Northside Church - Sydney
Stop. Revive. Survive. – Week 2: Psalm 27
I'm not suggesting for one moment that ministers are the only people who have jobs which include a lot of variety. I know many of you have lots of variety in your work but flicking through the pages of my diary, I'm old school, I have the old-style diary, I can find things quicker than those with electronic diaries but that's just me. Flicking through even the last week, visiting a 49-year-old woman who's just lost her husband and then going from there to visit a couple who've just been blessed with a new baby. And then going to a woman who's talking about difficulties within her marriage and then talking to a couple who are having problems with their teenager and then a meeting about the future of the church and then talking with a person who's just been retrenched and then a hospital call. And then doing the funeral, that lady I was talking to, the emotional upheavals and highs and lows in ministry are probably very similar to some of the work that you do. And of course in leadership, you've got to be able to compartmentalize your life and have a lot of things happening at once without them overwhelming you. One of my techniques is I think of my day as like a huge filing cabinet and all day I'm taking files out of that cabinet but I try to spread them across the desk rather than have them go up that way. And it's just a figurity thing that kind of helps me to spread, and you can't spread all that many files out, you can spread a certain number, the idea is not to have too many files out at once, but to take out a lot of files in the course of a day. I guess spinning plates is another analogy, with a rod you can spin a lot of plates if you're good, I can't but if you're good at it, but you can only, the rod can only touch one plate at a time, another way I guess of compartmentalizing our lives. On the other hand, in total contrast to that sort of compartmentalization, sometimes life demands us to be focused and single-minded to forget every other priority in life and just concentrate on one thing. And you know what those moments are like. It might be a project, it might be a certain event, it might be an assignment, it might be a health crisis, it might be a tragedy. When death comes onto the scene, I know from my experience and others of you who deal with people when a death, everything else just seems to fade, you just got to focus on what that family needs and what's happening with those bereaved people. Every other priority is forfeited under those circumstances to attend to that one thing. Now these two words, one thing, this little phrase, one thing, features in some interesting ways throughout the pages of the Bible. For example, Solomon chose one thing. When given the amazing opportunity by God to acquire anything he wanted, it's recorded in 2 Chronicles 1 verses 7 to 12, he chose wisdom. God told Solomon he could have whatever his heart desired. Listen to verse 7 of 1 Chronicles 1, "What would you like me to give to you?" This is God speaking. How would you answer the Almighty if he asked you that question? What would you like me to give to you? No conditions, no restraints. Solomon, verse 10, answers, "Give me the wisdom and knowledge I need to rule my people." One thing. And there's a great affirmation in verse 11, God says, "You have made the right choice." Solomon chose one thing and that was wisdom for his leadership. And then over in the New Testament in Luke 10, there's the incident involving Mary and Martha, known to many of you. And Mary discovered one thing. You know the story. Martha's out in the kitchen and she's fussing around because of their honored guests. She's kind of getting the roast pork ready. Well, watch. Wouldn't we get the roast pork ready? No, Julie. Getting the fried chicken ready or whatever. It's okay. She's fussing around and she's really becoming quite indignant that Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus. But you see, Mary has got the message. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that sit at the feet of Jesus in my own home. What an opportunity. I'm not going to miss it. Look what's recorded in Luke 10, verse 41, because Martha's saying, "Come on Lord, get my sister back in the kitchen. She's needed here. We're running out of hands here and listen to this, the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled over so many things, but just one thing is needed." Mary has chosen that one thing and it will not be taken away from her. Powerful word from Jesus. And we all remember the rich young ruler lacked one thing. He was a man who impressed Jesus. He approached our Lord with a penetrating question, the question of the ages. What must I do to inherit eternal life? And the Bible says, this is another powerful reference from Jesus. Listen to this, Mark chapter 10 and verse 21, "Jesus looked straight at this man with love and said, 'You need only one thing. Go and sell all you have, give the money to the poor, you'll have riches in heaven, and then come, follow me.' The young man lacked the faith and the trust to let God have control over the one thing that dominated his whole mind and his whole thinking and his whole life, the size of his bank balance. On a more positive note, the healed man. The healed man rejoiced over one thing. He pops up in John's gospel, chapter 9. You're familiar with this guy, I'm sure, he's been blind from birth and Jesus heals him. And then he comes the center of a huge controversy as the Pharisees launch a kind of royal commission into the credentials of Jesus and into the legality of healing on the Sabbath. And so they haul this guy up before them. They question him at length and the interrogation is pretty merciless. And then in chapter 9, verse 25, "I love this guy in desperation." And she of frustration says, "I don't know if he's a sinner or not. One thing I know, I was blind. But now I see." That was the one thing that was important for that man. He's still on the subject of one thing, who could ever forget how Paul, the apostle Paul focused on one thing. Here it is right here in Philippians, Philippians chapter 3 and verses 13 and 14. Paul says, "Of course my friends, I really do not think that I've already won it. The one thing I do, however, is to forget what is behind me and do my best to reach what is ahead. His all-consuming passion in life was to forget his infamy as a persecutor of the church and move forward in God's strength to become a promoter of God's church." Isn't that interesting? The one thing, it comes to a variety of passages. And the one thing in biblical terms, the one thing is the very heart of the matter. It's the thing that makes the difference between knowing God in all His fullness and being satisfied with a mere superficial, path-baked experience of Him. It's what makes the difference, which brings us to our Psalm for this week. You see, in Psalm 27, David requests one thing. He's reflecting on all of his experiences of life, the good times and the not so good times. And he expresses a deep longing of his heart, a cry from the depths of his soul. And in verse 4, he writes, "I've asked the Lord for one thing. One thing only do I want to live in the Lord's house all my life, to marvel there at His goodness and to ask for His guidance." Someone says, "Wait a minute, hang on. David's one thing is to hang around the church all his life. That's way short of the kind of thing like Solomon asked for, isn't it? There it is, to live in the Lord's house all my life." Friends, the only way to understand this verse, of course, is to appreciate that in ancient Israel, the temple was the very epicenter of community life. It's where everything happened. You went to the temple to worship, to sacrifice. It was believed He went to the temple to actually meet God Himself. It all happened in the temple. And of course, You were taught in the temple. You went to school in the temple. You met your friends at the temple. You even shopped at the temple on the outskirts. And Jesus had an incident with some traitors during His ministry. So everything happened around the temple. And this point was brought home to me so powerfully when there's a hotel in Jerusalem, in the suburbs of Jerusalem. And I've been to this hotel where they've devoted half of what we would call an average society's quarter acre house block. And they've devoted half of it to a recreation of Jerusalem as it was at the time of Jesus. It took them over three years to build it. And they went with the basic footprint of the current city and they delved back into the old documents and looked at the Old Testament records of how big the temple was to be and so on. And it's a fascinating display. It's like half this auditorium and you can sort of kneel down and you can kind of look at all the streets and all the buildings that's outside. So it's made out of mud and some, I don't know, don't talk about buildings. But whatever, it's permanent and takes the rain and all the elements. And here's the thing. The dominant feature of that model is this massive temple. It just fills the landscape and you realize that in ancient Israel and even the time of Jesus, the temple was the, it was the hub around which everything revolved. And so the dominance of the temple was unmistakable. So a devout person like David would be constantly going to the temple every day, many times a day. He would have believed that there, as in no other place, he encountered God for himself. That's how he would have seen it. In his Psalms, David is constantly making reference to his great love, his obsession almost with the temple. You remember some of these Psalm 23 verse 6, the 23rd Psalm, we all know it. I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Psalm 26 verse 8, I love the house where you live, oh Lord. Psalm 61 verse 4, let me live in your sanctuary, all my life. Psalm 63 verse 2, let me see you in the sanctuary. Let me see how mighty and glorious you are. And then finally in Psalm 84 verse 10, one day spent in your temple is better than a thousand anywhere else. We used to think about that, Michael, didn't we? Better one day in your, yeah, I remember that. I'm not going to sing that, but remember that. So friends, here's the thing. It's not so much more of the temple God that David wants. It's more of God himself. You see that? It's not so much more of the temple David wants. He wants more of God himself. Now today, of course, we don't associate God's presence with a building in that way. Yes, places of worship can have a special meaning and they can evoke certain thoughts and feelings about an awareness of God. But the truth is, since the coming of the Holy Spirit, our experience of God's power and presence is not a matter of location, it's a matter of lifestyle, not a matter of location as it was in the Old Testament times believed to be. It's a matter of lifestyle and the Apostle John captures this thought in his first epistle when he says, "If we live in the life, just as he, Jesus, is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus purifies us from every sin." Now friends, life, life has always been associated with the presence of God and here's John saying to experience God in all his fullness, you don't have to visit the light, you don't have to view the light from afar, you only need to live in the light. It's all around you. It goes with you everywhere. Now this is where David in Psalm 27 does reveal, if this man in this, if he studied the Psalm, it does reveal something of an advanced understanding of God because he writes in verse 1, "The Lord is my light and my salvation, I will fear no one. The Lord protects me from all danger, I will never be afraid." So let's gather this up together. Here's David with a firm belief in the temple as the focal point of worship and for encounters with God, but with a growing awareness of God's presence and power in his life at all times. He's kind of straddling the old and new covenant in that sense, recognizes that the temple is very, very special, but also getting a sense that God is the light of his life and his salvation and it's everywhere, it's no matter where he goes. Friends, in that sense, I believe this Psalm can be the timely message for all of us and it has to do with the link, the link between what happens in corporate worship and our effectiveness as Christians out there. There's a link and I think this Psalm speaks to it. To experience more, more of God's light and salvation and to reduce his level of fear and anxiety, David wants to spend more time in the temple. I've asked the Lord for one thing, one thing only do I want to live in the Lord's house all my life, he's wanting more of God. Here's a question for you and for me. Is the one thing in our lives to live in the light? To know God and all his fullness through Jesus Christ, is that the one thing in your life? Is that the one thing in my life? As David says, to seek God's guidance, to draw on his strength through prayer, in combating fear and anxiety, is that the one thing in your life? And here's a related question, what part does your experience of worship and celebration play in your walk with God? What part does it play? Now these days, we don't expect people to hang around the church on an ongoing basis, unless they're staff members, of course, we expect them to be around the place occasionally. But what's our answer to the worship question in terms of frequency, in terms of participation, in terms of what you draw from the experience? How would you answer the worship question? Over the years of my ministry, I've seen, among many churches, a steady, slow, de-emphasis of worship, with not surprisingly a corresponding decrease in attendances, and that's the reality we face in Australia and in many parts of the Western world today. The thinking behind this is that too much has been made of Sunday worship. You know, we've turned it into a spectacle, or it's pandering too much to the consumer mentality of the modern society. Now, look, guys, in many instances, in some instances, that may be so. But I can tell you what, that is the furthest thing from our mind here at Northside Community Church. Yes, we do place a high emphasis on the Sunday event. We engage way over fifty of our people in the presentation of our services and in this area of our ministry. And our aim in doing so is quite specific. It is to provide worship experiences that really do allow people to stop, revive, survive. It's our whole aim to be inspired, to be encouraged to move out from this place into our communities where the church really takes place. Their interaction with people and our ability to our opportunities to beat Christ to people really does happen. But we need this experience, of course, and you don't need convincing of this because you're here. My word here this morning is continue to be here and continue to give worship a high priority. If living in the light is the one thing for you and me, and it should be, then we need regular involvement in a service like this to meet with each other, to hear the word of God red, to hear the word preached, to meet around the table, to enjoy each other's company, to recognise we're part of a serving family, for goodness sake, and we need the encouragement of each other because it's not that easy to keep the light of Christ's love burning out there in some of the environments in which we work and in which we serve and in which we live. We need to gather and celebrate, not as ends in themselves, but to serve our community locally and beyond. Friends, here's the point of this Psalm, and I read it many, many times this week, and I'd urge you to read it this week too. It's a powerful Psalm. There are many messages you can draw, but here's the one I drew. David acknowledged God as his light and his salvation, and he knew the value of hanging around the church as it was then to strengthen the reality that God was his light and his salvation. It was the one thing in his life. Somebody says to me, "What is the one thing that Northside needs to do to be an effective church?" And the answer is maybe many. To win more people for Christ, that's one of the things, but that's not the main thing. To increase the numbers, well, that's one of the things, it's not the main thing. To get out there and make a difference and serve, and that's one of the things, it's not the main thing. The main thing, the one thing for us is to know God in all his fullness, to establish an intimacy with him which is so close and so real that all the others will just spill out and will be a result of that one thing. What is your one thing this morning? I'm identifying, albeit feebly sometimes with David, to get more of God in every way possible, let us bow in prayer. 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