Welcome to the Illuminate Church podcast.
We hope today's message is encouraging to you.
We're in this series called Abandoned, and in this series
I've been getting some feedback from you all that it's actually
changing the attitude of your heart, the posture of your mind
as you approach the Lord. In this series, we're doing
singing and then we do the Word and then we do confession and
then we do more singing at the end as a response to what God is
doing in this series. Abandoned.
Abandoned is the the world, the word you want to hold on to as
we're considering what I feel like God has put on our hearts
for 2026, which is to leave behind the world and its
trappings that come with bondage.
It's incomplete, it's unsatisfying, it's not
fulfilling, it's broken. All of this is over here.
And to embody, to walk into the fullness of our identity as sons
and daughters of the living God, citizens of the Kingdom of
heaven, where there is no shortage, where there is
abundance in surplus, Right? It's not just a little bit of
more, it's a lot of more. There's wholeness, there's
completeness. You're not dissatisfied, which
we're going to talk about next week.
Satisfied. Finally, if you're going to come
to the next sermon, do I call these sermons sermons?
Who calls them sermons anymore? This the next message in the
series. So how do we do that Is is by
abandoning and how do we abandoned?
That's what we've been teaching in this series.
Abandonment looks like worship to abandon the world and walk in
our fullness of as children of God.
It looks like is worship. Everyone say worship, worship,
Amen. Worship is the path that we walk
to abandon our old life and walk into the newness of life with
Jesus Christ. But what exactly is worship?
Is it Z 88.3 Orlando right? Is that what it is?
Is worship just singing? We have this working definition.
It's not really a definition of worship.
It's just how it functionally works.
It looks like this God acts and humanity response.
Is it up there? Let's all say it together. 123,
God acts and humanity responds. Last week, we talked about how
God acts. And I pray that you left feeling
like you just received a big old hug of love from God.
Anybody. Anybody feel this last week?
Yeah. So precious, so powerful and so
personal to each of you is the love of God.
And it causes us to respond. We always have a reason to
respond. God acts, humanity responds. 2
years ago this month, we opened the campus of Illuminate Church
to the world. Yeah.
Anybody remember? Yeah.
Here's what I remember. The roof shook and reverberated
with the praise of God's people because we were literally
walking on, standing in God's promises for years.
We made thousands of laps of prayer around this land.
Literally thousands of lap. Kim Linaway did 1000 by herself.
Kim, are you here? She's usually over there.
Maybe she's at the 9. And I didn't say her name.
And now I feel bad. Kim that in the past we were
talking about you. So we prayed over this land and
one of the promises we pray was Genesis chapter 1317.
It was on a sign way over there and it says walk the length and
breadth of the land for I the Lord your God am giving it to
you. And on February 2024 we realize
that promise. There was a sign over here,
Zechariah chapter 2 verse five that says I will be the fire
around and I will be the glory within.
And when we walked into the building February 2024, we
witnessed, we experienced the promise of God that He is the
glory, He is the fire, He is the one thing.
Aren't you glad he's the fire today in Jesus name, Hallelujah.
So we were standing in the promises.
And because we were standing in the promises and saw them
fulfilled, the response was overwhelming.
It sounded like the courses of angels in the heavens.
Just worship and worship and worship is incredible time.
We had a reason to respond. God acts, humanity responds.
The question we're trying to answer today is what is the
proper response? Last week we talked about what
God does. Now what is our part?
Turn with me in the Bible to Luke chapter 24.
If you need a Bible, raise your hand.
We will bring you one. I'm trying BYOB this year.
Bring your own Bible to church. When you go to the mall, you
bring your say it wallet or your purse.
And when you come to the church, you bring your Bible.
Say it and in some churches you bring your wallet to anyway,
Luke chapter 24, I'm going to read just the first couple of
words and then I have to give context.
Otherwise they're just floating in the air with these words.
Verse 36 says while they were still talking about this, who's
the they and what's the this these unidentified pronouns.
They are the disciples, not just the 12, but the followers of
Jesus, as many as there were then that could fit into the
upper room, had gone back up into the upper room where Jesus
had his Last Supper with them. And there they are with the
doors locked. Jesus is dead.
They're worried about the tumult in the city.
Are the people going to come and rat us out and drag us down?
They just killed our leader. Like we don't think about it
like they just assassinated our leader.
What are they going to do to us? So they've locked themselves in
the room and they're discussing this.
What's this? Well, there are two guys who
have just returned from Emmaus. They had left Jerusalem, and
they were walking home, and they're just pondering what's
happened, what just happened. This is crazy.
And this other guy comes and stands next to them and starts
walking with them. And he asked them question,
like, do you understand what's happened in Jerusalem?
And they're like, not really. Like, there's this guy.
And we thought he was. I'm not sure.
And then this stranger starts to tell them exactly what's
happened here. Here's why this guy died and
here's why it had to happen. And here's what's good.
And their hearts are like, what? They're coming to this
revelation and they're just amazed and they're astonished to
what they're hearing. And they're like, they're so
amazing. Like, will you have dinner with
us? The guys like, I got to keep
going. Like, I know you have to have
dinner with us. So he, this stranger comes
inside, sits at the table and he reaches out that normally the
the host would do this, but the stranger reaches out and grabs
the bread and he lifts it up and he breaks it.
And as soon as he broke the bread, these two other guys
realized they're looking at Jesus.
This is the living God, the one they crucified is here with us.
And as soon as they recognize it was Jesus, he disappeared.
I don't know how he disappeared. I was like, excuse me?
And left or he just, I don't know what happened, but he was
no longer there. So they run back to Jerusalem.
They're in the upper room, locked doors with all the
disciples. They're discussing it.
And as they're discussing it, look what it says.
Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, hi, y'all.
He said, peace be with you. They were startled and
frightened. Can you imagine thinking they
saw a ghost? He said to them, Why are you
troubled and why do doubts arise in your minds?
Look at my hands and my feet as I myself touch me.
See, a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I
have. When he had said this, he showed
them his hands and feet, and while they were while and while
they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he
asked them, Do you have anything here to eat?
And so they gave him a piece of blackened mahi mahi and he took
it. That's the only kind of fish
I'll eat. Well, no, I'll eat some tuna.
Sorry. ADD moment happening right here
in front of you, verse 43. And he took it and ate it in
their presence. Now the next couple of verses,
this is what happens. Jesus does to the people in the
room what he just did to the people on the road to Emmaus.
He opens the scriptures, opens their minds to understand
everything that happened. All the Old Testament prophecies
are fulfilled in him and what he did on the cross.
And now he's standing there alive in front of them.
And if that's not it, he says, now you are to be my witnesses.
You're going to go all throughout the world and tell
people exactly what I've just told you and why I had to die
and why, and now I'm back to life and there's a new Kingdom
that's coming to earth. That's what you're going to do.
And by the way, I'm going to give you the Holy Spirit so you
can do it. This is amazing, best day ever.
Luke 2450. When he had led them out to the
vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands, He blessed them,
and while he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up
into heaven. Then they worshipped him and
returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they stayed continually
at the temple, praising God. Wow, what a day.
If worship is when God acts and humanity responds, then right
here at the end of Luke, we are centered in the midst of some of
God's greatest acts ever. In short order, a bunch of them
all together. This isn't the warm up band.
This isn't the opening act. This is the grand finale that we
are witnessing in Luke chapter 24.
Let's just go over them maybe a couple times for emphasis.
First of all, there's his torture and death.
Jesus has been merciless, mercilessly.
That's a hard word to say. Stripped, beaten, whipped, mock
spit upon crown of thorns. They lead him to the cross and
they execute them. A criminal's death.
Nails in his hands, his feet, a spear in his side.
And Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, they come and they
lovingly, gently take Jesus body down, wrap them in the the the
spices that we talked about at Christmas.
You remember frankincense and myrrh and laid him in the garden
tomb. Jesus is just stared down sin
and death, the darkness of evil and you get into this period
where we find the disciples where they're thinking it's
over. As far as the disciples
understood it, their three-year journey with Jesus had come to
an end just like that and they're wondering is our faith
folly? Are we now going to return to
our homes that everyone be like? There's the idiots who followed
the weird guy, but wait, he's alive.
I mean it. It's hard for us to feel what
they felt, but put yourself there three years.
The miracle man, the waymaker, the healer, the one who spoke
truth like never before, the one who spoke in authority.
He's he's extinguished in their mind, he's dead, gone.
And then they start to hear he came back to life.
He came what? Some of them have been to the
garden tomb, but Jesus isn't there.
They see the gardener, they see some angels.
They don't see Jesus. And now here are these two guys
who are telling us we saw Jesus and then he and as they're
talking about it, Jesus Caspers. That took a while.
You remember Casper the friendly ghost?
I mean, they think he's a ghost without opening a door, without
unlocking the door, without cracking a window.
Jesus is suddenly standing right there and the Bible says they're
startled and frightened. Can you imagine the gasps,
shrieks, people backing up, chairs falling over like this is
an epic moment. The root word of the word
frightened in the Scripture is the same root that we have for
our word phobia. Anyone here have a phobia?
Yeah, my phobia is public speaking.
That would be terrible. Actually.
I have two phobias. I'm not claiming them in Jesus
name. I don't have any phobias, but
sometimes I have acrophobia and trypanophobia.
Yep. Trypanophobia has nothing to do
with tryptophan. I love me some Turkey.
Acrophobia is the fear of heights and trypanophobia is the
fear of needles. So take me to the top of the
Eiffel Tower and give me a shot. Would be a really bad day.
A really bad day in Jesus name, Hallelujah.
But this is what these guys are feeling.
Whatever you feel when you get phobic, frightened, startled,
terrified, the scientific term is freaked out.
That's what they're feeling in this moment.
Jesus is in the room. There's lots of parts of
scriptures where I like to be a family on the wall and see it.
This is one of the top five, that moment where the man that
they thought was dead is suddenly in the room with him.
He is alive. There he is.
He's eating fish. It's amazing.
And then it says that they started to grasp that it was
Jesus in the room. He's not only not dead, but he's
now here with us, miraculously just appeared in the room.
And they go from being riveted in fear to this, these other
terms, joy and amazement. The original language for
amazement is also telling. It means this astonished out of
one's senses. The scientific term for this is
freaking out, just going nuts, losing bodily control of
yourself. I know I showed you one of these
videos at Christmas, but I love them.
So I have a second video that shows the same that explains to
you what it looks like when somebody loses bodily control of
themselves because of amazement. Here are children opening
Christmas gifts Part 2 2. Everybody clap your hands.
All right, OK. Crazy.
Out of their senses. This is what's happening.
I mean, again, put yourself in their position.
They go from being terrified of this ghost that's appeared, and
then they realize he's back. And then they lose their minds
rejoicing, screaming, joy and amazement.
They're right. They're going nuts.
And then Jesus opens their eyes. He helps them to see.
He reveals to them the fullness of what's happened, and he gives
them their mission and he tells them that the Holy Spirit is
coming. I imagine this moment is like
the best locker room speech ever given.
They're about to go out to war and Jesus, like, I'm back, you
got a mission, You're going to tell the world about me and the
Holy Spirit's coming and they're like, let's go, right?
I'm just imagining. And then he ascends.
Next thing you know, he raised up his hands.
He speaks a blessing and then arises invisible elevator up to
heaven, up he goes. All I'm trying to show you is
that God has acted a bunch. He bore the weight of all
humanity. Sin.
He came back to life a resurrection.
He's Casper. The ghost appeared into a room.
He's helped them finally understand their story.
He's given them their mission. He's told them the Holy Spirit's
coming. And then he flies up to heaven
right in front of their eyes. God has acted a lot.
The result? They worship a lot.
Did you hear the inverse? They, after seeing and
witnessing all this, continually stayed at the temple praising
God. They weren't like, wait a
second, this is supposed to be over in an hour and that homeboy
still preaching. I got to go spend $72 on my
salad at Shun the Non believer. Yeah.
I'm sorry, if you work at Panera or you have stock in Panera,
don't sue me. I can't afford it.
That's why I don't go to OK. Anyway, so God acts a bunch and
this is their response? Long lasting worship.
You know this to be true. When God acts, people are
changed forever. It happened with the disciples.
They're changed forever by the events that are happening here.
God did something in their life, and they're never ever the same
again. And they continually then stay
at the temple to praise the Lord.
I want to introduce you to a strange concept.
But put all this together at the end.
But it's called PBRO. You say it.
Did you need help, PBRO? Yeah.
What in the world is PBRPBRO is the opposite of PTSD.
PTSD is post traumatic stress disorder where trauma hits the
body, the mind, the spirit, the soul so hard that it literally
rewires the brain. And then years later, days
later, it doesn't even matter if there's something that makes
your brain go towards this newly rewired neural pathway, it
suddenly takes you back to the trauma.
And because of it, you could be paralyzed, like just stuck in
fear, listless, depressed, anxious, you name it, it comes
on suddenly. When this neural pathway is
recharged up, the stress, the trauma can happen in an instant,
a horrific event, or it can be overtime.
You just accumulate stress through abuse, trauma, through
abuse, whatever. Over and over and over this
neural pathway is formed in your mind.
PTSD. Now I have this strange question
for you. Maybe this just reveals how my
brain thinks. But if our brains can be rewired
by a powerful negative experience, can't they also be
rewired by a powerful positive experience?
Amen. Is that true?
Yeah. That's PBRO post blessing
relief, Order PBR. Oh, post blessing relief or to
the opposite of PTSDI. Try to find the science on PBRO.
Like I didn't use AI and I just used my own brain.
I couldn't find the science on it.
However, standing in front of you telling you about PBROI feel
like the man in John Chapter 9 that meets Jesus and Jesus says
your eyes don't work, you're blind.
He's like, I know. Well, that's not exactly what
happens, but in my mind. And so Jesus heals him of his
blindness and the guy is walking around seeing and everyone's
like that guy used to be blind, now look at him.
And so because of it, there's a hubbub.
People start asking questions. The Pharisees, the the bigwigs,
they all start asking questions. And finally the guys like in
John Chapter 9 verse 25, Listen, I don't know.
All I know is I once was blind and now I can see.
I can't explain it to you, but Jesus, this man who you're
questioning and interrogating, he's the man who healed my eyes.
I don't know how it works, but one thing I do know, I once was
blind, but now I see. In other words, I have evidence.
In other words, I am the evidence.
Amen. It's PBR for him.
But listen to this. We have evidence, too, and we
may not be able to explain what God has done, but there are
things that have happened in our lives that are so radically
incredible that they've changed us.
The birth of a child. Haley, are you in here?
Yeah. Who's holding the baby?
Tester Davis. Holding the baby.
How old's the baby? How old?
Seven weeks. You said 7.
And pause. I'm like, he grew quick.
Seven weeks. Change your life, opens up your
heart in ways you can't even fathom.
Doesn't have to be your own kid. You could be somebody else's
kid. A grandkid like life.
Unbelievable. You ever had a relationship that
was rocky that gets reconciled and the moment of hugs and tears
and saying to the other person, I am holding nothing against
you. That's what forgiven means.
You have 0 debt with me. I forgive you.
And there's that like. So much angst and all of a
sudden, just reconciled. It changes you.
It's a positive blessing that changed you.
Have you ever had a gift that you didn't think you deserve?
Something extravagant. And they give it to you.
And you're like, for me. And it's so profoundly touching
that it changes you. Anybody.
Yeah. There's a guy actually.
He was a boy, little boy, lived in a city and his family was
like destitute, beyond destitute, barely had enough for
meals. And Thanksgiving was approaching
and he thought to himself, we're not going to have Thanksgiving.
And he's bumming inside, but he doesn't go dare talk to his
parents because he knows his parents will feel terrible that
he feels terrible that they're not going to have a Turkey feast
like the rest of America. Thanksgiving Day comes and he's
a knock at the door, goes to the door, opens the door.
There's nobody there, but there is a gigantic box of food.
To him as a boy, it was like the biggest thing he's ever seen and
everything necessary for Thanksgiving was in the box.
Turkey, bread, stuffing, yams, potatoes, green beans,
everything necessary. Which means there was no
cranberry. Yeah, What do I mean?
Good question. So I want you to know that the
boy looking at this, this box was rewired forever.
He said, my goodness, somebody loves us, somebody cares for us.
Somebody brought this food, doesn't even want the
recognition, spent all this money on us.
And standing in front of the box, he said to himself, as soon
as I have enough money, I'm doing this for somebody else.
High school came, he got enough money, he did it, delivered a
box, ran away from the door. The next year he did 222 baskets
of food. Then he invited some friends and
then it was 4, then it was 8, and then this is back in the 70s
and 80s. Now here in the 20 twenties,
this same group that's grown gives away 10s of thousands, if
not hundreds of thousands of baskets of food every single
Thanksgiving because of one man, one life changing thing that
changed the course of his life forever.
By the way, this little boy's name is Tony Robbins.
You may have heard of him. He talks like this because he
talks too much. He's lost his voice motivating
people. I don't agree with everything
Tony Robbins says, but I do agree that when something
blesses you so much, it changes you forever.
And that's what happened to him right then, right there.
He got PBRO rewired for good. It happened to him.
I'm going to put this all together at the end, but the
blessing of God is meant for good, for good, for good.
Let's say it all together, ready for good, for good, for good.
One more time for good, for good, for good.
Look at your neighbor, say for good.
Yeah, I'm not just being redundant here.
I mean, three different ways. It's for good.
First of all, it's for your good.
The blessing of God is God's favor upon you.
He wants you to know that he loves you.
He wants you to know that he's for you.
He wants you to know that he's on your side.
He's trying to aid you with his supernatural spiritual ability
to affect your life. He's blessing you.
It's for your good. Anyone want some blessing from
God? Would it be good?
Yeah. God is good, and all he does is
good. But it's also for good.
Meaning that every time that we receive a blessing, it's so that
we can bless somebody else. That's why it's called the
abundant life. Not to the just barely enough
life. When God blesses you, He blesses
you abundantly so that you have enough to share.
So it's for your good, but it's also for their good, Amen.
And it's also for good, for good, for good, for good.
Meaning it's for your good, it's for their good, and it's for
good. Meaning for the rest of your
life you've been changed in such a way.
You've been blessed in such a way that now you are different,
You've been rewired. I used to live this way and then
something happened in my life and in this case God touched my
life and I was different. It happened to Tony Robbins,
happened to Moses at the burning Bush, happened to Paul on the
road to Damascus when he met Jesus, happened to the woman at
the well. When she meets Jesus, it changes
her life forever. It happened to Zacchaeus when he
came down from the tree. It changed his life right there
on the spot forever. PBRO.
His brain rewired under the counsel of the Holy Spirit.
And then that's what happened to these guys in this room and
girls, the followers of Jesus, gathered together.
It changed them forever. You know that most of the
disciples went to their death because of what happened in this
room. He's alive.
He's given us a mission, and I'm going to give my life to it.
Some people believe that the church was born on Pentecost,
when the Holy Spirit comes in the book of Acts.
And I agree with it. But I think the church was
conceived in the upper room the day that Jesus appeared to them
and gave them their mission and they praised them.
Is that what we're still doing to this day?
On church days, Sundays, we gather together here, our
mission, and then we spend time praising the God, praising the
God, praising God him alone. Isn't that what we're?
Isn't that what we're doing church?
Because somebody affirm this? Isn't that what we're doing?
I better believe it in Jesus name.
Yeah. So it's happened for Moses and
Paul and Zacchaeus and the woman at the West.
Happened for these disciples. Again, I ask you, has it
happened for you? Has it happened for you?
Has the love of God so penetrated your life that it's
changed you forever? It's rewired the way that you
think and the way that you respond because God has acted.
Now it's time for me to respond. The question, I guess, is when I
remember the acts of God, is my actual response.
Worship, which you can't answer unless you know what worship
actually is. Well, tell me what worship is
then. Here it is, week 3.
We're finally here. Here's the definition of
worship. Proskuneo.
It's a Greek word. It's in the Bible.
It means to fall prostate on the ground and to kiss the ground in
front of somebody that you deem is superior to you.
Pros means to go towards and down and kaneo means to kiss
proskaneo. This is worship to go on the
ground and prostate yourself before superior and to kiss.
It's a posture that a person takes when they want to respond
to the goodness of God. Proskaneo The church has many
postures. They're on purpose, but we've
kind of just religiousized them and we just do them without
thinking about what they mean, right?
Stand up, sit down, sit up, kneel.
Standing is a posture of the church.
When we stand, what it means is I have risen with Christ.
I'm standing as a risen person of Christ.
I'm seeing from a different perspective now because I'm
standing with the risen Savior Jesus Christ.
I'm also standing to honor. We stand on purpose.
It's not just something to do to to make our legs tire while we
sing. Can we sit down now?
We've been singing too long. Kneeling is a posture of the
church. Kneeling is a sign of penance,
usually with the head bowed, and it's simply is this to the Lord
God, I'm sorry for cheapening your grace.
I'm sorry that you sent your Son to die on the cross to forgive
me of my sins. And yet I still continue to sin.
And so I kneel before you in penance.
I'm sorrowful. He's good to forgive you.
Amen. Sitting is a posture in the
church. It's not just means to like rest
or to sleep during the sermon. I can see you, by the way, if
you can see me, right, I can see you.
Sitting is for focus. When I was standing around here,
bodies move. We're sitting down so we can
focus and we can meditate. What the Lord has for us, it's
on purpose. It's not just to give us a rest
because our legs are tired. And then there's worship,
Proskaneo to lie on the ground and to kiss it, or some people
to find out like this, lying the ground and blow kisses to the
sky. Kind of looks weird, doesn't it?
Now imagine I'm just going to be here for a minute.
Get over it. I've I've tried to teach that
abandoned, to leave the world behind, enter into the life of
the Kingdom of heaven is to worship.
And now I'm telling you to worship is to lie in the ground.
So how do you do that when you're driving on I-4?
How do you do this when you're making dinner?
How do you worship in Chick-fil-A?
A lot of you do. You definitely don't want to do
this in the bathroom at work. OK, I got to stand up now.
Could take a minute. So what are we to do if to
abandon the world is to worship, and worship means to lie
prostate on the ground and the kiss the ground in front of the
superior Here. Here's the real truth of it all.
Worship, at its core, is less about the posture of your body
and more about the posture of your heart.
In fact, it's all about the posture of your heart because
you could put your body into a posture and have no meaning
behind it if your heart posture doesn't align with your body.
I'm just raising my hands in church because it's cool to do
because all the other kids are doing it, or I'm stuffing my
hands in my pocket because I'm too prideful to lift my hands in
worship. It's all about the attitude of
the heart. So I want to give you one last
word today. It's a strange word, but it
describes to you what worship looks like when the attitude of
your heart is correct. It's actually an English word.
Even though it's going to sound foreign, it's obeisance.
Everyone say obeisance. Does the first part of that word
sound familiar? Obeisance.
Obeisance means deferential respect.
It means that I come before you and I have a different opinion
of you. But because I Revere you, I'm
going to defer my opinion underneath your higher opinion.
It means that I gladly choose your way.
In fact, I want your way because I Revere you.
Your ways better. Your thoughts are higher, your
words are higher, your opinions, your desires are higher than my
thoughts, words, opinions. And so I deferentially say I'm
going to do what you prefer. Obeisance is the heart of
worship. God acts, humanity responds.
And this right here is our proper response.
Ready. This is what it looks like.
Whatever you say God, this is worship.
We think of it as singing and it includes singing, but it's
actually obedience. I put in a little sentence it
really similar to the proper response is praise and
obedience. When God acts in your life.
The proper response is praise, which we're used to doing to one
in the joy FM come to church. That's praise.
Praise really means eulogy. Anyone familiar with this word?
Eulogy. Yeah.
Eulogy is what we do at funerals when we talk great about the
person who no longer can hear that they're great.
We should be eulogizing each other while we're alive.
Silas, you're an incredible man, The way you worship.
I love it. I love that you love your
family. I'm glad you come to church here
with passion and honor. I love that you're here.
Silas, this is a eulogy, right? Agree.
Come on. Anyone else?
Yeah, that wouldn't really weird
if they didn't collapse Silas to have counseling.
That's a eulogy. When we praise God and worship,
we're eulogizing him. We're telling him what he is and
who he is and what he's meant to us, how great he is.
And we're singing, singing, singing.
Obeisance is obedience, and it's the other side of worship.
And I'm going to give you the greatest line of worship in all
of Scripture. Jesus in the garden, considering
the cost, his flesh says, I do not want to walk this path with
sin and darkness. I don't want to walk this path
where my body will be ripped to shreds with the whip and pierced
here and here, the crown of thorns.
I don't want to be left behind by my father and face the grave
alone. Please Father, if there's any
way, let this cup of of suffering pass from me.
And here's the greatest line of worship ever spoken.
Not my will be done, but yours be done.
Jesus, the King of kings, deferentially respects his
Father and we think that he died on the cross for us, which is
true, but he also died on the cross because it was obedient to
his Father and it was act of worship.
I set an example for us today. When you came in, you got your
communion elements. If you want to grab those.
Now, if you need comedian elements, want to raise your
hand, we'll bring them to you. Just keep it up high because
there's a lot of heads around and they're coming to you.
May take a second. If you need gluten free
elements, then you just go like this and we have those as well.
If you're at home, you have 30 seconds to go to the fridge,
grab some juice or some water and a piece of bread.
Go ahead. And as we're passing this out,
why don't we all go ahead and prepare our elements so that we
got all the jostling over with, right?
Just open the top, be careful, Don't lose the wafer.
And then open the juice and don't spill it.
We're coming. Is that the waving?
Yeah. Hey, can I have gluten free
anyone? Do we have gluten free elements?
We're coming to you. I see you.
I see that. Here.
Come on. We'll wait.
We're not going to rush. We have a lot of hands up.
Do we have extra staff, extra ushers?
Here we come. We're coming to you.
We're not leaving anywhere. Here we go.
Here comes Garrett. The gluten free is right there
in the in the sunglasses on her head.
Oh, wait, now she's got 2. Go ahead.
Double portion. Are you ready online?
Do you have yours? Mezzanine.
Are we good this size? Good.
Are we good over here? Does anyone see a hand?
Does everyone have elements? Now think about this.
Thank you. We've been saying in the series
that worship is God acts and humanity responds.
And the problem is we forget how God acts.
We're very leaky. All of God's goodness leaks
right out of us and we fixate on what's wrong instead of
remembering what he has done. And that is right.
When Jesus was with his disciples in the upper room, he
took the bread and he broke it and he said, this is my body
broken for you. Every time that you eat of it,
from now until then, January, February 1st, 2026, every time
you eat of the bread, Remember, Remember, every time that we
have community is an opportunity for us to remind ourselves of
the goodness of God, His acts of love to us, even to perishing on
the cross in our place. So Father, we thank you for your
broken body and we eat of this bread to remind ourselves of
your goodness in Jesus name, Amen.
Just hold your cup up like this. After supper, Jesus took the cup
and he lifted it up and he said, this is my blood poured out for
the forgiveness of sins. The old way of sacrifice is
gone. No more animals have to die in
your place, for I, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of
the world, will sacrifice my life for you.
I'm going to pause the middle of communion and ask you to match
this man's posture. He said every time you drink of
it, be reminded of my goodness. So Father, we drink of the cup
and we say we remember you are good and all you do is good.
Let's drink praise and obedience.
This is our response to communion.
Because He is good, I'm going to praise Him and I'm going to obey
Him, and I'm going to obey Him. Not then.
I'm going to obey Him now, because not obeying now is
disobedience. So whatever He's telling you to
do here and now, do it here and now, including this.
We're entering into a time of praising and singing.
And I've been telling you in this series, whatever you need
to do to get at the feet of Jesus, do here and now sitting,
standing, laying down, prostrating, coming down to the
altar, filling up the aisles. What whatever you need to do,
obey God and do it. Here's what I'll tell you.
I say this often, don't do anything that's man made.
Meaning, Oh, I'm supposed to because everyone else is or he
said so. I'm not going to just replicate
what I see others doing. That's called religion, right?
Instead, let's not do anything man limited, which means my
pride says I can't worship the way I want to because somebody's
going to see me. I'm a sound funny, look funny,
or that's for weird people, emotional people to worship that
way. That's all man limiting.
Don't do anything man made, but also don't do anything man
limiting. I'm a pray you get yourself in
position and then we're going to worship the Lord in song
together. Father, thank you for your life,
your death and your resurrection.
Thank you that you loved us enough to spare not your own son
Jesus. We've come today to honor the
King, to put his name on our lips and declare that he is
worthy, that he alone is worthy, that he is holy, that he alone
is holy. We give you honor in your house.
Our hearts are full of praise. We are ready to eulogize your
name and to give you glory, for you alone are worthy in Jesus
name, Amen. Thanks for joining us today.
We hope God is speaking to your heart through this message.
If you'd like to connect with us, you can text connect to
407-588-0115 or visit Illuminate dot church.
Have a great week.