Gateway Church's Podcast
The Wisdom of Seeking
When Robert invited me to take these three weeks, he was the one who asked if I would bring a series on worship, and he's aware of the fact that it was animated in the songs I've written that have been sung throughout the years, "Body of Christ," and books that I've written on worship, not all of them, of course, on that theme. I'd like to ask you to open your Bibles with me tonight to 2 Samuel, chapter 6. While you're turning there, being Mother's Day weekend and thinking about kids, I've got to tell you, when we come to worship, we're coming to really the starting point of everything that begets fruitfulness and substance in our lives, to come to the Savior and bow the cross as the beginning. And to grow in the knowledge of the Lord and the reverence of His ways and His Word is a continuum that never goes away. And no matter how experienced you become in a healthy church where there's healthy worship, as is the case here, that is by no means any reason that there's not reason to come back and look into the Word, and I'm trusting the Lord, give us together, added insight and enrichment as we deal with this theme. But as you have the Bible open, I'm still going to tell this story about one of our grandkids because of what I just said about this is coming to the beginning. Kyle was at his great-grandmother's house. My mom went to heaven about 14 years ago, but she was 70 at the time. And Kyle, who is second, our oldest grandchildren, was playing on the floor. He was five years old, and while he was playing down there, mama reached over to help him do something. I wasn't there, but she told us about it. When she reached over to help him, her hand came directly in under Kyle's eyes. He was a very expressive kid, even to this day, and when he saw her hand in the hand of an elderly person, bony fingers, wrinkled skin, and kind of like that hand right there, just very much like that. And he did a double-take, and he said, "Great grandma!" He says, "What happened to your hand?" He was really trouble. "What happened to your hand?" And she laughed. She says, "Kyle, nothing happened to great grandma's hand. It's just old." He looked at her, and he says, "How old are you?" And she laughed again. She said, "Great grandma's 70." She looked at her suspiciously, and he said, "70. Did you start at one?" When we come to the subject of worship, that's what we're doing. We're coming back to the beginning. The fellowship in the garden, before sin interrupted at all, was worship. And as I said, when we return to the Savior, it begins, as we usually use the terminology kneeling at the cross, presenting ourselves in reverence and humility and gratitude to the one who not only created us, but has redeemed us. I want to read this whole chapter. So you follow me. I'll do a pretty good job, I think. I discovered when I got in the side room before we came that I left my glasses in the hotel room, so you may need the gift of interpretation of what I read here. Again, David gathered all the choice men of Israel, 30,000, and he arose and went with the people who were with him from Beyala, Judah, to bring up from there the Ark of God, whose name is called by the name of the Lord of Hosts, who dwells between the cherubim. So they set the Ark of God on a new cart and brought it out of the house of Benadab, which was on the hill, and Uza in Ohio, the sons of Benadab, drove the new cart, and they brought it out of the house of Benadab, which was on the hill accompanying the Ark of God, and Ohio went before the Ark. David and all the house of Israel played music before the Lord in all kinds of instruments of Furwood and on harps and on stringed instruments and on tambourines and systems and on symbols. And when they came to Naikon's threshing floor, Uza put out his hand on the Ark of God and took hold of it for the oxen stumbled, and the anger of the Lord was aroused against Uza, and God struck him there for his error, and he died there by the Ark of God. And David became angry because of the Lord's outbreak against Uza, and he called the name of the place Parazuzah, which means an outburst against Uza, to this day. And David then became afraid of the Lord that day. Notice first he was angry, then he sharpened up. David was afraid of the Lord that day and said, "How can the Ark of the Lord come to me?" So David would not move the Ark of the Lord with him into the city of David, but David took it aside to the house of Obadietum, the get-tite, and the Ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obadietum to get-tite three months. And the Lord blessed Obadietum and all his household. Now I was told King David saying, "The Lord has blessed the house of Obadietum and all that belongs to him because of the Ark of God." So David went and brought up the Ark of God from the house of Obadietum to the city of David with gladness. And so it was, when those bearing the Ark of the Lord had gone six paces, now I want to pause there to say, this first Samuel edition of this story leaves out something that is sandwiched in and made in very great detail in 1 Chronicles chapter 15, where the same story is told but with some significant information that occasions why in verse 13 they start moving the Ark in a different way they did the first time. I want to underscore that, okay? Everybody got that wave at me, please. There's one, two, three. Three that didn't get it. Baby, I better read the whole thing again. How many got it so far? Okay, good. Suddenly repented. And so it was, when those bearing the Ark of the Lord had gone up, that he sacrificed oxen and padded sheep, and David danced before the Lord with all his might, and David was wearing a linen ephod. In other words, he did not have his Kingly garments on. This was something that indicated what you would call a sense of priestly ministry, though he was a king and not a priest. David foresaw, the Bible says, Jesus says Abraham saw my day, even before 2,000 years before Christ he saw something of what was going to come in the Redeemer. David saw the day would come when every believer would be called into the priesthood because it's not a ministry of formal leadership. It's a ministry of worship that we're all called to. First Peter chapter 2 says that very clearly, that we've been made a kingdom of priests, a royal priesthood, nudge somebody next to you and say, "You're in pretty high society." Go ahead. Tell them. Come on, tell them. Pretty high society, a royal priesthood. So David and all the house of Israel brought up the Ark of the Lord with shouting and with the sound of trumpets. Now, as the Ark came into the city of David, Michael Saul's daughter, she was David's wife, looked through the window and saw King David leaping and whirling before the Lord, and she despised him in her heart. So they brought the Ark of the Lord, sent it in the place in the midst of the tabernacle David had erected for it, and he offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord. He finished offering, burnt offerings and peace offerings. Get this and don't forget it now, will you? The peace of offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord of hosts and distributed among all the people. Among the whole multitude, both of women and men, to everyone a loaf of bread, a piece of meat, and a cake of raisins. So all the people departed, everyone, to his house. There was a feast and a resource they took to their home, because all the things described were more than you'd eat right then. Then David returned to bless his household, and Michael, the daughter of Saul, came out to meet David and said, "How glorious was the King of Israel today." Uncovering himself in the eyes of the maids of the servants says, "One of the base fellows shamelessly uncovers himself," which doesn't mean David had denuded himself, but he was not walking in the splendor of his Kingly capacity and right. So David said to Michael, "It was before the Lord who chose me instead of your father in all his house to appoint me ruler over the people of the Lord over Israel. Therefore, I will play music before the Lord, and I will be even more undignified than this, and will be humble in my own sight, but as for the maidservants of whom you have spoken by them, I will be held in honor. Therefore Michael, the daughter of Saul, had no children to the day of her death." About twenty years ago I was in the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. I was speaking in an event there in that city, and when I came downstairs from my room I noticed a plaque on the stairway, a sweeping stairway that comes into the hotel, a historic hotel, one of the more historic ones, and for a distinct reason beside its magnificence and durability over the years. And I stopped to read the plaque, and that's when I discovered that the song "America the Beautiful" was written in that hotel, and it was written by a woman who, having been up to Pike's Peak just the day before, had overlooked to the east, the plains, and from her standing up there had just been captivated by the loveliness of God's grace and beauty in our land, and she wrote, among other things, "Purple Mountains Majesty," where she was above the fruited plains. High in the Rockies there is a place that is called, and it's not just a location, but it bridges the watershed point of the North American continent. From that point, water flows either to the east or to the west, and consequently the rivers go that direction, and at watershed point is what I want to focus on with you, and it establishes the theme of the series that I'm wanting to bring to you these three weeks. Watershed worship. Will you say those words with me, please? Watershed worship. Say it again, if you will. Watershed worship. I want to speak to you today about the wisdom of worship, and to just take away two or three lessons quickly as we look at this episode, and I took time to read the whole text, knowing it would take a good bit of the time that I have with you, but I want to read it so that it's something that you could read yourself, obviously. In fact, I hope you'll go back to it again and think through and let the Holy Spirit teach you some things beyond the remarks I'll be making tonight, because it is pivotal with regard to the major issues that determine whether the water that God would flow into your life flows one direction that will bring fruited plains, as it were, and as with the great divide, when you go to the west, though it is not entirely barren, it is by and large an expansive desert, and the rocky hills, the Rockies, and the lower it gets, it still comes into desert terrain. And there is something about this concept that moved me to the title because the Bible is so clear that there is a river that flows from the throne of God. The Bible describes it in the 47th chapter, or the yes, 43rd or 47th, forgive me, it alludes me right now, of Ezekiel. And in that chapter it describes that from under the threshold of the temple of God in heaven, as the people worship Him, there is a river that flows and it grows ever wider and ever deeper, and everywhere it flows there will be life. The fruitfulness that flows from worship is the reason God calls us to it. God did not create us to be automatons that go through the worship. He gave us a capacity to make choices, loving us, bringing us into the marvels of the possibility of life, and He calls us to worship. In order that from that point there may come the flow of His divine love and grace and blessing and provision into our lives. And worship is the way that that fountainhead is tapped. But there is amazing things that lack wisdom, even among many believers, and all of us can always use a rekindling of things that we already do understand. I was very moved in preparing this message because though I have written five books on worship and hundreds of songs that have been sung by many others as well as in the congregation I serve for many years, there is something of a fresh need every time as I stepped into this room and I didn't do it for the sake of being able to say it to you, but in fact when you were singing one of the songs because I was over here for a while before we came over in this area, I knelt before the Lord. And I knelt not simply of some formality, but because I wanted to say, "Lord, as I come to bring your Word, I want to especially kneel and express my reverence for you," because I have nothing to give these people. I cannot make this word come to life, but the Lord wants life to flow in everything we do, not just for a teacher, preacher like myself, that life flows from what you speak. But in everything you do in your life, and He calls us to understand worship, and this passage of Scripture has three things that stand out, and I'm going, as I said, to touch them quickly because we haven't a long time, but I want to at least establish these points. And the first one is our need to avoid human confusion. David dearly wanted the Ark of the Covenant to be in his new capital city, Jerusalem. It had just been captured, conquered, taken, and He was beginning to establish what would be the ruling center for the now united, northern ten tribes, and the southern two tribes of Judah and Benjamin. And David coming to the throne, and all Israel acknowledging him now as their king, he is establishing a capital location that would be more commonly central than where he had been earlier when he was simply rolling over the two tribes of the south, when he had been down in Hebron. And as he was establishing this, we must have the presence of God. The Ark of the Covenant was for Israel more than merely an object. It was significant as an object. The Ten Commandments are inside of it. The blood of the Covenant is offered on the mercy seat on the top of it. It's the picture of the Word and of the blood of Christ that allows us to come, notwithstanding our violation of the law of God, to come into His presence and to come into not only worship, but into a walk with Him. And the beauty of that, in fact, I'll stop there. Somebody say hallelujah about that, will you? Praise the Lord. Tell somebody this is a pretty good preacher, and I think, go ahead. You didn't say that. A lot of you did not say that, and I'm deeply wounded, seriously, as He came with that desire to have the Ark of the Covenant in the land. It is more than symbolic to Him. The presence of God. The presence of God is welcomed by worship. That is the way we come into the presence of God, and it is what induces and welcomes His presence among us. I've had people say to me, "Well, the presence of God, God is everywhere." The omnipresence of God, of course, is a fact. Where can I escape from your presence, Lord? All things are open before the eyes of Him, with whom we have to deal. There's no question, God is everywhere, but that's not what we're talking about, the presence of God who is everywhere. That's the omnipresence. There's the covenanted presence. Jesus said, "Lo, I am with you always. You receive Christ. He'll come and walk with you daily." But there is another, and a third, distinct presence of God that the Bible describes, and we usually use the term the manifest presence of God. His presence there, doing things in you, speaking to you, giving direction, prompting, enabling in times that are tough, comforting in times that are particularly difficult. When we worship, sometimes that feeling you have of great joy that rises, or a great sense of breaking, or an amazed sense of suddenly, you say, "Well, I don't want to be too emotional. Listen, folks. God made our emotions. He made our minds too, and he despises neither of them, and often in worship we will feel the presence of God, and it's nothing to feel that you are giving place to simply a transient order of things." But a part of your created being that God wants to bring into ignition, because there's something about that that brings us to a quickened or a freshly enlivened awareness that He is there. Not only to be with us, but to work through us, and in that working, to bless what our hands are touched to, and to bless the things that flow from our lives to others. And so, when we talk about the presence of God and David's desire for that, he wanted that. The problem was the way they went about it. The story of how this happened to be where it was, the Arch of the Covenant, is one and there's not time to relate, but it had been there for 20 years. It was not in the tabernacle. The tabernacle of Moses had been in Shiloh, and it was devoid of this, and there had been all kinds of confusion about the Arch had been captured for a while, and it ended up back in Israel and at the house of a man in a community called Kiryat Yareem, and it indicates that there was something of respect that these people feared God, and that's why they put it at that place. But David says it needs to be at the center of the life of this nation, just as worship needs to be at the center of my life, and at the center of our home, and the center of the way we think that we are worshipers, please say amen with me, would you? And that openness to him. But David, in wanting to bring worship with others, they made a cart to carry it on. It reminds me of the human tendency to going to do something about God that they will figure out some system to do it. Things don't happen by a system with God, they happen by His Spirit and people that open to it. Let me say that again, things don't happen by a system. I heard somebody preaching, they talked about them trying to bring the presence of God in with a cart. They said, you know what carts are made out of, boards and big wheels. The system, bring it in that way, it doesn't work, in our lives, in churches, in any situation. And David, as they set out, they begin making all kinds of music, all kinds of instruments, but there's a distinct contrast, as you'll notice between that time and the time later when it says it was being carried or born on the shoulders of the priests. This wasn't being made to carry on the cart. The system, let me just simply put it this way. As great as the worship team is, as real and genuine as they are in any church, and there's none more significantly committed than this one, and I know that, and it's not just a courtesy to speak, it's a reality, and it means much to you. But no matter who it is, nobody else can carry the place you're called to worship. There's something of it that you carry on your own shoulders as one of those have been brought into the priesthood of God through the redemption in Christ. It's not a religious priesthood, it's a real life that is a worshiper of God. You know, somebody ought to be saying, "How, will you now and then, and make me feel better?" But you agree with this, I think? Yes. Okay, and as we come to this particular point, at the same time, every six paces, two, three, four, five, six, and they made another sacrifice, and one, two, three, four, six, and they made another sacrifice, all the way up to Jerusalem, which from Kiryat Yareem is about six miles. As they moved that distance, it was not just a matter of making bloodshed, but the recognition that it costs something to present yourself to the Lord, and to commemorate the fact of sacrifice we come with hands that we lift and worship Him, we come with hearts poured out before Him. The Bible speaks of the fruit of our lips being a sacrifice of praise unto God. How many times, and I want to talk about this next week, there are things that we say, "Well, I don't know that that stuff is important." For religious purposes, it's not. But where understanding is, the sacrifice of open expression of praise is not only biblical at its base, but it's a very real summons to come into His presence, present ourselves. And so they came before the Lord. While David is so overjoyed with what's happening, he senses, the presence of God is coming, "I will be able to rule this play. I'll be able to manage my life effectively. I'll be able to be an instrument of blessing." And before the day's over, he's distributing blessing because of blessing that is happening. But he's dancing, and it says, "Dancing and whirling," and the word literally is, he was just going like this. And he laid aside his kingly garments to do that, rejoicing, going before the ark as it's being carried, and it was not dignified either in his own eyes, but it expressed where he was in his life. But watching from a window was not only his wife, but the daughter of the former king, who as we just read, when he came home that night, having rejoiced with so many of the throngs who had attended the worship, says she who had despised him in her eyes has a speech to make when he gets there. And when he gets home, he'll come to a watershed point. And for Michael, the tragedy of it, hear me please, this is so significant. The tragedy of it is that it was simply born out of her sense of her own dignity and anything around here, and I want to say that there is never anything more dignified than to answer God's call to worship. God's call to humble ourselves before him. God will never make an idiot out of you, but he may call you, as David said, to become humble in my own sight. I want to finish quickly, and I'm already a minute past my time right now, but I've got to tell you about this. Three years ago, I had been to another nation and ministered there, and the first time I ever saw people dancing like this before, the Lord, they were doing this. And I wasn't offended or angry or critical, but I thought, you know, I don't do that. I was very open, praise her and worship her. I was very open, but I'd never done that. And you know, if you've never done it, well, that proves it shouldn't be done. I was home by myself in our sanctuary. I was walking across the back of the room, and I'd just come down front, walking. It was about ten in the morning, and I'd gone over to the sanctuary to pray by myself. And it was a weekday staff in the offices all around the place, but I'm alone. So there's nobody but me there. And the Lord spoke to me, and He said, "Dance for me." I didn't hear anything, did you? Instant, I knew two things. I knew that I would end up doing it, and I knew I really didn't want to. And as I thought about it, as I was thinking, I just feel so is it. I in fact thought, I don't know how to dance, Lord. I don't know how to do that. And the Lord did not say it, but He brought to my mind. You've been telling people about what you saw in that other country, and you showed them what they did. You know how to do that. See, but what they did wasn't cool. If I'm going to dance, it needs to be cool. It occurred to me there's no real cool way to dance, and suddenly I became aware of this horrible fact that it was not simply pride and some self-protectiveness, of some self-dignifying obligation to me. But I was so wrapped up in it that even if there was nobody else there, I didn't want to do it. And I thought that is really bad, and I started to weep. And I want to show you what I did, not as a display, and it may strike you funny, but I don't think many people will laugh because I'm not doing it to be funny. I saw myself standing there like a tiny little baby that could not even stand evenly, standing with kind of a diaper on, bare chest, bare legs, just a diaper, just a little baby, and a baby that's just learning how to walk. And as I was weeping, I lifted my hands and I said, "Lord, I want to be a child before you." Well, that's any time you want me to, and it was a moment of breakthrough for me. I want to finish the message by telling what Michael's name means. The name Michael, as it's spelled here and in the Hebrew, means a rivulet. A rivulet is not a river. It's a tiny little stream. Given much heat, it will dry up. Watershed worship will be worship that enters into the river, and it's not something that flows like a rivulet, because pride will drive that up, dry that up, and it says Michael never had any children. The issue is not that she was struck barren, what it's telling you is that David never went into her again, and there is something of a life-giving quality that Jesus wants to maintain in us as we live in worship, beginning with the fact that there's probably in this room right now, and I'd like to ask the musicians to come within this room right now, somebody, but you've never knelt before Jesus has saved her. I'm talking about worship, and God's not going to make a fool of you. You say, "Well, what you did, Jack, was kind of, you know, that's sort of weird." I realized somebody could think that, but I only did that to illustrate the fact that God calls us to a humility, and that wasn't in front of anybody, say, "Well, it just was." Yeah, it just was, and it wasn't for a show, and I think everybody understands that. I'm telling you, God won't make a fool of you. As a matter of fact, there's not anybody in this room that thinks I made a fool of myself just now, because when we come to the place of humbling ourselves before the Lord, we come to the place where the watershed is going to flow to the fruitful plains that will be cultivated in our lives. [MUSIC PLAYING]