A Church In Awe Of God

Yes. Amen. Amen. Oh, good morning church. Good morning. Happy Labor Day weekend. I'm I'm so glad you're here. We're starting a brand new series and we're calling this series That's my church. Now, I want you to understand the perspective on that. It's it's not you and I pointing to Camelback and saying, "That's my church." Although you can do that and that would be very true. But this series is from the perspective of Jesus looking at the church and looking at us and saying that's my church. And we're going to go through all four weeks of this and we're going to look at what it what does it mean to be that church from God's perspective?

What is he looking at? What does it mean to be a church that pleases God? If we're going to be a church that pleases God, we need to be people in the process of becoming like Jesus. Because a church that pleases God is full of people whose lives are pleasing God. That's the perspective of this. And here's what I know about most of us. I'm pretty sure that we are convinced that God loves us. We talk about that all the time. We understand that. We recognize it through scripture. We know that he's working in our lives.

But the truth of the matter is we're not always sure that God is pleased with us. And if you're a parent and you're here this morning, you understand what I'm talking about. Because as parents, we absolutely love our children and we love them always. But we are not always pleased with the decisions that they make. And there's a difference between the two. And as God looks at us, you know, there's a there's a passage of scripture that I pulled from our last year ma in last series in Matthew. And this is when Jesus steps up to the water where John the Baptist is baptizing.

and he steps into the water a and he steps up to John for John to baptize him and John's response to Jesus is he just backs away and he says I am not I'm not qualified to tie your sandals and Jesus says John baptize me and everybody knows you don't say no to Jesus and so John baptizes Jesus and as he comes up out of the water the scripture says that the Holy Spirit just settles right over him in the form of a dove. And God the Father in this passage in Matthew chapter 3 says, it says, "A voice from heaven said, this is my son whom I love.

With him I am well pleased." As a church, we know that God loves us. What does it mean to be a church that he says I am well pleased with? And over the next four weeks, I want us to look at that. I want us to really settle in on that. See, I came up with four qualities of a church that pleases God. There are more, but these are the four that we together are going to look at. It's a church that is filled with awe of who God is. a sense of awe genuinely in our lives when we talk about and look about and react to God.

It's a church that's filled with faith. Without faith, it's impossible to please God. The scripture says it's a church that's filled with faith. And it's a unified church. Jesus said this was a big deal to him. I want my church to be unified. I want them to be one body. And it's a loving church. The world will know that you're my disciples by the way you love one another. And if we're those, then we're going to be a church that takes God seriously. And this morning, the subject that I want to step into is the first one.

A church in awe of God. A people in awe of God. a people who recognize who God is. A reverent church fears the Lord and lives with a sincere obedience to him. What he says we do. What he asks we do. Psalm 147 says, 'The Lord delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love. He delights in those fe who fear him. It says the Lord, it doesn't say the man upstairs or a higher power. The Lord delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love.

In other words, those whose approach to him is not casual. It's so much more than casual. Those who fear him, I that Hebrew word for fear, I put it up here for us. See, see an awfilled reverently aware of God's holiness and his authority. A real clear understanding of the awesomeness of God. We say, "I put my faith in Jesus." But I got to tell you, all too often, our faith in Amazon is stronger than our faith in Jesus. because we're pretty sure that package is coming in the morning. And if it messes up, you're willing to give him a lot of grace.

Oh, it'll come the next day. But when it comes to God, we sometimes are not willing to lean in that much. The Lord delights in those who fear him. See, reverence for God isn't a fear that drives us away from God, but it's an awe that draws us to him. I go on. It's see it's a it's a deep rich sense of God's goodness, of God's holiness, of his righteousness, of his power. It's a recognition that God himself is the only one who's really worthy of us doing what we do here on Sunday morning and singing worship and praise to him just because of who he is.

He's the only one that's really worthy of us saying, "I'm going to give my life to him. I'm going to walk through life doing life, but doing it embracing him as not just my savior, but the Lord of my life." And over these four weeks, this is going to be the Sunday that's probably most likely to invade your space. I'm I'm going to ease off on the next three Sundays, but I'm gonna I'm gonna lean right into it this morning. You might not want to say amen at times because I'll probably be coming for you next.

You know, sometimes we sit here and say, you know, I love Camelback. I want the messages to encourage me. I just I just want to be encouraged and I want to hear because but don't mess with my stuff and don't mess with my thinking or don't mess with the things I'm doing. I really believe God's going to mess with some of your stuff this morning. You say, "Why does this matter?" It matters because the way we view God determines the way we live. Our perspective and where we place God determines where we live.

Let me ask you the hard question here. Here's the hard question. What does your life, what does my life, what does your life say about what you believe in God? If you take maybe just the last month or take the last six months and look at them in the areas of your life, what does it say about what you think about God or what you believe about God?

some of your actions, your responses to certain situations, the things that you look at, what you do with your time, what you do with your money, the things that you think about. A casual view of God means you treat God's word casually, which means you open up God's word and you read it or you hear on a Sunday morning and we hear things from God's word and you say, "Well, that's so true. I'm going to do that. I really believe that, but well, I'll just get right by I'll skip right by that one." and we have this ability to just to just walk past certain things that we know that God wants to do in our lives.

We treat God's word casually. Another thing that we do if we have a casual view of God, when conviction touches on an area in our lives, we have this ability to ignore it and we just rationalize sin because God convicts us of sin in our lives and so we rationalize it and we put it to this place where we're willing to say, "Well, that's that's just how I am." Or maybe really it's no big deal. Or maybe really, you know what, it's none of your business. If we treat God's word casually, if we have a casual view of God, you know what God says, but you do what you want anyway.

But if we have a serious view of God in those same areas, you take God's word seriously and you don't we don't just read it occasionally. We read it on a regular basis because we want to get to know him and we want our lives to be led by truth. Let me Why on earth and I know us because we mess this up. Why on earth would we want to walk through life not knowing truth?

Not taking the creator of the universe serious who knows everything about everything and everything about our lives and knows the path for our lives. And yet we don't so often listen. In second Timothy, Paul is writing to young Timothy and Paul says this to Timothy. He says, "All scripture," I pulled this from our last series. "All scripture is God breathed." And you know what it's useful for?

It's useful to teach us. It's useful for rebuking us. We're we're doing wrong things. Glen, don't do that anymore. It's useful for correcting and training in righteousness. It says it's useful for comforting us. God's word is useful for all these things. He says, "So that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." God wants you and I doing good works in a broken world. Now, let me clear something up here. You see that where it says good work there, I want to make sure that we fully understand this.

When we accept Christ as our savior, the blood of Jesus Christ on the cross, when he was crucified and buried and he was dead and he rose from the dead, the blood of Jesus Christ paid the price for your sins and for my sins. When we accept him as our savior, we become his adopted child and we are in his family. Real clarity. There are no works. The Bible says that we're saved by grace through faith in God. Not that anyone could boast. When we're talking about good work in these scriptures, we're talking about good works that we are doing because we are all ready saved.

There is no working for our salvation. There's nothing we could ever do to pay for our salvation because there God is God and we are not. And so we're in this place where we're doing good works. But look, look, look with me at Philippians here. He says this in Philippians. He said, "Work hard." He's talking to believers. Salvation prices already paid. We're in his family. Nobody is working for salvation. All of our all of our team in Camelback, every everyone's serving everywhere. They're not working for their salvation. I want to make sure that's 100% clear here.

That's a whole other arena. And the price has been paid by Jesus Christ. Work hard to show the results of your salvation. Obeying God with oh with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and giving you the power to do what pleases him. We are church pleasing God. You see, now we're living in his family. And we're just doing the family business. If you have a serious view of God, you repent of your sins quickly. You just do it right away. When you do something wrong, you say, "Lord, I'm I'm sorry.

Forgive me." And it's done. We don't do that. We just take our time and we carry the baggage around and we let it mess us up and we let it slow us down. We do all this kind of stuff. And he said, "Look, just say, "Father, forgive me. Lord, forgive me. I was wrong." You say, "James, wasn't that kind of old school?" It's Bible. It's old school. It needs to be new school. We need to be schooled. I don't care whether you want to call it old school or new school.

If you have a serious view of God, you obey God with reverence. reverence for who he is. I had to look that one up. It says, "Having a deep and profound mix of awe, respect, and humble fear towards our creator." Not that long ago, I just heard a pastor, older gentleman, well maybe my age, older gentleman, talk about his grandfather. His grandfather was a farmer in Ohio. And his grandfather said, "David, I have a job for you." And David said, "What's that, grandpa?" He said, 'We just we bought some cattle at an auction.

And the auction went in a way that the cattle went very cheap. He said, "I want you to take this envelope to that family because that auction really went way too cheap. I want you to tell them we're sorry. We're Christians and I want you to give them that envelope. He said, ' Grandpa, that was an auction. That's that's the way auctions goes. He says he says, "I know, but if you if you were having a difficult time and you sent cattle to an auction and it went very cheap, would that be what you want?" He said, "Well, no, no, papa.

It wouldn't be." He said, "I want you to take this." And David took the envelope, drove over 300 miles to this little farm and knocked on the door. And a lady pulled the curtain back and looked out the glass window and just let it go. And few minutes later, a gentleman came to the door. It was her husband. And he said, "I'm I'm I'm David." And he said their family name. And he said, "We bought some of your cattle at an auction." and the auction went way too cheap and we're sorry about that and but we're Christians and we want you to have this." And so the gentleman invited him in and his wife having heard the whole conversation just began to cry.

And her husband hugged her as she was just balling to the point that her no she actually got a nose bleed from crying. And she said to her husband, "Who does this?" And her husband's response was, "A Christian, honey. A real one." I don't know about you, but that got my attention. A real one. His grandfather died years later in Ohio. They had reserved the funeral home for the day and they were going to do a burial at night. They had to extend it three days because over a thousand people over a thousand mostly farmers and pastors came to that man's funeral.

And he said time after time someone came up to me and said let me tell you about your grandfather. And he said on the on the on the third day that lady came and she came up and she said, ' Do you remember me? And he said, 'Yes, yes, I do. And she said to him, be like your granddad. He had something. Do you have something?

Do I have something? Are we walking around with our Bible and opening our Bible and spending moments of time I get it. This is us. This is our culture. This is our world. But God himself is holy and powerful and awesome and loving. Be like your granddad. He had something. A church that's pleasing to God. Let me tell you. Do you know why?

because the whole world is watching and the whole world is desperately in need of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we sit here and we know we're not perfect and we're doing our best. I'm going and because we feel we're not perfect, we're we're just not all in on sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. We kind of let it maybe get it in once in a while and other lives could be transformed and on the path that ours are on. Your kids are watching you. My kids are watching me. Are they going to be able to say, "I want to be like dad.

I want to be like mom. That's what God wants. Obeying God with reverence no matter the cost, no matter what others think. Solomon. Bible refers to Solomon as the wisest man who ever lived. I want to go there for just a few minutes. In the book of Ecclesiastes, Israel, the third king. David was the second king of Israel. Solomon his son was the third king of Israel. He asked God for wisdom because he took he took this throne at a very young age. Ask God for wisdom. God specifically gave him wisdom and so much more.

Solomon led Israel like no other. This was the golden age of Israel. They had no wars on any of their borders. Had unbelievable wealth. Solomon's wisdom was in so many different areas, science and architecture and so many different things. And he was absolutely brilliant. And in the book of Ecclesiastes, he opens it up by introducing himself. He says in the words of the teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem, that's verse one. Verse two, he says, meaningless. Meaningless, says the teacher, utterly meaningless. Everything is meaningless. He goes on to say, "What does a man gain from all of his labor at which he toils under the sun?" That's true for us.

We just can't wait to get a car and we get a new car and we drive it and we just love it. And then over time this breaks or that breaks or something doesn't work right and we fix it or don't fix it and more time goes by and we get to this place where we just can't get to wait to get another car and get rid of this hunk of junk and so we trade it in and we get a new car and we repeat this cycle over and over again.

And Solomon talks about that and it and we can't wait to get into this house and then this other and years later we're at this place where we have so many things to fix and there is this cycle. He goes on in verse four to say generations come and generations go but the earth remains the same forever. We get married, we have kids, we might even get married more than once. We get a job and we work our job and at some point we actually maybe retire, maybe play golf for a couple of years and then we die.

And the very next morning, the sun comes up. Solomon says, "You say you're going to be different? No, you're not." And he continues, he says in verse 9, "What will be will be again. What has been done will be done again." There's nothing new under the sun. And you're probably thinking, "This is the wisest man who ever lived." It's not even encouraging. But then Solomon says, "I have seen something else under the sun." In other words, if all of life is only about what we see or if it's only about what we feel or what we think that we know, then life is meaningless.

But in Ecclesiastes chapter 3 and verse 11, he says he has made everything beautiful in its time. Just two chapters ago, he was saying it's all meaningless. there's no value here. And he goes on in that same verse and he says he has also set eternity in the hearts of men. God placed it there. Not religion, not culture, not anyone or anything. God placed it there. He has made everything beautiful in his time. And he has also set eternity in the hearts of men. In other words, you need to look beyond life under the sun.

He says, "He has set eternity in the hearts of men, yet they cannot fathom what God has done from the beginning to the end." Solomon is saying, "God is God and we are not." And we need to get to the place where we really recognize who God is because life under the sun goes on and on and on and while life under the sun is cyclical and happening, history is linear. And God is always doing something. He's doing something in your life. He's doing something in my life. He's doing something in his church.

He's doing something in the world. God is always moving things forward. And while life under the sun maybe it doesn't always work out and it's painful and at times in a broken world we're we're we're facing something. We prayed with so many last week people who are facing something. Our family we church we are facing something. I mean, we shared with our church family and my brother-in-law had an accident and a trauma through his head and dealing with that. And that's Cameron and you guys have been praying for him with us and keep praying for him.

We are so thankful for that. And just yesterday, he was flown on a on a medical jet from Virginia down to West Palm Beach for his next phase in and next stage of recovery. Let me just take a minute and tell you about Cameron because all the time we're praying for people and we want to know more about what we're praying for. He loves and he reveres the Lord. Cameron's a husband. He's a dad. He's a papa. He's a brother. He's He's more than a brother-in-law to me. He's He's a He's a very He's very close friend.

He's gregarious. He never met a stranger. He would walk up to anybody and slap right into a conversation with him. He's deeply curious. He's a lifelong learner. He has this unquenchable desire for knowledge. This is this is who he is. This is who we are praying for, church. He's an aviator. He's flown most of his life for American Airlines. Just retired a few years ago and continued to fly in aviation. Continued to fly. He's he's a good steward. He's a steward of his money. He's a tither, a saver, an investor.

He has the heart of a teacher. He laid he worked so much in just in the last few years in flying corporate. And whenever we were together getting up in the morning, Cameron would grab his phone. church. I wish we all did this. He would grab his phone, go to his Uver app, and he would go all through the scriptures of the day, go through his devotions of the day, and he would typically end with this. He would end with saying, "Lord, it's a pleasure to love you and a pleasure to serve you." And now he's in this place where we together are praying for him.

You see, God could have stopped the accident. God didn't cause it. Cameron didn't intend it, but it happened. And God promises in Romans 8:28 that he will use it. This is not the end of the story. This is where we are in this process. And God's already using it. He promises he'll use it in Cameron's life, in the life of his family, already using it in our lives, even in some of your lives. Solomon says this at the end of the day at the conclusion of the book. He said it's it's all been heard.

I've gone through everything. Here's the conclusion of the matter. Let's make this simple. He says the conclusion of the matter is fear God and keep his commands. This is the whole duty of man to fear God, trust God, honor him, respect him, keep his commands, have a very clear picture of who God is. Holy is the Lord. The Bible says, "Holy is the Lord." We sometimes get too casual. Holy is the Lord, Almighty God. He was there before the foundations of the earth. He's so big that he spoke the galaxies into being.

He's so big that the that he holds the world in his hands. And the same time he holds the world in his hands, he lovingly cares enough about the details in Cameron's life and in your life and in my life. We need to make sure that we have an awe of who God is, that we see God clearly, powerful enough to speak and raise the dead, personal enough to love you and I right where we are and take us on, pull us into his family right where we are. Church, that's our God.

He loves you. He loves you. He loves you. He loves you. And there's a difference between loving and being pleased with. He will never stop loving you more than he already does because he could never love you more than he already does. See, the question is this. Where has God become casual in your life? instead of holy. Where has God become casual in my life instead of holy?

And if you recognize that, if you're convicted of that, just simply repent. Do it quickly. Don't live in it. Just repent. Because some of us, it's it's what we watch on our television and our iPhones. We can be entertained by sex, murder, and rape and get comfortable with it. We can use language that may be incredibly offensive and get comfortable with it. See, it's us. It's all of us. It's me. And God himself is saying, "Let's change that." A church that pleases God is filled with people that please God. What do you do with this?

I broke it up into ages and I made it really simple and it's simple. It's if you're a student, you if you're a student, I encourage you to pray. Just pray for God's will in your life as much as he will reveal it to you. Because if you'll do that, for the most part, you'll get it right the first time. You know, it's good to learn from your mistakes. It's even better to learn from other people's mistakes. If you're single, do not embrace the myth that if I just find the right person, everything will be great.

Don't embrace that myth. Be the right person. Be the right person and just watch what God does in your life and through your life and who he brings into your life. Don't waste your best years chasing the wind. Wrap your life around something greater than yourself and pour yourself into it. And if you're married, cherish and love your husband, or your wife and your children. Cherish and love. And don't trade them for a car, a house, or anything else that somebody else will own eventually. Anyhow, Solomon really makes this clear to us.

And if you're old, you already knew this. And I would say to you, don't disappear. We need you. We need you. Stand with me, church. If our awe of God fades, our view of God shrinks. as a church as we close. My prayer this morning as we head into these next three weeks, probably be a little bit milder, a little bit lighter, but this is so important. God himself is tapping on our hearts. He's tapped on mine. What we're going through with Cameron, we absolutely love Cameron. And let me tell you this from the moment that it happened things begin to happen that would speed up recovery was there so fast.

They had him on a helicopter so fast. We are already watching just God doing little things forward. He's an awesome God. We don't know the outcome. At some point, I'll tell you what my prayer is. But God is God is at work in all of our lives. He's an awesome God. He created the universe and yet he is so intentional about your life. Father, thank you for that. Bless our church family. Lord, take this series as we slip into it and use it in our lives to make us more like you.

And Lord, for those of us who don't have willing hearts, may maybe we're at a place where I don't know that I want Father, I pray that you just give us willing hearts. If that's where you are, if you ask him for it, he will give it to you. Do that we ask in your name, Lord Jesus. God, as we move forward, let me let me just tell was not planning to do this. I'm only going to take a second or two, three. If you're here this morning and you've never accepted Jesus as your personal savior, you can do that right here, right now.

It simply means that you believe that Jesus is the son of God. God sent his son. He willingly laid his life down after living for ministry three years. They nailed him to a cross. They put him in a grave. He rose from the grave. His blood purchased your salvation and my salvation. Accepting that, believing that means you're accepting him as your savior. You can do that right here, right now. Every head bowed, every eye closed. Everyone just praying for a second. If that's you, just simply put your hand right up and put it right back down for me this morning.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Father, I thank you this morning for your work, your handywork in our lives. Lord, I pray that you bless those who raise their hands this morning. Continue your work of grace in their lives. Transform their lives as a part of your family, the closeness that only you can bring. And Lord, as we worship you in this song, God, I pray that you would inhabit the praises of your people. Do it. We ask in your name we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen.