Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] I want to do something different today. I want to first of all unpack what I would call the wisdom of this age and then describe how the church in general has adopted the wisdom of this age.
[00:00:20] And then we'll look at our passage, First Corinthians, chapter 2, verses 1 through 5, and then talk about how we apply the wisdom of God, not the wisdom of this age, to our life. How do we live with Christ central in light of the Gospel?
[00:00:38] And so, first of all, what is the wisdom of this age?
[00:00:42] Well, in the early 2000, sociologists did a study trying to figure out what was the prevailing spirituality of 18 to 20 year olds.
[00:00:54] What do they believe about God?
[00:00:56] What is their religion?
[00:00:59] And it led to a term called moralistic therapeutic deism. It's a very rigid, strange term.
[00:01:10] But. And many of you are familiar with this, but all of us are affected by it.
[00:01:16] And it is the belief that God exists, there is a God, Most believe there is a God.
[00:01:26] But what, what or who is this God and what does he want from us?
[00:01:32] Well, he wants us to be nice most of all. That's the way it was described during that time, 18 to 20 year olds, early 2000s, God does exist, and he wants us to be nice, he wants us to be moral people, and he also wants us to be happy.
[00:01:52] And so you see the moralistic therapeutic God wants us to be good and he wants us to be happy.
[00:02:00] And God's not necessarily involved in everything we do, not in the dailiness of life, but only when we need him.
[00:02:10] He's kind of that genie in a bottle when you need him, you pray to him, you go to church, you call out to him when you're in need, when you're struggling.
[00:02:23] And in the end, good people go to heaven.
[00:02:27] Just kind of the basic beliefs, most of these beliefs are held by millennials, those who are maybe 30 to 45 right now. This is what you believed and what you were raised upon, and this is what defines your spirituality.
[00:02:48] But this view of God kind of has percolated for about 20 years in American culture.
[00:02:56] And predominantly in American culture, there is the idolization of self.
[00:03:02] So if you take this view of God, that he's nice, wants us to be nice, wants us to be happy, and you combine it with self worship, you come up with the wisdom of this age, which is the self is sacred above everything else, what should be center is the self. You, God thinks you are sacred, and God wants you to be good and happy.
[00:03:36] And what this means is that you determine what is right. If you're good, then you're able to determine what is right. How do you do that? By what you want.
[00:03:50] What you want is right and you deserve it because you are sacred to yourself and to God.
[00:04:02] And so the wisdom of this age culminates in the law of being true to yourself.
[00:04:12] What is the law of this religion?
[00:04:14] Always follow your heart. Be true to yourself. Accept yourself.
[00:04:20] This is the wisdom of the age.
[00:04:23] This is predominantly how most people live their life.
[00:04:29] This is what we are inundated with daily.
[00:04:33] The voices that we see, social media, our entertainment, those who are trying to even help us, therapists, counselors.
[00:04:44] This is from where they approach their advice or what their message they're trying to get across.
[00:04:52] And if the self is sacred, sin is to shame the self, not offending God.
[00:05:02] But it is sin to question, shame or hurt yourself.
[00:05:07] Self esteem.
[00:05:10] And so what happens? Instead of calling rebellion sin, we see that it is conflated with all kinds of therapeutic terms.
[00:05:22] Sin is more your personality. It's a disorder, it's a sickness. And that's not to say that those things can't be true about you, but your sin can't be called those things.
[00:05:35] But in current culture, this idolization of self, this understanding of God, that's what we do.
[00:05:44] I don't sin because I am sacred.
[00:05:49] I don't rebel because I am good.
[00:05:54] And so instead of repentance, what we do is we call people to recognize their self worth, kind of justify sin and rebellion.
[00:06:07] There's no repentance.
[00:06:09] Now. Where this begins to affect others is really detrimental because some of you are listening, that you go, okay, so what's the big deal at this point?
[00:06:20] It's when you begin to move beyond yourself to others.
[00:06:24] Because if self is sacred and God affirms everything about self, then what about others in my life?
[00:06:33] Well, others must accept you the way you are, no matter what the reality is. Everyone lives in the story or the movie of their own life. They are the hero, they are the star.
[00:06:52] And what happens in movies and stories like that, it doesn't matter what the hero or star does. He wins in the end, she wins in the end.
[00:07:04] And that's the way you are to live your life. And so it doesn't matter, right or wrong doesn't matter toward others at any cost. You are the star and you are the winner, and you are to win.
[00:07:16] Everyone else is just props in your world. And you understand how you can't relate to others that way. You can't get along with others that way.
[00:07:26] You become narcissistic isolated, Everything's about you.
[00:07:32] And you never blame yourself.
[00:07:35] Even when you hurt people, it's not your fault.
[00:07:39] You are a victim of something that has happened to you in your past. It's not your fault.
[00:07:46] And others have to accept that too.
[00:07:49] Even when you sin grievously against them, it's not your fault.
[00:07:57] And guilt then is toxic. You hear that anyone or anything that makes you feel guilty condemns you even of sin, real sin.
[00:08:12] They're to be removed from your life. And so you hear a lot of conversation about barriers and those things.
[00:08:20] And religion, in light of this view of God, view of self is only useful if it works for you.
[00:08:30] If it doesn't work for you, it's not true.
[00:08:34] Whether it's the counseling, the discipleship, you see a lot of people, they engage in things, it doesn't work. Okay, that's not true.
[00:08:46] That doesn't work for me.
[00:08:48] And these are the prevailing notions when it comes to parenting counseling.
[00:08:56] And it's very prevalent in women's ministry.
[00:09:00] A lot of books are being written from these viewpoints in women's ministry, self empowerment, especially women who've gone through very difficult things and who legitimately are victims.
[00:09:19] This is the counsel they get. Look to yourself, protect yourself.
[00:09:26] But it can be dangerous. And we must be aware of this as Christians trying to flesh out the wisdom of God, we must be aware of the wisdom of this age.
[00:09:38] And what's tragic is churches are simply baptizing the wisdom of this age with religious jargon.
[00:09:48] You are to believe in a God who believes in you.
[00:09:52] God is your butler to get you what you want.
[00:09:58] God is simply your therapist to make you feel the way that you want.
[00:10:04] And you come before God evaluating him based on self. And so what does that mean?
[00:10:10] God's goodness is defined by what makes you happy.
[00:10:16] God is only good when you are getting what you want.
[00:10:20] God is only good when you feel the way that you want to feel.
[00:10:26] And you are the authority evaluating God.
[00:10:30] And this is the message in many churches.
[00:10:35] This is the message that many Christians are even wanting to hear.
[00:10:40] They're being discipled in this way throughout the week.
[00:10:47] I'm central. So I show up at church, make me central, tell me what I want to hear, make me happy.
[00:10:57] And the cross becomes a symbol of love and healing and acceptance. And you will never hear any talk of the cross, Jesus on the cross as a substitute for sin.
[00:11:11] Let me give you that test.
[00:11:14] When you hear songs, when you hear preachers, teachers dive deep and ask, what do they believe about the cross. Is Jesus a substitute for sin or is the cross just a symbol of love and acceptance?
[00:11:33] God loves me and accepts me and the cross is just kind of a logo of that, not Jesus dying for my sin. And so you'll see a lot of worship is very individualized, generically talking about God's love.
[00:11:51] I'm not going to give you illustrations because you know the songs I'm talking about. But God's love is a fill in the blank.
[00:11:58] All these glorious things, even in creation.
[00:12:02] But the cross is missing.
[00:12:05] Start evaluating those songs about God's love and look for the cross. Redemption, blood.
[00:12:12] No, God is God is just absolutely in love with you for no reason.
[00:12:17] There's no reason to believe that he just loves you to death.
[00:12:22] He does died on the cross for you.
[00:12:25] That's what makes God's love meaningful.
[00:12:29] Not just the beautiful scenery all around us.
[00:12:35] And pastors begin to mimic the self help life coaches and you'll see sermon series that are about a better you self care.
[00:12:45] They tack on Bible verses.
[00:12:49] The church is adopting the wisdom of this age and this is nothing new.
[00:12:57] Conflating the wisdom of this age with spirituality of the church is nothing new. It was happening in Corinth.
[00:13:06] Corinth was a place that prized oratory skill and philosophical wisdom.
[00:13:13] And this meant the truth of someone's message was evaluated by the presentation of the message.
[00:13:23] So if someone was teaching, a philosopher or even someone in the church was teaching on the meaning of life, they were only to be believed if they gave a good presentation.
[00:13:38] That was how truth was being evaluated.
[00:13:42] Eloquence, the wisdom of men and being able to display a good argument and what Paul would say is okay.
[00:13:53] But to make the gospel more acceptable, you got to take some things out because the cross is gory.
[00:14:05] A crucified messiah doesn't fit well with eloquence and men's wisdom because what men believe is you got to be strong and powerful and only the prestigious win at life.
[00:14:24] And so you can't go around talking about a crucified messiah.
[00:14:28] Messiah, God's king who rules forever dies. That makes no sense.
[00:14:36] The philosophers of the day said you got to take the cross out if people are going to listen to you.
[00:14:41] And many people did in the church.
[00:14:44] You can't be talking about this backwoods Nazarene claiming to be God.
[00:14:50] And so messages were crossless.
[00:14:54] The religion was more couth.
[00:14:56] And what developed in the church was a celebrity Christianity where speakers received credentials based on their messages and their appearance. And they began to manipulate the hearers for support.
[00:15:12] I need to live.
[00:15:14] So I got to give good messages.
[00:15:17] And what happened was a health and wealth gospel.
[00:15:21] Preachers were telling people what they wanted to hear. They were talking about experiences, visions, and people would give them money.
[00:15:30] And you had a group of speakers that became famous. They were like the influencers of the day with ICU advice.
[00:15:41] And people loved it. And they lapped it up and they gave the money.
[00:15:45] And then Paul comes in. And the reality is Paul was not impressive at all.
[00:15:52] Accounts of Paul appearances was that he was just a short, bald guy.
[00:15:58] Not that there's anything wrong with that, but he wasn't pretty.
[00:16:04] He didn't have a strong stature.
[00:16:07] And the man was beaten a lot. And so he probably walked around hunched over in pain, spent a lot of nights on hard concrete floors in jail cells, limped around. And so who is this weirdo talking about a crucified Messiah?
[00:16:28] That's who Paul was.
[00:16:30] And he says, power and prestige don't fit with crucifixion and no names.
[00:16:37] And this was the Christianity that they rejected.
[00:16:40] They wanted a Christianity of power and prestige. And I just want to say we have to be careful of that.
[00:16:48] So often as Christians, we don't think the gospel works unless the popular people believe it.
[00:16:56] There are people clamoring right now.
[00:16:58] Now, I hope these people believe the gospel. They want Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson to be Christians so bad.
[00:17:04] And I do, too. They need. I want them to be saved.
[00:17:08] But God doesn't need the celebrity to make the gospel. Go to build the kingdom.
[00:17:17] He's been doing just fine doing that for over 2000 years.
[00:17:22] But we want the athletes and the politician and the TV stars to validate our faith, to make Christianity cool. And Paul says, no, no, you can't do that. You got to get to the heart of the message, which is a messiah killed for no bodies.
[00:17:36] And in verse one, this is what Paul came preaching. Notice when I came to you, brothers, I did not come proclaiming. The word means to herald or declare or announce, to preach the gospel. You got to use words.
[00:17:51] It is news. It is a prophetic announcement about Jesus. And he says, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God, meaning the witness of God.
[00:18:01] The Gospel is what God himself says about Jesus. It is his testimony about Jesus.
[00:18:10] It is his witness about Jesus. And God says that Jesus is his son, that in his person the kingdom is at hand.
[00:18:19] And ultimately, through his death on the cross, he has paid for your sins.
[00:18:27] And through his righteous life, when you believed in him, you are credited with perfection. And you can stand before God. And when you believe in him, you have the hope of being raised from the dead. This is the testimony of God about Jesus. But God's testimony centers on Jesus.
[00:18:47] It's not generic.
[00:18:49] And he says, when I came, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God. Notice, with lofty speech or wisdom, with the world's methods or styles, it's okay to want to clearly communicate the gospel and to work hard at it.
[00:19:06] But Paul said, I didn't take the world style or the world's wisdom of power and prestige and try to come up with a message that would be palatable to you. No, I preached the cross straightforward because the cross is God's testimony. I wasn't going to take away the scandal.
[00:19:27] What is the scandal of the cross?
[00:19:30] God himself on a Roman instrument of torture.
[00:19:35] You can't pretty that up.
[00:19:38] You can't make that more palatable. What God does that, that is vile and disgusting and humiliating.
[00:19:46] That doesn't call you to power, prestige, self esteem. No, it's the very opposite of all of those things.
[00:20:00] Paul said. I preached it straightforward.
[00:20:03] And notice verse 2. I decided to know nothing among you except Christ, Jesus Christ and him crucified. Jesus Christ, God's savior, King crucified.
[00:20:14] It is a scandal. Those words are so oxymoronic.
[00:20:19] Jesus Christ crucified doesn't make sense.
[00:20:28] It would be saying something like a godly thief.
[00:20:33] They don't go together.
[00:20:35] A crucified messiah.
[00:20:38] Messiahs don't die, Messiahs don't lose.
[00:20:43] This is a king that's a loser.
[00:20:46] And Paul says, that's what I preach because that's God's testimony.
[00:20:50] Paul was willing to be seen as simple and unimpressive. So God's wisdom in Christ would take center stage. He would say, who cares if you think I'm a dumb babbler, a backwoods philosopher? Who cares?
[00:21:05] He preached the gospel. He rejected the tendency to be cool and edgy.
[00:21:10] And too often in church, that's what we can do.
[00:21:14] I need to be cool and edgy so people like Jesus more.
[00:21:22] And before long, there's no Jesus to like.
[00:21:26] It's just the stuff Paul says. No, we can't lose Christ and him crucified. He chose what we're talking about to make Jesus central through the preaching of the gospel. And in verse three, he says, I was with you in weakness and fear and trembling, and my speech and my message were not with plausible words of wisdom.
[00:21:46] Paul had been arrested in Philippi as we studied first and second Thessalonians, he was chased out of Thessalonica. He got to the areopagus in Acts 17 and was just humiliated as a backwoods idiot talking about the resurrection. And he says, by the time I met you guys, I had nothing impressive to give.
[00:22:08] I was worn out, I was tired, I was weak, I was scared. I'd been in and out of prison.
[00:22:18] What's going to happen here when I preach the gospel?
[00:22:22] And so even with trembling, nothing impressive.
[00:22:27] I just preach Christ in him, crucified.
[00:22:31] Nancy Poynter used to tell me, you preach better when you're sick.
[00:22:40] I hope you get sick more often.
[00:22:45] I'm not kidding. She said those words.
[00:22:49] But Paul is saying, I was so weak, I had nothing to depend on but the gospel. That's all I had.
[00:22:55] Couldn't have been about my power, my eloquence.
[00:22:58] And what we see here is there's a difference in manipulation and conviction.
[00:23:04] You should preach the gospel with conviction, but you shouldn't preach the gospel just to. In a way that manipulates emotion. And there's nothing there.
[00:23:12] I get people to agree or respond, but there's nothing there. What are they responding to?
[00:23:19] The appearance, the words, in a moment.
[00:23:24] But Paul says no, this was a notice. The text continues. A demonstration of the Spirit and power so that your faith may not rest in the wisdom of men, but the power of God.
[00:23:33] It is a display of the Spirit and power. I was so weak and I had nothing else to say but Christ and him crucified. And the Spirit used it.
[00:23:42] That is what the Spirit uses.
[00:23:45] And he says, so that your faith would not rest in the wisdom of men, but the power of God. God who uses weakness to preach a foolish message.
[00:23:54] God uses weak nobodies to preach a message of a dying Messiah.
[00:24:02] And that's what saves sinners who can't save themselves.
[00:24:07] And so notice that Paul's reason for preaching Christ there too, for the Spirit's power and for genuine faith.
[00:24:17] So we preach Christ because we trust in the Spirit, the Spirit, to use the gospel message.
[00:24:27] So we make Christ central through the gospel, because we want the Spirit to move.
[00:24:33] That's what the Spirit uses, is the message of Christ through the gospel, as the only way to God through the cross and his righteousness and resurrection. That's where you see the Spirit's power.
[00:24:45] The Spirit of God's role in human history is to point to Jesus from beginning to end.
[00:24:53] It's not as though you have the Father and Son and they love each other so much and they have this Wonderful plan over here. And the Spirit's just off to the side saying, what about me?
[00:25:05] No, the Spirit points to Jesus and is the display of God's love for Jesus. That's what the Spirit does, is the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That's how they work together.
[00:25:22] The Father loves the Son, the Son obeys God, and the Spirit points to the Son who is obeying the Father.
[00:25:29] And the Spirit is the testimony of the Father's love for the Son. And so he always highlights the Son. And so if you want the Spirit's power in the church, it's not through cool, edgy, emotional manipulation. It's through Christ in him crucified. That's what the Spirit does. The Spirit says, look to Jesus. Look to Jesus, look to Jesus. And so to the extent you're saying, look to me, you're working against the Spirit.
[00:25:57] No, look to Jesus, because I want the Spirit to move. And he also wanted their faith to be in the power of God. And so you see the messenger and recipient.
[00:26:09] You make Christ central because you want the power of the Spirit. You also make Christ central because you don't want your hearers to believe in anything else but Christ.
[00:26:18] You don't want people walking away from the message going, that was a great sermon.
[00:26:26] You want them walking away going, we have a great Savior.
[00:26:32] That's what you want. That's what we want here every Sunday.
[00:26:37] Not, how great are we, how great is our God in Christ.
[00:26:45] And that is the work of the Spirit. When you proclaim Christ.
[00:26:51] And so if you're here today and notice those two things, I want the power of the Spirit.
[00:26:56] I want my faith to be genuine. So if you're here today and you say, I want to genuinely, by faith, live according to the power of the Spirit, how would you do that?
[00:27:11] Well, you have to make Christ central.
[00:27:13] If the power of the Spirit was made available by making Christ and him crucified central in Paul's ministry, then the power of the Spirit is going to be available in your life. To the extent you make Christ central, you get that through the gospel. No other way. It is the Gospel that makes Christ central.
[00:27:37] And so if you're here today and you want the power of the Spirit and you want the favor of God in your life, and you want to know what it is to live in relationship with God, you have to start with this. And it's not the wisdom of this age, it is this. You exist for God, not him for you.
[00:27:56] You have to wake up every day understanding that I exist for God.
[00:28:03] Not God. You exist for me. Now, let me tell you how this thing's going to go today.
[00:28:08] No.
[00:28:10] And by the way, the world exists for the supremacy of Christ. So existing for God means you exist for the supremacy of Christ. So every day I exist for the supremacy of Christ, no matter what it means for me. Today, I need Christ to be supreme and you make him central of your life.
[00:28:27] And this means God is good and he is right, and he determines what is right and good for you, not you.
[00:28:33] And so you have to lay those desires on the altar every day and say, God, I don't understand what is right and good.
[00:28:43] So I'm going to take the desires I have and I'm going to place them on the altar. And you can crucify them, you can kill them, you can destroy them. Because I need to know what you want of me, not what I want.
[00:28:56] And then you've got to understand that sin is to personally offend God.
[00:29:04] It's not generic. It's not like a bank account where I sin and, okay, I get a subtraction. It's personal, right?
[00:29:13] God is your creator and he is telling you how to live and what is good for you. Sin is to look him in the eyes and say, no.
[00:29:22] Some of his parents know what that feels like, right?
[00:29:26] Do this. No. Oh, that kind of gets on you, right?
[00:29:31] Think about God, who's holy and righteous, and you're looking him in the eyes saying, no.
[00:29:37] It is to personally offend God and say, I don't want what you want.
[00:29:42] And for that you deserve hell, because that is an infinite offense.
[00:29:49] It is tragic that we are all guilty of that.
[00:29:53] And our only hope is the gospel. This announcement that Christ has been crucified as a substitute.
[00:30:01] God's love isn't generic.
[00:30:03] It is Christ on the cross, enduring justice and wrath that you deserve for telling God no. And he is enduring the penalty for you. He is your substitute.
[00:30:15] That is at the heart of the gospel.
[00:30:17] Don't replace that in any way.
[00:30:20] At the heart of the gospel is Jesus dying for your sin. So you have to say, I'm a sinner who's offended God and Jesus, out of love, has died for my sin. This is your only hope.
[00:30:33] And it's not good advice.
[00:30:38] God's message to you isn't just good advice. Be a better you.
[00:30:42] No, it's good news that Jesus has died for you.
[00:30:47] And there's nothing. Not being nice or being good doesn't get you to heaven. It's done through Christ on the cross. You can be Saved from your sin, that infinite offense. And here's the thing that we don't get.
[00:31:02] There is joy and delight and freedom.
[00:31:08] Confessing that you have offended God and turning from that. Not accepting yourself, but saying no, myself has gotten me into eternal damnation and turning from self to Christ, who is the Son. Why does God do it that way? Because he wants forever Jesus to be exalted, not you, Jesus. And there's delight in you exalting Jesus.
[00:31:35] That is a way to joy, turning from your sin and turning to Christ.
[00:31:40] And so very practically, first of all, if you've never believed in Christ today, maybe that's why every day you feel like you are just running into a brick wall.
[00:31:52] I want to be happy today. And you just bam into that brick wall because you are trusting in yourself and you are looking for something inside you to make you happy and to deal with all of your problems. And it doesn't happen day in, day out. It's not happening.
[00:32:12] Here's where joy begins.
[00:32:14] Turning from self and turning to that wondrous cross where the Prince of glory died, denying self and seeing Christ crucified as yourself and saying, I've already been crucified for my sin in Christ.
[00:32:38] But how do you live that way on a daily basis? How do you live with a joy in that?
[00:32:43] Some of this is going to be a review for us, but I want to challenge you today to make Christ central through the gospel in word, prayer and worship.
[00:32:55] And what that leads to is Christlike obedience.
[00:33:00] Not being nice or good, but Christlike obedience.
[00:33:04] Make Jesus central through reading your Bible in light of the gospel. What this means is every day you immerse your life into the story of the Bible. Understand?
[00:33:14] We say this a lot. I just got to keep saying it. The Bible is a story. Genesis to revelation. It's not a tip book, not instruction manual. It is a story about Jesus. At the center of that story is the cross and Jesus's work. So every story in the Bible is looking to Jesus.
[00:33:33] If there's a problem, we know who eventually fixes it. At gal got Jesus.
[00:33:40] So wherever we are in the Bible, we're looking to Jesus. He is the hero.
[00:33:46] So read your Bible every day as if Jesus is the hero. If there's a promise, he fulfills it. Problem, he fixes it. A command, he obeys it. Wisdom, he lives it out. And so I read these things in the Bible. It's constantly God is saying, this is what I require of you. But then your heart is pulling you to Jesus and you're Kind of looking up, going, I know God and Jesus did it for me. And you're kind of looking to Jesus constantly. That's how you should read your Bible. You know what that does? Just like in the Bible, Jesus fixes the problem. Jesus fulfills the promises. Jesus obeys the command.
[00:34:25] Jesus becomes the hero of your day when you read the Bible that way. Because I'm living my day and there's a problem.
[00:34:34] I'm living my day and I need to believe a promise. I need to trust God.
[00:34:41] I need to follow God in this way and live out wisdom.
[00:34:44] And Jesus becomes the hero of all of that. And then I begin to look to Jesus daily in the grit and grime of life. Jesus is the hero, and I begin to look to him, not myself. That's what that does. Because the more you try to fix it and fulfill all of God's promises, you're going to feel like a failure. No, but you're constantly looking to the hero, who is Jesus, daily. So you got to read your Bible that way, and then you have to pray that way.
[00:35:12] Through word and prayer. Make Christ central.
[00:35:16] For some of us, prayer is just this perfunctory thing that we go through.
[00:35:22] And it's this thing I got to do every day, and I go through the list.
[00:35:26] Some of us are really good at it. We're very disciplined at it.
[00:35:30] But I wonder, do you pray in light of the Gospel in your prayers? We pray to the Father.
[00:35:38] Get that clear?
[00:35:40] But in the act of praying, Jesus has to be central because you can only come to the Father through the work of Christ.
[00:35:48] So the essence of prayer is making Jesus central.
[00:35:54] You can't pray to God as Father. Apart from Christ, you are covered in his blood, and so you are accepted as a son. You are a child of God speaking to your Father. Why? Because of Christ. So you have to remember the Gospel in prayer.
[00:36:08] And then as you engage as a child of God that exalts Christ, that makes much of the gospel. Because I can only be here because of the Gospel.
[00:36:18] And so as you make your desires and your requests and your struggles known, what you are doing, it's not some mystical Santa Claus that's out there that's going to give you whatever you want.
[00:36:33] No, it's your Father who loves you.
[00:36:36] So every prayer request and every desire and every frustration that you offer to God in prayer is in the context of God's love, because it's through Christ. And here's why that's important.
[00:36:50] God loves you more than you can love yourself.
[00:36:55] I wish so many of you, you and me and everybody would believe that and would know that that's better than trying to love ourselves.
[00:37:09] There is self worth, there is self esteem in its proper place.
[00:37:14] But let's just focus on how God loves us first.
[00:37:18] And that's mind blowing.
[00:37:21] And then I began to deal with all of my struggle and all of my sin in the context of God's love.
[00:37:27] Not self love, God's love. And it's so much more powerful because I can endure whatever even when I don't get what I want, even when I'm not as good as I want to be, God loves me. And so we, through the word, Jesus is the hero in prayer, make Christ central.
[00:37:47] You are adopted by the Father through Christ who loves and values you. Pray that way every day and then make Christ central in worship.
[00:37:57] Worship means to declare the worth of something.
[00:38:01] In worship here we want Jesus to be central.
[00:38:05] And so we declare his worth by celebrating the gospel.
[00:38:09] I was just meditating today as we were singing.
[00:38:14] Pastor Clay does such a good job of making sure the gospel is in every single song.
[00:38:21] We don't get in there and just sing about God's love and flowers and oceans. I did it. Hurricanes.
[00:38:29] And it's so reckless in all of this.
[00:38:36] It makes no sense apart from the cross.
[00:38:40] And so we celebrate the gospel.
[00:38:42] We celebrate the gospel and every song we sing about the gospel, why that makes Jesus central and that exalts him and he is supreme and that's good for us. It weans us off ourselves and we do that in worship.
[00:38:58] Worship making Christ central. Celebrating the gospel has to be central to your spiritual growth.
[00:39:08] Because you can't come in here and be self centered.
[00:39:12] A lot of other people in here.
[00:39:15] You can't come in here and just think about yourself.
[00:39:19] You come in here and you first of all think about Christ.
[00:39:23] And what Christ does is say, stop thinking about yourself, think about me.
[00:39:28] And then when you leave, you're not going to think about yourself. You're going to think about all these other people that God has given you to love like Christ loves.
[00:39:37] That's why worship must be central to your spiritual growth. Gathering to confess and praise and thank God for the gospel.
[00:39:45] And what you begin to see is this leads to power in your life.
[00:39:51] The power of your spirit. To the degree that you are making Christ central is the degree that you are living by the power of the spirit, by faith, daily. If you're not making Christ central, then you're living by your own power. And so real quickly, I want you to Think that problem you got, whatever it is, circumstance, frustration, that sin.
[00:40:14] I want to do what God says in this area. I want to love this person, I want to forgive this person, I want to be merciful to this person. I want to share the gospel. I want to give and sacrifice. I want to obey God in this way.
[00:40:27] And maybe you're frustrated. I want you to ask yourself the question. That circumstance, that sin, whatever it is, who is at the center of that issue for you right now?
[00:40:38] Who's at the center of all that? Is it you?
[00:40:44] Is it you? Or is it Christ?
[00:40:46] Because if you put Christ at the center of that issue, everything changes. Because you want Jesus to be exalted, you want Jesus to be supreme.
[00:40:57] And so whatever you have to go through, you can pray. God, this is the desire of my heart that you would take the sin away. God, this is the desire of my heart that you would take this sickness away. God, this is the desire of my heart that this situation would go that way. You should pray to your father that way. He wants to hear the desires of your heart. But when you make Christ central, you can say, God, even if you don't do it the way that I want, I can still be happy.
[00:41:25] I can still be happy.
[00:41:27] It's not about me, it's about Christ.
[00:41:30] And when you're constantly making Jesus central through the gospel, that's the way you begin to think. And you realize that it's not dependent on how you feel, but it's on who God is. And God is good and God is right. And the things that he calls you to do have to be right and good.
[00:41:48] He's not necessarily calling you to be nice and happy, but Christ exalting through the gospel.
[00:41:59] See, the reality is God isn't the therapist meant to grant you every desire and feeling that you want.
[00:42:08] You're going to be disappointed. The reason I say that is not just, oh, we're going to talk big and bad about all the wisdom of the age. And no, I just see too many people who are miserable and they think God is going to make them happy by doing what they want. That's not the way the world works.
[00:42:29] God's much better than that.
[00:42:31] And the people in this room right now who've gone through some stuff would tell you that they've gone through some stuff, some suffering, some very hard and difficult circumstances.
[00:42:43] And they would tell you you don't want some make believe, nice God who just gives you everything you want, makes you feel better. No, you need a sovereign king who is in control and died to save you from your sacred self.
