"The Disciplines" - Part 3 Study, Worship & Celebration

Introduction

So we are in the midst of a series of messages we are simply calling…Disciple.

And we have spent that last couple of weeks looking at the disciplines or the practices that will help position you and begin to renovate the thoughts and intents of your heart.

We have said that these practices can be placed into two categories.

There are Practices of Abstinence, where I abstain from doing something I would normally do.

We finished looking at those practices last week. They included Solitude, Silence, Fasting, which we looked at two weeks ago, and Frugality, Chastity, Secrecy & Sacrifice, those practices we looked at last week. All of these practices are done to take away or abstain from doing things we might normally do AND they also each bring a level of freedom to the the way you live your days out in this broken world if they are practiced on a regular and consistent basis.

I hope you have found some of those to be helpful and that you have made some effort to engage in one or more of these practices. I should remind you that if you only do these a couple of times, then you are not practicing, you are simply toying around with what are probably the most important and most effective things you can do, if being a disciple of Jesus is your intent, and I hope and pray that it is.

These are the very same practices Jesus engaged in during His earthly ministry and the things He taught His original apprentices to do as well. So, they are important. They are necessary if we are to be transformed.

With that in mind, I want to once again bring us back to the WHY. Why do these things? I know we have had some fun with some of these and joked about driving purposely in the slow lane in order to practice slowing the pace of our lives. But I don’t want us to lose site of how serious all of this is.

The truth about each of us in here this morning is that we live from our heart. And by heart, I am not referring to the physical muscle that beats in our chest though it often seems like that is in fact, the center of our emotions.

The part of us that drives and organizes our life is not the physical at all. And like all truth, that truth remains true even if we deny it.

You and I have a spirit within us and it HAS been formed. Your spirit and my spirit has taken on a specific character. I have a spirit and it has been formed. You have a spirit and it also has been formed. And that spirit is a fundamental aspect of every human being. It is inescapable.

And the character of your spirit and the character of my spirit has been formed by the experiences we have lived through and the choices we have made in our past.

Our life, and how we see the world now and in the future, is almost totally a simple result of what we have become in the depths of our being, in our spirit, will or heart. That which is the very core each of us. It is from that core, what the Bible often refers to as our “heart”, that we see the world and interpret reality. And from there we make our choices, take our actions and try to change our world. We live from that deepest part of ourselves, most of which, we do not really understand.

And if this is true, then what must also be true is that all the individual and collective disasters that we encounter and experience are not imposed on us from without. They do not just “happen” to us.

Famine, war and epidemics are almost totally the outcome of our human choices. And those choices are merely the expressions of our human spirit. Now of course there are exceptions that could be discussed but those are so rare and small in percentage that they are hardly worth talking about.

What I am trying to say is that individual disasters we experience, almost always follow human choices. Choices we ourselves make, or choices made by others.

And something else that is very true. The situations we find ourselves in on the regular, are NEVER as important as the way we respond to those situations.

And the way we respond comes from our spiritual side.

All that to say, if you and I carefully cultivate our hearts, and lean heavily into the grace that comes from God, we will successfully foresee and preempt, or even transform most of the painful situations we find ourselves in, while everyone around us just sits there and asks why? Why did this happen to me?

Once something has happened, knowing why it happened is of little benefit. That it happened is what is important and deciding how you are going to respond is of utmost importance.

The Bible is full of wisdom on these life matters. We even call some of the Old Testament writings “Wisdom literature”

Proverbs 4:23 instructs us to “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.”

Beloved, the greatest need you and I have is heart transformation. That spiritual place with each of us, where our outlook, our world view, the choices we make, and the actions we take come from. So far, it has been formed by a world far away from God. And so, it must be transformed. If our heart has already been formed and out of it, we are experiencing something less than “Springs of life”, then we must do whatever it takes to change our heart, to conform it to be like the heart of Jesus.

And this is what discipleship and the practices that go with it are all about. It is THAT important beloved. So if you approach ANY of the things we have talked about as merely a box to be checked on your religious to-do list, then I can guarantee you one thing for sure and for certain. Transformation will not happen for you.

So I hope you can see how important these practices are and how vital it is that you actually practice them and make them a way of life and of course all the while, relying on the abundant grace that God has to offer.

We have been formed. We NEED to be transformed. And on those two points lies the inescapable relevance of Jesus to our human life. About 2,000 years ago, He gathered His little group of friends and trainees and he sent them out to “teach all nations”, that is, to make students or apprentices to Him from all ethnic groups in the world. And Jesus objective was to eventually bring all of human life on earth under the direction of His wisdom, goodness and power. This was all part of God’s eternal plan for the entire universe.

And make no mistake about it, when He sent out that handful of trainees, He set a World Revolution in motion that is still in process and will continue until God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. And when this revolution concludes, all the forces of evil known to mankind will have been defeated and the goodness of God will be known, it will be fully accepted and joyfully conformed to in every aspect of human life, And get this.

He has chosen to accomplish all this with, and in part, through, His apprentices. And it will require transformed apprentices.

So, becoming His apprentices, learning everything we can from Him and doing the things he did is the way that transformation will happen. It is the ONLY way it will happen.

All right then.

I have said this before but it bears repeating. Folks, you and I CAN learn to be at home in the fellowship of our heavenly Father who loves us, as we learn the secret of Jesus's easy yoke. He said my yoke is easy and my burden is light. We can gradually grow to effortlessly, without deep strain, do the things that Jesus would do if he was in our place. And we move towards this by doing one thing, and this is what we're learning about. By arranging our lives around those practices that Jesus engaged in to be constantly at home with and receiving power from his Heavenly Father whatever was going on.

The truth is, to follow Jesus is not a life of constant straining and trying harder and feeling guilty. It is about arranging our lives around those practices and rhythms that enable us to be different on the inside.

This morning, we are going to begin to look at some of the Practices of Engagement, where I actually DO things I would not normally do. We are going to look at three of these practices this morning…the practice of Study, the practice of Worship and the practice of Celebration.

A couple of weeks ago we talked about the practice of solitude. That is where we we purposely abstain from interaction with other human beings. We deny ourselves companionship and all that comes from our conscious interaction with others.

Solitude frees us from the patterns we fall into when we are around others. Patterns of performance expectations. Patterns of comparing ourselves to others or worrying about what others want from us.

I hope you all have incorporated this practice because this one really lends itself to the practices we are looking at today. Once solitude has begun to do its work of freeing you from those nasty patterns of comparing yourself to others, you are in a much better position to benefit greatly from and unhindered practice of study.

Remember, We started looking at the practices of abstaining, where we take away things from our life and that is intentional so we can make space in our lives because they have a way of getting so crowded and so full and it is hard to add more things without first taking some things away.

So if you have not started to practice some of the things we have already talked about, the ones that give us more space, then you will probably have a harder time adding these practices of engagement. Why? because you are already too busy and in too much of a hurried pace. Practices of engagement are much more successful when you have first learned to slow down.

But you can’t just abstain from things. Its kinda like when you breathe. You have to breathe in and out. You breath out to get rid of all the old toxins and that would be the practices of abstaining that we have already talked bout. But you also have to breath in because that is where life comes from. So as we practice activities of engagement, we are inhaling n ow the spirit of God. In fact, you may know that in both the Greek and the Hebrew language, the word for Spirit is the same as the word for breath. We are inhaling spiritual life. Maybe the most important inhaling practice is ...

STUDY

What is it? Study is where we place our minds fully on God and His Kingdom. And study leads us more fully into the next practice we will look at which is Worship. AND, worship will naturally cause us to want to practice celebration!

So when we study, we engage ourselves, above all, with the written and spoken Word of God. As I said, Solitude is the primary discipline of abstinence for the early part of our spiritual life transformation, so study is the primary discipline of engagement.

In Isaiah 55:11 we see a promise from God regarding His Word...

Isa 55:11 ESV - 11 so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

But here is the thing about study of God’s Word. If you expect to have any kind of relationship with God, just like with any other person, pretty early on in that relationship, you will be required to make a contribution to the relationship. In spiritual transformation, your contribution to your relationship with God largely consists of study.

When we are with somebody, it mostly involves something we do with our minds. I am sure you all know what it is like to have a person whose body is in the same room with you but their mind is a million miles away. If you don’t know what that is like, you could ask my sweet wife and she will be able to tell you first hand what that’s like! When we are with someone, it mostly involves our mind.

Calvin Miller said, “Mystics without study are only spiritual romantics who want relationship without effort”

And so study is about engaging our minds around the presence and nature and will of God.

Now why would we do this? I think we know why, but let me make sure we know what study is NOT about. This is very important. We don’t study God’s Word to get the right answers in Bible trivia. One of the things we have to be aware of when we study was identified by the Apostle Paul when he said knowledge puffs up. Love builds up. The aim of study is not about knowing, as much as it is about love. We don’t study to show people how well I know the bible or how smart I am. That will be a temptation that you will have to do battle with.

I can tell you that I am not impressed with someone who is always rattling off Bible verses but their life and their actions show little evidence that they are living according to those verses.

We study so that our minds can be renewed.

You might be thinking of a statement made by the Apostle Paul when he was writing to the church in Rome.

Rom 12:1 ESV - 1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

“...offer your bodies as a Living Sacrifice”.

Now really that's talking about the spiritual practice that we're involved in. I Surrender myself and then my body engages in activities like solitude or like silence or like fasting or like study. Study is something I do with my body as I surrender it.

Paul then goes on to say in verse 2 of Romans 12...

Rom 12:2 ESV - 2 Do not be conformed to this world, (Don't just go on autopilot doing all the stuff that the people in the culture around me say to do), but be transformed by the renewal of your mind,(that’s the goal of study, to have your mind renewed.) that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

The Great challenge of life is managing that unceasing flow of thoughts and feelings and desires and intentions that are always going on in my mind. If I try to follow Jesus

Behaviorally, by doing the right things, by saying the right things and avoiding the wrong things without changing that inner flow within me, that's the hard way.

The easy yoke is to aim at the transformation of that inner Flow by the renewing of my mind.

How do I go about doing that? Well, a fundamental place to start is to study so that the thoughts that occur to me can be centered in wonderful truths like, “the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not live my life in a constant craving and sense of discontent and dissatisfaction and want.

When I engage in the act of study, what I'm trying to do is change my mental map about how things are. Because, as Dallas Willard says, “we all live at the mercy of our ideas”

Sometimes you hear people say. “You ought to live up to your beliefs”.

The truth is, you DO live up to your beliefs. When you look at your behavior it will tell you what it is that you really do believe.

So you might think that you believe it's better to give than to receive. But if you look at your bank account and what you actually do with your money, then you will find out. “Do I really believe that or not?”

I believe in gravity so I don't have to say I'm going to work really hard to get my mind committed to gravity. I never live in violation of gravity. It's a part of my mental map about the way things are and so i don’r struggle with that.

And so in study I'm seeking to change that mental map so that I navigate reality in the awareness of God's presence.

Now part of what that means with study then is it is Never Enough simply to know about something. To know the words. I must actually seek to do the things that Jesus said to do because it's only by doing them and finding that they are true that they Work.

2Ti 3:16-17 ESV - 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

So much more could be said about this but we need to move on. Next is...

WORSHIP

If you are diligent to study God’s Word and really learn who He is and what His will for you is, then that will naturally lead to a desire to worship Him and celebrate.

To separate those two, to engage in study without it leading to worship is to disconnect our heart from our mind. On the other hand, to try to generate emotive or experiential worship without feeding the mind, is to commit idolatry with worship, where we just want to have the worship experience rather than actually worshiping God.

In worship we engage ourselves with, dwell upon, and express the greatness, beauty, and goodness of God through thought and the use of words, rituals and symbols.

We can do this alone, as well as in union with god’s people. To worship is to see god as worthy, to ascribe great worth to him.

A couple of the greatest descriptions of worship are found in the book of Revelation. As I read these, you can worship Him right now where you are seated.

Rev 4:11 ESV - 11 "Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created."

Rev 5:11-14 ESV - 11 Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, 12 saying with a loud voice, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!" 13 And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!" 14 And the four living creatures said, "Amen!" and the elders fell down and worshiped.

As you and I worship and give careful attention to the details of God’s actions and attention to His “worthiness” the good that we adore enters into our minds and hearts to increase our faith and strengthen us to be as He is.

Now we know that God is always present but sometimes, when we are focused on worshipping God, we can experience what is often called the manifest presence of God where we acutely sense His real presence which goes beyond mere emotions. This kind of encounter with god can make for an immediate and dramatic change in our lives.

This is what happened to Isaiah. Not Isaiah 6:13 that I put in the notes there, but

Isa 6:1-3 ESV - 1 In the year that King Uzziah died (interestingly this was at a time when the circumstances looked bad. When there was the loss of this great leader who had brought security and confidence. It was precisely at that moment no accident, Isaiah catches a vision of God high and lifted up Seated on the throne) I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!"

Worship has a way of positioning us to experience God in a way that otherwise may not be known to us. Often it is when we worship, that God shows up in manifest ways.

That passage we just read in Isaiah was the inspiration for one of my favorite Worship songs…I see the Lord.

I See the Lord, seated on the throne…Exalted.

And the train of His robe, fills the temple with Glory.

And the whole earth is filled. And the whole earth is filled. And the whole earth is filled with His glory.

Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy

Holy is the Lord.

Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy

Holy is the Lord.

We are made for worship. It is a gift from God because it enriches our life. It moves us out of the routine, humdrum meaningless thing that our lives sometimes feel like, and moves us into the very presence of God, where nothing else around us matters in that moment. it is a time of refreshment and freedom.

We often just think of worship as a music thing. We even refer to the music part of our service as the worship time. But the reality is, everything we do here when we are gathered together corporately should be about the Worship of our King.

Some things that may help you with this. First thing in the morning, Lift up your heart to God. Say the Lord’s prayer with your hands lifted to Him.

I like the 12 step morning prayer that says...

“God, direct my thinking today so that it be divorced of self-pity, dishonesty, self-will, self-seeking and fear. God, inspire my thinking, decisions and intuitions. Help me to relax and take it easy. Free me from doubt and indecision.

Just google the 12 step morning prayer if you like that. But use that to lift your heart to God. That is an act of worship. No music necessary.

Use nature, Use poetry and of course use music if it helps you to do this. Any of the good things that God has provided us can be an occasion for worship. That first cup of coffee in the morning can be cause for worship of the God whop provided it. We were made to live in the fierce Joy of the God who loves us and worship Him with abandon. That brings us to the last practice I want us to consider this morning and certainly the other two, study and worship should lead us naturally into this one...

CELEBRATION

This might be one of the most important practices and also most overlooked and misunderstood. It really is the completion of worship because it dwells on the greatness of God as shown in His goodness to us.

We engage in celebration when we enjoy ourselves, when we enjoy our life, when we enjoy our world, (now this is important) when we enjoy those things in conjunction with our faith and confidence in God’s greatness and beauty and goodness. Celebration is when we concentrate on our life and OUR world as God’s work and as God’s gift to us.

There is no good thing, no joy, no pleasure that comes into your life by itself, on its own at random. Every good and perfect gift comes from above and that is cause for great celebration!

This often means that we come together with others who know God to eat and drink, to sing, to dance, to share stories of God’s action in our lives.

Miriam Celebrates - in

Exo 15:20-21 ESV - 20 Then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing. 21 And Miriam sang to them: "Sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea."

Deborah celebrates - All of Chapter 5 of Judges (Not Jude)

Jesus First Public Miracle caused quite a celebration (John chapter 2)

We looked at this passage a few weeks ago where God instruct the people to gather together a tithe of their grain, their wine, their oil and the firstborn of their flock and use it all to gather and have a big celebration party. he tells them if it is too much to carry to the designated party venue, then they are to sell it, carry the money to the venue and then...

Deu 14:26-27 ESV - 26 and spend the money for whatever you desire--oxen or sheep or wine or strong drink, whatever your appetite craves. And you shall eat there before the LORD your God and rejoice, you and your household. and he reminds them to share what they have with the Levites who were not permitted to work for a living because their entire lives were taken up serving the Lord and his temple. 27 And you shall not neglect the Levite who is within your towns, for he has no portion or inheritance with you.

Now there is a passage that you won’t hear read in too many Baptist churches I know of!

King Solomon observed in...

Ecc 2:24 ESV - 24 There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God,

In Psalm 30 David writes of how the Lord gave Him reason to celebrate...

Psa 30:11-12 ESV - 11 You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, 12 that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever!

Why should we do this? Because holy delight and joy is a great antidote to despair and it is a wellspring of genuine gratitude.

Also because clearly, God wants us to celebrate all that He has done for us. So the next time you find yourself dwelling on all the reasons your life is a misery, turn your thoughts to all the ways God has blessed you and celebrate! I promise, you will feel better and our good God will be glorified.

Hearty celebration makes all of our deprivations and sorrows seem small and insignificant and in that we will find greater strength to do the will of our Father because His goodness becomes so real to us. So Celebrate. Celebrate. Dance to the music. Our God is great and greatly to be praised…Amen?

Why don’t we pray?

Study Heb 4:12 ESV - 12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Worship Celebrate