Relational Worship or Religious Ways

If you have your Bible, open to Psalm chapter 50, and I know a lot of you bring your phones on Sunday morning, and I hope you use our outlines that we prepare because our outlines always have the major point of the scripture that we're studying, and it also gives you even more scriptures that you can study to strengthen the message that God speak into our heart. But today I want to talk about the fact that have you noticed that there are many different people who bring many interpretations to the Bible? And some of that is good because as long as it's God's doctrine that we don't mess with, we can all bring a little more understanding and perspective that helps us to serve God better. But the Bible also says in 1 Timothy 4, verse 1 that in the last days there would be doctrines of devils. And what that means is the devil has this way of sneaking in and he distorts God's Word and he deceives people and he damages lives and he hurts people because we're not able to live God's truth the way that we should. And in Matthew 15, the Pharisees challenged Jesus one day, and they challenged Him because He wasn't following the interpretation of Scripture that they thought He should. And Jesus wouldn't follow it because that interpretation of Scripture was distorting God's presence and it was distorting the way God wanted to relate to people. But after the Pharisees challenged Jesus, He challenged Him back and He said this to them, Why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? And Jesus is talking about the fact that religious habits can develop in our heart then they're not really based on God's truth. They're just based on tradition that's been handed to us in life. And you may say, well, Pastor, why do people follow tradition like that? Well, for some people, they just want to please people in their life more than They want to please God, so this poor theology and poor tradition gets handed down through their families. For other people, honestly, they want to live with a heart that's far from God. They don't want God to make these demands on them because they want to do their own thing. And pretty soon their religion has more tradition associated with it than it's really acting upon the truth of God. And Jesus knew that's a dangerous thing, and here's why. Jesus said in verse 6, you nullify the Word of God for the sake of your tradition. In other words, if you obeyed the truth, you would be blessed by the truth, but you're actually negating the power of the Word of God because of your tradition. And then Jesus said, you're actually hypocrites. And Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, that these people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain. In other words, their worship is really worthless because their teachings are just human rules. Now when Jesus called them a hypocrite, I don't think it was quite as offensive as maybe we would hear that word today, because it could also be interpreted that you're a pretender when it comes to worship or you're an actor whenever it comes to your worship. It was very common in their day at their place for one performer to play many different parts and he would hold up a mask depending on the part that he or she was playing in that play. So think of it this way this morning. Let's just say that I was going to bring you a message and I was going to be very fatherly and very wise and I would hold up a Pastor Larry mask so you would know this was really Pastor Larry I'm acting like this morning, not Pastor Jim. Or pretend I started talking really, really fast and I sounded like I was from New York. How many of you know you would know it was Dr. Chris who was talking to you, not Pastor Jim. Or let's just pretend I moved so fast that the cameras couldn't keep up with me. How many of you know that would be Pastor Tony who was talking to you this morning, not Pastor Jim? And Jesus was simply saying to them, you're not being who God has called you to be. because who you're called to be is a much loved child of God, who because of how you honor the Father, He is blessing your future more than you ever dreamed your future could be blessed. That's the point of the Psalm we're going to study today. God wants us to know The dishonor for His ways is going to cause us to miss a lot of blessing in our life. But honor for God's ways puts us on His pathway of blessing. And so I'm going to read the last verse of this Psalm, and then we're going to come back, and it's going to teach us how to experience what this last verse says. God wants every person to experience. Psalm 50 says, Those who sacrifice thank offerings honor me, and to the blameless I will show myself Now, notice it's not to the perfect because none of us are ever going to be as perfect as Jesus was. And the truth is we're all going to be praying, God, forgive me of sins until the day we step into heaven. But there is something God asks, and that is a blamelessness, that when He points out something that's wrong in our life, something that we're deceived about, something that's damaging our life, God wants us to have the honor to say, yes, sir, want to follow You and I want to reflect Your goodness in my future. And that's what this Psalm is going to help us to do. The word thank offering is the Hebrew word todah. And it means to extend our hands in gratitude to God. So if we do what this Psalm calls us to do, this is what should happen in our life personally. We should extend our arms to God. And our testimony should be, God, I was so addicted before I came to you. God, I was dysfunctional before I came to you. God, even what I was raised in was so much less than you were capable of bringing into my life And here's what God's after. Ephesians 6 says this. It says when we honor God, it's the first commandment with a promise. It's going to go well for us. We're going to live long in the earth and people are going to see the goodness of God because of how we obey Him. How many of you think that's an invitation that's worth taking for every single one of us, right? And that's what Psalm 50 is calling us to. It's teaching us what moves our heart from a place of religion to a place of real worship. And it starts by God giving us a summons. And a summons is a formal court order that requires us to appear. recently got a summons. I was told that I had to show up at the end of July and I had to be in the courtroom because I was potentially going to be the member of a grand jury. You say, what did you do with that summons? I prayed, Lord, please let me not be selected in the name of Jesus. No, I'm just kidding you. What I did was I showed up and they didn't select me, so I will admit I was kind of happy. But when I got home, I got curious. I thought, what would have happened if I wanted to showed up for that summons, and you know what I learned? The judge would have fined me $100 to $1,000 if I didn't show up, or the judge could throw me in jail. Now, why does the judge have the power to do that? Well, Jesus, or God tells us in the first verse why He has the power to summons every single one of us. He starts in verse one by saying, The mighty one, God. The Lord speaks and He summons the earth from the rising of the sun to where it sets. So God summons everybody. Why? Because when it says He's the mighty one, it's the Hebrew word El. And El means the Almighty, the powerful God. God says, listen, I created the universe. And since I created the universe, unless you have the power to create another one of these things called the universe, then I have the power to call you in and I to talk to you as your father. Think about this. What if the person who created my iPhone saw me using my iPhone and he said to me, Jim, I want to show you how to use this better. I would be happy because my seven-year-old granddaughter can show me how to use my iPhone better. But some people with their lives say, no, God, I got this. I know what I want. And what happens is when we say no to the designer, I want to do what I want to do, we end up diminishing the designer's plan for our life. So God says that I am El, I'm the one who created everything. And then when He says, I'm God, He says, I'm your creator and your judge. And of course, if the boss called us into the office, we have to go, right? Because He's the boss. Or we could go get another job if we don't want to come in. But if you don't want to say yes to God, where are you going to go? Because God owns everything. And so God starts with a courtroom scene when He talks about getting of the wrong things in our hearts that are keeping us from blessing. And then I love this last part. He says, I'm the mighty one, God, the Lord. And the Hebrew word for the Lord is I'm the covenant keeping one. In other words, I want to love you better than you've ever been loved. I want to lead you places you could never go without me helping you, but I need you to respond to my summons if that's going to happen. So God wants us to understand that when He issues a summons, He's not asking us for an appointment. God's reminding us that He needs to be an authority in our life. And he says in verse two, from Zion, which is perfect in beauty, God wants to shine forth. In other words, Zion represents the presence of God. And God says if you'll show up and let my authority accomplish what it's capable of in your life, I'm gonna shine through your life. But you know what, you're gonna shine too because of what I accomplish in your life. And then he says it again in verse four, it says he summons the heavens above the earth that He may judge His people. And He says, Gather to me the consecrated people who made a covenant with me by sacrifice. Now this is interesting because God is going to be talking to people who say they're consecrated, who say that they're sacrificing things for God, but He's going to say, Your sacrifice is incomplete, so I can't do all the things that I want to do in your life because I love you so much. And so the second thing that God does after He summons us is God addresses this whole issue of sacrifice. And it's interesting because God says in verse seven, He says, Listen, my people, and I'll speak. I'll testify against you, Israel, that I'm your God. I'm your God. And again, the word God is the one, which means He's our judge. He's the one who summoned us into His presence. And he says to us, I bring no charges against you concerning your sacrifices or concerning your burnt offerings, which are ever before me. In other words, God says, You're coming to church. You're even bringing your offering that I ask you to bring to church. And I want you to know that's not what I'm thinking about. I'm not thinking about whether you consecrate yourself to come to church regular on a Sunday to honor the Sabbath. I'm not thinking about whether you bring an offering whenever you come to church. And all of us know that we have to do those things to supply for God's house. Can you say amen? But here's God's point, and that is He doesn't ask us to come and do those things just to supply for His house. He calls us to do those things so He can shape us as a son or a daughter into a person that God blesses. And so God says, I call you to consecrate yourself. I call you to sacrifice. What do we sacrifice? Well, we sacrifice our thoughts for his better thoughts that can bless our life more. We sacrifice what we think would make us happy so that God's leadership can have full effect in our heart and we can truly be happy because of what God does. We sacrifice what we think about life and we say, God, you're the creator, judge my heart God, I know you can make my life so much better than I could ever make my life. But how many of you ever heard the story about the chicken and the pig? And they had a wonderful farmer who took care of them. He generously fed them every single day. He built a beautiful barn to protect them and to keep the crazy creatures that could harm them away. And one morning it was the farmer's birthday and the chicken got up first because he likes making noise whenever it's dawn, right? And then the chicken said to the pig who kind of slowly got up, he said, listen, let's do something special. Mr. Farmer today because Mr. Farmer is such a special man. He said, Let's give him the best ham and egg breakfast he's ever had in his life. And the pig looked at the chicken and he said, Hold it a minute. For you, that's an offering. For me, it's a total sacrifice, right? And God's talking about us coming to Him and saying, God, I want to live for you more than I want to live for myself. Help me be everything you created me to do. And that's what Paul says God asks us for in Romans chapter 12, verse one. What does Paul say? He said, Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy. In other words, if Jesus died on a cross for you and if He loved you that much, if God the Father loved you enough to send Him to the cross for you, Do you really think you can produce a better life loving yourself than loving God with all your heart? The answer is no. But even people who come to church because they understand that to some degree, Paul continues, he said, In view of God's mercy, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. You know, your body carries a sin nature. It's why you have wrong thoughts. It's why you have wrong desires. And God says, going to have to sacrifice that. And I want you to know this is your true and this is your proper worship. And I put some scriptures on your outline I hope you'll look at later because they talk about what God promises as our Father to a person who lives with a fully surrendered heart. Deuteronomy 28, verse 1 and 2, He says, If you'll fully obey Me, And if you'll carefully follow all my commands I give you today, all my blessings are gonna come on you and they're gonna accompany you if you fully obey me. Listen to what Jesus said in John 15:7 before he was crucified. He looked at his disciples and he said, If you remain in me and my words remain in you, you can start asking for whatever you wish and it'll be done unto you. In other words, the God who created everything, including you, the God who encoded desires in your heart, and the God who encoded a will for your life, He says, if you will just trust Me to be your Father, I promise you it will be more fulfilling than anything that you could ever bring forth on your own as a person. And I know some of us here today are saying, Pastor Jim, man, I know God loves me, but the truth is, when I think about my heart, I don't feel that loved by God. I get it. others of you, you look at your circumstances and you think, why isn't God working in my circumstances more? Why don't I see God's love taking care of these things? Well, this verse is helping us. And what's happening is God loves you, but Jesus told the disciples 2 verses later, after After he said that if you'll remain in me and my words remain in you, you're gonna start asking for what you wish and it'll be done to you. Jesus said these words just two verses later. He says, as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you, so remain in my love. Don't let your thoughts and desires and emotions pull you from the love of God. And then he said, if you keep my commands, you will remain in my love. just as I've kept my Father's commands and I remain in His love. And I've told you this so that your joy may be complete. And I've told you this so my joy can be on the inside of you. If you want to know how to be loved by God, I'll tell you how to live loved by God. Start doing what He asks of you, and one day you'll look up and you'll say, my goodness, I can't believe that God can make my life more like it is in heaven. I've been through so much hell, but when I obeyed you, God, you began to turn the influence of hell into the blessing of heaven in my life. But the pathway is God summons us. He doesn't ask us. He tells us, are you going to let me be Lord of your life or not? And then God goes the second step and he says, will you sacrifice? Will you truly let me be the Lord of your life? And then there's a third step, and that is God asks for our submission. Now this is where it gets really juicy, y'all, so put your seatbelts on, okay? It says that God says to the wicked person, and you're saying, hold it a minute, you talked about gather the consecrated, gather those willing to sacrifice, and now you're saying, I wanna talk to the wicked people. Why is that? Because we as church people, we're not perfect, are we? Then God says to the wicked person, I say to you, what right? Do you have to recite my laws or take my covenant on your lips? You hate my instruction and you cast my words behind you. When you see a thief, you join with them. You throw in your lot with adulterers. You use your mouth for what's evil and you harness your tongue for deceit. Now this is what's so interesting to me, and that is when God starts accusing people of wickedness, notice He didn't say you're committing adultery or you're committing this sin, you're a thief. He says you are approving, you are complicit in a life where people are committing adultery and they're doing things that are wrong. And you know what, quite frankly, I'll put it in street talk this morning, you don't have the guts to stand up for truth. And God says, I want to talk to you about the fact you don't have the guts to stand up for truth because that makes you complicit in the evil that's going on. And listen, we got a challenge in this culture. And that is, I understand it, Mom and Dad, that society's gotten so secular and our kids are getting tempted on every hand. And we're living in a day where parents are really busy and for some reason we have mistaken being godly for being nice. And God has to heal this if God's going to heal our country right now. So I just declare from my mouth today that the most godly pastors, the most godly parents, the most godly leaders are going to fill up the house of God so he can reverse the curse in this country and God can restore blessing again. See, God starts with the big rocks and He doesn't talk about whether you're doing it. He talks about whether you're approving of it so that it has power that's generated in our society. And then He says, and if people are committing adultery and if people are stealing, then they're going to do some other things. They're going to be deceitful with their tongues. They're going to testify against brother and sister. They'll slander their own mother's son. And now listen to this. God said, when you did these things and I kept silent, you thought I was like you, but now I arraign you and I set my accusations before you. So here's what God's saying as a father, and just know this, that the Bible talks about if God's going to bless us, we have to learn how to receive the kindness and the sternness of God. If you respond wrong every time somebody's stern with you, you're probably not going to live with Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior of your life. And the truth is, as a pastor, God told me what my job is. He said, teach the truth. And then he said, if the church doesn't obey the truth, you gotta correct them. You gotta say, hey guys, this isn't me talking, this is God. We gotta obey this, right? And then he says, if they don't receive correction, you gotta rebuke people. And God said, you have to do that with all authority. And then he said, encourage everybody and make sure you love them a whole bunch 'cause you start doing that, they get real mad at you, right? And so as a pastor, I want you to know I love you enough that I want you to receive the work of the Father in your life. And can I tell you, I've pastored for a long time and I've seen people who chose to gratify their flesh over honor God. And can I tell you, I've seen people distort the gospel I've seen people take forgiveness and they would use it so that they could distort and live any kind of wrong lifestyle because God's forgiving. And God's forgiving, but it doesn't mean He endorses your wrong lifestyle. You'll end up paying for that. I've seen people who, listen, they just, disobedience becomes a way of life. And here is where we miss it, guys. God will love you no matter what you do. But we hurt ourselves and we hurt others when we mistake God's love and patience, and we think it means that God's given us permission. And in this Psalm, God's saying, I don't give you permission. I'm just loving and I'm patient. And he said, here's what I want for you, because I'm a father who loves you so much. I want you to know I'm summonsing you. that all of the earth is called to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. It was such a miraculous event that was prophesied, supernaturally brought to pass. His life is amazing. There's no way to discount or to discredit what Jesus Christ accomplished when He was on this earth. And God says, The reason I sent my Son, I'm summonsing you, and I want you to sacrifice the pleasures of sin, and I want you to submit to me And I'll make you a promise. If you do that, you'll experience salvation in your life. That's the last verse. Those who sacrifice thank offerings. Everybody say those who. That means no matter what I've ever done, I should be encouraged this morning that God wants to love me like his own son or daughter. God wants to bless me. God loved me so much that if I was the only person in the whole world, God would have sent Jesus Christ. How many of you know it's fitting for us to praise God every Sunday morning and to give God the biggest hand clap in this auditorium because God's love is amazing, right? And he says, if you'll offer thank offerings to me, if you'll extend your hands in gratitude for my guidance and my instruction in your life, He said, I promise you to the blameless, to those who don't make excuses for their own immoral, ungodly lifestyle, He said, I'll show you my salvation. I'll show you how much I can bless your life. As I was preparing this message, I thought back to the 70s and the 80s when God sent us a revival that He's getting ready to send to a whole new generation. And I thought about how we saw, man, we saw potheads become amazing preachers of the gospel, like Greg Laurie, right? We saw people who were so self-serving, they thought the world should bow down to them. And they said, no, not me. The whole world needs to bow down to Christ. And I went back to those 1970 worship services I was in. Yes, I had the long hair on my, you know, I wasn't quite Michael Graff, but Jim Graff had a lot longer hair and I had hair all over my ears. And yes, I wore the bell bottoms and almost tripped on them. I mean, I was all in in the 70s. And I can think about those services whenever we would worship. And I've been singing some of those songs to prepare me for this new era of consecration and blessing that God's calling us to. And I thought I'd bring one of them to you to close this message this morning. This was a Wayne Watson song that we sung. Where the people of God, we're called by His name. We're called from the dark and we're delivered from shame. We're one holy race, saints everyone, because of the blood of Christ Jesus the Son. Oh, we would sing that and we would have so much shame The things we were doing in the 70s, there was so much shame whenever we sung that. And I would have sung it for you this morning, but I wanted you to stay till the end of the service. So I thought I'd just read it, okay? But there's two kinds of people I'm concerned about this morning. Number one, I'm concerned about the stubborn. If you think that you can just live your life however you want to live and it's not going to matter, One day you're gonna take your last breath and you know what? Life on earth is gonna turn into life and eternity. And I just want you to admit in your heart today, eternity's too long to be wrong. Give your heart to Jesus. He'll make earth better and he'll make eternity amazing, amen? The other people that I wanna talk to are people who need to crawl out beyond your shame because some people are stubborn, some people you're underneath your shame. And I want you to know this pastor grew up going with my dad and being around people in bars. And this pastor grew up in locker rooms and I grew up with people who had a lot of issues and they had a lot of problems in their life. And that's why I'm so strong at Faith Family Church about saying this place will never be here to see through people. We're gonna see people through past drug addiction, past immorality, past the things that the enemy's doing to destroy lives. but nobody can do it for you. You have to say today, I'm a person of God. I'm called by His name. I'm called out of the dark. I'm done with darkness, and I'm delivered from shame. One holy race, saints everyone, because of the blood of Christ Jesus, God's Son. Are you grateful that God summons you so He can save your life, church family? I wanna pray for you. God, thank you for these wonderful people who came to hear your word today. Thank you as we get started on a brand new school year, God, that everything you do, the kind things you do, the stern things you do, the encouraging messages we hear, the challenging messages that we hear. God, we know that all of them are only for one purpose. And that is, God, you love us so much and you want to bless us so much. God, we thank you for inspiring your word so we don't live in religious tradition that robs us of what we need most in life. But Jesus, we want to be worthy worshipers who show your worth. And we thank you for your word today. In Jesus' name, amen.