Grow Up | Summer In The Psalms | Pastor Derick Amsler

Go ahead and grab your seat, grab your Bible. We've got some work to do today. We are in this series called Summer in the Psalms. Everybody say psalms. And we're looking how the largest book in the Bible is broken down into bite sized chunks and genres and if you will, doorways to actually help formulate and mature our soul.

Here's what I know. You can blow out more candles on your birthday cake. It doesn't mean you're getting more mature. Anybody know somebody like that? You can pass calendar years and make all the New Year's resolutions you want, but at the end of the day, if you haven't grown up, then you haven't grown up.

I discovered this several years ago. I got to another year of living, another lap around the sun, and I was looking back on the course of one year and I thought, I don't know if I changed. I feel like I'm the same. And so I started looking into what would it look like for me to have actual metrics or a ruler of life? What does it look like that this time next year I can look back and say, did I grow spiritually?

Am I a better man? Am I a better husband to Jessica and father to Avery and Cade? Am I a better pastor? Am I a better friend, a brother, a son? What does it look like, like for me to know that growth is occurring in those long summer months where it feels like you're spinning your wheels and nothing's really happening?

Several years ago, somebody introduced me to what's called a rule of life. It's almost like a ruler. A ruler is going to give you some metrics. It's also going to provide a straight line for growth and development. Today I want to give you a rule of of life that you can end this year better than the way you walked into summer.

Let's walk out of the summer with a profound direction and vision for our life. The Bible says where an individual has no vision, they waste their life wondering aimlessly. This year we're going to get our vision back. We're going to get our focus back. We're going to get a ruler back.

I'm a church kid. I grew up in church. My dad was a preacher and I'll never forget our youth pastor. One Wednesday night, he took us all out on the church parking lot to the church parking lot and he rolled out a 55 gallon burn barrel and he preached a passionate message, talking about the holiness of God. And it was impactful.

Here we are all these years later, but I still remember the Thesis of his message. There are things in your life that don't need to be in your life because they are restricting your life, keeping you from God. There are some things that you've been watching, that you've been hearing, that you've been thinking about, that you've grown comfortable with. But God wants to remove them from your life. So here's what he said.

Some of you, you have some CDs. And if you're under 20 and you don't know what a CD is, I can't help you. Okay? Look it up on Google. He says.

He says. He says some of you got some music in your car that you need to burn tonight. And if you don't have anything, we're gonna write it down on a note card. We're gonna throw it in the burn pile and we're gonna burn it. And some seniors started crying, you know.

Cause they wanted to be holy before God. And they went to their car and they took out one of those big old CD albums. Anybody remember those? Anybody remember the CD album? Just pages of CDs.

If you don't know what CD is, it's like Spotify on plastic is what it was. And some of these kids, they were bringing their CDs, and it was like, I'm giving Metallica to God. And they burned it for God. And some of them took out really nasty stuff like Nirvana and they burned it. And really wicked stuff like Britney Spears, and they would burn it.

Really terrible stuff like Garth Brooks. And to be fair, that doesn't need to get burned. I mean, let's just be honest. I know we're in West Virginia, but anybody got time for it? And to this day, I've associated the smell of burnt plastic with revival.

Right? So imagine my frustration when I woke up on Thursday, assuming that the desires of temptation would decrease because I just burned a piece of paper the night before. Now, there's nothing wrong with what my pastor taught me. I've done it too. As a youth pastor.

I've done it as a pastor. Be honest. I'll probably do it again at the end of this year. But that's not my point. My point is, I wish he would have just taught me the second half that subtraction does not equate to sanctification.

Sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit to sanctify, mature our life. You can keep removing things from your life, but that doesn't make you more mature in life. I see it every January. Somebody's gonna fast sweets all January. But all they do is replace sweets with Cool Ranch Doritos.

You know what I'm talking about. It's like, ah, I don't know. Subtraction does not equate to sanctification.

The maturity of our soul and the rule of life requires us to think beyond what is in me. That needs to get out of me. And it calls us to reorder our very life. Elbow the person sitting next to you so hard you break their third rib and say, I don't need this, but I'm glad you came. Let them know.

Come on. I'm glad you're here for this. Here's what it would look like. Let's say that this net represents our soul. This is our heart.

Now remember, when the Bible says heart, it's not talking about our emotions. It's talking about our holistic living. It's talking about the operating system in which we see the world in which we intentionally go through life. It's the mechanism upon which we make decisions. Which is why Solomon said, guard your operating system, Guard your heart, for from it will flow the rest of your life.

The condition of this affects all of this. If the net represents our soul, let's say that these golf balls represent the good things in your life because not everything in your life is evil. Let's say that this represents marriage. Marriage is a good thing for many of us. And I was looking for an amen or something, but don't worry about it.

Don't worry about it. We'll have a marriage conference later. And your job. Your job can be a good thing. And money, I mean, let's just be honest about it.

Money's a good thing. I know everybody doesn't want pastors to talk about money. There's two things that are off limits in the church world. Don't talk about money and don't talk about sex. But everybody I know wants more of both.

I'm just saying. So money. Money's a good thing. Money's a good thing. Let's talk about kids.

Kids are a good thing. Your kids schedule, you know, just all of it. They keep you busy. Now watch this. I want you to notice a couple things.

Our desires do carry some weight. Some desires are a burden. The blessing and the burden weigh the same. But I want you to notice this. Wherever you go, there you are.

You can't compartmentalize your life. The goal isn't to love your wife less. The goal is to maintain balance of good things. Watch this. Watch this.

I also want you to notice this. Nothing I put on the net was evil. I didn't put anything bad on the net. Matter of fact, everything I name plus others, the Bible specifically calls those categories gifts from God. So the goal isn't to love less.

The goal is to get good things in the right order. Our life be filled with so many good things, and yet our life feels chaotic, in disarray. Why do sometimes I feel like I'm being weighed down by a lot of good opportunities? 1600 years ago, a pastor named Augustus called it ordo armor. And it means ordered loves or love in right order.

He goes on to say this about sin. Sin not merely loving bad things, but loving good things in the wrong order. So it will look like this marriage, marriage is a good thing. But if it becomes the main thing in your life, look how all those other desires are now affected by the course and the state of your marriage. Which is why some people put too much expectations or weight on their spouse.

They want their spouse to eradicate every insecurity and, and heal every wound that they didn't even cause. They find their source of stability and security in the other person's sensibility. So if they're good, we're good. But if they're not good and we're not good, my entire life rests upon them. Parenting.

Parenting's a good thing. But we all know people who live through their kids. They don't parent their kids. So now if your kids are the main thing in your life or actually the image of your parental style is the image or is the center of your life. Now, their opportunities, their awards, their performance is an indication on your importance as a parent.

Other parents, they don't live through their kids. They lean on their kids like emotional support dogs, right? They need their son to be their confidant and they need their. Or the mom needs the son to be her confidant. And the sad, the dad needs the daughter to be his emotional support.

Because where else am I getting validation from? And so make our house okay. Make us all okay. By the way, that's not a childhood, that's child labor. You're asking for emotional employment from a person who doesn't even know algebra.

They're trying to figure out their locker number and you're asking them to carry you and your importance and validate you as your sense of well being and identity. I'm just saying whatever is the heaviest in your life will draw all other emotions down to its lowest level. So the goal then is not to love things less, it's to get good things in the right order. The book of Psalms has five different genres. And theologians point out those five genres perfectly mirror the first five books in the Old Testament.

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. When we look at the continual thread through the first five books in the Old Testament called the Pentateuch, we discover one theme. So it's not five distinct stories. It's one story of divine creation and formation. It's how God formed all of creation and our life and how God formed a people.

He's going to use a group of people, a people group, and he's going to teach them how to order their life. Not just the subtraction of sin, but the reordering of good things that allows them to be in a fruit full and flourishing relationship with God. So we come to the book of Genesis and the world is created with divine order. Genesis chapter one. There's no chaos.

Everything, it finds its proper place. And the Bible says in chapter two, verse nine, the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground. Trees that were pleasing to the eye. Beauty's good, creativity is good, and good for food. How many people say food is also good?

Food is also good. Now watch this. In the middle of the garden were the trees of life and another tree called the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. God said, don't eat from those. Those aren't for you.

Not everything in your life is for you. Not every good gift from God is all about you. Sometimes God blesses you, but he always has more than you in mind. The trees weren't evil because God doesn't create evil. The trees were something good that signified something better.

God says, hey, I want to remind you on a daily basis that you're not in this relationship because I'm forcing it. You are not my robots. You are not enslaved or held captive in the Garden of Eden. You can either accept or reject my love how you see fit. I want this to be a relationship built upon your choice and desire and trust and surrender and not force.

So I get the purpose of the tree. What bothers me is the location of the trees. Like God, if you know they're gonna send. Why did you put the tree in the middle of the garden? Why not put it on the other side of a river somewhere surrounded by pine cones or something?

Why you gotta put it in the middle of the garden for? Because every day it was a reminder. Who's in the center of the garden of your heart? Who's in the center of your love? What is the heaviest object, the heaviest truth?

The Heaviest desire, the heaviest love in your heart. You know the story. The serpent shows up. Notice what he doesn't do. This is called the, the, the logic from the reversal.

It's where you, you look at what wasn't said. And by looking at what wasn't said, emphasizes what is said. Watch this. The servant doesn't say, eve, I can't believe that you believe in a God. How could a higher power.

No, no, no, that's not his goal. He doesn't say, eve, stop worshiping God. It's not his goal. For the goal of Satan is not to remove your belief or worship in God. It's simply to move him off center.

Off center? Did God really say that? The reason why God really said that is because he knows that you could do his job better than him. Lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge yourself and you can direct your path.

I'm not asking you not to believe in God. I'm just asking you to move him off center. So I know what the Bible says about sex before marriage. I know what the Bible says about money. I know what the Bible says about dreams and ambitions.

I know what the Bible says about forgiveness. I know what the Bible says about hatred and bitterness and worry and strife and fear and control. I know what the Bible says about all those things. But just for this moment, in this particular setting, in this particular moment in the garden of my heart, let me just move God off center and place myself and my wisdom right here. My control, my desires, my loves, my longing here.

And let's just see what happens. The goal of Satan isn't to convince you there is no God. It's simply to move God just enough where something else takes its place.

You know the story. The moment God is removed off center, the rest of the world comes crashing down the rest of the Pentateuch. Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Is God forming a group of people to reorder themselves so that a watching world can see what walking in alignment with God looks like at the tree. God is.

God is replaced with their own intellect and desires. Eventually, God finds a man by the name of Abraham and he makes him a promise that you're going to have a son. And through him they will have so many children that will band together into what we call tribes. Today we call them the twelve tribes of Israel. Those tribes will stay together and there'll be a nation.

And I'm going to bless that nation on your behalf. And so a lifetime of prayer and promise wrapped up in this one child. Now Watch what God asks from that child. Are you ready? Genesis 22.

Abraham, take your son, your only son, whom you love, and offer him another Translation is more specific. Sacrifice him to me. Now, I've talked about this in great detail in the past, so I won't bother it too much right now. But that wouldn't have been an abnormal request in this particular day and age. In this context, it was normal for people to believe that pagan gods were wanted you to devote the heaviest thing on your heart, being your children to them as proof that you were devoted to them.

God is speaking in a language then that Abraham understands. Now, if you're newer to the Bible, fear not. Don't stress. Everything's going to be okay. They'll both come off the mountain.

Just so you know. But notice the compounding emotional terms God uses. He doesn't just say, take that boy. He doesn't say, take Isaac. He says, take your son.

That's weighty. Your only son. It just got weightier. The son in whom you love.

The heaviest thing on your heart will always be the greatest test of your desires. The greatest gift in your life will always be the greatest test of your heart. What means the most to you is going to be the greatest test you have to endure. Now watch what happens. Abraham, he takes Isaac.

They're walking up a mountain. And in verse five, he says to his servant, the boy and I will go over there. And this is the first time this particular word is ever used in scripture. And we will worship. There's no band, there's no keyboard, there's no guitar.

And thank goodness nobody has a tambourine. They have nothing that says this is worship. So clearly, the word worship here doesn't accompany music, a microphone, a melody, or lyrics. The first time the word worship is ever used in the Bible is in this context of sacrifice. Matter of fact, the Hebrew word is shaka.

And it and it literally means it's not a music word, it's a body word is what we would say in grammar. It's a body word meaning that you physically bow low in respect. Surrender, or in this context, sacrifice. What is worship? When I have something weighing on the fabric of my heart that I surrender to God out of respect for his lordship and his authority in his reign, that becomes worship.

I know I've got every excuse and reason to remove him from center because I want my will to be done here in this moment. But when I keep God at the center, no matter what it costs me, I gain everything. Now watch this. Watch this. Me and the Boy, we will go over there and worship.

Going to lay it down.

In modern times, the word confession is almost treated like a cuss word in churches, right? Like, nobody wants to confess their sins of one and to another. Let's be honest, it's awkward. And we just don't want people knowing our business. And so we say things like, don't judge me and only God can judge me.

And we're like, yes, he will. That's why we need to talk about it. We need to do something about it. And the word confession simply means there has been something that has drifted to the center of my life that needs to be replaced with something greater. That's all it means.

It's not a scary word. It's a word of alignment. Help me get my good things back in order. When God is at the center, every good thing finally becomes good again. Watch this.

There is actually a promotion in second place.

When your wife is able to be your wife and not your God, she moves from being your total confirmation to now your companion, a helpmate, and not your sense of stability. There is a promotion in her being second place behind God. Your kids can be kids again. Your vocation can be a place in which you honor God through the intellect of your mind and the work of your hands and opportunities at hand, and not your sense of importance or validation or sense of identity. There's a promotion in second place.

Let me continue the thread. Abraham's family eventually grows into a nation, and that nation ends up enslaved in Egypt for over 400 years. Second book of the Bible, Exodus. When God wants to intervene, he calls on the man by the name of Moses and tells Moses to go to Pharaoh with a message. You already know the message.

Let my people go. Most of the time we put a period there, but the text says there's a comma there. Moses doesn't say, let God's people go so they can be free, although that would be good. He doesn't say, let God's people go so they can have a better life, although that would be good. Let God's people go so they could have more time to serve him.

He doesn't know what it says. He says, let my people go so that they may. And here's that word again. Worship me. This time in Hebrew, it's not the Hebrew word shaka, which means to bow low.

It's a word that literally means to labor, to serve, to work. It's the same word used earlier in Exodus to describe what God's people were doing for Pharaoh. The same word which tells us that God didn't come to liberate his people from work. He came to liberate them from working for the wrong master. He came to redeem what Pharaoh was trying to establish in them.

Have you ever worked for Pharaoh? What was the voice of Pharaoh? More. More quota. More straw.

More bricks. More pain. More agony. Bigger buildings. More.

More. And here we are, 2,000 years later, to discover Pharaoh still hiring.

You want to be important. More likes, More followers, More thumbs up. More importance, More validation, More sense of security. More people, more friends, more accolades. Pharaoh's looking for a workforce.

God came to tell his people, you don't work for Pharaoh anymore.

Your work can give you assignments and tasks, but only God gives you your calling and your anointing. You don't work for Pharaoh. You work for the king of glory. Worship. Bow down and surrender worship to labor or work or serve with a different spirit.

That whatever you do, you actually do it for God. And when you view your work as worship unto him, he will inhabit the praises of your work.

Pharaoh eventually lets God's people go. They cross the Red Sea. The sister of Moses, her name's Miriam, she grabs a tambourine and she starts to lead the entire nation in a song of praise and worship and thanksgiving. And the word here used for worship is that clapping, singing, raising your hands. I'm just pointing out the location of the clapping, the raising of the hands and the singing.

It wasn't to get delivered. It was in response to an awareness they are. Worship, then, is a response to the victory that God has given us through the person and the work of Jesus. On Easter morning, when he rose triumphantly over sin, death, hell and the grave, and the crucifixion of the cross, reminding us that if he can do it for his own sake, son, he can do it for us. What did Paul say?

The same power that raised Jesus back to life. Now he lives in us. Worship is a response to that reality. I'm not worshiping to try to try to lure God to me. I'm worshiping because he's already close to me and he's given us the victory.

So watch this church our size. Every Sunday, somebody says something to me about our worship. They're going to say something about somebody clapping their hands. They're going to say something about somebody jumping up and down. They're going to say something about somebody raising their hands.

And they're like, pastor, where I come from, I've never seen my do that. Is everything okay in the back? Is everything okay in the Back, like, what's going on back there? That people are, like, in full surrender. And they'll say something like, you know, like, I notice every Sunday that people are down front and they're getting prayed for and they're crying and.

And there's other people laughing. It just feels like this is a very emotional church into which I'm like, you have no idea. And, you know, the reason why we worship the way we do is because it's in response to what God has been doing in our life. So watch this. My fear is not my God, so I can clap my hands in the middle of unfavorable circumstances.

My plans are not my God, so I can raise my hand while still carrying unanswered prayers in my mouth. Money is not my God, so I can live with obedience and with generosity to build the kingdom of God in me and around me. My image is not my God, so I can worship freely, a God who gave me everything. And if there's a need in my life, I don't mind coming down forward and asking our prayer partners to pray for me, because my ego doesn't serve me. I get my ego in check to go serve the God who can do something about the very issue that I'm waiting through.

Singing and serving and giving are different expressions of the same reality. God is at the center. And when God is at the center, he affects everything else. My emotions, my will, my intellect, my relationships, my career, my sense of purpose. Because whatever's at the heaviest of your life will influence the weight of everything else you manage.

So now back to the role of life. How then do we live and apply all these truths? Let me give you five things that the capital C Church has been using throughout centuries. Five things that you can measure. Practical steps you can take to put God at the center of your life beyond intentions.

By the way, in Genesis, things were in order. Sin, disordered it. In Exodus, God sets people free to reorder what got disordered Genesis, Exodus, in Leviticus, numbers, and Deuteronomy. God is doing one thing. He's developing rhythms through remembrance.

Rhythms through remembrance. Because God knows what we have learned the hard way. Our heart can drift quickly. So the rhythms of remembrance on a weekly, daily, annually, rhythm keeps God at the center of our life. It's called the trellis, or the framework of five.

Five things to put God first. And by doing so, it centers God. Are you ready? Write this down. Number one.

First voice. First voice. Before you open up social media or the television, before you allow the world to shape your nervous system and tell you how the day's going and to remind you everything that's out of your control, to remind you what they deem as important. Open up, open up. Open up the Bible and hear from God.

Hear God's voice. Here's what I'm going to encourage our church to do as a whole this month, the month of August. I want us to exit the summer greater than the way we walked into it. So we're going to read every morning, one chapter a day of the Gospel of Luke, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. You say, why Luke?

Luke is a story of individuals who lost their proper order and Jesus restores it. So if you want to be a Navy SEAL about it, take an orange or yellow highlighter and mark up every time someone got out of order. And then watch how God redeems order. And by redeeming the order, he blesses their life. First voice, second first opportunities.

The desert fathers would say this. At the first opportunity, you have to encourage someone on behalf of God to strengthen somebody, to pray with somebody. It builds spiritual moment momentum in your heart and focus for your mind. And you're going to start discovering this. God's actually doing a lot more than what I used to see.

But now that I'm aware and I'm participating early on, he's all around me. He goes before me. I thought I walked through that situation, but he back there, too. First voice, first opportunity. Then they would encourage us.

First place. This is where we rest our head on pillow at night and we ask God, God, did anything get out of order today? Now watch this. If you're prone to guilt and shame like I am, it's going to be easy for you to start getting down on yourself and feeling bad again. It's Wednesday.

I did it again. That's okay. A thousand distractions are a thousand invitations for you to come back to the heart of God. Don't beat yourself up for getting out of order. Praise God for his grace that he gives you another opportunity to get back in order.

That's what mercy is all about. That's what grace is all about. First voice, first opportunity, first place. And then the Bible would encourage us to do exactly what you're doing right now. First day of the week, we gather together.

We grow in our awareness of God's love and God's truth. We encourage one another, and then we go out to live out that which we learned in this place. We gather, grow and go. And then the Bible says, first fruits every week. I'm going to give the first 10% of what God's given me through a paycheck back to him.

It honors the giver more than a good gift. It builds the kingdom of God by surrendering my heart. Worship the bowing low of a good gift, the full surrender that everything I do in including work belongs to him. And watch how God builds this kingdom of order in me. Now.

Watch this Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these other things.

God will take care of those.

There's peace on the other side of proper placement. There's a holiness on the other side of divine order. God didn't leave us guessing what he wants from us. He's clear in his word. So I'm just telling somebody, just try it for a month and see if the things of this earth don't grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and his grace.

Stand up with me across this place. Lord, I do thank you for the rule of life that is foundational to formation. Lord, thank you for the grace that you provide us when subtraction is needed. But Lord, we revel in your mercy when a reorder is needed. Thank you for not leaving us until we get in order.

Thank you for doing the ordering process alongside with us. There is no one like you, Lord. Thank you for divine favor and grace and blessings that are on the other side of just walking in alignment with you. So Lord, once again we close our fists and we release any sin and we open up our other fists to release any pressure or any sense of control that gives us a false sense of importance. And Lord, we raise, raise up holy hands, inhabit the praises of your people as we put in right order your truths in our life.

In Jesus name and all God's people said, come on. Amen. Amen.