God's Constant Worthiness: Worship Beyond Circumstances

All right, well, this morning I don't know if I'm on or not, I have no clue.

So, I actually felt like, I don't know if you could hear me or not. I kind of wanted to keep going a little bit. Sometimes you get caught up in that moment and just a simple worship, "You're worthy of it all."

And no matter what our seasons look like, no matter where we're at, what lane we're in, in a sense of where we're at with life and all the challenges that it offers to us, right?

It's interesting, the seasons, they're changing. Spring is coming. And I don't know, last week was really a lot of fun to get out of the building and go to the park. Do you guys have a good time? I did.

Yeah, I think we had a couple hundred people there that really appreciated what we did, the egg drop and the coffee. Thank you guys for actually everybody that served.

Next year, I felt... I caught myself falling. People are... I'm sorry. Next year, we'll have 5,000 because it was over like that. And we almost need the helicopter, you know, drop them and just say go for it.

But they had a good time and it was a lot of fun. It just felt good to be out of the four walls. And it really kind of confirmed to me, you know, what I love being out of the church. I love being out. It's part of our DNA. It's to not be walled in and I've always been leery of four walls.

The good news is meant to be shared in public and public settings. And that was a lot of fun.

And so we're going to talk about that today. But I want to make a few announcements. One of our children, go ahead and get up. Thank you guys for participating and staying in. I could hear your little voices, appreciate you very much, love you.

They all look so beautiful and handsome last week. And this weekend, we have our grandchildren with us. They're in the corral, the nursery, the corral for the little ones. They woke up in such a good mood this morning.

Going to bed, it's a different story. They're not so good of a mood, but they woke up like, "We're Mimi's!" They had a smile on their face and they had Wally, our little dog, and he's like, "There's kids here. I get to wake up my chew toys."

They're about his size. He could jump up and just gnaw on them and have a good time that way. But anyways, if you haven't had kids in a while in the house and all of a sudden you do, it's like that. Just being honest, right?

She loves being Mimi and I love watching that too.

And so, this morning, I wanted a couple announcements. Thank you guys for... I'm gonna backtrack a little bit. We had an incredible... If you were married and came to our "Exo"... Those six weeks, man, that was amazing, right?

And I also want to think... I think... Did I do this already? But Tommy, thank you so much. He threw down some New York steaks and chicken and it was for about 40 or 50. How many people were there? 40 people or so?

It was amazing. It was really good. And I just want to thank him for that and all the girls that did stuff in the table setting. It was really a lot of fun. We had a great ending to that with just a great dinner around the table.

And we had some laughs and good times and just reminded us what really being married is all about. So we need singles that live well and do right. You need us married people to do well too so you can be encouraged, right? That's a whole 'nother deal.

Also, next weekend is the women's tea, right? You're going up to Fresno Saturday. Have fun. So I won't be there. It's... It's a tea. What can go wrong with it?

Well, I can tell you I had some pretty bad, gnarly tea last... In Easter. Actually, excuse me. We're... My daughter-in-law here. She made some tea and I'm like, "What is this?"

Anyways, it was wonderful. It grew on me. God bless her. So anyways, it's... It's tea.

So another thing I want to do. Starting in May, I'm going to start a Men's Bible study. And it's going to be... It's going to be kind of interesting. It's going to be on early Saturday morning.

And I want to commit to this for you guys for about six weeks. Every Saturday then, we're going to have a day trip. Probably the second week of June to go up to the Bass Pro Shop up in Manteca.

We're all going to pile in the van or take a train or whatever and take off and go have some breakfast and be dudes and go have Fred teach us the right pole to buy, I don't know. And the right bait to use.

But we're going to have a good time. And it's not going to be here at the church. It's going to be at the barn on the corner of 65 and 198.

Okay? So the reason why is because they have breakfast burritos out there, right? Okay? They're $2.99, all right? It's the best deal in town.

And those little gals in there are pretty generous. If you're nice to them, they'll roll those things up big. And I'm like, "Man, she really laid it on there thick today."

All right? You can't beat it. So for $2.99 plus coffee, you're going to spend $4.50 or whatever. So bring your lawn chair.

So it's breakfast burritos, five Bs. Breakfast burritos, Bibles, and bros at the barn. Amen?

All right, I don't know, it's just too convenient, it's too easy. But for that price, really. It's about, it's easier than setting up and tearing down in here.

And we can get out, it's going to be really nice mornings. We're going to do it at 7:30, a little earlier, and we'll beat the mosquitoes.

By the way, I've been warned that if you have ponds, and this year, because of all the rain, to expect fleas, mosquitoes, gnats. It's like, really? Okay.

So, but anyways, be careful. Just take care of business. And anyways, you don't want that.

So this morning, a couple things I've been thinking about this week, for me, I'm like, "Will you speak on us?" "Right after Easter, it can be somewhat challenging."

And I enjoy being outside, you know. You have about a five-minute window of attention span kind of because there's so much going on.

And so it was rather brief and quick, and we were out there to have fun and to meet and greet and to be with our community. It's a great area and a great park to do that in.

So all week, I've just been thinking to myself these two words: "In Him." "In Christ." "In Jesus." "In God." And being rooted in Him. Being found in Him. Being a part of what God is doing.

And so I'm just reading through scriptures and reading through Bible verses that in Him, dot dot dot, right? And so I come to the story.

And it's really important because the society where we're at today, time and age we're living in... I tell you what, we need Jesus more than ever.

And Jesus needs to be big and real in our lives. And He needs to show up, right?

And so I'm going to pick up a story. It's a famous story. It's a story about Mars Hill. So what that was called in the King James Version is a place where they would come and gather and talk about ideas.

So I'm going to talk about that a little bit. So Paul went to Thessalonica. He was doing his missionary work. He went to Berea, where people were saved.

And then, they... he was having trouble and they were kept moving him around because people were pursuing him, wanting to kill him. The guy just everywhere he went, he just preached Jesus.

He preached a simple message that Jesus was Lord, that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. And to that, people were like, "What are you talking about?"

But he went to the Jews, he went to the non-Jews, and this was his message. And it was very simple, but yet very powerful.

So when he went to Athens, they moved him to Athens, Greece there, and Timothy and Silas stayed behind.

And it says, "When he was waiting there, in Acts 17:16-21, while Paul was waiting for them, for Timothy and Silas, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols."

So he's in this city, and I've never been to Greece, I've always wanted to go. But he's there, and he's walking around the town, and Greece was like the epitome and the pinnacle of all intellectualism and mythology about Zeus, and all the mythical people that we know, Clash of the Titans, all that kind of stuff.

And they had all these statues. If you walk down through there, I'm sure it was just really amazing to see all these works of people's hands to worship different gods.

And it would really just distress him. And it said that he reasoned in the synagogues, with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace, day by day, to those who happened to be there.

So he went to two places, really the only two places we can go in a sense, is one is the house of the Lord. Like he went to the synagogues to reason with the Jewish people.

And then he went to the marketplace, to the place of business, where he worked, making tents or whatever, and got involved with the community and began to share and to speak with people about the best.

Sharing the gospel and the good news of Christ. It says, "A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, 'What is this babbler trying to say?' Others remarked, 'He seems to be advocating foreign gods.'

They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. So to them, he almost came off as an illiterate person because they called him a babbler, like, 'What are you babbling about?'

Maybe you didn't use the correct language or the words that they thought he should be using, grammatically sound. I don't know, but somehow they had this just superior attitude, looked down to him, kind of threw their nose, or whatever, and said, 'Who is this babbler? What are you babbling about?'

They got it all figured out. They knew what was going on. They lived in the highest place of intellectualism and philosophy and worshipped many gods, and they had it all down, and everything was good.

But he was just preaching the simple message that Jesus was about Jesus and the resurrection.

Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus. So that was a place. It's a big hill. It was called Mars Hill, where people would meet and gather.

And give thought to certain things of the times. And they said to him, 'May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears. We would like to know what they mean.'

So they were curious, like, 'What are you talking about?' And I love this. It says, 'All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.'

They just sit around, watch TikTok, get on Instagram, watch TikTok, basically. If they were staying in this day and age, that's basically what they would say.

They sit around and were gleaning ideas, gathering ideas, listening to what everybody had to say. No difference today.

And I'm going to tell you what, I'm reading this and I'm praying about this. I'm like, 'Man, today's culture and the society we live in, this very same thing is happening before our eyes.

As of January, and I'm not knocking it, I have a TikTok. I like, I sit there and watch Marla and laugh with her and she shows me goofy stuff.

But all she gets on me sometimes, 'You should watch the YouTube.' I go, 'This is where the fight, this is where it's happening in a sense with the exchanging of ideas, exchanging the philosophies and the influences going on to our children too.

It's molding and shaping a generation. And, you know, as of January 2023, there are currently 3.2 million estimated podcasts that are going on daily.

Spotify claims to have 4.7, and I enjoy podcasts. Anybody ever listen to one, I enjoy them. Apple has 2.5, it says they're about 150 million podcast episodes, averaging 50 episodes per podcast.

So there's just a plethora. There's a pouring out of people's ideas and what they're thinking. And the number one genre is society, societal things, right? Culture and education.

'Are you smart? You know, that kind of stuff.' It says, 'The podcast also outnumber audiobooks by over six times.'

So people are even before reading or listening to a book or going to church, you know. And it's like, 'So and so and so and so and so.'

And I'm like, 'I said there's a lot of societal issues, societal things.' You know, Hollywood could be a teacher to all children.

I mean, it's just like, 'Wow, there's just a lot going on out there.' And I'm like, 'Wow, as I'm reading this and I'm getting all this information, you know, it's just so much that's being poured out.

It's so much information overload.' And he goes on, he says, 'Society and education take up about a quarter of all that.

The Epicureans, that Paul faced when he went to Mars Hill, when he went up there to Mars Hill to talk to them, to share about the simplicity of Christ and the resurrection, he had two lines of thought.

The Epicureans were people that believed, just like God really didn't exist or you don't really need a God. They had this idea that we're all just a mass, and what you do is what you do.

And also kind of like, if they were really big into whatever pleases you, whatever pleasures you find, that's your life. So do as you will. It sounds familiar.

The Stoics, on the other hand, were pantheists. They believed that God was in everything, that God existed in the water, in the rocks, and everything, and even in them to the point where they could be God unto themselves, that they could redeem themselves and be a God unto themselves and live that way.

Matter of fact, it's kind of interesting, they would write books about it, a book of hardships that they could compare. "Look what I've endured, look what I've stoned, and tested, and been tested with, and saved myself."

So, yeah, these two training lines of thought, and Paul was just like, "Well, you guys are off here." He went right after them with a simple message, it says this, "In Acts 17:22-23, Paul stood up in the meeting of the Arumidiges and said, 'People of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious.'

'For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription to an unknown God.'

'So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship. And this is what I'm going to proclaim to you.'

So they covered everything. They didn't want to offend anybody. They just wanted to please everybody and become whatever.

They were going to tolerate everything. Paul challenged them on this and he went straight to the heart of it and he says this, Acts 17:24-25, "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth.

And does not live in temples built by human hands." "And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, rather he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else."

He goes, "We build these things and we do these things, we can conduct our lives, and we got to think that God will submit to us and how we construct it and how people should think about it."

It says, "But really, we're the ones that are on the other end of that. We're totally lost and we really need Him more than anything."

And then he goes on, he says, "In Acts 17:26-28, 'From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth, and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.'

God did this so that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from any one of us."

And he goes on, he quotes this man, this poet of the modern day, one of their philosophers. He'd be a YouTuber today, quoting Paul Logan or somebody else.

And he says, "For in Him we live and move and have our being." As some of your own poets have said, "You're His offspring."

So, he uses this modern day philosopher, whose writings were well known in that culture, to build a bridge to their society, to their culture, to say, "Hey, listen, there's another way to live."

And this guy, I mean, this is historical, this guy was known for this, 600 years before Paul. A terrible plague came on the city, sounds familiar, right?

And a man named Erikotnides, he had an idea. This guy, the pandemic is here, right? Covid-1, I don't know. He had an idea.

He let loose a flock of sheep through the town. And wherever they laid down, they sacrificed that sheep to the god they had the nearest shrine or temple.

If a sheep laid down near no shrine or temple, they sacrificed the sheep to the unknown god. So this guy, the pandemicist, right? Covid-1, he goes, he got an idea.

Let's let all the sheep out. And wherever they lay down, whatever statue they're closest to, that's the god we'll sacrifice to.

And then if they don't, well, I don't know, they're just one of the sheep. What are we going to do with them? Let's just take them to the unknown god.

We don't know who it is, but just in case he exists, let's sacrifice them and maybe this thing will lift off us.

I was reading this and I'm kind of laughing. I didn't know this backstory. I'm thinking, "Man, the season we just came out of, and even people's attempts right now to just appease anything and try everything they can to make things right, people just do whatever it takes."

And Paul says, "Well, let's talk about this unknown god. There's a way that you can make it work. There's a way," and he quotes them, "In him we live and move and have our being."

And I love the story that Paul recognizes that the one thing, and the same as us, we've got to change our ideas and our concepts of who God is.

In him, it says this, in Acts 17:29-31, it says, "Therefore, since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image made by human design and skill.

In the past, God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed, and he has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead."

So, Paul's sitting there in this great arena or this place on this high mountain, and he says, "At one time, God overlooked all this ignorance. You guys worshiping these false gods and becoming gods to yourself or living overly sensual lives because you think pleasure is the answer to everything."

He says, "But he's not overlooking anymore, except because he gave his Son." And he says, "That same Son is going to be the judgment for all the world, and his resurrection, and it's a powerful word and a powerful ending.

They said only about two or three people got saved in that preaching. One of them went on to be a saint in the Catholic Church, so he did have some impact.

But I'm here today to tell you that we're at a precipice and we're at a time in our culture where the simplicity of the gospel, like Jesus, an Him resurrected, to know that He has given proof of this to everyone by raising Him from the dead,

Philippians 3:10 it says, "I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised Him from the dead." When's the last time we prayed that?

Now, the Easter is over, post-resurrection. On the way 50 days later, on after spence, which when they're all in power with the Holy Spirit, but how many times have we prayed this?

I want to know the power of His resurrection in my life. And the words after that says, "Also in His sufferings." Because they also wanted to suffer.

Many times in our suffering and difficulty is when we do experience the power of His resurrected life. And if that same Jesus and that resurrection power lives in us, man, let it... Let it come to life.

Let it pour out. The Lord helps me to not restrain it or keep it bottled up because people need it. People need it.

I was really moved. We went passing out eggs. We went passing out those little pamphlets about having our Easter.

And this guy kept walking by and I don't know, he kept complaining about hurting or something. An older guy and we were teasing with him.

But I think he made a couple, two or three laps and I heard Amber say, "Do you want us to pray for you?" And I was really proud of her for doing that.

Made a fool of herself, but that's what it takes. I mean, Cassie got caught up praying with somebody at the house. I was like, "Where did you go?"

"Oh, I was just upstairs praying with somebody." I was trying to keep my dog from pooping on people's yards. Like, "Don't do that."

But that's what it takes. You just never know how God will show up in somebody's life if you just offer it.

And it's my prayer for you. I pray that you'd be full of life, that you'd be strong, that you'd be fresh, that you'd be moving, and that you'd be innovative.

Let go, move forward, and keep climbing. That's the essence of life. I pray that you'd exist with character and strength in him.

And know that in him we live, we move, and we have our being. Amen?