On Mission: Delight in Jesus

Let's turn to God's words in your bulletin and on the screen. I'll read the odd. You read the even.

God is indeed good to Israel, to the pure in heart. For I envy the arrogant. I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They are not in trouble like others. They are not afflicted like most people. Their eyes bulge out from fatness. The imaginations of their hearts run wild. They mock and they speak maliciously. They are in deflection. They set their mouths against heaven, and their tongues strut across the earth. The wicked say, how can god know? Does the most high know everything? Did I purify my heart and wash my hands in innocence for nothing? If I had said, decided to say these things aloud, I would have betrayed your people. Until I entered God's sanctuary, then I understood their destiny. How suddenly they become a desolation. They come to an end, swept away by terrors. When I became embittered and my inmost being was wounded, yet I am always with you. You hold my right hand. Who do I have in heaven but you? And I desire nothing on earth but you. Those far from you will certainly perish. You destroy all who are unfaithful to you. — Psalm 73

This is the word of the lord. Thanks be to god. Good job y'all. Good job reading this morning.

You ever wondered what we're doing here? If you were driving by this building with a friend who's from somewhere where they've never seen a church, they don't know what worship is, they had no clue what happens in this place and they were curious—what would you liken this to? Is it like a TED Talk? Or a concert? Or a workshop?

We do all kinds of things in this place that we do in other places. There are places where you hear somebody lecture. There are other places you go to where you sing out loud. There are other places that you go to to have a snack. But nowhere do you do all that at the same time. It's weird what we do here. It's weird what we do in worship together, and I want us to think about this this morning.

We're in a six-week series on our new mission statement, which is posted right up here on the wall behind me. As I said last week, I'm not the biggest fan of mission statements for churches because the church isn't like any other organization. This isn't Walmart. This isn't Chick-fil-A. We're not selling hot wings or Hondas. And yet, the language of mission came originally from scripture, not from marketing strategies or business schools. This is Bible language.

I think it's really helpful—often, like in all areas of life—to know our why. Why are we doing what we're doing? So we as elders and a larger group of leadership wrote this mission statement and have passed it this winter, and it goes like this: CTK exists to develop disciples who delight in Jesus in worship, are discovering Jesus in community, are displaying Jesus' kingdom in our lives. Five Ds—develop disciples who delight, discover, display.

This morning, we're going to look at delighting in Jesus in worship and what is that supposed to mean? Psalm 73 is really, really helpful for us. Because the writer here, Asaph, shows us what are essentially like three head-on collisions that we pray happen every time we come and worship with God's people. There should be—I'm using that word head-on collision purposely—startling, jolting, knocks you out of the direction you're going to a different direction. All of that.

We're going to look at these collisions that happened this morning, and here's the first one.

Life Confuses; Worship Restores

The Psalmist here is shouting, is angry, is upset. And not just about the injustice in the world out there, but like what's right in his face. His people are suffering. He's suffering. He's struggling.

Here's what the psalmist is upset about: he feels like everybody around him, their stock is rising, his is falling. The lives of people who don't know God seem bulletproof. Everything seems to be going well for them. They have great vacations. They have awesome bodies. Their kids are doing great. Everything seems to be going well for them. The anti-god people are just prospering in health and wealth and they're cocky.

I could identify with this, can't you? Something's not right in the house of god. Something's not right. It seems like god has allowed some incongruities out there. There's some contradictions for the way things should be. I thought god, you were good to your people—but where can I see that? That's what he's asking. Can you feel the anger? Can you feel the struggle?

If I didn't hit a chord with you today, that's okay.

That's okay. You know, I'm glad to hear it. Maybe this Psalm doesn't resonate because this man's professed theology is crashing on the rocks of what is around him, of everything that he sees and it all seems to be falling apart. Maybe life for you this morning is puppies and kittens. Any puppies and kittens out there? Okay, maybe a couple of you. Everything's just going great for you. But let me warn you—if that's the case, I hope you can still feel some of the shock value of what's happening in this Psalm.

Now, some of that's related to who wrote it. Asaph, the writer of the Psalm, is not King David. We think of David writing most of the Psalms in our Psalter. Asaph wrote this, but Asaph is cream of the crop. There's this one little tribe that gets set apart to be worship leaders, and of that, there's one little clan that gets set up to be the best of the best worship leaders. Asaph is Summa Cum Laude Worship Leader in Israel. This is a household name. This is a name everybody knows. I want you to think Christendom today—Christian subculture world. Do you know the name Tim Keller? Anybody know Tim Keller? Some of you know that. Some of you named Beth Moore. Anybody know Beth Moore? Okay, Chris Tomlin, right? Rick Warren. These are names in Israel, and this is the guy. Asaph—key worship leader in Israel. And this is what he said.

As for me, my foot almost slipped. My thoughts were going crazy. My heart was strained. I've been in a dark frame of mind. When you've tried to do right and other people, even people who love the Lord, do wrong to you. When you've tried to do right and honor God and everything seems to be falling apart, right? And you want to ask God, why? This is where Asaph is.

My feet almost slipped. It'd be like Tim Keller saying, "You know, guys, all the stuff I've been preaching for years? I'm not sure I believe that anymore." You hear the shock of that? It'd be like Beth Moore showing up at a family funeral or Rick Warren and saying, "All that stuff I've taught for years and years, I don't know, y'all. I think I'm kind of done with it." That's the level of shock value you're supposed to hear from this song. This is Asaph, for crying out loud.

Here's the truth for us: Your tenure in church doesn't protect you from the incongruities of life. The incongruities of "this is what I believe, but this is what I see." The longevity you have, a theological degree, a position of leadership in the church, your faithfulness over generations, and the faithfulness of your family—it does not protect you from the heart, does it? Is there anybody in the house this morning? Does anybody know what I'm talking about here? It is hard. It doesn't mean you don't wrestle with God. And so here's Asaph. He has a problem. His professed theology and his lived experience don't line up. They don't line up. He looks all around and says, "What's the point? Why have I done all this?" He catalogs all his frustrations right here.

Asaph knows God can handle his questions. His wrestling—he's not so sure about everybody else. He says, "I don't know if I can say this stuff out loud, but this is what I'm feeling." He's saying, "Have I wasted my time trying to please God? I'm afflicted all day long. It seems hopeless." In other words, he says, "God can handle this. On some level, I know I've got to take this stuff. I've got to vocalize this stuff to God."

When Life Strikes: The Call to Honesty

When life strikes and it's hard, the Christian thing is not to pretend. Look at Asaph. He models for us this bone-deep honesty. This is hard, guys. And I don't know what to do. This Psalm—does it make you wonder? This Psalm could have been written in 2023 BC or AD, because some of us know what this is like. Some of you come here this morning with no questions, and good for you. I'm glad that maybe some of you have it kind of tied up. But can I speak for the rest of us? We got questions, y'all. And I think we're in good company when we have questions about what God's up to in the world.

You read your Bible and you're like, David says:

Why do the nations rage and plot and scheme? — Psalm 2

They seem to be triumphing. You see Jesus on the cross, and he had some questions.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? — Matthew 27:46

If you never have any questions about God and his ways and what's happening in this life, keep on living. It'll come. You know, if you live long enough, you will be like Asaph. "I almost slipped. I'm not sure I could have kept going." And this is the first answer. This is the first head-on collision for why we worship.

Why do we come to worship? We've come because life confuses. It's confusing. And we need a word from the Lord. And looking on the inside doesn't really help. And looking on the outside makes it worse sometimes. It confuses us. So, what do we do? When real life and right theology don't match up, this is what we see from Asaph. You better learn how to look up. You better learn how to look up. This is what you get when you come to church. You remember that what you observe is not all there is. What you observe is not all there is.

Now, let me show you something. The Psalm starts off with a way we would never start off an email. It starts off with the word nevertheless. Can you imagine writing an email to somebody in your office? Nevertheless, they'd be like, "What are you talking about?" That's because Asaph is having an argument on the inside. He's debating back and forth. Nevertheless, God seems good, but not so sure about this. Everything I see tells me something different and then the Psalm sort of hinges on verse 17.

Until I came into worship

The word there in the Hebrew—and I'm not so great at Hebrew—but like all the commentators say, this is like a full stop sign with blinking lights around it. It's like a stop sign. Wait, hit the brakes really hard. This is where there's a violent disruption. Until I came to worship. And this is what he does. He goes, "I see this and this and this. I see, you know, the wicked. When back before thin was in, this is like fat is good, right? They're bulging in fatness. These people were well fed. Their lives are going well. Everything seems to be going well for them."

Until I laid this up, I made a tally. I made a list, pros and cons. I listed both of these things. I said, which one of these is greater? All these things that are happening to all these people or God?

And he says, until I came into worship, then I could say God is good. God is good. He remembers in worship that God is good beyond all the consistencies of life, beyond what he observes of the rest of the world.

Worship as Recalibration

You know what worship does—what worship does, what we're doing here—one of the things it does is it helps us to see differently. It helps us to assess, to calculate on something other than what we see around us. If you live by mere observation, you will never calculate the goodness of God. Am I right? You look around and you're like, "This is it? This is the goodness of God?" But what Asaph comes to say is that when he can't make sense of what he sees, worship reminds him of what he knows. It reminds him of what he knows deep within. Don't let what you observe make you let go of what you know to be true of who God is. You don't have all the information. Don't let the fact that you are not omniscient—you don't know how this is going to work out, you don't know what God's up to, you don't see where God's hand is at work in this world—don't let the fact that you don't see him lead you to the conclusion that he's gone or he doesn't care.

Life Lived by Revelation

If life is not lived by observation, then how do we live life? Life is lived by revelation. What God says. Because we have limited sight. We see what's right in front of us today. If I could take you back ten years and say, "On this day, can you remember what you were worried about on this Sunday morning?" You can't remember. Most of us can't remember because we think about what's right in front of us. What we can see right in front of us. We look around, we see other people's outsides and we compare them to how we feel on our insides. We look at their outsides, we say everything's going well on the outside of their life. What they are experiencing is really different from what I feel. So, God can't be good.

You know, years ago I'm old enough where we got our traffic reports from a helicopter for years. You'd tune in to the radio and listen to the traffic report which would tell you where the accidents are, what roads are clogged up, and what's the way around them. This was really important if you lived in a big city. Nowadays, you've got one of those smartphones that can tell you exactly how to get around. Waze or Google Maps or Apple Maps will tell you what's the best way to get from point A to point B. The maps, the apps, and the helicopter work the same way. Neither of them eliminate congestion. Neither of them cause there to be no more delays or construction. Neither of them can magically make that stuff disappear, but they can tell you how to safely reroute to get to the right place in the best time.

You know, this is what happens when we come to worship. We tune in to the frequency. We pull out the app.

We hear God saying like, "Look, I'm not necessarily going to eliminate all the construction and all the congestion, but I will take you safely home. I will show you the way. There is a way to be with me that I will get you where you need to go."

You know, all the data that He has up there—just like the helicopter with eyes in the sky, or the satellites that beam down the data from up above and show us what's going down on the ground. This is what we do when we come to worship. We come in and we remember, "Oh yeah, I don't have all the data."

Because this is what we do. We say to God, "Hey, God, the wicked are prospering," and God says on His traffic report, "For now, for now."

You know, we say, "God, it doesn't make sense what you're doing," and we tune in the traffic report and God says, "I'm still working all things for your good."

We tune in to the traffic report. We're saying like, "God, right now I feel abandoned," and God's traffic report says, "I will never leave you or forsake you."

Right? In that in-the-sky perspective—that's not going to change what's hard in your afternoon today or what's hard in your worries or insecurities, your doubts about God's goodness. Will He provide? How will He come through? But what they do remind us is that He is with you. He's downloading all the information up above and saying, "I got it. I can take you there. I know the way."

This is why we come to church. Nobody's taking attendance. I mean, we actually average up the numbers so we know how to plan, but nobody's writing down names of who comes every Sunday. For most of you, you come. Why do you come to worship?

We come because we need a head-on collision—in the good way—between observation and revelation. Because everything we see out there is confusing, and worship restores us. This is what this is for.

The World's Competing Story

The world interprets worship restores. What do I mean by that? We come to worship because the world has a story to tell us of what is real. Look at verses 21 to 22. This is the experience Asaph testified to. He says:

I became like an unthinking animal before you.

Did you notice that when you read that? How weird that language is? "I became like an unthinking animal." Older translations say, "I was a brute beast before you."

Why does he compare himself to an animal? Because an animal lives according to instinct and only according to desires and to today, right now. In his blindness, he's become bitter on the inside. Literally, it says in the Hebrew, in his kidneys. In other words, he's feeling it in his body. He's feeling it deep down inside.

He's realized he's been living for the next moment. He's lost his grip on "Is there anything else to this?" He's lost grip on there being a greater story of God or a greater place in the story. Asaph realizes the whole focus of his faith has been wrong. He's just been interested in what God can give him and how God needs to provide for him right now. He says, "I was like a beast. Survival mode."

Several years ago, we got a box of hand-me-downs from another family in our church, and this happens a lot when you have a lot of boys. So we've gotten a lot of hand-me-downs over the years, and this one box had a neon yellow sleeveless T-shirt with one thing on it that said "Beast Mode." It had what looked like a switch that you could push, like we do with your mouse—take your cursor and switch it to Beast Mode.

And of course, Beast Mode is great for the gym or the football field. Well, I found this T-shirt and I couldn't wear it, so I gave it to one of my friends who's a rector down the street at Holy Trinity Anglican, John Yates, who's maybe the most Eddie Bauer person I know. Right? Not beast mode. Nothing about this guy screams beast mode. I've been backpacking with him and he always looks like he just had a shower. So I gave him this cut-off T-shirt.

But anyway, I love beast mode. Beast mode is what we think of like, "This is what we need for the field. This is what we need for the gym. Push it, slide the bar over and go, right?" This is what you need.

And yet, beast mode is not so good with how we live before God or how we live in this world. Animals don't think about the future. Your dog has no 401ks. Your cat is not worried about retirement. Humans, we think about the future.

Animals are not concerned with their appetites and instincts. They aren't thinking of higher things like beauty or loyalty, especially cats, or goodness or truth or friendship or love. They're not thinking on those lines. They're living according to "Who gives me my next meal? That's who I love, right?"

And animals are not interested in you for you.

They don't sit down with you and say, tell me about your week. Animals are interested in you for what you do for them. Asaph is like, man, I've been in beast mode with God in a bad way. I've been living for what's right in front of me, my instincts. I'm interested in him for me, not him for him. I don't want to know God. I want God to provide what I need right now and I don't understand why he won't. Beast mode.

You know, Asaph, like us, he's in beast mode until verse 23. He comes into worship and again, this is another hinge in this. He says this:

Yet I'm always with you. You hold my right hand.

He goes into worship and worship does something to him. I'm stealing this line from a writer named James KA Smith: that worship restores us. It restores us. That was point one but it restores us. It reminds us. It locates us in God's story. It reminds us that God is the author, that he is writing a grand narrative in this world. It reminds us that we are characters in a larger story. It shows us when we come into worship, we see—oh, the beauty of the Lord, the glory of the kingdom of God, the power of the Holy Spirit.

Historic Christian worship always has a narrative arc to it. So we do a liturgy in our church. Susan described it when she led our night of lament recently—that it's like riding a train and you make stops along the line. That's what we do every Sunday. We go along this journey together as we come into worship. We're taking all these stops because what happens when you come in here as you're in beast mode and God restores you. He sets you into the story.

Now I'm going to mess up this name. Some of you all speak French and don't make fun of me. Antoine Des Saint Exupery. Anyway, the guy who wrote The Little Prince. I butcher his name, but he's got a great quote about this. He says, if you want to build a ship, you don't drum up people to collect wood, you don't assign them tasks and work. You rather teach them to long for the immensity of the sea. You take them to the beach. You talk about how amazing it is to go across that water.

See, there's something about igniting our imagination that takes us out of beast mode. Coming to worship is remembering we're part of something bigger than what's right in front of us. Worship does this by engaging all parts of us. It uses both parts of our brain. We come in and we do things physically. We hug each other. We shake hands. We stand up. We sing. We take into ourselves bread and wine. We taste and see that God is good. Every time we do this, this is why worship can take you to another place.

And if you look at this Psalm, it reads like a journey. He starts off at the very beginning saying, God, question mark. And then he looks around and says, them. And he says, me. He's like, God, me and God. He's going on a journey. And here's the conclusion he comes to:

You're always with me. Wait, you're always with me. I am always with you. You hold my right hand. You're in this story too, God. You guide me with your counsel. You're going to take me on to glory. There's a destination. This isn't meaningless. We're not just chasing our tail running in circles. You're my greatest treasure. Who have I in heaven but not you? But you, Earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail but you Lord, you are the strength of my heart and my portion, my inheritance, my treasure, my prize.

You're what I want.

You know, when our leadership chose this new mission statement, we chose these words really carefully. And that word delight—we're talking about delighting in worship. That was really important to us. Delighting has connotations of savoring, of being satisfied, being filled up. You know, praising and praising the second member of the Trinity. The Bible has a huge range of appropriate emotions for worship. Thanksgiving, lament, sadness, wrestling with God, all these things are appropriate in worship but our dominant note we want to sound here—this is the thing when I called up Danny Yancey and said, Danny, I want you to be our worship director. I said, you got to find the joy button on the CTK dashboard and mash it as hard as you can, as often as you can. He's really good at it.

Because what we need more than anything else, what I need to restore me, what you need, the collision you need every week is to be restored. To remember beast mode is not all there is.

Circumstances Isolate; Worship Reconnects

Finally, circumstances isolate. Worship reconnects. Remember how Asaph felt? He's like, I can't say this stuff in church. Now, maybe you feel that way and it's kind of debatable as to whether that's actually true. You know, would it have really betrayed the children of God if he had said how he really felt around the people of God? I don't know but that's how he felt and that's how many of us feel and this is why we feel so alone in our pain. We don't think anybody can understand.

We don't think anybody can hold what we're going through. Does anybody feel this? This is why Asaph is isolated. He didn't have anyone he could talk to about his circumstances. His interpretation of the circumstances made him really alone. He felt like he couldn't or shouldn't be honest, and he kept it to himself.

This is what happens to us. We don't think anybody can understand, then we don't give them the chance to. Have you noticed that you do this? I've noticed that you do this. There are a lot of us who are really alone and isolated, and I understand you're tired of being fixed by the Christians. You've had other Christians pull out the Jesus bow and plant it on your pain. But listen, I've spent years running away from vulnerability. I don't like it. I don't like being sad. I don't like talking about it.

But when something happens—when Asaph comes to worship—something happens. He reconnects. He reconnects with the Lord and with God's people. He says:

As for me, God's presence is my good.

We've all learned how great isolation is. We had a three-year-long experiment worldwide and how great isolation is. How great was online worship? Not so much, right? How great is it like being on a screen and singing? I hate hearing myself sing. I have to come here so y'all can out-sing me so I don't have to hear it.

When we come together and we sing and we recite and we read together, what we're doing is we're saying the same line. When I hear you singing, I hear: "As for me, God's presence is my good." When I hear you reciting the creeds, I hear: "As for me, God's presence is my good." When we gather around the table, I hear you say: "As for me, God's presence is my good."

When we come together as a church family, it reconnects us to God and to one another. It's so important. Worship is a head-on collision. It's a testimony. It reconnects us. And at the end of this, this is why Asaph says he's got something to testify about, something to share. We come and we've got something to say after being here.

Worship is a head-on collision between my isolation and this truth that God can handle it and so can the people of God. We need to see him. Every week as you come to worship, I hope you go home a little shell-shocked. You know how you show up on a Monday morning at work and somebody says, "What happened to you?" I hope that every time you show up at work on a Monday morning, somebody says, "What happened to you?" and you say, "Well, I went to church yesterday." In a good way.

The writer Annie Dillard puts it this way: "Why do people in churches seem like cheerless, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the absolute? Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blindly invoke every Sunday? As I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? Churches are like children playing on the floor with chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It's madness to wear straw hats and velvet hats to church. We should be wearing crash helmets."

What's she getting after? She's getting after something that is incredibly powerful that we're doing every Sunday. We're getting in touch as a people with the God of the universe. So here's what I pray your testimony is every week: Something good happened in church this morning. This is what I pray you say on Monday morning when somebody says, "What happened to you?" Something good happened in church this Sunday because I came into a collision with the God of the universe and he lifted up my head.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Let's pray together. Father, we pray that you would put knee pads and elbow pads and crash helmets on us, and would you crash into us every week? Lord, we pray that you would surprise us, you would startle us, you would wake us up out of our slumber. Lord, you'd raise our heads. You would remind us of who we are and whose we are. You would restore us and restore us. Put us back into the story in the right place. Father, connect us to one another and to you. We pray these things in your name. Amen.

I got a question for you. Name is Robert Wilson, I'm in Columbus, Ohio.