Well, I'll tell you, church,
it's it's always a joy to shepherd. And it's always frustrating to
shepherd when you have to shepherd your own heart in so many ways
to prepare to bring God's word and to look deep into the text,
not to miss that which God shows you. And God tries to show you
sometimes we we overlook things, not because we're lazy, because
there's just some other things that we like to see. And we see
that which we love. We fall in love with it and it
gets so big. It gets so big that we miss everything else is sort
of not seeing the forest, the trees type thing, and it's OK
if you can't see anything but the tree of Christ, then that's
great. But he's a big tree. He's got to keep stepping back.
Why you keep coming close? It's really oxymoronic if you
think about it. In Ephesians 5 today, turn there
with me and then I'm going to allude for just a moment to Psalm
145, which is what Brother Swift read before the service began.
And starting in verse 15 of chapter 5 of Ephesians, you see Paul's
words. Look carefully then how you walk.
Not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time because
the days are evil. Therefore, do not be foolish,
but understand what the will of the Lord is. Do not get drunk
with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the spirit,
addressing one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, singing
and making medley to the Lord with your heart, giving thanksgiving
Always for everything to God and Father in the name of Jesus
Christ, our Lord, submitting to one another out of reverence
for Christ. So here is where we are today
and this is what we're going to do. There is a lot that I
would like to just. Pile out of and say now it's
a good opportunity. To preach. specific topics or
specific things that may be beneficial for us. And what's really amazing
to me is that how God has continued to push me back to. Verse 15. That's the big the big thing,
verse 15, where it says, look carefully at how you walk, not
as unwise, but as wise. See, Paul is affirming and warning
the church, us. that we are indeed in Christ
wise. We don't have to. Become wise. We don't have to. Find others
who are wise that we might take it from them. We don't have to
buy wisdom at the local Christian bookstore and boxes. We don't
need to try to deal with commentaries and all these other superfluous
things and find someone else to give us wisdom for the scripture
has said that we who are indeed in Christ have wisdom. And with
that, then it goes in my mind to James one, if anyone lacks
wisdom. And I think to myself, how can
we lack wisdom if we are wise? And if we are wise, then why
is it that Paul says, look carefully how you walk, not as unwise,
but as wise. So we have to walk as wise. And
if we feel we're lacking in that walking, we must ask for wisdom. Then Paul says. Making the best
use of the time because the days are evil, so do not be foolish,
so the fool is the one who does not understand the will of the
Lord. The wise man understands the will of the Lord. The fool
says, I know. The wise man says, God knows.
That to me is the first portion of Proverbs. That's what we see
there. And so it was difficult, as a
matter of fact. At 10 o'clock, I considered even
re-preaching verse 15 from a deeper perspective of seeking and knowing
wisdom. But God did not give me The go
with that. He wants me to talk about what
is next. So last week, as we looked at the filling of the
Holy Spirit, we understood that that is something that is done
continually. Fully, as we meditate and seek
and abide in the Word of God, as we learn Christ, that the
Spirit of God is filling us all with the fullness of Himself.
So, because of that, we are empowered to actually walk wise, as wise
people, in wisdom. We are able to walk in love,
as beloved children, forgiving one another as Christ has forgiven
us. We are able to walk to the praise
of His glorious grace. We are able to walk with thanksgiving.
We are able to walk apart from being slaves to immorality and
sexual immorality and debauchery and ignorance and foolishness
and greed and lusidiousness and all the other things. We're able
and desiring not to be filled with the artificial filling of
wine, but be filled with the fullness of God in the Spirit. We're able to do these things
because God is able and enabled us to walk in these ways. It
is, I would say, a cop out for us to say that there is sin and
flesh that has us. You see what I mean? The flesh
does not have us. If it looks like the flesh has
us, one of two things is at work. We are lying and thus deceiving
ourselves that we are rebelling against God or we are lost and
must repent and believe the gospel. What sin are you talking about?
Any sin. For the sin of the church, for
the sin of the Christian, for the sin of those who are in Christ,
they do not walk in them. They do not They're not ruled
by them. But the outflowing of the filling
of the Spirit of God is evidence. Now, here's the mistake. And
I have to admit that I have done this in years past. It's easy
to take a text like this and to do the following. These are
sound bites that get you in trouble, by the way. But it's easy to
take a text like this and to do the following. Oh, Paul was
saying, don't drink. Paul was saying, be filled. Paul
was saying, address one another in psalms. You better get to
the psalms. Address one another in hymns.
We better get Horatio Stafford on the line. If you don't know
who that was, don't worry about it. He wrote the hymn, It Is Well
With My Soul. Upon hearing the news of the
death of his family. My family is dead, but it is
well with my soul. There's power in that church.
There's power in that. It's not an instruction there.
Well, we better find out what are spiritual songs. Let's preach
a sermon on spiritual songs. Well, that'd be a good sermon.
I could preach it right now off the cuff. I know what a spiritual
song and what a stupid song is. There's the two. There's spiritual
songs and stupid songs and stupid songs, I would say, are boring
songs. But that's not what Paul is saying here. Well, maybe he's
commanding us to sing and make medley to the Lord with our hearts,
giving thanks. But if you understand grammar
and at some level, You'll see very clearly after I show this
to you. There in no way is there commands to sing and to address
and to be thankful. There are other places. But that's
not what Paul's saying here. Be very careful not to isogene
scripture from a personal perspective. Just because there's a word on
the page. Oh, Paul said and. And he also said but. So let's
talk about those two things. And is a conjunction that connects
two sentences or thoughts or words, either in a sequence or
a phrase. Or maybe it's, well, what's a
but? It depends on who's asking. It could be a contradiction,
it could be a contrast, or it could be that which we sit upon.
So we don't pull just words out of context, that's called a pretext,
and a pretext is false teaching and it's always wrong. Never,
ever right. Even if what you say is good
and full and could be found somewhere else in Scripture, if you say
it's there and it's not, you're wrong and you're a false teacher.
You see that? So, so careful. We have to be
so careful and depend upon the Spirit of God through rightly
dividing the Word of Truth and dedicated study, even as Brother
Dave and I were talking this morning, to the English language.
Sometimes we need to study up on our grammar so that we might
understand that which is being spoken to us and that which has
been written to us in a language that is understandable and comprehensible. Frustrating critiques that I
get often when I preach other places is I didn't understand
a thing you said. And I appreciate that and I understand
that. And I like to ask the question, well, what did you not understand?
Nothing. I didn't understand a thing you
said. Really? Hi, my name is James and it's
an honor to be here today. Did you understand that? Well,
yeah. I didn't understand your sermon. And it used to bother
me a lot. Well, I'm a horrible communicator.
Which is true. I can meal around and stomp and
say all sorts of non-cohesive things. And somehow you people
get it. What does that say about you?
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Amen. I got that. I go back and
listen to my sermons every week. I'm like, what am I talking about?
Something is wrong. Those people are amening and
I don't even know what I'm talking about. You know, so who's crazy
here, me or the other me? But what do you not get? Well,
you use language that's not that's that's just above my head. Like
what? Like that word that you used
propitiation. No, I read it from the English
Bible. How do you if someone writes you a letter and it says
from the Department of Defense, United States of America urgent
and it's certified and a general sends it to you or stands at
your door and you sign for it, you can throw it in the trash.
Well, golly, wonder why there's a general. You got time for that.
Throw it in the garbage. No, you're going to open it,
and you're going to read it. And if it has something at the
very beginning that says, warning, you are hereby reported or are
required to report to a tribunal. You go, a tribunal? Is that those
little things that you eat that you put on your finger like little
fingernails? You know, you've got three of them, so it must
be a tribunal. Those are bugles, corn chips. And you go, well,
my golly, I'll just go buy me some Tribugles. And you go to
the, throw it in the trash, and you go, and you go to the store,
and you buy your potato chips, and you think you've reported
to the tribunal. Well, no, you haven't. You haven't. And you
might not know what that means, so you're going to do something,
because it's urgent, it's important. You're going to say, what does
that mean? You're going to call your mom and your daddy, and your mom's mom, and all them
people, and everybody else, and you're going to find out what
it means. You're going to get on Google, and Yahoo, and Bling,
and Bada Bing, and all the other places, and you're going to tweet
it and flap it and flirt it and everything, and you're going
to go out and Facebook it, and you're going to get 65,000 responses
on what it means and what you're supposed to do. This is an important
document, and this very important fellow has come and served me
with this paper, and something's wrong. And I don't understand
a thing that it's saying. But you know that if you throw
it in the trash, there may be a consequence. You may either
miss out on something. Maybe your uncle was a general
and he had a retirement. You're the only living beneficiary,
and you're about to get $50 million. Or maybe somebody said that you
were someone who you aren't and they're about to lock you up
and your whole family and your dogs and your parents. Either way,
you're going to find out what's going on. Because it's important
to you. I know that's an over the top,
exaggerated, hyperbolic, whatever example, but I'll promise you
this. It's worse than that when we
think we know the word of God and we don't care to understand
the words that are actually written in our own language. and how
they are constructed. The Bible does not say in John
3, 16, that God loved the world so much, not in any language
under the sun, not even in English, that it says, for God so loved
the world. The word so in front of a verb is the extent to which
it was acted upon. That's grammar. Hermeneutics
is the science of interpretation. And friends, if you are a Christian.
You should have a desire to understand how to interpret scripture. And
the church ought to teach you how to do that. And so what's
not happening here is we see that in verse 18, Paul is doing
something. There's a there's a reason for
this. I want you to get I want you just to clarify. And the
reason I'm going harping on this so much is because as I was going
back to look at verse 15, I happened to come across a set of commentaries
that I've never seen before. And they may mention I mean,
there were nine sermons for verse 19. And I thought, boy, I missed
something. Nine sermons in a list of things,
and I looked at that, and here's what they said. That Paul here
is commanding us to address one another. in songs. He's commanding us to address
one another in hymns and he's commanding us to address one
another in spiritual songs. So there's four sermons. We got
to address one another. And there are three ways we do
it. Four sermons. No, no, no, that's not there. That's not
there. The other thing is this and how
we address one another in spiritual songs is we sing and make melody
to the Lord with our heart and we give thanks. And so and we
were commanded. There is no command there except
one. What is it? Be filled with the
Holy Spirit of God. Be filled with the Holy Spirit
of God, then what we see is a list, not a list of and this and also
this and also this and also this, but a listing of things that
give us one thing. And if you understand and remember
what we talked about last week, that the filling of the spirit
ultimately is satisfaction and eternal joy with the whole of
one's being, which if you understand the writings of antiquity. The
whole of one's being is referenced as what the heart. And when the Scripture talks
about the heart, it's not talking about the organ that pumps blood
through your circulatory system. It's talking about the core essence
of who you are entirely, which is why the Scripture, when God
says to love the Lord your God with all your heart and your
mind and your soul and your strength. It's not four different things.
It's four ways of saying the fullness of your person. It's
one way of showing that it's all-encompassing. When you see
the word heart, that's what it's talking about. If you believe in your heart
that God has raised Jesus from the dead, that means that everything
you are, with every fiber of your DNA, with every molecule
of every atom in your person, With every conscious thought,
with every breath and exchange, and the chemical exchange happens
in your lungs, with everything that you are, you hold fast with
the fullness of joy and absolute satisfaction and glorious affection
to Christ. That's what it means to believe
in your heart. So what we can't do here is to
pretend that there's a lot of different sermons. Now, is it
bad to think what a spiritual song is? No, it's not. But it's
bad to say Paul's commanded that spiritual song, so we better
find out what spiritual songs are and we better figure it out.
Well, friends, I will tell you what they aren't found in the
Bible. Songs are found the Bible. Hymns
aren't, and spiritual songs aren't. Why? Because we don't have a
hymnal from this first century. We don't have it. We don't know
what they sung. We don't know if it was Greek in nature, or
Palestinian in nature, or Arabian in nature, or Jewish in nature.
We don't know what their songs are. I can tell you the people
at Ephesus didn't sing Hebrew style songs. But I didn't hear
if it was Middle Eastern. So are we supposed to sing their
songs? No, we sing our songs. We sing the songs that Horatio
Spafford has written. We sing the songs that Keith
Getty has written in Christ alone. We sing the songs. But let's
look here at what this is really saying. What Paul is really saying
here is that as we are filled with the Spirit, the fullness
of our satisfaction in the heart of our being is in Christ. And the outcome of that is joy. How do you get it? I showed you
this last week and I told you we're going to center on it today.
I've done numerous sermons on worship. I thought about just
sort of resurrecting some of them and I started thinking,
my gosh, I'd be 12 weeks in the preaching. Just don't do that. We go to Isaiah, and we go to
Revelation, and we go to Psalms, and we go to Proverbs, and we
go here, and we go there, and we go there, and everywhere.
And before long, we're just totally chasing rabbits. Why? Because
the whole of Scripture is an example of worship by God's people. And rebellion, and judgment,
and grace, and mercy, and worship. And rebellion, and judgment,
and grace, and mercy, and worship. So we see the continual cycle. In Paul, one of his greatest
arguments here in this letter is that God has created a people
in Christ Jesus before the world began. He predestined us in love. That we might be in the image
of Christ, holy and blameless before the world began to the
praise of his glorious grace. And so I guess the question then
should be this. What are these things talking
about? Here's what they're talking about. In contrast, the world's
ways, the world's thinking, the mind of those who are in the
world, those who are lost and dead in their sins, and the judgment
of God remains on them. Those who are not friends of
God, who do not love him and who do not care to worship him,
they live in one way. And those who are born again
and saved by Jesus Christ, they live another way. And the satisfaction that's found
in the world is the lust of the eyes and sometimes of God that
someone else with good intentions has created for them sometimes
a Jesus that they may like what he offers, but he looks so much
like them that they're willing to get along with him. And then
they love that. And it's not the God of the Bible.
It's not the Jesus of the Bible. It's not the spirit of the Bible.
And so they live in a false religion of morality, worshiping a false
God who will say to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you
workers of iniquity. And he doesn't stop. He continues
here to say that the world who is ignorant and foolish, they
fill their lives up with escape. They fill their lives up with
wine. They fill their lives up with
those things which are not. Found or named among the church. And that when we are filled with
the spirit of God, look right here. And do not get drunk with
wine, for that is debauchery, but we feel Which is the negative
command and the positive command. The negative command is do not
get drunk with wine. For that leads to debauchery.
But be filled with the Spirit of God. And then the outcome in verse
19 and 20 is just this wonderful picture of what that looks like. How is it, Paul, It says that
do not grumble, complain, murmur in all things. Why does he say
that? Because grumbling and complaining
and murmuring, frustration, bitterness, maliciousness, all of it, they
are not part of the spirit of God that resides within the Christian.
They're not there. Put away all malice. Put away
filth. Put away It's rude joking and
talking and laughing about that which God has created good. Don't
talk and make fun of sexuality and snicker. Don't laugh at the
things that people say in reference to that which God has made beautiful.
The reflection of the gospel in His grace and the union of
God and His people in Christ Jesus. Don't talk about foolish
things or crude things, but instead let there be what? Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is really the outcome of joy. So the outcome of being
born again, you're thankful and what it is well. When peace like
a river. Sorrows like sea billows roll. Those are those are Stafford's
words. So when peace, like a river's
in my life, when sorrow, like the billowing waves of a sea,
you know what a swell is? A swell is in the ocean. When you've got a calm ocean,
which is never such a thing as a calm ocean, it's always choppy, it's
always moving. But we have a swell is when the
water, the water goes up and then at the same time as it's
going up, it's going down. And the swell is the distance
between these two things. And I know there's a lunatic
among us that has been in 40 foot swells and a scuba gear,
but we won't talk about that. 40 feet of water. Now think about sorrows as sea
billows roll, the billowing of water. For some strange reason,
I had dreams this morning about the sea swallowing up the people. hundreds of miles in. I mean,
I envisioned the sea here and we went to Macon and the sea
was still coming and it was swallowing everybody up. You know what?
One day it may. And I woke up with that and I'm
not even going to preach today. This is horrible. No, I'm going to preach about wisdom
because I've got to work out what's up in my head. You know, I don't
put a lot of stock in dreams, but I know that psychologically
there's things that you are maybe subconsciously thinking about.
And so God put that picture in my head about the sea. And he says, as the sorrows of
life swallow me like a sea and continually come in, even if
they're small, it's never stopping. It is well with my soul. Thank you, God. It is well with
my soul. You see that? So the outcome of the filling
of the Spirit is that we will address one another in Psalms. Now see, listen to
this as it is intended. Address one another in Psalms
and hymns and spiritual songs with your heart. So there's there's a phrase there.
There's listing, if you will. It's not a bunch of and this
and this and this is just one thing. Continue with us grammatically. And it is it is the outcome of
that which is before it. Fill with the spirit and you
will address each other this way. That's what is written here.
That's why the verb is addressing. Not and address one another.
Addressing. So you will be addressing. It
will be a connectivity, a life together, a fellowship, a bond.
And so as you are filled with the Spirit of God, we address
one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing
and making melody to whom? To the Lord. With our what? Heart. It doesn't say anything
about singing songs. It doesn't say anything about
singing to anybody else. It doesn't say anything about saying anything.
So what in the world is happening here? Well, that's what I believe.
I believe that it is indicative, it is OK to say, well, we can
sing songs in worship. Worship is good. Worship in song
is wonderful. Worship is an opportunity for
us to reflect. Music changes us. Music touches
the soul and the core of our emotion and it changes us. That's
why it's so dangerous. In church, not only is music
dangerous apart from the church, music is dangerous in the church.
It's like a preacher's sermon on that. And it would be a good
instruction, but it's not the point that Paul's making here.
But let me mention it for a moment. If we put the emphasis on music,
then the music becomes the controlling factor of our joy and our feeling
and our addressing one another. And so what it says there is
not with our mouths, though we should worship with our mouths,
just as it says in Romans 10, confess with your mouth that
Jesus is Lord. Unless I believe in your heart that he's been
raised from the dead. That's an all encompassing. That which
is true in our heart is confessed with our mouth. When? Every moment
possible, make good use of the time for the days are evil. You
see now how it's coming together. And I believe that if we have
worship as the core of our being, if we have joy overflowing, as
Jesus tells the woman in chapter four of John. Give me water. If you knew who
it was to ask you for water, you would ask him for water and
he would give you living water that would well up to eternal
life. And she says, oh, give me this water. When our heart is full with the
living water of Christ, our joy is complete. And our joy is full
and it's always filling. And the Spirit of God is filling
us when we are satisfied in Christ, when we abide, and when we walk,
and when we hold, and when we run into, and when we press in,
and when we repent, and when we by faith believe, and always
pressing, and always pushing, and always abiding, and always
worshiping, and always in all things at all times, no matter
what, praising God and thanking Him for all that He's doing.
In Christ Jesus forever. So we should address and what
is it talking about? Well, we make melody. And seeing. Not to each other, but to the
Lord, and we do it with our heart. Oftentimes, I used to say it
this way when I was a little bit younger and a little bit
dumber. Because I liked polarizing statements. I love to see older folks just
leave church early because I'm like, yeah, I said something
right there. You know, you can say something crude and people
will do that. It's not always a mark of good preaching when
someone's offended. But I promise you, good preaching will offend
somebody. Even in the most gentle and gracious of spirits. But I used to, I started out
a sermon one time, I can't say I used to, I've said this several
times, I started out a sermon And the music was wonderful.
The worship through song was wonderful. The sound was great.
I stood on the front row and I just closed my eyes and I imagined
just a small moment of what it must have been like, what it
was going to be like, just in a small, really tiny way of how
amazing it was going to be in glory when we all stand with
perfect voices and we sing praises to Jesus. And I'm like, wow, that's good. And
I felt so emotionally peaceful and I felt so driven at the idea
that one day we would be able to worship Christ fully forever
without ever having to go home or turn on air conditioning.
It's just, it's good. It's good. Come Lord Jesus quickly. Then I got up and I turned around
and what I saw, I thought everybody was just going to be like this
when I got up on the pulpit, you know. I wasn't even going
to be able to preach the first ten minutes because I just had
to give them time. And to give them time. Oh, God, I'm going
to have to give them time. They're going to have to have time to
just listen. Maybe I'll just read some scripture.
Revelation 4. I'll just read that. We'll just
have a good time. And I turn around, people picking their
nose, passing notes, chewing gum, high-fiving, getting the
hook up on the cell phone. This is the biggest disappointment
of my day. So in my mid 20s, I decided I'll
show them. I said, you know what God says,
do not use the Lord's name in vain. And I said, this is the biggest.
Useless, most vain abuse of God's name I've ever seen. And I said, we might as well
just all stand up. And I said it just like this. And just rip
off a really big roar and just say, G.D. real quick. Let's do
it on the count of three. People look at me like, what
is he doing? I said, because when you sing praises with your
mouth, with an empty heart, there's no difference in the two. And
I was right, but boy was I incorrect in my approach. I should have
said, you know, are you singing from your heart? When I had the
answer, people were appalled. Oh my gosh,
how dare you say my singing was just like cursing? Because if
it was not from the fullness of joy in the heart, it was.
It was vain. What does Jesus say to the Pharisees? He said,
you honor me with your lips, but your hearts are far from
me. This is the problem. Everybody's
willing to come and sing songs at church. Everybody's willing
to put the CD in, to buy the checkbook with the scripture
on it, and to get the phone case with the cross on it, and to
wear the cross around our necks, and to put the stickers on our
cars, and to say the right thing, and to always talk about the
Lord is good all the time, and all the time, the Lord is good.
And in back of June, we banter at the parking lot, and we banter
at the Walmart, and it's a real fun, jolly, happy-go-lucky, yee-haw,
Jesus, and Griffs. We're all good. But we never stop and focus on
the reality that that God who loved us in spite of the fact
that we should have been destroyed and still today do not deserve
His grace in Christ, much less Christ coming to take our punishment.
Willingly and obediently and joyfully, Christ looked beyond
the cross joyfully, willfully, He got up on it. He took his
life and laid it down. He had the power to do so. Jesus
was not taken by force. And our worship is so vain when
we pragmatically Punch holes in the scripture
and say, oh, well, we're just going to sing some songs, singing
songs. I bet you the most beautiful voice in all the cosmos is Lucifer's. And I bet you, I bet you with
everything I am, he can sing praises to Jesus. Don't believe me? I've heard
the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing it as well. And I wept in worship
and then I threw up. They sang that song and it moved
me to praise my God and they don't even know Him. It's not about those things.
You see that? With the heart and humility of the Lord. So
our worship, even with each other, is unto Christ. And we'll see
that as we get to submission in a couple of weeks. Always giving thanks for everything
to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Submitting
to one another out of reverence for Christ. You see that? It's
all about worship here. Worship in spirit and in truth. And I don't believe that Grace
Truth Church has a problem with worship. But if the Scripture
calls us out on it, let's take note of it. Preaching isn't to
beat us up. It's to build us up. And people
who feel beat up and beat down, good! Because that which is beaten
is building. God does not beat down the lost.
God does not crush them. God does not convict them. God
does not discipline them. God lets them be. They have their
best life and then the judgment. And this world is not about our
joy. It's about Christ's glory. So we need to consider that as
we are one flesh, we are addressing one another in songs and hymns
and spiritual songs, singing and making medley to the Lord
with our hearts. How is that done? Let's think
about that for a minute. Let's get some of the songs we
sang today. How great is our God. The splendor of a king. Clothed
in majesty. Let all the earth rejoice. You
see, Psalm 145, verse 4. One generation shall
commend your works to another. That's how we sing songs and
hymns and spiritual songs to one another. We commend the works
of God to one another. Why? Because He is commendable. The splendor of a king. Friends,
there's nothing beautiful about a king of the earth. It's repulsive. It's grotesquely out of place.
That people would bow down and kiss the hand of a pope is garbage. God have mercy on that idolatry. God have mercy on those who look
at a stage of a Christian singer and swoon out of adoration. God have mercy for the idolatry
is deep. The blindness is dead. God have
mercy. This kingdom of kings is clothed
in majesty. Chris Tomlin, God bless his little
soul, He knows what he's talking about with these lyrics. Let
all the earth rejoice. Let all the earth rejoice. He
wraps himself in light and darkness tries to hide and trembles at
his voice. But great is our God. In him was the light. The life
of men in the darkness has not overcome it. That's John 1. And
we sang it this morning. We sang the light of the gospel
in the face of Christ. We sang words. You know, sometimes
I stop and my hand falls down like a club on the keyboard because
the lyric just goes, whoa, boy, you're wasting this. Stop. Just
keep singing. Don't follow me. I'm not a good
worship leader because I'm going to worship without you. Just
don't do what I just do what you want to do. I'm going to
do what I want to do. And I'm not a professional and never
will I try to be. The name above all names, the
power of the cross, I love this, Keith Getty, Stuart Townsend.
Oh, to see the dawn of the darkest day, Christ on the road to Calvary,
tried by sinful men, torn and beaten, then nailed to a cross
of wood. This the power of the cross. Christ became sin for
us, took the blame, bore the wrath. We stand forgiven at the
cross. Wow, that preaches. You know why I preach this? Because
it's the scripture. It's the word of God out of the overflow. Poetry is the language of experience. You want to take a lesson in
literature? Take a class on literature. Take a class on poetry. I promise
you, you will change your worship. You will change. Oh, how it would be to take two
years and hide in a hill and write poems. With an AR and a side gun. painting pictures. I want to
paint. I've been equipped with the materials
to paint, but not the talent. And so I'm going to learn on
that. I'm going to learn that I want to paint. I want to paint
a picture literally out of paint on a thing. What is it called?
A canvas. In my mind, what I see when Christ
saved me out of darkness into light, I want to paint what that
looks I want to paint that. I don't
know how to make it happen. It's a language of experience,
an expression of worship that God has bestowed in us that we
would overwhelmingly explode into joyous thanksgiving and
praise with each other, singing medley to the Lord with all of
our being, in our hearts, and thankful for that which Christ
has done. We stand forgiven. What a love!
What a cost! How about all creatures of our
God and King? This is an old, old, old, old song. David Crowder
made it new. But it's old. It's really old.
Francis of Assisi penned these words. All creatures of our God
and King, lift up your voice with us and sing, O praise Him.
Hallelujah. The sun, the moon, rejoice. The lights of heaven, rejoice.
Father, praise the sun. You know, there were two or three
more stanzas of this song, and I believe one of them talks about
forgiving one another. It's good stuff. We need to add
it. Just keep on singing. I like that. I like sentences,
not short little phrases that we just sing until we pass away.
But I like sentences that have that have meaning, that we have
to think about what we're saying. Whoa, the glory of God is building
itself. What's the next line? I can't wait. Whoa, I've got
to sing that. I can't wait. What's line three? What's line
48? Yay. Oh, my gosh. Now we've been here
an hour and there's no time for preaching. So what? Take out
your Bibles anyway. And we're going to, you see, I wish it could be like that.
Psalm 145, you know, you see that term, you see those words. All your works for sin shall
give thanks to you, O Lord, and all your saints shall bless you.
They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and tell of your
power to make known to the children of man your mighty deeds and
the glorious splendor of your kingdom. Your kingdom is an everlasting
kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all the generations."
We're not making this stuff up when we sing these songs. All I have is Christ. Hallelujah! All I have is Christ. You are
my life. He is my life. Is Christ our
life? If Christ is our life, we will
understand fully in a few minutes how that works, what it sounds
like, what it looks like, what it does. And the war of our flesh
is defeated, though it's still at the battle lines, though it's
still at the front lines. Christ has already blown it up.
It's over. Know that it's over. And we fight
for a little while, but Christ is victorious. We have overcome
the world. And how do we overcome the world?
By our faith. What is it that overcomes our
world? Our faith. Friends, this is not a prescription
for witchcraft. This is a proclamation of the
fact that Christ in his fullness is victorious over all that is
in the world that is passing away. And friends, unity in the
church and fellowship together and worship as the body of Christ
is the only, only, only eternal, temporal, eternal picture that
there is. It's temporal on this side, but
what we do is eternal. What we prepare for is eternal.
Even the marriage will pass away, but our siblinghood will not.
My wife, is for prayerfully 80 more years. My wife, she killed
me. I don't want to live that long. But forever, she is my sister.
My children are my children, but forever they will be my siblings
in Christ. That which is temporal is gone.
The shadows of things is gone. And it points into that which
will be. Friends, the body of Christ is eternal. And we are
to reflect the nature of our groom who has made us blameless
and holy and spotless before him. And because of that, we
proclaim and sing and make melodies to the Lord with our hearts,
giving thanks always for everything to God the Father, in the name
of our Lord Jesus Christ. submitting to one another out
of reverence for Christ. So what does that look like?
I asked that question a minute ago and then got on a little
spree. It looks like this. That no matter how or why or
what life does. That the outcome of that thing
that may stand in our way or that situation that may dampen
our spirits. That we who are in the body of
Christ, we lift each other up through the reminder of that
song which is in each of us that we proclaim the greatness of
His mercies. To the praise of His glorious
grace. You want to know what kind of
songs we ought to be singing to one another? You know what
kind of things we ought to be saying to one another? We ought
to be reminding each other of the mightiness of our God. I just don't know what I'm going
to do about this. What does it matter what you're
going to do, brother? You can do everything you could
do. You could twinkle your nose and tap dance all the way back
to sideways. But God has it. He works all that out for your
good. What am I going to do about this?
What about my plans? If the Lord wills, you make your
plans unto the praise of His glorious name. Well, I want to
be a doctor. How does that work? Why do you
want to be a doctor? To get your bank account full?
You are a blasphemer and a liar and the truth is not in you.
Why do you want that job so you can have all that stuff? What good does it profit a man,
or what does it profit a man to gain the world and forfeit
his soul? Jesus says you cannot love two masters. You must love
one and hate the other. Well, I want my children to have
this and that. Why? Is it wrong to want the
best? Is it wrong to want the things
that you might desire? Is it wrong to go buy a new bicycle
or a new truck or a new pair of shoes? No. But why do you
want it? Why do you want it? Well, if I could just have this
God, I'd be happy. No, praise God in the nothings. If my son could just be this
or my daughter could just be this, no, I'd be glad if they're
homeless for Jesus. Don't prepare them for that.
No, no, you're not taking that scholarship. You're going to
be homeless. Here's your box. Here's your one pair of shoes. And the toothbrush, take care
of them. You only get one set. No, we don't do that. You can strive for things. You
strive for things. You can plan for things, if the Lord wills.
But we must test our motives in them, church. We must test
to see if our thankfulness is in all things or if it's just
in the things that we want. I recently discovered a new phenomenon. Baptist word of faith. What's that mean? That means
there are a group of people who have grabbed hold of the title
of being Baptist, but pushed away all the doctrines of grace
and then embrace the demonic phenomenon of materialistic and
word of faith and health and wealth gospel. God, they say,
has established his kingdom and his providence so that we can
have everything we want. And if we don't have everything
we wanted, then God's a liar or our faith is bad. So which
is it? Nobody's going to say God's a
liar. Well, your cancer, sir, is because you fail to have enough
faith for us to heal you. What about when he's ninety nine
and he dies? It's a blasphemous thing. It's
a heretical thing. The scripture actually teaches
by direct structure and actual example. Every one of the New
Testament Christians suffered greatly. None of them had anything. None of them had a place to live.
None of them survived very long. None of their children grew up.
To be great historical figures. They snatched them away, threw
them to the wolves, threw them to the lions, threw them to the
gladiators, burned them on pyres for centuries. So where's the health and wealth
gospel? Where was Paul's faith? I prayed to the Lord three times
to remove the thorn from my flesh, but he said to me, my grace is
sufficient. Paul had stock. He was a good
person. He exercised his rights. Yeah,
but not in exemption of his faith. I count all the things that I
am and have as nothing for the priceless gain of knowing Christ. It's all rubbish, he says. Garbage. Nothing. And I thank him for
it. We're crushed down, but not destroyed.
perplexed and driven to despair, as in Corinthians chapter 4.
We see the example of the New Testament church, and it was
pressed and driven out of the cities. You know, we are very tolerated
in America. But it won't be long. Are we giving thanks always for
everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus?
And I'm even in the next week's sermon, so let me stop. I guess in closing. The fullness of the question
that needs to be answered in each of our hearts is. Where and on what or whom is
my joy? for my worship will be clearly
in line with that. Is my joy on Christ? Is my church experience an additive,
an obedient, an abundant increase in the joy that comes in Christ
because I come with my siblings in Christ? Is my worship... And friends, no one ever said
that worship meant singing. Worship's not singing, it's singing. Worship's not reading the Bible,
it's reading the Bible. Worship's not hearing a sermon,
it's hearing a sermon. And many people can sing and
read the Bible and hear a sermon and never worship. But if you are a child of God,
you worship in all those things. In everything. You worship when
you put on a pair of socks. A mentor of mine argued with
me. And it's an interesting place when you argue with those people
who developed you spiritually for years. And you come to the
place where you feel that. And you go, oh, everything this
man has ever said to me, I have taken one thousand percent as
absolute. And now he disagrees with me.
What do I do? I test the spirits and I stay
humble. When I said to him, Everything we do as Christians should be
an act of worship. He said, really, can you put
your socks on for the glory of God? And I said, yes, you can.
He goes, that's impossible. And so the next morning I got
up and I put my socks on. Like I do every day, no sleeping
socks, it irritates me, so I always put socks on. Every day. And as I held the socks, I asked
myself this. Am I thankful for these? Do I see this sock as just something
that I tolerate and have to keep up with the pair? That I deserve because I need
socks? Do I see this sock, this one
sock, as a blessing and a gift from a providential God? who
created the very cotton in the field of the soil that he, by
his mouth, brought into being. Praise you, God, for the sock. And I look at the foot and I
say, wow, look at that foot. I'm going to put the sock on
that foot. I can do that. I don't think
about it. It doesn't take me 20 minutes.
I don't have to get my mind straight to think about it. And I go,
that's what I'm doing. And it just happens. Just put
it on. I don't even think about it some days. I'm like, hey,
I don't know, I have my socks on, I'm ready to go. I can do it. Thank you, God,
you've given me the faculties to be able to put on a sock,
to know the common sense, to know that I should wear them,
that I have a foot to put it on, and that it works sometimes. Now, why am I putting on those
socks? Well, maybe my feet are cold. Well, thank you, God, that
you provided warmth in a cold day. Well, maybe I'm going somewhere.
Why am I going and where am I going? What am I going to do? To what
end and to what glory will I give your name? See how, man, you
can sit all day on the edge of your bed and never leave. So though, yes, we might philosophize
and we might theorize about just the idea of giving God glory
and putting on socks, friends, if we can't, we're missing something. And our worship needs to be that
intimate. Something I used to tell my kids
when they were in a private school and I'd let them off and they'd
open the door and I'd say, in everything you do, give glory
to God. I said, when you're studying
and you're getting out of the car, when you're sharpening your pencil,
when you're listening to the teacher, and then I'd say what? They didn't even want to say,
what did I say? And when you what? When you put your socks on, but I'd
also say something else. When you wipe your bottom. Even the most ridiculously private,
grotesque thing, nobody wants to talk about that. Give glory
to God in it. Weird. Oh, yeah, we're weird
around here. Maybe we'll be the new normal.
And everybody else will be weird. That's what I believe. I believe
everybody else. I believe it's weird for people to say they're
Christians and not radically be in love with Jesus. I think it's weird when people
who look at their sin in their lives and say they've been born
again and they say, well, I just can't help myself. I think it's weird. When we say
that we're believers and we're born again, we've changed. We're
new creations. We're not the same old gump trying
to get right. We're not transforming. We've been transformed. We've
been recreated. I find it weird when someone
says they're a new creation in Christ, they have no affection
for his word or his people. I find it weird. Because the
fullness of what we see here, Paul is showing us that we are
to praise his glorious grace. that God has saved us in Christ
for all time to the praise of His glory. So if nothing else,
church, we need to constantly be reminded of that which God
has done in Christ Jesus. The gospel of Jesus Christ is
nothing that you get. It's something that you're always
getting. It is forever active in your life from the time God
saves you forever. So let's test ourselves. Let's
look at ourselves. Let's come to the throne of grace and walk
in love and understand that our strength comes from that which
God is and who he is and worship him for the fullness of all that
he is, because he's worthy of worship. Worthy of worship, I'm reestablishing
some notes for street preaching, I've decided I'm going to get
back out on the street. So there is there is there's
several things that are always there. And it always starts with
the worthiness of God to be worshipped and obeyed. Always starts there.
Always starts there. Church, it would do us good to
street preach to our own hearts and to each other every day that
message. God is worthy of your obedience
and of your honor. Stop coming to God as though
you deserve to stand before him. Bow down and he will pick you
up. Bow down. And He will pick you
up. Let's close with this. 145.14, the Lord upholds all
who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down. The eyes
of all look to you and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand. You satisfy
the desire of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all
His ways and kind in all His works. The Lord is near to all
who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth. He fulfills
the desire of those who fear Him. He also hears their cry
and saves them. The Lord preserves all who love
Him, but all the wicked He will destroy. My mouth will speak
the praise of the Lord and let all flesh bless His holy name
forever and ever. Let's pray. Lord, just as we read that psalm
and looked at it for the last 45 minutes or so, Father, the
very next one, it says, Do not put our trust in the princes
of men. Put our trust in You and Your
Son. Lord, put our satisfaction in You. Thank You for placing
in us a new heart, for coming into our dead, dry, decaying,
dried up, marrowed lives, and for giving us life and blood
and energy and electricity. and for putting flesh on those
dead bones and marrow running through and everything that you've
done to restore us when we were just decayed corpses of corpses. Thank you for that. Thank you for snatching us out
of the dark, broken, blind, deceived, dead place. And for bringing
us into the light of your Son. Thank you for that. Thank you
for building a people for your own glory by the power of your
grace that we might worship together and love you together and unify
for the sake of proclaiming your great mercies to every living
thing as we grow intimately inward and upward and go outward for
the gospel. Teach us to learn and to live
and to love as Christ teaches. and empowers us to do that which
was from the beginning, that which we have seen and heard
with our ears and touch with our hands. Father, you proclaim to us through
the apostles, let us proclaim it to the world and to one another,
singing songs and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody in our heart
to the Lord God with thanksgiving in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ. And it is in His name that we pray and in His power
that we stand. Amen and amen and amen.