Well, good morning, Springhouse. It's a wonderful day to be in the house of the Lord.
It's Picnic Sunday, and we do have a picnic prepared for you.
I smelt fried chicken in the hallway, and is there no better, uh, is there no better, uh,
lunch menu after church than fried chicken?
Uh, yes. Amen. Amen.
[Laughter]
Welcome. If you're joining us online, you're missing out on that fried chicken,
so you better get here at noon.
Just, uh, some, some real fast, uh, real quick announcements before we, uh, continue to be clicking along here.
Uh, some instruction, because I don't want to disrupt, uh, I'm excited for what the Lord has for today.
I want to disrupt at the end to come back and do this.
So, for those of you who are staying for the picnic, we're going to ask immediately,
following the gathering, once we release you,
if you'll go out this door over here to your left, uh, go through the breezeway there into the Fellowship Hall.
They will have lines ready to serve you, and then the tent is outside.
There is some seating inside for those who might not be able to get outside.
Uh, there will be some seating in there, but there's seating outside for you.
Man, please stay and, and come and hang out with us, and, um, and let me encourage you to,
I know that we like to sit with our families, and that's appropriate,
but have your family link up with another family that you don't typically sit with, okay?
Because the point of the picnic is for us to get to know one another in a deeper way.
So, if you'll do that, uh, that would be really, really good.
Uh, a couple of other things here.
Uh, we have a, the youth are doing an event this coming Saturday.
Um, we do not have a garage on campus, but they're having a garage sale out here,
and so that means if you've got something in your garage that you want to offload to the youth so they can sell it, they'll take it.
Uh, and, uh, they're going to do this, this coming Saturday to raise funds for camp,
and so we ask if you would be a participant in that, and then if you'd like to just, uh, give a donation to help kids go to, to camp,
they'll, they'll accept those as well.
Uh, so you can see, uh, Pastor James, Dana, Doug, and Jody, uh, today if you have any questions about that,
but that's coming up this coming Saturday.
And then on Sunday, if you are new to Springhouse, or you're new, we're to Springhouse,
I want to invite you to be a part of our newcomers, uh, luncheon.
Now today is for everybody.
Next week is for those who are new or to Springhouse, because we want a more intimate connect with you
so that we can get to know you, tell you more about our church, and, uh, and learn more about who you are.
And so if you'll make plans to do that, now the little QR code there, those are throughout the building as well.
You can scan that, and that will take you to the Church Center app and get you signed up for things, uh,
and then you can register to go to that, but even if you don't register, still come.
We will make sure we have enough food, uh, and we'll tell you more about registering that at that meeting as well.
But please, if you'd like to learn more about the church, that's an opportunity for you, uh, next, uh, next Sunday.
Uh, and then next, starting next Sunday, we're going to pick back up, if you've been traveling with us this year,
we've been reading and looking at the greatest stories ever told.
And so next week we're going to pick that series, uh, back up, and if you are following along on your Bible reading plan with us,
you'll be reading about the walls of Jericho today, which we have already, uh, shared about, uh, in, in the service.
But we try to parallel the, the reading with the, with the, uh, sermons that are coming down the line.
But man, uh, journey with us. If you haven't picked up a Bible reading plan, it's never too late to start.
Uh, so I encourage you to get into your Word and to be reading your Word.
But today we're going to talk about a very important topic, especially as it relates to Springhouse worship in Art Center,
which is our actual official name. Uh, and that is the, the, uh, the, um, title and the subject of worship.
I want to talk about worship, uh, uh, today for a few minutes, uh, with, with you.
Um, I'm here to provide a little bit of context and a little bit of, of history, and I'm going to actually turn this over.
Um, the first person who held the title of worship pastor here at Springhouse was a man by the name of Carl Howard.
Now, I don't know Carl. I was not here when Carl was here. I can't tell you anything about Carl, but he was the first worship pastor.
But I can tell you about the person who followed in a step, uh, followed, uh, into the, into the next position as worship pastor.
And that was a man by the name of Wayne Berry. When I, yeah. And so when I came here in, uh, in '96, um, uh,
Wayne Berry was, was worship pastor, and some may have seen Wayne and his wife, Jean, as they're still around.
In fact, they're here in this gathering. Um, Wayne has held the longest tenure as worship pastor here at Springhouse.
And by large, uh, by, by and large, most of what, what we have experienced, Wayne has foundationally laid, uh, a strong foundation in what we experience in our services week to week.
By sowing in relationally to a team, yes, musicians and singers and dancers and all of those things, but it wasn't just from a posture of crafting a skill.
It was from a heart posture to glorify God. It was from a heart posture to glorify, to glorify God.
Wayne served for 22 years in that capacity, and he, I believe, is a pillar of this house.
If you've known Wayne for any length of time, you know that he is a pillar of this house, and he exudes the love of Jesus Christ.
Uh, in fact, one of the greatest testimonies and blessings to my life, uh, from pastor Wayne is not only that he walks out what he preaches, uh, but that he's still here.
In this church, active, participatory, and concerned about the people on the planet in relation to their God, to relation to this great, glorious God.
When it came to time for Wayne to transition out of his position of worship pastor, uh, we brought on a man by the name of Will Sevier.
Who knows Will Sevier?
Now, Pastor Ronnie selected Pastor Wayne, but I had some input when it came to Will's appointment because at the time Will was working for me over at, at the school.
And none of us really knew that years later I would become, uh, lead pastor, but I believe that Will's appointment was a Holy Spirit set up for a long ministry relationship and friendship years to come.
And boy, don't we just love the Sevier family. Is that true? Do we love the Sevier family?
So Pastor Will stepped into the role of worship pastor in 2017 and continued to sow into what Wayne had laid, affording Springhouse a very healthy transition.
You see, Wayne didn't hold on to his position like this. He held on to the position like this.
And when you hold on to what God gives you like this, we glorify the Lord.
Dear, I say we worship him. We worship him. And that's worship.
A few years into Will's tenure, I saw a need for pastoral oversight in our arts department.
And I went to talk to Pastor Will about this. Now, Will has a background in worship leadership, but he also has an extensive background in arts related activity, especially when it comes to theater.
Do you know of any place that has a theater? But more than his portfolio, I wanted somebody who reflected my vision in the heart of Christ and could pastor a team of people who would run this a very important area of outreach.
Now, when I went to Will about it, honestly, I was not convinced that he was excited about the new appointment.
In fact, I believe I know he wasn't extremely thrilled about it, but can I tell you that Will's out of the gate response to me was this.
Kevin, you are my lead pastor. If you say go, I'll go because I trust that you hear from the Lord.
And not only did he move to the new position, he did it with abundant joy and he's doing an excellent job. He's doing an excellent job.
You see, obedience to the authority that God has placed in your life is a direct reflection of how you worship the Lord.
I don't believe that there would be one thing Pastor Ronnie would ask Pastor Wayne to do and Wayne wouldn't say, "Yes, sir, I'm on it."
I don't believe that there would be one thing that I asked Will severe to do and he wouldn't be, "Yes, sir, I'm on it."
And it's not because Ronnie and I are all that. In fact, I get it wrong a lot.
But these guys' faith in God supersede the need to be right, the need to be recognized, and sometimes cause them to sacrifice what they wanted to do in order to walk in obedience in that moment.
And guys, that's worship. That's worship.
And then we hired this guy.
Now we're still trying to figure this one out.
I'm just kidding.
During the transition between Wayne and Will, there was some real merit to the thought process that Jonathan would be our next worship pastor.
He had been serving for years, his family was here, he had the abilities, but the issue was that it wasn't God's timing.
Sometimes just because you might not understand why or how something is happening doesn't mean it's not God.
In fact, oftentimes we look in Scripture and we see God move in very unexpected, peculiar ways.
But here was Jonathan's response, "I'm gonna stay planted. I'm gonna serve deeper.
I'm gonna trust the God in the leadership He's placed over me, and not only that, when people see or talk to me behind the scenes, behind closed doors,
I want them to see a reflection of God's heart." That's worship. That's worship.
Regardless if it seems unfair or whatever, Jonathan had no idea that he would be offered the role of worship pastor five years down the road,
nor was that a consideration in his continued heart posture to serve this body with excellence. That is worship.
As lead pastor, when looking at or looking for a worship pastor, I'm looking for three things, and this really is for any pastor, not just a worship pastor,
but if I'm looking for a pastor to serve here on staff here, I'm looking for these. The first one is faithfulness.
I'm looking for somebody who will remain faithful. I'm looking for somebody who will do what they say they will do.
I'm looking for the person who will show up when they said that they will show up. God honors faithfulness. That's the first thing.
The second thing is I'm looking for a willing heart of obedience. Obedience to the Lord, but also submission to the authority in the house,
so that we can walk in tandem with the vision that God has placed in this place. Faithfulness, obedience, and lastly, but not surely,
last on the list, but this is no sequential order, is a love for the Lord, a genuine love for the Lord.
I don't believe that you can really have a love for the Lord if the first two aren't in place.
And do you notice that when I talked about this is what I look for in a worship pastor, do you notice on there is not play a guitar?
Have a good voice? Have skills in songwriting? None of those things are the top criteria for filling this position. Why?
Because here's the thing. These things are our acts of worship. There are acts of worship, and guys,
I believe that God has anointed and appointed a phenomenal man to lead us in the area of worship.
Would you guys please welcome Pastor Justin, not Justin. Let me tell you something.
The reason that came out of my mouth is because there was a time, I have no time to share this story,
this time I asked this man to play bongos and it went really bad. It went really bad and it was in my mind.
And he was leading worship at the time. Guys, would you welcome Pastor Jonathan Grisham.
I thought for a second the Holy Spirit answered my prayers. Like, somebody else gets to do this. All right.
Pastor Kevin cut off the best part of that picture of me.
There's a group of birds that are attacking us on the beach because I took a bag of chips.
It was just like, wah, and they were like attacking my family and stuff. Anyways,
it's been about 10 months since I was last allowed to speak and I'm not counting.
So I really didn't know if this was a hey, you did well enough last time, we're going to let you do it again kind of sermon,
or if it's like, you got one more shot at this kind of sermon. I don't know. We'll see.
I guess it could still go either way. So today we're going to be looking at the topic of praise and worship.
I love Pastor Wayne. He describes this as two sides of the same coin.
I love that compared to scripture because you see it in these unique ways that are distinct,
but connected. And I've seen I've heard him reference it to like something like a prism that when you shine light through it on the other side,
that stream of light turns into all these depths of colors that are bending in different directions.
You just go with a topic like this that's so vast. The challenge could be what part of it do we want to look at today?
But Pastor Kevin thankfully gave me some really specific direction and asked me to, I don't know why, stay focused.
I don't know why we emphasize praise and worship at Springhouse.
And I think in order to do that, the first thing we need to do is build some kind of foundation and understanding of it.
Then we can look at how it's been emphasized and we'll discuss some vision.
So if you would stand with me, we'll start building that foundation together.
We read, "Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.
This is your true and proper worship. Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing, and perfect will."
Father God, we thank you for your Word. We thank you that we've been called into your kingdom.
Holy Spirit, we pray for a deeper understanding of what worship means and how we can offer sacrifice to you in a pleasing way that's fruitful for your kingdom.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
Church, you may be seated.
So what are some things that Scripture tells us about worship?
In Exodus chapter 20, God giving the Ten Commandments to the Israelites says this,
"You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above, or the earth beneath, or in the waters below.
You shall not bow down to them or worship them."
So there's a distinction between that outward expression and the worship that happens.
"For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God."
So those verses tell me a couple things right off the bat, which is God has created us to worship.
God knows that when left to our own devices, we will find someone or something to worship and make the object of our affection.
And God is not interested at all in sharing the worship that's due Him and Him alone with anyone or anything.
And He does not command this pridefully or out of self-interest.
This is strictly because He knows ultimately what's best for His creation and that our joy is actually made complete in praising Him.
C.S. Lewis says this, "I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment."
It is its appointed consummation.
It's not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are.
They delight in, the delight is complete and is not complete until it's expressed.
So in Matthew 15, 8 through 9, Jesus quoting the prophet Isaiah says,
"These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me.
They worship Me in vain, and their teachings are merely human rules."
So in light of all those verses, in Exodus and Matthew, I can point out three kinds of worship we could be looking at.
One kind of worship, completely misdirected away from God.
He's not the object of our affection and He says that's not pleasing to Him.
It's not fruitful for His kingdom, not fruitful for us, therefore don't.
So that's that.
Second one is what Jesus is saying here, warning us on what is super scary,
which is there's a kind of worship by all outward appearances seems right.
But it's far from the heart of the Father.
So we got the right words, we got the right songs, we got the right postures,
we got the right direction, the right melodies, whatever it looks like,
but it's distant, it's not flowing from anywhere of substance.
So that's Jesus helping us on our way to putting together some kind of understanding of true worship,
and I would say something like this.
True worship is an outward expression that declares God's worth-ship,
overflowing from a heart intimately connected to the Father.
And I do believe it's significant that Jesus is calling attention to the distance between their hearts and the Father.
It is important as worshipers that we stay near to God because He ultimately is our source of grace and mercy.
Now going back to Romans 12, Paul is writing this to the Romans at this time within that culture,
but this call to worship is certainly extending out to all generations.
It's meeting us right here today, it's for us, and it's kind of encouraging us that every generation of believers
is called to pursue and represent the kingdom of God through true worship.
And we are challenged to do so in a culture that aims to conform us to itself.
And the Message Bible puts it like this,
"Don't become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking."
So the first thing is, I think, sometimes we read wrong,
is I don't think Paul is saying everything in the culture is bad.
Like, I don't think he's saying just assume everything is bad.
He's saying you gotta use your brain when it comes to this stuff.
We're working through a book as a staff that says sometimes the most challenging thing,
even when we know we're doing something good and biblical and from the Lord,
is to slow down long enough to think about what you're doing.
And it's in the thinking about what you're doing that adds so much value.
Brittney and I, we were going through the season of Lent, and we were talking about fasting,
and we were talking about Sabbath, and we were looking to the Bible to go,
"What does it say all this is good for us?"
And when you look at the culture around us, the culture understands that there's health benefits to fasting.
And I don't know if that's like a fad now, but it's like intermittent fasting is everywhere.
I've never done it, of course, but you can tell I need to.
But also the culture knows that rest is good.
But the Bible says that instruments like that in the hands of true worshipers,
God can use in supernatural, incredible ways.
A.W. Tozer says the following, "Worship is no longer worship
when it reflects the culture around us more than the Christ within us."
So how do we reflect Christ within us?
Paul says offering our bodies to God as a living sacrifice is our true and proper worship.
Then he spends the whole rest of Romans 12 and the next few chapters detailing
what this lifestyle looks like, saying things like,
"We worship by glorifying God through humility, through the gifts He's given us,
like prophecy, teaching, serving, giving, showing mercy through loving others,
clinging to what is good." And I skipped over this part a couple times.
Being patient in affliction, I had to go back and read that
'cause we don't like that one.
Practicing hospitality, living in harmony, being obedient to leadership,
all of these wonderful things.
And of course, these are all ways that Jesus modeled a life of worship for us first
in His life before asking us to do it, all the way to His death.
And I was convinced early on when preparing a message on worship,
I had to just camp there for a while.
'Cause it's such an important thing to go through that lesson, go,
"Are all these things actually active in my life?"
But I couldn't shake the feeling that the Holy Spirit just kept saying,
"Work the foundation, focus on the foundation."
And kept illuminating the phrase to me, "In view of God's mercy."
Romans 12, it says, just as a reminder,
"Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy."
And once that phrase became stuck out to me,
I started to see it all over Scripture in all these other ways.
Going back to Exodus 20 in the 10 Commandments,
the very first thing that God says before giving His people this lifestyle of worship,
is, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery."
So it's actually God calling attention to His mercy and telling His people,
"Think on my mercy."
And this is important, and I put this in here just for Pastor Justin today.
In the Old Testament, this is important because in the Old Testament,
all the way up to a few decades before Paul would be speaking to the Romans,
sacrificial worship to pagan gods was the exact opposite.
The sacrifice was given so that they would receive mercy.
But that's not how our God, the one true God, functions.
He says, "The mercy is given freely, without restraint, with no strings attached.
It's not something we earn or deserve,
and it's in view of that mercy that we're called as worshipers to give and show mercy."
If our worship isn't flowing from God's mercy, it won't look like His.
Eventually it'll run out if we don't stay close to the source.
Paul calls us vessels of God's mercy in Romans 9.
Meant to be filled and created to be poured out.
So we'll get exhausted if we don't run back to that source
and keep a fresh view on God's mercy.
The next word that stuck out to me was "therefore" in Romans 12.1, the opening word.
So Paul is saying, "Everything I'm about to tell you about this lifestyle of worship
is completely built upon the foundation of everything I just told you."
In Romans 1-11. So everybody open to Romans 1.
And we're going to read straight through today.
And that'll take care of a lot of time. No.
We're going to go through the greatest hits here, I'll call it.
Romans 1.20.
"For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities,
His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen,
being understood from what has been made so that people are without excuse."
Romans 3.23-24.
"All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
All are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ."
Praise the Lord. And if we cling to that, we have assurance. Romans 8.38-39.
"I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,
neither the present nor the future, any powers, neither height nor depth,
anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God
that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Which makes me really think, because we've got to pay attention to this view of mercy,
that the timing of a worship message the week after Easter is really appropriate.
Because I think that view of God's mercy is on full display.
It's fresh in our hearts, fresh in our mind.
It's kind of like our lead pastor hears from the Holy Spirit.
And I told First Server this.
I want to make extremely clear to our lead pastor, without looking him directly in the eye,
that I'm not asking to teach on worship the week after Easter every single year.
Please don't.
Pastor Justin could have it next time.
So as much as Jesus is telling us in Matthew 15,
our worship flows from a heart connected to the Father,
Paul is telling us to use our brains.
Tells us to think on the mercy of God.
Tells us that there's a renewing of the mind that's taking place within our worship.
The phrase "true and proper worship" in Romans 12 can be translated as "reasonable service."
I believe in the King James.
And that word "reasonable" is translated from the Greek word "logikos,"
which has three connected meanings working together.
It's the Word of God, reason of the mind, and pertaining to the soul.
And we see that word again in 1 Peter 2, which is an incredible chapter on worship.
"Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind,
like newborn babies crave pure spiritual milk of the Word, of the logikos,
so that by it you may grow up in your salvation now that you have tasted that the Lord is good."
And this is a Pastor Wayne trick.
You can take that verse, flip it on its head, and read it again, and it'll mean the same thing.
But now that you have tasted the Lord is good, it kind of seems like, "In view of my mercy, do this."
So my best attempt at explaining how that word in Paul is using that in Romans 12 is something like this.
Right thinking of God through study and application of the Word of God
renews our mind and informs our soul how to respond in worship.
Making sure our understanding of worship has a biblical foundation is important,
and I'll throw it back to my friend A.W. We're on a first name basis.
I actually don't know his first name. It's A. I'm just realizing that.
The church that can't worship must be entertained,
and men who can't lead a church to worship must provide the entertainment.
I don't have to be clever. This guy. Golly.
And that's important to me because I don't think I'm very entertaining.
And if I'm going to be here for 22 years or five years or however long the Lord has me,
it's important to me that we have a foundation because entertainment is not going to carry any of us
in this race that we're called to run as worshipers.
So we now have somewhat of a foundation, I think.
Exalting God, a heart that pursues intimate connection with the Father,
a mind that's diligent to seek out His Word to know more about Him
so that our souls will be informed how to worship Him.
So now we can get onto the task that Pastor Kevin asked me,
which is why we emphasize praise and worship at Springhouse.
And I struggled with that question for a minute because I was like,
"How do I talk about this?"
Because what we don't do ever as a staff is sit down and go,
"Okay, this week, how can we emphasize worship like mercy?"
Or, "How can we emphasize worship like giving or worship like obedience?" or whatever.
What we do all the time, it's in our prayers, it's in our DNA,
it goes way past the generation past Pastor Kevin,
is we go, "How can we make sure that everything we do points to Christ?"
And at the end of the day, when people come here,
"How can we make sure that everything we do, they leave with Christ in their mind?"
And that's putting God first.
And I think from that place, that heart posture, that pursuit of His Word,
worship will naturally flow and be emphasized.
So the different question might be,
"How have we expressed worship at Springhouse or emphasized it?"
And that's really a question of history.
We've just celebrated 50 years of God's faithfulness as a church a couple of years ago.
That's incredible.
I've only been here like 13 or 14 of them.
So I'm not the best person, I'm not qualified to be talking about 50 years of God's faithfulness, you know.
But as Pastor Kevin was saying, we kind of have a built-in time today
where we can really take advantage of, there are people sitting among you
who have roots here that have been serving for 10, 20, 30 years.
And it's so easy to go somebody, "Can you just tell me about God's mercy in your life
and how that's worked out?"
So what I can do is share some stories about my time here
that have been informative to my understanding of worship in powerful ways.
And I think within them, there will be a bit of an implied history.
And this is what I mean by that.
Pastor Wayne was the first person to point out to me that in Genesis 22,
that's the first time the word "worship" is used.
So that's the story where Abraham is asked by God to sacrifice his son, Isaac.
And Abraham and Isaac get the materials for the burnt offering,
which is, that's fascinating.
The burnt offering, everything goes to God.
There's nothing left over.
A little connect point.
And then, but they get the materials and he turns to his servants,
Abraham turns to his servants and said,
"Me and the boy are going to go up on that mountain to worship."
And as they're going up the mountain, Isaac starts sweating a little bit,
noticing there's not actually a sacrifice and goes, "Dad, where's the sacrifice?"
And Abraham says, "God will provide."
Now, I believe two things are true in this story.
I think Abraham fully committed in his heart to walk in obedience to what God has asked.
And that was counted as his worship.
I also believe he was absolutely full of faith that God would provide something.
Now, the implied history is this.
If we knew nothing else about Abraham's life, we would have to go,
"Something's going on between him and God,"
to make him respond that way in worship.
I was telling my wife, talking to my wife Brittney about it last week,
I was like, "This isn't day one Christian stuff.
This is crazy."
And it's just crazy to wrap your brain around.
But thankfully, we do know more of the story.
If you've been following along in the Bible reading plan,
we know that God has helped Abraham bail out Lot.
He's helped Abraham bail out Sarah,
because he can't stop telling people they're related, brother and sister.
He's blessed Ishmael, even though that's Abraham and Sarah's bright idea
to make the promise happen, and of course, given them their promised son.
And I believe it's all those things active that actually,
it's that view of God's mercy that's informing Abraham's soul
how to respond in worship during that very difficult time.
So the stories I'm gonna share, I wanna point out that they intentionally
cast a very wide net across different situations and a lifetime,
because that's what we're talking about with worship.
So much of what we do here is important,
but in the reality, it's five hours of our, however many,
somebody who's good at math, how many hours in a week?
I don't know.
Nobody's good at, oh, no, I'm just kidding.
I'm just kidding.
Thank you, 168, wow.
So for many years when I first started going here,
we had a missions pastor named Pastor Bruce Kobel.
Now, he and I during his time did not really connect all that much.
I knew him as this, he loved the Lord,
he would preach straight from the Bible, and he was super witty.
He always had like a pun for everything.
But I was much more drawn to Pastor Wayne, who also loved the Lord,
but would wear coats with bananas all over him or whatever.
You know, there are times where Pastor Wayne would be teaching
and like he's in the loft teaching.
It's not uncommon for the tech team to say,
what do we need to prepare for today?
And we just don't know, we'll just hang on.
And Pastor Bruce was like the total opposite of this.
And I just, you know, didn't connect with him in that way.
But there were so many people that were younger than me at the time
through all age groups that would just speak so highly of Pastor Bruce Kobel.
They would say, he's our favorite pastor.
And I didn't understand, I began to ask people, what is it with this guy?
And the first thing I noticed actually without asking is,
he was always serving on the mission field, locally, globally, so faithful in that.
But when I started asking people, there was this common thread that would be,
you know, he was always present, he was always consistent in the highs,
in the high point, if I, you know, if our child was born or if there was a wedding,
but also he would be the first to call when we lost somebody.
And it wasn't just a call that was just, I'm so sorry for your loss.
It was, I want to walk with you every step of the way and shoulder this for you.
Even last year, I was meeting with a friend to kind of talk to him about things going on in his life.
And he looked at me and goes, are you going to be like my Pastor Bruce?
I said, what do you mean by that?
And he said, well, Pastor Bruce met with my dad 10, 20 years ago to talk about stuff.
And I was like, I can't, that's crazy. I can't fill those shoes.
But what I learned from watching his life was,
what people were drawn to was just that reflection of Christ that he gave off.
And as I was thinking about it, I went, you know, to love and serve people in that way,
it comes at a really great cost.
It comes at a cost to yourself, certainly to your family at times.
And I got a chance to share this with Pastor Bruce.
He came to speak to the staff about a month ago and I shared everything,
just thanked them for how he had served and loved others and taught me worship.
And I guess the allergies were really bad that day because our eyes got real sweaty.
And he just told me, all he could say was how good God had been to him.
And how much he wanted others to experience that mercy.
He didn't have to tell me all the little ways in which God was merciful to him
that would get his soul to respond in that way, but there was a history there.
The world teaches us to be self-seeking,
but the Word teaches us as worshipers to be self-sacrificing.
Romans 12, 10, "Be devoted to one another in love, honor one another above yourselves."
Next is Pastor Barbie. She's showed me so much on worship.
Paul tells us that we worship God through gifts such as prophecy, teaching, serving.
She has a ton of them, but my favorite one that I'm gonna share a story on today is prophecy.
'Cause I've been on the receiving end of that
and family members I know have been on the receiving end of that in insane ways.
And let me just tell you, it is scary working alongside a prophet.
When they ask you how your day is and you're like, "Fine,"
and you wonder what they actually know, it's crazy.
So when I was a youth leader, maybe 10 or 11 years ago,
I had been following the Lord for a couple of years at that point,
and I began to wonder if my baptism counted
because I got baptized when I was like nine or 10.
And I began to think maybe I did it for the wrong reasons.
Maybe I didn't fully understand what I was doing
and people around me were getting baptized.
So I began to think about that,
but anybody who knows me knows I'm not an out loud processor.
I process things in. I like to figure things out for myself.
So I hadn't really told anybody this,
and I decided I'm not gonna do it.
My baptism counted. I'm not gonna make a big scene about it.
I'm not gonna get in there and certainly tell anybody what I'm thinking
and all that stuff 'cause I don't like talking in front of people,
and now look what God has done.
But there was one Sunday we get back from a youth retreat,
and Pastor Kevin and Pastor Justin are baptizing people in there,
and I'm out in the congregation next to my wife, Brittney,
and Barbie is up here, Pastor Barbie, and she says,
"I feel like the Lord is telling me there is a young man in here
who's thinking about getting baptized again,
and I want you to know if that's you, it's not an interruption.
We'll reopen the curtain. Just run. Just go."
And Brittney was like, "Dude."
And I was like, "Dude!"
And I had to, it's like how many times can God just like,
"I'm telling you to do it."
It's crazy, but I've been blessed to feel that feeling a couple of times
where God's saying, "Go tell this person this thing,"
or "Go do this thing for this person."
It's hard not to wrestle with that voice sometimes.
You go, "God, is this really you?
'Cause if I put myself out there and it's not you,
it makes you look bad, or even worse,
it might make me look bad," or whatever that is.
All kinds of anxiety and stuff can affect you,
but beyond that, even the world says,
"We don't want the voice of God in it.
We don't want to hear the encouragement of God.
We don't want the word of God."
But as worshipers, we are called to treasure God
and His voice above everything else,
walking in obedience to what He asks of us.
And I love that lesson she taught me on worship.
Pastor Wayne, worship pastor here for, I think, 22 years.
I had the privilege of serving under him for six or seven years,
still learning from him to this day.
Incredibly valuable lessons he showed me on worship.
Worship as obedience, as Pastor Kevin mentioned earlier,
obedience to leadership, and also identity as worshipers,
not being tied in things like job title or vocation
or anything like that.
And I can remember, I guess an example of that would be,
I'm a worshiper that plays guitar,
but I'm not a worshiper because I play guitar.
If I can't do this one day, which is likely,
or if I can't sing, I hope and pray
that I'm just as much of a worshiper.
Valuable, valuable lessons.
And these are great lessons because the world wants
to convince you that your identity is tied up
in anything else.
Your identity is tied up in your job or your salary
or your accomplishments, what you can get done,
what your feelings are.
But that's not what the Word tells us.
We actually kind of see this leaking into the church
in some ways, I feel.
I've seen people walk in discouragement
from feeling like their worship is somehow limited
by not having a title or recognition.
But Paul's telling us, no, no, your identity and calling,
it's firm, it's in Christ, and you can worship Him freely,
fully at all times in your life.
So after all those lessons, years of lessons,
one day the Holy Spirit would tell Pastor Ronnie,
it's time for me, Pastor Bruce, and Pastor Wayne
to transition everything over to the next generation
and start thinking about retirement.
And I literally got to watch Pastor Wayne practice
what he had been preaching for all those years.
And he did it faithfully and he did it humbly.
And I believe there was a blessing attached to that
because here we are still,
it was just a beautiful lesson to learn.
The last story I'll share is about Pastor Ronnie.
When I spoke in the 12 last year,
I was asked to teach on the story of Lazarus.
And I remember that was actually the first story
I got to teach on when I was a youth leader,
like 12 years ago.
And my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, Brittney,
recorded it.
So I remembered that was out there and I found it,
dug it up on a hard drive,
'cause I just wanted to see
if there was anything worth listening to.
It was terrible.
Like, couldn't use anything from it.
But the absolute best part of the whole thing
was in the first five minutes
where I was paraphrasing something
that I had learned from Pastor Ronnie
or a sermon that he gave.
So this would have been 12 or 13 years ago.
And I ran it by him in first service this morning
and I think we're good.
He agreed with all of it.
So he was teaching on Romans 8, 28.
"We know that in all things,
"God works for the good of those who love him,
"who have been called according to his purpose."
And I add that good and bad there
because what he was doing was calling attention
to sometimes we read that too quick.
We don't think good and bad.
We think all good things are working together for good,
but we gotta slow down long enough to go,
oh, it's really the all means all.
But he took it one step further and said,
"You know, if all good and bad things
"are flowing from a sovereign God
"who has your good in mind
"and his glory in mind and all that,
"maybe we'd be careful in saying bad things
"and we'd be better off saying there's good and hard things."
But what stuck out to me,
so I gotta take you on a timeline jump here.
So I'm listening to this.
Me quote Pastor Ronnie,
something he said like 10 years before.
And the first thing I think is
there's a whole lot of life that happened
between those two points.
When he said that then,
he had no idea what he would be walking through
maybe four or five years later
with the passing of his first wife, Margaret,
who he mentioned from the stage the other day.
I knew I was gonna have to talk about this story
because it was informative.
I mean, being young to the Lord,
their worship was so beautiful.
It's the reason why goodness of God
hits us a little deeper still to this day.
'Cause if you were here during that time,
you knew that goodness of God was really Margaret's anthem.
She was holding on tight to that view of God's mercy.
I still remember her over there with her arms lifted.
And the deal is,
what we know about Pastor Ronnie
is he just kept on keeping on.
He kept being faithful, serving the church,
leading the church for a couple of years.
But when I knew I was gonna tell this story,
I went back to find the first message
that he ever taught after Pastor Margaret passed.
And it was about a month later and he was back,
ironically teaching on a time to weep and a time to laugh.
And he said, you know,
the first 10 minutes was just updating the church
on everything that had been going on.
But he said, "People wanna know, am I mad at God?"
And I think that's from inside the church
and outside the church.
That's a question we all hear.
If God is so faithful and God is so good
and God is so merciful,
how could he allow something like this to happen?
And he says, "People wanna know, am I mad at God?"
And he said, "No, I'm not mad at God
because God's been good to me.
I know what the Word says about God.
He's faithful as merciful."
So that's that view of God's mercy.
And Pastor Ronnie came up to me after service to say,
the other thing was,
why would he cut himself off
from the only source of hope and comfort that he had?
That view of God's mercy was there,
or that right thinking of God was there.
But I began to say, think, where is the mercy?
You have to show me the mercy in this.
And he did not disappoint.
And he said, "You know, for so long,
my prayer has had Pastor Margaret at the very top of it.
I prayed for her health.
I prayed for her favor.
And that prayer just doesn't seem right
now that she's gone
because I think she has all the healing
and all the favor that she could ever possibly have
in the eyes of the Savior, in the presence of God."
And then he said, "So I've had to shift my prayer
to one of thankfulness.
And I just say, God, thank you for 43 years."
Talk about mercy.
That knowing that every breath, every second,
every moment is a gift from God.
It's that view of mercy
that is the foundation of our worship.
Pastor Wayne had a teaching
on where he would say a phrase,
"Revelation leads to transformation leads to impartation."
And the point in sharing that was,
a lot of times when we get the Word of God,
the revelation of God,
we get so excited that we wanna share it
with everybody around us.
And that's totally understandable,
but sometimes we just need to stop and let it sit
and let it transform us and renew us.
When Brittney and I first got married,
we went to Disney World for our honeymoon,
and we went to a place called Typhoon Lagoon,
which we knew nothing about, we had never been before.
It was really hot outside.
And we went to the water park.
The first thing we wanted to do was get in the wave pool
because of how hot it was.
Now there's a foot of height difference
between my wife and I.
So I can, I didn't laugh.
I didn't laugh at that.
(congregation laughing)
There's a foot of height difference between
(congregation laughing)
there's a foot of height difference between my wife and I.
I'm telling this with a straight face,
which means that I can comfortably go out
a little bit deeper than she can.
So I said, "Look, I grew up in Nashville.
"I used to go to wave country all the time.
"I know what wave pools are like.
"The waves are kinda gentle, and then they grow."
And I said, "It's no big deal.
"Get on my back, we'll swim out there.
"And when the waves come,
"I'll turn around and swim us to shallow water."
So she agrees.
And when we step in, there's a lifeguard posted up
in like one or two feet of water,
which was interesting,
but it didn't really mean anything to me.
So we go out there, six feet of water, whatever,
and we're in love, and we're laughing.
And all of a sudden I just hear, "Boom!"
I was like, "What is that?"
And I look at the back wall,
and there is an immediate six foot wave
that appears, typhoon if you will, from this back wall.
And when this happens,
it sweeps across the entire wave pool
in two to three seconds.
So if we're in six foot of water in a second,
we're gonna be submerged in 12 feet of water.
So I turn, and I start slow motion running in water,
just like all your nightmares are.
It's absolutely true.
And I'll tell you what, that wave hit us,
and all of that, "I'll never let go" stuff.
(congregation laughing)
I absolutely let go.
I had no choice.
She was just swept away, and so was I.
And then I found out what that lifeguard was for
in a foot of water.
He was there posted to help six feet tall,
300 pound men get their footing
so they wouldn't embarrass themselves.
(congregation laughing)
Now, you wanna talk about a view of God's mercy.
Brittney still calls me her husband.
(congregation laughing)
She's very gracious, we laugh about it today.
But my point is this,
revelation leads to transformation, leads to impartation.
We have to be careful when we take people
into the deep end of the revelation that God is showing us.
If we have not allowed ourselves time
to be transformed by it, when the waves come,
we risk them getting swept away with us.
And I love in all these stories,
these worshipers were actually allowing themselves
to be transformed and renewed by the word
before they ever imparted that to any of us.
And when they were tested in it,
their souls were well informed on how to worship.
And I wanna add, I don't say any of this
because they're pastors.
I don't think there's a special grace
that we don't have for that.
We all have the same Holy Spirit.
I share this because as pastors,
their life of worship was often on display
for everybody to see.
So I'll close with this
if the worship team would come up.
And we're actually not gonna have a time of prayer today
and I'll give some instruction on that in a minute.
Early on in the preparation for this sermon,
when I knew that the Lord was gonna have me share
about some of these moments of history at Springhouse,
I asked the question,
what is the benefit of sharing history like this?
And I believe the Lord answered that in two specific ways
through Scripture,
including our Bible reading plan for this week.
Number one, there is a generational blessing
that goes forth from our worship.
Because of Abraham's obedience in worship in Genesis 22,
God gives the following blessing.
"I will surely bless you and make your descendants
as numerous as the stars in the sky
and as the sand on the seashore."
And this is the part that caught my attention.
"Your descendants will take possession
of the cities of their enemies."
We are literally witnessing in the book of Joshua
the ongoing result of that worship.
They are walking in that blessing.
I believe here at Springhouse,
we are witnessing and living in a blessing
because of the worship of previous generations.
Your worship will affect your children's children's children.
He also showed me
there is a generational responsibility in our worship.
When Joshua and the Israelites
are moving to take the promised land,
they come to the Jordan and the presence of God
dries it up, and God tells them,
"Take 12 stones as markers and set them up
as God's mercy."
Markers of God's mercy, rather.
We would refer to these as something like Ebenezer,
which means stone of help.
And this is what God says to the Israelites in that,
doing that.
He said to the Israelites,
"In the future, when your descendants ask their parents
what do these stones mean,
tell them Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground,
for the Lord your God dried up the Jordan before you
until you had crossed over.
The Lord your God did to the Jordan
what he had done to the Red Sea
when he dried it up before us until we had crossed over.
He did this so all the peoples of the earth
might know the hand of the Lord is powerful
and so that you might always fear the Lord your God."
The stones stand as history markers of God's mercy.
They're not only an encouragement
to the ones that actually lived through it,
their primary purpose is for those who are paying attention.
Now, what I love about that
is there's actually three generations present
in those stones.
It brings up the Red Sea.
That has nothing to do with this story.
It brings up the Jordan,
which has everything to do with it,
and the generation ahead that will see it.
So what that's saying to me is your battles
and my battles won't look like Pastor Wayne's
and Pastor Ronnie's and Pastor Barbies.
There might be connected elements in how the Lord works,
but what it's saying is God will be faithful
because he is the same yesterday, today, and forever,
and we will worship him.
It's the responsibility of one generation
to put the mercy of God on full display
and the responsibility of the next generation
to take notice, inquire about it, pick it up,
carry it for themselves.
I say full display for a reason.
If you take a single river rock out of that river
and put it on dry land to the trained eye,
it might look like it doesn't fit in.
It would be just as easy to not even notice that it's there.
12 rocks, stone stacked high, undeniable.
You can't miss that that is not fitting
into the culture around it.
So according to 1 Peter 2, we, everyone in this room
who loves the Lord, exist as living stones of God's church,
living stones of his mercy.
We have a rich history of praise and worship at Springhouse.
My hope and vision for the future
that would be like the generation before us,
we would continue to stay near the heart of the world
and near the heart of the Father,
continue diligently to pursue knowing him through his word
and so that his glory will be on full display in our worship
through love, through mercy, through giving, through faith,
through obedience, singing, dancing, art,
and everything that scripture has for us
according to his word.
So I've asked the team this morning
if they would lead us in a song
that I think lyrically kind of encapsulates
all these things I've talked about.
And I've asked my friend Tina Bryson
to come and worship alongside them.
I think this serves as a visual representation
of a fuller expanse of worship
that we're gonna be looking to pursue here.
And what I wanna encourage you in is
don't take the time to spectate this moment.
I wanna encourage you to reflect on God's mercy in your life.
Give him thankfulness and gratitude
and let that inform your soul
how to worship him in this moment.
It could look like bowing.
It could look like lifted hands.
It could look like silent reverence.
Let's worship, church.
[music fades out]