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Spiritual Life of the Leader - Lesson 22

Examples of Worship in Revelation 4

The elders fall before the throne, they worship the Lord and they cast their crowns before him. Falling before the throne represents an acknowledging of God as absolute deity. What is going to happen in the future tells us what we should be doing now. When we fall down before the throne, our heart condition is inward humility and submission to the Lord. Then they raise up and exalt the Lord by proclaiming his worth. Inward love results in proclaiming what is right, good, just and holy. Taking of crowns is an outward expression of placing everything we have under the Lordship of Christ and an inward movement of total abandonment of everything we are to God.

Stephen Martyn
Spiritual Life of the Leader
Lesson 22
Watching Now
Examples of Worship in Revelation 4

Examples of Worship in Revelation 4

I. Three Movements of Worship in Revelation Chapter 4

A. They fall before the throne

B. They worship the Lord

C. They take off their crowns and cast them before Jesus

II. Intentional and Focused Worship of God is Often at Best, Secondary

A. Follow the example in Revelation Chapter 4

B. Example from the Gospels

C. What we should do as leaders


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  • Dr. Martyn has surveyed church leaders around the world to understand their responsibilities and pressures. He aims to use his experience to help them develop a model of ministry that encourages spiritual formation, discipleship, and worship in a healthy way. His class is comprehensive on topics such as spiritual formation, discipleship, leadership principles, and worship. Listening to this class could benefit anyone regardless of whether they have an official leadership position or not.
  • Christian activism is Christians seeking to be involved in the issues and needs of the day and time. Wesleyans in the 1700's in England sought to minister to people that others didn’t care about. To be called by Christ is to be called into the body of Christ. A biblical model is that every member is a full-fledged minister of the gospel without distinction between clergy and laity. 

  • Mysticism can be described as the direct communication of your spirit with the Divine Spirit as taught and illustrated in the New Testament as a fundamental part of Christian belief. Receptivity means that I am open to what the Lord is saying to me through the revelation of his word, the magnificence of his son and the voice of his Spirit which is consistent with the written word. The church was emphasizing what they were doing for God rather than on first listening to what God wants us to be and then acting. Union with our Lord must come before any type of donation or work (kenosis) for our Lord. (Download the complete text of the sermon by clicking on the link on this page or under the Downloads heading on the class page.)

  • Which do you love more, the Lord or the projects you are doing for him? Is your goal to exalt the Lord or build a personal kingdom? Essence of anxiety is whether or not you can trust God. The question to ask when you begin having feelings of self-pity is, “Is you life going to be defined by how you think it ought to go?”  The blame-shame mindset is that you are unhappy because there is something wrong with the people around you. When you experience these red flags in your ministry, you should recognize it as time that it’s possible that the Lord may be prompting you to make a change in your life.The Mary in you must rest at the feet of Jesus if the Martha in you is to do her work.

  • Essence is who the Lord has created you to be. Biblically, essence precedes existence as oppose to Sartre's teaching that man is no more than what he makes of himself. God has given us the capacity of reception, to be able to hear God’s voice and follow it. The spiritual life that God calls you to live is based on what you receive from God, not on what you do for God.

  • How do you determine if your motives are right in your efforts to serve God? The more gifts and talents we have, the more susceptible we are to self-deception regarding our motives. Resist the urge to make pleasing people your primary motivation. You will never please everyone and in the process you lose sight of focusing on pleasing God. When people have expectations of you that don’t match what God has called you to do, there are times when you must, “let Lazarus die.”

  • God wants us to be faithful to the kingdom and his son and fruitful according to his metrics. What’s the goal and what condition do our hearts need to be in to understand the goal? The Mary in us needs to rest at the feet of Jesus in order for the Martha in us to do her work. Think about when you experienced renewal and think about when you were blessed. When you have received God’s blessing, how has that resulted in demonstrating his hand of mercy to someone else? How are your activities balanced?

  • A canal simultaneously pours out what it receives. A reservoir waits till it’s filled then discharges water without loss to itself. Today, there are many in God’s church that act like canals. The reservoirs are far too rare. So urgent is the charity of those through whom heavenly doctrine flows that they want to pour it forth to us before they have been filled. They are more ready to speak than to listen, impatient to teach what they have not grasped, and full of presumption to govern others while they know not how to govern themselves. High mountain lakes have one stream out and water level relatively constant throughout the year. How is the water level staying constant in your life? Depletion results in erosion of presence, and results in just going through the motions. 

  • The Lord desires that we live dispositionally. Important elements include loving God, living devotionally, relational strengthening, vocational serving (listening with the intent of following what I hear). Dallas Willard wrote, “If I am a disciple of Jesus, I am with him to learn from him, how to be like him." The primary calling of a pastor is to follow Jesus, within the calling of leading a church. 

  • The eight deadly sins are in the order that Satan uses to try to get us and in the order in which we need redemption. Gormandize means you are overdoing it and being a slave to flesh. Fornication refers to a wandering heart and seeking to devour others. Avarice is the love of money and sometimes is a fear of not having enough. Anger is a rancorous spirit. The spiritual cancer of depreciation is looking at the vast horizon of God’s goodness in his creation and my life and depreciating it, only seeing what’s wrong. Psalm 51:10-12, create in me a clean heart, O God and renew a right spirit within me.

  • When you experience a difficult situation, how do you begin to turn your focus away from the negative and on to what God is doing? How do you respond when you are working closely with people that don't like you? What do you do as a leader when there is a person that is angry with you and disagrees with how you are leading?

  • The sin of acedia is, “I don’t care anymore.” The sin of tristitia is sadness, wrongly processing suffering and loss, allowing the soul to close in on itself and refuse instruction from God. Tristitia is neither a result of other people or of our outward circumstances. Satan wants to get us off the track in stupid presumption or in sinful carelessnenss. God redeems the hurt that evil has done.

  • In the early church passion was seen as something that controlled you and out of control and leading you astray, not a positive motivation. John Cassion described vainglory as passion to take pleasure in our own qualities. The danger is that we take credit for what God is doing. In pursuit of being popular, we often sacrifice who we are at the core. Pride is the original vice from which all others spring. Pride can develop into functioning atheism. The cure for pride is to have the humility of Jesus in our heart. 

  • Is there a sin that's not deadly? To what extent can you worry about something before it becomes a sin? What does it take to overcome gluttony? The minute you make an exception for yourself, you either presume on the grace of God or break a known law of God. Admit what you are feeling and submit it to God to have faith in him in the situation, then do your part.

  • Instead of gluttony, we see temperance. Temperance means living a balanced life. Chaste love is extending love to others, not preying on them. Poverty of spirit rather than greed. Cultivate meekness to deal with anger. You have been forgiven much so you should be willing to forgive others much. Cultivate faith, hope and love to deal with hopelessness. Cultivate humility to deal with vainglory. Evangelism in the first 300 years a result of the quality of the lives of disciples as they lived in a hostile environment. 

  • A transcendent crisis is yearning for the “more than.” “Is life meaningful?” “Is God good?” Can I trust my life to God or have I been abandoned by God? An idolatry crisis happens when you run after a passion rather than pursue God. Each person in your sphere of influence is going through crises in their own lives. God can use a crisis to help something in us die so we can experience and share the light of Christ.

  • To feed the 5,000, the disciples had to rely on Jesus because they didn’t have the resources. Jesus walked out on the water to comfort the disciples with his presence. The disciples thought they were going to die a terrible death. If you choose to think your situation, the church and others are hopeless, it results in ego desperation, or hopelessness. You see what’s wrong, you think you have exhausted your resources and you see no way that it’s going to get fixed. If you allow the crisis to take you into the life of Christ and dependence on him, it will not destroy you. 

  • It's important for us to understand how our relationship with God is affected by being born at a certain period of time and in a certain society. The vital is the physical dimension of the human life. Vitalism is where your physical pleasures become the priority in your life.  Functional is the roles, tasks and responsibilities we take on. It’s a problem when we allow our roles and responsibilities to define us, which is functionalism. Transcendent is the longing for the “more than.” Pneumatic/Ecclesial level is the capacity the Lord has given each of us to hear and respond to the Holy Spirit, God’s voice. When ambition gets separated from the leading of the Spirit, it can become self-promotion. Functional Transcendence is you using the things of God for self-gain.

  • It's important to keep Christ at the center of who you are. Interiority includes memory, intellect, will. Augustine says will is most important.In addition to our personal thoughts, we exist in community with others who are submitting their lives to the will of Christ. The Lord has placed us in a certain place and time and wants you to live a life of obedience in that context every day, not just one day a week. The Father is seeking to form your life into the image of Christ as you were meant to be. Through our experiences, God forms you into a unique person. On the relational side, this results in compassion for others because we love others with the same love we experienced. God gives us confidence that he has given us the gifts and resources we need to live out the calling he has given us. Competence that our ministry will be effective. Our courage comes from trusting in the strength of the Lord. Community, the work of God’s Church is a work done with others. Confirmation comes internally from God and externally from the community of faith. 

  • If you are following Jesus, you have a role as a leader. If a spiritual leader does not understand what their task is according to scripture, then their spiritual life is not going to have the focus the Lord wants them to have.  Worship is a response of the love that has been shown to us. Worship involves our all aspects of us and is enabled by God’s Spirit. We worship God because of who he is. By looking at Jesus, you see who God is.

  • The Church needs you to present what Scripture says, not your own ideas. Worship means to kneel before someone out of respect or honor. We owe it to God as an act of service to sit at his feet and worship him. Spiritual worship is to place our physical bodies at God’s disposal. Are we leading people to worship God, or just providing religious goods and services to them? Solid biblical teaching is important. Structure follows purpose. We are failing to dig down into the revelation of God and let the revelation of God set the compass. If you are not careful, your program sets your agenda.

  • Movements in worship: 1. kneeling in acts of loving worship. Kneeling in submission before God to acknowledge that you are dependent on him. 2. Exalting God by declaring his worthiness 3. Receiving God’s life symbolized by the sacrament of communion. 4. Empowers us and encourages us to go out and serve. We participate in the fellowship and life of the Trinity. We need to immerse ourselves in relationship to God and let that inform and empower what we do so that our worship service is more than creating an experience or transmitting information. Be explicit about your purpose in worship and include prayer.

  • The elders fall before the throne, they worship the Lord and they cast their crowns before him. Falling before the throne represents an acknowledging of God as absolute deity. What is going to happen in the future tells us what we should be doing now. When we fall down before the throne, our heart condition is inward humility and submission to the Lord. Then they raise up and exalt the Lord by proclaiming his worth. Inward love results in proclaiming what is right, good, just and holy. Taking of crowns is an outward expression of placing everything we have under the Lordship of Christ and an inward movement of total abandonment of everything we are to God.

  • The call of Jesus to, “follow me” is the call to redirect everything in our lives. A disciple is one who seeks to fulfill the will of the father by actively following Jesus the Son while continually depending on the Holy Spirit for guidance and strength. Faith is my trust in Jesus as well as the content of the Gospel. Practice is putting it into play. Catechism is the content of the faith, and catechesis is how you express it. Cheap grace is not biblical because it allows for justification without ensuing discipleship. Primary purposes of the church are to proclaim the Gospel, worship and make disciples. In addition to knowing the content, you must live it out. Clergy need to learn how to make and train disciples. Laity must be fully committed full-time ministers of the body of Christ.

  • Movements that are necessary for the church today to fulfill what God is calling them to do. For the clergy, 1. moving from pastor as the primary minister to each believer fulfilling their calling as full-time ministers in their spheres of influence; 2. Moving from preaching only to not only appropriate sermon preparation time but also discipling a core group; 3. Moving from a priority on numbers to staying with a process that results in mature disciples; 4. From solo leadership to team leadership. Discipleship should not be optional. Old Christendom model is breaking down but confusion on who and what we are called to be. “Is my first aim to make disciples, or do I just run an operation?” For the laity, 1. From going to church to being Church; 2. From expecting benefits from Christianity requiring no sustained effort to being intent on being disciples; 3. From being passive observers to full-time ministers. Primary purpose of leader is to equip the people of God to do the work of God.

  • The sermon is a critical part of the discipleship process. The “through” movement is the process of the “from-to” movement. Each of these steps must be contextualized to your situation. We are aiming for maturity in Christ. As a leader, you love the whole but you only disciple the few. Don’t neglect public proclamation but don’t see that as the end of your ministry. Daily pray, read scripture, weekly services, small groups acts of service, fasting, giving. Discipleship is helping people integrate the word of God into their lives.

  • Tozer says we don’t have the right of choosing Jesus as Savior and postponing our obedience. Dispositions are something that’s part of your daily life. Christian disciplines help us to love God and love our neighbor. Encourage people to seek God’s direction for where he wants them to serve. The biblical model is that mature Christians will live as disciplined followers. Make it a goal for pure love to fill your heart and govern your words and actions.

What do you think the priorities should be for a leader in the Church? How do you cultivate your personal spiritual life in a way that keeps you emotionally healthy and helps you avoid choosing sin? What is your measure of success for your church? How does that compare with a biblical measure of success? What is a disciple? What should the process of discipleship look like? What principles can you learn from the way Jesus interacted with his followers that will help you to encourage spiritual formation of the people in your sphere of influence? What are sins that people in leadership have commonly struggled with over the past 2,000 years? How do you recognize them in your own life and what are some practical ways to avoid them or repent and recover from them? What is the essence of worship? How do you live your life so you are worshipping God authentically in everything you do? How do you lead worship in a group setting in a way that encourages others to worship authentically? 

These are a few of the questions that Dr. Martyn poses to begin a conversation regarding the subject of the spiritual life of the leader. As a pastor for more than 20 years, Dr. Martyn asked and answered these questions in the context of loving and serving people personally. As part of his current position of teaching future pastors at Asbury seminary, he and some of his colleagues have conducted extensive surveys of church leaders throughout the North America and the world to get a better understanding of the responsibilities and pressures that church leaders face every day. His goal is to be able to understand biblical principles and use his experience to help leaders develop a model of ministry that helps them develop their personal spiritual life and give them a model to disciple and encourage the people they work with in a way that is healthy and encourages their faith and practice. 

Whether you have an official leadership position or not, you will benefit from listening to this class. It is one of the most comprehensive classes on spiritual formation, discipleship, leadership principles and worship that you will ever hear. If you listen and reflect on each of the lectures from beginning to end, you will be glad you did. 

Dr. Stephen Martyn
Spiritual Life of a Leader
sf502-22
Examples of Worship in Revelation 4
Lesson Transcript

 

[00:00:01] Welcome back. What I would like to do and where I'd like to lead us now is continue on in Scripture looking at what the word has to say. And I owe this next section to the dear colleague who seeing Glory now in Robert Mulholland. Doctor Mulholland has been a guide for me for many, many, many years. And I should also it's important for me to say that biblical training has a fairly major section on Mulholland on Revelation, and I highly recommend this to you. So Dr. Mulholland studied and taught for decades on the Book of Revelation. He was a New Testament scholar, and I think that his work in the fourth chapter of Revelation goes to the very heart of what we've been talking about. And and it goes to the heart of pastoral leaders, of of congregation leaders in terms of how we understand how our own personal living and our own personal understanding of how we are to lead others here. So this is this is going to apply to all of us who are working for God's church. John proclaimed, and the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and inside, day and night without ceasing. They sing Holy, holy, Holy, the Lord God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come. And whenever and whenever the living creatures give glory and honor. And thanks to the one who is seated on the throne, who is for ever and ever, the 24 elders fall before the one who is seated on the throne and worship the one who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, singing You are worthy, our Lord and God to receive glory and honor and power for you created all things.

 

[00:02:45] And by your will they existed and were created. Now, as the four living creatures continually sing their song of worship to 24, elders enter into a three fold action of the worshiping church. I told you we were going to do those movements again. And so hold on. Here we go. What's what's the movements? These are movements for all of us, you know, And you want to learn about worship. Where do you go? You go to the word first. They fall before the throne. Second they worship the Lord. Third, they cast their crayons before him. Now, Mulholland comments that this posture of falling before God's throne does what it represents an acknowledgment of God as absolute deity. Now, it's important for me to also say I'm quoting Dr. Mulholland from a commentary, the Cornerstone Biblical commentary. James First and second. Peter two in Revelation, this Tindale House publication. So they're acknowledging God is absolute deity. This is the whole falling down before this, remember, is classic worship. So in their worshipful movement of falling before God, they are paying him proper homage. By what? By adoring him. Then, in throwing their crowns before the throne, Mulholland notes that this represents authority, rule control. Whoa. What do we see here? Here we see the elders yielding the control of their lives to God. Wow. Falling before rising up to praise. Then casting our crowns. I'm yielding all of the authority and rule and control of my life before God. So this allows God to be God in their lives. On God's terms, On His terms, not on theirs. Since all of the indicators in the Book of Revelation point to worship as the primary activity of the Bride of Christ in the New Testament and in the New Jerusalem, that is to come.

 

[00:05:34] And do you hear that? Listen, theologically. What do we say about that? This is what we say. The end determines the now. In other words, what we're going to be doing in the kingdom determines what we need to be learning to do and actually doing. Now the end determines to the now. So. Listen, the Bride of Christ in the new in the new Jerusalem. So we're going to do well to to allow our future adoration of God to give substance, literal substance and shape to our present worship in the church. Now, here's where Mulholland, you know, here's her. Dr. Mulholland exegesis of the word can help lead us in our contemporary worship today, and it can lead the whole church. All right, Now think about it. There's the physical action. I fall down before the throne. Well, what's the heart condition? Because the Lord's very concerned with the heart. You can actually, as we know, go through physical actions and be absolutely dead, worthless religion. Well, the heart condition is inward humility and submission to the Lord, not my will, Lord, your will. So this outward posture of acknowledging God is our superior in all things is matched with an ongoing inward movement of a claiming God is Lord in master second. So you fall down. Then what you do, you raise back up and you exalt. You are lifting up. You're exalting the Lord by proclaiming His worth ship. He's worthy and we're declaring all of those attributes that he is. This is the raising up. So what's the outward posture, the outward postures raising up now in terms of adoration of God and lifting up my eyes and lifting up my heart? What's the N word, love? Well, it's exactly that. It's. It's inward love expressed by lifting up the Lord.

 

[00:08:07] I mean, how do you feel when your your spouse speaks well of you? You know, we get a wonderful Latin word, those of you in leadership in the local church who will give at the end. What do you do at the end of the service? Yeah, you give the benediction. Well, it's from it's Benedict Terry speaking well of. So if your spouse speaks well of you just kind of makes your day if if those you love speak well of you. It's always important to have a dog around the house because the dog will always speak well of you, even when the spouse and others don't. That's an important issue. But, you know, we're speaking well of God is what we're saying here. I'm speaking well of God. Why is this important for us? Because when you live where people get caught up with all that's wrong with the world, or when you live in a in a place in time with partizan bickering, partizan contrary political views both in the church and how do the church you know you are not going to tie into that. What we're going to do is tie into speaking well of God. We're getting our eyes off, not neglecting, but we're getting our eyes off of what's wrong with things by declaring what is right and good and just in holy and honorable. And all of that is grounded in who God is. So this is inward love. It's an ongoing movement of declaring the goodness of God, even in the mess of our own daily lives. Sometimes in three, what do they do? They take their crayons off of, you know, So. So our crowns are our achievements are our good works for the Lord. Any kind of honor that is given us.

 

[00:10:16] You know, it's a good thing to take it. Take it off now. I, I had at one point, I had a number of plaques and diplomas, and I had awards all on my all own, my office. I got to looking at those one day, I was just sitting in front of them, and I thought to myself, well, any of my three children or any of my grandchildren even want one of those things, much less put them up on a wall anywhere. And I immediately knew the answer. No, sir. Took them all down. They're not there. Every last one of them. They're all dead. Let's just take them in through and before the Lord right now, thanking him for what he's given us. Thanking him for how he's honest, everything. We thank him. We thank him for it. We're throwing the crown before the Lord. What's that doing? So it's acknowledging that every good thing that happens in my life. Who made it possible? The Lord Jesus. It comes from his. And let us say where it comes from. It comes from his mercy. Undeserved. Undeserved. It's an outward action of placing all that we are under the Lordship of Christ. And it's an onward. It's an ongoing inward movement of total abandonment, of everything, all that we are to God. Get the formative movement now. Bow in love, lifting high, casting our crowns. Listen, we are painfully aware that as we attended worship services over a broad area, that intentional and focused worship of God is often, at best secondary. And all too often not even mentioned in worship services. It's a neglected. These things are neglected. These movements are neglected. We're failing at every primary level of recognizing and honoring father son in spirit as our try and God, the one Lord of our lives, the three of our love.

 

[00:12:37] Now without being prescriptive in any manner. Again, I don't want to do that because every truly consonant, Christian tradition, faithful Christian tradition has its own own way of working out the application parts of of worship or without trying to dictate specific styles of worship. You know, I'm really, really want to press all of the streams of Christianity, of Christianity, that we're being summoned by the elders in Revelation. This is the true elder board here to bow before God and to declare his praise. The people of God deserve this, and they're going astray because of its absence in the light of worship is not breaking into the darkness of this fallen world. I want to also suggest that we learn how to worship by looking back, by looking back at an account in Scripture that shows up in all four Gospels. So you'll see it first in Matthew 26, verses six through 13, a woman, a sinful woman, comes to Jesus. She's lived a life of self curvature where she's taken the love that's meant to be for God and for others. She's turned it back on her self. She's lived a morally. Corrupt, miserable life. And she was filled with shame, no doubt. And so this poor lady, when it seems that things can't get any worse for her, what happens? She finds herself in the presence of Jesus. I no doubt she'd heard about it. You know, she knew about him. But I think like everyone else, she kind of figured he would condemn her. What happens? The son of man, the son of God, sees right through her sin and shame to who she was meant to be. And what does he do? He responds to her not with condemnation. But with mercy, with love, and with amazing forgiveness.

 

[00:15:12] Nobody is beyond the reach of forgiveness here. Then she in turn, responds to his love by receiving this forgiveness that he offered and by trusting that he would indeed work out the mess that her life had become. So while her life probably was still hard, I mean, she still had issues she was going to have to face. She had been restored. Her basic dignity had been given to her. She was loved. She knew the love that she was seeking. And she had the opportunity now to know God's intention for her life. And what does she do? She brings in the most expensive things she has. And she broke it and poured it out on Jesus feet. I mean, she bought the good stuff, the great perfume. She bowed before her Lord. She anoints his feet with her costly gift. And then what she does, she wipes his feet with her own hair. Now, this woman offered up the most costly gift that she had to Jesus, and she gave her complete self with that gift. And she literally with this action, she's literally offering all that she has in love and worship and adoration with the 24 elders, we too are called to bow down and to rise up in in praise and to cast the costly things of our lives. All of it before him, before the feet of Jesus. So here we go. Here we go. We want to come in. I learned. I've learned this from Robert Weber. We want to come into the presence as leaders who want to draw people into the presence of Christ. And we want to be really clear. We are here to worship and select and sit earlier. We want to do we're asking we're invoking the Holy Spirit to make this possible.

 

[00:17:24] We're praying. We're reaching out to God. In worship, whatever tradition you're out of, I'm trusting that the Word of God will be held up. And let me just say a little little word here. I love what John or Debbie Start said many, many decades ago. He said this sermon, it's now sermon. It's a little bitty few points, a few illustrations sermon. It's make for Christians. It's still the sermon. It's the people of God need to come to the feast of the word. So whoever says, you know, we come to the feast, the word of God. Then we respond. In the classical sense, we respond. How do we respond? We come to the table of God to receive all of the gifts He has for us at the table. And then what do we do? We go out. We go out to serve. All of this is an action of worship, of bowing down, of rising up, of blessing, of going forth. Then after throwing our crayons. So why I mean, we're acknowledging this big. Why? Why are we gathered? We're gathered to still our lives to focus upon God who calls us into worship. And we're inviting the Holy Spirit to enable our worship. This is why we're doing it. We come before the mystery of God and we bow down in submission and praise. And then we listen. Listen to the word. This is why it's so important for anyone breaking the word of lie for them to have. Listen to what God has to say. You want the mind of Christ for your people. Not your own mine. The great, great systematic theologian Thomas Soden. Said, this is why Jesus came. And this kind of sets our agenda in bringing forth the word.

 

[00:19:50] Whether I'm doing this in a small group, in a Sunday school class, in a discipleship class before a congregation. Jesus came out and wrote to reveal God to humanity. To provide a high priest interceding for us who is able to sympathize with our human weakness, to offer us a pattern of fullness of human life. To provide a substitution every sacrifice for the sins of all of humanity, faith to bind up the demonic powers in all of this fullness of the Gospel is coming out in all that we preach and teach, and it's all focused on Christ. These are the things that we listen to as we study God's were listening to God's Word, faithfully presenting God's Word, and in response, the living word. Who is Christ Jesus? We say yes to him. We say yes to all that He wants us to say yes to. And we do that by entering into the great sacrifice of our savior. We remember what was done for us in the Atonement. That's why we celebrate Holy Communion. We're remembering we're also looking forward to the fullness of the banquet that is to come. And we're also right now presently receiving all of his love through grace. Through grace. Well. Finally, we go forth. It's the people of God who've worship, listened, responded, received, praised. Given our lives, we go forth. Now, for those of you in leadership today, I just want you to be encouraged. You know, we don't have to collapse to the level of what's called anxious people pleasers. Why? Because when you take up the courage of God, he will help you lovingly, graciously and at times, yes, firmly present his word. We don't ever want to use the word as a hammer to beat people.

 

[00:22:18] We don't want to use the word to promote our own agenda. We want to let the fullness of the gospel speak. But I think when we bow before him, when we rise up to praise him, when we cast our crowns before him, he's going to equip you. He will equip you with his work, his job, his kingdom, his church. And I bless you in the name of Christ, our Lord, and that whole movement of worship. May you be a true leader for God's kingdom. A man.