Christopher: Confidence in prayer is not about bending God's will to our own by our intensity of prayer. But it's about aligning our will to his by humility and the working of the spirit. Confidence in prayer is not about rowing in the direction of our will with all our might and getting the boat there. Confidence in prayer is about raising the sail of our prayers up into the wind of his will and allowing that then to carry the vessel of our lives in that direction according to his will. That's when we can have confidence.
Caleb: The following message was recorded at King's Tree Church. May the spirit use it to help you see, savor, and sing the beauty of God in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.
Christopher: I write these things to you who believe in the name of the son of God. So those of you who have chosen to believe in the testimony, I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. All right, that's what we're looking at this morning.
Christopher: Let me pray for us before we dive into this more closely. Father,
Christopher: we come to you this morning praising you, thanking you that you are our father in Jesus Christ, that your name for us now is father because we are united to the son. We're united to your beloved son by the spirit, and so his name for you is our name for you, and we thank you. We take refuge. We hide in the reality of your fatherhood over us. And father, I appeal to you now and ask that you would have mercy on us, that you would grant me grace to faithfully unfold your word, to faithfully apply your word.
Give Christ through this word, and Lord mercy on your people to receive, to have soft hearts and discerning hearts, to receive what is of you and to filter what is from you, and that your spirit would be working now to impress upon all of us your word, your will, your purposes for us. So come father now and work powerfully by the spirit for the exaltation of Jesus Christ so that your people would be built up in him, and you be glorified in him. We submit ourselves now into your hands. In Jesus
Christopher: name, amen. So let's begin with verse 13. John says, I write these things to you who believe in the name of
Christopher: the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. So before we get into the idea of eternal life, let's ask ourselves what does he mean when he says, I write these things to you so that you might know. What are the these things he's talking about? What are the things he has in view? Most immediately it seems that he's referring back to the section he just finished up.
Verse five of chapter five begins with, Who is it that has overcome the
Christopher: world except the one who believes
Christopher: in the Son of God? And then verse 12, Whoever has the Son has life. Whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. So this section we were just in was about Jesus as the Son of God, believing in him as the Son of God. And now in verse 13 John says, I write these things to you who have believed in the name of the Son of God so that you may know you have eternal life.
So in a sense at one level he's referring to the section he just wrote, referring back to it. At another level though he has in mind, it would seem, the entirety of the letter that he's writing, everything that he's written. I've written these things, meaning this whole letter, the whole thing we've been spending the last year plus in as a church. John says, I wrote all of this, this whole thing I wrote, so that you might know that you have eternal life, those of you who are believing in the Son of God. And one evidence of that is if we look back to the very beginning of this letter, it starts with an emphasis on eternal life.
Eternal life is really the theme of this whole letter. So just by way of reminder, here's how John starts this letter. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest and we have seen it, and we are testifying to it and proclaiming to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us. So John starts his whole letter saying, We are proclaiming to you the eternal life that was with God and was made flesh in Jesus Christ.
The life we saw and touched and walked with and lived with in Christ. Jesus Christ, the incarnation of life. We've seen him, and we're writing this letter to you about that life. So the whole letter may be said to be about eternal life. John is writing this whole thing to unfold what eternal life is and to help those who believe in Christ to know, yes, you
Christopher: have it. Here's what it is. Yes, you have it. That's what he's
Christopher: been writing this whole letter about, which leads us then to ask the question, okay, what is this eternal life that John's writing about? We've talked about this a number of times. In fact, last week we talked about it, and we did a number of times before, so I won't belabor the point here, but just by way of reminder, what is this eternal life that John says his whole letter has been about, has been about communicating to his hearers? Well, could put it this way. In John's view, eternal life is this.
It's the new quality of existence that we are experiencing already
Christopher: in this life as we
Christopher: together know God in the crucified and risen Jesus. Eternal life is not just extended life. It's a new quality, a new depth, a new fullness we are experiencing now in this life together with the whole church as we are knowing who God is in Christ. And specifically this letter has laid out two indivisible realities in which this life consists, this eternal life. This eternal life consists in two realities that cannot be divided, and they are believing, believing the crucified Jesus who is risen is the Son and revealer of God.
Not just believing the facts about that, but laying hold to that. Laying hold of that, believing, receiving Christ as the Son and revealer of God. That, and indivisible from it, loving each other as he has loved us. These two together constitute this experience of eternal life, eternal life that John's writing so that his readers would know that they share in and know that they have, that they are sure of having this eternal life. That's what it looks like.
Believing in the crucified and risen one, and loving as he has loved us, that's what it looks like to share in God's life now, to be folded into God's life now, and to live out of that life now, and that's the life that it deepens and widens and broadens for the endless ages to come. You can think of it, this helped me a
Christopher: little bit, you can think
Christopher: of it as in analogy to our own physical lives. Our own physical lives we eat, we drink, we breathe, those are the rhythms that keep us alive. You could say that's our life, that's the rhythm of our life, but then as those who are eating and drinking and breathing, we do stuff, We work. We make things. We talk to people.
We go places. So there's eating, drinking, breathing that's sustaining life, and then there's the going and doing that is the matter of our life. In a similar way you could say that believing in the one who dies and rises again as our Lord and our God, that's the eating. That's the drinking. That's the breathing of eternal life.
And then you could say that loving one another as he has loved us, that's the carrying out of eternal life. That's the doing the stuff of eternal life. These two work together, and they're indivisible. Now in laying this out today and in the Sundays prior, something I hope you have seen is that John's vision of eternal life is irreducibly relational. It's a relational vision.
It's not just a thing you get and now you have it. It exists within a context of relationships. Eternal life is a relationship, a believing relationship with the person of God in Christ, and it is the way that relationship works itself out in the relationships around us, in other believers around us. Eternal life you could say is a divine human relationship that lives within the context of human human relationships. So this experience of eternal life is fundamentally relational, fundamentally relational, and
Christopher: you get that all the way
Christopher: back at the beginning when John writes this, That which we have seen and heard we're proclaiming to you so that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. That fellowship is another way of speaking about this experience of eternal life. It's fellowship with one another, which is fellowship with God in Christ, this horizontal and this vertical. So eternal life has this relational quality that is fundamental to it, and that's going to be important to keep in mind when we transition now to our next section, but here all I want to reiterate for you is that John is writing to assure the souls of his audience, and by extension to assure your souls, those of you who are believing in Christ, casting yourself upon him. He's writing to assure us that to believe in the slain and risen Jesus, and to love as he has loved us, that is to have eternal life.
That is already to be living the eternal life that will deepen and broaden and widen into the ageless time to come. So that's what he's writing this first part. He says, I want you to be confident in that. I'm writing so that you might know that this is the case. Now look at He seems now to do a fairly hard transition.
Look at verse fourteen and fifteen. And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us, and if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests we have asked of him. Now you might say, Well, wait a second. He just said, I'm writing so you might know you have eternal life, and this is the confidence we have, that whenever we pray he hears us. And it's like where's the connection here, John, between this?
Is it just you're just throwing in a
Christopher: new thing here? And I think the
Christopher: connection between the confidence we have in eternal life and the confidence we have in prayer is that relational element. It's that relational element. So eternal life is ultimately our living relationship with God in Christ together with his people. And confidence, to be confident in that relationship with God leads naturally then to confidence in our prayers to God. Confidence in my relationship to God in Christ leads, which is eternal life, leads naturally then into confidence in my prayers to God in Christ.
And so that seems to be the connection that John's making here. The relationship we've entered into through Jesus yields confidence in prayer, And this is emphasized a little bit more even in the Greek because your English version probably says something like, this is the confidence we have with God or before God. The ESV says toward God, and that's a good translation. The word that's used there has this toward, like a facing one another idea. So there's this hint of a relational confidence.
We have this confidence before God's face, as it were, face to face with God. So that's how we move from confidence in our eternal life, which is a relationship with God, into confidence with prayer. It's a relational bridge. And let me place one more emphasis here before we move to look at what John says about prayer. This suggests to us that prayer is fundamentally a relational experience.
Prayer is primarily relational, not transactional. See the difference there? Prayer is not about entering into a transaction with another party. It's about being in a relationship with another party. Prayer is primarily about being with rather than getting from.
That's what this emphasis on relationship points out to us. Now this is not to say that petitioning God, asking for things from God is wrong, not at all. We see that all throughout scripture. We see Jesus doing that, so don't hear me saying, Oh, that's small stuff to ask God for stuff. No, no, no.
That happens, but the relational point here lays the emphasis on this, that the driving motive of our prayer and the highest form of our prayer is not about getting from, but about being with. I'll give you one example from the Psalms, which is the prayer book of God's people. One example from the Psalms to substantiate what I've just said. Psalm 20 seven:four, David says this, One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire or meditate in his temple. So David has asked a lot of things of God.
Look through the Psalms. David asks many different things of the Lord, but here he says, In everything I've ever asked, there's only one thing I'm ultimately asking for, and that's to be in your presence and to look upon your beauty and to meditate on you. And so David's saying, and David is functioning in the spirit and showing us the heart of Christ. David's saying, Everything I ask is ultimately an asking of this, to be with you, to be in your presence, to behold you. And so again, prayer is supremely about being with, not getting from.
So our confidence in prayer is a relational confidence deriving from the new relationship we have with God in Christ, which is eternal life. With that laid out before us, let's ask ourselves now, okay, what is this confidence John wants us to have in prayer? What are we supposed to actually have? What kind of confidence are we actually supposed to have as we approach God in prayer according to what John lays out here? So let's look at it, understanding that the relationship with God in Christ undergirds this confidence.
What is the confidence? Verse 14, And this is the confidence that we have toward him. Here it is, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us, and if we know that he hears us in whatever we've asked, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. Okay, so there's particular confidence John wants his audience and you and me to have, and there are two things that I wanna emphasize here. One is he says, This is the confidence we have toward him.
If we ask anything according to his will, so there's a condition. We're gonna look at that in a second. Just grab that condition and set it over here for a moment. If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. Okay, that's what I wanna think about first.
What does John mean by hearing hear? What kind of hearing does John have in mind? Let's look at that first, and then we'll circle back around to look at the conditions that give us confidence we are heard in this way. So first, what is the hearing John's talking about? Because the way he says this, you could think, Boy, sometimes God doesn't hear my prayers.
He says, If we ask anything according
Christopher: to his will, he hears us. So you might say,
Christopher: So does that mean like sometimes he doesn't hear me? Sometimes he puts his fingers in his ears? Sometimes he's not listening or paying attention? Sometimes he's on his phone, and the little kid is trying to get attention to his dad, and his dad's just flipping through the phone. Is that what's going on with God?
No, no. Obviously that's not what's going on here. God is not a distracted father who doesn't listen. He's not a father who gets upset and slams the door in his children's face. We have one There are many places we could go to to verify that, but Psalm 14five 18 says this.
Apparently that's the wrong reference, but I'll read to you what I know it says anyway. You are near to those who call upon you, to those who call upon you in truth. Speaking of phones, you can look that one up on your phone, and it's probably either 144 or 146. I have it off by one, but there's the reference. You are near to those who call upon you in truth.
The Lord is near to all who call upon him in truth. That's what scripture says, and so we know if we're calling upon God in the name of Jesus, which is the truth, He's near to us. He hears us. So you can be confident, Christian, that you are heard. You are heard by God.
It's not that there's sometimes that he doesn't hear you. There's not sometimes that his heart is closed to you. He hears those who call upon him in truth. Okay, but then what does this mean when John seems to say, But there's sometimes he doesn't hear us? And we get an answer to that in verse 15.
Look at verse 15 of one John again. One John five, And if we know that he hears us, and we could add in this particular way, if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests we have asked of him. So the kind of hearing John has in mind here is a hearing that not only hears and says, I hear what you're saying, my child. That always happens. I hear what you're saying.
I'm receiving the cry of your heart. That always happens, but this kind of hearing is a hearing that says, I hear what you're saying, and I'm going to do exactly what you're asking me to do. That's the addition to this. This is a hearing that says, I hear what you're saying, and I am going to do exactly what you've asked me to do. That's the particular kind of confidence, the particular kind of hearing John's highlighting here.
That is the hearing that we don't always get. When I say, Lord, I'm hoping, Lord, give me this job opportunity. Lord, let this sickness pass by. Lord, let the surgery go well. He hears us.
He loves us. He's with us in those, but we don't have confidence in those moments that he's also saying, And I'm going to do exactly what you've asked me to do. We know he'll do what's good, but we don't know. It's not like we've just given him a slip and he says, Okay, that's exactly what I'll do. But John says there are times when the Christian can have that degree of confidence
Christopher: that what I've asked is what he's going to do.
Christopher: That's the kind of hearing he has in mind here. That's the kind of hearing. Okay, well then the next question is to say, what are the conditions that gives me
Christopher: confidence that God hears me in that way? What's the conditions to give me confidence that God is not only hearing, but he's going to do just what I've asked him to do? Well look at what John lays out as the conditions. This is
Christopher: the confidence we have toward him. If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us in this particular way. He hears us in this way that says, Not only do I hear you, but I'm going to do exactly what you've asked. When we pray God's will to him we know he's going to do exactly what we're asking him to do. That's what's going on here.
When we pray God's will to him we know that he's going to do exactly what we're asking. So confidence in prayer does not come from the particular strength of your faith, or the length and intensity of your prayers, or the holiness of your life necessarily. It comes from praying in accordance with the will of God. That's what's laid out here. Confidence in prayer is not about bending God's will to our own by our intensity of prayer, but it's about aligning our will to his by humility and the working of the Spirit.
Confidence in prayer is not about rowing in the direction of our will with all our might and getting the boat there. Confidence in prayer is about raising the sail of our prayers up into the wind of his will, and allowing that then to carry the vessel of our lives in that direction according to his will. That's when we can have confidence. That's when we
Christopher: can have confidence, and this leads to
Christopher: the question, well, can I still pour out my heart before him, as it says in Psalm 60 two:eight? Pour out your heart before God. Can I still just bring him the whole confusion, and mess, and pain, and pour it out before him? Of course, yes. Not only can you, but you should and you must be clear and honest with the Lord.
John's not writing to limit your prayers, but he's writing to clarify your confidence. Where do you have a particular confidence? And John says, It is especially when you're praying according to his will. That's when you
Christopher: can have confidence. He'll do this. He's going
Christopher: to do this. How do you know?
Christopher: Because it's in accordance with his will. That's what's going on here. Now then, a further question if you're like me. You're thinking, Okay,
Christopher: how can I know his will? It's very nice to pray according to his will. How can I know his will? Is there some elaborate process of discernment? Somebody says, I was driving by the church, and it said this on the sign, and they had just said that on the radio, so I must actually have to do this, right?
This kind of whole cottage industry of figuring out the Lord's will and lining yourself up with it so your life goes just right and you don't make a mess of things because I'd missed his will. God is not a labyrinth maker who lays out all these hidden riddles and looks for the people who can figure out his secret will and then blesses them. That is not how God works. There's nowhere in scripture we are commanded to discern the secret will of God. He has a secret will for everything.
He knows what you're gonna be doing at three p. M. This afternoon, but he never says, And you've got to figure it out or else. That is above our pay grade, and hunting for that leads to all sorts of false confidences in the Christian life, and all sorts of confusion, and, Wait, I thought God said to do this, but I thought he And if I don't get it right, I'm paralyzed until I can figure out his will. That's not what John's talking about here.
Let me just dispel that for you. That's not what John's talking about here. Rather, knowing God's will in the
Christopher: way John has it in mind here is quite straightforward. It is the will that God has revealed supremely in Christ, but by extension in this book. The will that God has revealed in this book. What has God said is his will? What has God said he will do?
What is it that God wants us to do? That is his will. Let me take a sip of water here. Where has God actually said, This is my will? That is what we can be certain of, and we can pray it with confidence.
And where do we find that? Well, one simple place to find that is in his commands, in his commands. What God has commanded is what God wills to be. If God says, if God commands that something should be, then he wills that it should be. That's pretty straightforward.
If I say to Wicklow, Wicklow,
Christopher: go and pick these socks up, very clearly that's my command. And if he says, Well, I discerned that your will was that I should actually go and make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I might say, That's fine. I'm not against that, but the will I revealed to you was go pick up your socks. So too for us, the will we can be confident in is what has God commanded us?
Christopher: What has God said to do? And we'd say, okay, that's your will. Very clearly that's your will. We can be confident in that. In this way every commandment in scripture becomes like a western wind blowing over the ocean of our
Christopher: life into which we can raise up the sail of our prayers and be carried along into the safe harbor of final union with Christ. Do you see
Christopher: a command in scripture? It's God's will for you.
Christopher: Now you're gonna say, Well, what about Leviticus? What about the Old Testament law? Okay, there's a little bit of Christological interpretation that needs to happen here, more than we can get into now, but in general, where God makes a command, he is revealing his will, and the Christian can confidently pray that command back to the Lord, and know, I know you're going to do this, Father. You won't say, Do this, and then I say, Grant me to do this, and then you say, No. That's not how it works.
If the Lord has said, Do this, and I say, Grant me to do this, his answer is, Yes, absolutely, absolutely. You can know you will receive what you're asking for because it's in accordance with his will. So let me wrap us up with moments that remain to us here with looking at some examples, some practical examples, because we talked about this a few weeks ago, this idea that commands can become prayers, but I wanna give you a few concrete examples to work with, things that you can be confident in. I can pray this, and know that the Lord's answer will be,
Christopher: Yes, I will do that. What are some examples of that? Well, let's look
Christopher: at them together in the last section of the message today, but before we do that, let me give a little bit of perhaps a qualification when we think about the commandments of God. Sometimes commandments are like the cold, hard part of scripture. That's like God's Whatever you use to spank Spank the kids. Some parents use a belt. Maybe there's a switch.
I don't know, whatever, maybe hand, but it's like that's the spanking. The commandments are the spanking. The blessings, that's the grace. That's the mercy, right? Don't think that.
Don't think that. The commands of God are mercies. They're mercies. They're graces. They're not hoops to jump through so you can get to heaven.
They're mercifully given opportunities to know and be conformed to the heart of God in Jesus Christ. Every command is a gift, a gift.
Christopher: Every command is like saying to a starving soul, Eat, or a thirsting heart, Drink.
Christopher: We see this in the longest chapter of the Bible, Psalm 119, by far the longest chapter of the Bible, and the entire chapter is about the psalmist's passionate desire to be conformed to the commandments of God, to receive them, to enjoy them, to be shaped by them. I'll read you just a section of it here as we begin our final part of today's sermon in Psalm 119 verses 33 to 40. The whole Psalm's worth reading of course, but in verse 33 to 40, just listen. Listen to the heart of the psalmist which is
Christopher: the heart of Christ here. Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes, and I will keep it
Christopher: to the end, statutes being commandments. Give me understanding that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart. Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it. Incline my heart to your testimonies and not to selfish gain. Turn my heart to your commands, is what he's saying.
Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things and give me life in your ways, and then down at
Christopher: the end, Behold, I long for your precepts. In your righteousness give me life. So this is the kind of
Christopher: prayer the Lord will answer. Lord, lead me in your commandments. Grant me obedience. Conform me to your will. That's the kind of prayer we can be confident he's going to do it.
Further we could say that's the kind of heart prayer is designed to create, the kind of heart that says, I want to be made like you. I want to obey your commandments. I want to be conformed to your will. That's the heart of Christ being formed in his people by his spirit. So okay, let's look at three examples in these last minutes together.
Three examples of specific commands in scripture that we can turn confidently into prayer. The first, love, the command to love. Now we've looked at this over and over and over again in one John. I'm not going to stay here long this morning, but it's worth seeing it from other New Testament authors as well. So Jesus in Matthew You don't have to go to these.
I've laid them out for you, but you don't have to go to these. I'm gonna touch on them quickly. Jesus in Matthew 22 verse 37 and following, he's asked, What is the greatest commandment? And he says, This is it. You shall love, love, that's the command of God, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. Or again in Romans thirteen:eight, Paul says, Owe no one anything except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The whole law, all the commandments are the command to love one another.
Or Ephesians five twenty five, Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave him up for her. Now we continue this for many, many times over, but the point is clear. Husbands, love your wives, a command from God. Christians, love each other, a command from God. Love your neighbor, the people around you, a command from God.
Love God, a command from God. So what's God's will for you? To love those around you. No question. You don't have to discern that.
You don't have to go on a retreat and pray about whether or not that's what the Lord would have you do. It is clearly his will. Love, love your spouse. Love the people you live with. Love the people in the pews near you.
Love the people in the homes near you. Love the people you run into. Is this difficult? Is this trying? Is this not the natural inclination of our hearts?
Then ask. Ask the Lord to work it in us. Father, grant me today to love. Grant me today to love this person, to love these people, to love my coworkers. It's your will, so let it be so in me.
And John says when you pray that way, you can be sure he's going to work that. He's going to do that. He's going
Christopher: to work that out in your experience. So love, every moment of your life, that's God's will for you. Let's look at
Christopher: the second one here. Trust, trust. God commands his people to trust him. He doesn't just say, Oh, I love it when people trust me. He commands his people to trust him, and that doesn't just mean believe the facts that Jesus died and rose again, but it means lean the weight of your soul upon this one.
It means live as though if God were not true, your whole life would be meaningless. Your whole life would fall to ruins. If your life makes sense apart from Christ being raised from the dead, we're probably not trusting him, because trust means I am leaning on him. He is what my life is built upon, and God commands that of us. He commands us to depend upon him, to lay down our defenses and our questions and our what ifs and trust him.
Let me give you a few examples. Psalm 62. Psalm 62, verses five through eight. Let me read it for you. For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence.
And when the Holy Spirit inspires a prayer like this, we can take this as a command as well. For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation. My fortress, I shall not be shaken. On God rests my salvation and my glory.
My mighty rock, my refuge is God. Trust in him at all times, O people. Pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us. That's a command.
Trust in him at all times. God's not saying,
Christopher: Hey, stir up some trust so that you can line
Christopher: up with my desire for you. He's saying, My desire for you is that you trust. Ask me. As it says in another Psalm, Open your mouth and I will fill it. Ask me.
I'm ready to It's my will to cause you to trust me in this moment. So let us pray it with confidence, or again, even more clearly in Psalm 115. Psalm 115
Christopher: verses nine through 11 says this.
Christopher: O Israel, trust in the Lord. He is their help and their shield. O house of Aaron, trust in the Lord. He is their help and their shield. You who fear the Lord, trust in the Lord.
He is their help and their shield. O Kingstree Church, trust in the Lord. He is your help and your shield. Put your name in there. O you trust in the Lord.
He's saying it to you right now. He's commanding it of us right now in the face of fear, in the face of that uncertainty, in the face of the upheavals in the world, in the face of loss and sorrow and shattered hopes and the inability to control, right in the middle of Not when you get your hands back on the steering wheel, right in the middle of having no control, he says, Trust in me. Right now trust in me. Trust his love. Trust the heart pierced through to heal you.
Trust the hands torn through to raise you up from the dead to himself. Trust the resurrection that turns weeping to laughter. Trust the Lord right now, and he commands it, so pray it on the way home tonight, right now. Lord, help me trust you. Help me trust you.
And he says, That's what prayer I'm ready to answer, because I've commanded it. I've commanded it. Trust means not having all the answers, not being in control, not knowing where things are headed, not having my safety net all perfectly put in place, but it also means rest,
Christopher: and peace and hope. Very quickly I need to
Christopher: move to this last one here, but this is critical. May the Lord grant it to the land with the way it needs to. He commands us to worship him. He commands us to worship him. This is not egotistical.
If I commanded you that, it would be egotistical. For God to command his people to worship him is like a banquet saying to a starving man, Eat. Or oxygen commanding a suffocating man, Breathe. Or water commanding someone dying of thirst, drink. The command to worship him is a command to live, command to be satisfied, a command to be full as he calls us to.
I'll just You have the verses here. I'm not gonna read them all for the sake of time. Psalm 150 verse six sums it all up for us. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
Christopher: Praise the Lord. Do you have breath right now? Then God's will for you is to praise him right now. Now that is I'm not saying his will for
Christopher: you is to pretend to be happy. Pretend it doesn't hurt, pretend everything's fine. That's not the same thing. Rather what this is saying is his will for us is to recognize his wisdom, his authority, his glory and beauty in all circumstances. Recognize I am myself here.
That's what it means to worship him, and that really is what our soul most desperately needs. In joy, in fullness, in peace, this worship is the flowering of the springtime of our soul, and it's joyful. But at the same time, in loss, in sorrow, in uncertainty, this worship is the hiding place, and the refuge, and the balm for our soul. When there's no more words to speak, and there's no more tears to cry, Worship is the place where we die. We die into worship and just live there on the altar burning in worship to him.
What else can I do but die into this moment and confess you here to be God, to be good, to be savior, to be Lord? Remember what it says in Job chapter one when Job's whole life has been ripped from him? Then Job arose, tore his garments, shaved his head, and fell on
Christopher: the ground and worshiped. Worshiped.
Christopher: It's not saying he's not grieved. His children have died. He rips his clothes, shaves his head, but then he dies into worship. And from the grave he cries out, You are good. You are true.
You are worthy. Let your name be lifted up. This kind of worship that God commands of us at every moment, Christian, It's an unmooring of ourselves from the sinking anchor of our experience, and it's a binding of ourselves to the unshakable mountain of his name. That's what is called for here. A song of worship in the night of our suffering, even sung through tears.
That's God's will. It is always his will that we worship him. It is always his will that we worship him, which means when we turn our hearts to him and say, Father, grant me to praise you in the midst of this, his will is always, Yes, yes, I will do that, and it can be done, we can enter that only because Christ our God has borne every night, every horror, every darkness, every sorrow you will ever enter into, Christ has borne it, and in the midst of it, in the midst of our sorrow and brokenness, he worships. He praises God. Last verse I'm gonna share with you, this from Psalm 57.
Hear this as voice of Christ in the midst of your crisis. My soul is in the midst of lions. I lie down among fiery beasts, the children of men whose teeth are spears and arrows. Their tongues are sharp swords. I'm in the midst of my people's horror, says Jesus.
And what is the response of his soul? Verse five, Be exalted, O God, above the heavens. Let your glory be over all the earth. We can worship in the midst of every night because Christ worshiped in the midst of our night. Our song in the night, Christian, is an entrance into Christ's song from the cross, and we know that
Christopher: the end of that song is Easter morning joy, so let us pray these things and know it is God's will, and he will give what we pray in accordance with that will. Let me pray for us now.
Christopher: Father, thank you that you have shown us your will in your word, that you haven't led us to grope blindly through what seems right to us, but you have spoken your will in scripture and in Christ, our savior, who is everything to us. Father, I pray that you would put into our mouths, just as parents teach their children to speak, Father, put into our mouths your will that we might pray your will back to you from hearts being conformed to your will, and that we might have then this unique confidence in prayer that asking this, we know we will receive it because it's according to the goodwill of our Father as revealed in the merciful gifts of his commandments to us. All of this in, through, and because of, and unto Christ. It's in his
Christopher: name we pray, father. Amen.
Caleb: Thank you for listening to this message from King's Tree Church in Sabina, Ohio. To see more of the beauty of God in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, come worship with us on Sundays at 10AM or visit our website at kingstreechurch.org.