We're continuing our series called Priests. And if you've been here for a while, you've been following along that we are talking about all of us as followers of Jesus are given this call as priests before the Lord. And we talked about the very beginning that Adam and Eve, they were called to be kings and priests, right? They were called to steward the overlap of God's dwelling place, and then man's dwelling place, heaven and earth, and we're called to steward that overlap.
And yet there's things that come against that when we're trying to steward connection with God, like shame, like guilt, condemnation. And Jesus silences the chirps of accusation. And he says, no, you actually get to approach my throne with boldness. You get to be stewards and priests before me of the overlap, and this gets to be your identity approaching with confidence.
And then we've talked about how we actually want as a people to behold him like the chair of him. We want to behold him like John the Baptist, and God is raising us up as a community to lead and be part of the movement of worship that Jesus is worthy of, right? And so this week, the message I've named it mean it. Everybody say mean it.
Mean it. Turn your Bibles to Psalm 18. I want to get into some of the Psalms tonight. We've all been given this call as priests.
And a couple weeks ago, we talked about our target demographic as priests. You know, the group or the demographic that we feel called to as a people, as priests of God, is God. God is the target demographic. We get to be those that minister to God.
And I can't think of anybody else other than Jesus himself that ministered to the heart of God more than David. David, the man after God's own heart. How many of you have ever been in a worship service or, yeah, you're worshiping together, and you are hearing a song. And as you're listening to it, you're seeing the words on the screen.
You start singing the words on the screen, but you don't actually mean it. Have you ever had that before? Yes, like you are all not telling the truth. I didn't see enough hands, right?
Where you're just, you're just singing along, but you don't actually mean it. And I believe that David is the man after God's own heart. He knew something and he leaned into something. That many don't even touch.
And what David did was that he completely blew the ceilings off of worship, blew the glass box of religion. He just blew it all up. He broke all the rules. He was a guy, he was like a troublemaker in the area of worship.
It's like Elijah, but with worship, right? Troublemaker of Israel, David. And he started messing things up. But David had this brokenness in his story.
How many of you know David was the run? David was the run of his family. He was the last son of inheritance. He was the forgotten one by his dad.
His dad forgot about him. He was just in the field. It's like, oh, yeah, you came to anoint the next king. Well, David for sure isn't in the running.
He's the scrawny little kid in the field taking care of sheep. And then what happens is Samuel anoints David. How many of you know this story? Samuel anoints David.
It's like, hey, everybody, don't sit down. All the brothers, all the older brothers stay standing. We're going to wait for David to walk in the door. And then Samuel anoints to him as the future king of Israel.
And then what happens is David, then he starts his internship under the guy that he's going to replace as king. And he's the armor bearer of the king, which means when they go to battle, the king's life is in his hands. And he has the power in a moment to actually let the king die because he's the rear guard for the king of battle. And he faithfully protects King Saul, knowing that he's actually meant to replace him.
And this is after moments where King Saul starts trying to throw spears at him as he's playing guitar, like helping Saul with his demons and then Saul's literally throwing spears trying to kill him. And David, he goes on the run. And what does Saul do? Saul gathers 3,000 of his special forces, the most elite men in the nation of Israel's army, like 3,000 green bureys.
And he says, hey, go hunt David. Go kill David. Bring him to me. And David is found in caves, pleading with God, crying out to God.
Then Saul passes away. David becomes king. He establishes 30 years of worship and prayer of day and night, 24-7. He's breaking all the rules, like I said.
But then he starts falling into sin. He commits adultery. Then he kills the husband of the woman that he slept with. He kills him, sets up a murder.
Then his son later on actually sleeps and rakes his daughter, and he doesn't do anything about it. Because he has shame about what he did in adultery earlier, and he doesn't feel like he can actually address the thing that happened. So his son later on, another son, goes and betrays him. This is the guy that actually got arrogant about how long he was going to be.
And because he had pride in his heart, there was a plague that broke out, and 70,000 men died because of David's pride. Talk about pain, guilt, and shame on one person. Attacking one person. Talk about failure.
And yet God's going to come. And I'm going to sit on David's throne. I'm going to associate myself with this guy, David. And he's the one after my own heart.
What? Why? Why would you do that? David could have left all of the worship up to the Levites.
Just like Saul, right? I'm going to do the king thing. You guys do the priest thing. But David breaks the rules and he says no.
We're going to put the presence of God right in the middle of us all. And we're going to break all the rules. It's just like Jesus, right? How many of you guys know there's stories in the New Testament where Jesus?
He's doing all the rules. He's doing all these things that are aggravating the religious, right? And he's just kind of breaking the rules as a God-pleaser. As one that's after God's own heart.
Now even that phrase, after God's heart, that word heart in Hebrew, actually means God's desires, the way that he thinks, and God's emotions, the way that he feels. So I want to be clear, when I'm talking about David after God's own heart, what we mean by that is after God's desire, after God's emotions and after God's way of thinking. And so God is saying David has tapped into something when he's outcast little kid and he's hanging out with a little sheep on the backside of Bethlehem in the hills. When nobody's watching, there's a one-on-one thing that's happening with David and God.
And there's something special so much so that before all of this stuff that David's going to do, God says I'm tuning into this one's heart. And I believe that God is calling some of us, maybe you're a mom. You're 40 years old. 45 years old, you have teens, and you're taking care of a parent.
And I believe I just dream of this. Can I just picture with me? That mom, 45 years old, part-time job, caretaker for mom. And all of a sudden, the father leans over to Jesus and says, she's one that's after my heart.
How about that 16-year-old kid? 16-year-old kid. He could be doing so many other things. He could be hardened by all the things that have been done by him, all the things that have been said about him, and yet he's in secret when nobody's in secret.
He could be hardened by all the things that have been done by him, and yet he's in secret when nobody's watching mom and dad aren't even aware. And he's in secret, and instead of looking at his phone, he's choosing to meet with God. And God, oh my goodness, he's leaning over the sun. The same to you, see him.
This guy, he's after my heart. I want that for all of us, oh that we would all be. And that when we come before the Lord and worship that we would actually mean it. We've done that so many times.
We've done the sing along, we've done the campfire thing, right? And God is actually maturing us. That's like what Katie was talking about last week. He's maturing us into the more of not being content with just business as usual, going through the motion, singing worship songs, doing our duty, doing the formal thing.
God is breaking through the religion of it all. God is not just content with just some worship services and worship moments, right? He's calling us into authentic connection. Authentic connection of actually meaning, meaning worship.
Our only hope is Holy Spirit of our God. Our only hope. We are fully dependent on Holy Spirit that searches the deep things of God, right? So he searches his depths and then he searches our depths.
And David experienced this phenomenon. The searching of the depths of God and the depths of his soul. That's what David experienced. I want to show us how he experienced that.
Psalm 18, read this with me. David is praying and he's worshiping. And he's remembering when there was, he was being hunted by 3000 soldiers. He's remembering it.
And he's remembering what happened and singing to the Lord, remembering what happened. Okay. Let's look at verse one. It says this.
I love you, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield and the strength of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon the Lord who's worthy to be praised and I am saved from my enemies. The courts of death encompassed me.
The torrents of destruction assailed me. The courts of shayl entangled me. The snares of death confronted me. But look at this.
In my distress, I called on the Lord. To my God, I cried for help. And from his temple, he heard my voice. Look at this phrase right here.
I meditated on this for 40 days on a 40 day fast in 2008. I meditated on this one phrase. That's why I say it all the time. My cry to him reached his ears.
My little weak words went past the seraphim and the cherubim and the merians and merians of angels. And they started approaching the throne of heaven and they went into the eardrums of God and made his little eardrums vibrate. He's right got big eardrums. Right?
But David is saying, my weak cry enters in his ears. And look at what happens in verse 7. This is wild. Verse 7, then the earth reeled and rocked.
The foundations also the mountains trembled and quaked because he was angry. And then when you start reading the rest of the passage, it's wild. What David starts saying about God's response to his little weak cries that went into the eardrums of God. And I just want to cast a vision for us that your little weak words are touching the heart of God.
They're moving through his eardrums, whatever that means. And there's like a festering of your words in God. And there's movement that happens because you use your vocal cords and your lungs and your mouth to speak to him. David understood this.
David God. And what I want to talk about is the fact that the only way that we can mean what we're singing is through intentionality. How many of you know that there's a lot of times when you're in a relationship with someone, you don't feel like loving them? How many of you know that, right?
Have you ever been in a relationship and you're like, I'm not feeling this. Have you ever known of you? Yeah? Okay.
I'm always left sick. I always feel that Pastor Josh is like, praise God. That's awesome. But how many of you know that most of the time, the people in our lives, we don't feel like loving them.
And what I'm not talking about tonight is what I'm not talking about is we always have to feel like we're speaking. But what I'm casting vision for is that we would mean what we're saying. That there would be authenticity and it might not be that we're feeling emotions around it, but we actually mean what we're saying. And those aren't the same.
Okay? They're not the same. A lot of times we feel like authenticity, like it can't happen if I don't feel it. And that's not true.
I just want to call that right? What it is, you can be authentic without feeling emotions behind it. You can feel, you can be authentic and honest without having some emotional attachment to what you're saying. How many of you know that feelings follow intention?
You start, you feel dry in your relationship with your spouse. You start filling your mind with all the things that you love about them. Even if you don't feel it. Maybe you don't feel romance.
You start meditating on all of the things and attributes about them that you just love. And it takes intention. It takes discipline. We don't like that word.
No, don't say that. Don't say that. Don't say that. Did he just say, it's a plan?
All right, go go sleep. Right? I see somebody sleeping. That's okay.
Listen, the end to everybody's like looking around like, who's asleep? They're not now yet. They just got kicked. They got elbowed.
Hey, you're sleeping. Oh shoot. Yeah, passing just called you out. Oh, just hang it.
Right? Listen, David. David was intentional with his phrase. Psalm 18, we just read it.
What's happening with Psalm 18. Is this what happens in worship? You fill your mind. Worship starts with thinking.
Worship starts with intentional thinking. In between your ears. It doesn't start with emotion. It doesn't start with feelings.
It starts with the thoughts. How many of you know that the world gets changed daily by normal people having thoughts? How many of you know that all of the biggest companies on the planet right now started with an idea? That's how worship works.
You have a thought or an idea and it's on God. It's about God. Okay? What God does in this Psalm 18 passage is he remembers who God was.
How many of you guys remember the cherubim in Revelation 4? And they go, who was and is and is calm. But David is tuning in. The cherubim are the worship leaders of heaven.
The cherubim and the cherubim. Worship leaders of heaven. We're going to take notes from them tonight. Okay?
We're taking notes and what they're doing. Even as they're saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of God who was and is to come. They're actually giving us an outline of how worship works. Listen, did you just hear what I said?
They're giving us an outline of how worship operates. So, what is the meditation on what God has done and who he has been, who God is now and what he's doing now and who he will be and what he's going to do. And that is the content of worship. And so, David is remembering what God has done.
And he's worshiping him for what he's done and who he's been. Right? It's remembrance. And then David meditates something.
How many of you guys know Psalm 23? Right? Everybody's probably heard Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd.
We could go in. We could quote it. Right? What's happening in that?
He's meditating on who he is. He's the shepherd. And he's filling his mind with content of this is who you are. Right?
And so, what happens is we either fill our minds with what he's done, who he is, which we've talked about with beholden, or we partner with what he's going to do. Right? And that's a lot of time to intercession prayer. And that's what we're going to talk about in the future of the series.
Okay? So, we're going to get into intercession prayer in the coming weeks. But I want to jump right to what I think is David's secret sauce. Okay?
This is, yes, it's going to get saucy. David, David, he knew something. And what he knew is that the secret sauce was raw, messy vulnerability. That was it?
How many of you have ever read the Psalms? You're like, well, this isn't very positive. Right? And it's like you go to the next one and you're like, wow.
You're like, keep on flipping. I want to be encouraged. It's like song of lemons after lemons. And you're like, oh, no.
Right? Man after God's on heart. Do you know what that is? David's Monday through Saturday.
You know what that is? His Monday through Saturday was his context of worship. He's got the content of worship. God, what he's done, who he is and who he's going to be.
But what really brings worship to connection time is when you start taking the context of your story and your life and your pain and your difficulty and your guilt that you have for 70,000 men dying because of your arrogance and pride and your daughter suffering because of your sin and guilt. And you start taking all of the pain and all of the fear. And you start saying and you give language to it and you give it to him. That is like what God was desiring in the garden.
Adam and Eve were found hiding. Is that right? Adam and Eve are hiding. David steps out of the tree and he's like, God, you're calling my name.
Here I am in all of my vulnerability and all of my brokenness and all of my mess and all of my failures. And now I'm going to see, we're not building a house of prayer or house of worship. Yeah, it's a house of prayer but it's a house of connection. That's what we're building and that's what you want and that's what he wants.
It's connection. How do you have you ever, this is so true for some of us. Have you ever stopped for someone like at Christmas time that has everything? Have you ever done that before?
It's literally the worst. What do I give you? You buy anything that you want. Very privileged.
It's amazing that you can just buy anything. Right? And so why do I give the person that has everything? What do we give?
What does David have to give to the Lord that the Lord doesn't already have? He literally has everything and he has no need of you. Before God created, he was fully happy by himself. He was fully satisfied.
He didn't create because he's going, I need billions of people to love me. I just need it. I want to feel it. I'm really needy.
I just wish that someone would love me. God, and eternity passed. Jesus talks about it in John 17. Is that right?
The glory that I had with you before the beginning of time. We were fully happy within ourselves. Fully consent. What can you give God that he doesn't already have?
A moment that has never happened before of authenticity and vulnerability. You actually have something to give him. You have moments of vulnerability and connection that you can give him as a gift. I don't even get it.
I'm trying to peer into it. I know I'm not doing a good job of explaining it. But listen, he has everything and yet he desires something. He was desiring something in the garden.
It was to be with us. It was connection. It wasn't the shell of connection. It wasn't religion.
It wasn't doing things because I should. It wasn't the facade. It wasn't the compartmentalization of my Monday, my Tuesday, our mind, and that's secular. And then my Sunday is sacred and that's the Lord's.
No. It wasn't the religion thing. It wasn't doing things and showing up to things and singing songs and doing that. It was connection that was vulnerable and honest and real.
How many of you know when you're in a relationship with someone and they're not being honest? And they're not being honest with you. And you're feeling disconnection and you're feeling like I'm not getting the full person. Have you experienced that before?
I'm getting about 25% of this person. The Lord wants 100% and that's what's scary to most of us because then the alarm starts tripping. Right? And we start realizing that we actually don't believe the gospel yet.
We start realizing that we are afraid to give him 100% of ourselves because he might be upset with us if we actually gave him access to all of the junk. And the Lord, oh my goodness, he's going, I am stepping in and I'm pursuing you in the garden. The garden of your saying, but it's going to be a garden of connection. And I died so that we could have these moments.
I died so that there could be honest, real authentic connection. Not so that you could watch people have connection. Not so that you could be a spectator. Not so that you could just come here, do the thing, and then forget about him all week.
God's an spectator Christianity and he's making it real. He's making followers out of us. He's making sons and daughters out of us. He's making priests out of us to actually feel like there's this call that we have to be real with him and minister to him.
It's the vulnerability. When I look at what we're doing as a church, as feelings will follow intention, I believe that there are moments that we're going to feel it. And those are special. Right?
But how we do it is this. We fill our minds with him. And let me give you an example of what that looked like. Okay?
Because I want us to be like actually real. So I stopped and worse than wrote this down because I thought this was a perfect example. The goal is to be connected and to mean it. Right?
So how many of you guys remember the moment in worship where we start singing? There's nothing better. Okay. That's again.
That's not how I sing. I know it's good, but that's not my voice. Okay? But we started singing.
There's nothing better than this right now. And what I would encourage us to do is to not sing something that we don't mean. Because in that moment, I actually didn't believe that. That there's nothing better than this right now.
I didn't feel that. And so what we need to do in that moment is not check out, but lean in with intention. Right? Just because I'm not feeling it and that's not true and authentic for me to sing it right then.
I didn't check out. Do you know what I did? I started thinking. And I had a thought.
When could I actually mean it? When could I actually mean it? And I thought I could actually mean that when I see him face to face. And I started picturing me seeing him face to face for the first time.
And having that phrase come out of my heart. There's nothing better than this right now. And I could actually sing that phrase and mean it in my heart. I want to encourage us.
It starts with thinking thoughts in our brains and not just going through the motions. Don't choose the facade. We are leaving religion behind like David did. We are leaving back the, leaving behind the, oh I just do this because I should and I sing the song because we're singing the song.
And we're going to mean it when we sing it. Have you guys ever noticed, I'm sure you have, if you've been around girl for a while. There's these moments where there's spontaneous songs that we sing. And some of you are like, what the heck is happening?
There's no words on the screen. Everybody's just standing here and we're looking. What should I even do with myself? How many of you experienced that right?
You first came to a girl and you're like, okay. What's happening right? It's like, okay, you're not alone. Okay.
If you've never experienced that, that's okay. Have you ever received a hallmark card? Like for your birthday or Christmas, right? And you open it up and it's like they didn't write a note in it.
And there wasn't money in it and you're like, okay, oh, thank you. Have you ever done that before? It's like, okay. That was really thoughtful.
Thank you. What's happening in those spontaneous moments is that it's like a handwritten letter to the Lord. It's happening. Okay.
So we have these worship songs that are pre-written and they're amazing because a lot of times they inspire worship and connection and content that we fill our minds with and that we mean things. Right. But there's something special when we offer him a song as a church family. And it's a song that's never been sung before in all of history.
So this day, this song has never been sung before him. And maybe after today, it will never be sung again. But in this moment, we all sang the same thing. And what happens in that moment, a lot of times, is they're getting, they're meditating as worship leaders, they're filling their minds with the content of him and they're thinking from their place of context.
And there's a spontaneous combustion of worship that's honest, like the chair of him. And then we all, as a whole church, jump in with them in the course that they get it. And we all can mean it in a moment together. And we all get scooped up into a moment of honesty and authenticity and singing through to him.
God is calling us as a people to write songs in little moments and not just on Sundays. I just believe God is raising up little ten-year-olds, seven-year-olds, and fifteen-year-olds. I believe that growth kids is actually going to birth, singers that sing to the Lord in secret. And then all of a sudden, there's actually songs that start billowing out of Generation Z, or whatever their generation is going to be called.
And it's going to be honest. And they've been stewarding, playing their little fingers on pianos for seven years, ten years. But I believe that we all, as adults that are in this room, we can do it Monday through Saturday and have honest songs. I want to encourage you, it means something to him when it's real and authentic.
Even when we don't feel it, we're going to lean in with an intention as a people. Let's all say that. Jesus, you are the King, you're the priest, you're the prophet. You're the one that has been chasing us and pursuing us in the gardens.
As we've been hiding around trees, behind trees, covering ourselves in our own strength, like Adam and Eve did with fig leaves. And Lord as a people, we want to be those that are like David. After your mind, after your way of thinking, after your emotions, after your thoughts, after your desires. This is what we want.
And so Lord, I thank you that you're demystifying the things that have felt confusing to us in worship and Lord you're making it simple. I think about you. I think about what you've done, who you've been. I think about who you are and what you're doing.
I think about what you're going to do in the future and who you are in the future. And I do it within the context of my life. And I start meaning it. And so God, Lord, I just thank you for giving us the special grace as a people to mean it when we sing.
Lord, thank you for raising up our generation. Everyone that's alive, when I say our generation, I mean everyone that's alive right now, raising up this generation as a generation of worshipers like David, men and women after your heart. Single moms, single dads, middle-aged moms, middle-aged dads, single 20-somethings, single 40-somethings. Lord, raise up 13-year-olds, 7-year-olds, 80-year-olds.
Lord, just like last week, we declare over our city that we want there to be billows of living sacrifices to you from our city. Billows of worship from the everyday. In Jesus' name.