Moving Forward - Pt. 4

The heart cannot love what the mind does not know, which is why our worship of God is grounded in treasuring His Word. As we diligently study the Bible to know Him greater, our knowledge of God overflows into praise to Him for who He is and what He has done. Worship involves every affection, attitude, and action because they ascribe worth to what we value. When we gather together, and when we don't, God alone is the focus of our worship.

Over the past two week we have tried to put some biblical meat to the bones of Gospel-centered Worship. If you missed either of those weeks, I would encourage you to go to our website and either listen to them or follow the streaming link and watch them.

In those two services we saw how as created beings, we are made for worship. And that worship is to be directed toward our Creator.

Now, because of our sinful nature, we take what is good and twist it to be all about us, but a biblical understanding of worship, as we saw in Psalm 8, is grounded in what we know to be true about God.

He created me. He redeemed me. He alone deserves my total affection and adoration.

As Jesus taught the woman at the well in John 4, those who worship God must now do so in Spirit and truth.

And that involves two things:

The Inner Man - Your Heart

The Truths of God - defined by the Word of God

Our worship, when we are together and when we are apart, is to be:

based on truth, not our feelings

focused on Jesus, not ourselves

from the heart, that has been transformed by the Gospel

Someone from our faith family had shared a post yesterday that is so true and the emphasis of that post was that worship is not relegated to one day a week. In fact, worship is to be an every moment of every day orientation of our hearts. We don’t turn a switch on to worship, then flip it off when we feel like we are done.

Friend, worship is something we do because of who we are. We are created as worshippers. At all times we are elevating something or someone to the throne of our heart. Our prayer as a local church, is that God alone would be the focused King of your life and the heart of your worship.

Now, as we further develop the way forward, there is an overflow of a biblical understanding of worship that is grounded in the gospel.

You see, if God has done the regenerating work of redemption in you, then things are going to be different!

2 Corinthians 5:17 NKJV

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

This new life that Christ provides, is what we are talking about when it comes to Gospel-centered Transformation.

We emphasize in this that…

Slowing down sufficiently for the will and presence of God to fill our lives doesn't happen naturally. We intentionally embrace our limitations and strive to allow the rhythms of our lives to reflect the grace and goodness of God. Centering our hearts and schedules on the gospel transforms the way we pray, rest, relate to others, and work. Although perfection is not a reality on this side of heaven, progressive growth is a result of a life impacted by the gospel daily.

Life can be hectic! In fact, unless we are intentional with our time, slowing down to spend time thinking about God and growing in our understanding of Him won’t happen. Now, some would ask, “Why should I devote time to think about and grow in my understanding of God?”

We attend church on Sunday.

I already know that He is God, I don’t doubt that.

No one has ever challenged me to do this before.

Biblical understanding of our total love for God - turn with me to Mark 12.

Mark 12:28–34 NKJV

28 Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that He had answered them well, asked Him, “Which is the first commandment of all?” 29 Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. 31 And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” 32 So the scribe said to Him, “Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth, for there is one God, and there is no other but He. 33 And to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” 34 Now when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” But after that no one dared question Him.

Did you pick up on what was said? Christ responded with the two greatest commandments - Love God and Love People. This type of love supersedes the ceremonial sacrifices found in the law.

And how we are to love God is with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.

And the scribe replies (v. 33) heart, soul, understanding and strength.

But before we crucify the pharisee for changing Jesus’ words, let’s look at what was originally said.

The greek word in v. 30 (mind) is speaking of the seat of the faculty of reason - it is that which is responsible for one’s thoughts.

And the the greek word in v. 33 (understanding) is a different word all together. It is the ability to comprehend.

So an application from this deduction is that to love God, you do so in the totality of your being. And this includes your thoughts. And although we will never fully comprehend or understand God, we are to be growing intentionally in this process.

Friend, your love for God includes your growing understanding of Him. I would dare to say that if you aren’t loving God with your mind, then you aren’t really loving Him.

And to love God with your mind, requires time thinking about Him. Not defining God by what your mind can resolve, but dwelling on God as revealed through His Word.

And in emphasizing Gospel-centered transformation we emphasize that in order to love God well, it requires our minds - and in the day we live it is much easier to allow our minds to be occupied by everything else than God.

It is not natural for you to think about God. In fact, apart from the grace of God, you would not think about Him at all.

An early study of humanity proves this:

Cane and Abel. - Cane brought what he thought was good to God - He didn’t consider what God had already prescribed in what to bring. And as a result, God refused His sacrifice and Cane killed Abel. His thoughts revolved around himself - and so did his worship - and the result, in this case, was murder.

A few chapters later in Genesis we come to tower of Babel. What was that? In its most basic sense, it was man’s way of promoting themselves to be like God. Their natural thought was self. The bent of their motivation was exaltation of creation - they were not seeking God, they were seeking to obtain a name for themselves.

So humanity in general, you included, apart from the regenerating work and presence of the Holy Spirit in you would not seek after God, nor think upon his person, character, and attributes.

Paul addresses this, and we studied it in more depth when we were there last year in our study of Romans, but Paul says:

Romans 12:1–2 NKJV

1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

2. Transformation (v. 2)

Believers for centuries have been seeking what the will of God is for their lives. They desire as Paul says here, the good, acceptable and perfect will of God.

Many who are pursuing God like verse 1 talks about, understand the why of giving our all to God. The simple conclusion is, “He is God, and it is reasonable worship to do so.”

But how that takes place begins in v. 2.

Paul gives us two thoughts - one negative and the other positive.

First, he says, don’t be conformed to this world - literally in the greek this age.

In other words, “Don’t let the culture around you squeeze you into its own mold.” On this journey of presenting our complete selves to God, we must not align ourselves to those things that are contrary to God’s holiness.

But as RC Sproul encourages, we must be careful with the business of conformity and nonconformity. There are christian distortions that add extra-biblical details where the bible doesn’t speak and can produce a nonconforming spirit that isn’t Christ-like at all.

Sproul writes, “Often Christian ethics is determined simply on the basis of antithesis—if the world wears lipstick, the Christian doesn’t wear lipstick, to show that she is spiritual rather than worldly. If the world goes to movies, Christians don’t go to movies, to show that they are more spiritual, more pious.

Friend, That’s nonsense, that’s the kind of attitude the Pharisees had, which distorted the truth. Christ calls us to a special kind of nonconformity: a refusal to conform to the sinful patterns of the world, to patterns of disobedience.

R. C. Sproul, The Gospel of God: An Exposition of Romans (Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 1994), 196.

So there is a negative prohibition in Paul’s teaching, but notice with me the positive affirmation also. He says, don’t allow your culture to formulate how you live, but rather, in your presenting of yourself to God in every area of your life:

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

To be transformed means to be changed from one thing to another. And that is what God wants for you.

God’s desire is not that you would remain in the conformed state of your current culture, whether secular or religious, or that you would be molded by the natural you, but that you would be changed into godliness through renewing your mind.

This is not so much a call to drop out of society and culture as much as it is a call to dedicate our entire lives to the glory of God.

So don’t seclude yourselves into monasteries and refuse to see those of the culture of our day, but involve yourselves as much as is needed to love people to Jesus.

Don’t partake of sin, to reach the sinner. But build a bridge of grace to them that can support the weight of the truth we all desperately need.

This transformational change we all need comes through the renewal of our minds. We have to relearn things from a new perspective. We need new values. We need to train our minds so that we begin to think God’s thoughts after him.

And as we develop our minds to think godly thoughts and view life from a godly perspective, we will be able to test and approve God’s good, pleasing and perfect will.

There is no magical way to know and live out the will of God, apart from knowing the Word of God.

So we begin our understanding of Gospel-centered Transformation with the basics of our depravity and the desperate need we each have for God to change us - and that change begins in our minds. The key to your life being transformed by the Gospel is by incrementally renewing your mind in the Word of God.

Friend, we have the Coffey’s scheduled to come on April 26 for a special week of meetings, and I am praying that God works mightily through our efforts that week. But your spiritual transformation isn’t accomplished in a week of revival meetings.

We do our best to promote the meat of God’s Word on Sunday Mornings, but your spiritual transformation isn’t accomplished in attending a service once a week.

Spiritual transformation begins with your mind, and the intentional renewal of incremental thoughts from what used to be important to what is eternally important - defined by God’s Word.

Now, next week we are going to delve deeper into what this looks like, but for today I need you to do two things:

First - be honest, how often do your thoughts involve God and His Word?

Two - sign up today for Healthy Discipleship.

Our healthy discipleship is a church wide curriculum that we are going to walk through together.

We exist to glorify God by making spiritually and relationally healthy disciples.

This is one of the keys to our plan.

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