A Seamless Life of Worship and Work

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.

I always have to begin my time with you by saying thank you.

Because it was a church just like you 47 years ago that welcomed a young man like me.

I was a teenager.

By the way, there are some eras you don't need to relive, and one of them is junior high and parts of high school, right?

But I I wasn't, you know, better or worse than most.

I was, but I was in all of those normal, where do I fit mode?

You know, I was a good basketball player, but as you can see, my vertical leap is limited.

My dad called me a fiery humanist and a repressed basketball star.

Okay?

Steph Curry, I am not.

And then I didn't quite fit the chess club either.

I like chess, but that was how many of you know schools have social groups, right?

But you know, I discovered there's one group that didn't care what group I was in, and that was the body of Christ.

I saw changed lives in young adults such as myself who had met Christ.

They invited me, and I'm just gonna say, to a church like awakening.

I gave my heart to Christ.

You were there when my family went through difficulty.

And one night leading a small group, by the way, I was just like awakening.

Uh they they believed in me and believed I could do something for God as a young man.

Um, by the way, my first small group lesson I preached for 45 minutes.

I don't do that anymore.

But Jesus was so faithful, but you were there.

And I want to share why it matters today, both what we do, but why it matters that we gather together and share about how God's people bring liturgy and life together.

By the way, if that word liturgy is new, it literally means the work of the people.

It means what we do to respond to God.

And so I'm so excited to share with you from God's Word.

Would you turn to Psalm 111?

And we're going to be in the Hebrew and Greek scriptures, the Old and New Testament.

And Psalm 111, 112, and 113 are part of what are known as the halal or hallelujah Psalms.

They were part of the worship of ancient Israel.

And let's look at some of these verses together.

They're also on the screen if you want to follow along.

But let's look at some of these together.

Psalm 111, first part of verse 1 and 2 and 3.

Praise the Lord.

I will extol the Lord with all my heart in the counsel of the upright and in the assembly.

Verse 2 great are the works of the Lord, they are pondered by all who delight in them.

Glorious and majestic are his deeds, and his righteousness endures forever.

So we're praising God, but we're already doing some thinking.

By the way, I want you to know, maybe you're having some challenges with your faith.

Maybe there's a part of you that wonders if this Christian endeavor can engage the mind as well as the heart.

I want you to know God welcomes worshiping Him with all of our minds as well as our heart and our lips.

Look at Psalm 112, verse 1.

Psalms 112:1

Praise the Lord.

Blessed are those who fear the Lord, who find great delight in his commands.

Wow.

All that God tells us to do for our good is part of worship as well.

And then let's go to Psalm 113, verses 2 and verses 7 and 8.

Psalms 113:2

Let the name of the Lord be praised, both now and forevermore.

Verse 7.

He raises the poor from the dust, lifts the needy from the ash heap.

He seats them with princes, with the princes of his people.

Do you know that our God cares about justice?

Can you say amen?

He cares about seeing people lifted, welcomed, included, and flourishing.

So we can't separate our worship together from doing good in the world that changes people and systems.

What a wonderful God.

We've just gotten started, though.

Would you go forward in the scriptures with me, please, to the New Testament, to 1 Corinthians chapter 10.

1 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

One writer said years ago, if you want to understand the gospel, read the book of Romans.

If you want to understand a community trying to work it out and having lots of challenges, read 1 Corinthians.

And then when you're broken, read 2 Corinthians and get healed.

But 1 Corinthians, Paul's working with these enthusiastic believers to understand culture and morality and worship and how to walk with the Lord.

And in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, we have the introduction to the table of the Lord.

1 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

And let's look at verse 16.

We're now talking about what we call communion.

Others call the Eucharist, the table.

And here's what Paul says.

Verse 16 of 1 Corinthians 10, is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ?

And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?

Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body, for we all share in the one loaf.

Turn immediately to chapter 11.

And Paul gives some further instructions that he had received from the apostles about this moment around the table when God's people gather together.

Verse 23 of chapter 11.

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you.

The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way, after supper, he took the cup, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me.

For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Wow! A celebration of what Christ has done for us.

As Josh said earlier, he died in our place, and he rose again, offering us new life.

So we celebrate that in the bread and the cup, but we anticipate the day he returns, and the feast is forever.

Already, just from the scriptures, we've seen that we're supposed to praise God.

We're supposed to learn about him, and we're supposed to participate together around a table.

By the way, I'm gonna give you a little bonus I didn't do in the first service.

Don't tell them, okay?

Have you ever had a wonderful meal around the table and you didn't want to leave the table?

Have you ever had that experience?

It's like you don't want to go into the living room.

You want to just stay there.

The conversation's flowing.

By the way, I Kathy, in addition to being my wife, in addition to being an amazing artist, she makes homemade bread.

You're all salivating right now.

I want you to imagine homemade sourdough.

I want you to imagine homemade figasa bread with a little olive oil and salt on the top, fresh from the oven.

And you're all starved right now for lunch, aren't you?

But we're around the table, and you don't want to leave.

Jesus gave us a table to be around, to celebrate him together.

Well, let's keep going forward.

A few more instructions from the Apostle Paul.

Would you turn to 1 Corinthians 14, 26?

So we're praising God.

We're hearing about his commands, we're learning together, we're celebrating Christ.

And then chapter 14, verse 26, Paul spends a few chapters here kind of putting things in order, but he says we're to be participating together.

Look at verse 26.

What shall we say, brothers and sisters?

When you come together, each of you has a hymn or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation.

Everything must be done so the church may be built up.

Now, the order of this and how these kinds of things are administrated are unique to awakening in every church.

But whether it's a small group, a Bible study, our fellowship time during the service, we come ready to participate, ready to bring our gifts and graces to the church.

And so, as we share from these scriptures, just a couple more, Colossians chapter 3, verse 16.

Colossians 3:16

So as Paul writes to his friends in Colossae, he says this: Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one of another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your heart.

Now I'm gonna let Josh lead worship, not me.

Every church I've been in, they say, watch Pastor Charlie clap and do the opposite.

So I'm not, I mean, I can sing a chorus and lead a prayer, but um, that's music isn't my gift, but God still wants a song to come from my heart, words of encouragement to come.

And in this one little phrase, we have the psalms of ancient Israel, the hymns of the church of every place and age, and new songs to come forth.

Thanks for teaching us a new one.

And he wants us to participate together.

And then last scripture this morning, would you turn to 1 Timothy chapter 4, verse 13?

1 Timothy 4:13

You can look on the screen as well.

Paul says to his young pastor, Devote yourselves to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and teaching.

By the way, do you know the difference between preaching and teaching?

It's not just volume and spit.

I just want you to know that.

Preaching includes good instruction, but it's calling forth a response.

A response to come to Christ, a response to deepen our walk with Christ.

Teaching can include that, but it's it gives us greater depth and detail.

Can we just thank God that every week at awakening we are preached to and taught well?

Can you say amen?

Pastor Ryan and the team, what do they do?

They're encouraging us to respond in the moment, but also to keep learning, keep deepening.

So, why do we gather?

Why is it important that we gather in person?

Well, God's design and destiny for us is to be with him and to do his work.

The reason we gather is that from the beginning, God designed us to enjoy his presence and fulfill his purpose.

And by the way, when the Lord returns and everything is put right again.

Anyone else with me?

Are you looking forward to the day when everything is put right?

Amen?

It's okay.

Go ahead and clap.

This is not an escape, it's fulfillment.

And I hope you want to bring a few more people with you.

God made us to dwell with him, to enjoy him, and then he made a world for us to cultivate and to develop together.

And one day I want you to know your reward for good work in this life is more in the life to come.

Isn't that good?

By the way, though, no bad bosses, no bad paychecks, no high taxes.

We were made to be and to do, just as the God we worship, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are forever a divine dance of love, and they're on a mission together, doing the work to bring all things together under Christ.

My friends Jeff and Sid Hosclaw wrote a little book a couple years ago called Does God Really Like Me?

By the way, spoiler alert, the answer's yes.

But they I want to give them the credit for just putting these two words together: the being, the doing, the presence, the purpose.

And so, with that framework in mind, let's talk a little bit about the biblical gatherings for worship.

First of all, we're saying yes to God's invitation.

God called the meeting this morning.

We're responding to him.

The late Robert Weber at Wheaton College reminded all of generations of students and others who read and listened to the sound of his voice that our worship pleases God, but he took the initiative and we're responding to him.

Thank you for saying yes to that invitation.

And we're responding to him, to his mighty acts and his goodness.

We can worship in private and in public.

So praise God.

It's not, our worship isn't confined to moments like this, that it includes that public place of being together.

It includes private, but it's God's invitation.

And that it brings us into his presence and into his purpose.

So I'd like to share three elements of worship or three sort of sets of ideas that have always been a part of worship.

And then we're going to make application for Monday morning.

Is everybody looking forward to Monday morning?

You can't wait to get back on a Zoom call, right?

Or back in that office.

I hope you are.

And by the way, if you're not quite, join the class that's being offered on faith and work integration.

On the airplane, I'm asked what I do for a living, and I explain to people I travel the country teaching pastors about what you do all week and the goodness of the work that you do all week.

But let's I want to share three things coming out of these Psalms, out of these epistles, out of history.

Number one, God's people have always offered prayers and songs to God.

The early church took the synagogue worship and made it their own, centered in Christ.

And so we're always offering prayers, prayers of just beautiful praise to God, and sometimes prayers of deep lament for our sin.

Intercession for those around us.

And then we're offering songs.

By the way, open the book of Psalms, and they're either complaining or praising, and sometimes they're doing it in the same psalm.

By the way, is that am I the only one that complains and praises every day?

It's normal.

Kathy and I call it living a life of joyous lament.

There's not a day that goes by we cannot weep, and there's not a day that goes by we cannot praise God and rejoice.

And that doesn't mean we're in a roller coaster every day.

It means that God's people have always, together and in person, offered prayers and songs to Him.

The second element that's been a part of worship from forever is the reading and teaching of God's word.

In fact, the great Old Testament word throughout all of the Old Testament is hear, O Israel.

Nobody had pocket Pentateuches back in the day.

Nobody had the prophets, you know, in a satchel.

You had to hear the word being read and then being taught.

Praise God, we have it in print.

We have it for those of you who struggle with reading.

Can we be really tender today?

You can listen to it today.

Isn't it exciting?

You can listen to it.

You can download and listen to God's word.

So whatever, whether you were a reader or not, you can hear and listen and learn.

And then the teaching of God's word.

We need women and men that can help us learn.

And I want to give thanks to you as a church again.

I was the kid in Sunday school, as a new Christian, that asked all the weird questions.

And somebody said, I'm tired of you asking questions, you need to start teaching.

But I received some good mentoring and some good teaching, and I'm so grateful for it.

So we need to read and learn God's word.

This is what Jesus did as he inaugurated his ministry.

He read from the book of Isaiah, he expounded upon it.

And then the third element that's always a part of gathered worship, and that's the participation of the community.

In the ancient synagogue, there would often be questions and participation back and forth.

In the early church and throughout church history, there have been people reading prayers, singing psalms, responding to the leaders, sometimes exercising spiritual gifts.

It just depends on the tradition.

But participation matters.

You see, Jesus isn't looking at us like uniform bricks in a wall.

We're living stones in an unfinished, beautiful cathedral of his presence.

And every single one of us adds something that wasn't there before.

If you're newer to awakening, thank you.

You've just made us better.

And of course, some people are awakened going, well, I'm not sure they've made us better yet.

You have.

Because you're a unique living stone held together by faith, hope, and love.

So God's people have always prayed and sung together, learned the word together, and then participated together in a variety of expressions.

Along with all of this, Jesus gave us two special moments that we need to remember as part of our worship.

These are sometimes called sacraments or ordinances.

And traditions have a lot of different ways to put these, but there are two that every group of Christians agree on.

Jesus gave us a bath and a meal.

He gave us baptism, not to be baptized in water again and again, but rather as a fundamental place of dying to ourselves and rising in new life, but also as a place to remember that we were not only baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we were not only baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus, 1 Corinthians 12, we're baptized into the body of Christ as well.

So when I said yes to Jesus back in 1974, I didn't know all I was doing.

But one thing that happened at that moment, I became a part of the body.

And we make that concrete in a local church.

And then Jesus gave us a meal.

He gave us the bread and the cup to both celebrate and anticipate, to remember what he's done, but also to be right with each other.

And again, a little bonus I didn't get to in the first service.

One of the tragedies of church history is that the church has fought over that bread and cup more than almost any other item.

You see, many of the ancient traditions made it this beautiful high altar of great mystery, but almost inaccessible.

And then a small little event called the Reformation came along.

Anybody read about that in history?

There were actually five of them.

And it became a table again, but then we made the pulpit inaccessible and way up there.

How many of you are glad that we can have the desk and the table and the participation of God's people all together?

And so this is really important as we think about why do we gather?

We gather to be well taught.

We gather to sing and praise together, and we gather to have this meal and make sure our relationships are in place and make sure that we're continuing as a community.

And this table is where everyone is welcome.

Has anybody heard the words diversity and inclusion at least once this week?

By the way, don't treat those as good words.

The Apostle Paul spent a lifetime getting Jew and Gentile to sip out of the same cup and touch the same loaf of bread.

I have missionary friends spending a lifetime getting upper and lower classes and different cultures to sip from the same cup.

But regardless of culture or color or nation or class or background, the table is open.

Can you say amen?

And it's a place of inclusion.

That's where real inclusion happens, is around the table.

And these are the elements of Christian worship that we get to be part of.

But how does this work on the other six days?

As we prepare to go from this place, I want to share some practical applications for Monday morning.

And then God's given me a word of encouragement for awakening that relates to this area of worship and mission that we're about to embark on.

So it's wonderful to gather.

And I just have to say that there's an even more fundamental reason we need to gather in person.

And those of you watching online, this is not a legalistic call.

We're not asking you to be uncomfortable.

In this moment of pandemic, there's all kinds of reasons that some need to be home, some need to be watching online.

So this is not a this is not a call that uh you have to be in a certain kind of meeting at a certain moment.

But in general, all things being equal, the fundamental reason we need to gather together is that God decided in Jesus Christ to forever be one of us physically himself.

Jesus, the incarnate Lord, decided we were worth becoming one of us forever.

I mean, God could have just said to the world, He could have called the Dolby brothers to put the speakers in Air and then could have called Samsung to put the screen in the air and just told the world to repent, right?

And instead, in Jesus Christ, he forever became one of us, and in the divine inefficiency of God, he's decided to use us to welcome other people in the kingdom of God.

Embodied worship, work, and witness matter so much that Jesus is forever one of us.

How many of you needed that word of encouragement to know how valuable you were this morning?

He's forever one of us.

We are forever worth the blood of his sacrifice.

So, what does this mean, the other six days of the week?

Well, number one, that praying and that singing, we can't just go to the next Zoom meeting tomorrow and burst out into Josh's new song.

Although that might help some of our meetings, right?

But what we can do is be people who meditate on the goodness of God.

And look at and look at this wonderful word to be a people who are listening and rejoicing.

We can take our gathered experience and make it our experience every day as we listen to the Lord and as we rejoice in Him.

There is such a lack of joy in our culture today.

The fact that we are rejoicing in God in and through every circumstance will set us apart from so many of our colleagues and neighbors.

So, how do we apply singing and praying?

We become people who are listening and rejoicing as we go to work.

And may I remind you that all of Jesus's signs and wonders took place outside of religious gatherings?

That the supernatural work of God is not confined to this tent, to a home, to a tabernacle, to a church or a cathedral.

We are his emissaries.

As Mark Green puts it, we're on the front line for Jesus wherever we are all day.

We can be people listening, rejoicing.

The reading, the teaching.

We can be people of meditation and observation, always looking to learn.

And by the way, meditation here means that we're we're not getting into some kind of cosmic consciousness.

It means that we're pondering the goodness of God.

We're allowing his word to get inside us, and then we're allowing the Holy Spirit to use us both in the work that we do and in the people we engage with at work.

That learning continues.

And by the way, we can keep learning from God's second book as well.

We can learn from watching the world around us, from scientific and technological innovation.

And we can be people who are constantly learning and growing.

Thirdly, and this is exciting, communion, baptism means that daily we can be consecrated to God and we can know that we're part of a community.

Just as you welcome me and didn't treat me as one of those cliques in high school, so also by being part of this beautiful community Christ has created, we can also be the people of God who are engaged in a consecrated life, in a life dedicated to Him, and then doing our work for His glory.

God's at work in us, creating new dispositions, new desires.

Now I want to share a word for awakening that I think is so exciting in this moment.

When we flew in yesterday, we immediately were aware of the unique challenges of this beautiful valley where both Kathy and I grew up.

Kathy grew up in Sunnyvale, and uh the house she grew up in, anybody know what an Icler house is?

It's a cult these days, isn't it?

But she grew up in a little Icler house about a mile from the Apple headquarters.

I grew up in Almanon Valley when there were still apricots falling from the trees.

And that$30,000 house was so hard to afford.

But as we wrote, we we we understand the unique challenges that we're under.

But as I was praying for us here at Awakening, three things came to my heart that I want to share by way of encouragement.

First of all, we need to understand this moment.

We are feeling as Christians, marginalized, sometimes exiled, mostly ignored in this valley.

We're not always persecuted, we're just not even part of people's radar sometimes.

You ever feel that?

But it's precisely in this moment that the ancient people of God became their most effective in witness and mission.

Would you write down Jeremiah 29 to look it up later?

The prophet wrote to a people going into exile.

They had lost, they were losing their temple, they were losing their cultural influence, their power, they were losing the visible trappings of what had been a tremendous history.

And he said, I want you to seek the flourishing or prosperity of the city where you are.

I want you to engage.

And here's the amazing thing from history: more people came to the Lord God to believe in the Lord God, either as full converts to Judaism or God fearers that you read about later, more people came when they had lost all the trappings of power, felt weak, and they in fact became amazing witnesses.

Awakening, our best days are ahead.

Can you believe it's been a decade already of ministry here?

Can we thank God for it?

Amen.

The next decade is going to not be easy, but be even more fruitful.

For your witness will shine as people of consecration, as people dedicated to justice, as people calling others to repentance and faith in Christ.

So though the moment is challenging and it feels like we're in exile, it feels like we're ignored, and in some cases we are.

Let me encourage you, it's precisely at that moment the witness will shine through.

A second thing I believe for us together is that we need to bring history and hope together.

We need to remember the goodness of God this past decade as a church and beyond that in our personal lives, but we need to allow our hope to be shaped by the future and not by the past.

We need to remember the ways the Lord has led us, but also forget at times both the failures and victories in order that we might know the new thing that God's doing.

In the second half of the book of Isaiah, starting in chapter 40, in that second half, he's talking to people who feel just so discouraged, and he says, I want you to know I'm with you.

I want you to know I'm about to do new things.

I want you to know I'm going to give you streams of water in what feels like a desert land.

By the way, I'm not simply being cheerful, Charlie, or an optimist or hopeful.

Based on God's word, based on history, based on the work of the Holy Spirit in the present, we have amazing, hopeful days ahead.

Can you say amen?

And finally, today, as we prepare to worship some more, I believe that awakening has a new day, a deeper day of prayer and practice, of impact, supernatural impact.

As we come together, those of you online, in the sound of my voice, those of you gathered here, as we come together and experience the goodness of God, learn from God's word, as we take that and apply it daily, I believe we're about to come into a moment of supernatural expression where God's going to trust us, trust us to be a small part of an awakening in our nation.

It's been 200 years since we've had a full awakening in this country.

We've had amazing revivals.

We've had amazing moments of renewal.

We've had amazing moments locally and even nationally of God being at work.

But awakening comes when Sunday's ecstasies join Monday's ethics.

Awakening comes when we not only call people to personal faith in Christ, but we go out and embody what new systems of righteousness look like.

Awakening comes when we not simply ask people to conform to a culture, but ask people to be transformed by Christ.

Do you believe God has something great for us in the future?

And we all get to be a part of it.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

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