Seek the Lord

you should have gotten an outline when you came in uh if you didn't or if you're joining us online you can download it through the app the most of the scriptures we're going to use are included there maybe not all of them but most of them the lesson tonight's a little different maybe a little less structured but i think it's relevant the topic is seek the lord and it's really what i want to try to unpack with you with with the lord's help he put it in my heart a few days ago and i i tried over the weekend and i ended up kind of taking a detour which i am one to do i mean it was a wonderful exciting spirit-filled biblically informed detour on humility but nevertheless it was a detour and so i want to come back to this because it it's something that's on my heart and you you just get to walk with me along it but it's something that it feels like to me has been lost a bit in our imagination of a relationship with the lord one of the characteristics of the people of god through scripture and then into church history is that in times and seasons there are aspects of our faith that we seem to lose and i'm not saying that seeking the lord is absent from the landscape and christendom it just doesn't seem to me to be a a dominant theme or a preeminent topic or a practice that we have great familiarity with you know but god's people losing sight of necessary aspects of walking with the lord are very much a part of the people of god maybe the one of the more prominent biblical examples was when josiah was king in jerusalem he was a good king a godly king and he ordered the temple to be remodeled and refreshed the temple had fallen into disarray in fact around the temple area there were there were shrines for temple prostitutes but that's hard to get your brain around the temple in jerusalem solomon's temple had fallen into not only disrepair its purpose had been lost enough that prostitution was attached to the to the temple which means there were there was a formal authority structure attached to that and there was profit being made to that and there wasn't enough objection to it that it was thought to be inappropriate so it's safe to say there was a little drift and so josiah orders the the temple to be remodeled and while they're remodeling it you many of you know the story they found hidden in the wall of the temple the books of moses the law they lost the bible and they didn't know it before we point fingers fewer than i recently saw a study that said fewer than 10 of the people in our nation have a christian worldview so we kind of lost our bibles too and and i can we could look at place after place after place both biblically and through church history where we we kind of lose sight of a practice well it seems to me in contemporary american christianity at least this notion of seeking the lord is a little beyond our imagination or our thought press processes i just don't think we've maintained the practice of it we know the words and we've kind of exchanged some things for that you know we've cultivated a notion very carefully cultivate a notion of discovering salvation we want to help people discover the need to be saved and i think that's appropriate to be born again or saved or converted whichever label you prefer for that entrance into the kingdom of god but the result of that mindset is a lifestyle of faith that is marked by milestones have you made a profession of faith have you been baptized have you ever read your bible through then we kind of put these benchmarks in our journey and that's been equated with spirituality in a spiritual life they're almost like milestones of achievement like you've completed the necessary coursework for christianity 101 so now you can consider yourself a participant in christianity 201 and you get promoted to the next grade some of us did that through school we kept getting promoted we never did learn english you know if our life depended on defining a participle we would just count on salvation making it better when we got done with whatever they were going to do to us but the weakness in that is it's created i think in our imaginations an approach that's more focused on mastery in that you know i've done this and i've done this and i've done this and i know this set of facts and i'm this familiar with these general topics and my theology is relatively intact and so i've kind of mastered that and i would submit to you that is not only not helpful i think it's detrimental because i think the assignment isn't mastery of our faith but it's to get to know the master and i don't mean to do that as a word play they're two very different things if i learned something new about god every day of my existence at the end of my journey under the sun there'll be more to know about him than i will have learned in all those preceding days but i don't find that to be the attitude that i encounter when i interact with christians and there's a passage in proverbs 2 that i think really gives us kind of a snapshot of the attitude around this this is more directed at god's word but it says my son if you accept my words and store up my commands within you if you turn your ear to wisdom and apply your heart to understanding if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding if you look for it as for silver and search for it as hidden treasure then you'll understand the fear of the lord and find the knowledge of god now the last sentence is the punch line it's the payoff it's the it's the objective we want to understand the fear of the lord and the knowledge of god but the pathway to get there does not sound like my experience in christendom it starts by accepting my words and storing up my commands we have to accept the the word of god is authoritative we don't study it to gain facts we read it to learn how to submit to its authority very different thing very different thing you know biblical criticism has dominated formal biblical scholarship for decades where we approach the text from a critical perspective not in critical in the sense that you diminish it but you break it apart into its subcomponents the the social components the literary components the historical components and and out of that somehow all the authority drains away you see if we approach the word of god with with a yielded attitude that i will submit to the authority that's present the truth presented in this book it changes entirely the nature of the interaction accept my word store at my commands turn your ear to wisdom apply your heart to understanding the the language in this these verses gain intensity of effort as you go through them it starts out with accepting words and then storing up commands and then turning your ear and then applying your heart to understanding and then you have to call out for insight you have to cry aloud this isn't subtle you can't do it quietly it's not just a personal thing others will know of your desire and then look for it as silver if you're going to mine much silver you're going to have to move a lot of dirt you're not going to accumulate a great deal of silver without a whole lot of effort if you'll search for it as hidden treasure again all of this language suggests tremendous effort then you'll understand the fear of the lord see i want to understand the fear of the lord if i just sit through church i don't even get the parker i wanted to i had to park a little further away and i walked in it was hot out there i was uncomfortable the time i got in the building and somebody was seated in my chair so i have sought the lord today but the language the invitation of scripture is different than that so i want to talk a little bit just about how you would seek the lord what that would look like what it would just in practical terms and i'm going to share some from my personal experience some from a biblical perspective then the when and why you would seek the lord because i think that's really lost on us again i think i'm a part of the system so i'm not pointing fingers at anyone we we've put so much effort emphasis on being born again and not committing gross public sin we really haven't talked about much more so when would you seek the lord and why would you seek thought what do you mean you know we'll say things like i don't pray and then we get in a really difficult place in life you know crisis some description brokenness of some description tremendous disappointment and there's some comfort in prayer so we want to know somebody that knows how to pray and i wish you'd pray for me and i'm not that's not wrong that's helpful it's necessary but it's a very child-like beginning children don't know how to fix the problems they bump into they run to somebody to fix them right a band-aid will cure almost anything right band-aids are wonderful and if you can spray something on it before the band-aid we're good and from a kid's perspective a credit card's all you need right i mean that's enough don't you have your credit card because if you give them your credit card they'll go online they don't even need you anymore amazon will deliver their dreams if you'll just give them your credit card or your password and we've had a little bit you know why would i see god how do i think when would i seek what's that look like and i really i think if there that's almost slipped beyond us you know how you seek the lord there's not a singular answer on this and i gave you a lot of scripture i didn't give you three pages i just made it really small but you know i mean biblically you can fast fasting is abstaining from food for spiritual purposes it's not a diet it would be to miss a meal or two or however many and invest the time and energy that you would normally put around that meal and seeking the lord maybe reading your bible or praying or worshiping the lord there's all sorts of kinds of fasting you can have a complete fast where you're not eating anything or limited fast where you limit your diet to to things that are less appeal appealing there's a you say i don't understand the purpose of that there's something in fasting that is very humbling no matter how powerful you are or influential you are or together you are you miss three or four meals watch what happens you can see a mcdonald's advertisement on television you can smell a quarter pounder i mean there's something very humbling in fasting but that's just one way prayer is certainly a part of seeking the lord watching and praying it's a biblical notion watching is missing sleep to seek the lord intentionally taking a block of time that would normally be your sleep time and saying god i'm going to take that time and pray or read my bible or worship you say well why would you do that i'll talk about that in a minute for a moment we're just going to talk a little bit about how um reading your bible in more than an obligatory way i have a friend that last year because of covet and the disruption his his work schedule was different he still worked but he he commutes from another city back and forth and some of the commutes were interrupted he had more free time he read his bible six times last year and he's not like a book nerd i mean he's a car guy and a boat guy and it changed him now when i talk to him his perspective on the bible it's a living thing to him you know i'm saying slow down big fellow i got to look this up i didn't just finish my sixth read it changed him so why would you do that i mean somebody make you do that i'm busy why would anybody do that to seek the lord we've lost we've lost the we don't even have the intent really worshipping it's not about musical style or format or hands up or hands down or kneeling or stretched out the intent to worship the lord people say well i'm not emotional i didn't ask you to be emotional well that's a private okay privately worship the lord i'm far more expressive when i worship the lord alone than i ever when i'm with you i mean if there's a trail cam out there when i'm in the woods i'm in trouble because i have a good time with the lord i'm thankful for him investing time and attention in the lord we're talking about how you would seek the lord if i were in a difficult place if i needed a breakthrough physically emotionally if i needed a breakthrough in my life i would i would be in a worship service more frequently than i were when i wasn't seeking the lord uniquely not because i knew i'm going to hear some great fact or some i want to present myself amongst the people of god with greater frequency well why would you do that i'm seeking the lord now the skeptics will say you're just trying to bump a ten that's not not really i promise i've got other ways to do that that are less work obedience is a way of seeking the lord stop arguing with god be obedient to the things you know be intentional with it holiness cleanliness i don't mean physically cleanly physically clean but spiritually take a season and say i'm going to seek lord i'm going to give greater attention to being spiritually clean than i have in the preceding season keep shorter accounts pay more attention to what i watch and listen to and the words that come out of my mouth and who i'm going to spend my discretionary time with how do you seek the lord there's not a singular way it'll depend a bit on your own journey and where you are in the season of your spiritual life avoid evil don't intentionally put yourself in places where evil is going to be expressed we can't always limit that but when you have a choice say for this season i'm not going to do that put it in a different context how would you gain proficiency in a new business you'd study you'd learn you'd be spend time with people that had experience you didn't have you'd watch a lot of you'd spend a lot of time online getting information watching youtube videos you understand you'd invest time and energy you have to absorb some things if you're going to get involved in that new business there's going to be a redeployment of time and resources and effort you understand that our new hobby if you want to if you want to pick up a new hobby or you want to get significantly better in the hobby that you have you understand you're going to have to learn a little bit invest some time and some energy and some effort you're gonna gain some from people that have experience that are beyond you there'll be some practice there'll be some experience and then adjustment and then try again until you see some improvement along those areas those are not attitudes that i find prevalent in our christianity again i'm not throwing stones i'm telling you it's time to seek the lord it is time to seek the lord i'm going to show you some scriptures it's a central theme of scripture but we have lost the imagination i thought back through my own life and there's there's different expressions we were kids at home my parents i don't know where they got the idea probably right after the idea they thought they we should clean stalls and cut hay because it all seemed evil to us but in the summertime when we were out of school they wanted us to do a summer project as a family some spiritual project you can imagine how excited three boys were about that wouldn't you like to seek the lord this no not really i mean you couldn't say it they were bigger than us but there's a lot of eye rolls but one summer i remember we we had a limited fast the only beverage we drank during those summer weeks was water no sweet tea no soft drinks no fruit juices and and they would get us together to pray imagine three little boys oh yeah we would love to stop and pray about now we're smacking one another and i mean i look back but i still remember the summer one summer we memorized deuteronomy 28 the blessings of abraham those first 12 verses and we'd say them together every day probably under stress i could still get them out but summer projects i didn't understand i was learning to seek the lord i just thought my parents were torturing us i didn't put it in some hierarchy of spiritual development i had a job one summer when i was in college i worked at a manufacturing plant in smyrna and my job was to manage there was a conveyor belt we were painting aluminum building windows and doors i was monitoring the painting process so i had eight hours a day watching conveyor belts go by stacked with stuff that was being painted maybe twice a week i had to intervene can you say boring eight hours a day standing on concrete we got a 15-minute break in the morning and a 15-minute break in the afternoon and 30 minutes for lunch so i had seven hours a day to stand there in this mind numbing with this noise and this heat because the furnace was right next to me and after about two days i said i'm going to lose my mind so i made a game out of it i would spend as much of that seven hour block of time as i could praying in the spirit and my manager god you couldn't hear thunder because of the furnaces and my supervisor would walk up and tap me on the shoulder say who are you talking to i was just talking to myself i was the crazy guy that ran the paint sprayers that talked to himself all the time but i'm quite confident that there were things that were prayed about that summer that ended up changing the course of my life i invested hours and hours and hours in prayer and i want a very spiritual person i didn't know i mean i was on my way to a very secular i mean i wasn't planning on doing this learn to seek the lord when i graduated from college i went to the philippines for the summer mission project it wasn't where i wanted to go i wanted to go to to sweden and they sent me to the remote islands and the jungles of the philippines to do manual labor i really didn't consciously honest to be honest with you i didn't process it as i was seeking the lord but when i i look back i realized i could have taken that summer and done many things i just graduated from college i was headed to graduate school i i needed to break and i took that summer and it was a difficult summer in many many ways and i can't say that i came home and thought i'm spiritually changed i came home and said i'm skinny and then you know i went to hebrew university at one point when i finished a graduate degree at vanderbilt and i was i decided to go to hebrew university for you and i tell it after the fact that it sounds so funny they go i'd love to do that but at the time it didn't feel like that at all it created hardship with the assignments i had here i emptied my savings account resources were tight we lived on a really meager budget it was not an easy season but the lord has honored it in my life so many ways and i as i began to to think about the topic and go back through my life i find all of these places where i made investments of time and energy that at the moment weren't really fun or particularly fulfilling and you know you could tell them after the fact and people oh i'd like to do that but in the moment there wasn't a line of people going oh i'm in i mean in my daily i have a daily routine that is about seeking lord a weekly routine to be honest i could probably pull together a sermon in about 15 minutes i've done this for a while it wouldn't require tremendous preparation just to find something to talk about and an outline that would be technically appropriate hermeneutically sound homolytically correct and exegetically could pass the mark but the time and effort i spend is about being quiet before the lord and opening my bible and trying to open my heart then it was if somebody would know the difference or not i don't know but for me the the agenda is to seek the lord i want to know him see i'm asking you to think about your life and the pattern of your relationship with god we have equated attending a church service not committing gross moral sin what do you want from me i'm not i'm not trying to bring shame or guilt i'm asking you to think about seeking the lord as if you'd like to know him as if it mattered to you as much as it matters to you whatever else you've given your heart to accumulating resources taking care of your grandkids whatever is a passion for you what would it look like to have that kind of enthusiasm for the lord how would you begin to give expression to that well why would you do that because life's going to bring you something where you're going to need to know god and it's really really difficult to figure out what to do with goliath after you've heard him bellow his challenge does that make sense david says i got this guy but i i'm confident of that because the lion and the bear came out against the flock and god delivered them into my hand and he looks as ugly as they did so this is going to work out he was vectoring a future based on some points he could plot from his past he'd been seeking the lord while he was tending the sheep doing his day-to-day routine and therefore goliath seemed like a manageable objective and you and i want to seek the lord when he can be found when we don't need him and you need to understand that when you're in a crisis it's okay to seek the lord roll in and say hey lord here's the truth i could have cared less about you last month i was more concerned about public opinion or more interested in this or that or those things but it recognized today there's something that i need a power beyond myself and so here i am and that's okay seek the lord seek the lord don't just worry don't just be anxious don't just try to wish it away seek the lord it's a totally different mindset and when we've kind of lost it we've kind of pushed it away a little bit i interact with people all the time and they face life-threatening circumstances family threatening circumstances devastating events happening in their lives breaking over them and i don't think they're trying to be willfully stubborn i don't think i don't think we have talked about how to seek the lord we talk about how to accumulate money how to help our kids get on a travel team we talk about all kinds of things but i'm talking about good people godly people moral people i'm not talking about pagan people that you look at and go oh that person needs to get saved i'm telling people about past muster so the how part of the we could talk about that a lot more sometimes we seek the lord on behalf of other people i went through there was a time a few years ago so i had three friends at the same time facing life-threatening diseases and it was almost overwhelming so i decided to to fast and pray with him and it was an extended thing it wasn't a quick thing for in a year's time i fasted more meals than i ate now that's not as hard as it sounds you can eat a meal a day and you missed i'm thinking three meals a day and i don't eat three meals a day very often so it wasn't like i'm not trying to make it sound crazier than it was and to be completely candid about it i didn't get the outcomes that i would have preferred they're not all here they're not here today but that ended up being triumphant seasons in their lives and i'm confident of where they are today and in the midst of that i needed to seek the lord from my own sanity so again i'm not handing you a singular way you could begin to say to the lord lord i would like to know you better and i don't know anything better to do than i'm going to attend an extra worship service or i'm going to get that bible reading thing out that i've been kind of making fun of and i'm going to lean into that a little bit or i'm going to memorize a verse a week you'll know but when you do it when and why are a little mixed up to me i i i maybe haven't thought it through as fully as i could but you know when you're sick or you're frightened or you're threatened or you need direction seek the lord when you're isolated or you're the end of yourself or you've got major decisions to make seek the lord when intercession is needed somebody you care about when my friends are barricading their hometown and they've left their families to go stand on the barricades you better believe i'm going to seek the lord because we need outcomes that we can't orchestrate we can't travel we can't send goods we can't we can barely communicate when you don't get the outcome you prefer you better seek the lord when the answer you seem to be getting from the lord is one you don't like you better seek the lord when you're guilty or you've fallen or you've failed seek the lord don't hide from him when god's judgment appears i think that's relevant to the season we're walking through we better be seeking the lord so well pastor i'm coming to church what do you want i want you to seek the lord and we've lost it we've lost the imagination i'm coming to the scripture in a minute i promise maybe daniel chapter 9 and verse 13 did i put that in your notes too bad you can check me later daniel 9 daniel 9 is daniel's remember daniel he's a slave in babylon he spends his whole life there not because of a fault of his own but his god's judgment came upon the jewish people because of their idolatry and their hard hearts he said you can't stay in the land i promised you you're going to be slaves in a foreign country and daniel spends his whole life as a slave by the time we get to the ninth chapter of daniel he's discovered by reading jeremiah it's time for the people to go home so he begins to pray a prayer of repentance and he includes himself in the need for repentance he's not pointing a finger but in verse 13 he says just as it is written in the law of moses all this disaster has come upon us yet we have not sought the favor of the lord our god all this disaster has come upon us and we haven't sought the favor of the lord our god by turning from our sins and giving attention to your truth folks i'm watching what's happening to our children they're being devastated by the ideas we're releasing on them i'm telling you there is havoc being wreaked on their lives and i'm watching those of us that are older and mature enough and have some life experience and have some church experience and we're not saying anything into the culture we're not seeking the lord we've lost it why would we do that because god will intervene why would we see because god told us to because we need understanding we don't have how do we turn back this avalanche of destructive things that we see coming i don't have the answer but i'm going to seek the lord why do i seek the lord because he invited me to if i got a note from the governor tomorrow he said he'd like to have lunch with me i bet i could make time well he's just the governor the creator of all the universe invited us to spend some time with him no but i'm busy oh when you see him that's going to be an awkward discussion again it's something we've lost the imagination for we're invited to it's a secure place i seek the lord because god is omniscient he knows it all and he said in james 1 5 if i ask for wisdom he'll give it to me without criticism watch me ask why would we not seek him i seek the lord because i recognize my limits in my brokenness i seek the lord to gain understanding i seek the lord so how i think can be transformed i don't want to think like godless i seek the lord so i can bring alignment between my life values and his values because apart from his word and his spirit i'll wind up someplace else i want to seek the lord i need his help i think of it for me the thought process is not vastly different from physical health and nutrition how do you stay healthy it's not complicated multi-billion dollar industry and i don't mean the the medical side i just mean the information side billion dollar industry but spiritual health and wellness is not that complicated you need good nutrition and i bet we could 90 of the things we should eat we know we just don't but we understand it takes good nutrition and it's not about good nutrition last week or two years ago it's about good nutrition today and if you really want to be healthy it means good nutrition tomorrow and say well i don't like to eat that if you get sick enough or desire to be healthy enough you'll change we also know exercise is a part of that exercises for most of us isn't fun i mean yeah if you're six exercise is fun you run everywhere wait a while we understand it's about your immune health your immune system that there are things that will attack you and as you age and you gain more vulnerability well as you as you mature spiritually and you gain more responsibilities you have more vulnerabilities you better understand your spiritual immune system you better recognize the things that can diminish you you better seek the lord we understand preventative care is an important part of staying healthy we understand physically that early detection of a problem is of tremendous significance in your long-term well-being the same thing is true spiritually you want to stay close enough to the lord that early detection of a problem is a part of your portfolio so it doesn't grow and gain momentum and overwhelm you it's much much much much much much more difficult to overcome seek the lord there's some biblical directive psalm 34 verse 10 the lions may grow weak and hungry but those who seek the lord lack no good thing i'm going to move through these pretty quickly i want you to see this isn't some subtle minute theme of scripture it is a prominent theme first chronicles 16 give thanks to the lord call on his name make known among the nations what he has done do we do that do we make known among the nations what he's done for us the freedoms the abundance the liberties the privileges no we don't sing to him sing praise to him tell of all of his wonderful acts glory in his holy name let the hearts of those who seek the lord rejoice look to the lord and his strength seek his face always if the goal was sit in church when it's convenient that's what it would say again we've lost something when they brought the book of the law and began to read it to king josiah do you know what he did he tore his clothes fell on his face and began to weep he said we are so far away from this and when i think about seeking the lord the best people i know again i'm not throwing stones folks we've lost our way a little bit look at isaiah 55 seek the lord while he may be found call on him while he's near we have this notion that god is our bellman that we should signal i'm about to pray now garcon i'm about to offer a request but i'm going to be really annoyed if you don't respond i prayed twice knew there was anything to it seek the lord while he may be found call on him while he's near let the wicked forsake his way in the evil man his thoughts and let him turn to the lord he'll have mercy on him and to our god and he will freely pardon now i could have given you 40 scriptures but i think you get the idea but then in the practice of it ezra is assigned he's a priest and he's assigned to reinstate the practice of worship after the exiles have returned from their punishment they've been gone 70 years and they've come back and ezra is there to help them learn to worship the lord can you believe that god's covenant people would have to learn to worship him again that they forgot do we have the humility to say that it's possible that the the voices that have spoken into our lives perhaps didn't have the full perspective or do we define our spiritual life in terms of that's how my grandparents did it i have some godly grandparents i'm very very thankful for what they spoke into my life i don't mean to be disrespectful but the scriptures suggest that there's some generational ebb and flow it has reception verse 19 on the 14th day of the first month the exiles celebrated the passover they're back in jerusalem the priests and the levites had purified themselves and were all ceremonially clean they've gone through an elaborate ritual of physical preparation before they could even have the worship service the levites slaughtered the passover lamb for all the exiles and for their brothers the priests and for themselves so the israelites who had returned from the exile ate it there's some israelites that had been in babylon they've come back and they're going to eat together with all who had separated themselves from the unclean practices of their gentile neighbors some had been left in the land and they've been living like the pagans and before they could celebrate passover they've had to separate themselves from the unclean practices that's called seeking the lord see we sit in church covering our sin ignoring our sin ignoring our ambivalence and our indifference and we say well i'm born again and my sins aren't that bad god grades on a curve he's a god of love they separated themselves from their unclean practices of their gentile neighbors in order to seek the lord the god of israel before they could begin to seek the lord they had to separate themselves change some of their habits readjust their routines are you ready are you willing we need outcomes we're not getting we need the power of god to be demonstrated in this generation in ways that we don't see or our children are going to be swept away now what are we going to say are we going to blame a politician or a political party or an ideology or a university structure who are we are we going to say before god god if you were for us who could be against us i need to know you better i need to know how to pray so that i see the outcomes in the midst of the places i care about i will seek your face until i understand that well pastor and then what we hire you for now esther chapter four esther is a jewess she's an exile living out of israel she's selected to be the queen of persia there's just one slight problem she's hidden her ethnicity and now there's an edict that has been signed that all the jewish people are to be annihilated slaughtered the day's been given hatred to the jewish people is not a new thing in fact the the rulers of persia hating the jewish people is not a new thing you know the modern-day name for persia iran and the ayatollahs say that their stated objective is the annihilation of the jewish people but esther has the assignment of going to plead for her people she says to mordecai i go gather all the jews who are in fast for me don't eat or drink for three days night or day and i and my maids will fast as you do and when this is done i'll go to the king and if i perish i perished what'd she do before she went to make her plea she sought the lord do i think you can manipulate god with three days of focused efforts i don't think you manipulate god but but i think that you can present yourself to the lord and hear from him understand him you'll learn from him my bible we'll look at it in a minute my god's bible says that god responds to those who seek him now you can't seek the lord then live like a pagan you're not doing the other things we're that's you can't pick and choose but learn to seek the lord build a habit build a set of routines two seasons of the year i'm gonna take this month and make a unique effort towards the lord because i want a different outcome for my kids in the school year you make unique efforts in the summertime for them to be in youth leagues and sports leagues you're accustomed to all kinds of unique efforts for outcomes you care about how about an effort and seeking the lord well you're just trying to raise the bar you bet i am because i want to know the lord better than i knew him last year there's some new testament instructions along these lines in hebrews chapter 4 it says we have a great high priest who's gone through the heavens jesus the son of god did you know you had a high priest the only reason you can pray to almighty god that you can take a petition to him is because you have a high priest as an intercessor that's the truth it's not because you come to woc do you think you can quietly let the name of jesus need to be diminished and his perspective be mocked and that he is your high priest is pleased again we've invested so little we don't have a high priest who's unable to sympathize with our weaknesses but we have one who's been tempted in every way just as we are yet he was without sin that's the whole point of the incarnation jesus knows what it is to be tired to be fatigued to be emotionally beset he understands the frailty of this earth suit that you and i share he was rejected mocked brokenhearted verse 16 let us then approach the throne of grace it's a call he said let us approach the throne of grace that's not that's not the attitude we have we sit on our good intentions and say well if god wants me to have it he'll give it to me i go to church some what do you want from me the invitation is to approach the throne of grace the throne of the creator of all things suppose you got an invitation to address the united nations next week how many of you think you'd get a clean shirt no i'm just gonna wear an old shirt i think i'll wear my workout clothes i doubt it approach the throne of grace folks i need some outcomes from the throne of grace don't you so now i'm back to thinking about those passages about consecration and and preparing and setting some things aside and maybe some attitudes i've had and if god knows everything maybe i'm going to think about what i'm watching and what i'm saying and what i'm doing before i approach the throne of grace because i want to show up as prepared as i know how to let us approach the throne of grace so that we can find mercy and grace to help us what's the next phrase in our time of what need we're invited to the throne of grace when we have a need not when we've got it all together in our brokenness in our mass and our failure and our disappointment in our heartache and our inconsistency god i need help help me god i want to seek you i want to seek you revelation 1 9 john is at the end of his life his peer group's gone they're all martyred and he's been exiled he's been imprisoned and it's the sabbath it's the lord's day this is the introduction to the book of revelation he said i john your brother and companion in the suffering and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are ours in jesus john was with jesus he saw him walk on the water he watched him raise the dead he saw him crucified and he ate with him after the resurrection i'm telling you the boy's got some stories to tell but when he when he gives us the identification in which we share with him he gives us three characteristics he said i'm your brother and companion in the suffering and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are ours in jesus are you listening i was on the island of patmos because of the word of god and the testimony of jesus and on the lord's day i was in the spirit on the lord's day i gave myself to the lord i was in the spirit what if john had been at the ball game what did john have been at the lake what if john had been hung over now i'm not against going to the lake i'm not against recreation but i'm telling you john was seeking the lord and he got a revelation and you and i need to begin to build into the routine of our lives and our patterns and our habits times and places where we make an effort to present ourselves to the lord because he has some things that we need to know and if you tell him you've got five free minutes on the commute between the office and home and you'd be happy if he's got any messages for you but you'd really prefer that he delivered them during the advertisements because you don't want to miss the talk radio it's highly improbable we're going to learn a lot from the creator of all things seek the lord seek the lord seeking the lord is envisioned in scripture with renewal maybe that's what led me here i think we need renewal in hosea chapter 3 and verse 4 says the israelites will live many days without a king or a prince without sacrifice or sacred stones they're going to live many days as someplace else no king no prince no daily sacrifices those are all the things that define their lives they're going to live many days without that but afterwards the israelites will return and seek the lord they're going to come back from that lost place and that place of judgment when they come back they're going to seek the lord their god and david their king and they will come trembling to the lord if i'm looking for an emotion perhaps in this i think when you begin to seek the lord you're going to understand he's holy and me not so much god i want to know you i really do the bible talks a good bit about those who don't seek the lord and the outcomes of that or a failure to seek the lord isaiah 9 the people have not returned to him who struck them nor they have sought the lord almighty isaiah is saying god brought judgment on you and you didn't seek him you see it's not a certainty that when god brings judgment or discipline that you'll you'll yield to the discipline some of us continue in our stubbornness and rebellion it's not a good plan isaiah 31 woe to those who go down to egypt for help or who rely on horses who trust in the multitude of their chariots and in the great strength of their horsemen but they don't look to the holy one of israel or seek help from the lord you look for every other resource you'll go through you'll push every button and pull every lever but you don't seek the lord oh you would accept help from the lord if god sent you a supernatural miracle a check in the mail or some surprise or some divinely divine intervention we would go okay that's good yay god i'm happy and we move on seeking the lord is something different it's time and energy and effort watching and praying fasting and praying cleansing yourself intentionally living with a purity that you don't typically live with because i need to know the lord better i need his help why because i'm in a desperate place most of us begin seeking the lord with a predetermined idea of what we the outcome that's acceptable to us i'll tell you my experience in the places where i've seen the most dramatic intervention of god in my life his outcome is not the one that i started out thinking i needed because the truth is i think i'm smarter than god you're laughing because you know i'm not but you don't know how smart i am because when i have a problem i know the solution i want don't you somebody here have a problem and you pretty much know what the solution would be if i had this i'd be good to go and i can't tell you the times in my life where god has brought solutions that looked different than the one i imagined and it was better that's so awkward okay so you got this one right listen to our language we say well you know god's been really good to me so far let me help god's been good to you if you turn to a pile of dust on the way home he's been good to you and to me now i know my time is up but there's a pattern to this in jesus life and since you know the the scriptures and the story of his life i don't think i have to read them all but i want to walk you through jesus seeking the lord the incarnate obedient son of god did not fulfill his assignment under the sun without the intentional pursuit of god and neither will we and i'm not talking about going to synagogue or knowing the scripture because he he checked those boxes i'm talking about in the daily routine of his behavior again it's something we've lost we don't think about it we are offended by it we're afraid to say it to one another well what do you want me to do seek the lord amen how do we need to go back to that list just follow me with jesus for a minute matthew chapter 3 it's his baptism story jesus is ready to be baptized he says jesus came from galilee to the jordan to be baptized by john galilee's in the northern part of israel john's baptizing in the southern part of israel it's a several day journey he's the son of god john is a locust eating poorly dressed itinerant evangelist and the creator of all things makes a several day journey to present himself to john to say i need you to baptize me and when he gets there you know what john says no i need to be baptized by you and basically jesus just said shut up get with the program i mean he talked about fulfilling all righteousness but in the living bible he just said shut up and get with the program and then god says it says there's a voice from heaven that says this is my son and i'm pleased with him a several day how many of you would be baptized if i said in order to be baptized you've got to drive to chicago what kind of foolishness is that we're not accustomed to thinking of effort in seeking the lord but it goes right on luke chapter 4 right after his baptism he says full of the holy spirit he's he's led by the spirit into the desert for 40 days he's tempted by the devil he ate nothing during those days for 40 days after god says this is my boy i'm really pleased with him jesus goes on an extended fast this is the beginning of his public ministry this is when the page turns he has been his story is private he has no ministry at this point and for 40 days he spends seeking the lord and it says luke says that he comes away from that time back to galilee in the power of the spirit in verse 14. then in luke chapter 6 it says on one verse 12 and one of those days jesus went out to a mountainside to pray he spent the night praying to god why would jesus spend all night praying he and the father are one it wasn't like he'd spent the night before gambling and he was out there concerned about how he's going to get his money back he spent the night praying and in the morning he called his disciples and he chose 12. before he chose the 12 he sought the lord jesus do you think maybe you and i should spend some time seeking the lord before big decisions well it's what i want well good for you what's god want or most of us are afraid to ask because he might not want what we want luke chapter 5. the good news about jesus spread all the more crowds of people came to hear him he healed their sicknesses but he often withdrew to lonely places and prayed think of the podcasts he could have done my next healing session will be luke chapter nine about eight days after this jesus took peter john and james with him and he went up to a mountain to pray i know you really know the words but did you think about it he called peter james and john they're the closest amongst the torah that's the inner group of the twelve and he took them up to a high mountain to pray so i said how many of you would like to spend some time in prayer this week okay we're going to drive to johnson city well well well why it doesn't say why hard work i know that mountain i ride up it and i'm tired now on top of it's the transfiguration moses and elijah come talk to me about what's ahead of him but there's an effort involved he's seeking the lord luke chapter nine as the time approached for jesus to be taken up to heaven jesus resolutely set out for jerusalem he's going to jerusalem to be betrayed and tortured to death but luke says it's time for him to go to heaven and he's determined to go to jerusalem are you willing to seek the lord even when it's hard are you willing to seek the lord when you're not getting the outcomes that feel good jesus did well it was easier for him no it wasn't mark chapter 8 he began to teach the disciples that the son of man had to suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests that he must be killed and after three days rising and he's telling them what's come he's trying to help them and their response peter takes him aside and says never may this never happen to you may this never happen to you and jesus has to say get behind me satan he gets to gethsemane and it says that it's the night he's going to be betrayed and he goes into the garden and he says to his friends watch and pray with me miss some sleep and pray with me and he prays with such agony that he sweats blood and his friends go to sleep he wakes them up says i can really use some help here and they go back to sleep i think it's safe to say with just that cursory review that jesus sought the lord to get to his outcome i don't think you and i will finish our course unless we cultivate the habit of seeking the lord and i'm talking about beyond sitting in church and again i think it's kind of lost to us it's just beyond us and i didn't bring you a to-do list because i want you to begin to think what would it look like for you to make more time and a little more energy a little more effort for some of you to be about more generosity maybe more time for other people i don't it'll be different the lord will begin to help you but begin to say to the lord i'd like to know you better i don't know you nearly as well as i would like to in fact i've lived very presumptively i've presumed that that my eternal destiny was sorted out and i wasn't really doing anything that was too significant and i thought you were pretty much pleased with me god i'm sorry i'd like to know you better where could i start let's seek the lord let's seek the lord sodom and gomorrah would have would have survived if there had been ten righteous men at one point god says to the prophet i looked for somebody in the nation that could stand in the gap on behalf of the people but i couldn't find anybody let's become some of those bodies let's seek the lord i want to pray with you don't you stand with me i mean you'd say to the lord i'd be willing to do that help me understand what that would look i'm going to pray for you i'm going to ask the lord to do that maybe you'll pick up your bible reading with a little maybe you're going to memorize a verse of scripture maybe you're going to come to an extra worship service maybe you're going to go get a friend that you know has a real need in their life and you bring them with you don't look at them and say i'm helping you seek the lord just say you know church would be more comfortable if you'd come sit with me i don't know the lord will show you i need to know him better folks we have got to get over ourselves amen god does not need my bank balance he doesn't need my physical strength he certainly doesn't need my intellect i need his help and so do you i like the palms down palms up we're going to give to the lord all those things that we don't want to carry out of here fear destructive habits and then we're going to turn our hands over and receive what god has for us lord thank you for the cross that you love us and care for us and we come tonight lord to acknowledge our our frailty and our brokenness and our distractions forgive us forgive us lord we imagine we've made ourselves successes and that our hard work has brought outcomes when we know the truth we could have worked hard and had nothing forgive us for our arrogance and our pride and our indifference but we laying before you tonight the fear we have the anxiety we have the brokenness in our hearts the uncertainty lord we we lay it before you we turn our hands and our hearts to you to receive all that you have for us lord show us the steps to take let there be a hungering and a thirsting within us a desire to begin to seek you as we've never sought you before to seek you with the intensity that we've sought the the great passions of our lives and the great enthusiasms of our lives that that you might become a dominant enthusiasm in our hearts holy spirit help us we thank you that you love us and you care for us and we come tonight to turn our faces to you in our hands to you in our hearts to you to say lord jesus we want to honor you with our heart mind soul and body and all that we are and all that we have may you be pleased in jesus name amen hallelujah god bless you

Channel: World Outreach Church

Views: 5,518

Rating: 4.8984771 out of 5

Keywords: World Outreach Church, World Outreach Church Murfreesboro, Pastor Allen Jackson, Pastor Allen Jackson Sermons, Online church service, live church service, christian sermons, seek the lord, how do I seek the lord, what does it mean to seek the lord, Jesus' life, Jesus' example, new testament, scripture, renewal, How do we seek the Lord, Seeking the Lord, prayer, fasting, worship, reading our Bibles, avoiding evil

Id: gFpfumtiwcc

Length: 59min 3sec (3543 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 15 2021