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Part 4 of 7
ALTARations Series (Part 4) - On Worship as a Spiritual Discipline
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I want to start with a statement that may be shocking, but it is significant for every individual serious about spiritual quantum leaps. When we speak of quantum leaps at this church, we're not using the term as those in quantum physics do. We're applying it as those in personal development do.
The idea of quantum leaps pushes back against the notion that all growth has to be incremental. Some growth can be exponential. There are things God chooses to do over a span of time, and then there are other things—other growth—that he catalyzes in us exponentially.
The Bible is clear: God is a God who orders our steps, but the scriptures also declare that God is the God who makes our feet like the feet of a deer. When a deer runs swiftly, it doesn't just step—it leaps. So God is not just the God who orders our steps. He's the God who will orchestrate some leaps. This is why for the believer, every year can be a leap year.
If you are committed to quantum leaps, lean into this statement as we explore the spiritual discipline of worship: It is impossible to become a good worshipper with a bad memory.
When I say bad memory, I'm not referring to physical memory loss that you can't control. I'm referring to spiritual forgetfulness—which is an infection of entitlement that breeds amnesia about the great things God has done in the past because he's not doing what we want him to do in the future.
This is why every serious saint should embrace a theology of remembrance—the notion that strategic recall is a divine attribute of God and should be a spiritual discipline for humans.
God strategically recalls. God sovereignly selects what he chooses to remember. He engages in sovereign selectivity when it comes to choosing what he remembers.
There are some people who have done things in their lives and they are grateful for the scriptural truth that he will remember our sin no more. As one passage says, he will take our sin, cast it into the sea of forgetfulness to remember it no more. It doesn't mean God can't remember. It means God chooses not to deal with us based on what he decided to forget. It speaks to an eternal expungement—not just of our record, but of God's memory. It speaks to his commitment to engage in what we call mercy, where he interrupts his own law of sowing and reaping.
There's some stuff you sowed that you should have reaped, but you didn't reap—because mercy stood in between what should have come to you and what didn't come to you. You know there are some people who went to the same places you went and something happened to them that didn't happen to you. You did some things that other people did, and something happened to them that didn't happen to you. The Bible is very clear: it rains on the just and on the unjust. Since you didn't earn that exemption, you ought to be appreciative of the fact that he chose to forget.
This is not only an attribute of the divine; it should be a spiritual discipline for humans. The Apostle Paul demonstrated this selective recall. He wrote to believers in Philippi: "I do not count myself to have apprehended. But this one thing I do: forgetting those things which are behind me and reaching for those things that are in front of me, I press."
I'm pressing because I know what to forget. It's not that I no longer have the memory, but I made a decision not to let the memory have me. I've learned the difference between divine conviction and satanic condemnation. Conviction comes to set me free. Condemnation is sent to keep me bound. He whom the Son has set free is free indeed.
As humans, we should not only know what to forget like God; we should know what to remember.
At the essence of worship is intentional reflection. Intentional reflection becomes a catalyst for organic worship. We don't have to prime you if you just remember. You don't have to be prompted to praise if you just remember.
Seasoned saints with a godly heritage say it this way: "My God, when I think of the goodness of Jesus—and all, and all, and all he's done for me—my soul cries out."
That intentional reflection is a spiritual discipline. I've got to discipline myself to remember what Satan wants me to forget, and then I've got to discipline myself to forget what Satan wants me to remember. I'm tired of the devil playing games in my mind. God's going to renew your mind, and you're going to know what to forget and what to remember.
Intentional reflection should be a spiritual discipline. It's not only what we need; it's what God wants. The text corroborates this claim.
This passage gives us insight into an experience Jesus had with ten men suffering from leprosy—at that time an incurable skin condition. Luke, who is a physician, writes with a degree of detail and thoroughness. There are details that Luke lifts up that we cannot and should not ignore.
Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. And as he was going into a village, 10 men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, "Jesus, master, have pity on us." And when he saw them, he said, "Go show yourselves to the priest." And as they went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God with a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus's feet and thanked him, and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asks, "Were not all 10 cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give God praise except this foreigner?" Then he said, "Rise and go. Your faith has made you well." (Luke 17:11-19)
Leprosy was a highly contagious disease that required people in Israel to be quarantined to leper colonies. They had to keep their distance from others so that they wouldn't infect them.
Now watch what's remarkable: Jesus tells them to go show themselves to the priests. Why would Jesus tell them to go show themselves to the priest? Because the priest was responsible for observing the progression or regression of the disease and determining whether or not the individual could be allowed into the general population of Israel.
Do you understand how illogical that instruction is? They're still burning, still itching, still irritated. And Jesus tells men who obviously have leprosy, "Go show yourself to the priest." So they're walking by faith, not by sight. Sometimes your miracle, sometimes your anomaly, sometimes the obvious expression of divine intervention is on the other side of your willingness to obey divine instruction that doesn't make sense. You better learn how to walk.
And the text says: *"As they went, they were healed." They were walking, and then they started looking and they started seeing some things were changing as they were walking.
How many of them was it? Ten. But verse 15 says: "One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back." Verse 12 says they stood at a distance and asked for the miracle. Verse 15 says only one of them came back and thanked him for the miracle.
It is a powerful picture of how quickly amnesia can set in. In two verses, they forgot what it felt like to itch.
The only people that will worship in their chapter 15 are people that don't forget their chapter 13. You hadn't always been in a chapter 15. You've been in some chapter 13s. You've been in some chapter 15s, but the issue is: some of us get to chapter 15 and forget what chapter 13 felt like.
You forget what it felt like to deal with the hopelessness of leprosy. You forgot what it felt like to be praying for what you're now complaining about. That was a day you were praying. That was a day where you were saying, "If I could just have this, I would be fine." And now you got this, and it's like, "It's not enough."
When Jesus asked, "Were not all 10 cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give God praise except this foreigner?" He's essentially saying: "I performed 10 miracles, but I got one thank you. I opened 10 doors, but I got one thank you. I protected you 10 times, but I got one thank you."
Jesus is not expecting thanksgiving because he needs it. He's expecting thanksgiving because they need to learn how to be thankful. Them being thankful doesn't change anything for Jesus, but them learning to be thankful and engage in intentional reflection changes everything for them.
Here's something remarkable about the Bible that I hadn't seen until recently. The text says: *"Were not all 10 cleansed? So I'm like, 'Well, they all got healed.'" But then it says: "Rise and go. Your faith has made you well."
When you look at the original Greek words, the writer used two different words. All 10 men were made clean. But only the one who returned was made well. The word "well" there is sozo, which deals with healing and salvation. It has roots in sotia, from which we get soteriology—the study of salvation—and it speaks to how God does more than make us righteous but how God makes us well.
You see, leprosy not only had physical ramifications; it had relational ramifications because you were cut off from the community. It also had emotional ramifications because imagine having to live with something there's no cure for and the impact that has on you emotionally.
So they got healed physically, but they did not get well comprehensively. They had modification but not an alteration because they did not respond in their verse 17 in a way consistent with what God did in their verse 13.
I want to know: am I talking to anybody who wants sozo? I want to be more than right. I want to be well. When people ask me, "How's your mind doing?" I want to say, "Well." When they ask, "How are your relationships doing? How's the job going? How are resources coming in? How are you doing spiritually?" I want to say, "Well."
Sozo—comprehensive wellness—and worship brings presence, and presence brings wellness. There are three things I see in the text that this man did to experience his sozo that we need to do to experience ours.
You have to arrest amnesia. We have a default orientation toward forgetting. This is why I'm calling this a spiritual discipline. You do not remember God's comprehensive goodness without intentionality.
This is so important to God that in the Old Covenant, he gave annual feasts for the purpose of making people pause and remember. He gave them a rhythm of remembrance through rituals. God would give them the Passover feast and say: "Once a year, I want you to remember. When the angel of death was coming through Egypt and I told Moses to take the blood from a lamb and put it on the doorpost, when I came through Egypt and I saw the blood, I passed over that house. I made that house the exception. Once a year, I need you to pause and remember: I'm the God that'll make a Passover."
Somebody ought to give him a Passover praise, because now Jesus is our Passover lamb. I don't have to have a Passover day. I live a Passover life.
Spiritual disciplines like solitude exist for the purpose of reflection, meditation—not Eastern meditation but biblical meditation, meditation for the purpose of reflection and thinking. That is the only way you interrupt amnesia. This needs to happen personally, and this needs to happen as a community in the church.
Second, accept absolution—the act of forgiving someone for having done something sinful. Leprosy is used as a metaphor in the Bible for sin. Just like Jesus had the power to cleanse leprosy with a word, he has the power to cleanse sin completely and permanently.
An individual will never have a proper approach to worship if you don't have a proper understanding of the gospel. A proper gospel understanding means understanding both grace and change. In one tradition, there was a whole lot of grace but not a lot of change. In another tradition, it was almost like self-modification through self-hatred—and I've never seen anybody healthy or holy who got there through self-hatred.
Without a proper understanding of the gospel, you won't fix stuff that needs to be fixed, and so you will insult the spirit of grace. Should we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid.
The other side is operating under the identity of a sinner rather than a saint—trying to earn something that's unearnable. Instead of embracing an identity and living out of it, when you believe who God has called you to be positionally, you start acting like that experientially.
Because the gospel is not just the historic act of the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus—though that's true—it's the implications of that act. He didn't get up from the grave for him. He got up out of the grave for me. He didn't go to the cross for him. He went to the cross for me.
Third, address your allegiance. This man had to turn his back on the nine and go back to the one. He literally said, "I know where y'all are going, and I can't go that way, because worship in spirit and truth requires addressing your loyalties."
Idolatry is divided loyalty. God doesn't ask to be the only important thing in your life. He says, "I need to be the first important thing in your life." He doesn't ask to be only. He just says: put me first. He says, "The place I have in your life should be a chair, not a couch. I don't share that."
God's love is what's called a loyal love. Loyalty at some point has levels, and at some point loyalty requires a choice. For everybody that likes to play the middle, at some point your loyalty will require a choice, and you should be choosing based on principle, not person.
Choose ye this day whom you will serve. What fellowship does light have with darkness? This applies personally, but it applies corporately. As a church, we have to have an unapologetic allegiance to the thing God told us to do.
I was sitting in a systematic theology class at Princeton Theological Seminary, grieving the fact that this wasn't the life I wanted. You can give God a yes and be excited at the yes, and then you start living in that yes and the excitement wears off.
I was not going to law school. I was following God to seminary. Then I'm sitting in seminary like, "Man, this is..." And Dr. Daryl Cole introduced us to a book called Announcing the Reign of God by Mortimer Arias, a South American United Methodist Bishop. That was the first time I saw that I had been preaching and grew up hearing people preach the gospel about Jesus but not the gospel Jesus preached.
He kept showing us in the gospels: "The kingdom of God is like..." over and over. We were talking about Jesus but not what he talked about. He kept talking about a kingdom—the king's way.
The Holy Spirit spoke to me in systematic theology in the year 2002 and said: "That's what I called you out of law school for. You're upset because you think I called you to build what you saw, and that ain't worth sacrificing for. We don't need another one of those churches. Darius, you build it my way, and if you build it my way, I will raise you up and you will do more with less. Be biblical. Don't worry about being big."
He told me three things—these are not negotiable. I'm never changing them.
Number one: Do kingdom. That's why the name of our church was Kingdom Church. Now we call it "the Third Way"—not culture's way, not church's way, but the king's way.
God calls different churches to carry out the church's mission, but God calls different churches to make different contributions to that mission because different people need different things. We do church for three seats: unbeliever, believer, and mature believer. We think like missionaries. We say we're not this or that; we're this and that.
Number two: Do it missionally. We had a three-night revival, and I was sitting at Denny's in Oakbrook, Illinois in 2006. I had a conversation about First Kings, and I opened my laptop and looked up First Kings chapter 10—the story of the Queen of Sheba coming to visit Solomon. It says: "When she saw the house that he had built, the seating of his servants, their attitude, there was no more breath in her."
The Holy Spirit said: "That's the way my kingdom is—excellent, breathtaking." We have lowered the standard so much in church that excellence is interpreted as showing off. We will accept things in church we won't accept anywhere else and then say we're the most important institution on the planet. God's work deserves my best effort. Excellence is doing the best you can in the season you're in with the resources you have available.
Number three: It must have integrity. For the gospel to be transmitted, it must be embodied. This matters because in order to do kingdom, you've got to be credible. You can't live these different lives. If there's no integrity, there's no safety. If there's no integrity, it's not different—it's just the same.
As we celebrate 20 years, I want you to know if I back off any of that, I'm committing idolatry. I'm acting like I know what's best for you more than God knows what's best for you.
I understand the assignment. Worship isn't just about actions. It's about your allegiance. I will put nothing in front of you or in front of what you told me to do. Your conviction needs to be anybody who asks you to compromise that is a person who hasn't learned how to love you right.
