I. God Is God and You Are Not 00:02

Well, let me tell you, it feels pretty good to be standing up here getting ready to preach again after the past few weeks. For those of you who don’t know, I went through some weird health things. A disc in my neck was pushing on my spinal cord, and I was having difficulty talking. I was on the phone with a friend of mine, and he goes, “Man, have you been drinking?” And I was like, “No, I’m trying to talk clearly.” But my words were slurred. I couldn’t walk very well. My hands wouldn’t do what I wanted them to do. It was really scary for a moment there.

But I will tell you that there is nothing like having a whole church of people, and people around the world, praying for you. The peace of God, as I had people texting me and calling me, was so present in a time where I could have been freaking out, because everywhere I went the doctors were like, “We have no idea what’s happening.” Now, there are two ways you can take that. It’s like, “Well, it’s not one of the big bad things that they thought it was.” But you could also take it like, “They don’t know what it is, and what am I gonna do?”

And I just want you all to know, especially those who were praying: man, God was so faithful during that time. I was trying to explain to Marie Madison the other day, “Yeah, it was hard. It was totally difficult, and I had difficulty focusing. I mean, there were so many things going on. But I had no pain and I had no fear.” God just met me in those places. And so I just started praising God, man. Every day I woke up, no pain, and I just had this peace that God was working things out for his benefit.

So I wanted to share that story, first of all to thank you who prayed, but also to say that no matter what comes into your life, there are always two ways you can experience it. Well, maybe there are infinite ways, but at the very least there are two. There’s one where you try and press into what God has for you in that time. And then there’s one where we try and control the situation, where we try and fix the situation. I could have been my own doctor and gone online and researched everything, and that was definitely a temptation. And I actually told myself, “I’m not gonna look this up,” because I knew that as soon as I started doing that, my own desire to fix myself would kick in, and I would be lost to the anxiety of WebMD and all the other things you can find.

And that brings us neatly to the subject of what we’re talking about today. I’m going to be talking about worship. And worship’s not just about singing praises. It’s not just about taking the Eucharist. We say the Eucharist is our highest form of worship. It’s not just about some of the things that we often associate with it. It’s largely about acknowledging that God is God and you are not. That’s the central premise of what we’re talking about today. God is God and you are not. And that’s what I had to acknowledge in that moment of helplessness. I had to rely on what God was doing in me.

II. Culture Is Like the Ocean 03:03

So as we talk about this, I wanted to use some analogies here, because I kind of came up with this three-part series. God’s been really speaking to me over the past little bit as I haven’t been preaching, and they’re all meant to address one big problem, and that is the culture in which we find ourselves. Now, that’s a word that’s used far too often: the culture. “Our business culture is gonna be this.” “Our church culture is this.” “We gotta fight the culture in America.” But I don’t think we really know what it means very much. So I’m gonna use a couple of examples that might elucidate, might illustrate, what I’m trying to say in this moment.

Culture is like the ocean, which makes a lot of sense to us in San Clemente. We get to see it every day. On my way home I look at the ocean and just thank God for that beautiful view, the vastness of it. But there are a couple of things that we can use as analogies as we talk about this.

A man once thought to ask a fish about water, because wouldn’t a fish give you the most profound answer about water? I mean, nobody knows water better than a fish. So he got the fish and he said, “Hey, what is water?” And he’s waiting; he’s gonna have this big revelatory moment. And the fish goes, “What is water?” A fish doesn’t know what water is. The fish is immersed in water. The last person you should ask about water is a fish. They just live in it. They just exist in it. They don’t see it. They don’t recognize it as something separate. It’s just the place in which they live.

And it’s the same thing with culture. You may not know it, but you are immersed, you are swimming through and living and breathing, the culture that we are surrounded in. And so what I’m hoping is that through this series we can see a couple of the ways in which we might be being pulled in a certain direction by our culture without even realizing it.

In fact, when you get into the ocean, there are a couple of dangers that come with being in the ocean, especially when you’re going out swimming or surfing or boogie boarding. First of all, there are the waves. That’s the first thing you notice. But for those of us who’ve grown up in a beach town, you know the waves are not all that dangerous. The current is what’s really dangerous.

Now, my analogy here is that the waves are kind of like those headlines that we react to in our culture, the ones that really get you going: they’re going to change the curriculum in the public schools, and they’re going to be talking about all these things. And then you see the big headline, the teacher who’s trying to teach her kids the liberal view or the leftist view or the secular view or the atheist view, whatever it is, whatever the splashy headline of the day is. That’s kind of like a wave. And if you’ve ever tried to beat a wave, you know that punching it, tackling it, it just doesn’t work. The headlines are not the problem. They’re a symptom of the problem. They are informative of where the direction of our culture is going. But there are deeper things going on. There’s a current that you’ve got to be aware of in our culture.

And there are a couple of things about currents. Number one, you guys have all had this experience where you’re out in the waves, and you’re playing, and twenty minutes later you look over and you’re fifty yards north or south, depending on where the current’s taking you. All of a sudden you’ve moved. You didn’t do anything different. You didn’t swim in a different direction. But all of a sudden you’ve moved.

And in the same way, if we examine our lives and we think about the values that we have, the ways that we live our life, I think all of us are being pulled downstream by our culture. All of a sudden we’re living our lives in a way that’s more similar to the culture around us than to the church, the kingdom in which we belong. All of a sudden our views on certain topics that were so fast… we’re like, “Well, maybe that’s not so bad. Well, that’s good for them.” All of a sudden everything in our life is getting reoriented around our cultural values and norms. And I think that’s accelerating and happening more than ever, and we need to be more aware of that right now than ever, because the great power of culture is its normalizing effect. What that means is that in our culture things that we know are wrong are normal, and over time our reactions to them become less and less averse to that thing.

Now, the good news is that we actually are not a part of this culture. Or let me say it this way: we’re called to be a part of a better kingdom. We’re called to live in the kingdom of God. And so there are antidotes in the Bible to the culture that we are surrounded by. There are ways that we can live that aren’t about fighting culture but about changing our culture, us here in this room.

The way that you guys in the pews live affects me and my culture, because we’re a community living life together. Did you know that if you hang out with a bunch of drug addicts, it’s going to be really difficult to make good choices, because their culture is going to pull you in their direction? In the same way, the joy of getting to hang out with people like you all is that I can count on the fact that I’m going to be hanging out with people who are going to be pushing me in the right direction and not the wrong direction. That’s why I’ve loved having home group over the past year and a half. I’m spending time with people talking about things that are pointing me, in the middle of my week, back in the right direction. They’re reorienting me in the midst of it. And then I go back out and I’m back in the culture: I’m driving, I’m working, I’m doing my things. And then I get reoriented. It’s always this push and this pull, and it’s God transforming us to be more like him.

III. The Cult of Self 09:36

So today I’m going to talk about one of the greatest antidotes to the pull of our culture, and that is worship. Worship changes you. As we go forward, the next two are going to be about welcome and wonder. But these are the three things that I think we need. We need to be a people of worship, welcome, and wonder as an antidote to the culture that we live in today.

Now, right now the greatest pull of our culture is what I’ve termed (borrowed from some people) the cult of self, the worship of self. And just like any religion, there are some precepts that go into this cult of self, this worship of self. And so I titled these the six commandments of the cult of self.

I’m going to give you a couple of statistics right as we jump into this. Recently they did these surveys of the American people, and these are things that are kind of hints of what’s going on in the undercurrent of all of these things. What they said is that 84 percent of Americans believe that enjoying yourself is the highest goal of life. Eighty-four percent. Further, 86 percent believe that to enjoy yourself you must pursue the things you desire most. And 91 percent affirm this statement: “To find yourself, look within yourself.”

In our day, the Westminster Catechism (you guys have probably heard of it: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever”) has been inverted: the chief end of man is to glorify and enjoy himself forever. That’s what the pull of our culture is towards.

And even if you think, “Well, I know that’s not true,” I want to argue that it’s about more than having a fact in your mind that that’s not true. It’s about the pull that we all experience. In order to stay at one place in the ocean, you actually have to fight the current. You can’t just sit there. It will pull you away; that’s what it does. We actually have to do things to keep ourselves from being pulled into this idea that the chief end of my life is to glorify myself and enjoy myself forever.

IV. Trust Yourself and Follow Your Heart 12:19

Now let’s go through these commandments. I want you all to know the reason why I love preaching on this right now is because I feel the conviction of everything that I’m saying. Every one of these hits me in some place. And so I’m hoping that it resonates with you as we talk about these things.

First: your mind is the source and standard of truth, so no matter what, trust yourself. Hashtag “the answers are within.” You guys know that hashtag actually gets used frequently by these super-wise influencers: “The answers are within.” Well, in Scripture we see, in John 14:6:

6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14.6

So where are the answers? Are they in yourself? I don’t think so. If you think the answers are within yourself, think of the person in your life that you think you’re better than. Let me phrase this a little differently: we all know an idiot. Remember the fact that you are somebody else’s idiot. And think: if that person is looking within themselves, what’s happening in their life? We’re no better than anybody else. We need Jesus. So remember, you’re somebody else’s idiot, and don’t look within yourself. Look to Jesus. We’re not going to be in this cult of self.

Number two: your emotions are authoritative, so never question (or let anyone else question) your feelings. Hashtag “follow your heart.” That’s the key message in much of children’s programming today, let me tell you. And you know what? It’s no better in the adult movies. If you think that you’re gonna get there by following your heart, then remember this verse, Jeremiah 17:

9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? 10 “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” Jer 17.9–10

I don’t know about you, but one of these sounds more true than the other. If I’m honest with myself, I know that the fruit of my deeds shows that when I follow my heart, things go weird, things go wonky, and things go straight-up bad. God himself is the one who wants to test your heart, test your mind, and lead you in the way. Let’s go back: Jesus is the way, not the way your heart is pointing.

V. Live Your Truth and You Only Live Once 14:58

Let’s go on to the next one. Commandment number three: you are sovereign, so flex your omnipotence and bend the universe around your dreams and desires. Hashtag “live your truth.” Now, that one’s hard. Why is it hard? Because I like my dreams and my desires. I’m a big fan. I really like the things that I like. But Exodus tells us, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exod 20.3). What is a dream or a desire outside of God? That’s an idol. That’s worship misdirected.

Next one, number four: you are supreme, so always act according to your chief end, to glorify and enjoy yourself forever. Hashtag “YOLO.” Basically, do whatever you want, because you only live once. Well, let’s see what the Bible has to say about that. Hebrews chapter 9, verse 27:

27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. Heb 9.27–28

So what do you want to do? You want to live for now? You want to live for this day? You want to live for this life? Carpe diem, seize the day, you only live once? Or do you want to live for eternity?

It’s like when you go in and meet with an investor. I had a couple of friends in college who were learning how to do that and wanted to meet with me, and they’re saying, “Okay, well, how much do you want to save, and when do you want to have this much money?” Well, you know what? Their advice was very different if I said, “I want this investment to mature in a year,” than if I said, “I want this investment to mature in thirty years.” You invest differently. Well, in the same way, if you’re living for this life, you’re living very differently than if you’re living for eternity. Talk about compound interest. I’m serious. If you think about how much better your life can be if you keep investing in God and his purposes for eternity, it beggars imagination.

Now, I don’t want to be that guy who’s like, “Man, I’m just living for heaven.” The quote is something about how they live so much for heaven they’re no earthly good. Obviously I’m not arguing that we need to go out and be monks who pray and fast all day and just seek Jesus because “I’m living for eternity.” That’s not it. In fact, you only have this one life to live for Christ. You only have this one life to build your family, to invest in your children, to do all of the things that it takes to live in the kingdom of God. And it’s not because you and your works and your power are gonna build this thing, and then when you get to heaven God will be like, “Man, your life, you did so good.” No. It’s actually about letting go of all of that and living for eternity right now. You actually get to build the kingdom of God by just cooperating with what he wants to do, by turning your will and affection towards him, by worshiping God alone. This is exactly the opposite of what everyone in our culture is being taught, and it’s exactly the opposite of where the current of our culture is taking even us in the church.

VI. Never Change 18:26

Let’s get through the last two commandments here. Number five: you are the summum bonum (I threw some Latin in there to feel smart), the standard of goodness, the ultimate good, so don’t let anyone oppress you with the antiquated notion of being a sinner who needs grace. Hashtag “never change.” I see that everywhere: “You are so great. Never change.” But let’s look at Romans chapter 3:

23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Rom 3.23–24

You are not the ultimate good. And it only takes one glance in the mirror to know it. We all know it. We are not the ultimate good. But man, if you say it enough, people will delude themselves (and I say people; we will delude ourselves) into actually acting like we believe we are the ultimate good. “Man, I serve Jesus so well. Man, I preach so well. Man, I love my wife so well.” It just starts to build, and you don’t realize it, and before you know it you are the ultimate good: “If only everybody could be like me.” If you’ve ever had that thought, stop, please. You’re going in the wrong direction.

I’m telling you, we laugh and we see all these commandments and we’re like, “Yeah, those heathens.” Maybe you never use the hashtag, but I promise you it lives in your heart somewhere. And then Jesus: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt 4.17). Our call is always to change. Literally always. Never stop changing, because he wants to take you from glory to glory (2 Cor 3.18).

Now, I want one more point on this. You can’t tell somebody who’s depressed, who’s anxious, who’s insecure, who knows their worthlessness, “Never change. You’re great the way you are.” That is a death sentence. The only hope we have is that you can change in Christ Jesus. When you’re addicted, you don’t need to hear “Never change.” “Oh, you mean my life just has to be this? I’m stuck here for eternity?” No, no, no. The hope we have in Christ is that you can always change.

VII. Authenticity 20:51

And last, number six: you are the Creator, so use that limitless creative power to craft your identity and purpose. Hashtag “authenticity.” This one’s really dangerous. I see it a lot in the church: “I’m just being my authentic self, and my church fired me as a pastor when I decided that I was a woman.” And then people pile on in the tweets: “Oh my gosh, you’re being your authentic self. I can’t believe that church didn’t want you to be their pastor. You should go start your own church.” You’re hashtag never change, hashtag YOLO, hashtag authenticity. I’m not kidding you; I just read a whole thread of this stuff happening in a real person’s life. What does that person need to hear right there? They need to hear, “Jesus loves you, and he wants you to come back to him.” That’s what that person needs to hear. But instead it’s like, “No, continue on this journey of self-discovery. You’re so brave.”

If you see somebody saying “You’re so brave,” you can almost guarantee that they’re following one of these hashtags. I promise. That’s because it’s surrounded our culture. We’re the fish in water. People don’t even know that our whole value system is flipped upside down.

What’s the response to this hashtag authenticity? Ephesians 2, verse 8:

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Ephes 2.8–10

So what’s in there? A whole lot that we don’t have time to talk about. But let me just point out: you are not the creator. You are the created. And you have been created for a particular purpose. And the only joy, the only fulfillment, the only goodness that you can have in your life is when you walk into that purpose, not when you try to be who you really are. Stop striving to be authentic. Seek who you are in Christ, who he has made you to be.

Man, there is so much comfort in that fact. I can’t imagine believing all of these, being so unaware of God’s goodness that I thought I was the source of all goodness, I was the source of all truth, I just had to be authentic to myself, I just have to be more like myself. That leads to destruction. And all of these things that I’m talking about are not because God’s like, “Naughty!” No, it’s because he’s inviting us. He’s inviting us to lay down our idols and to worship the only being who is worthy of our worship.

Now, the antidote to this I sum up in this phrase: “Let all that you do declare that I am not the glowing center of the universe.” Your whole life should be a testimony to the goodness of God, not a testimony to yourself.

VIII. Living Stones, Not Scaffolding 23:08

Now, specifically, where does this manifest in the church? A couple of weeks ago I felt like I got this word, and it’s been stirring in me: basically, we use the church as scaffolding to build our lives. The biblical picture is that we are living stones coming together to build the household of God. In First Peter it says:

4 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 1 Pet 2.4–5

Man, I was feeling really good about that revelation. I was like, “Man, God, that’s a great word. Everybody needs to hear that.” We’re not using the church as scaffolding to build my family, my life, my thing. In fact, we are coming together as living stones. We’re fit together, and God works it all out so that we can build the kingdom of God.

And I was so rah-rah excited about this. And then I went through that sickness, and I was lying on my back, helpless to do anything, and God came to me in his goodness and his love, and he said, “You know you’re the person I gave that word to?” And I said, “Yeah.” And he goes, “Because you need to hear it.” And it was like the blinders fell off my eyes. I was excited about the word about using the church as scaffolding to build your lives, because I thought it applied to all of you, not to me. “I am building the church. What are you talking about?” the voice whispers in your head.

And God said, “No, no, no. You’re getting caught up doing the things that are going to end up building your life, your career.” I don’t know if you guys know this, but my goal is to work in the church. My goal is to have a career in this church. So what happens when I build the church? Well, in my heart and mind something subtle had shifted, where I was striving to make the church the best it could be so that my life could be the best it could be. Now, that doesn’t mean I wasn’t doing good things. But good things with a bad attitude are not good. And God confronted me with that, and he said, “You’re the one in the greatest danger right now of falling prey to this.”

And it just broke my heart, because I thought, “Man, you’re right.” But you know what happened? It wasn’t shame that I felt in that moment, but relief. Because if it’s on my shoulders to build the church and to build my life, I am hopelessly gonna fail. But if it’s about building the kingdom of God and trusting God to build my life, that I can do. I can be just another worker building the kingdom of God, another stone fitted into the household of God through his grace. I can do that, and trust him to build my life.

IX. Seek First the Kingdom 26:32

But that’s a word for all of us. We are so concerned with building our kids, building our families, building our careers, doing this, doing the right thing, looking the right way, when God’s saying, “Man, build my kingdom. I’ll take care of all of that.” Jesus says it very succinctly in Matthew chapter 6, verse 32. He’s talking about worrying about money and clothing and provision, and he says, “Don’t worry about those things”:

32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Matt 6.32–33

That’s worship: seeking the kingdom of God and trusting him to add all the other things to you. Lay it down. You believe in a God of resurrection, so what does it matter to you if a dream of yours dies? He can resurrect it. He can bring it to pass, or he can transform it. You know, some of your dreams are wrong. We already talked about how deceitful the heart is. Some of your desires need to be remade. That’s what we mean when we say worship is: turn your affection on him and let him order the rest of your life.

X. Delight Yourself in the Lord 27:41

I’m going to end with my last verse here, Psalm 37, way at the end of the presentation here. It says:

4 Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Ps 37.4

We could all just sit in that verse. I know for myself I needed to hear that word. We need to delight ourselves in the one thing that is worthy and the one thing that matters, and that’s the Lord. But guess what? There’s a promise attached to it: he will give you the desires of your heart. This is only good news. Even if you have to give up something, even if you have to lay something down, I promise you this is only good news, because he will give you the desires of your heart. So when we talk about worship, that’s what I want you to think: am I turning my affection towards him?

And I’ll just say this: true worship evolves over your life as you encounter the living God. None of this makes any sense unless God is real in your life. Now, you can have faith in him, you can hope in him, but I’m going to pray today that we all have encounters with him, that the Holy Spirit falls and transforms us. Because if you just strive (“Oh, I’m going to turn my affections, I’m going to do this”), all you’re worshipping is your own ability. But if we lay ourselves out and say, “God, I need you to make this transformation of my heart,” then you will have an encounter.

Lord, I just pray that you would open our eyes to see the way that you are moving in our midst, the way that you are working in our life. I pray that you would reorient us from the ways that culture has tried to suck us towards self-worship. And I pray that you would help us to lay our desires, our dreams, down at your feet and turn all of our affection towards you. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.