The Invitation | Wednesday Night Service

So I have the honor tonight to bring the message. I thought I was teaching next Wednesday and Pastor Nathan was supposed to teach tonight, but some things came up, we switched weeks, but we're doing kind of this two week teaching. Pastor Steph asked us to talk to you guys about the word of God, how to study it, how to read it, the importance of it. And Pastor Nathan actually sent me his notes for me to just know what he was gonna be hitting on week one. And he's gonna, please come next week.

He's going to equip you with a lot of practical information, a lot of stirring information. If I'm honest, what I'm bringing tonight feels more like a part 2 on the surface, but I feel like the Lord has an intention in it tonight. So I've titled message one of how to read and study the Bible. I've titled it An Invitation. And I've been praying all afternoon that we would hear him knocking on the door of our hearts as it relates to His Word and us going deeper and higher and it not becoming something we just check off the list to satisfy our conscience or we do out of duty, but instead we would hear him knocking on the door of our hearts like in Revelation 3:20.

He says, Look, I'm standing at the door and knocking. If anyone, if anyone, if anyone listens to my voice and opens the door, I'll come in and we'll eat together. So may we open the door that he might come in and we can eat together? Like I already mentioned, next week Pastor Nathan's going to talk about how to read the Bible. This week I'm going to talk about the invitation.

God knocking on the door of your heart as it relates to. To His Word. So if I were to ask. Well, I guess I'll just ask. Do you know the most often quoted scripture in all the Bible?

I think your mind would probably go to some of the same passages, maybe John 3:16, because that's one people readily know. For God so loved the world, wouldn't that be embarrassing if that's all I could remember anyway, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life. Or maybe Psalm 23. And part of me wants to quote it and part of me is intimidated, but you get the idea. Maybe those would be our guesses of the most quoted passages of Scripture, when in all actuality, most likely the most quoted passage of scripture is Deuteronomy 6, 4, 9.

Because in orthodox Jewish homes it is read aloud every morning and every evening it is recited. Every Sabbath, it's quoted at deathbeds and at bar mitzvahs. As a matter of fact, when Jesus is asked the most important commandment, he goes directly to this passage and he references it. The verses of Deuteronomy 6:4,9 that we're going to read in a moment is known as to Orthodox Jews, but really to all of Christianity and Judaism, it's known as the Shema. S H EE M A.

It's most likely the first scripture Jesus ever heard as a child, because it was probably quoted every day in his home. And the Shema is a Hebrew word that means to listen. So let's look at Deuteronomy 6:4 through 9. I think we have it for the screenshot. And if you don't wear glasses and you don't have 2020 vision, you won't be able to see it.

But all right. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children.

Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands. Bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates. Now, if you're anything like me, when you read through directions like this, whether it's in Scripture or another context, but particularly in Scripture, if you're like me, there's this instant sense of like, okay, I have to do this.

I have to do this. I have to love the Lord my God. I have to talk about his commandments when I'm at home and when I'm on the road and when I lie down and when I get up, I've got to tie it to my hands and bind it to my foreheads. It needs to be on the door frame of my houses. And the reality is these are commands.

But he didn't intend for them to be fulfilled through any kind of striving. That's not in fact, it's quite the contrary. The greatest commandment is to love God, but it's not a trying to talk yourself into it. God's not looking for striving love. In fact, striving love doesn't mean a whole lot to him.

That's not his goal. He's looking for wholehearted love. He's looking for a people that will love him with all that we have, all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our strength, and according to the Shema, even his commandments are to be connected to our heart. So as it relates to the Word of God and even some of the practicals that Pastor Nathan will help us dive into next week, understand that meditating on His Word is to be connected at the heart level. That doesn't mean that you're supposed to feel bad tonight.

If that's not how it is for you. It's more about hearing the knocking at the door. Will you open it and say, come in, Lord. Open the Scriptures to me. Let's dine together.

Show me things that I couldn't discover on my own. This authentic love and loyalty to God that the Shema talks about, this one, authentic love and loyalty to God and his commandments is to be passed on to the next generation. It's to be passed to our kids, our grandkids, whether natural children or spiritual children, just people in our lives. But it's supposed to be a natural overflow of our lives. So it goes beyond just our kids seeing us read the Bible, although that's a great place to start.

But it does go beyond that. It's. It's the outflow of our lives when we're sitting at home. Like, if someone's gonna find you sitting at home, will they find you ready to discuss the beauty of the Word of God? Or are they more likely to find you watching Judge Judy?

Just use the one that might be applicable to myself.

So when we sit at home, when we walk along the road, when we're moving, when we're going places, when we lie down, when we get up, these commandments are to be ingrained in us. They're to be tied to the work of our hands. In other words, we don't compartmentalize. We're at church. We're really into the Word of God.

But then when it comes to our work, no. He says, no. Tie it to your hands. Tie it to the work of your hands, and it's to be bound to the activity and outflow of our minds.

The Lord convicted me even in studying this because it's been a long time since I've committed to memorize new Scriptures.

The Lord's law and commandments are to create the greatest context of atmosphere in our homes.

This isn't to make anyone feel bad. This is a knocking at the door. It's an invitation. John Bunyan, who wrote Pilgrim's Progress, he had written on the inside cover of his Bible a statement that has become a quote. I love that he had this written in his Bible.

This is what he had written. Either this book will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from this book. Either this book will keep you from sin, sin will keep you from this book. In Psalm 1:1:3, it says, Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. And I think we'd all agree.

That would be great. We'd love to be that person that doesn't walk in the council of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit at the seat of scoffers. But instead his delight is in the law of the Lord. His delight is in the law of the Lord. And on his law he meditates day and night.

The one who doesn't walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of scoffers, but finds a delight in the law of the Lord is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season. Its leaf does not wither in all he does, he prospers. His delight. Her delight is in the law of the Lord. The word delight there literally translates pleasure.

Bless you, keep you. Was that you, Jonathan? You need a little attention.

His delight is in the law of the Lord. His pleasure, his desire, that which is valued is in the law of the Lord. How can we delight in the law of the Lord and the commandments of the Lord if we're not reading it? It's not possible. The Pinterest post with a verse or a social media post isn't going to cut it.

Really? Even coming on Wednesdays and Sundays? That's wonderful. But if that is the diet of the Word of God for you, it's not enough. And I'm not saying that in condemnation.

It's an invitation. Please don't hear condemnation. It's an invitation. Maybe you're sitting here and you say, why? I try.

I don't understand it when I read it. And I'm telling you there is something about the washing of the water of the Word, even when you don't understand it. We see it modeled in the Tabernacle. The basin represents the washing. Even when you don't understand it, there's a washing.

And then later there's a candlestick, that there's the lampstand, and that represents the place of revelation. The Word produces both, and you have to start somewhere.

So the delight in the Word of God comes from actually tasting of it. Isn't that profound? Kind of is, actually, because we often feel a resistance, especially when we're tired. You know, when we know why I should quote a verse right now or I should go to the Bible, and you feel that war. You don't want to because it's counterintuitive to our flesh, but it's what gives life.

And that delight leads to a day and night meditation. It's not a striving. In fact, the whole fake it till you make it. I live a lot of my life, actually. Like, if I don't feel like doing something or I'm not feeling it, especially in this season, I feel like I'm faking it till I make it a lot.

But that's not God's dream. He's knocking on the door and he's saying, if you'll open it, I'm going to come in and we're going to talk together. And his favorite topic is the Word. It gives us power to not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of scoffers. This delight makes you this delight.

It's not just the word of God, it's delight in the word of God. This delight makes us like a tree planted by life streams. It makes us fruitful. It makes us vibrant. No withering leaves.

I'm really into my yard. I have a ridiculous amount of plants and flowers. Couple of decades ago, Pastor Steph was my mentor in the yard. I gave her a tour of my yard just a week ago, and she's the best. She walked around my yard.

This is vintage Pastor Steph. She said, you know what? When I go home, I'm gutting my yard and starting over. It was the best thing she could say. And then we went to this graduation ceremony that didn't start as early as we thought.

So we left and went to Lowe's and bought some plants. And she said, when we got there, I feel like I'm at a makeup counter with a makeup artist. Show me what to buy. Maybe she was just saying it to make me feel good about myself, but it worked. But when I walk around my yard and I can tell this happened, I was in this moral dilemma because I had studied and spent a lot of time praying.

And I was like, oh, I'm gonna walk outside and pace and pray. I'm not gonna get distracted. And then I started to see, like, the thirsty leaves. My daughter came out. She's like, mom, what are you doing?

I'm like, I'm praying. She's like, you're watering. I'm like, I'm doing both.

But our leaves can be in that state where they're never withered because we're right by the stream, we're right by the source. And it's not just from the word, it's from delighting. Finding the place of pleasure and desire, that which we value in the word of God. It causes us to be vibrant. No withering leaves.

And it causes us to prosper. The word prosper there literally means to advance. It means to penetrate the dark veil with a spear of light. That's what the word of God does for us. His and her delight is in the law of the Lord.

So how do we find the delight? We're gonna talk about three things. These are the three ways we find his delight is in the law of the Lord. So how do we find this delight? Three ways that all start with by apprehending.

I'm just gonna say by apprehending now, and then we'll go to the point. Make sense? Okay. Good to two of you. It does.

All right, so we learn this delight by, number one, apprehending. Passion for the greater story. I'm gonna give you a longer word, metanarrative. I'm gonna unpack that in a moment. But it's passion for the greater story, the overarching story.

This is super important. I've told this story before. I love this story. My oldest niece, her name is Janae. She's in her 30s.

I don't remember her age right now. Cause there's a bunch. I have a bunch of nieces and nephews. But it's my brother's oldest daughter. She's married.

She married a guy from Wales. She has two little boys. She's a wonderful girl. But when she was in elementary school, she started this thing of being very afraid of the dark. And my brother would like declare Psalm 139, verse 12 over her the prayer to God.

But even the darkness is not darkness to you, God. The night is as light as the day. Darkness and light are the same to you. So my brother would read this to Janna and he would say, baby, light and dark are the same to God. And Jana looked at him and said, yeah, well, they're not the same to me.

God's story, or God's metanarrative, is an overarching story. We just have one little small window in the experience of our lives. God's story is a metanarrative. It's also called a grand narrative. The metanarrative is an overarching story.

And it's not just his story over our lives, it's his story in the word of God. And when you begin to approach the word of God with a little more understanding of this grand narrative, it changes everything. It's mind blowing. It's beautiful. That's what I love about Janet Roberts.

I told her the other day it's my goal to mention her every time I teach. It helps me with my resume and my credentials.

So I taught her everything she knows. But really, whenever Janet teaches, there's this jealousy. Many of you have experienced it, like the right kind of jealousy, this desire to understand the greater context. It even becomes addicting in the best way because the overarching story or God's storyline gives context and meaning and purpose that then we can even apply to our lives when we say, you know what? I'm a tree planted by the water, but I don't feel like it right now, but thank God I am.

One sentence in one paragraph of one chapter of this story.

Amen. Could always count on Pastor Andrew. So grateful. A metanarrative is a big picture. It's an all encompassing theme.

Think in terms of building a house. I saw Scott Farrington. I need to pay that invoice. I just remembered again.

Anyway, anyone that wants to give towards my fund, you can. No, I'm just kidding. Scott is amazing and he's really good at what he does. And he'll probably never do anything for me again.

All right, sorry. Scott, you're the best. But in building a house, there's all kinds of workers doing individual jobs, right? Plumbing, sheetrock, electrical work, roofing. Scott's case, he can do a little bit of all of it, but there's all these different subcontractors working towards the same thing.

They're working towards completing a house. The blueprint is the big picture. So the metanarrative that gives meaning to each of the contractors individual work, their individual toil, their individual trials, the unforeseen circumstances, the burdens, the breakthroughs, the beauty is that it's. There's a meaning for that. That it's not just what's happening in the moment, but there's a larger story being written.

In other words, the plumber isn't fitting pipes to nowhere.

He's involved in the larger scheme. So post modernism that kind of became popular in the mid 20th century, really began to oppose the idea of this metanarrative of really any world religion, but especially with Christianity. And even though it was something that became popular in the mid 20th century. Its tentacles reach into our culture today and in many ways with more power than it did even then. Because postmoderns do not generally accept an overarching story that gives meaning to all of life, they don't accept a story that speaks of absolute and universal truth.

Instead, they focus on small, individual narratives that give meaning to their own lives. An individual narrative that speaks of what's true for me. Right. Hasn't this really seeped into our culture? The individual narrative that gives meaning to my life, and that's all I care about.

And somehow we're being disrespectful to one another to not be sucked into the narrative of what gives you meaning. But then there's never a plumb line because it's all based on people's relative truth.

So postmoderns say a single narrative, a narrative giving meaning to all lives is an impossibility. But the Bible supports a metanarrative. In fact, the biblical story and the brilliance of the Bible in itself displays this beautiful metanarrative. It's like reading one chapter out of a book and then trying to act like the expert on the whole book. No, that was one chapter.

That's not even where the story landed. That was only a small piece of the story. Like you have to read and come into the whole thing in Ephesians 1:9, 10. Am I really loud? Okay, good.

I am. To me, that was not passive aggressive. I was just making sure.

Ephesians 1, 9 and 2 is a passage that speaks of the metanarrative. It speaks of a divine will of God, a purpose, a timeline, a fulfillment and unity around that story. It says this. God made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ to put into effect when the times reached their fulfillment, to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. So the entire Bible is wrapped into this metanarrative.

The Gospel story is wrapped into the passages of Scripture. We see this in the Book of Hebrews. The entire book of Hebrews traces themes begun in the Old Testament all the way to their fulfillment in Christ. The earthly ministry of Christ was part of a plan that extended all the way back before the foundations of the world. The plan shows up even in creation.

It shows up in the temptation of the devil. It shows up in the fall of man. It shows up in humanity's propensity to choose our own way. God always had a plan, and he has a plan now. Even in Genesis 3 after all, all of creation and all the access that Adam and Eve had to all of this beauty and everything they could ever want or need.

Yet they're distracted by the tree they can't have because of the devil. And the devil entices them and talks them into it, and they choose the forbidden fruit. And as a result, God has to give some consequences to Adam and Eve. But before he gives them the consequences, he punishes the enemy. Let that breathe for a moment.

There are consequences for our choices. But the first thing the Lord does is rebukes the enemy on our behalf. And he tells the enemy, from this point forward, you're gonna crawl on the dust of the earth on your belly. And then he gives a redemptive messianic prophecy. In Genesis 3:15, I will put enmity between you and the woman speaking to the serpent, between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall bruise your head, he being the woman's offspring, and you shall bruise his heel. So the enemy will have effect in bruising the heel of the seed of woman. Jesus. But the seed of woman will ultimately crush the head of the enemy. That is established in the beginning of the story.

And then that theme is carried out all throughout Scripture. It's fascinating stuff. Jesus first sermon contained a metanarrative declaration. In Mark 1:15, he said, the time has come. The kingdom of God has come near.

Repent and believe the good news. In other words, this is what all of history has been set up for. This is the good news. It's here now. The prophecies of the Bible all indicate the existence of a metanarrative.

In other words, history unfolds like acts in a play. The lights come up and down on various scenes, and different characters tread the stage. But there's one plot always moving forward toward the final curtain. It's an overarching story of redemption, and it's found on every page of the Bible. And it's beautiful.

And the deeper you go in Revelation, the more you're like, you've got to be kidding me. This really is the most compelling and beautiful book ever written. And it's the only book you've heard many times that the author is present every time you read it. There is a resource many of you probably already know about. It's called the Bible Project.

The Bible Project has incredible resources. You can write that down. You can watch an intro to every book of the Bible that they do in a very fascinating way with illustrations. The guys that started the Bible Project are brilliant, and they have a gift of simplifying things. But they made a video on the overarching narrative.

Turn your attention to the screens. We're learning how to read different types of literature in the Bible. And we're going to start by talking about biblical narrative. So narratives in their most basic form have characters in a setting going through a series of events and how those events are selected and then arranged by an author. The that's called the plot.

A basic plotline begins with a character in her setting, but then something new or unexpected happens, causing problems that lead up to some ultimate conflict, which is then resolved and the character finds herself changed, living in a new normal. Now, when reading narratives, it's important to understand every scene in the context of its larger plotline. The you can make the same story have a totally different message if you ignore where it occurs in the plot. This happens all the time when people read the Bible. Really?

Yeah. Take for example the story about Gideon. There's this well known scene where Gideon's trying to discern whether God will help him win a battle. And he requests a sign from God. Yeah.

Gideon lays a wool fleece on the ground and asks that in the morning the fleece be wet with dew, but the ground totally dry. And God does it. Now, if you look at this scene just by itself, what is the conflict? How can Gideon know if he'll succeed? And the resolution test.

God ask for a sign and find out. Yeah. And that's how many people actually read this story. And it totally misses the point because it's ignoring the larger plot line. Really?

Yeah. So let's start from the beginning. You'll get the context. The story begins with Gideon and the Israelites living in fear because they're oppressed by an invading people. The Midianites.

Got it. Then there's the call to action. God commissions Gideon to defeat the Midianites and save Israel. Yeah. This is shaping up to be a good story.

But then Gideon's super hesitant, so he asks God to do this magic trick. A sign so I can know it's really you talking to me. And God stoops to his level. He gives him a sign by lighting the fire on an altar. So Gideon's already asked for a sign.

And that's not all. In the next scene, God tells Gideon to tear down an altar to another God. And but Gideon's so afraid he does it at night. So Gideon's skeptical and also a bit of a coward. Then we come to the moment where Gideon's about to face the Midianites and he's still uncertain.

So he asks for another sign, the fleece. He says, I want to know if you'll save Israel by my hand. And God gives him that sign. And he's still uncertain, so he asks for even one more sign, which is just a variation of the previous sign. Okay, so Gideon's asking for way too many signs.

Exactly. In the larger context, it's clear the plot conflict is not how can Gideon discern the mysterious will of God? The real conflict is, when will this guy get his act together and start trusting God? Okay, so then what's the resolution? We have to keep reading.

So Gideon gathers this huge army, 30,000 soldiers, to fight the Midianites. And God says, no way. Too many men. He whittles the army down to 300. Why would he do that?

Well, Gideon's been testing God, so now God returns the favor. He tells Gideon to arm these 300 soldiers with trumpets and torches and then surround the Midianites at night and make all this noise in the hills, which sounds ridiculous, but Gideon does it. And the noise scares the Midianites into this frenzy. They start destroying each other in the dark while Gideon looks on safely from the hills. So this story isn't offering the reader tips for discerning God's will.

No, it's about God's commitment to use weak people with deep flaws to do more than they could have imagined. Okay, so short scenes like Gideon and the fleece are combined with other scenes, making up a larger plot line. And tracing the conflict and resolution through the plot helps you see the message the author's trying to get across. Now, Gideon's story has been set alongside many other stories that are also about these flawed, often questionable leaders called Judges. And each of these has its own internal plot line.

But then altogether, they make up a whole movement of the biblical story, the period of the Judges. And that has its own unified plot line. And there are many movements within the story of the Bible. Exactly. And all the smaller stories, hundreds of them, they fit within the context of their own movements.

And then these movements together make up the building blocks of. Of the grand plot line of the whole story of the Bible. So no matter where I'm reading in the Bible, I need to pay attention to these different layers of plot so I can read each story in context. Exactly. The Bible is such a sophisticated piece of literature, and so all these smaller plot lines keep overlapping, building up the tension.

And when you back up, you can see how they've all been woven together into the unified story that leads to Jesus.

Amen.

So he's knocking and we can open the door. He wants to show us how to see Jesus in the entire story, in the biblical narrative. And we need. And in turn, then we begin to see Jesus in our entire story. We don't love every chapter, we don't love every paragraph, we don't love every sentence.

But we can see his fingerprints through the whole story. We've got to build according to God's blueprint, not someone else's blueprint. Whether that blueprint is informed for you by the world or it's someone else's concept of God that you were handed, that's not accurate. According to scripture, you have to have your own encounter with the word of God. I think about the two on the road to Emmaus.

After Jesus was crucified, put in the tomb, then his body was missing, all of Jerusalem's in an uproar. They're upset. His disciples are forlorn because Jesus has been crucified. Now they can't even find his body. Everyone's talking about it.

There are two men walking on the road to Emmaus, and Jesus shows up, but they don't recognize Jesus. And he says, what are you guys talking about? And they say, well, we're talking about all these things happening in Jerusalem. And he says, what's happening in Jerusalem? And they say to him, have you been under a rock?

I love the irony. He's like, actually, I have. He doesn't say that, but he just kind of goes with it. But they're so moved by this man. Even though they don't recognize him as Jesus, they entreat him to stay.

They want to spend more time with him. They have a meal together. When they start to break bread, they recognize, well, Jesus. Before they recognize him as Jesus, he's opening the Scriptures to them. Then they're having dinner, they recognize Jesus and then he disappears.

And they realize, wait a minute, he was with us the whole time. But this is the statement I love. They said to each other, did our hearts not burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened the Scriptures? Jesus wants to open the scriptures to us and he causes our hearts to burn. You know, the different questions, like party, Christian party questions.

If you could be anyone in the Bible, who would it be? If you could talk to anyone in the Bible, and I have a whole list of people, but I think one of the two on the road to Emmaus would be an option for me. Because to hear Jesus go through the entire Gospel would be pretty incredible. There's this metanarrative that he wants to bring us into. And it just looks like sitting with him, committing to the word of God, meditating on it.

If you're dealing with fear in your life, you find every scripture on fear. You commit it to memory. You write it on cards. You. You invite him as he knocks on the door.

You say, come, sit with me. Teach me, Lord. Before you open the scriptures, you ask him, show me what I haven't been able to see before. His delight. Her delight is in the law of the Lord.

How do we find that delight? By apprehending, number one, passion for the greater story. Number two, by apprehending passion to leave a legacy out of our own authentic encounter. Passion to leave a legacy out of our own authentic encounter. With every generational transference, there's a loss in quality.

And I'm not just saying that because I'm old, there is a loss in quality with every generational transference, we see it even in biblical history. Take the book of Hebrews. You've got the chapters that are written about radical people in the kingdom of God. Like in Hebrews, 11 people who endured, some who were even cut in half for their faith. But in the same book, the writer said things to the people of God, like, you need to learn how to persevere.

You give up too quick. The writer of Hebrews understood that as generations had passed from the time of Moses to the quality of faith had dropped within the religious system of his day. And a lot of times the older generation will wag our fingers and shake our heads instead of saying, no, I'm the one responsible for the decline.

Because the transference is up to us. And I think we focus on the transference and teach out of our own striving, rather than burning for him and causing the younger ones to say, I want what she has. Because even if people copy us, there's something lost in the translation.

I asked Summer if she had any cassette tapes, and she didn't. So she Amazoned and got Roberto to bring this. And who knows, probably spent a bunch of money. Actually, I know how much she spent. But anything I ask for Summer, she makes it happen.

I have an invoice that I have to pay. I'm just kidding.

Oh, man. I don't know. Sorry, Scott. Are you mad at me?

You guys recognize these cassette tapes we were talking about? McDouglas recognized it. He's like, oh, wow. I haven't seen one of those in a while. Remember when you would record things off the radio station?

You would wait for the song and then you would record it, and then you would record another one, and you'd make a mixtape. And then it became like this hot commodity, and all your friends would want it, so you would make copies. And I had. I remember a couple of Christmases, I asked for the dual deck so I could make copies for my friends. But the reality is, when you start from the radio to the cassette, there's already some things lost.

And then every time you make another cassette, it kind of diminishes because we're copying a copy. I believe in us living our lives in a way that people want to follow. It's what I love about Pastor Steph. Whatever Pastor Steph does, there's like, dozens of people that start doing it, juicing, reading 5,000 chapters of the Bible a year. I mean, whatever it is, if she does it.

And I told her, I'm like, you are the best marketer there ever was. She does it mostly for the things of God. That's the most compelling. But she'll talk you into the pots at Walmart. The most comfortable shoes she has ever put on her feet.

Although she will say that about five other pairs of shoes, and she means it about all of them. So she has a life that's worthy of modeling yourself after. But if you fully just try to look at her and copy, it diminishes. You have to go to the source and receive from that. So we live our lives in a way where people are hungry to encounter what we've encountered.

And so we have to be passionate to delight in the law. We have to go. No, I need to leave a legacy.

I want, when something happens to me, my daughter, to be able to grab a Bible and find rich notes in the margins and not just remember that I looked at it on my phone. That's just a practical thing. But more than that, I want her to remember how I lived according to the Word and made her go, no, that's right, God. The word is my tuning fork. That's the plumb line.

I don't have to remember what mom would have done in this situation. I go to the source. That's the legacy. And that's what leads us to delighting in the Lord. When we're passionate about leaving a legacy, and we all are passionate about it.

If you go to a moving funeral, we all do it. We start to think about what we want the mark of our life to be. And I say this a lot. I've said this to the ladies for years. I say, ladies, if you want people to say at your Funeral.

She was the most kind woman I've ever known. Guess what? You have to be kind. We can't just dream about what we want people to say about us. Like, you can't leave a legacy of an authentic encounter unless you have one.

I'm running out of time. I thought this was gonna be so short. Cause I was feeling so overwhelmed in the prep, but I'm getting all worked up. So in the same, you know, in this metanarrative, there's this passion to leave for our kids, to impress things on our kids. By tying the law of the Lord, the commandments of the Lord, the word of the Lord, to the work of our hands, by binding them to the outflow of our minds, the activity of our minds.

So then that's the fruit of our lives. And instead of faith, the quality of faith diminishing from our generation to the next, we burn for him. And then our kids and the generations behind us say, no, no, no. I remember. Like, I remember how Pastor Steph walked this out.

I've got to run to him. I've got to know the word. So the writer of Hebrews addresses this. This idea of the cassette. You went through all of that just for me to hold this up?

Thank you, Summer. You're amazing.

Hebrews 8, 5, 7. They speaking of the priests serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. This is why Moses was warned. This is why Moses was warned. Am I giving you a warning?

I am, because I believe the Lord's giving us a warning. He was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle. See to it that you make everything according to the pattern, not our own spin on it. Don't get the download about the tabernacle and how to do the fabrics and what height and width and breadth. And don't get all of that and go, well, actually, there's actually a better way, a faster way.

He says, no, no, no, you do it the way I say. Because there's a metanarrative you can't see around every corner. You follow what I say. You follow what I've laid out. Verse 6.

But in fact, the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is Mediator is superior to the Old One, since the New Covenant is established on better promises. For if there had been nothing wrong with the first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. He's not saying, we tried the Old Covenant. It's bad. Let's try something new.

He's saying, no, it's part of the metanarrative. There were natural things and systems that were established so that you could see the Old Covenant is a shadow of the New Covenant. It's not getting rid of what was before. It's fulfilling what was before. That's why Jesus said, I didn't come to abolish the law.

I came to fulfill it. So the tabernacle was commanded by God to Moses to build with very specific instructions and dimensions. And when God gave this to Moses, he. He spoke to him face to face as a man speaks with a friend. We all need that.

We can hear the sermons. We can be compelled. I hope tonight that you're compelled, but it's to go and eat the scroll for yourself. It'll change everything. This encounter with God and with his Word is what motivated Moses.

And then Moses had to relay what. What he heard to God's people when he came down from the mountain. And that's where the challenge came in. Because the people had a propensity to only wanna receive it from Moses, and he was gone too long. So then they adjusted things according to their own purposes and agendas and desires.

And we're just like that. So he's saying, here's the warning. Do it the way I said. Meditate on the word day and night. And if it's not your delight, position yourself for it to become the delight.

And a great place to start is to commit yourself to the metanarrative. And there are all kinds of resources. BibleProject has podcasts on all kinds of subjects, and it will make you hungry for the word of God. So it had been these people that the writer of Hebrews is writing to. Now, these Hebrews, he's speaking about a tabernacle they weren't familiar with.

They knew a temple, kind of Solomon's had been destroyed, and now there's another one. But they don't really understand the tabernacle. They're generations removed. So the writer is pointing to something they had never personally seen or experienced. And this had been happening for hundreds of years.

So the writer spoke of the old covenant that was given the covenant of Moses, when God promised to be with his people if he kept his commandments. But he's saying, but I'm inviting you to an encounter with a better covenant. Understand, there's a bigger story, but you get to encounter the better covenant, he said. And this covenant maker, Jesus, didn't. He's not telling us to build the tabernacle.

He became the tabernacle. He was the dwelling place of God. And Rather than a high priest burning an offering, a bull, a goat, to shed the blood of something else, to atone for our sin, Jesus became the sacrifice. He was the priest and the sacrifice. He offered himself as a gift.

And when you go through the story of how lost humanity was, we understand the perfect lamb. I mean, there are so many incredible things, even the timing of the feast and when Jesus showed up in different moments in history. It's not just for Bible nerds. It is for us to fall in love with the story. Jesus is a great high priest, a better high priest, and he was bringing a better covenant.

But the people who are just like us were attempting to copy a lesser covenant. That's great. Jesus is coming with a better covenant. But our forefathers understood this other one, but we don't fully understand that. So we're kind of creating our own.

And it's based on good behavior and not grace. And it's all messed up. When Moses went to get the Ten Commandments, the instructions from God, by the time Moses came down from the mountain, they weren't waiting on the Lord, they were waiting on Moses and got sick of waiting. So then he comes down and they're worshiping a cow made out of gold earrings. And you know what that revealed in that moment?

They came out of Egypt, but Egypt had not come out of them. This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle. See to it you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain because it's a shadow of what's to come. See to it that we walk out according to his precepts so that people say no, that's just a shadow. Shadow of what's available to me in the perfect one.

We have to learn how to delight in the law of the Lord. And we can find this delight by apprehending one number one passion for the greater story, for the metanarrative, and a commitment to the metanarrative in our own lives. If all of us have the chapters where we would run and give up if it wasn't for the greater story, at least I would like tonight run away. We apprehend. We find this delight by apprehending passion to leave a legacy out of our own authentic encounter with the Word of God.

And thirdly, we apprehend the delight of the Lord by having passion for the currency of heaven. And this is where we're going to wrap it up, and I'm going to do this pretty quickly, and we're going to spend just a couple of minutes aligning our hearts to the Lord in worship. In Matthew 6, 1921, it says, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

I remember Mel Denton saying one time that politically and legally, they can try to get God out of the schools or out of government institutions, but we can always carry love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. We can always bear fruit. And Mel pointed out, against such there is no law. Right? We let the fruit of the beauty of this story become what drives us because there's a currency of heaven and the word of God.

We aren't planted by the lifestream without a delight in the law of the Lord. So I'm going to wrap it up with this idea because I've given a lot of my life to teaching the Book of Revelation, the end times. A lot of people fear the Book of Revelation. Many don't read the Book of Revelation yet it's the only book that actually states that you will receive a blessing if you read it. Yet we avoid it.

Revelation 1:3. Blessed is the one who reads aloud, who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near. Well, the judgments of God that will cleanse the earth are all throughout the book of Revelation. And there's all kinds of debate, you know, about what God would allow us to suffer and not suffer. And I'm not going there tonight, although I kind of want to.

But there is a staggering, and I show the RDS students this. There's a staggering parallel between the plagues and of Egypt and the judgments that will come to the earth. In Revelation, God did not spare the Israelites from the plagues. They had to live through it. They were on earth, but they were protected.

Think Daniel in the lion's den. Thank Goshen. When they were. When there were the outbreak of. The outbreak of frogs, they were protected from that.

When there was darkness, there was light in Goshen. So there is a. There will be judgment on the earth to cleanse the earth. And we run from that because we just say, well, God wouldn't do that. But we have to examine it in the metanarrative saying, no, God's not allowing this to come because he's unkind.

It's part of his greater story. So I'm Gonna just show you two things. In Revelation, we don't have slides for this, but in Revelation 6, we read all about judgments that'll come to the earth. Not gonna get into those. But it says in verses 15 through 17 that as these judgments are unfolding, the kings of the earth, the great ones, the generals, the rich, the powerful, everyone slave and free, hid themselves.

This is what John was seeing in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains. And rocks fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of their wrath has come. And who can stand? Who can stand in the midst of these judgments?

Who's gonna make it? Who can save us is what they'll be asking the kings of the earth. Who will deliver us? Can kings and governments? Can they?

What about those with great influence? What about our celebrities? What about our military, with all their technology? Can they save us in the day of trouble? Is it the rich who will save us?

No. They'll be at mountains, asking the rocks to fall on them to escape the wrath of the land. So who's going to be able to stand? The answer is one chapter later, in Revelation 7, verses 9 through 12. After this, I look.

Do you see why the metanarrative is so important? This is the currency of heaven, friends, where we are committed to the story no matter what comes after this. I looked and behold a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, crying out with a loud voice, salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. And they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying Amen.

Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power, and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen. Listen to what Eugene Peterson said about these two chapters. These people are not only secure, they are exuberant. Speaking of chapter seven, this is a curious but holy biblical phenomenon.

The most frightening representations of evil, Revelation 6 are set alongside extravagant praise and Revelation 7. Christians sing. They sing in the desert, they sing in the night, they sing in prison, they sing in the storm. Any evil, no matter how fearsome, is exposed as weak and pedantic before such songs. And I'm here to tell you that the church that sings in the midst of trial is the one who has found her delight in the law of the Lord.

And these songs in the midst of suffering are the currency of heaven. So who can stand? We can the church who is willing to delight herself in the Word of God. The church that is willing to find her delight by apprehending passion for the greater story, by apprehending a passion to leave a legacy out of an authentic encounter with the Word and presence of God and a church that is willing or who has a passion to have the currency of heaven. We can stand the church who is willing to sing and it is a song that comes out of revelation of the Word of God.