MAR 27 2022 | Worship: More Than A Song S1E2 | Living A Vertical Life

Sea Change Church · MAR 27 2022 | Worship Ep 2 | Living A Vertical Life
Psalm 121
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Come and give me life I lift my eyes up Up to the mountains Where does my help come from Hey everybody I'm Bill Fitzmaurice I'm currently the president Of the Wednesday Surf Club And as Joe said I'll be outside Signing up volunteers And thank you very much For your time Reading some scripture I lift my eyes To the mountains Where does my help come from My help comes from the Lord The maker of heaven and earth He will not let your foot slip He who watches over you Will not slumber Indeed He who watches over Israel Will neither slumber nor sleep The Lord watches over you The Lord is your shade At your right hand The sun will not harm you by day Nor the moon by night The Lord will keep you From all harm He will watch over your life The Lord will watch over Your coming and going Both now and forevermore The word of the Lord Thank you I have a man I have a man I have a man I have a man I have a man I have a man I have a man I have a man I have a man I have a man I have a man I have a man I have a man I have a man to the one Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. read these psalms, it is not really a walk in the park. It is not so much a trail walk through Mount Laguna. You are actually ascending, and there is some peril as you move upward to meet the Lord at the top of the mountain. Now, you'll also see in a moment that he's not just at the top of the mountain. He helps us along the way. This is a powerful psalm of God's help and overwatch of our lives. So if you read through this psalm, if you're ever in a rough space, I knew some people this week that were struggling, I sent them this psalm because it's very encouraging.

And one of the things you can do is if you're in a tough place, you can take these psalms of ascent and you can begin to read Psalm 120 through Psalm 124 and read these and insert these in a physical way. You speak them over in a way of declaration into your life. But like I said, it is when we are ascending the mountain of the Lord in worship and going towards spiritual things, it is more like mountaineering with like an ice pick and moving up and cables and the danger of actually slipping and falling. We see that in this passage. It is closer to that than like, hey, let's go to Laguna, have a picnic, and walk on the trail. We'll talk about that in a second. Last week, here's what we discovered last week. There's two things last week we discovered, and we're going to discover two more this week, and they're very practical. The first is last week we discovered that worship acknowledges God as greater than ourselves and detoxifies our lives by purifying our tongue. So one of the core things, the key thing that God, you know, gives us worship, because worship isn't something God created.

Worship happens when you encounter somebody who is worthy of worship. So if you, the Bible shows that if you were to stand in front of God right now, you would, like a reflex, you know how you can't stop a reflex, you would be forced, wouldn't be forced, you would just naturally worship because you would be in awe. And so worship is a reaction. So we see that reaction, but that reaction is meant to have a, a, a, to play out in the way that you live your life. Go to verse one.

I lift my eyes up to the mountains. Where does my help come from? And so you see an actual lifting up of the eyes. One of the things you'll notice is God didn't put your eyes on the top of your head, right? So if God wanted us to constantly be looking up, he would have put eyes on the top of our head. No, God has put our eyes straight in front of us, and it is a work of the will, in verse one, as we'll see in just a moment, that you need to actually make a decision to look up in your life. That is sometimes difficult to do. So worship is more, this week we'll find out that worship is more of a renewed focus or a headspace. Worship is more than just a renewed focus or a headspace. Worship is an act of ascent that directs our action in the direction of that new focus, in that renewed focus. Let's just go back to mountaineering. Show that picture if you would. I had a dream last night. I was climbing the Matterhorn with Kai, which is really interesting. Kai goes to our church, and he wants to climb.

He actually wants to still climb the Matterhorn. I want nothing to do with the Matterhorn, but I still had a dream I was doing it, and that was good enough for me. And so when you see, there's a difference between looking at the mountain and thinking, I really would love to stand atop of Everest or atop of the Matterhorn, and actually getting the ice pick, the climbing boots, the ropes, and actually ascending to go to that place. Our spiritual life is the same way, and these are mountaineering. These are mountaineering scriptures show that just sitting in the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth, and looking up towards Jerusalem and saying, I want to, oh man, that mountaintop, I'm going to look up to the mountains, but never actually walking up to Jerusalem, this is what they did. You are not going to be living the life that scripture calls us to. It's one thing to come and worship in an amazing manicured worship environment, and churches are getting really, really good at that. They're getting so good at making sure the environment, the music is right.

They're telling worship leaders, countdown, six, five, four, go to the chorus. There's all these things that are happening. Start the smoke machine, you know, whatever it is, of all these things that are happening to create a manicured worship environment. And people say, man, that church just knows how to worship. You won't know if our church knows how to worship unless you spend time with our people at the Costco parking lot when they're trying to get a spot. It was my spot. I just want you to know it was my spot. You passing it and then realizing that you passed it and seeing it and backing up and then saying it's yours. Well, it should have given it to her anyways, but her, him, them. Nonetheless, it was my spot. Here's today's focus we're going to work on. Number one, worship fixes our gaze on an epicenter of God's glory, provision, and care. So when you look up, what are you looking to?

So in your life, we're going to ask you a question in a moment. Where are you focusing? The thing we're going to learn today, last week, was that it detoxifies our life and that it also acknowledges that God, someone is greater than ourselves, which puts us in a position of humility and worship. That was last week. This week, we're going to focus on our gaze, on fixing our gaze on an epicenter of God's glory, provision, and care. And the second thing today is worship is as physical as it is spiritual. That worship is a physical thing that you do. I mentioned in the last sermon, where you swipe is a physical thing on your phone. It is a physical thing you do, and it can be an act of worship or it can be an act that leads you to death. It can be an act that does nothing as well.

You're just setting the timer for what time you're going to wake up in the morning. And that could actually be a physical thing as well, actually, if you want to wake up early to spend time with God or to do whatever you would do. But it is a physical thing. Let's go to the first one. Worship fixes our gaze on an epicenter of God's glory, provision, and care. I use that word specifically because it is easy to make ourselves or our issues or our problems or the problems of the world or all the things that are happening around the world, the epicenter of our focus. I would say that we need to have self-care.

We need to be aware of where we are and look inward and know our feelings. But I don't think you want to be the epicenter of your thoughts. I don't think everything that you think about should be about yourself or how people are thinking about you or all that where you become the central focus. When we lift our eyes up, we lift our eyes up. And you realize God also didn't make our eyes looking inward the opposite direction. We do have eyes of the heart that are meant to do that. But our eyes are meant to look towards something and to focus on something. I will assure you that what we focus on will change the trajectory of your life. Whatever you're focusing on on a regular basis. If you are a person and you're in a relationship with somebody and you are constantly focusing on how they let you down, on their faults of the past, on all the mistakes they've ever made, on the thing that they didn't do right well, they did this but they didn't do it quite right. If you are constantly focusing on that, the trajectory of your relationship will go in that direction. It's whatever you're focusing on. If you're focusing on someone's potential, which I said as a child, I wasn't a great child to raise. You know what I mean? I had some issues and some struggles. But one of the things my family regularly did was their focus was not on what I did wrong.

It was always on my potential. And so I had my dad wrote me like this four-page letter and he did the steps of success. I remember it. It was on this yellow pad because he was a big yellow pad guy. I'm still a yellow pad guy. I just haven't been able to do digital to-do lists. It's got to be on a yellow pad for me. A lot of people are like that. And he gave me this thing, the steps to success. And I had just gotten kicked out of Christian High, I think, for the second time or something like that. I did get kicked out twice, which is tough to do. That's a record. And I remember looking at that and it was all about my potential. It was focusing on, hey, you can do this. You're really great at this. This is amazing. You can do this so well. I'm so, you know, when you do this, this is how it affects our lives. And it was always focusing on potential. So in this scripture, go to verse one, I lift my eyes up where? To the mountains. Now, why the mountains? Well, the mountain is a metaphor. Everything God created, according to Romans chapter two, has a meaning. So everything that we see. And so this metaphor has a meaning. So God implanted, it says in Romans chapter two, it says his divine nature and his invisible qualities into creation. So that when you look at something, you can know about it and it gives it meaning. And so when you look at a mountain, what does God mean? Well, mountains are massive. So when you look at a mountain, it's massive. God is massive. When you look at a mountain, it is hard to move. Jesus, that's why he says you're going to move a mountain. It is a stable, it is a stable place. A mountain ascends to the top. A mountain is beautiful. All the things you see, you could go on and on throughout creation and see God. One of the things the devil wants to do is to remove meaning. Because when you remove meaning, you remove the story that God has implanted about himself in meaning. There is a huge debate in our culture today over meaning. What does it mean? What is the definition of this? Can you describe this? As believers, we are willing to accept the limitations of something in order to have meaning. What do I mean by that? If you were going to define something, it means that it's not something else, right? And so one of the problems with our culture is we want everything to be everything. And so if you have a meaning, you have a limitation. So chocolate is not vanilla. Vanilla is not chocolate. And so as believers, we are willing to say that things have a limit. Why? Because they're based in a truth and a reality of the way God made it. And so one of the things about following Christ is you're going to see limiting principles. In this verse here, it is saying where do you look up to? That metaphor, that meaning is a mountain. Is God a mountain? Well, according to Isaiah chapter 2, which is great, I think it's Isaiah chapter 2, you can do this for extra homework, you can read all about why God calls himself a mountain. Is God a mountain? Of course God's not a mountain. But he uses that for a reason. And so these scriptures of mountaineering are meant to bring meaning. They're meant to bring definition. Because without definition, you can't have meaning.

And this is why as our culture continues to move away from definitions, because they're limiting, which we agree they're self-limiting, you have people that are struggling with meaning. Because you have to know what something is before you can define it. You have to accept what it is, what it's been created to do, and then the definition comes from that. So God has created that and brought that meaning. So worship fixes our epicenter on the God's glory. What are you looking at? Where are you focusing? Where is your focus? Is it on the house? Is it on the job? Is it on the career? I met with some friends this week in a counseling appointment, and one of the people in the counseling said, I want to have success. And I said, well, what is success? What measures success?

And we kept going down that rabbit trail, like, well, how do you know it? Well, I guess it's the things I want. And so I asked the question, so the things you want means if you get what you want, then you succeed it. And then pretty soon the person realized they were boxed into a corner. I wasn't trying to box them into a corner, but they said, I think you boxed me into a corner. And in the end, we had a really good conversation about what does success mean and what are we trying to get? What are you focusing on? What do you want? And are the things that you're focusing on leading you to life or to death? I read a conversation, I mean, I read an article this week that we have lost 40% of our attention span since 2007. It was by a Microsoft study in Canada, and it shows that our current attention span is seven seconds. Can you show me the picture real quick? A goldfish has eight, okay? A goldfish has eight seconds of attention span. Now, it is said that, and according to the article, these swiping apps on your phone where you're only watching what hits your dopamine. So you never, you immediately get rid of anything you don't like. It's just quickly moving to the thing you like, the thing you like, the thing you like, the next thing you like, and you're sitting there scrolling forever. It is actually removing our attention span, and it actually causes us to never be able to have anything in focus, especially things in focus of meaning. Now, I read another article that said that if you were to go, and China owns TikTok, if you were to go to Chinese TikTok, and you were in China, as you swiped, you would see that the videos are longer, and so they've intentionally made the videos longer. You would also see in the algorithm, it doesn't just give you what you like. So if you were, I did a mini twerk last time. I'm not going to subject you to it, but if you were really into twerking, or you're really into some dumb dance, and if you see your kids, well, not that it's dumb, but if you see your kids on the street corner doing this all the time, it's because of what they're swiping through, and their dances are super important.

If you were to be in China, the thing that they focus on is the algorithm just isn't based on what you like. They throw things in there that they want to put into society. So as you swipe through, there's a lot of robotics. If you swipe through, there's a lot of art. As you swipe through, there is a lot of medicine and science, and they make like building a robot and architecture super cool. So as kids are swiping through, they also limit how much time, not that I'm saying I want to live under the CCP, but they actually limit how much time because they realize that it actually is not good for society to sit there with too much time all the time, and the algorithm actually moves you towards things of meaning. If you were to look at the American algorithm, according to the article I read, if you look at the American algorithm, all it does is take you to meaninglessness.

There is no robotics. There is no science. There are no, it all just is people doing stupid things and throwing hot dogs at each other, and it's just like idiocy for the most part. The article said that what it's causing us to do is to focus on meaninglessness. Now, if I was, conspiracy theory, put my tinfoil hat on, if I was in another society and I wanted to actually destroy the core of society, I would build something for young adults that causes them to lose focus and what they do focus on has no value in life at all. And so it is important, where are your kids? And that used to mean something different when I was a kid. It was like I was off riding my bike, now they can be in your bedroom, and you can ask your kid, where are your kids? It shows us that back to the scripture, when we put our eyes up, we are focusing on something greater than ourself. And we are focusing on the epicenter of God's presence, love, and provision. Go to verse 2. He asked himself the question, I look up to the mountains, and then he asked the question in verse 1, where does my help come from?

My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. And so we saw first, and you'll see this in your notes, that worship is a concise decision to change our focus, to lift our eyes up. When you look towards forgiveness, it lifts your eyes up. When you look towards worshiping God, to speaking to how good God is, when you use gratitude, all of these things are conscious decisions that cause your focus to look upward. When you're in a relationship with people, are you looking downward? How easy is it to be critical? Criticism is so easy. Living towards your base passions is so easy. We do live in a world that I think encourages you to, hey, if you want to do it, just do it. If you want to do it, just do it. I remember Anthony Bourdain had this quote. He said, your body is not a temple. It's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride. And I would say I would completely disagree with that, that, you know, we want to do things that actually have meaning that build us up.

Where is your focus? He asked the question, where does my help come from? He says my help comes from who? The maker of heaven and earth. Now, why is that important? Why does he put in maker of heaven and earth? Now, we're in a mountaineering, we are in an outdoors theme of 15 psalms that uses this on a regular basis that is saying, look to the creation because as you look at creation, you can worship God. Now, in Romans 2, it says that people, they see the creation, it's so glorious, they start worshiping creation and they stop worshiping God. But it's using these and it's telling us to look to these things. Why? Because we realize that God is the maker of all these things. And if you have a problem within the biosphere or the emotional sphere of something God created, it means that he's got charge and the ability to fix that problem. He doesn't say, you know, I lift my eyes up to the maker of heaven and earth, but I have a problem that is outside of what God has created. Every problem you have, every issue you have is within the sphere of God's influence. That is what he's saying here in verse 1. But oftentimes, we start to think that we're all alone. As we'll see in just a moment, you are not alone on this journey up the mountain. He says, where does my help come from? The maker, that is a capital M as on there in that scripture in the Hebrew, that is a term, a noun that speaks of who God is. It defines God. God is a maker of heaven and earth. And if he made heaven and earth, he can fix your problem in heaven or on heaven, excuse me, on earth through his ability from heaven. So it says, worship reminds us that all the challenges we face in the world are within the dominion of the one who created it, the maker of heaven and earth. And go to verse 3 through 5 now.

Verse 3 through 5 says, he will not let your foot slip. The one who watches over you will not slumber. Verse 4, indeed, he who watches over Israel will not slumber or not sleep. The Lord watches over you. So the second thing we're speaking about today, the first one was worship fixes your gaze on an epicenter of God's glory, where you focus. And the next is worship is a physical as it is spiritual.

Now, let me say what I mean by that. There's a picture here of the Hillary step. This is the Hillary step. Now, if you have ever studied mountaineering or you've studied Everest, Edmund Hillary with Nizel Tanzing got to the top of Everest. He was the first to climb up there. And when he got there, there was this 20-foot high steep rock face that actually took some, it's like climbing. I know Brian is a climber and he's in the back there. He's a climber and he could probably climb something like that. But climbing it with all your mountaineering gear on, you hit this obstacle on the way up.

What I think is interesting in Christianity, you can leave that picture up for a second. As people look at Christianity, as soon as they accept Christ or you hear about Jesus, we expect it to be a hike in Mount Laguna. And we oftentimes don't think of our faith as like mountaineering. Following Jesus is hard. Following Jesus, as you'll see in just a moment, it doesn't say the Lord carried me up to the top of the mountain. You actually have to go on your own. You're going to see in a second that he guides you up. He's there along the way. He watches over you. But you have to take the decision to make some very treacherous steps going forward. Why would God put the treachery of the ascent into this scripture? Why wouldn't God, if he just wanted to make things easier, everybody say, I live in the valley. Get on your bike and cruise down to me. I'll be there waiting for you in the meadow. Granted, Psalm 23 has meadow and things of this nature. But he shows that as we move forward in our spiritual life, there's many ways you can fall. And one of those is faith. God let me down.

God didn't have timing. Somebody close to you died. You had a health issue. You had a financial issue. The thing that you always wanted to do never got to happen. So now you feel like you don't have purpose. Along the way, there were so many places that we can fall. But God says that if we lean into him, that he is here, there with us. So the first thing I just wanted to say is that when the scripture talks about ascending the mountain of God, it is treacherous and there is danger in doing it. But God says this, go to verse five. But it's, or excuse me, verse four. He will not let your foot slip.

He who watches over you will not slumber. It's interesting. Imagine when you put your foot there that God taking his hand and putting his hand on each step. They call, they're called clamp and then they clamp them on. So they're called clamp-ons that they put on your feet and they have these big spikes on them. Imagine these big spikes and you have the, you know, as you climb and you have the pickaxe and all the things that you use to climb. That God is there and as you climb, each time he makes sure your foot is solid and he sets it. Even as you're going up the Hillary step. Even as you're going to the most difficult place. And one of the things we see in this scripture is he doesn't call you to climb alone.

He doesn't say, hey, I'm up here at the top of the mountain. I'm with all the Tibetan flags up here and I'm taking some great selfies. See you down there in the Hillary step. Get up when you can. No, you know, hope you have the supplemental oxygen. I've been reading a little too much about it. So as he comes up, no, it says God isn't waiting at the top of the mountain. He's there at the top of the mountain. But if you would, look what it says. It says he watches over you. He won't sleep or slumber.

The Lord watches over you. It says the Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun will not harm you by day. The moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all harm. He will watch over your entire life. The Lord will watch over your coming, your going, both now, forever more. He also says, and like I said before, he will not let your foot slip. Which means he's with you on the journey. It isn't God's there and I have to take this treacherous journey. He's not only there that watching your foot that it won't slip.

He's guiding you along the way. But we have to follow his cues as we make our ascent that God is with us. If you turn your notes over, the life of worship is closer to mountaineering than trail walking. He won't let your foot slip and he will be your guide. Verse 4 and 5, he will watch over you. I would say, notice that the language of ascent involves God watching over us and guiding us rather than carrying us to the top.

Now there's a lot of places in the scripture where I tried to prove scripturally that God never carries us. It didn't work. There was a million times where it says God carried us. I was like, that would be a really salient point. If I say God never carries us, there's a million places in scripture where like it was so wrong, it was like I hadn't even read the Bible before. Like that's how wrong that point was.

But in this particular passage, it basically shows that God isn't saying I'm going to carry you to the top so your foot won't slip. He's actually saying you actually have to do something. You know, that is so true in our lives today. If you are going to have a life of ascent, you are going to make decisions. Every time you press a button, not every time, but like I said earlier in the sermon, when you press a button on Netflix, when you read an article, when you choose to go somewhere, whenever you make a decision, you can choose ascent. You can choose to add ascent into that or we can sometimes just go for the descent. We can go to the things that are easiest. Notice that the language of ascent is God watching over us and guiding us rather than carrying us to the top. If you're going to follow Jesus, it's hard. Jesus said, if you follow me, they won't like you very much. That's not what he said. He said the world will what? Hate you. Hate. That's a really strong word. Why? Because the way we live is completely antithetical. We believe that things have meaning. We believe that things have limitations and because something is limited doesn't mean it's bad. Just because chocolate isn't vanilla and vanilla isn't chocolate doesn't mean that chocolate isn't good. I don't like white chocolate. No such thing as white chocolate. It's not even chocolate. It's a bad definition. But nonetheless, we believe that things have meaning. Why is the world going to hate you? Because we believe in things like life and hope and forgiveness. And we believe in saying no to yourself on a regular basis. We believe saying no to certain things in society. We believe in limitations in a world that wants zero limitations with no meaning and chaos. Satan is the author of chaos. That's why he doesn't want anything to have a meaning.

He doesn't want sexuality to have a meaning. Just consent is the only meaning. Consent is not the only meaning of sexuality. He wants to have a meaning. Marriage has a meaning. Men have a meaning. Women have a meaning. Mountains have a meaning. Everything has a meaning and everything points to who God is because he inserted the story of himself into everything he made. The devil is not about meaning and he wants chaos and he wants confusion and he wants people to walk around hopeless with no meaning. And so we look up to the mountain. We look up to where our help comes from.

Two things. We're done in about two minutes. Number one, here's two practical steps that this week you can walk a spiritual life of ascent. Number one, lift your eyes up and your heart will follow. Lift your eyes up. What are you focusing on? What are you looking at? Where are you constantly looking? Lift your eyes up and your heart will follow. Number two, make concise physical decisions of ascent.

Where will you go? I remember when I got sober, I changed my calendar. I said, I will not go here. I won't. It just literally in my head thought of all the places in San Diego and south of the border where I said, I will not go there. I will go here to church. I will go to this Bible study here in La Jolla. I won't go to that there. I definitely ain't going there. You know, I will hang out with this person because they bring me life. This person, we're going to put them on edit for a while.

And I began to make physical decisions that changed my life. Where you go, what you do with your time will change your life. But it's oftentimes based on your focus. Don't expect to get to the mountain, to the top of the mountain if you're focusing on the valley. Don't expect to get to the ascent. Don't expect to get to the highest place on perhaps the Matterhorn or whatever it is, wherever you're going spiritually, if you're constantly focusing on the valley. Two things, lift your eyes up, your heart will follow. Make a concise physical decision of ascent this week. Amen?

Stand if you would. I want to bless you. If you want to be prayed for, we have people that have little prayer name tags on. They've been trained. They will pray for you up the front. And then also, if you want to next steps to find out about following Jesus, more about our church, and then small groups as well in the courtyard, we'll pray for you. If you want to extend your hands, if you're comfortable with that, I want to play a blessing on you today. Lord Jesus, we pray a blessing of ascent. As these people begin to walk, God, and make decisions to look up.

To look up from depression, to look up from the negative, to look up the glory of your world, Lord God. The sun is shining another day, God. You are there, and we cry out help. I pray for help, God. I pray for consolation. I pray that their foot would not slip, Lord God, and they would walk further, God, with you beside them, watching over them. You do not sleep. You do not slumber. Give them faith. Give them joy. Give them hope. We send you out now as an army of God's consolation and love.

In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Hey, we love you guys. Have a great week. Stop the coffee on the way out. Bye-bye. A's