do that?

Well, remember, this people had lived in exile.

Their home was Babylon, not Jerusalem.

They grew up learning Aramaic, not Hebrew.

And so Hebrew would have been a second language, or at least just a difficult language that they weren't familiar with.

They grew up in the Babylonian culture and not necessarily the Jewish culture, though they still had the remnant of what their time was.

And so Ezra and the Levites and others were interpreting the word of God, helping make clear what God's word said to them.

And when they understood it, it said they weeped.

Why?

Because the dissonance and the breakdown from what they were doing and what God's word said, what God's best and his way of living and what was actually, you know, being lived out, it broke their heart because there was a conviction that came with it.

Preaching is not for us to feel good, but to form Christ in us.

I just want to draw to your attention what Ezra, the priest, did as he pastored this community.

First, he brought God's word, not his opinions.

Everybody has an opinion.

And it feels like over COVID, everybody has to share their opinion.

My opinion is that we can hold our opinion to ourselves more than we need to share our opinion.

But that's just my opinion.

What I want to bring and what we want to do is care less about our personal opinion, care more about God's word.

He didn't say, Hey, I have this idea.

I, you know, here's something I've been thinking about and chewing on.

And uh let me test it out here.

This is what God's word said.

Secondly, he was concerned with being clear over being clever, and then you're like, Ryan, but you were kind of trying to be clever and clear in that one point there.

Not to impress, but to impart God's truth.

The Levites worked with Ezra.

I I often think this is a lot how just our pastoral team and our small groups, and we're walking around and just trying to make sure that everybody understood.

You saw that repeated over and over.

Who could understand?

And they wanted to make sure everybody understood and took the time to help people truly understand.

And finally, Ezra preached and he communicated for application, not applause.

And I think there's a temptation when we communicate, and when I communicate, is to have you go, Wow, what a great sermon.

You're not slow clapping with me.

That's fine.

That's fine.

Right?

And all of us want to feel that.

And he's going, no, no.

The point of it is a transformed life, not just informed about something new, and that requires application.

Information without application will never lead to transformation.

And so we begin to go, okay, it's not about, oh man, that was cool.

Oh, that was funny.

Um, I'm gonna read younger next year, but what am I gonna do as a result?

The second element of a deeply formed church preaching is not for us to feel good, but to form Christ in us.

Our teaching team, and yeah, I have a team, by the way, before we ever um give a sermon, I actually have a few people that just get feedback on it.

And they said, you know, something that would be great is how do we go about, you know, these sermon series?

How do we discern what we're gonna preach about?

And just thought I'd share one so that you kind of had some of that inside track.

Um, we typically teach through books of the Bible, and right now we're in kind of a topical series and we'll do those from time to time, but historically we'll teach through books of the Bible.

We just recently taught through a book of the Bible.

Now we'll test the N1 ear theory.

Can any of you tell me what book we spent six months teaching through?

Help me out.

Oh, praise Jesus.

I was so nervous.

Um, yeah, we spent six months teaching through the book of Acts.

We spent uh did it in four series.

So we will we'll do these in series and break them up.

So we started uh Future Church, and then we did a series called For All People, then we did a series called Purposeful, and we close it out with uh God's Strange Gifts.

We've taught through the book of Ephesians, we've taught through the book of Titus, we've taught through Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, we teach through books of the Bible.

Why?

Because we want you to learn God's word and be uh be able to understand his word and his and be able to understand a book of the Bible as a way uh to do that.

And so then we pair that with, okay, what is our church needing?

Where are we at?

What are you going through?

And how do we begin to make those fit together?

So preaching first uh is not to make us feel good, to form Christ.

The Bible is more than a good book, it's God's word, and finally, a deeply formed church.

The emphasis is on the people of God, not the pastor.

This is a little backwards in the way we're doing it in the West right now, right?

Emphasis kind of on the pastor, persons on the stage.

And the minute you read this chapter, you saw Ezra got a big old stage.

And so immediately we're thinking, like, man, Ezra's getting on that stage doing his thing, right?

Actually, scholars will tell us that the emphasis of this chapter is on the people of God, not Ezra.

Flip back to the teaching text, if you will.

I highlighted it for you.

All the people as one, the people assembled, men, women, and all understood.

Men, women, and others understand all the people, all the people, all the people, all the people, the people, the people, the people.

That's gonna be like some crazy gift or something like that, right there.

The people, all the people, all the people, all the people.

Thirteen times it says people, and nine of those is all the people.

The focus and the emphasis is on the people of God gathering together.

Did you know the people asked for God's word?

They said, Ezra, bring the word.

We want to learn.

There was this sense and this hunger to know God's word.

There's this desire.

They're saying, Ezra, would you read the book of the law to us that God gave Moses?

We want to learn.

They hungered after God's word.

And and by the way, they didn't say, you know what, I would love for it to be at about an hour to hour and 15 minutes service.

That would be fantastic.

If you can go 30 to 35, 40's pushing it, but if you're funny, I'll do 40, you know.

But but but if you can keep it right here, five to six hours they stood, there was just an insatiable hunger for the word of God.

For many, do you remember when you first came to know Jesus?

Or maybe you've recently been around someone who knows, just first came to know Jesus.

And there's that like, can't get enough of God's word.

Like, you just go like, uh, dude, I'm I've had this enough myself and I've had it with other people.

Tell me, I'm like reading this hours on end.

I wake up, I read it, I I uh lunch break, I read it, I go home, I read it, I just can't get enough of it.

Oh, that we would be a church that returns to our first love and that kindled enough that we go, man, it's God's word, and there's this hunger and thirst for God's word.

They listened attentively to God's word.

There was a focus and a direction, and they stood, and the text literally says they listen attentively.

And I think for us, we we actually gotta make sure because we have all the distractions around us.

We we gotta set aside distractions, turn off the alerts.

By the way, um, do you know there was a one sermon in particular where I lost the entire audience?

Not one person, like I will lose some people from time to time or like, hey, praise God, I hope you're having a great nap.

You know, um that happens.

But there was one service, I lost the entire uh audience.

All of a sudden, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

I'm looking around, I'm like, oh, I didn't think I was that that off this week.

It was the week that Kobe Bryant died.

It was a Sunday morning, and everybody got their alerts.

Terribly sad and tragic.

But I wonder what would happen if we just turned off the alerts and were attentive to God in this moment.

Like, hey, I have this 90 minutes and I'm just gonna be fully attentive, and I don't need any buzzes, I don't need any alerts, I don't, I'm just gonna be focused.

And something that happened to me over COVID, and maybe this happened to you.

I I didn't have this problem near as much, but over COVID, when I spend time with Jesus in the morning, my phone is such a distraction.

It's as if my hand has a mind of its own and it reaches for the phone.

I don't even know why.

I have zero understanding of what I'm reaching for the phone to look at, and then I start to look at apps.

I'm like reading a text or writing a journal, and then all of a sudden I'm like, huh, what is this strange glowing device next to me?

I literally have to set it in the other room because if it's right next to me, it will distract me.

And we have to get to our focus of where we go, no, we're gonna be attentive.

All eyes on.

And they responded.

All the people, all the people responded to God's word.

James 1 says and tells us do not merely listen to the word of God.

And so, do you know what it said next?

Deceive yourself.

Like there's a danger in hearing preaching and not applying it, you become self-deceived.

Because you feel like you're a good person, but you're not actually doing the good work that Jesus has for you.

Instead, do what it says.

That we respond to the word of God.

A few weeks ago, I now that I got my boot off and played golf with a buddy, uh, we'll call him Terry, because that's his name.

And and Terry and I were playing, and he's a good buddy of mine, and you know, he kind of treats me a little bit like a doctor, and I don't mean that like a doctor doctor, but you know, like if you're hanging out with a doctor, you're not gonna ask them medical advice because they're off duty, you know.

Uh, and so he doesn't want to ask me Bible stuff because I'm technically off the clock.

Um, and he's like, hey man, do you think I could ask you like a Bible question?

Little, I was Terry, I'm like, you can always ask me a Bible.

I love talking about this.

Is not like an on the clock, off the clock thing.

And so we're we're we're you know hanging out, and I had given him younger next year, and he's loving it too, by the way.

Um and and he's like, Ryan, I just want my times with God in the morning to be better.

Like when I read his word, I I like want to hunger after his word his word, but I'm not like I wake up, I want to read younger next year and not his word.

I love that.

I love that honesty, and you know what I love even more than that?

Is he had a longing to have a hungering.

He had a longing to hunger for God's word the way he was hungering for this.

And I think that's where some of us or many of us are.

Like, like Ryan, I don't have that hungering, but I have a longing, like as you're saying, I'd want that, but I'm not there yet now.

And God answers that prayer, by the way.

When we bring that honesty, God, I'm just longing for more of you.

I don't quite have that hungering.

In fact, there's other things that I kind of am being drawn to more, but I have a longing for a hungering, and he'll meet you there.

And so I just asked him, I said, Terry, like, what do your times with Jesus look like reading the word?

And this is what many people's times are.

And and he it's a lot of the way we just read a book, but it's not a book, it's God's word.

And so you read a chapter or two, and then you kind of move on.

And so that's what he was doing, and he would read a chapter or two, close it, and move on.

I said, Well, let me just give you something that that I think will help.

And it's an acronym called SOAP, and many of you probably know it, but those who don't, you can write it down.

Soap just S stands for scripture, O stands for observation, A stands for application, and P stands for poor, uh, prayer.

Poor, prayer, you know, similar things.

Scripture, where you just begin to read.

You you take maybe a chapter or even a paragraph, you read it thoughtfully.

Okay, and you make observations.

The reason I put the text in the way it did is I just wanted you to see my observations.

This is kind of how you make observations.

You see repeated words throughout it, you begin to notice some things that stand out, and you make some observations, and through that, then you begin to ask the question God, what do you want me to do as a result of what I've just read?

And then pray.

I'd pray at the beginning, Holy Spirit, He's the Spirit that illuminates his word.

Would you speak to me?

Would you reveal a deeper insight into your word?

And then pray to close it out.

And I this is so amazing, and I'd love if this is the type of church we become, where we just share what God's been teaching us.

One of my favorite questions to ask is what has God been teaching you lately?

What are you learning?

It's amazing how deep the conversation goes so quickly.

But where we just begin to share what God has told us.

Deeply formed church, three elements.

The Bible's more than a good book, it's God's word.

The preaching is not for us to feel good, to form Christ.

And finally, the emphasis is on the people of God, not the pastor.

Let me give you some application that I want us to do this week.

First, come expectant for God to speak to you.

Your experience on Sunday will change if you actually show up expecting that God will speak to you.

Through his word, in community, through worship, the preaching of the word of God, he will speak to you.

Secondly, bring your Bible and take notes.

Bring an analog, a physical Bible.

I love that we can get it all on our phone, but we also have all of those alerts and all those distractions, and all of a sudden you see you have emails, and then it sends you a spiral down a whole different way, and you're like, why did they send me that email on Sunday?

They could have waited till Monday.

Bring your Bible, take notes.

What's written is remembered.

When you write it, I don't put notes for me, I already have it.

Many of you take notes.

I love that, and especially out of COVID, we're doing more and more of that, but write it down.

Third, ask, what am I to do with what I just heard?

Like, not, hey, did I like it?

What was that funny?

Did I enjoy it?

Ask those things, but then ask, what am I to do with what I just heard?

And then finally, go enjoy a great meal.

And I actually mean that literally.

We can talk about the figurative in a second, but like literally synagogue practice.

You notice they're weeping, he says, No, no, go feast.

And then share with somebody who doesn't have.

Wouldn't it be amazing if after church, and a lot of you already do this, but but you center your your celebration of the Lord's day, and and you go out to eat, and maybe you invite somebody that you realize, hey, maybe they can't afford it, or you just want to get to know them, and you just begin to talk about what God's been teaching you.

Friends, we'll be a different church if we do that.

We'll be a Jesus kind of church.

And then the other side of it is if you're only eating once a week, you're gonna be hungry.

Get into God's word every day.

Get into God's word every day.

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