A Worship-Filled Life

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Well, good morning, church. Good morning. Well, I don’t know how you cannot be pumped up and excited after that. That was awesome, wasn’t it? Those people have done.

They just kicked it out of the park. I love hearing people just praise the Lord and we’re going to continue that as we share the word. And if you have not met me before, my name is Mike Laramie. I’m part of the preaching teaching team here at Eastgate. And Pastor Gary should be in Uganda right now.

Should be. And if you hadn’t heard, we had to cancel the trip this year because of the Ebola outbreak that’s in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. So there’s a travel ban and our team was not able to go this year. So would you join me? I want to pray for Pastor George Mobonye and all their team there who are still ministering during that time.

So let’s pray. Father, I do pray for Pastor George Mobonye and all of those in Kisoro, Uganda, Kisoro Baptist Church and all the 27 churches or more that he has planted in the last several years. His ministry has been thriving. But Father, this is a threat against him. You know, against him and you’d people.

And so, Father, I pray against this illness and I pray that this would be an opportunity for you to show your glory in Uganda and throughout southern Africa. We pray blessing upon Pastor George and his staff. And I pray this in Jesus name, Amen. So, yeah, I’ve been to Uganda. My wife and I, Cindy and I have been to Uganda.

A number of you have been out there and it’s a fantastic trip. I highly encourage that. If you get a chance to go, please go. You’ll see a modern day Paul in Pastor George. He is a church planter and he is all about it.

He’s an apostle. You got to meet him. He comes here every once in a while. Next time you hear him coming here, you want to meet Pastor George. He’s great people.

Today we’re continuing our sermon series entitled Built Different. And that phrase kind to describe someone who maybe physically or mentally is just a little bit different from other people. You know, you might say something like that person’s cut from a different cut of cloth, you know, or maybe, you know, you know, that one’s a beast. I don’t know that I’d want to use that all the time. You know, like I heard a comedian once say, you know, she was a softball player and the last thing she wanted to be called was a beast.

You know, who wants to be the enemy in her favorite movie, right? You know, Beauty and the. You don’t want to be the beast, right? But maybe it’s this idea of being countercultural, going swimming against the stream of the current culture. That’s what we’re called to.

We should be built different. So those of us who are in Christ are built different because our lives are built on Jesus Christ alone and not of this world. So our series is based upon six concepts that we’ve pulled from Romans 12:1 and 2. Let me remind you of that serious theme verse. Now.

Romans 12:1 2 says this. I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. And so today we’re going to concentrate on that concept of spiritual worship and we’re going to dig into Psalm 63 in order to do it. Now, the Psalms are a great place to do that, right?

Because most of the psalms were meant to be set to music and they would be recited. They are forms of praise that date back millennia. That’s what the Psalms are for. And Psalm 63 is one of those most loved Psalms. Fourth century church father John Chrysostom once wrote that it was decreed and ordained by the early church fathers that no day should pass without the public singing of this psalm.

So the early church fathers said that we should be singing this one every day, Psalm 63. And so in the first service, I challenged Pastor Steven to put Psalm 63 to music so we could east gate ize it, you know, so we could do it like we just did. I think it’d be awesome. He’s already kind of struggling with it, though. You know, it’s going to be a tough one.

That’s a tough one to put to music. I’m saying, hey, you already got the lyrics written. You just go ahead and go, right? Write the music. That’s the hard part.

So we really want to dig into this now. We talk about worship a lot in the church, right? But there’s some confusion as to what it actually means. What does worship actually mean? Many people reduce worship to singing, and it certainly includes singing.

But worship is not just a 15 to 20 minute time where we all stand and clap our hands and sing songs. That is not the sum total of worship. Worship is an orientation of life. Worship is Something that we is something of the way that we live. It’s far deeper than just singing, but singing is certainly, like I said, it’s a good part of it.

Now, the question is not whether we’re going to worship, but what is it that you are going to worship? See, all of us worship, okay? What every human being is already a worshiper. The question is not whether we worship, but what we worship. Something is going to sit at the center of your life and it’s going to shape everything that you do.

And that is something that you would worship. What we worship then takes control. What we worship takes control. It determines how we spend our time, what we invest our energy in, what we sacrifice for, and where we place our hope. Whatever we sit at the center becomes the engine that either drives us on or crushes us under its weight.

The problem is, is that most of us place weight on things that were never designed to carry it. Our job, money, our hobbies and pastimes, perhaps our children, politics, maybe even our sexual identity, all of that stuff can take the center. These are all good things by themselves, but they were never designed to be the ultimate thing, the thing that was meant to be worshiped in the center of your life. Instead of helping us. These things eventually will crush us.

They’ll leave us empty. They’ll leave us restless and tired. So the real question is not are you worshiping? The question is, is what you are worshiping able to take the weight of your life?

There’s only one person who can. That’s Jesus Christ. And in Psalm 63, we’re going to see what it looks like when a life that is anchored in the worship of the only one who can take that worship will do to our souls. We’ll see what Psalm 63 has to say about that. In Psalm 63, David was in a barren wilderness and he expressed his desire to live a worship filled life.

And his greatest desire was not for comfort or for safety, but the presence of God. See, we too can live a life like that. Just as David modeled in the wilderness, we can live a life filled with worship. Well, how can we do that? How can we live that life filled with worship?

Well, the text is gonna give us three marks of a worship filled life. So if you would read with me, join me in Psalm 63. We’re gonna read verses one through eight. Psalm 63, verses one through eight. A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah.

O God, you are my God. Earnestly I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My flesh Faints for you as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory because your steadfast love is better than life.

My lips will praise you, so I will bless you as long as I live in your name I will lift up my hands. My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food. And my mouth will praise you with joyful lips when I remember you upon my bed and meditate on you in the watches of the night. For you have been my help. And in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.

My soul clings to you. Your right hand upholds me. May God bless the reading of his word. Amen. We’re looking here for three marks of a worship filled life.

And here’s the first one. That’s the heart that seeks God. The heart that seeks God. I start off and I read the prologue to the psalm. And I did that on purpose because I want to set the stage for what David is doing as he writes this psalm.

He is in the wilderness of Judah. And most commentators figure that this was the time where David was being chased out in the wilderness during Absalom’s rebellion. Absalom was one of David’s sons. And he decided, you know what, it’s time for me to be king. And he wanted to be king, and he started this rebellion.

David ended up getting chased out of the capital city and he’s running for his life with his mighty men in the wilderness, in the wilderness of Judea. Many commentators think it’s probably near Ein Gedi, which was near the Dead Sea. So he’s in a very dry and barren land. Okay, so think Nevada, think Arizona. Okay, think very dry, no rain, no water.

Okay? That’s where he is. But look at what he does. His first words as he writes the psalm is, God, you are my God. God, you are my God.

He starts with God, but there’s a really interesting thing in there if you actually look at the Hebrew underneath, because he actually says, elohim, you are my El. Elohim, you are my El. Elohim is the plural name for God. Okay? That’s in the Hebrew.

This is again, all the Jews that are reading this are reading this as Elohim, plural. That’ll preach right there. Okay? I don’t even. We’re not even have time to go there, but that’ll preach.

That is the word that they would use to describe the mighty creator of the universe, God, Elohim. It’s the plural Name. And he’s saying, this mighty king of the universe, this God of Gods, King of kings, creator of the universe, is my God, little G, God, my God. You can see he takes this attitude of profound reverence and prostration and. And he immediately pivots it to that of relational intimacy.

Oh, God, you are my God. You know me. You are my God. That’s how he starts his praise. He recognizes who the praise is for.

God, you are my God. In verse one, he says, he seeks you, I seek you. He says that means to search, to look for earnestly. Right. Right away, the worshipful Christian will seek God early and often.

Like there’s this unquenchable desire. Like, I gotta find this. That’s what David is saying. This isn’t just going, oh, yeah, I looked kind of like yesterday. I was looking for a sauce in the fridge and I couldn’t find it.

And so I ended up eating my dinner. And my wife goes, it’s right here. Okay. Yeah. Where is it?

I don’t know. You know, that’s not that kind of seeking. Okay. This is an earnest, actually eyesight, open seeking and desire to see it. And you can see how he seeks it because he says in verse one, my soul thirsts.

My soul thirsts. What’s the soul? In the Old Testament, especially, the soul is that sum and totality of who you are. That’s your emotions, that’s your desire, that’s your personhood. That’s who you are.

He says, that very nature of my being thirsts. And he. He uses thirst instead of hunger. That’s an interesting thought. Think about that for a second.

How long can you go without food? About 30 days. How long can you go without water? About two or three. Okay.

My soul thirsts for God. My soul thirsts. It is a deep biological necessity. It is so important to David, and he seeks it so earnestly that he’s thirsting and he’s in a dry and barren land. He’s in the wilderness of Jesus Judea.

He knows what physical thirst is, but he says, my soul thirsts for you. John 7:37. Jesus speaking. Jesus stood up and cried out, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Jesus understood this concept.

He was the living water. He’s talking about soul quenching water, not just the drink that’s in your cup. In the morning, every morning I get up, first thing I do, I’m thirsty. I go straight downstairs and I get a 16 ounce glass of water and chug it. You know, maybe you do the Same thing, you know, but that’s not what we’re talking about.

This is waking up first thing in the morning, you get a 16 ounce jug of God. I’m searching for that right now because I need it. I need it so bad. I need it so much that in verse one, he says, my flesh faints, I am fading, my strength is fading. I need God so badly that I’m searching for him like that.

In verse 2, David calls to mind the sanctuary. Now for those of you who are biblical students, remember that when David was king, there was no temple. Yet Solomon is the one who built the temple. Solomon is David’s son. He built the temple.

There was no temple. There’s still the Wilderness Tabernacle. There was the tent that moved around during the 40 years of wandering in the tent desert. So there’s still that set up. Okay?

But the Wilderness Tabernacle, even though there’s not a temple building, there was still corporate worship. And this is what David is talking about. He certainly, he said, God, you are my God. He can certainly meet with God in the desert one on one. But what’s he really missing?

He’s missing that corporate worship, that gathering of God’s people, that time that they can offer behold the Lord together and they can sing together, they can pray together, they can worship together. That’s what he’s missing. He’s missing the glory of God that we can only see when we gather together as a body of Christ. Look at what he writes in Psalm 27 as well. He says something very similar.

He says this one thing I ask of the Lord, this thing I seek most is to live in the house of, of the Lord all the days of my life, delighting in the Lord’s perfections and meditating in his temple. That is the earnest desire that David has. He’s not just, not only wants to, he’s not only seeking after God individually, he’s seeking after this corporate experience in which you are all participating right now.

I wonder if we’ve lost that longing that David has. I wonder if we’ve lost that. You know, for many Christians today, church has become one appointment on their calendar. One appointment among many. Right.

You know, if nothing else is scheduled, I’ll make it at the 11 o’ clock service or 9:15 or whatever, you know, whatever I can make, you know, if I can make it great, you know, but if there’s anything else going on, sorry, church that’s not going to make. Or maybe community group, you know, same thing, you know, Wednesdays are tough. Me or, well, Tuesdays are tough for me. Or whatever day it is that your group meets, you know. Yeah.

You know, if there’s nothing else going on, then I’ll come. You know, maybe that’s. Maybe that’s what we struggle with, you know, because as the weekend gets busy, church is the easiest thing to sacrifice. You know, Barna has done a bunch of research, and he’s constantly researching the state of the church. And in his latest study in 2025, he found that the average person who calls themselves a Christian and calls himself a regular church attender attends 1.6 Sundays a month.

1.6. That’s less than two Sundays a month considering themselves that, hey, I belong to the body of Christ. That should make us weep. It should make us weep. It makes.

I tell you what, you know, most of you know that, you know, my job takes me away many weekends. The last time I was able to be with you, I was actually in the park. I have not been able to be with. And it pains me. I hate it.

I hate being away on a Sunday, you know, it’s not merely an attendance issue. It’s an affection issue. It’s not an attendance issue. It’s an affection issue. I’m not here to say, okay, I want you to come here more.

That’s not what I’m saying. That is not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is you. You know, you don’t have to convince someone to pursue what they treasure, right? You don’t have to convince them, like, if your grandkids are coming over, you’re gonna rearrange your schedule and make that happen, right?

If. You know, I love the Hurricanes, man. Carolina, Hurricane, Stanley cup champs. Woo. You know, I didn’t get to see a single game because I was working.

But you know what? We got WI FI in our airplanes. And you better believe I was watching that. Okay, only in Cruz, right? Only in Cruise, but, yeah, I was following it.

And you better believe I saw all the highlights. Okay, we will rearrange our schedule for a playoff game maybe. Perhaps you’re following the World cup right now and, you know, and that’s really big for you. I hope you enjoy it. I’m not a big soccer fan, but I get it.

I get it. You know, I’ve been in countries where the World cup is a big deal. Okay, I get it.

Do you miss the gathered worship of God’s people when you’re absent? Do you miss that? Do you long to sing with the saints? To hear God’s word preached to Pray with his people to witness baptisms, to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, to celebrate the youth going to camp with 60 kids. That’s awesome.

That’s awesome. Do you long to be there? Or has church become a religious obligation instead of a holy delight? The answer isn’t simply, I need to go more. That’s not.

Again. That’s not, don’t hear me that way. The answer is this, Lord, restore my delight in you. Restore my delight in celebrating with other believers. Cultivate my love for Christ so deeply that I can’t imagine.

Imagine willingly being apart from them on Sunday or on Wednesday or whenever you meet. Cultivate your love for you so much that I cannot imagine being apart from other believers. See, believer, we’re here to seek the Lord with all your heart. Deuteronomy 4:29 says, but from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find him. If you search after with all your heart and with all your soul, he will allow you to find him.

If you seek him, you need to look for him. Jeremiah 29:13 says, you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Jesus also echoes this in the Sermon on the mount. In Matthew 6:33, he says, Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. You see how important it is to seek after the Father now?

Several times when I was on active duty in the Air Force, we would go to Las Vegas. I would go out to Nellis Air Force Base. There’d be an exercise. Perhaps you’ve heard it, it’s called Red Flag. And we’d.

There was one. Our opportunity would come up every six months. I love the flying out there because it’s first rate. It’s fantastic. We’re dropping live weapons and there’s adversaries and there’s like, huge numbers of airplanes.

I love that stuff. It was a lot of fun. So every time they’d come up and go, all right, we’re going to Red Flag. And I go, I want to go. You went last time.

Look around. All right, you can go. So I’d go right now. One of the things I didn’t like about it is, you know, running herd over a bunch of fighter pilots as the dd, because guess who was that was me, you know, running the casinos. Come on, can we go home now?

It’s midnight. I want to go to bed, you know, because I’m the only one sober, right? Come on, let’s go. Come on. Herding cats.

You know, that kind of scene. What would normally happen, though, is on the Saturday, because we’re there for two weeks on the Saturday, I would go out to a place called Red Rock Canyon State Park. And for those of you who’ve been out there, it is fantastic. It is gorgeous. And we went out to Vegas last fall, my wife and I, and I got to show her where we used to go.

And this state park is a great place to. To spend some time. Okay. There are trails that you could walk just like this, you know, because it’s pretty easy all the way through climbing to. You need equipment like straight rock face, everything in between.

So you can do all of it. But it’s gorgeous. Red rocks everywhere. Fantastic. But did I mention it’s In Nevada?

Yeah. 7% humidity, 115 degrees. It’s hot and dry. Okay, so this one time I went there in my backpack. I don’t had two bottles of water.

Some of you can already figure out what went wrong, right? We were about halfway up the hill, I finished my second bottle and I went, maybe we should head back to the car, you know? So we started walking back to the car. About halfway back to the car, I stopped sweating. For those of you who know anything about physiology, that’s not good.

Okay, that was really bad. I finally got to the car and I had to drink a couple quarts of water to even start being thirsty. That was not good. Okay. I probably was close to dying.

Not smart on my part. We need water. Even here with 95% humidity, most of the time in the summer, we need water. See, we don’t casually consider water. Let me think about water.

You don’t politely include water in your plans. You desperately need it. As human beings, we need it because our lives depend upon it. See, see, some of you have included God in your life. You know, hey, you know, whenever, if it’s all right, you know, we’ll include him in there.

Now, see, we don’t include him in our life. We misunderstand that predicament. He is not a source of life. He is the source of life. He needs to be a first priority.

We need to seek him first. Have you made following Jesus your lifelong pursuit? See, the world offers all kinds of pursuits that might feel satisfying at the moment, but they can’t satisfy the soul in the long run. They promise fullness, but they leave us empty. Have you felt that inner thirst that nothing else seems to quench?

You know, we know sometimes what it’s like to chase achievement or relationships or comfort or success, and it comes up dry worship is not a weekend activity but a lifelong pursuit of the only one who can satisfy the soul. That’s the first mark of a worship filled life. Let’s look at the second. It’s a mouth that praises God. A mouth that praises God.

So here we’re looking at what David is doing as he responds, as he sought after God, he is now starting to praise him. And the first thing he praises God for is his steadfast love in verse three. His steadfast love. This is the Hebrew word chesed. You got to use a little phlegm, you know, chesed, okay?

It is translated variously as loving kindness, goodness, mercy, favor. Does this sound familiar? This is the Old Testament form of the Greek word agape. This is the unconditional love of God, the chesed in the Hebrew. This is showing favor on those who are unworthy.

As David thinks about the love of God, it calls to mind a biblical commentator from the he 18th century. His name was, let me see, what was his name? You don’t care? Thomas Brooks. Like you’re going to look him up.

Okay, Thomas Brooks. But he said something really cool. He said this, he said, you know, no man sets so high a price on the sun as someone who’s been locked for months in a dungeon, right? So if you’ve not seen the sun for months, okay, I met a former submariner here between services. He didn’t see the sun for months.

And I bet you when he got to port he was awful happy to see the sun, right? Or if you have a dry and parched land, you know, and you finally see rain, that’s the kind of response that we have to the love of God.

In verse six. I’m sorry, in verse four, David says, I will bless you as long as I live. And then he also has three different statements in verses 3, 5 and 7. He says, My lips will praise you. I will praise you with joyous lips and I will sing for joy.

These are all things that he’s using his tongue, his mouth for. He is praising God. This is a loud thing. And remember, he’s writing this in the desert. He’s got every reason to complain, right?

He’s thirsty. He doesn’t have any food. He’s being chased by his son who’s trying to usurp his throne. He’s living in the desert. What is his response?

He praises God. See, praise is a choice. So even when you’re in dire circumstances, or maybe it’s not so dire. Let me share real quick. A couple weeks, maybe a week or so.

Ago. Most of you all know I’m an airline pilot and I’m based up in Boston, so I have to commute up there, which means I thumb for a ride and see whoever’s got an empty seat. I get to work and then come back. I was trying to come home, and there were three successive flights I tried to get on. Hey, can I have a ride?

Nope. Sorry, Foal. Can I have a ride? Nope. Sorry, fo.

So three successful flights, and I didn’t get on any of them, which meant I was stuck in Boston for another night, and I was going to take the first flight out in the morning. I was like, dang it, because I want to get home. You know, I don’t want to be up there. And I was all kind of. And then this.

This bolt came out. And I think God was just saying, you got a great job. You know, you’ve got a great. You got a job that most people would really kill for. You know, you got a great job.

You got people that rely on you. You know, this is really a small thing. So you don’t get the great home tonight. I was like, praise God. You’re right.

You’re right. Small thing, okay. Most of you are probably struggling with things far worse than what I just described. But that’s just a small example of how we can choose to praise God even in circumstances that we wouldn’t want to. David sings for joy.

So certainly we are commanded to sing, but it’s not just singing. It’s shouting, shout for joy. It’s speaking, it’s murmuring for joy. It’s thinking for joy. Okay?

All of the types of use of your mouth, lips and tongue could be used to praise God. Psalm 19:14 says the words, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight. O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. Everything that is of us should praise God. So how do we praise Him?

Is it just when things go well? We’re really good at that, right? Hey, I just got an A in my test. Praise God. Okay.

Yes, you should do that. Absolutely. But you know what? Hey, I got a C in my test, and I really studied Praise God.

Right? That’s a little harder to do. We’re still to praise him in those kind of circumstances. But it’s not just. We don’t just praise God by saying those things about him or to him.

You know that we can praise God by building other people up. Do you know that we can praise God by the edifying words that come out of our mouths. You know, how often is it that we might tear people down? And then the next Sunday we’re in here praising God. Do you have a work mouth and a Sunday mouth?

You know, do you have Monday through Friday where you speak one way and then on Sunday morning, hey, brother, how you doing? Careful. I’ve been there, right? Careful. Let’s build people up with our.

With our mouth. Let’s also not detract from the Lord by our speech. Let’s do that. Look, in verse four says, I will bless you as long as I live. David is saying something curious here.

I will bless him. How do you bless God? Right? When I was teaching my kids how to pray when they were young, you know, all they did was, you know, dear God, please bless mommy and please bless daddy and bless grandma and bless grandpa and bless meme and all Uncle Mark and you know, right? Please bless.

Please bless. We’re good at asking for that. Please bless. How do we bless God? I’ll tell you.

To bless him means to kneel before him. It’s to ascribe to him the glory that is due to him. It is to serve him and to do what he says that blesses God. How many of you parents out here today, if you saw your kids doing what you. You would want them to do without you telling them that that would bless you?

Absolutely. That’s how God sees us. We can bless him by looking for his hand in our life and acknowledging his sovereign hand. And in your name, I’ll lift my hands. Guess what?

Charismatics, you know, you didn’t invent that in 1800. That goes back three millennia, right? Raising hands. That’s okay. You guys can raise hands in services.

It’s perfectly okay. You can do the, you know, the two hand, or you can do the one hand, or you can do the, you know, whatever. I don’t hope nobody sees me. You know, go ahead and lift your hands. Okay, David did it.

Okay. David’s doing it in the desert. You guys are in a nice comfortable auditorium. Raise your hands. Don’t do it because I said to do it, though.

Do it because God has motivated you and you are praising him. Acts 4:12 says, There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men, by which men may be saved. That’s why we praise him. That’s why we praise him. We praise his name.

I remind you, let’s practice speech that continuously thanks God and acknowledges his name forever. David again in Psalm 30, verses 11 and 12, says, you have Turned for me my mourning into dancing. You have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness that my glory may sink. Sing your praise and not be silent. O Lord, my God, I will give thanks to you forever.

There’s reason enough. You’re breathing, right? You’ve woke up on this side of the dirt. Okay? Praise God.

Hebrews 13:15. Through him, let us continuously offer up a sacrifice of praise to God that is the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Have you thought about how powerful the tongue is? Right? It’s volatile.

It’s vital, though, right? Washington Irving said that the tongue, a sharp tongue that is, is the only edged tool that gets sharper with constant use. Scary, right? James, the brother of Jesus, writes in his letter, the tongue is a fire, a restless evil, and full of deadly poison. You know, the tongue doesn’t look all that bad, right?

It’s hidden behind pearly teeth and maybe here in the front row, maybe some braces a little bit. Right? Hidden. Hidden back there, right? But think about what you can do with your tongue.

Right? You can whistle, you know, you can yawn. Maybe I’m doing that to y’ all right now. Okay? Maybe you can yawn.

Okay. You can taste delicious, tasty food. You know, if you go to Pastor Gary’s office, he’ll hand out peppermints, if you like those. I don’t. I don’t like peppermints.

I don’t like. But, you know, you can use it for that. You know, for those in the other room, we got people who can play brass and woodwind instruments and those kind of things, and they can play the entire song without missing a beat. But then watch. You smash your thumb with a hammer or kick your pinky toe on some furniture and see what your tongue does then.

Tongue’s dangerous. Will you use your tongue to bless others instead of curse them? Does your speech reflect the character of God? Do you share gossip in the form of prayer requests? Do we actively participate in tearing down others?

See, most of us are not going to curse God actively, but we might be slandering him by how we use our voices in the presence of others. Let’s use our voices to praise God and to praise each other and to lift each other up. That’s the second mark. Here’s the third. A soul that meditates on God.

A soul that meditates on God. This is not this Eastern meditation that you may have heard of where you’re mindlessly repeating a mantra over and over and over again. That’s not what we’re talking about. We are talking about focused thinking. Focused thinking about God and his Word.

That’s what Christian meditation is. And you see, David gives us a little bit of a prescription on how to do this. He says that in verse five, my soul will be satisfied. This is to be filled, like, with rich food. Like, I mean, I love every once in a while to get a rich, juicy steak.

And I love a rib eye more than anything else, right? Why? Because the ribeye’s marbled with fat. And any chef will tell you that fat equals flavor, right? If you want to add flavor to something, add some fat in some kind of form into it and it tastes good, right?

You guys can have all the other different kinds of steak that you want to, but if I have a choice, I’m going to order a ribeye, right? That’s the kind of food that we are feeding on. When we feed on God’s word, we’re chewing on the fat. We’re chewing on the nutritious part, right? We’re really getting in there.

See, God receives his glory when we meditate on his Word and really chew on it and let it richly penetrate into us. See, Colossians 3:16 says that the word of Christ is to dwell in you richly, richly, like fat and savory food. And the next step that David gives us is. I remember you in verse six. This is not some casual.

Oh, yeah, I remember, like, hey, you know what happened on Wednesday at camp? You guys would go, oh, yeah, well, this happened. That’s not what I’m talking about, okay? I’m talking about. I’m thinking back to the times that God worked in my life, and I’m actively processing it.

You know, I’m really thinking about, hey, you know what? I remember a couple years ago, I was going through a thing, and God really moved in my life and made things happen. That’s an active remembrance. This is not a casual thing. And then I meditate on you.

Now, you’re going to love this. This Hebrew word is the word haga. Haga sounds like a growl, Right, right, right. And that’s the picture. That’s the Hebrew picture.

Hagah is like a lion crouching over its prey. Like, don’t come near me. I’m enjoying this wildebeest or whatever it is that he’s eating, right? So that’s how we are to treat the word. We’re to grab it and devour it and just tear it up.

I know you guys are loving that. You’re going to remember that, right? Hagah this is the meditation that we’re talking about. You can read it back to the Lord, you can think on it, you can pray it back to him. You can think about it under your breath, in your mind.

See, we don’t just fill our minds with information as we meditate on God’s word, the Spirit takes that truth and presses it deep into our hearts. He’ll convict us of sin at that same time, but he’ll also comfort us in our suffering. He’ll strengthen our faith and he’ll transform our desires. This happens as we meditate on the promises and on the word of Scripture. Meditation is the means by the Spirit how he does that.

And as we pray through that, and as we meditate on God’s word, it goes deeper and deeper into us. And David throws a couple more things at us. In other words, he says, when I’m on my bed or I’m in the watches of the night, in the Hebrew, they divided the night into three watches of four hours from 6pm to 6am so what he’s saying is, you know, every once a while, in once in a while, when you wake up in the middle of the night and you can’t sleep and you’re laying there and what do most of us do? Grab our phone. Worst thing we could do.

You know that blue light now I know what time it is. I don’t really want to know what time it is. Oh, now I’ve only got two more hours to sleep or whatever, right? What David is saying is, in those watches of the night, meditate. What has God been saying to you?

What is the last Christian song you heard? What’s the last scripture that you heard? Or remember? What’s the last thing that a Christian brother or sister has spoken into your life saying, Meditate on that. Take that time and use it productively.

That’s what we should be doing at 2 and 3 o’ clock in the morning when you wake up for no reason.

He’s been my help. David says there’s another thing that we can meditate on. See, David is saying this from the past. He’s not saying, I’m in the wilderness, please help me. He’s saying, you’ve been my help.

Remember, David slew Goliath. David’s been made king of Israel. David has killed his ten thousands when Saul has killed his thousands, right? David has been a great and mighty warrior, leader and king. He remembers how God helped him.

He remembers the help that God had. And so he calls that to mind. And that’s what he’s doing in his meditation. And let me show you in verse 8. Here is the objective of the whole bit.

Verse 8. My soul clings to you. My soul clings to you. That’s the purpose behind the seeking, right? The praising and the meditating.

All of that is so that my soul will cling to you. This is a familiar word. This shows up in Genesis, Genesis 2:24. This is going to sound familiar. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

That word cleave in the King James. That’s that. Hold fast. The objective of spiritual worship, as we seek and we praise and we meditate, is to cleave to God as a biblical marriage does, As a man clings to his wife, and as a wife clings to her husband to become one flesh with the holiest of holy, with the King of the universe. That is the objective of spiritual worship.

You are learning to get closer to him because his right hand will uphold you. See, God repeatedly tells us to meditate on His Word. And in Joshua 1:8, he says, study this book of instruction. Continually meditate. Meditate on it day and night, so you will be sure to obey everything written in it.

Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do. And then in the beginning of Psalms, as He introduces all 150 of them in Psalm 1, verses 1 and 2, he says, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his, his law. He meditates day and night. We are commanded to meditate. Let’s use Christian meditation for what it really is meant for.

Not this mindless repetition, but this. You guys are gonna chew on it. Chew on it. Paul says in Philippians 4, 8, finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. If you get to the point where you’re like, I need to meditate and I can’t remember the last scripture, or I don’t remember the last Christian song or whatever.

How about the last time you went to the beach? Or maybe you went to the mountains, okay? Or maybe you saw a newborn child, or you were at a wedding, you know, and you saw the bride and groom pledging their lives together. Whatever is pure and beautiful. Meditate on that.

Because those are From God too. Meditate on that. Those are the things that we should be filling our life with. It’s like a cow chewing on its cud, right? When the.

When the cow eats the grass. If they ate like me, it would be. It would be like three bites and it’s gone, right? Done. That’s not what a cow does.

Cow brings it back up and chews it and choose it. He gets every bit of nourishment out of that meal. That’s what we are to do as we meditate on the goodness of God. It could also be like that song that doesn’t leave your head, right? That song that continuously loops all day.

I’m sure that’s happened to you. It happens to me all the time. Sometimes it’s a song I really don’t want to hear. Okay. And I’m trying not to think of them right now because then it’s going to loop in my head.

See, every one of us has a meditation loop. We all have it. Your mind is always rehearsing something. For some of you, it’s anxiety. You know, you’re thinking about the next big problem or you’re just worried about whatever it is.

Maybe for others it’s resentment. You know, there’s some hurt that’s out there that you’re just looping over and over and over again. Some people replay conversations that they’ve had that they wish had gone differently and it keeps looping. Others rehearse worst case scenarios that may never happen. Some people obsess over their bank account, right?

Some people obsess over their retirement, their children’s success, or maybe even like the latest headlines, it’s easy to do. And it loops over and over and over again. We become experts at meditating on our problems. But we’re so much like novices when we should be meditating on God. Let’s not be good at meditating on our problems.

Let’s be good at meditating on God, right? Because he’s got so much more for you. Whatever you continuously rehearse, your heart’s going to believe. Imagine what would happen if we spent as much time rehearsing God’s promises as we do rehearsing our problems. What if every anxious thought became an opportunity to pray?

What if every fear reminded us of a promise of God? What if every sleepless night became an opportunity to remember God’s faithfulness? See, the goal is not. I’m not telling you to pretend that the problems don’t exist. They do.

Okay? But let’s let the greatness of God become bigger in your mind than your problems. Let’s meditate on that. See, Psalm 63 shows us what it’s like for us to be built different. And, you know, even in the wilderness.

Even when David was in the wilderness, his circumstances were dry, but his soul was satisfied because his worship was put in the right place. He sought God first with everything he had. He praised God with his lips, and he meditated on God with everything that he was. The result was a life that was not merely surviving in that wilderness, but worshiping through it. See, ultimately, what David longed for, we now find in the person of Jesus Christ.

See, Jesus is the true and better temple. He’s the one in whom God’s glory is fully revealed. And through him. We’re not just invited to visit the presence of God occasionally, just on Sunday when I can fit it in, but we’re brought near and kept near by the right hand that upholds us. So the question is not just whether we admire David’s worship.

That’s not my point. But whether we’ll live it out. Let’s live out the worship that David modeled. Will we continue to chase what can’t satisfy? Or will we be a people who are truly built different, whose souls cling to God and find their joy in him alone?

Let’s pray, Father. I pray for these, my friends, as we consider how we are built different. And I pray that we would truly live a life of spiritual worship, one in which our lives are dedicated towards cleaving to you, to being close to you and clinging to you. And perhaps, you know, there may be people here in the sound of my voice. And you’ve never offered your life to Jesus.

And you don’t know what it’s like to live a life built different. You don’t know what it’s like to live a life of spiritual worship because you’ve never met him. It’s easy. Just pray with me. Jesus, I need you to be on the center and not the thing that I’ve been putting in front of you when whatever that is, Lord Jesus, forgive me, forgive me for putting something else in front of you.

I want to love and serve you always, friend. If you prayed that, it’s that simple, you started a life with Christ for others. Many of us, many of us believers who’ve been believing for a long time still struggle with this act of worship. And I want to pray for you too, Father. I pray that for me and for all of my friends here that we would love and serve you first, that we would seek after you.

That we would praise you with our voice. That we would meditate on you so that we could live the life of spiritual worship that you’re calling us to. We will forsake all the others. Help us to serve you better. I pray this in Jesus name, amen.

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All right, church boy. That gets me kind of pumped up, man. That one’s a little too hyped. I think that one. You know what I love?

It’s Father’s Day and we have that intro and we’re serving you donuts. There’s just nothing makes sense about what we’re doing. I’m so thankful to be back right now. I’m thankful to be preaching again this morning. Thank you, Brother Josh, for preaching these last couple of weeks.

I had a great vacation with my family and he did a great job in my absence and got us kicked off into this series called Built Different. This phrase, built different, you’ve probably heard it, I bet it’s more of a recent phrase about someone who stands out. I grew up hearing, like the phrase, he’s cut from a different cloth or he’s a monster. You know, those kinds of phrases. This idea that someone is exceedingly stands out in physical or mental kind of way.

And so the goal of this series is that we as Christians should truly look different. We should be, quote, built different because we are built on different stuff. We’re made of different stuff. And the reason is, is because Christ should be. Is our foundation.

So it causes us to just look completely different and that we should praise this and not run from it. And so our series theme that we’re going to be in the next couple of weeks comes out of the book of Romans. And we’re just taking little bites out of this and expounding on them. And so you’ve already heard from Josh over the last few weeks about presenting your bodies and being a living sacrifice. Today we’re going to talk about spiritual worship.

Romans, chapter 12, verse 1 and 2. It says, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed then to this world, but. But be transformed by the renewal of your mind. And by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

So we’re going to be, over the next few weeks really trying to get at what does it look like to have a life that’s built different? What would it look like to truly live for Christ and how would it impact everything and transform our lives? And this morning we’re going to talk about this spiritual worship. Now, at church, we talk about worship a lot. Sometimes it can be confusing because you may think when you think worship, you think what we just did.

Songs and instruments and singing and that’s true, but it’s only a piece of worship. Sometimes we get confused here and think that singing is all that worship is. But I want you to hear something today that worship is not primarily something that happens in a service. It is an orientation of your life, that your life should be one of worship. Now, here’s the thing.

It already is. We are all worshipers. We’re great at it. Actually. It’s one of the things that all of us share in common is that we are great worshipers, but we all worship different stuff.

We’re great at putting something at the center of our life that either causes us to be lifted or. Or causes us to feel empty. It can be a weight that crushes. And here’s why. Because we all worship.

And the question is, what’s at the center? What’s taking the seat, the throne, if you will, of your life? A lot of things in life are the weight that weighs us down because they were never meant to carry that. Things like your career or some certain success, a comfort, a dream, a our relationship, even these things are not meant to bear the weight. Instead of lifting us, they leave us discouraged.

And that’s really the question today is what will I make the center of my life? And what can bear the weight? Here’s the great news. Church. We know the one who can bear the weight.

His name is Jesus. We’re going to talk about him a ton today. Every Sunday, hopefully every day of your life. He’s going to come up a lot. And he is the one, the only one who can bear the weight of worship.

As we’re going to dig in today in Psalm 63. The Psalms are a great place for us to find ourselves as we’re teaching and preaching on worship. This is really the primary focus of the Psalms. And we’re going to dig into Psalm 63, and I want to give you just a little up front before we dig into the text. Psalm 63.

There’s a superscript up at the top before verse one that says a Psalm of David when he was in the wilderness of Judah. This is a great place for us to find ourselves today because there’s two different times in David’s life when he finds himself in the desert of Judah. The first is when he’s young and he’s running from Saul. Samuel, the prophet, comes and tells him, hey, you’re going to be king. And obviously that ticks Saul off.

And so Saul chases him out in the wilderness to kill him, and he runs for years, and he writes a lot of Psalms in that season. But there’s another season where there’s been this catastrophe in his family. One of his sons rapes one of his daughters. One of his other sons murders him, maybe justifiably, depending on how you look at it. And his name is Absalom.

And Absalom begins to gain power in the nation. And has David run out of his own court. And now at this point, which is most likely when this psalm is written, David is on the run with a few of his men in the deserts of Judah, running from his own son after the catastrophe that has happened in his family. Let’s talk about a low point. I know you’ve had some low points.

That’s a low point. And this is when he writes this worship song, this worship psalm that is surprising. Instead of God help me to come back and be king. God, help me to pray, restore my kingdom. God help me to deal with my son.

God give me courage. He doesn’t pray any of that. Instead he says, God, I need you. Let me have more of you. Can’t wait to share this psalm with you today because I know some of you are here, some of you are here, some of you are here.

And this is for all of you, because God has called us to a worship filled life. So let’s dig in. Psalm chapter 63. As David is in the wilderness, he shows us how to live a worship filled life and we can live it out. So let’s dig in.

Psalm 63, 1:8, a Psalm of David. And when he was in the wilderness of Judah, here’s what he says. O God, you are my God. Earnestly I seek you. My soul, it thirsts for you.

My flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I’ve looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and your glory because of your steadfast love. Life is because your steadfast love is better than life. My lips, they will praise you. So I bless you as long as I live in your name I will lift up my hands.

Church, hear this. My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food. And my mouth will praise you with joyful lips when I remember you upon my bed and meditate on you in the watches of the night. For you have been my help. In the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.

My soul clings to you. Your right hand upholds me. This is God’s word. Amen. This is good news.

Church. I pray this morning you feel encouraged by this word. There are Three marks in this text of a worship filled life. Here’s the first mark. A heart that seeks God.

A heart that seeks God. I love that. David, instead of immediately saying, God, help me, says, o God, my God, I hunger for you. I want to be in your presence. He says, elohim, oh God.

This is God’s divine name, this plural name that says the one true God. He calls him by his name. And he doesn’t stop there. He says, o God, the one true God, my God. He’s taking ownership here.

He’s saying, I want to worship you. I want to come into your presence. I know that in this terrible place where I find myself in the desert, here’s what I need. I need my God. And earnestly I seek you.

The Hebrew here for this word earnestly in the King James is translated. Early, early in the morning, I seek you. That’s because this word has to do with a timing thing. So he’s saying, hey, as soon as I wake up, I need you. I seek you.

Now, I’ve heard from a lot of you and I’m this way too. Like, I can’t really start my day until I’ve had a cup of coffee in me. Some of you, it’s two or three. Like, I got it down a couple before I talk to another human, right? That’s where a lot of you are.

For me, I’ve got to have a shower in the morning. I’ve got to start my day that way. Some of you do this nighttime shower thing. I do not understand you. I don’t know how that works.

I’m sure sleep is great, but you wake up with your hair, doing all this, that’s crazy, but that’s not me. I got to get up, I got to have a shower. I got to have coffee. That’s not what David says, though. David says, God, I got to have you.

First thing, I got to have you. I pray that we would be the kind of people, the kind of church that would treat God like something far greater than a morning shower and a coffee. That the thing we wake up for, earnestly seeking that my. He says in verse one, my soul thirsts for my flesh is fainting for it. I gotta have this.

I’m in a desert. I know what it’s like to thirst, but I don’t need water, I need Jesus. I don’t need water, I don’t need food. I need the living God. I don’t need my throne back.

I don’t need everything to go right. I don’t need all of my circumstances to line up in the way that I need them. No, I need the Lord God. And then all these things, whether they’re up, they’re down, they’re in the middle, they all become something I can easily manage because I serve a living and holy God who has an eternal purpose and destination for me. Then all these temporal things start going, Eh, he can handle that.

He’s got that Jesus, in fact, says in John chapter seven, he says, jesus stood up and cried out, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. You thirsty this morning, boy? There’s something powerful about that. I wish we could get that peace if we would just be the kind of church that is hungry and thirsty for the living God, like this, that all other circumstances take a back seat. Yeah, I’ve got problems.

Yeah. My money’s not right. Yeah. I’m having trouble in this relationship. Yeah.

This isn’t going right at work. Yeah. There’s a sickness. Yeah. Yeah.

I gotta have. I gotta have you, Lord. And first and middle. And at the end of it, I gotta have you. You see this?

You want to know what it looks like to have a life that’s built different? It starts different, it wakes up different. But Jonathan, I can’t figure out what’s going on. I can’t get this right. And if I come to you and say, hey, how do you start your day?

Do you start it in the Word? Yeah, but, Jonathan, I’m just not a morning person. I don’t care. I’m not either. I’m not either.

But guess what I’ve discovered. I can have a most wonderful Bible study at the end of the night. And something happens to me in my sleep and I wake up in a bad mood. I wake up going, I’m not a morning person. I’m going to get into my day and start just.

No, I got to start with early. He says, early. Earnestly, I seek you, Jonathan. I don’t have enough time in the morning. Yes, you do.

You just got to go to bed earlier. Ew. Yeah, make it happen, Captain. Give it 15 more minutes. Give it 30 more minutes.

Get up a little earlier and spend time earnestly with the Lord. He goes on in verse two to say something that so few of us get. I wish we would. He says, I’ve looked upon you in the sanctuary. I’ve beheld your glory and your power.

When David is out here in the desert, he’s different than some of us. He’s cut, a little different. He’s definitely built different because he’s not longing for a hot shower and a hot meal. He’s longing to be back in church. Man, I miss getting to be in the sanctuary.

I hate being out here in the desert where I can’t be there, where the ark of the covenant of the Lord is, where the people of God are singing together, where we could hear the word spoken by the priests, where we could do church.

Some of you are in a desert, metaphorically right now. I wonder, does it cause you to long to be in the sanctuary with God’s people? This is going to sound extremely self serving and I don’t really mind because I want you at church. Why? Because I actually believe.

This is going to sound crazy, but I actually believe when you come and you sing and you hear God’s words preached, you will be changed. I think it makes an impact. I think it affects you. So, yeah, I want you in these seats. But it’s bigger than that.

It’s bigger than that. David says in one of the earlier Psalms, Psalm 27, he says this one thing I ask of the Lord, the thing I seek most is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, delighting in the Lord’s perfections and meditating in his temple. David’s a strange one man, I just want to hang out in church. You know why? I think he’s getting something right.

There’s a lot of us that aren’t quite ready for heaven. And here’s why. Because heaven’s a big church service.

There’s going to be a lot of singing up there. Some of you ain’t sang a song in a long time other than in your cars or in the shower. And we all know, we can tell, like, go ahead and let that freak flag fly. Go ahead, let it in here. We need to hear your atonal song.

Let it be heard. Because in heaven we’re singing. It says, every knee will bow, every tongue confess.

You and I need to begin to cultivate something in us that longs to be in the house of the Lord. I struggle here too. Church. Don’t miss this. There are small group nights where I’m like, I’d rather stay home.

There are church mornings where I go, boy, I am whooped. And I gotta preach twice.

And I love to preach, but some mornings. But do I long to be in the house of the Lord Because I’m preparing for heaven. I’m preparing for glory. Here’s what’s true Christians today. Something has drastically changed over the last 10 to 20 years.

Twenty years ago, studies would show that. Hey, church members generally go three out of four Sundays now. It’s far less than that. In fact, I don’t know how this math works, but it’s somewhere around 1.6amonth. So sometimes you’re only sending half your body.

I don’t know how that works, but 1.6, that wasn’t funny. I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t have laughed at that either. 1.6, that means there’s a convenience to this thing. Church has become an appointment that we either keep or we don’t.

If something better comes up.

And I’m not telling you this because, oh, we desperately need bodies and seats. No, I’m telling you this because God should be moving you to long to be in his presence. There should be something changing in us that makes us want to be with the Lord Jesus personally and corporately, constantly. Do you long to sing with the saints? Do you long to pray with his people?

To witness a baptism? We’re going to have a huge baptism next Sunday. I pray you’ll be here to celebrate what God is doing in the lives of people. What wonder is that? Do you long to celebrate at the end of service, the Lord’s Supper, what Christ has done for you?

Or has church just become an obligation? My prayer for you is not, hey, I pray the people would attend more. No, I pray that God would so work in your heart that you’re desperate to be in his presence every day, certainly a Sunday, that if we do a pop up church service on Thursday night, you’re like, I gotta be there because I don’t know what they’re up to. If they’re singing, I want to be in there. Do you long for his presence?

The Bible is very clear on this. It says it so many times. When the Bible speaks something over and over again, you should take it to heart. It begins, one of the early ones is in Deuteronomy, chapter 4. It says, from there, you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find him if you search after him with all your heart and all your soul.

Seek him, seek him earnestly. Jeremiah writes, you will seek me, and you will find me when you seek me with your whole heart. Jesus repeats this Matthew 6, Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And all these things will be added to you. What do you seek earnestly search after?

That is what you truly worship. That is what you truly worship. And a lot of the things that you’re earnestly seeking after, they cannot bear the weight you’ve put on them. They can’t even people. Oh, he’s great.

Oh, she’s great. Oh, I just want my kids to grow up and be great. They cannot bear the weight you’ve put on them. Only the Lord Jesus can do that.

Me and my wife, we went on a camping trip some years ago. We got married in August. I wouldn’t recommend that to anybody necessarily in North Carolina because August in North Carolina is so, so hot. And we were very poor in the early years of our marriage. And we got this bright idea, well, we got to do something, so let’s go camping together in August in North Carolina.

We did that once. Church. We’ve been married 20 some years. We ain’t doing that again. It was miserable for all involved.

We forgot some things. We went on a long hike together. It was kind of a nice day for August. It wasn’t crazy hot. The sun was out, birds were chirping.

We’re climbing a mountain. We’re in the western part of North Carolina and there’s some great hiking trails up here. I think we were hanging rock in that area, if you’ve ever been there. Some pretty stuff to see. And so my wife is not really the hiking type.

She’s not really the moving type. More of the sleeping type. She loves sleep. It’s her spiritual love language. And anyway, so I take this woman camping.

Y’ all already see the problem. This makes no sense. What am I doing? So I take her hiking. It looks like a one to two mile walk.

And I honestly, she doesn’t believe me to this day. Did not mean for it to be a five or six mile hike. I took the wrong turn at Albuquerque. I mean, I messed up. And so we didn’t pack enough water friends.

We didn’t pack enough water on this hot August day. And I saw my wife do some stuff that day that I’ve never seen before or after. There was a stream of water that she seriously considered drinking. I mean, we’re up in the mountains. I’m like, we’re going to come home with some new stuff if you do that.

Like, don’t do that. And I literally piggybacked my wife out of the woods at least a half a mile. I mean, I’m impressed with myself. Thankfully, she’s very small and I was much stronger then. I don’t know if we could do that together now.

It would be pretty tough. But we realized something there that honestly we already knew and that is water isn’t really something you just like include in your plants. Water is a necessity. Water is A must. I mean, we could have packed some little slim gems and little fun things, but we’re fine without that.

Some of you are going through life.

I’ll just include. I’ll just have a little God in my day. It’ll be a little pack along rather than see this like water, like the very breath in your lungs. You’ve made God. You made Christ Jesus a source of life in your life rather than the source source.

Then you find yourself by various streams going, man, I’m so thirsty because you didn’t pack right.

Boy, I hope we could get this one thing, if we get nothing else today, that our lives would be holy and completely changed because we would make Christ Jesus the center. We would make the decision. Everything else comes around this truth. Everything else, the way I operate in my workplace, as a parent, as a husband, as a wife, all of it would encircle this central thing, which is necessity, the lifelong pursuit of Jesus. Have you felt this inner thirst that nothing else could quench?

That’s the first. A heart that seeks earnestly after God. Here’s the second. A mouth that praises God. A mouth that praises God.

For several verses, the psalmist makes sure to tell us. My lips will praise you. Praise will be on my joyful lips. I will sing for joy. My mouth, my lips, my tongue.

I will honor you. I will praise you. I will bless you. In the middle of the desert, when he’s on the run, when life is at a real rock bottom, he says, I’m going to make sure this thing does the right thing.

This is going to be a really good word to somebody today. I’ll say the right stuff. I’ll be nice. I’ll praise if they’re nice. I’ll bless if they’ll bless.

But if they curse, I’ll curse. I can give it just like everybody else. Some of you, you’ve made the decision, boy, Sunday mornings, I’m going to let lips, I’m going to let my mouth praise God. And then Monday morning, I’m going to absolutely let somebody have it. And there’s some kind of weird thing going on with that.

There’s some kind of head confusion going on with that. David says, no, your steadfast love is better than life. I can’t help but just constantly say, God is good. It must have been weird to be with him in the desert, his men coming up to him, do we have a plan here? I mean, your son’s about to whoop you.

He’s taken over your kingdom. And he’s like, I don’t know. But you know what? God is good. What?

I don’t know what he’s up to. I don’t know what he’s planned for us, but I know this. He’s good. You sure about that, David? Because we’ve been on the run a lot, some of these men.

We were on the run the first time when it was Saul. I’m starting to wonder about your leadership, David. I don’t know. But I know this God of the universe, he loves us, he’s got a plan, and it’s confusing sometimes, but I trust him. Hmm.

I’ll follow that guy. Boy, I’m feeling down, I’m feeling low. But this I know God is good, and I will bless his holy name this day and forevermore. Look at verse four. He says, I will bless you as long as I live.

The psalmist writes in Psalm 19, he says, Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight. O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. I will bless you as long as I live. This is a crazy thing to say when you really think about it, because how do we bless a God who doesn’t need anything? How do you bless him?

He can bless us because we’re super needy. How do we bless him? This word bless has to do with kneeling, with saluting, with paying homage. He’s saying, all of my life, all the days of my life, I will kneel before a sovereign God. He will know that I am his man and I will worship him.

And verse four goes on to say, and in your name I will lift up my hands. He doesn’t worship every little passing thing that gives pleasure or comfort. He says, one name I will bless. One name I will worship. Here’s this crazy thing, Church.

Every single day is a new opportunity to worship something. And we’re funny. We’re so fickle. No matter who you are, this is you and I. We’re in this together.

Tomorrow morning we can wake up and decide, hey, today’s worship is going to be about, man. I got to get this project done, man. I got to make sure that my wife or my kids are doing this. And we just put our. We just set our intent on this one thing for today.

Says, I think, why Paul says, every single day I make my body my slave for the Lord, because otherwise it just goes. It does its own thing. We’re all like squirrels out in the field going, oh, look at there. Oh, look at there. This is how we are.

And the next item that passes by, we’re worshiping that. But David, he says carefully, in your name, I lift up my hands. I make sure every day to wake up every day and say, you are the one I worship, nothing else. You.

And we know that that name has gotten more clear in time. In fact, the New Testament writes in Acts, chapter four, there is salvation in no one else. There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. There’s only one name, one name we worship. So, Church, then the question is, do you practice a speech that continually thanks God and acknowledges his name forever?

The psalmist writes, in Psalm 30, you have turned for me my mourning into dancing. We sang this earlier. You have loosed for me my sackcloth. That’s the idea of these dreadful clothes I put on in mourning. You’ve rid me of them and clothed me with gladness that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.

O Lord my God, I give thanks to you forever. Hebrews 13 through him, then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God that is the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Church, I want you to hear this, and I pray it will get through for so many of you in the room. Your lips will praise on Sunday, but they will not praise on Monday.

And you’re thinking, well, wait a minute now. I don’t wake up and start like, cursing God or no, no, no. But you use your mouth for all this other stuff that has nothing to do with blessing God. Instead, it curses man, and in fact, because of that, curses God. You’re thinking, what are you saying?

I pray. I wish that you and I would have lives that were a sacrifice of praise. He chooses that word wisely, I think, because for so many of us it will be a sacrifice. Because the place you work is rowdy, and you’ve been that. You’ve been right in the middle of that.

It’s going to be a sacrifice of praise for you to say, I’m not going to be that guy anymore. I’m not going to speak that way anymore, because I’m not that man. I’m not that woman. I’m a son or a daughter of King Jesus. My lips should say so.

This is why when we get home, we should no longer say things like, hey, you need to. I’m going to make sure to not curse and do these things around my kids. Really, why not just live that way continuously in life? It’s kind of odd that I’m not going to say these kinds of things at church, but on Monday, they’re Safe. No, they’re not.

My life is a life of blessing and of praise. James, when he writes about this, he says, speech is like the rudder of a ship. It’s like the bridle in the mouth of a horse. Horse. This big, strong animal with this little bitty thing that controls where he moves this huge ship, and this little bitty piece of wood controls where the ship goes.

And many of you have missed this, that the words of your mouth, they tell a wholly different story than what you say your life’s about. Oh, my life’s a praise. My life’s a worship, really. Why do none of us ever hear it?

I really pray that if you see me out in the city, you see me in a grocery store, you see me somewhere. That the way I speak to you then is the same way I speak to you now. And I’m working on it. Church. I’m not perfect.

None of us are. But I get up every day and say, like I pray you will say, lord, be with me. Walk with me. Help me to speak to people as you would speak to them. Give me wisdom.

Help me to live a life that honors you, that my actions and my speech would glorify you.

Will you use your tongue to bless or to curse? It’s radical what I’ve heard in my office with people on the couch talking about their marriages or the way they were raised and hearing from people, what they said to one another, what their parents said to them growing up. People sadly saying, hey, my dad said I would never amount to much, or my mom or my dad said, wow, you really wrecked our marriage. You really did. The son, the daughter.

Wow. Do you realize the power of your words? I pray today, yeah, it’s Father’s Day. But I pray today that over lunch or when you go home, there’s somebody in the room that needs to just change up. The way they speak today, that today maybe the first time you’ve said it in a long time.

But today would be the day you would say to your daughter or your son or your wife, you would say, I love you. I’m proud of you. You’re beautiful. You’re great. Because we’re really good at saying, hey, clean up your mess.

Clean this up. You’re always doing this. And we love these two words. And I’m telling you, you need to dump these from your language. Always avoid, always, and never say never.

Dump them. And for some of you in the room need to hear this, too, in your marriages, that D word. The D word is divorce. It doesn’t exist in your language anymore. It’s scary that you would say this to one another.

Stop it. Instead, say, I love you to death. Do us part. We got some problems, but let’s work on it. Change your language.

A language that blesses God by blessing others. Do you hear this? I pray you would. Here’s the third. I’m going to let you off.

I know. I’m feeling the pressure. Third mark of a worship filled life is a soul that meditates on God. A soul that meditates on God. This is really the heart of this passage is right here in verse five.

And it’s so sweet, it’s so good. David writes, he says, my soul will be satisfied as with rich and fat, fat and rich food. This word here, the Hebrew word, really means to be satiated, that you would be full of food. Some of you are starting to feel that right now, like I’m getting hungry. The psalmist says, boy, when I wake up in the morning, I. I’m going to show up until I get full.

I wonder how many of you in the room have ever even felt this in the Lord. A soul that’s satisfied in Jesus, and here’s why it happens so infrequently to us, is because we put God on a time schedule and say, man, if you would just show up in this little bitty window. All I need is a little snack. Let me get a little snack, Lord. Instead of a meal, he says, he doesn’t say, hey, give me a couple saltine crackers.

He says, fat and rich. This word means the choicest of foods. The filets, the steak, whatever you picture in your mind, the place you would go if you had the opportunity to eat anything. That place. That’s what he’s saying.

My soul is so satisfied in that. And you know, here’s what’s crazy. You know, if you went to that restaurant that served that gourmet meal that you can’t wait to have, you’re thinking about it right now, that you wouldn’t show up and say, all right, everybody help me cut this thing up so I can jam it into my mouth as fast as I can, because I got to get this goodness in me. You wouldn’t do it like that. You wouldn’t.

You be sitting there cutting so slow, you be taking your sweet time with it, you know, but for some reason, when we get up with the Lord and earnestly seek him, we’re just going, oh, God, please show up.

And we wonder why we don’t feel satisfied because we’ve Turned the gourmet meal of the Holy Spirit into a saltine cracker feast rather than a steak dinner that takes time to enjoy. But, Jonathan, I don’t know if I have. You need to find more time. Your life is not that busy, my friend. You probably just make disciplinary choices in your evenings or in your mornings that only allow five to ten minutes.

For the Lord. If that my soul will be satisfied in you as with the richest portion. And I will meditate on you. He says in verse 6, this word means to moan, to growl. It’s like that beast that lives in your stomach when it’s hungry.

He says, I meditate like that. Look at it. He says in verse six, when I remember you upon my bed. I meditate all the watches of the night from sunset to sunrise. I’m up thinking about you.

I find a soul satisfaction in you. Well, this is good stuff. This is sweetness. Because for so many of us on those late nights where we can’t sleep, we go to all kinds of other stuff. Maybe I just need.

I don’t know. Maybe I just need to eat something. Maybe I just need to do something. I can’t get my mind to turn off. Some of you are having these sleepless nights and you don’t.

You’ve never put the dots together that maybe God is up there going, talk. You never thought even for a moment, hey, okay, Lord, what’s going on? Let’s chat. You’ve never woken up from a dream going, man, what was that? Lord, help me, help me to understand and unpack that.

I had a really crazy dream a couple of weeks ago where I was getting attacked by otters. And I’ll be honest with you, I guess I’ve never seen it happen to a human being. But I have a lot of questions. First of all, I don’t remember watching or talking about otters. So I woke up thinking, lord, let’s chat.

What was the otter thing about? Honestly, I do think that had nothing to do with the Lord. But this is where I’m trying to adapt and change. Because there’s some mornings, there’s some evenings, some late nights where I wake up thinking about you or a family member or a son or a daughter. I think about you.

And I used to just say, ah, roll over, let me go to sleep. I ain’t got time for that. I gotta get my sleep. The watches of the night. I meditate on you.

There’s divine appointments that are happening 24 hours a day sometimes. Hey, Jonathan, I want to talk about. I want to talk about so. And so you got a moment, wake you up from a dead sleep to chat with you about it. I meditate on you when I remember you in my bed in the watches of the night.

Verse 8, climax of this, it says, my soul, it clings to you. I love this word. It’s the Hebrew word, the Bach. It’s early in the book of Genesis. It’s one of the earliest words.

Genesis chapter two, we have this word clings or cleave. The Bible says in Genesis 2:24, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and cling, cleave to his wife. So David here is using that same word to describe the one flesh of a marriage, to describe the this is how I want to be with you, God. I want to have that kind of relationship with you that has that level of conversation and closeness. The person you know better in this life is the person you’ve married.

Perhaps at times you understand them even better than yourself. You cling, you become one flesh. And David says, I want that. I want that with you, God. I want your words to be my words.

I want your thoughts to be my thoughts. I want to live life as you would have me live. Help me to cling to you. You want to know what it looks to have a life that’s built different, that’s built on worship. It’s that, God, you live in me, through me, be the voice inside my head, the voice that leaves my lips.

You know good and well if that’s how you operated, it would change everything. It would change how you work. It would change how on time you would show up, how hard you would work, how you would speak to others, how you would speak to your kids, how you would treat your wife or husband. You know it would change everything. So why hasn’t it?

Why hasn’t it that my soul would cling to you? God repeats himself over and over about meditating in him and in his Word. Joshua writes this. He says, study this book of instruction. Continually meditate on it day and night, so you will be sure to obey everything written in it.

Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do. The psalmist writes right away, very first chapter of Psalms, one of the most famous lines in all of Scripture. Psalm 11:2. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, but nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates.

When day and night, day and night where is the meditation of your heart? Where do you spend all of your time? In mental rehearsal? Is it on God and his Word? Being satisfied with the choicer food?

Paul puts it this way. He talks about meditating in this way to the Philippian Church. He writes, finally, brothers, whatever’s true, whatever’s honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure or lovely or commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Oh, man, Church, if we could get this one. There are some of you in the room that are just so pessimistic, and people are around you going, man, why does he complain?

Why is she this way? I just encourage and implore you. Would you spend more time, as Paul instructed, the Philippian Church, whatever’s lovely. Would you start your day instead of saying, boy, I got this, this, and this to do today. Oh, it’s going to be a struggle today.

Instead, wake up and say, isn’t it true that the God of the universe sent his one and only son to die for me? Isn’t it true that I’m a daughter, I’m a son of the one true king?

Maybe I feel in love, maybe I don’t feel like I’m getting it all right, but he does. He loves me that much. That’s amazing. Whatever’s lovely, thank you this morning, Lord Jesus, for giving me breath and direction. Lord, thank you for Jesus, thank you for the cross, thank you for the resurrection, thank you that eternity is in store for me.

What would it look like to start your day a little bit different? Whatever’s lovely, Lord. Thank you for this family, thank you for my wife, for my husband, for my kids, and especially on a morning where you went to bed angry because you already disobeyed one of God’s rules and you went to bed angry. Shouldn’t have done that. Stay up all night, figure it out.

Now, I wouldn’t say necessarily that always works out, but that’s how I’ve practiced it many times. But you woke up still a little frustrated with the person sitting next to you. And that’s the very morning you say, lord, thank you for her or for him.

I want to end with this illustration. It’s one I grew up hearing. This word meditate, kind of brings to mind in the Hebrew, this idea of an agricultural sort of thing. It brings to mind what a cow does in chewing its cud. Now, this is kind of nasty, actually.

I’ve never really followed this all the way through, but I wanted to consider it with you today that when a Cow chews grass. You may or may not know this, but they have three stomachs. And what they do is they just sit out in the field. You’ll watch them moving their little goofy mouths, chewing. And they never stop chewing.

It’s like, what in the world? And here’s what’s going on, friends. They’ll swallow it into that one stomach and then it’ll move to the second and they’ll go ahead and bring it right on back up again. Some of you are like, I can wait on lunch now. They bring it right back up.

Mmm. Then it goes down to the third. Bring it back up. That’s why they’re always out there mooing. Mmm.

Because grass ain’t got a lot to it, y’. All. They’ve got to get every last little ounce of minerals and vitamins.

Takes, three stomachs and all this. This Hebrew word meditate has to do with bringing it back and forth. Now let’s move the nasty illustration. Here’s what he means, here’s what meditation’s about. That you would start your day with the word of God in prayer with the word.

And now at lunchtime, you’re bringing it back up again and chewing on it a little bit more on the way to work, going, what was that? What was that about God? As you’re on your lunch break, as you’re on your way home, as you’re laying your kids down at night, what was. So you’re chewing on it and chewing on it and chewing on it. You read it, you pray it, you repeat it, you sing it, you memorize it as you’re reading it, maybe a song comes to mind.

You sing it and you chew. Rather than get up in the morning tomorrow and read this and check a box off, you’ve got a journal over, well, I did it. Woohoo. Rather than say, alright, God, today I want to have my soul satisfied. I love what Jacob once said.

He wrestled with God, and Jacob made a ton of mistakes. But there’s a scene where he wrestles with God. God renames him Israel and dislocates his hip. It’s a crazy cool story, but I love this moment where Jacob grabs him. The angel of the Lord, it says.

And here’s what Jacob says. You remember this? He says, I will not let go until you bless me. I love the heart of Jacob here. Some of you need to start your days this way.

I should say all of you, what would it look like tomorrow morning to spend some time with the Lord and say, I’m not leaving Here until you satisfy my soul. I’m not leaving here, God, till you bless me means you need a little more time to do that. Hey, we’re not walking away from this good word until you give me something to chew on.

Read it, repeat it. Let God’s word be a feast to you that you graze on all day because your minds are already doing this. Look, I said this at the beginning. You’re great worshipers. You are.

You’re just not great at always worshiping the one true God. You’re also great meditators. You just haven’t been calling it that. For some of you, it’s anxiety, obsession. You’re rehearsing things already.

Rehearsing a conversation you had a week ago and how it could have gone better or how it just took. You rehearse it. You’re rehearsing a conversation you need to have that you haven’t had yet. And you think it’s going to be a tragedy, but you’re running it in your head. And until you have it, you’ll never know.

You’re meditating, obsessing over your future and over where this career and over your kid’s future and will they take life seriously and will they go to college and will they find the right mate? And you’re just.

And you’re putting all this weight and rehearsal on things rather than the one true God who can restore all of this. Imagine what it would look like to spend more time meditating with a holy God. Start taking those thoughts captive. Lord, I’m thinking about this conversation, but let’s move it over here. Lord, you and I, let’s talk about this.

Let you be the satisfaction of my soul so that my life isn’t spent rehearsing this. What if every anxious thought became a prompt to pray? What if every fear reminded you of a godly promise? What if those sleepless nights start becoming opportunities to see God’s faithfulness?

Psalm 63 certainly shows us what it looks like to be built different. What’s really great is built different in the middle of a desert. I’m thankful for this. That this ancient psalmist, King David, said, I will seek you, I will praise you, I will meditate on you. You’re all I need.

Ultimately, what David longed for, we find now perfectly in the person of Jesus he longs to be. David says, I want to be back in the sanctuary. We have the sanctuary. I have such great news for you today, Church. Your worship doesn’t have to stop here.

You don’t have to just worship on Sunday mornings, it’s about to be over. Wouldn’t that be sad? Worship’s over for the week. False. Take it to lunch, worship with your family over a meal.

Take it to the evening, wake up on a Monday morning and worship. Did you know you could do that? That worship is an orientation of life, not an event on a Sunday morning. And in Christ Jesus we have access to the throne of God every moment of every day. He is our temple, our sanctuary, our tabernacle.

Do you understand how amazing that is? That you can be in the presence of God at any moment of any day? Do you long for it? I pray you would. Let’s pray together.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much that you are a good God who loves us for this great word today. Lord, here’s what I’m thankful for. I know that you satisfy every longing of mine. I know that when I come to you and meditate with you, that when I come there longing to be satisfied by you, you show up, I’m prayerful this week that someone’s going to make a decision, make the decision to earnestly seek. You make the decision that their life is going to be filled with worship.

They’re going to start their day different. They’re going to let their mouth and lips of praise God, I pray, would you do this? I boldly ask you, Lord, would you show up in a powerful way in their lives that when they come to you and spend more time with you, begging you, Lord, don’t leave until you bless me. Don’t go until you satisfy my soul. God, I beg you, would you show up, let them experience your presence in a way that’s like the finest feast.

God, would you do that in our lives? So then once we’ve had that boy, we would long for life. That desire would never go away. God, would you show up in that kind of way, in a powerful way? Let us be the kind of people whose mouths speak and bless you.

I pray that you would change your church. That the way we interact with the world, the way we interact with our co workers, our family members, this community, that people would see it and go, man, there’s something different. This is obvious. These are people who bless and do not curse. These are people who love Jesus and they lift his holy name.

God, would you help us to do that, to be ambassadors of reconciliation in a fallen world?

Lord, I recognize that someone may have come in today and this all sounds really great, that we can have really true satisfaction, that we can have a life that has meaning, that we can live a worship filled life. But you know, friend, you’ve known. You’ve shown up today and you’ve not said yes to Christ. Christ, you’ve not said yes to the gift. This one name, as Acts said, this one name by which every knee will bow.

The only name by which men can be saved. You know, you’ve come here today and not you’ve not professed Jesus. This is an appointment.

Today happened on purpose. It’s not an accident that you’re sitting here that the Holy Spirit is moving you to place your faith in Christ Jesus. If that’s you, my friend, now’s the time. Would you pray simply with me? This Jesus, I believe.

I believe you are Lord of all things. You are the king. Jesus. I believe you died on the cross for my sin. And God, I believe you raised Christ Jesus from the dead because of your death and resurrection.

Jesus, I place my faith and my hope in you. I’m asking now, would you satisfy my soul? Would you satisfy my soul? Lord, help me to hunger and thirst for you. Guide my steps.

Help my life to be honoring to you, dear friend. If you prayed that prayer with me, I’m so thankful, so honored to get to be a part of what God is doing in your life. And I’m praying with you, my friend. Lord, guide us, guide our steps. Help us to have souls that are satisfied by you.

Help us to hunger and thirst for your righteousness. We love you. It’s in all these things we pray in Jesus name. Amen.

We talk about worship often in the church, but there is often confusion about what it actually means. Many of us reduce worship to singing. But singing is only one expression of something far deeper. Worship is not primarily a moment in a service, it is the orientation of a life. In fact, every human being is already a worshiper. The question is not whether we worship, but what we worship. Something will sit at the center of our lives and shape everything.
And what we worship always takes control. It determines how we spend our time, where we invest our energy, what we sacrifice for, and where we place our hope. Whatever sits at the center becomes the engine that drives us or the weight that slowly crushes us.

And in Psalm 63, we see what it looks like when a life is anchored in worship of the only One worthy to carry the weight of our souls. In Psalm 63, while David was in the barren wilderness, he expressed his desire to live a worship-filled life whose greatest desire was not comfort or safety, but the presence of God.

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