He Is Good | The Power of Worship | Mark 14:1-11 | Coleton Segars

The teaching text for today comes from Mark 14, and it's verse 1 through 11.

This is what Mark writes.

He says, Now the Passover and the festival of unliven bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were scheming to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him.

But not during the festival, they said, or the people may riot.

While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar, a very expensive perfume, made of pure nard.

And she broke the jar and poured the perfume on Jesus' head.

And some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, Why this waste of perfume?

It could have been sold for more than a year's wages and the money given to the poor.

And they rebuked her harshly.

Leave her alone, said Jesus.

Why are you bothering her?

She's done a beautiful thing for me.

The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them anytime you want, but you will not always have me.

She did what she could.

She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial.

Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.

And then Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them.

They were delighted to hear this and promised to give him money, and so he watched for an opportunity to hand him over.

This is the word of the Lord.

One of my favorite stories comes from a book called Make Your Bed by William, or excuse me, Admiral William McCraven.

And this is what he says.

It's a rather long story, but it's really inspiring.

I really like it a lot, so just bear with me.

But this is what he says.

He says, It was Hell Week, and my SEAL training class was down at the infamous Tijuana mudflats.

The purpose of Hell Week was to eliminate the weak, those not tough enough to be SEALs.

Statistically speaking, more students quit during Hell Week than any other time in training, and the mud flats were the toughest part of the week.

I was sitting in chest deep mud, covered from head to toe.

My vision blurred with the caked on clay, I could see only the outline of my fellow students lined up beside me.

The mud clung to every part of our bodies, and it was so dense that moving through it exhausted you and tested your will to carry on.

By the evening we could barely move from the bone-chilling coldness and the fatigue.

Morale was declining rapidly, and we all knew that another three days of pain and exhaustion lay ahead.

Just then, a SEAL instructor, sounding like an old friend, softly spoke and offered us comfort from our suffering.

We could join him on the and the other instructors by the fire.

He had hot coffee and chicken soup.

We could relax, get off our feet, take it easy.

All he needed was for five of us to quit.

Just five quitters and the rest of the class could have some relief from the pain.

The student beside me immediately started to move toward the instructor.

I grabbed his arm and held him tight, but the urge to leave was uh the mud was too great.

He broke free of my grasp and began to lunge for dry ground.

I could see the instructor smiling.

He knew that once one man quit, others would follow.

But suddenly, above the howl of the wind came a voice.

Singing.

It was tired and raspy, but loud enough to be heard by all.

The lyrics were not meant for tender ears, but everyone knew the tune.

One voice became two, and two became three, and then before long everyone was singing.

The student that was rushing for the dry ground stopped, turned around, and came back beside me.

Looping his arm around mine, he began to sing as well.

The instructor grabbed the bullhorn and shouted for the class to quit singing, but no one did.

He yelled louder, the singing continued.

With each threat from the instructor, the voices got louder and the class got stronger, and the will to continue on in the face of adversity became unbreakable.

And then in the darkness, with the fire reflecting on his face, I could see the instructor's smile.

If you want to give people hope, start singing when you're up to your neck in mud.

I love that story.

Um I love it for a number of reasons, but um just the power of one person singing that then led to a couple of people doing that, and then what it did for the people that were headed towards the shore to actually escape, it just inspired something in them.

And I say that story one, again, I just love it, but in this text here, you see one person's worship.

You see one person's expression of love, and it's not even singing, but it but it is worship.

One person seeking to honor Jesus that ultimately changes the room in many different ways.

Some people love it, and obviously some people don't like it.

But what I want us to do today is I want to look at her devotion.

I want us to look at her worship of Jesus in some ways so that it actually affects us and moves us into a space where that man's singing affected the entire group.

I'd love for her worship to do something similar to us, to inspire us, to stir our affection for Jesus, to lead us to worship in that way as well.

And so today, I want to look at two things that we learn about worship from looking at this woman's worship, and then I want to give you some application.

And so the first, the first thing we learn about worship is that we are shaped, we are shaped primarily by what we worship.

The shape of our lives and the decisions that we make is shaped by what we worship.

And you see that in the huge difference between Mary and then Judas.

Two different people's names are well, Judas' name is mentioned here, and then this woman.

We know that this is Mary based on John's gospel.

This is Mary, the sister of Lazarus who was raised from the dead.

We know that this is this is who this was.

And so she breaks this bottle of perfume, which was likely like this family heirloom that has been passed down from generation to generation to generation, because it's so expensive that it wouldn't just be like something you purchase every now and then.

It was probably this thing, this trinket that they had, and like, hey, I gave this to you and gave this to you and gave this to you.

And so she breaks the family heirloom that is worth a full year's salary, your entire salary given to Jesus in one setting.

But you see that?

That's what that's her response to Jesus, and then you see the exact opposite in Judas's experience with him.

Judas Iscariot goes to the chief priest to betray Jesus to see if they could give him any kind of money, and then they actually sell Jesus.

He sells Jesus for the price of a slave.

He didn't even ask for more money than a slave.

Just any money will do.

The lowest possible price for a human, I'll take that for this person.

And it's like, this is Jesus.

You could have at least asked for a little bit more money, but he's like, I don't care, I just want some money.

And so we see a huge difference between Mary and Judas and their experience with Jesus.

And what's odd about their experience is that there are so many things about their lives that are exactly the same, or at least very similar.

And so for Mary, she had spent time with Jesus, she had sat at Jesus' feet and heard Jesus' teaching, she had seen incredible miracles from Jesus, her brother Lazarus being probably the most incredible thing she's ever seen in their life.

And so it makes sense that she's like doing something out of love and worship and affection and devotion to Jesus.

That makes sense.

She's been with him, she's heard his teaching, she's seen his power.

Like, so it makes sense that she's doing those things.

But if you think about it, Judas has seen more, heard more, and spent more time with Jesus than Mary ever did.

He had lived with Jesus for three years.

He had heard all of Jesus' teachings.

He'd seen not only Lazarus' miracle, but he's seen like tons and tons of miracles, feeding 5,000, calming the seas, other people being raised from the dead, other people being healed.

Like he's seen all of this stuff.

And yet, even though they had similar experiences with Jesus, Mary breaks a bottle open and pours it over his head, and Judas goes and actually seeks to betray Jesus to someone else.

And the reason, even though they have all these similarities, but there's this huge difference in their experience with Jesus, the reason that difference exists is because of who they worshiped or what they worshiped.

Who and what they worshiped shifted and shaped them and changed them.

And so we know this about Judas.

Judas loved money.

He just loved it so much so that like John and his gospels, like he used to help himself to the money bag.

They knew they know that they tell us that about him.

He had just affection for money, his love and this devotion for it.

He wanted that thing.

It's what makes him mad here.

And then we know from this interaction about Mary and other interactions, like the most important thing in her life is Jesus.

She sits at Jesus' feet when she actually should be doing work, when Mary and Martha are actually supposed to be doing things for them.

She here, she gives away literally her entire life savings, probably to Jesus.

She's like, You are more important to me than anything else in my life.

And so, because of that, because of who they worshiped, they were formed into people and they made decisions based on the thing that they worship.

Judas worshiped money and he becomes angry and negative and mean and selfish and uncaring.

He's acting like he cares for the poor, but he really just wants money for himself.

And then Mary worships Jesus and she becomes very similar to Jesus.

Mary worships Jesus and she becomes sacrificial, she becomes generous, she becomes loving.

She's unself-conscious.

She's like, I don't, I don't care what people think about me in this particular space.

She's freed from the love of material things so much so that she's like, Yeah, what's the most important thing in my life?

And everybody's going, Don't obviously you can give them whatever you want.

Just don't give them the thing that's our livelihood.

And she's like, oh no, no, that's the most important thing.

Let's let's give that to him because actually he's the most important thing.

She's been shaped by what she worships.

She's been shaped by what she loves.

And that's true of us as well.

Your life is shaped by the thing that you worship.

The thing, the person or thing that you worship shapes your lives.

G.K.

Beale in his book on worship says that what people revere, they resemble either for ruin or for restoration.

What you revere, you will resemble.

What you hold up as the most important thing, we can go to the next slide here, I believe.

Yeah, just go to the G.K.

Beale slide.

That'll be great.

Uh what people revere, they resemble, either for ruin or restoration.

What is held up as the most important thing in your life will be the thing that you ultimately, all of your decisions will be shifted and changed by that thing.

And it will either ruin us or it will actually lead to something that restores us.

And Tim Keller in his book talks about ways that he saw this kind of take shape in New York during the um 2008 when the bubble burst or whatever and that whole thing.

He talks about this idea in the uh and the economic crisis.

But he says, after the global economic crisis began in mid-2008, he says there there followed this tragic string of suicides of formerly wealthy and well-connected individuals.

The acting CFO of Freddie Mack hanged himself in his basement.

The chief executive of Sheldon Good, a leading U.S.

real estate auction firm, shot himself in the head behind the wheel of his red jaguar.

A French money manager lost 1.4 billion of his client's money in the in Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

And when it became apparent that the money was irretrievably lost, he chose to take his own life sitting in his Madison Avenue office.

When I did some research, like because he doesn't give the names of these people, and so I just researched the names of these people and wanted to like read their obituaries and read what people are saying about them and see like maybe it wasn't just losing money that led them to do these things.

Maybe it was like their life was just genuinely terrible and like they were just lonely and didn't have families and there was just nothing to live for.

But what I found was like every single one of them was married, which can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on who you're married to.

Um every single one of them was married.

One of them had three sons, uh, and one of them, at the time he took his life, had a six-year-old daughter at home.

And I just like I was reading these things and I was going, why would losing a bunch of money lead you to leave your families?

Like you have so much left to live.

Like you'll never get to walk your daughter down the aisle now.

Like you'll never get to see her grow up.

Like your son's graduating and going off into college and then getting married and then having children.

You'll never see grandchildren.

You'll never like none of it, like you lost some money, and that led you to take your life.

And I'm like, what is that?

And I think what G.K.

Beale would say is like what people revere, it will shape them and it will change them and it will form them, and it will either do that for ruin or restoration.

Rebecca Pippert in her book says, the person who worships power is controlled by power.

The person who worships acceptance is controlled by the people he or she wants to please.

We do not control ourselves.

We are controlled by the Lord of our lives.

And so, whatever that thing is, whatever we give ultimate value to, when that thing is either doing well, we're doing well.

But if that thing tanks, so are we.

Because what you revere, you will resemble either for your ruin or for your restoration.

Because you were shaped by the thing that you worship.

And these men were shaped by the thing that they worshiped, so much so that it led them to do things that if you'd asked them any other time, like, would you ever do this and leave your family?

Never, I would never do that.

And the thing that they worship died, and they were like, What's the point of living?

This is why God commands our worship.

He's like, I want you to worship me, not because I need your worship, but you will be shaped by the thing that you worship, and I want to shape you.

Worshiping Him, praising Him is the reason we do the call to worship, all of these things.

It is the second most commanded word of God in the scriptures to us.

The second most commanded thing.

Worship me, praise me, elevate me.

And the reason is because you will be shaped.

Your life will look like and be take the form of the thing that you hold up that has ultimate value.

We're shaped by the thing that we worship, and he wants to do that.

And so that's the first thing that we learn.

This woman's life is shaped by Jesus because she worships him.

Judas's life is shaped by money because he worships it.

It's what he holds up that has premier value in his life.

We are shaped by the thing that we worship.

The second thing that we learn, we learn that God uses our worship to accomplish his plans in the world.

God uses our worship to accomplish his plans.

Verse 8, it says, She did what she, Jesus is saying this about her.

She did what she could.

She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial.

And it's important for us to see, like, Jesus is saying this not just to the disciples who are rebuking her, he's also saying this to her.

What you have done, you have poured on my body in preparation for my burial.

She had no idea that this is what she's doing, is preparing him for burial.

Some people might be like, no, I think she had a clue on this.

Like, nobody has any idea that this is what's happening.

Like, she had no idea, she's just worshiping him.

She's just doing something kind to Jesus.

She's just loving him well.

And what God does with her worship is he snags it, and it's like, I know that you're just trying to do something nice.

You're trying to display your love for him and all those things.

But he uses, he grabs that worship that's offered to Jesus and he uses it to actually prepare for the burial of his son.

Because normally, if you die in certain in such a way, if you die as a criminal, like you're not able to be prepared for worship or prepared for burial.

You're just stuck into a tomb or cast to the side.

Like you're a criminal, get out of here.

And so Jesus wouldn't have had this opportunity.

He's going to die as a criminal in a few days.

And so no one would have been able to prepare his body for burial.

And so God just snags the worship of this woman and uses it in order to accomplish something that he wants to do in the life of his son for his son.

And I think this is true for all of us.

You see this all throughout the scriptures that in worship, people just seeking to worship God, God snags that and he actually uses it to do something out in the world that he's been wanting to do.

And so he takes it and he actually uses it for something.

He has chosen worship, not just singing, because this woman's not singing, but but he has chosen worship to be this thing that he grabs and then uses with power out in the world.

And so again, you see this all throughout the scriptures.

One of my favorite stories in the scriptures is about Jehoshaphat, which is just maybe the worst name in history.

But when he's a he's being invaded, he's the king of Judah at this time, and these massive armies are invading the land, and they're all freaking out, obviously, because they there's just seas and seas of people that are coming in.

And so everybody's terrified.

Jehoshaphat prays, and then God speaks to him and to the nation through a prophet.

And this is what it says.

It says, Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jehaziel, and he said, Listen, King Jehoshaphat, and all who live in Jerusalem, this is what the Lord is saying to you.

Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army that's coming your way.

For the battle is not yours, but God's.

Tomorrow, march down against them, and they will be climbing up by the pass, and you will find them at the end of the gorge.

You will not have to fight this battle.

Take up your positions, stand firm, and see the deliverance the Lord will give you.

Do not be afraid, do not be discouraged, but go out and face them tomorrow, for the Lord will be with you.

And it says, Early in the morning, they left, and as they set out, Jehoshaphat stood up and said, Listen to me, Judah and people of Jerusalem, have faith in the Lord your God, and you will be upheld.

And then Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord, to worship him, and to praise him for the splendor of his holiness.

And they went out ahead of the army, saying, Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever.

And then notice it says, As they began to sing and to praise, the Lord set ambushes against the enemy nations who were invading Judah, and they were completely defeated.

And so God used this worship, this space, like, what's going to do it?

It's like as they began to sing and to praise, God snags that thing, and then he goes to work defeating these armies.

And it says, by the time they actually get to the battle line, when they finally get to the gorge and they see the enemy, they're all dead.

Like everything's been taken care of.

The Lord has fought for them.

They didn't even get to see the battle.

All they know is that they were worshiping him, and as they were worshiping him, their weapon was their worship, and God actually used that in their lives and ultimate ultimately to defeat that enemy.

We see this in King David's worship when he was just David and not King.

But it says that in 1 Samuel, whenever the evil spirit would come upon King Saul, that David would take out his lyre and he would play and he would sing and he would worship.

And then relief would come to Saul and he would feel better and the evil spirit would leave him.

God has chosen to use worship in order to do things in the world.

David writes in Psalm 8 that through the praise of children and infants, God, you have established strongholds against the enemies to silence the foe and the avenger.

And I've said this before, but this is why we want our kids in the worship area.

There's something powerful about it.

He has chosen the weaker things in the world to actually display his power.

And one of those things is through the praise of children, he establishes strongholds against the enemy.

And so we like, there's just something, he has chosen to use worship to do what he wants in the world.

David says this in Psalm 22 that he dwells, that God dwells or he inhabits the praises of his people.

He dwells in the praises of his people.

And so we're not just singing, but he is like, I am indwelt, I am enthroned on the praises of my people.

And so what God does consistently through the scriptures is he takes the worship and he does something more from it than what we thought it would actually do.

They thought we're just, we're just singing.

Like we're just we're just worshiping the Lord.

That's all they thought they were doing in the like.

As soon as they start doing that, God takes that worship and he begins fighting for them.

Mary thought, I'm just, I'm just giving you a gift and telling you I love you.

And it's like God used that to prepare Jesus for her burial, for his burial.

God takes our worship and does something more with it.

And we've seen this, you've seen this in this church.

We do the giving liturgy, and I've heard stories of people in our church be like, someone was moved by God to be, they want to be generous.

They want to worship God through generosity.

And some of you have come up to me and told me, like, people have walked up to me and like given me money for things that they didn't even know I really needed that money, but they just felt led by the Lord to like give money to me.

And it was that person's worship.

I'm seeking to worship by giving God.

He has He has given to me, and I want to worship Him by giving Him things as well.

And then people walk up, God takes that worship and He uses it in the lives of people.

And some of you have shared that story.

Like, I didn't have enough money and now I do have that money.

And it's like, what is that?

It's like God is taking worship, and we just thought, I don't know, I'm just, I'm just I'm just doing a thing.

But it's like He has used that and grabbed it and plunged it into somebody's life in order to bless them.

We see this in our missionaries.

Mary Heard is one of our missionaries in Honduras that we support as a church.

And the the the way that she was seeking, her and her husband were seeking to honor the Lord and to worship the Lord was to sacrificially go into a space that needed an orphanage and needed Christians there to go and actually start a thing.

And like it was sacrificial worship of God to go and do that thing.

And now countless lives have been formed by the worship that she has offered to the Lord.

And God has taken that sacrificial worship and he's used it in the world.

I've shared this before, but uh a man named Mark McClendon, uh, that's where I heard the gospel really for the first time that I really understood it.

Um but his desire to love Jesus and to follow Jesus and to worship Jesus was by teaching a Sunday school class of high school guys.

And if you're ever like, what's a real sacrifice?

That's a real sacrifice.

Um because we were awful.

Like we did not care.

We made fun of his glasses, his hair, his anything.

Well, like whatever.

There's tons of things to make fun of in this man.

And like, and he just he just stayed.

Like it's like, well, they made fun of Jesus as well.

They they mocked Jesus.

I don't mind if they mock me.

Like this sacrifice from this man.

Just to continue teaching a class that nobody wants to hear you teach.

No one's here for you.

Nobody cares about you.

No one cares about any of this.

And he had to feel that, and yet he gave this sacrificial worship to like, I'm going to devote myself to this thing because God has devoted himself to me, and so I'm going to devote myself to this thing.

And it was through his teaching and preaching of the gospel and through his worship that God used that, snagged it, shoved it in my heart, and it changed my life radically, changed my life.

And it's like he probably just thought, like, this is doing nothing.

Like these kids don't listen.

This is doing nothing.

But it's like God has snagged his worship and done something incredible with it.

And I'm very thankful.

He didn't even know that it happened in my life.

He had no idea.

I had to reach out to him last year.

I actually found him on LinkedIn and was like, hey man, I need to tell you something.

19 years ago, I was radically saved, and it had to do with something that you said in that time when I was probably making fun of you in the middle of Sunday school class.

And it was like, what a random story.

But we connected on LinkedIn and it was this amazing thing.

But he had no idea.

But God has chosen to use worship, to use devotion.

He's chosen to use those things to do things in the life of people.

And so you don't know what your singing in church might do.

To you, you're just singing.

Or maybe you're just doing something to the Lord.

But somebody else may see that and be stirred with your affection for Jesus, stirred something in them.

You don't know what your giving and offerings might do.

You have no idea.

But what is true is that God will use it.

He has chosen to use our worship to do things in the world.

And so we need to have this vision of worship.

Like, what is he going to do through this?

And it's like, I have no idea, but he wants to use it powerfully in the lives of people.

And so we need to have that view of worship, that it has that kind of power because God has chosen to do it.

And so those are the two things we learn about worship.

Your life will be shaped by what you worship.

And then God has chosen and will use the worship of his people in order to shape the world.

Now, three applications before we close.

The first, because our lives will be shaped by what and who we worship, and God uses our worship of Him to shape the world, because of those two things, we need to know what we actually worship.

Because you can sit in the middle of church and you can give lip service to Jesus and you can even sing the words and maybe sometimes mean that in your hearts here and there, but it is very easy for church people to just come into church and to do their thing and just actually, outside of this, there's things that they really hold up as valuable.

But in here, we just give a little worship and praise to Jesus.

We need to know what we're actually worshiping.

Tim Keller says that in each culture, and this is his book, Counterfeit Gods, which I really recommend to you.

It's a wonderful book.

But he says, each culture is dominated by its own set of idols to worship.

Each has its priesthoods, its totems and rituals.

Each one has its shrines, whether it's an office tower, a spa, the gym, studios, or stadiums.

Each one has its shrines where sacrifices must be made in order to procure the blessing of the good life and to ward off disaster.

We may not physically kneel before the statue of Aphrodite, but many young women today are driven into depression and eating disorders by an obsessive concern over their body image.

We may not actually burn incense to Artemis or sacrifice our children in the fires of Moloch.

But when money and career are raised to cosmic proportions, we perform our own kind of child sacrifice, neglecting family and community to achieve a higher place in business and gain more wealth and prestige.

We all worship something.

And at church, it's easy to be like, well, I clearly worship Jesus.

I'm a Christian, therefore I worship Jesus.

And it's like, yes, but there is our culture also is constantly pulling us to elevate it and elevate things in it for it to worship.

And we've seen this happen in people's lives.

You've seen this.

You've seen some people who worship their careers, their whole life is shaped by it.

The whole thing is developed around it.

What they do when they go on vacation, if they show up to their kids' soccer games, if they spend time with their family, if they're happy or if they're mad, all of that is dictated by the thing that they worship.

And it all has to do with this thing.

If my career is good, then I'm having a good day.

If my career is bad, I'm having a terrible day.

If my career gives me time, then I will spend time with my family.

If my career doesn't give me time, then I won't spend time with my family.

And it goes on and on.

You've seen this with people who date and fall in love and they worship the person they date.

They worship the relationship.

It's like you just they compl they become a completely different person.

All of what they used to like, this person didn't like, and so they're like, I don't like any of that stuff anymore.

And they lose themselves in this relationship.

And you're like, who are you?

Like you're a completely different person.

It's like they've begun to be shaped by the thing that they worship.

He tells a story in this book about this woman that grew up poor and uh was so afraid of being poor again, like did not want to be poor and struggle with with that in poverty.

And he says that she worshipped money so much, and whether she actually knew that or understood it or not, she she worshipped it so much, she was so afraid of getting back into poverty that she had these men in her life that she'd be dating that loved her so well, and she loved them, but they didn't have any money.

They weren't affluent.

And so she would pass on relationships and break up with these men in her life because they she was so nervous about not having enough money that she broke up with them and they didn't do that.

And he says, and she eventually married somebody that was very, very rich.

And it was like, but the the she didn't love that man, and that man treated her terribly and was abusive towards her and all these different things, but he had the thing that she actually worshipped.

He had money.

And he goes on and tells the story, and he's like, but the issue is like eventually their relationship split up, they divorced, and uh now she actually is living below the poverty line because what she feared actually ended up taking shape.

And it was the point is like there are things that we may, like in that space, like he knows her because she's coming to church.

She's doing the thing, and yet she's worshiping something else.

And so we need to know what we actually worship because we will be shaped by that thing.

Everyone worships, but what we worship can fly under the radar.

And so here are three questions you can ask yourself to really get to the like, what am I actually worshiping in my life?

Here are the three.

The first is what do you think you need in order to have the life you desire?

What is that thing?

You're like, I need that thing.

Life would be perfect if I had this.

What is that thing?

Or you can ask it the other way.

What would make you not want to live if you didn't have it?

Like those men after the 2008 crash.

What would make you not want to live if you didn't have it?

I cannot live without this thing.

If I don't have that, if it's threatened, you get angry.

If I don't have that thing.

But maybe the best way to figure it out is just to ask who you are becoming?

What are you being shaped into?

Who are you becoming like?

Because you will be shaped by the thing that you worship.

And so if you claim to worship Jesus, are you becoming more like Jesus?

Are is the fruit of the spirit actually being developed in you?

Because if you're worshiping Jesus literally, you will become like Mary.

She became sacrificial and loving and just over the top generous.

She became very similar to Jesus.

Things were developing in her from his personality.

And so if you are worshiping Jesus, is the fruit of the spirit being formed in you?

Next slide here.

Fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Are those things being formed in you?

Are you becoming more loving?

Are you becoming more self-controlled?

Are you becoming more patient?

In this cultural climate, are you becoming more kind?

What are you becoming?

Are the fruit of the spirit, or is the fruit of the spirit being formed in you?

Or maybe it's the fruit of the world.

You're giving lip service to Jesus, but maybe the fruit of the world is being formed into you.

And so the fruit of the world is the anti-fruit of the spirit.

And so instead of love, is self-centeredness being formed in you?

This life curved in on itself to where, like, I'm not actually looking of how to love other people.

I actually am just focused on myself.

This is the anti-fruit of the spirit.

Instead of joy, it's cynicism.

You're just constantly criticizing.

I'm not filled with joy, I'm just constantly criticizing other people, constantly looking for things that are I like being angry.

Like instead of that, is it cynicism or just settling for shallow pleasures, just something to make me feel good.

It's not really joyful, but honestly, it just takes my mind off of it for a second.

Instead of peace, you're filled with anxiety.

Just restless.

Instead of patience, it's irritability.

Patience isn't growing, but I'm becoming more irritable.

The fuse is getting shorter and shorter and shorter with people in my life.

Instead of kindness, harshness has developed.

Treating people as obstacles, threats.

Instead of goodness and loving good things and wanting good things, it shifts to moral compromise.

You just justify wrongdoing.

I know it's wrong, but I did that because.

And either it was convenient, it was just easier to lie, it was just easier to steal, it's just easier to be rude, it's just easier to da da da.

And so instead of being like, but that's not good, like that's not doing good in the world, it's like it doesn't matter.

Just morally compromising.

Instead of faithfulness, are you becoming more unreliable?

Instead of gentleness, are you becoming more dominant and defensive, using your strength to protect yourself rather than to serve others?

Instead of self-control, you're just filled with impulses that you cannot control.

Like they're just the boundary walls of your life, and like everything that happens in your world, it's like I eat too much, I drink too much, I watch too much, I do this, all these different things.

Like there's zero self-control in your life.

It's just constantly what I feel I do, what I feel I do, what I feel I say.

It's all live, everything is live.

We will either be ruled by godly desires, or we'll be ruled by ungodly desires.

And it's based on who we worship.

You will be shaped by the thing that you worship.

And James K.A.

Smith says in his book, You Are What You Love, he says, if you want to change someone profoundly, you must change what they worship.

If you want to change, and so to me, like what I love about this, it's like, how do I change?

It's like just honestly figure out what you worship and then shift that thing.

Stop worshiping that thing.

You will be shaped your whole life.

Everything will be shaped by the thing that you hold up as the most important thing.

Every decision that you make, the way that you spend your money, the way that you spend your time, the way that you, uh the way that you talk to people, look at people, and all these different things, everything will be shaped by the thing that you worship.

And so if you want to change something profoundly in yourself, you need to change what we worship.

Figure out, like, oh my gosh, I'm worshiping this thing.

Of course, my life looks like this because I worship this.

So what are you worshiping?

Second application.

Because what we worship will shape our lives.

And because what we worship will be, uh because worship will be something that God uses in the world, we need to intentionally seek, intentionally aim at worshiping Jesus.

We actually need to seek to do that more and more and more, to aim at that thing.

Gary Chapman in his book, some of you may have read it, The Five Love Languages.

Have you ever read that book?

Um I actually haven't, but I know the cliff notes.

Um but he talks about like, here's how people receive love, right?

Here's all these different five ways that people receive love.

But what's great about the book is it actually teaches you how to then go therefore and like love a person and love people.

And so to me, I'm like, how do we intentionally seek to worship Jesus?

How do we how do we shift our affection from something, shift our love from this, and shift our affection or love to Jesus?

To me, I was like, we have to practice these things.

We should just practice the love languages on Jesus inside of our faith, shift those things.

And so, for instance, we need to practice words of affirmation for Jesus, expressing affection through spoken words and praise and appreciation.

This is why we do worship on Sunday morning.

It's giving you time to actually affirm Him and say things about Him that are wonderful.

Not because He needs affirmation.

He's not sitting there going, like, I'm honestly really self-conscious about myself and I could really use the worship of my people to feel better about myself.

Not that.

But it's like these, these these, it's a way that we turn our affection, we turn our love to him.

And so worship through singing, through the liturgies, through prayers, through gratitude, just expressing gratitude over meals or whatever.

Constantly things happening in your world that you're grateful for and saying thank you to him and not to someone else.

And so we need to practice words of affirmation.

We need to spend quality time with him.

If you want to intentionally seek to worship him, spend quality time with him.

And we do this through prayer.

You can do this through reading the scriptures, you can do this through having like one verse, just meditating on that verse and keeping his word in front of your mind every single day.

Memorizing scripture and having it in your heart.

Setting aside time where you're just intentionally going, I'm gonna be alone, but I'm gonna be alone with you.

If you are with me always, I want to seek just to spend time with you, to hear your voice and to spend time with you.

And so to intentionally seek to aim our worship and aim at and love at Jesus, we have to do those things.

You can do this by giving gifts, giving things that symbolize love and affection.

That's what this woman did.

She's just practicing a love language on Jesus.

She's like, I'm gonna give you a gift, and here's this the most important gift in my life.

I'm gonna give it to you.

And she worships Jesus in this way.

And so we can do that by giving financially.

You can give that through time serving the poor, you can give it through time in general, or just uh through your talents and things.

Like, I want to give you something, God.

And so I'm actually gonna do this to the glory of God.

You can do the dishes to the glory of God.

You can actually just give those things to Him.

Acts of service.

Some people receive love through acts of service, and we know that Jesus does.

But doing helpful, sacrificial things for people.

And so, examples, you can sacrificially love people that are difficult to love.

You can offer forgiveness to people.

It's like it's a sacrifice, but it's a service sacrifice.

Giving up your time, following obediently in the spaces where Jesus has called you to follow him.

It's a sacrifice, but it is a way of serving him.

It's like, I know that you want this done in the world.

I know that you want this done, and I'm gonna go and be the person that you do it.

It is a sacrifice to me, but I'm gonna serve you in this way.

And then physical touch, a little more challenging with God being spirit, but he says this in his word.

He's like, anything, and Rennie was talking about it earlier, anything that you do for the least of these, Jesus says, You've done that for me.

And so if you've clothed an individual who was the least of these that had no clothes, he's like, You have clothed me.

You have physically done something for me.

And so, one of the ways that you can actually express love and affection to Jesus is by being with the church family.

You seeking to encourage and lift somebody up here or out in the world.

Like you were doing that not just for them, but as a physically, it's a physical response of actually loving Jesus, physically caring for the least of these.

And so, all of these things.

We need to practice those things.

Intentionally aim that stuff.

You're like, how do I aim my worship at Him?

Do those things.

That's how you do it.

And I know it might sound odd to practice the five love languages on Jesus.

Maybe you're like me and you're like, no, it sounds great, really good.

But if it sounds odd to you, you practice all five of these things on every single thing that you actually love.

If you love your career, you were physically there all the time.

You probably talk about it a lot, you sacrifice for it.

Sometimes even your kids, you sacrifice your kids for it.

You give things to it, your time, your talents, like you give those things.

Like we do this all the time with things that we worship.

If you're in a new relationship, I bet you talk about that person a lot, maybe too much.

You know, but the words of affirmation, all those different things, like you do that, you physically spend time with them, you give them quality time, you do this with the things that you love.

And so, in order to aim our loves at Jesus, we have to begin doing these things.

So shift your love to Jesus because that's who you will be shaped by if you're able to do that.

And then, third and finally, what you worship, what you worship will shape your life, and God uses your worship in the world.

He does something powerfully through it.

Therefore, your worship will experience opposition.

If you seek to worship Jesus, you will experience opposition in your worship.

It happened in this woman's life.

Verses four and five, it says, like, what are you doing?

Why, like, this is a huge worship of Jesus is a huge waste.

She's experiencing opposition from her worship.

She's seeking to honor Jesus and they rebuke her harshly.

And these aren't just enemies, these are people in her church.

These are people in her community, these are her best friends, and they're looking at what she's doing and looking at her worship and going, that's the dumbest thing I've ever seen.

She's experiencing opposition.

And the reason she's experiencing opposition is God actually wants to do something powerful through your worship.

And so it makes sense that there's an enemy at play trying to hinder and squash your worship.

He wants to actually drown it out.

He wants to make you self-conscious about it.

He wants to.

And my encouragement to you in those spaces is don't let someone else and what they think about how you worship, don't let them dictate how you love Jesus.

Don't let them do that.

And so if you're like, I'm nervous of what people are gonna think if I worship in this way, just double down and do it anyways.

Now, look, I've been at so many different churches.

Don't be a distraction in your worship.

If you get up and you start running in the back behind us and stuff, that's gonna take eyes off of Jesus and like what we're actually doing and actually fix our eyes on the person running sprints in the back of the room.

Okay?

Don't do that.

And so when you worship him, I do think there's this space where like you should be able to express yourself in the way that you love him.

But also, yes, we also don't want to steal all the attention of what's actually happening and have them focus on us.

And so we do need to be careful about that.

But if you're sitting there and you're you're wanting to worship, I want to lift my hands or I want to go to my knees, I actually want to express this to him.

Will people oppose that or will people find that weird?

Yes.

But they found this weird and Jesus calls it beautiful.

And so we say, like, she has done a beautiful thing to me.

And so they may rebuke you, but Jesus will defend you.

They may find it something that's just terrible, but other people will find it really, really something wonderful.

And God Himself will be like, She has done a wonderful thing for me.

And so for you, you get to express yourself in worship how you please and how you want.

Because you're not doing it for the people in the room, you're not doing it for yourself, you're doing it for the person that you actually love.

But just know your worship will be opposed because there's an enemy trying to hinder what God does in the world, and he's gonna take your worship and use it in somebody else's life, and he doesn't want the enemy, doesn't want God to be able to do that.

So he wants to squash you, make you self conscious so you don't do it.

And my encouragement to you is to worship, anyways.

Your worship may just be the thing that gives somebody else hope.

It may be the thing that leads somebody else to Jesus, like it did for me.

And so worship.

All right, let me pray.