It s Not About You: Worship and God s Kingdom

Transcription

1 It s Not About You: Worship and God s Kingdom Rich Nathan January 4-5, 2014 Vineyard Core Series Psalms 96 I want to begin by asking you a question: Do you know what this is? Picture of a Dog Very good. Let me ask you a second question: Do you know what this is? Picture of a Cat If you are over the age of 1, you should have gotten both of these questions correct. Years ago I heard a talk by a man named Stephen Hawthorne, who is a great leader in Christian missions. He said there is a major difference between dogs and cats. Dogs say, You feed me, you care for me, you walk me, you must be God. Cats, on the other hand say, You feed me, you care for me, you clean my litter box; I must be God! Stephen Hawthorne said the problem we have with the Bible is this: the Bible was written by dogs, but it s read by cats. The Bible is a story all about God; it is designed for dogs, so that we would end up worshipping God. But instead, it is read by cats. We believe that the Bible is a story all about us and we turn the Bible into a self-help book, instead of a book about God. It is no wonder that we are a nation of cats. We Americans hear ten thousand advertising messages a day that tell us have it your way, you deserve a break today, be all you can be, it s all about you. And this message is not just coming from the marketers and advertisers. Every year at thousands of graduations across America, the commencement speaker will turn the college graduates and say something like this, Follow your passions; chart your own course; march to the beat of your own drummer; pursue your dreams; find yourself. Rick Warren wrote a mega-best-selling book a decade ago called The Purpose Drive Life. The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren And some of you may remember the first four words of Rick Warren s book. It starts this way:

2 It s not about you. Here is how Rick Warren continues: The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or even your happiness. It is far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions. If you want to know why you were placed on this planet, you must begin with God. You were born by his purpose and for his purpose. We are at the beginning of a new year. It is a good time to reflect on essential purposes what we re living for; what we re building our lives on; what s the foundation for successful living; what are the basic ingredients that will lead to well lived lives in the year 2014? The first thing we need to get straight, of course, is our starting point. You cannot arrive at God s purpose for your life by starting with your desires, your dreams, your passions, your ambitions, your goals. As Rick Warren put it you can t arrive at God s purpose for your life by starting with yourself at all. You must begin with God. Again, quoting from the beginning of The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren wrote: You were made by God and for God and until you understand that, life will never make sense. It is only in God that we discover our origin, our identity, our meaning, our purpose, our significance, and our destiny. Every other path leads to a dead-end. But how do we start with God in the new year? What does it mean to begin with God? Today, I m going to begin a five week series called Vineyard Core which will lay out the five basic ingredients for living a God-centered life as opposed to living a self-centered life. Picture of a pentagon with Worship and God s Kingdom on one side. Each week I will be filling in another side of this pentagon. But in this new year, if we want to start right, we need to begin with the worship of God and God s kingdom. I ve called today s message: It is Not About You: Worship and God s Kingdom. Psalm 96 (NIV) 1 Sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth. 2 Sing to the LORD, praise his name; proclaim his salvation day after day. 3 Declare his glory among the nations, 2

3 his marvelous deeds among all peoples. 4 For great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; he is to be feared above all gods. 5 For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the LORD made the heavens. 6 Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and glory are in his sanctuary. 7 Ascribe to the LORD, all you families of nations, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. 8 Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering and come into his courts. 9 Worship the LORD in the splendor of his holiness; tremble before him, all the earth. 10 Say among the nations, The LORD reigns. The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity. 11 Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it. 12 Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing for joy. 13 Let all creation rejoice before the LORD, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness. Let s read vv. 1-2 again. Psalm 96:1 2 (NIV) 1 Sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth. 2 Sing to the LORD, praise his name; proclaim his salvation day after day. It s not about your feelings Three times in these two verses the psalmist commands people to sing. Why not just wander in late to worship to hear the message? Why not spend the singing portion of our worship texting a friend, chatting out in the lobby, reading over the bulletin, looking at your ? Why spend any time during the week in the private worship of God by reading a psalm out loud, or singing a hymn, or worshipping along to some worship 3

4 music that you ve downloaded? Why should you sing to the Lord? Why worship the Lord? The first and most obvious reason is because God s Word commands you to sing to the Lord three times in two verses! Sing to the Lord! And, if that s not clear enough for us, God s Word says again, Sing to the Lord! And if we still don t get it a second time, we re told a third time, Sing to the Lord! The command to worship the Lord, to praise the Lord, to sing to the Lord, to glorify the Lord, to honor the Lord, is repeated literally hundreds of times in the Bible. And we see command language used in vv. 7-9: Psalm 96:7 9 (NIV) 7 Ascribe to the LORD, all you families of nations, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. 8 Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering and come into his courts. 9 Worship the LORD in the splendor of his holiness; tremble before him, all the earth. (NIV) These commands are not addressed to our feelings; they are addressed to our wills, to our convictions. We live in an age of total subjectivism. We live in a time where we Americans believe that the real self, the real us is our feelings. We go with our gut. We constantly are expressing our feelings. We live in an incredibly subjective time in history. We believe that if it feels good, we ought to do it. We say to one another, How can it be wrong, if it feels so right? The most important thing to us is how we feel. We think our feelings reveal our truest self, the real self, the authentic self. But the real you, friends, at least according to the Bible, is not your feelings. The real you is your deepest convictions about life. The real you, the place where you are most authentic is that place inside that contains your core beliefs about life, about God, about what matters most, about what s right, about what counts. You are not being inauthentic when you behave in accordance to your convictions rather than your feelings. You are being as true to yourself as you possibly can be. On the other hand, when you deny your deepest convictions and simply follow your feelings, you are betraying yourself. You are being two-faced. You are rejecting what is most fundamental about you. You know, in the old days when somebody behaved according to their beliefs, according to their convictions, we used to call that being a good and decent person. Such a person who acted in accordance with their convictions and resisted temptation, who didn t just go with the flow, were said to be acting with integrity. We saw these folks as whole and healthy people. And in the old days when somebody acted against their convictions, we 4

5 thought that they were cowards, weak, people-pleasing. They didn t have the courage of their convictions. Now we say just following your beliefs, living out of conviction, that s inauthentic; that s fake. Being true to yourself is obeying your desires, following your passions; or as Woody Allen put it, The heart wants what it wants. To be a good and decent man or woman is to live from a place deeper than your feelings this year. It is to live out of your convictions. So the psalm says in v. 2: Psalm 96:2 (NIV) 2 Sing to the LORD, praise his name; proclaim his salvation day after day. Some days you re emotionally up and you feel like thanking the Lord for your life; you feel like worshipping; you feel like reading your Bible; and you feel like praying. And some days you are emotionally down. You feel numb inside; you have no feeling of giving thanks to God; you have no feeling of wanting to pray, or wanting to read the Bible. The psalmist says, Sing to the Lord, praise his name; proclaim his salvation day after day on good days and on bad days, when you are up and when you are down, when you feel like it and when you don t. Do I feel like reading the Bible and praying every morning? No, I don t feel like it. Am I glad I do? Yes. And other people are glad that I do as well. I m a lot more pleasant to be around after I spend time with God. I think private prayer and private Bible Study along with private worship are like showering. Do you feel like showering every day? Maybe not. But other people are glad when you do! You are a lot more pleasant to be around, if you shower every day. Now, it is great when you have a feeling to go along with your convictions. When I feel grateful as, I give thanks. When I feel loving as, I show love. When I feel like singing as, I sing. When I feel generous as, I give. But often in the Bible people choose to do things in utter contradiction to their feelings. For example, we read this in Psalms 56:3: Psalm 56:3 (NIV) 3 When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. The emotion of fear is overruled by a deeper mindset, a deeper conviction, a deeper choice of faith. Or how about this in Job 13:15: Job 13:15 (NIV) Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him; 5

6 I am going to hope in God whatever happens. I ve decided to cast my lot with the Lord. Or how about this in Philippians 4:4: Philippians 4:4 (NIV) Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! I can tell you, I do not always feel like rejoicing! But I can choose to find joy and solace in the Lord. I do not always feel thankful. But I can learn to give thanks in all circumstances. I can choose to worship God at a funeral. And I can choose to praise God in a hospital room. And I can choose to sing to the Lord in the midst of my tears. People in the Bible frequently choose in contradiction to their feelings. One of my favorite texts is Habakkuk 3:17-18: Habakkuk 3:17 18 (NIV) 17 Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, 18 yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior. I will be completely honest with you. If I followed my feelings all the time, there would have been times in my Christian life where I would have followed my feelings into blowing up my Christian faith and destroying my Christian witness. See, living successfully this next year means that you don t make a God out of yourself and you don t make a God out of your feelings and bow down and worship your moods and your feelings. You bow down and worship God. It is not about you. And it s not about your feelings. I ve never seen this particular truth better illustrated about acting in accordance with your deepest convictions, with what you believe to be right, and what you believe to be good, and what you believe to be true other than what you feel in the moment; I ve never seen it better expressed than was stated by my favorite Christian author, CS Lewis, in his book titled The Screwtape Letters which, if you haven t read, you absolutely need to read. And it s been a long time, you need to back and reread The Screwtape Letters. The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis 6

7 Lewis writes about of a senior devil training a junior devil in the art of temptation. And the senior devil, Wormwood, cautions the junior devil to not gloat over the fact that his victim is currently emotionally down, as if the battle was won. Lewis writes this: One must face the facts that all this talk about [God s] love for men and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot loathsome little replicas of Himself creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because he has absorbed them, but because their wills freely conform to His Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do [God s] will looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys. So, if we don t begin with us, and we don t begin with our feelings, and we don t worship at the altar of our feelings, where do we begin? It s about God The starting point is God. Psalm 96:1 (NIV) 1 Sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth. One of the wonderful things about Jesus as a master teacher and master disciple-maker is that Jesus didn t just teach us as his disciples what to do. He didn t simply say, Worship God, or pray. Jesus taught his disciples how to do what he was instructing them to do. And he modeled for them how to do it. So, for example, Jesus teaches us that we should pray. But then his disciples came to him and said, Master, teach us to pray just as John the Baptist taught his disciples to pray. And so Jesus taught his disciples how to pray. And he gave his disciples a track to run on called The Lord s Prayer. You know how the Lord s Prayer begins: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Now, the Lord s Prayer was never meant to be recited in rote fashion. It wasn t meant to be a mechanical thing that you run through without thinking over and over again. The Lord s Prayer is a model prayer. It is an outline for how we re to pray. The Lord is giving us a track to run on. When you begin in prayer, the Lord is saying, don t begin with your 7

8 needs. God give me a job; God heal my loved one; God fix my marriage; God give me a girlfriend or boyfriend; God help me financially. It is not wrong to begin with your needs, but Jesus suggests a better way for us to pray. He knows that if we start with our needs, we ll never get beyond our needs. If you start with you, you will never get beyond you. So Jesus tells us to begin with God, our Father, who is in heaven. This is not just by way of command. This is by way of help. Jesus is serving as our wonderful Counselor, as he is described in Isaiah 9. Jesus is giving us counsel on how we can best pray start with God. Get your eyes off yourself when you begin. Don t start with your anxieties. Don t start with your fears. Don t begin your prayers by listing all of your frustrations. Focus on how great God is, how powerful God is, how good God is, how wise God is, how competent he is, how loving he is. Focusing upon God, just by itself, will begin to lift you out of the muck, and it will build your faith. Just focusing on God, beginning with the worship of God, is a huge step in pulling us out of anxiety and depression. And as we focus upon God, our confidence will build so that we can pray about specific issues that we need God s health in issues of our personal needs, our personal sin, and our personal temptations whatever. And because worship is about God, the essential question is not whether you or I enjoyed worship, I didn t like worship today. I prefer other songs, or a different style. See, as Marva Dawn commented, we re not worshipping you! So the essential question is did God enjoy the worship? Was our worship sincere? Was it heartfelt? Was our worship honest? Full of truth? Now, the psalmist tells us that it is not only about God, but it is about God s glory. It s about God s glory Notice how many times God s glory is mentioned in Psalms 96:3: Psalm 96:3 (NIV) 3 Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples. Psalm 96:6 (NIV) 6 Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and glory are in his sanctuary. Psalm 96:7 (NIV) 7 Ascribe to the LORD, all you families of nations, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. Psalm 96:8 (NIV) 8

9 8 Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering and come into his courts. Again, the Bible is a book all about God. The Bible is not primarily a book about us, although it teaches us a great deal about human beings, about the human condition. But the primary aim of the Bible is to teach us about God. And the Bible is a book about God s glory. What the Bible tells us is that God puts a higher value, a higher premium, on his own glory than he puts on anything else. What God values most, what s upper most in God s affection, what God exists for is his own glory. Now, the word glory is not easy to define. In the scriptures glory refers to the essential worth, the beauty and value of people, the beauty and value of created things, and most of all the beauty and value of our Creator. The Hebrew word for glory is a word meaning weight or substance, sometimes brilliance or radiant beauty. To glorify someone is to recognize their intrinsic worth and beauty and to speak about their worth and beauty in a public way. That their opinions have weight, their being has weight. To glorify God is to praise him, to speak openly and truthfully about God s value. So to bring this down, what we mean by the glory of God is that God himself is worth more than anything or anyone else. There is no one more valuable than God. There is nothing more valuable than God. God loves to show the universe how valuable he is and then to have the universe respond and say, yes, you are to be valued and esteemed above everything else. Nothing compares to you. God wants us and all of creation to understand that he is supremely valuable. God knows that you and I will never be happier, or more secure or more content than when we respect and value God. God ought to be respected and valued. So, if you are going to have a great starting point for this new year, you don t start with yourself, your goals and your dreams, your ambitions. You don t start with your feelings, what you prefer, what you enjoy. You start by a deeper set of convictions about God. You say, I want to have the very best starting point for having a successful I am going to start with this basic conviction: every day there is nothing more valuable in all of creation for me today than God and my relationship with him. Being famous is not more valuable than my relationship with God. Being promoted is not more valuable than my relationship with God. Having sex is not more valuable than God. Having a good job, having a healthy, fit, nice-looking body nothing is more valuable than my relationship with God. Let me bring this down and put it in a slightly different way. You can tell the worth of something to you by how you feel if you lost it. You lose a piece of costume jewelry, some trinket, a glove somewhere and you say, Ah, gee, I lost that, and you don t give it another thought. You lose your wedding ring, or a family heirloom, a manuscript you ve been working on for months that has no back up that s hard. You lose a person you love, it s crushing. For the Christian to give God glory means that we live with the 9

10 constant recognition that if I was to lose my relationship with God, my life would not be worth living because I ve lost what is of supreme value, what is of ultimate worth. How do we give God glory? The psalmist says sing, sing, sing. You say, I m a terrible singer. Well, so am I. Anyone who has ever stood next to me in church will tell you that. But praise God that the Bible doesn t say, Sing well to the Lord. And if your singing sounds like mine down, like a frog croaking, or a crow cawing, oh well I believe it is still precious in the ears of our Father in heaven. We give God glory by singing to him. On many mornings I just open the Bible and read a Psalm out loud to the Lord. The psalmist suggests another way to give God glory in v. 8: Psalm 96:8 (NIV) 8 Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering and come into his courts. Why should you bring an offering? How does that give God glory? Stephen Hawthorne made this suggestion. He said, God wants you. The reason he tells us to bring an offering is because the offering brings the offerer. Let me put it differently. Jesus said, Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. We think this process is reversed. We think that if our heart is moved, then we should give. But Jesus says where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Give and your heart will be moved. You give out of a place of conviction, out of belief. I believe in this church. I believe in what the church is doing, so I give. I bring an offering. And in bringing the offering, I m bringing myself. And if I give, it moves my heart to care more about what the church is doing. A great habit to start in the new year is giving to the church. If you ve never given, or if you are giving no tithe to give a tenth of your income to support what God is doing in the church. We start with God. And we start with God s glory. Day after day I recognize there is nothing more valuable than my relationship with God. The psalmist tells us that it is about God. It is about God s glory. It s about God s kingdom The subject of this psalm is the Lord s reign. V. 10: Psalm 96:10 (NIV) 10 Say among the nations, The LORD reigns. The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity. 10

11 The kingdom of God which is something that Jesus preached as his central message can be translated as the reign of God, the rule of God. The kingdom of God is what life would be like if God ran everything. Right now we human beings run a part of the universe. Our wills are done. The Bible teaches that God s enemies Satan and the demonic world are exercising their wills what God wants is not always done. So let s think about this for a moment. The Lord s Prayer instructs us to pray: Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Where do we want God s reign to come? Where do we want his will to be done? We ought to want God to reign over us personally. God reigns over us personally In this new year, if you are a follower of Christ, what you ought to want for yourself above everything else is for God to reign over your life more in 2014 than he did in Above everything else you ought to want God to have more of his will done in your life, more of his way, more of his desires and purposes done. The choice of having God reign over us personally is a daily choice. It involves 1001 individual choices, the kind of step-by-step, left-foot-right-foot following of Christ that the Bible teaches for anyone who wants to be called a Christian disciple. Let me put it this way. We often think that surrendering to Christ and his reign is a onetime decision. Yes, I surrendered my life to Christ six months ago, a year ago, ten years ago, or fifty years ago. And there needs to be in every person s life a time when we get off the throne of our lives and ask Christ to sit on the throne, to call the shots, to be our Lord, and to be our Master. But the way this decision to have Christ be Lord of your life works out in practice is something like this. We give our life to Christ and it is like giving Christ a $10,000 bill. And then Christ makes that $10,000 bill into change. He converts it so quarters and dollars and $20 dollar bills, and $50 dollar bills and $100 dollar bills. And he gives us back our life in change. Most of the reign of Christ is Christ saying to me, Will you give me 25 worth right now? In this little choice, will you get up 20 minutes earlier and spend 20 minutes of time with me this morning? 20 minutes of time reaching God s Word, praying, reading a Psalm out loud this small choice, will you give me obedience? You let someone cut in on you in traffic and be gracious as you drive? Will you give me thanks even when you are disappointed? Sometimes inviting the reign of Christ into our lives requires $5 worth of obedience. Will you forgive someone who said something hurtful to you, or failed in a work project? Sometimes inviting the reign of Christ is much more expensive. God is asking for a $100 worth of obedience, or a $1000 worth of obedience. Will you break off this 11

12 relationship? Will you repent of a long-standing practice? Will you open up your home and take in a foster child, or go back to school and study in the evenings. This business of the reign of God is really costly. But it is foundational to living life successfully. We begin with God. We begin with God s glory, esteeming him, valuing him above everything else; and, we begin with God s kingdom I want you to reign personally over my life. God s reign is not only over us personally. God reigns over the nations. God reigns over the nations We read in v. 3: And in v. 10: Psalm 96:3 (NIV) 3 Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples. Psalm 96:10 (NIV) 10 Say among the nations, The LORD reigns. The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity. Israel needed to be continually reminded in the Old Testament that God didn t belong to them. It wasn t just the God of Israel. He was the God of the nations. The reason God chose Israel to begin with was so that Israel would be a light to the world, not just so that Israel would know and obey God, but that the whole world would know and obey God. God is not just a tribal God. He is the God of Israel and all the other nations have their Gods. This just happens to be our God. So God reminds Israel over and over again regarding their task. Say among the nations: the Lord reigns. And we who are followers of God s Messiah, Jesus, need to remind ourselves in the 21 st century that God is not the private possession of the church. Well, we worship our God and everyone else worships whatever they worship. God wants to use the church to reach the world. He wants you to be a light and a witness to others at your job and in your family; to pray that your influence, wherever you are in a classroom, in a hospital, on a team, in your neighborhood wherever you are, God wants you to influence others to come under his reign. We bear witness to that by God s grace, others will become worshippers! But God doesn t only reign over us personally and reign over the nations, God reigns over the earth. God reigns over the earth 12

13 Look at this with me. Vv a Psalm 96:11 13 (NIV) 11 Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it. 12 Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing for joy. 13 Let all creation rejoice before the LORD Have you noticed how many times in the Psalms the psalmist portrays the earth as worshipping the Lord not just people of the earth, but the stuff of the earth the trees, the rocks, the mountains, the seas, the fields, the wind, the sun, the stars, the animals. The vision of creation praising God is not just an Old Testament vision. When the Apostle John received his visions and his revelation of heaven John saw four living creatures looking like lions and oxen and eagles praising God without stopping day and night singing: Revelation 4:8 (NIV) 8 Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come. Then human beings join in in praise of God. Creation, even now, recognizes what many human beings don t the value, the worth, the beauty of God. This all has to do with the presence of the glory of God. God s presence, God s glory was, in the Old Testament, located in a specific place. God s glory was in the tabernacle. And then God s glory was in the temple. And then God left the temple. But he didn t leave us without his glory, without his presence. He sent his Son Jesus Christ into the world. Here is what we read in John 1:14, John 1:14 (NIV) The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. When Jesus ascended, God didn t remove his presence and his glory from the world. He sent his glorious Spirit! Instead, he distributed his glory and his presence to people who would receive his Spirit. So instead of buildings like the tabernacle or the temple housing the presence and glory of God, human beings who receive the Holy Spirit are now living temples spreading God s presence throughout the world. We read this in 1 Cor 6:19-20, 13

14 1 Corinthians 6:19 20 (NIV) 19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. And one day, God s glory will not only be resident in us, his followers, but it will spread throughout all creation. So we read this in Habakkuk 2:14: Habakkuk 2:14 (NIV) For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. Which leads to the last thought regarding the reign of God, the kingdom of God. God will reign Psalm 96:13 (NIV) 13 Let all creation rejoice before the LORD, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness. Right now, we struggle to see signs of God s kingdom, of his reign in this world. We catch glimpses in the wonder of a child being born, in the joy of experiencing welcome and forgiveness from God when we ve totally blown it, in the goodness we observe when someone lives their lives with faithfulness and integrity. We occasionally get a glimpse of God s kingdom, God s reign and control in this world, but we struggle to hold on to that vision. In the midst of all the chaos, all the brokenness, all the violence, all the disease and immorality, the heartbreak and disappointment, what keeps our faith going is the confidence that God s kingdom has not only come, but is coming. That God reigns, but that his reign is only partial. One day his reign will be total and absolute. One day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. One day there will be no opposition to the reign of Christ no sickness, no sorrow, no tears, no child suffering, and no mother weeping. How do we hold on to that vision of the reign of Christ which fuels our Christian life and enables us to keep going in all the disappointments, hurt and brokenness? How do we hold on to a vision of Christ s coming reign and the submission of all things to Christ? We worship right now. It is worship that lifts up our spirits to heaven. The present reality that right now at this moment in heaven, here is what s going on: Revelation 5:11 14 (NIV) 14

15 Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they were saying: Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise! Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying: To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever! The four living creatures said, Amen, and the elders fell down and worshiped. So, here is the starting point for your life this year. It is not about you. If you want to live well this year, worship God and surrender control to his kingdom. Let s pray. 15

16 It s Not About You: Worship and God s Kingdom Rich Nathan January 4-5, 2014 Vineyard Core Series Psalms 96 I. It s not about your feelings II. It s about God III. It s about God s glory IV. It s about God s kingdom A. God reigns over us personally B. God reigns over the nations C. God reigns over the earth D. God will reign 16