Hi, this is Dave Olson. I'm the senior leader of
Heartland Church located in Ankeny, IA.
I hope the following message challenges, encourages and
ultimately changes you. Thanks for joining us.
Amen. Good morning, man, God is good.
Amen. All right, this is Pentecost
Sunday and I am not going to preach on that.
I know it's disappointing, but I want to make a few comments
because we're in a vein. I, I feel like the Lord has a
word for us, but because it's Pentecost Sunday, we want to
touch on this Pentecost Sunday. You know, we, we think of as New
Testament believers, we are Pentecostal.
We believe in the outpouring of the Spirit.
We believe in the continuation of spiritual gifts.
That's what that's what people mean when they refer to people
as Pentecostal. But it really goes back to a
Jewish festival, the Feast of Pentecost.
And the Feast of Pentecost was, it means literally 50.
It was 50 days after Passover. So like Pastor Adam was talking
about the Passover lamb at 50 days later, the children of
Israel were at Mount Sinai. Moses ascended the mount of the
Lord, got the stone tablets, and brought down the law.
In the New Testament, Jesus is our Passover lamb.
Everything that Pastor Adam said sets us up for 50 days later
right here, we Jesus didn't ascend Mount Sinai, but he
ascended the hill of the Lord, literally stepping.
He's enthroned in heaven. He ascended, and now he's at the
right hand of the Father. And what did he do?
He poured out his Spirit on all flesh.
He, he poured out his spirit on his church.
So here's the deal. We don't have an external law.
We have the internal spirit living within us, enabling us,
strengthening us, empowering us to live up to the righteous
requirements of the law. So much so that what we see in
the Old Testament, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount said, you
have heard it said, and he would refer to the law.
You have heard it said, you're not, you know, do not commit
adultery. But I say unto you, if you look
lustfully upon a woman, you have already committed adultery in
your heart. So rather than lower the
standard, Jesus raised it in the new covenant because we now have
the indwelling spirit that enables us to fulfill the
righteous requirements of the law according to Romans chapter
8. So the spirit filled life is
literally him living his life through US.
Years ago we had a when I worked at Teen Challenge, we had this
guy. He was an old biker that got
saved and started a boy's home. He's now with the Lord, but he
he used to talk about his theology wasn't real deep.
He was very effective as a minister, but this was his
theology. I met Jesus, he came inside, sat
down in my heart and he looks out through my eyeballs and that
was his theology. Jesus is looking out through me
and living his life through me. And that's good theology.
It's not real deep the way he explained it, but it's good
theology. And so we'll, we'll give an
opportunity for people to have hands laid on him If you want a
fresh touch of the spirit at the end of the the message this
morning, if you need to be filled with the spirit.
But I want to continue on in the vein we have been in, especially
in light of what we were just singing.
So turn with me to Psalm 149, Psalm 149.
In Psalm 149, we've been looking at this whole concept of praise.
And in Psalm 149, he, he and lists these groups of people.
So we've been looking. I'm hold on.
I'm a guy. I can't multitask, OK?
I know women can, but I can't. I'm a guy.
OK, so this is what we've been looking at.
Psalm 1, Psalm 2, and what? Psalm 149, Psalm 2, the second
book in the Book of Psalms, and Psalm 149, the second to the
last chapter of the Book of Psalms.
The Psalms, were they? They were really the records.
They were scribes, psalmists and seers.
OK, these are functions of Old Testament individuals.
There were seers who would literally see things in the
spiritual realm. They were prophetic.
They would go into encounters and they would deliver to man
what they saw. They were seers.
What it was a it was a form of prophetic or prophets.
Being a prophet, they were seers.
Samuel was a seer. David and Asaph were both seers.
David was a prophet. He was not only a king, he was a
prophet. And so you had these prophetic
people and they would capture the word of the Lord in song.
And they were recorded by scribes as Psalms.
And so we have these in this book of Psalms.
And they're not just nice little ditties that we sing.
They are the tracks. They are the footprints that we
can follow into our own encounter so that we can
experience what David and Asaph and the others experienced.
And so David left us a trail. Now here's the really
interesting thing to me is that David, matter of fact, the the
movie Braveheart was on the other day and I caught just the
end of it. So I got my phone and I filmed
it because I love this end where Braveheart, William Wallace, who
was William Wallace, the real character, William Wallace had
carried the Psalms with him into battle.
And his one request when they were murdering him, when they
were killing him, was that he could carry the Psalms in front
of him. He laid them open as they killed
him because that was his battle book.
That's how he won freedom for Scotland.
And then Robert the Bruce, who's also in the movie, Robert the
Bruce, actually had a prophetic ministry and had a healing
ministry. The real guy, Robert the Bruce.
Fascinating at the end it says that there's this scene where
they're they're standing before the hordes of of England and and
Robert the Bruce says we're going to we're going to, we're
not going to just acquiesce to them.
We're going to go into battle. And so the one dude throws the
sword and it dramatically flies through and then over the
narration, it says they were warrior poet.
They fought like warrior poets. They fought like Scott Mcsman
and they won their freedom. You know what, oh, bagpipe
music. And it's it's a guy flick man.
It's inspiring. But he called them warrior
poets. And David was a warrior poet.
David was a worshipping warrior. He was a man of war.
But his his battle plan was written down in the form of the
Psalms. And that's what we see in Psalm
chapter 2 and Psalm 149. Listen to what Psalm chapter 2
says. It says the the title over the
ESV is the reign of the Lord's anointed.
Why do the nations rage? The people plot in vain the
kings so he says the nation's rage, the people's plot in vain.
The kings of the earth set themselves and rulers take
counsel together against the Lord and is against his anointed
one, saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast their cords
from us. So there's these groups of
people, there are the nation's, the peoples, the kings and
rulers, and they try to set themselves against the purposes
of God. Now turn with me to Psalm 149
and listen to what this says. Look at verse 7 or look at verse
6. Let the high praise of God be in
their throats and A2 edged sword in their hands to execute
vengeance. And it enumerates those four
same groups of people, a vengeance on the nation's
punishments, on the peoples to bind their kings with chains and
their nobles with fetters of iron.
It is not a coincidence that the same ones that chapter 2 says
are trying to oppose the Lord's purposes.
Psalm 149 says that we literally bind them and we bend their neck
into the Lord's purposes through worship and the vivid language
it says with the praise of God in their throats and A2 edged
sword in their hand. Literally in the Hebrew it's a 2
mouthed sword. And the reason it says that is
in ancient times initially swords were curved and they
called it the mouth of the sword and you'd be consumed by the
sword. And then over time they began to
manufacture double edged swords. So they literally were called 2
mouthed swords and in the New Testament we see A2 edged sword
coming out of Jesus mouth. It's the word of the Lord and so
it's a picture of you and I in worship.
We're declaring him. We're enthroning Jesus over our
circumstance through worship, and then we're releasing the
word of the Lord and literally bending the neck of rogue rulers
in the world. We need to understand that there
is tremendous power that is released in worship.
And so let's look at chapter 149.
And then we're going to get into another Psalm as well.
So let's pray. Father, Lord, help me this
morning. I ask God that you would speak
to us and you would deliver your word.
Lord, that it would strike the mark.
Lord that it would be a flaming arrow.
God that would set our hearts on fire in Jesus name, Amen.
Psalm 149, praise the Lord. It's a command.
It's a call to arms for all of us.
Sing to the Lord a new song. It's that that word, a new song
literally means something that's never been heard before.
He's talking about touching the prophetic in worship.
Prophetic worship is catching what the Lord is doing in the
moment. And you can see that in worship
at times. It's like, you know, Scripture
says we see through a glass darkly.
We see in part, we prophecy in part.
So we're, we're, we're searching for what the Lord is doing in
worship and then we'll hit it. And those of you who are more
perceptive will sense that we'll hit that spot.
Oh, man, that's it. That's what the Lord's doing
right now. Prophetic worship is nothing
more and nothing less than the right song for the right moment.
We're releasing what the Lord is doing, just as Jesus, it says,
only said what he heard the Father saying and only did what
he saw the Father doing. In prophetic worship, we're
seeking what is the Lord saying? And we're putting that to song
and we're releasing that into the atmosphere.
We're trying to catch the word of the Lord because when we do
so, we literally begin to impose it on the enemy.
Now we need to understand that worship really has there's in
one sense 3 theaters in which that battle is fought or three
theaters that it affects. Yes, we're worshipping God
because He's worthy and we would.
We can worship for all eternity for that one reason.
He is worthy. But that's not the only reason
we worship. Do you know God's pretty secure
in His identity. You know, he wasn't feeling
insecure this morning. I think I hope I can just make
it to worship so that they'll reaffirm who I am.
It's not what's going on. Worship is not for God, It's for
us. We're declaring who he is.
We're we're recalibrating our mind.
But what what Scripture says, we're going to look at it in a
moment in Psalm 22 that literally God enthrones himself
in the midst of our praise. Our worship is a coronation
ceremony where we crown Him Lord of all, and we're getting our
minds aligned with that. So we worship him because He's
worthy, but we also worship Him because we've got to recalibrate
our mind and get our mind in the right place so that we crown Him
over our circumstances. In fact, let's let's turn to
Psalm 22. I've gotten stuck in Psalm 22
this last week, and in fact, the Lord spoke to me during worship
last week and it just fits in with the theme we've been on and
I've not been able to get out of Psalm 22 all week.
It's this is a very famous passage.
There are several prominent scriptures that you'll be
familiar with. What many believers don't
realize, however, is how close these opposite themes are in
Scripture. So look at what it says in verse
2022. One my God, my God, why have you
forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving
me, from the words of my groaning?
My God, I cry by day but you do not answer, and by night but I
find no rest. Now, of course, this is the
famous Psalm that Jesus himself quotes on the cross.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
But again, like we were looking at Psalm 2 a few weeks ago, we
need to realize that this was first a Psalm of David, then
it's a messianic Psalm, and then there's an application to you
and I God's, God's always playing 3D chess.
He's releasing revelation. David is going through something
and he's leaving the tracks for us.
He lays them down so that we can enter into what he entered into.
But also he was, he was not only articulating his present
circumstance, he was also tapping into the Spirit and
prophesying of what Jesus would do.
And the reason these messianic Psalms applied to David and to
us is because God has his ways, his templates by which he
operates. So God operated the same with
his Son as he operates with you and I.
And so if we can look in the book, you can find yourself on
every page and you can find how to navigate your circumstances.
And in this passage, it's, it's an amazing thing.
David says this, he's complaining in prayer.
And then the very next verse, verse 3, listen what it says.
Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel, and you,
our fathers trusted. They trusted, and you delivered
them. And he goes on.
He begins to remind himself of the testimonies of Israel and of
the history of God's people so that he can recalibrate his mind
to get his mind lined up with what God is doing.
But David begins with a complaint.
You know, David is a man after God's own heart.
God refers to David again and again and again centuries later.
And he would say things like, for the sake of David, I'm going
to do this thing. I don't know about you, but that
makes me jealous, makes you feel like, Lord, can I really live in
such a way that centuries later you'll refer to the light, the
short life I lived, and say, because of the way that man
postured his heart, I'm going to act in this hour of human
history hundreds and hundreds of years later.
And the answer is a resounding yes.
David was not meant to be an anomaly.
David is meant to be an example and a door for us to walk
through and to recognize that David discovered things and left
the tracks for us in the form of Psalms.
And this man that is called the man after God's own heart, what
does he say about him? This guy that pursues God?
David was a complainer. The difference between David and
other men were not that he didn't have doubts and
complaints and frustrations and even made some accusations
against God. The difference was not that
other people did and David didn't.
It's where David took those complaints and those even
accusations. You see, David understood that
prayer and praise are ways that we process our trials.
That is the area that we work these things out.
It's when we we get caught up in this life and and David's
feeling like God, why have you abandoned me, Lord?
I've cried out and you're not answering Lord.
But then David said, he says, yet you are the God of Israel,
you and throne yourself in our praises.
And all through this Psalm 22, David jumps back and forth.
It starts with a complaint and then verse 3 it says yet you are
the holy one of Israel. And then in verse 6 then he
says, but I am a worm and not a man.
And so David is being pulled back and forth between 2
narratives, 2 stories, 2 interpretations of what's going
on in his life. And David is working this out in
prayer. He's working this out in praise.
He's going to God. He's not ignoring his
circumstances. He's not pretending this isn't
his reality, but he's not. He's not satisfied to stay
there. He's getting in God's face,
getting in God's presence, and working this thing out.
It's not a sin to be frustrated and to have complaints.
It just depends on what you do with them.
Our complaints are not to be shared with each other.
It's to be shared in prayer and in the secret place.
We're hammering those things out and we're crying out to God and
saying God, what's going on? David was trying to find his
way. And if you read Psalm 22, it's
he has a complaint, but then he says yet Lord you are and thrown
in Israel and you delivered your people all the time.
But I'm a worm. And what he's saying is I'm
disqualified. I can't.
And then he said yet, and there's yet and butts and pulled
back and forth. And by the end of the passage,
David has found himself in victory, so much so that he not
only has the victory between his ears, he's now begin to, he
releases it over others and he begins to make these
declarations of the people of God will do these things and
they will see the deliverance of God.
And that's the way you and I are to live.
We've talked about it before. When you follow Jesus, he will
invite you into battle. If you really want to follow
God, get ready for a ride. I can't help but think of
Jonathan, Saul's son. And he says to his armor bearer,
they're all just kind of taking it easy under a tree.
And the Philistines, there's an outpost a ways away.
And Jonathan says to his armor bearer, hey, let's go pick a
fight with the whole outpost, just you and I.
He said, OK, whatever's, whatever's in your heart, we're
going to do it. And then they throw this crazy,
crazy fleece before the Lord. They said, OK, what we're going
to do is we're going to talk smack to these guys at the top
of the Cliff. And if they tell us to climb up,
then we'll know the Lord's in this.
I mean, if the enemy's lazy and they don't want to come down to
you, you know, it's God. They made it pretty easy on God.
But the picture is this, that the Son of the King has invited
you into battle and he's going to use your life as the bait to
take more ground and to overcome the enemy.
So if you really want to follow Jesus, just understand there's
going to be some battles. And so you're going to have to
be like David and get in God's face and say what is going on?
I know what your word says, but I know what I'm experiencing.
And he's pulled back and forth and through the Psalm, he's
processing his problems until finally, halfway through, he
settles it. God is in this thing.
I'm going to get through this thing.
And then he's able to release the victory to others.
And you and I are no different. See, we have a tendency, if
we're not careful, to think that David had some secret sauce.
Some special grace that he was he was a special one and we're
just the normal normal ones and but David had this elevated
grace that he could pull on and that's not true David that what
what made David stand out among the rest was David knew what to
do with his problems. He would take him to the Lord
and at times even say outrageous things to God.
You ever said anything outrageous to God?
If you haven't, you need to start because I guarantee you,
you're thinking it. Don't look at me that way.
I know you've had those thoughts.
And so we take them to the Lord and we process and God, this is
what it feels like. And I don't understand.
And David's processing his problems in prayer, in worship,
and he gets himself to the point of victory.
So David says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my
groaning? It's like you're distant Lord.
Later on he says be not far from me.
So he's first convinced God is far, then he's saying be not
far. And by the end of the Psalm, he
knows he's he's walking with the Lord and he's got the victory.
And we need to sharpen though it that skill set to hammer out our
frustrations in prayer. We talked about it a couple
weeks ago, but it's that we live between two narratives.
There's the narrative of the enemy and the narrative of
heaven. And again, a narrative, a
narrator, is the voice that gives meaning to what's
happening on the stage. We have our experiences, and the
enemy is trying to impose his interpretation of what's going
on, and God wants to impose his interpretation.
And you will find God's interpretation of your
circumstances in His Word. And we cannot afford to listen
to any voice that violates the word of God because it's the
word of God that's going to give you the accurate perception of
what you're going through. And so David is working his way
through and crying out and he's like, God, what's going on?
It feels like you abandoned me. He didn't hide those feelings.
He got right in God's presence and began to pour out his heart
to God. And through that, God began to
bring him online. And he he moved himself into the
truth, recalibrated his mind not just with prayer, but with
praise. And so David said, Lord, you
enthrone yourself in the midst of the praise of your people.
Again, when when we praise him, we are crowning him.
There is an element of God's presence that he reserves to
praise. It's when we come together and
and the context here, by the way, is corporate praise in
Psalm 149, Psalm 2, there's there's this thing that we
worship him together. There is an element of his of
who he is. He will not commit to the
individual. It's very clear Psalm, Ephesians
rather chapter 1 and chapter 4. Ephesians chapter 1, the last
few verses says God has put everything under Christ's feet,
comma for the church, and then it says the church is this the
fullness of Him? You will never walk in the
fullness of God alone. In chapter 4 it says you have
been given a measure of the gift of Christ.
You have a measure. I have a measure, and the only
way to discover the full measure is to get with someone else in
their measure, because wherever two or three are gathered in His
name, there he is. And so there's something about
availing ourself to corporate worship, and we begin to lift up
His name, and he begins to settle in there.
And from there he begins to extend his scepter and rule in
the midst of our situation. But if we become those people
that say, well, I'll believe in God's deliverance when I see it,
you'll never see it. We have to win the battle
between our ears before we win the external battle in our
circumstance. And with David here, David wins
the battle in these passages. By the end, he's declaring the
victory over his situations, but nothing has changed physically
yet. We come in here and we
recalibrate our minds and we exalt Him, and we begin to make
declarations over our situation. But for the most part, when we
get in our cars and leave this parking lot, our circumstances
themselves have yet to give way to the word of the Lord.
But the beginning of the that victory is the victory between
your ears. And so we've got to learn that
worship is a way that we train our minds, we recalibrate
ourselves, we begin to align ourself with the narrative of
heaven. And you see David doing that in
Psalm 22. Lord, you've ignored me yet.
You, you have. You deliver your people, but I'm
but a worm. And he complaints more yet.
And he reminds himself, and he keeps working back and forth.
He's pulled back and forth until finally he settles into the
victory. You ever been there?
If you ever, if you haven't ever gone through something like
that, you haven't been walking with the Lord very long because
the Lord will take you. He'll lead you into impossible
situations and through your heart cry.
He'll turn those situations around.
The way that God takes ground in the earth is through your life.
You are the bait. He will pick a fight with the
enemy, with your life and then use you to get more ground.
And if you don't understand that, you'll think, well man,
Lord, my life was pretty smooth till I got saved.
It's because you were flowing with all the other flotsam in
this world. You want to go up up against the
against the stream. You want to see God do some
things and you've got to align yourself with him.
So let's look at Psalm 149. This is this is so, so very
important. Psalm 149 and we don't have time
to get into everything. I would love to release to you
this morning, but we want to get to 1 part.
Listen to what he says here. So in Psalm 149 there are 5 or 6
rather let there's let's he says chapter verse one.
It's the command. Praise the Lord, sing a new
song. It's a prophetic song in the
praise in the assembly of the godly.
The word assembly in the Septuagint is the ecclesia.
So you release that in the ekklesia.
There's a command for us to gather and lift up his name,
because that's where he's going to enthrone himself.
And then he says this, Let Israel be glad in his Maker.
Let the children of Zion rejoice in their king.
Let them praise his name with dancing, making melody to him
with tambourine and lyre. So there's this full body sport,
contact sport called worship that we're to get involved in.
And it's not this I'm telling you, God is so good that when
you see him, it says in Psalm 22, he says, Lord, you are the
source of my praise. What he's saying is when I
finally broke through and I got a vision of you, I couldn't help
myself. I had to worship.
So we press through until we see him for who he is.
And once you see him for who he is, praise will erupt from your
being. God is more worthy than a golf
clap. Oh, isn't he wonderful?
There's this thing within us that God, you're amazing, and
that eruption of praise. It's a command in Scripture, but
it has a source. He tells us let's do this, let's
do this, let's do this. He says verse 4.
This is the motive for our worship.
This is the why behind the what you see in the New Testament,
Paul and his epistles, he will go into the doctrine on the
front half of the book so that he can go into the practical
stuff in the back half of his book.
Ephesians chapters one through 3 all doctrinal.
Then in chapter 4 he says now walk worthy of the calling in
light of that walk worthy of the calling.
And then it's things like husbands love your wives, wives
meant to your husbands kids obey your parents, parents don't
embitter your kids. It's real practical.
I don't know about you. When I got saved, I spent all my
time in the last half of these books because I didn't know what
Paul was talking about. Ephesians chapter 1.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath
blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in
him. Like what I understood, Obey
your parents. But here's the thing.
Paul was brilliant. He understood that if you don't
understand the first part, the doctrine, this was the basis of
our ability to carry out the second part of the book.
And David's doing the same thing He's saying praise him, dance,
go wild, worship the Lord. I was, I was telling the first
service, you know, we talk about that prophetic worship.
I was up in Mason City, Chuck Moline and I went up there to
hear Joe Bieber this last weekend.
And the last song they sang was I'm Trading My Sorrows.
Anybody know that song? Yeah, Great song.
And you know where that song came from?
It was Spur of the Moment written in the moment by Darrell
Evans and Joel and Linda Budds Church.
Joel was on the front row in worship and the Lord told him
Joel had had really bad foot problems.
I don't remember what it was, but he had really bad foot
problems. And the Lord spoke to him and
said Joel get up and dance and I'm going to heal your feet.
And by the way, you're going to offend 2 families in the church
by dancing and they're going to leave your church.
So Joel's response, he jumped up and said, yes, Lord spun around,
His feet were instantly healed. Darrell Evans heard that and
said that's it and wrote the song on the spot.
That's prophetic worship. It released the power of God and
two families got offended and left because Joel was living up
to this passage. Extravagant worship.
Don't be Michael or Michelle or whatever her name was.
You know, David's wife, the daughter of Saul who did
despised him because he was undignified in his worship.
David said, oh, you haven't seen anything yet, girl, I'll be even
more undignified than this. And he just, he began to worship
and she became barren. Telling you he's worthy.
And there's something about when we see him for who he is.
And this is the key here. Listen what he says He says, why
do we worship him? Verse 4 it says for this is the
reason for the Lord takes pleasure in his people.
He adorns the humble with salvation.
Let the godly exalt in glory. Let them sing for joy on their
beds. Let the high praise of God be in
their throats, and A2 edged sword in their hand.
And he began in verse 6. It shifts into the corporate and
they begin to X to impose it externally because He first got
it settled between His ears. Here's the key.
This is verses four and five is the key to this whole passage.
What does he say? Why do we worship Him?
For the Lord takes pleasure in His people.
He adorns the humble with salvation.
Do you realize that God takes pleasure in you?
If you do not, you're going to be hard to sustain a life of
worship. But if you really begin to get a
vision for how God sees you, you will not be able to keep the
praise down. It will erupt from you.
There is a war in hell against your identity before the throne
of God. The enemy is out to convince
you. There's a lot of believers.
They have this low grade sense of divine disappointment that
they live in. They're continually feeling like
God's just kind of disappointed. He got stuck with me.
My son bought this guy and now I got to, it's like the ugly tie
your kids buy you at Father's Day, you know, when they're real
little big old thing, you know, ugly.
So you wear it, you know, but you don't like you're kind of
feeling conspicuous because it's ugly, but you're doing it
because your son bought it. A lot of people feel like that's
what they are. They're the ugly tie that the
father wears because the son bought us and they're kind of
embarrassed, like, oh man, you know, here's Dave, like Jesus
bought them. And we're, we see ourself as
merely tolerated rather than celebrated.
But this verse says God takes pleasure in his people.
I'm telling you, if you get a vision for this, it will change
your life. It will change how you approach
him. You won't you, you, you won't be
able to wait to get in his presence because God is
celebrating you. He's taking pleasure in you.
But if you have this nagging, even unconscious thought in the
back of your mind, God's disappointed.
He knows I'm the screw up son that can't pull it off I can't.
I can't do what He's called me to do.
I can't live the life right. I'm telling you the reason you
can't live the life right is because of how you see yourself.
Theologians talk about original sin in the Garden of Eden, but
original sin was the result of an original lie.
You're believing determines your behaving.
And the original sin was twofold.
There's two sides of it. God can't be trusted.
God's trying to keep the good stuff from you.
Don't eat that fruit. Oh, yeah, that's.
He's saying that because he's afraid you'll be like him.
You're going to take over his office.
You better take matters into your own hands.
God can't be trusted. He's not really good.
That's the lie. But there's a flip side.
There's a secondary lie. It's not theology.
The first one's your theology. The second one's your identity.
You're not good enough the way you are.
You're a cosmic accident. Other believers may be able to
do this, but man, you just keep messing up.
And there's this sense of disappointment that we walk in
and it robs us of our identity. And David tells us, listen, the
source of your praise is when you discover God takes pleasure
in his people. He takes pleasure in you
personally. He really does.
You know, I used to preach this. Curtis and Teresa, stand up real
quick here. This is Curtis and Teresa
Barnes. They're the directors of the
Women's Teen Challenge program out in Omaha, or not in Omaha,
but Nebraska. And yeah, so and Curtis went
through the Pro Teen Challenge back like 27 years ago.
We're both getting old. It's so good to see him and to
see these guys walking with Jesus.
I know you feel the same way, Curtis, seeing people that are
walking with Jesus all these years later, man, there's
nothing. John said.
My greatest joy is to see my children walk in truth, to see
people you poured into still walking it after all those
years. But Curtis, I've had to repent
of a lot of stuff I taught back then.
I used to preach that we are valuable because of what Jesus
did on the cross. You know, the the idea that
market drives value and well, you know, we weren't really
worth it, but Jesus was willing to pay with his lifeblood.
So that kind of raised our our standing in the economy, the
spiritual economy. You know, now we're worth
something because he, but he kind of got ripped off.
That was my theology. But that's not true.
Jesus died for you precisely because you're valuable.
We were the lost coin. The coin was still valuable.
It was simply lost. It still had the image stamped
upon it. And so he died to retrieve the
value. We have created value, not just
redeemed value. God made you and he takes
pleasure in the way he fashioned you.
And in fact, self rejection is an affront to God because you're
accusing him of making some kind of defective thing.
You have created value that yes, sin caused us to be lost, but we
still had value. And Jesus came after us and paid
the ultimate price. And if we don't understand that,
we can relegate ourselves out here like, like we're some kind
of reject that God got stuck with.
And that is not true. And what it does is it
undermines your ability to really have intimacy with God.
Who wants to hang out with someone who's constantly
disappointed in you? Have you ever known someone
that's always critiquing you? You're not real excited to have
coffee with them, are you? That is not God's heart towards
us. God takes pleasure.
He he. The The Hebrew word means just
what the English translate. He has a high degree of delight
in His people. He loves you.
He's not merely tolerating you. You're not the ugly Thai.
He is celebrating you and what you've got to do in worship.
What's going to ignite worship in your life is when you begin
to agree with Him. It's not pride when we agree
with our value. In fact, it's arrogant not to.
Because let God be true and every man a liar, including
yourself. When we agree with what he says
about us, it is liberating. I tell you, when you see how God
sees you, you want to hang out with them because there's no one
that loves you like God does. He knows you best and loves you
most. And when you see that, you want
to be with him. But many of us, we live under
this kind of shadowy disappointment, feeling like
we're just we're this cosmic disappointment like God is like,
oh, I wish I would have skipped that one.
And that is not true. And God is not waiting for you
to live up to some standard before he's he takes pleasure in
what he created. In fact, when you enter into
that is when you'll be able to walk it out because you cripple
your ability to draw on the grace of God when you constantly
feel like he's already rejected you anyway.
But as you realize that Jesus redeemed as simple precisely
because of the created value put within us.
I, I am created in the image of God, and God longs to see that
that unique facet of his image shine through me and shine
through you. And so we've got to get our
minds around this thing. There is a reason that Jesus
didn't enter ministry until he heard the heavens open.
The dove descended and there was a voice.
You are my Son, in whom I'm well pleased.
If Jesus, the sinless Son of God, needed to hear that, how
much more do you and I? You say, well, yeah, but it was
true of Jesus. He was sinless.
It's true of you, the psalmist said.
So let God be true and every man a liar.
Align our minds with what the word of God says.
God celebrates you. He really is crazy about that
quirky little personality he gave you.
And those years ago Bob Hazlett was here and he was teaching on
the prophetic and he said, OK, you know, pray right now.
Ask the Lord about someone in the room and and ask the Lord
about them and share it with them later.
My my bald headed brother Christopher, come to me later.
He said, hey, I asked the Lord about you.
I said, really? He said, yeah, do you want me to
share? I said yeah.
And I'm telling you some of the things he shared that the Lord
shared with him, it just broke me.
It tenderized my heart because there were things that to me
were very insignificant about my life that the Lord highlighted
and things nobody knew that to me weren't a big deal, but they
were a big deal to the Lord. And I knew it was God because He
didn't know about those things. I'm not unique.
It's true of all of us. God created you.
You are fearfully and wonderfully made.
He put His image in your personality and it's to shine
out in a very unique way. And God is hungry for that to
happen. But you've got to be convinced
of that before you can release that.
There's a reason that it's Psalm 149.
We don't get into releasing the word of the Lord through the
double edged sword over the kings of the earth until first
we come to this conclusion. He takes pleasure in His people.
Jesus himself didn't enter ministry until he heard the
Father's affirmation. And if he needed it, how much
more to you and I that the psalmist tells us the source of
your worship? What will ignite it and erupt in
praise out of your belly? He's literally the high praise
of God in your throat. It's just kind of a manly way to
say it. But what's what what ignites
that is that we see God takes pleasure in his spirit.
And then there's this other, OK, I'm going to take two minutes.
It says he adorns the humble. What does it say adorns the
humble with salvation. So there's two things he takes
pleasure in your in this people and he takes he adorns the
humble with salvation. The in the Old Testament, when
we talk about humble, it's more circumstantial than
psychological. What do I mean by that?
It means humble circumstances, our situation more than our
heart posture. Now, our heart posture is an
overflow of our circumstances. And when we see our
circumstances correctly, that will be humbling because what we
realize is we can't save ourself.
I'm not talking about eternity. I'm talking about we can't
figure out the most basic things in life apart from Him.
We can do nothing. And the quicker we come to that
conclusion that Lord, all of this thing called life and
parenting and pastoring, and it's all above my pay grade.
I need you every day. And matter of fact, I'm just
going to settle into my weakness and realize that that is the key
to access your salvation, that your power is made perfect in my
weakness. And if I'm going to settle in my
strengths and try to put pose, be a poser, you know, and try to
act like I got it all together, I actually forfeit the grace of
God through that pride. But if I'll humble myself and
say, God, I need you, I need your wisdom, you've got to speak
to me. There is a liberty in that.
And those are the two criteria for erupting praise in your
heart. He takes pleasure in you, and
you can settle in your weakness and just know God.
I am a man of humble circumstances, and if you don't
intervene, it'll only be humble circumstances.
It will be humiliating because I'll make a mess of things and
there's a liberty in that. God loves you and delights in
you. Where you're at.
He does. He doesn't want to keep you
there. There's all kinds of things in
you He wants to bring out. But the beginning is that
foundation, the beginning of the work of God in your life is to
know that He takes pleasure in His people.
Amen. Go ahead and stand.
Thanks for listening to our podcast.
If you'd like to help more people hear this message, you
can get the word out by subscribing and sharing it on
social media. If you'd like to support the
ministries of Heartland Church, you can do so at Heartland
Church online.com/give.