10 Years of Beholding God: Jordan Thomas

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Revival Sermon: William Chalmer Burns (Psalm 110:2)

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Welcome to the Whole Council podcast. I'm Teddy James, content producer for MediaGratia. I'm the guy that's typically behind the camera doing all of the recordings, but for the next couple of weeks,

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I'm going to be doing the introduction for the podcast. Throughout this year, we have been releasing special episodes from the interviews that we did for BeholderGod, Rethinking God Biblically.

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And what we're trying to do there is, whenever you do a large project like one of these studies, we may sit down and interview somebody for 45 minutes, or even in the case of Richard Owen Roberts, a little over two hours.

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But what ends up in the final product is maybe 15 or 20 minutes.

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So there's a lot of content that's left on the cutting room floor. What we wanted to do over the course of this year was to release their complete interviews or the complete interviews from all of the people that we talked with.

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This week, you're going to see the interview with Jordan Thomas. Now, if you're a longtime listener to the podcast, you're familiar with Jordan.

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We've had him on multiple times. But also, we pray that this will really encourage you to pray for us as we put the finishing touches on his mini -study and how it's about how churches can treasure

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Christ together. And it is just a wonderful study. It's been such a pleasure to work on that.

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And so, as you listen to this episode, please take a moment and pray for that study.

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Pray for Jordan, pray for us as, again, we put those finishing touches on and look forward to that in the upcoming year.

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Yeah, so the question from Tozer is, the most important thing about a man, what enters his mind when he thinks about God.

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I totally agree with Tozer. Personally, in my own experience, thinking that I was very familiar with God for a long time and not until I was almost 19 years old, being confronted with the

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God of the Bible. I knew him in name only, maybe, and really had a

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God of my own imagination. I took a little concept from Scripture and added them to that. But then when

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Tozer's book fell into my hands, from which that quote comes, which is the knowledge of the holy, and he begins that way, says the most important thing about any person is what enters their mind when they think about God.

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And then he unpacked the grand attributes of God for the remaining chapters. I remember the effect the book left on me.

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It was instantly and then afterward. I'm not nearly as familiar with the

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God that I thought I was so familiar with. And I want to know him. I want to know this

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God for who he is and how he describes himself. So that, I think the second part of the question was personal experience in relationship to is the most important thing about a person what he thinks about when he thinks about God.

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That set me on a journey of looking at God's descriptions of himself in Scripture.

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And when he says things like, let not the wise man boast of his wisdom.

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Let not the rich man boast of his riches. Let not the mighty man boast of his might, but let him who boasts boast about this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the

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Lord. It's Jeremiah nine. It says, this is

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God's ultimate priority for his own people, that we know who he is. Christ couldn't have upped the ante any higher when he said eternal life is, according to his own prayer in John 17 three, knowing you the only true

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God and Jesus Christ whom you've sent. If you don't know this God, you don't have the eternal life he offers.

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People may be pretty interested in eternal life, but if they're not interested in the God who provides it, then they'll never have the life he offers.

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Yeah, it's interesting that Tozer's assessment in his day would be that the church was miles wide and only an inch deep.

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I wonder what he would say in a day, just a few decades removed like our day. I totally concur with Tozer.

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When a man like Tozer walks with the God of scripture, knows him intimately, spends prolonged hours in prayer and fellowship with the living

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God and his word, and then steps out of that into the milieu of churchianity and the other kind of air that the evangelical world is breathing,

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I wonder if his stomach turns. So he looks at it and says, oh my goodness, you think you're under such blessing, but you're so wide and only an inch deep.

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The fellow who really invested a lot in me, Clyde Cranford, before he died said, spend your whole life digging a deep well.

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Go down deep with God. And when you interact with others, you'll be giving them just the cream off of the top of this sweet relationship that you've had with God that can't even be explained if you wanted to put it into words.

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But as far as the church being a mile wide or thousands of miles wide and only an inch deep, my own personal perspective on it is that the

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American church is a lot like a kindergarten show and tell experience. And so we're standing up in front of all of our peers and we're saying, oh, look at the new little trinket that I have.

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And we're so impressed with all these other peripheral things, some of them even good things, but not

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God himself. And instead of standing before the people of God saying, this is our

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God, this is the living God who spoke into existence the cosmos and by his own decree parted the

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Red Sea and provided redemption for his people in the old new covenant through the blood of his son. Instead of that, we're talking about our latest slick program or something that's really non -essential.

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So yes, we are miles wide an inch, if that far deep in so many cases.

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And it's to our own detriment and probably a sign of God's judgment upon us, even as his people.

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Yeah, what are the heart problems of the modern church in the

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West in particular? And what's the right prescription? Rather than dealing with the symptoms, how do we go down to the root?

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I'd say the root problems that I see, and there are a lot of people trying to identify lots of problems and offer lots of solutions, but oftentimes dealing just with the symptoms rather than those roots.

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I believe the root is really a lack of being impressed with Christ himself.

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Like we were talking about just a moment ago. Now, how many people would so quickly raise their hand to say, yes,

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I'm a Christian? I mean, I find it challenging to find anybody in Memphis who's not a professing

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Christian. I mean, everybody's been baptized multiple times, right? They belong to more than one church.

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But when you try to engage them about Christ himself, nobody's impressed with him.

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People find it challenging to even sustain a meaningful conversation concerning the son of the living

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God. Whereas scripture from beginning to end points to him and his glory.

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So when God gives us this one special revelation in a written form called

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Holy Scripture, Genesis to Revelation points to the glory of God in Christ.

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And here we are professing to belong to this Christ and hardly being able to sustain a conversation about him.

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It says something about the root problem, I believe. So a return to, like the book of Hebrews, a return to this majestic vision of God, where the writer says things like, concerning him, concerning Jesus, this is

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Hebrews 511, concerning Jesus, we have much to say. Oh, what a statement.

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But it's gotta be one of the darkest verses in the Bible because the next phrase says, concerning him, we have much to say.

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But it's hard to explain because you've become dull of hearing. So what might the writer of Hebrews have said when he's already laid out this untouchably glorious view of the incomparable

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Christ? What else might he have said that he didn't include because the people weren't ready to digest that vision of God's glory in Christ?

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So if that's like the lowest common denominator, I would have said more, but I'm not willing to go beneath this.

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And you measure Hebrews like with the modern church. And we've got, you know, five ways to have a better day.

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And it's nothing about the glories of Christ that's really concerning to me.

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And it says something about our disbelief in the God who has revealed himself in Christ, in his word, through the gospel.

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Well, the way to appreciate the loveliness of Christ, rather than to try to make him become more lovely than he is, he is altogether lovely.

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But to appreciate his loveliness, to really be able to see and behold him, we have the answer from the heart of God himself, which is, we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the

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Lord are being transformed into the same image. Well, how does that transformation into the image of Christ happen?

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It's beholding his glory in the mirror. Second Corinthians three, in the mirror, of course, is his word.

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I think of Ignatius's quote, which has been so meaningful to me.

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I think of it repetitively, apart from Christ, let nothing dazzle you. Really nothing.

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Now here's a guy who's discipled by a disciple of Jesus. So he knows the history of Christ well, humanly speaking.

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He knows a man who knew the man. And he's saying, let nothing dazzle you apart from him.

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And that quote comes in a letter that Ignatius wrote to the church at Ephesus. Well, Ignatius wasn't alone in saying things like that.

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You get years later, hundreds of years later, French theologians, Theodore Menard, saying things like, only three words.

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But in those three words, consists the whole secret of life, looking unto

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Jesus. Or you get men like Isaac Ambrose, saying things like, if there's any heaven on earth, it consists in the duty and practice of looking unto

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Jesus. Well, they get that right out of scripture. They get that out of Hebrews 12 and 2

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Corinthians 3, and these places where, like Jesus says, Abraham rejoiced to see my day.

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Well, he lived 2000 years before Christ was born. And then Jesus follows it up with, and he saw it and was glad.

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Abraham looked to Christ just like we're to look to him by faith in the great promises of God, the provision of the gospel.

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I mean, we could go down that track pretty far. But how do I enliven my own soul? I want to be better at that.

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How do I look to Christ myself? How do I employ the spiritual disciplines? I want to grow in that regard.

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But I can say this with humble confidence that I look to Christ the same way

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Moses did. I look to Christ the same way David did. I look to Christ the same way Paul did.

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It's by faith in what God has said about himself in the scriptures.

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Jesus said, if you believed Moses, you'd believe me because Moses wrote about me. How does a guy that lived 1500 years before Jesus was born write about Jesus?

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Because he knew him. We know that from Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11 says,

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Moses endured the exodus, not fearing the wrath of the king, because he saw him who is unseen.

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He saw him. He knew him. That's how he endured. And we're told, I mean, this to me is like, this is my only hope.

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We're told in Hebrews 11 that Moses considered the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasure of Egypt.

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He grew up in Pharaoh's courts. He had all the treasure of Egypt. He could have been the man. But he said

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Christ is more valuable than all of that. How he lived 1500 years before Jesus was born.

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David, we're told in Acts, wrote about the resurrection of the Christ. He saw

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Christ. He believed in him by faith. So how do I try to look to him? I try to look to him humbly in prayer through the scriptures to behold his glory.

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Not just the words of God, but the God who spoke the words. I want to see his glory in Christ.

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And if I can continue on that track, let me go a step further. Okay. So who is under satanic influence?

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If you had asked me that question 10 years ago, I would have said, well, all those guys

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I went to high school with that were overtly admittedly Satan worshipers or satanic.

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In 2 Corinthians 4, we're told who it is that's under the influence of Satan. And it's not only those people that would admittedly say that they're satanic.

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But according to that chapter, it's every person, every person, no one accepted, that does not see the glory of God in the face of Christ.

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We're told in that chapter that it's like Satan himself has put a veil over their face. And it's those who don't believe.

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Well, what do they not believe? The passage tells us so clearly. They do not believe the gospel of the glory of God that is revealed in the face of Christ.

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So we're to look at God's glory in Christ's face through the lens of scripture as the means of seeing his beauty and being changed into his likeness.

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There's no other way. You know, the way

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I would use scripture to promote my own view of God, we all hold terribly deficient views of God.

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We all need greater views of God. And the way I would use scripture to promote my own views of God are like the old

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Scottish pastor Samuel Rutherford talked about. He said he felt like his job as a pastor was impossible.

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He said he felt like he would have to walk 1 ,000 miles to the ocean and say, oh, look how beautiful it is.

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Look at the sunset. Look at the waves. Dip his two little hands down into the ocean, walk 1 ,000 miles back to his people and say, can't you see the ocean?

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Can't you see the sunset? Can't you see the waves? Can't you see the glory? And he thought they'd look at him with blank stares.

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And then he realized, unless you go to the ocean for yourself, you'll never see how majestic it is.

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No one can adequately explain to you. You've got to experience. Well, that certainly is true for the pew.

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All of our people need to go to the ocean for themselves. But perhaps the reason that many of our people are not going to the ocean is because their pastor's never been there to tell them how glorious this

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God is. They don't look at him for themselves. So another Scottish believer of days gone by,

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Robert Murray McShane, said that he felt like his job as a pastor was to go out into the good pasture, the good land, quiet waters, green, luscious pasture, and enjoy

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God there. And then come back to the people and say, come with me. I've been,

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I know that God is here. I know that he will feed us. I know that he will take care of us because I've been there with him.

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Come go with me and let's seek his face together. So I like both of those images together. The people certainly have to go for themselves, but let's take them with us to see him.

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But I would add this. The reason that most people don't seek God, bottom line, is not because they need a new video curriculum.

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It's not because somebody needs to explain it to them again.

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It's because they're totally disinterested in the God who is. When God rescued me as a freshman in college,

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I was hell bound and loved my sin. I wasn't looking for God. And he came in his mercy and rescued me.

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I was reading through the New Testament and halfway through the New Testament, I'm saying, I don't know the

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Jesus who's explained here. After true conversion, regeneration, a

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Bible word, being born again, falling in love with the Jesus who is, no one had to tap me on the shoulder and say,

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Jordan, it would be a good idea for you to get to know the God who loves you so much. I had a ravenous appetite for this

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God. Now I'm ashamed of how small this appetite is even to this day. But to know the

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God who has given over his only son for our redemption, it's asinine to think that we know him at all if we don't want to know him more.

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And the problem is a lot of people think God's just a good idea. He's a plus, he's a benefit.

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I mean, it would be nice if God were to come along with us for a day or two. We don't see him as a necessity, absolute, utter necessity.

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But Jesus said, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of his mouth.

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You have to have this God. And if you don't have him, you're dead.

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He's not a plus, he's not a bonus. He's absolute necessity.

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The shortcomings in modern evangelism, I think, can be reduced into a few categories.

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One is man -centered and two is decisionistic. It's about you.

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Now, we don't know what God did for all this time, but he sure was lucky when he got you on his team.

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This is not the gospel. The gospel is not man -centered. The true gospel is gloriously God -centered.

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Nor is it decisionistic. I have decided to follow Jesus. Well, maybe you did, but you didn't do so on your own initiative.

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God acted upon you if you've decided to follow him at all. So, all these contrivances for evangelistic tactics are betraying the reality that we don't know the

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God who does the saving. You can think about it in the big categories of God and salvation.

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Well, a lot of people want to think about salvation that God offers. Very few people want to think about the God who does the saving.

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And so, if you only think about salvation, well, how can I save my skin? How can I make sure that I don't go to the old nasty hell?

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And all you do is think about salvation, then you're almost inevitably going to be thinking man -centeredly.

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But when you think about the God who does the saving, it changes everything. Who is he?

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What do I need to be saved from changes to from whom do I need to be saved?

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It's the wrath of this God. I've offended this God. There must not be any mercy for me.

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There's no way I could have pardon, amnesty, total clemency from this

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God. And then you realize not only have you offended him, you're guilty of the murder of his son.

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How can you have peace with this God? And then you understand, oh, it's precisely through the death of his son that he planned that I could have the forgiveness of my sins.

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When we realize that Christ is who he is, has done what he has done, we will be reduced to humility and throw ourselves on his mercy and say, for your glory alone, you can have all of me.

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You deserve all the worship. That's exactly the way the Bible explains it better than I could.

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One died for all. Jesus died for all. Therefore all died so that those who live would no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again on their behalf.

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He died for us. So the real remedy to all the false gospels and contrived evangelism is not a new program.

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It's not another evangelistic slick method. It's an elevation of the

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God who is. When we see this God for who he is and the gospel provision of Christ for what it is, then our hearts will melt and we'll want to turn to him.

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And just one last thing to add, we're told in Isaiah 53, this is 700 years before the birth of Christ, that all of us have gone astray.

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We all need salvation. We're all sinners. But think about this. The Lord laid on him,

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Jesus, the iniquity of us all. God planned it. God determined to save us this way.

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There's no other way for us to be saved. But he planned it so that we would live for him and not for ourselves.

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When we see that gospel, we have to reckon with whether or not we believe the gospel at all if we've just embraced it as a, you know, man -centered, self -help, get -out -of -hell -free kind of ticket.

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Do we want this God? Well, we know that holiness for the

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Christian is non -negotiable because we're told in Hebrews 12 that without holiness, no one will see the

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Lord. We know that when God saves, he says, be like I am, be holy for I am holy.

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God calls us to so gaze on him, to see him for who he is, to know him, to walk in true intimate fellowship with him, that out of knowing him, we desire for our life to accurately reflect him.

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So for anybody to say, I'm a Christian, but all that holiness stuff, you know, that's for all those serious people, but not for me.

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They're proving the fact that they're not Christian at all. So also those people who would say, you know, holiness is optional.

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Let all you, you know, serious -minded people pursue your holiness and be really, you know, concerned about the things of God and scripture, but we're all going to end up in the same heaven when we die.

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You know, after all, once saved, always saved. They're revealing the fact that they don't know the

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God who saves. It's people like the sons of Aaron.

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Aaron was a high priest in the Old Testament. He had the privilege once a year of going into the manifest presence of God in a room called the

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Holy of Holies inside the tabernacle. He knew what it was like to see the unmitigated manifestation of the

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Shekinah glory of God. Well, this man had sons and perhaps he would be in context with his sons and they would ask him, what's it like to go into the presence of God?

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What's it like to know him? Well, his two sons got so curious one day that uninvited from God in Leviticus 9 and 10, they barged themselves into the

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Holy of Holies. They went right in behind the curtain into the inner sanctum. And what we find next is astonishing.

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We're told that in Leviticus 10, fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them and they died.

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Really, the amazing part of it is what happens next. Instead of mourning and lamenting and laying blame at God's doorstep, how could you do this to my son?

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I'm a high priest, God. Moses looks at him and says, didn't

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God say by everyone who comes near to me, I must be treated as holy?

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And the next verse tells us that Aaron shut his mouth. He agreed. Because God is so holy, not even my flesh and blood should have special privileges in his presence.

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So for anybody to say, I know that holy God over there, but holiness in me doesn't really matter.

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They're proving that they don't know God at all. Is that just the God of the Old Testament? Read Acts 5, Ananias and Sapphira told a lie to whom?

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The Holy Spirit. And he killed them in the presence of all the people so that everybody would know that this

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God's not to be trifled with. So personal holiness is non -negotiable for the

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Christian. And it's actually the way that God would use our lives to win those to Christ who would be one at all.

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They need to see someone like Christ in order to be drawn to him.

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They don't need to see someone like themselves. They see that all the time. I can use so many personal examples, but I'll share one.

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When I read older writers, the old dead guys, they talk about fellowship with God in such a way.

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I'm thinking of the Puritans, the Reformers, the church fathers. Some of them talk about fellowship with God in such a way as makes me wonder if I know him at all.

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And then at the same time, it animates me to say, oh, there's so much more of him to be known.

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I want to know him. And then in my own personal walk with the Lord, as I think about the way he reveals himself in Scripture, sometimes when

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I have the experience of having learned something new about God from the Word as he reveals himself in Scripture, my first thought is, how could

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I have been a Christian and not known this about God? But then I remember it's to those who know him, he fully intends to continue to reveal himself.

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Jesus said in John 14, one of the most encouraging things that I know of as a believer, he said, if you love me and keep my commandments,

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I and my father will love you. And then he says, I will come to you and manifest myself to you.

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I'm going to give you more of me, which says loads of things, not the least of which is the true believer's real desire is to know him more.

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Because the only incentive he gives, or the ultimate incentive is, you get more manifestation of me.

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So as I see him revealing himself to me in Scripture, through prayer, independence upon him, it does make me wonder, now how could

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I have known this God at all if I didn't already know this? Then I realize, oh, this is the fulfillment of the promise of my savior.

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He promises to continue to give himself to me as my portion, not only now, but forever.

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We'll never exhaust him, even in eternity future, he'll continue to give himself to us. And that drives me to want to know him more.

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Well, as a pastor, my assignment is to give people God. I think that's the most loving thing you can do for anybody.

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Jesus said, as you want to be treated, so treat others, and we call it the golden rule.

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But the rest of the verse says, for this is the law and the prophets, meaning that's the

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Old Testament. The Old Testament gives you God. How do you want to be treated?

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Treat others that way? Well, you want them to do what's best for you? What's best for you? God is best for you.

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And my job as a pastor is to treat others the way I would want to be treated. I'd want them to do best for me, and the best thing for me, and the best thing for them is

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God himself. But to promote the highest possible views of God in the church, in our own context, we use two primary means, and neither one of them are very novel.

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We pray and we preach. And in our Sunday morning prayer meeting, which is an hour before our preaching service, it's radically vertical, seeking the face of the

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Lord, calling on his name, really interceding for the needs that are within our body, but especially the spiritual needs, including that of unconverted people that we have relationship with.

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But in the service that follows, our preaching service, we also want that to be explicitly vertical.

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People are being bombarded all week long with all kind of worldly garbage and chaff and everything, and when they come to meet together in the presence of the living

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God, the last thing we want to do is give them more of the noise and chaff and junk of the world.

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We want to give them at least one environment every week where it's entirely

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God -besotted. And our own goal and prayer for us as a congregation is that Christ himself would hold the place of highest honor in everything, that we would point all attention to him in the praying, in the preaching, in the scripture reading, and so forth, so that all attention is drawn as best as we're able only to Christ, the sermons being an explicit focus on him, and specifically to promote the highest views of God in the corporate setting of the church.

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We've been criticized or critiqued for preaching too high. Nobody can understand if you're always in the clouds.

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When I think that if you hold out the highest possible vision of God that you're capable of holding out that comes explicitly from his word, the real believer, instead of being discouraged and saying, oh, that God's too far off, the real believer will be enthused, animated, with a desire to say, oh, there's more of him that I can taste and know and enjoy.

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There are caverns full of gold and rubies and diamonds and precious stones in God yet to be explored and exploited and enjoyed, and I want to know him.

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He is my God. So instead of discouraging the real believer, I actually think that it propels them into a true

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Godwardness if we hold out for the people the highest possible vision of him that we can from the word, and you're hard -pressed to look anywhere in Scripture where that's not the example.

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I mean, consider our common kinds of prayers that we hear in churches today, maybe even from our own lips, with the kinds of prayers that are recorded in Scripture.

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In the New Testament, we find prayers like, I pray that you would be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you would know him, that's

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Colossians 1, 9 and following, that we would know the great rescue that he's provided for us in Christ.

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So I think if we hold out a higher vision of God, a higher vision of Christ from the

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Scriptures, it's going to just cause the true believer to salivate, to want to know him more.

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To promote the highest possible views of God, you know, there's practical things that could be said, and I'm thinking, you know, you never know what bites will make it in or what pastors will watch it, but I am concerned that,

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I mean, you could say it this way, humble people are praying people, humble churches are praying churches. We don't tack a prayer onto the beginning and end of our service.

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So I wonder if it might not be useful to some of these, especially brothers who are in spiritual leadership in churches, just to say explicitly, or call into question, does your church seek the face of God together?

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Can you imagine what it would be like for one of the gray -haired ladies in your church to shuffle herself down the aisle and say,

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I have a prayer request. I mean, can you even imagine what it would be like for one of these senior saints among us who's been in Christ for decades to say,

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I have a prayer request. I want the fullness of the Holy Spirit. I mean, we can't even imagine somebody making a request like that, but Jesus said, you have a good father.

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He's better than any earthly father you have ever known. And all you earthly scoundrels that are full of sin and evil would never give a harmful gift to your children.

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If he asked for a fish, you're not going to give a snake. If he asked for a loaf, you're not going to give him a stone. Now think about this.

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You have the exquisitely perfect God at your disposal who only wants good for you.

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In that context, Jesus said, how much more will your heavenly father give the

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Holy Spirit to those who ask him? This is God. He will give us himself in the person of the

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Spirit. And so when we can't imagine the senior saint or any member of our church for that matter, saying in the context of the gathered assembly,

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I'm dry. I want the fullness of the Spirit. I've been living in spiritual lethargy.

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I'm apathetic. I'm indifferent. I'm lukewarm. I'm backslidden. Put all your handles on. And I want

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God to fill me. I want to know what it's like to live for his glory. Why can't we imagine that?

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I mean, what's the problem with us when that seems unthinkable?

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That's normal Christianity according to Scripture. So I would like to say to the pastors and churches who may take advantage of this video project, please, please do yourself a tremendous service and seek the face of God together corporately.

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Call on him. Maybe we've not had a fresh touch from him because we haven't asked. Let's seek him.

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Well, first, let's just establish that it is possible to be well -intentioned and be wrong.

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You can be sincere about all sorts of things. And we even use that kind of terminology when we talk about salvation.

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Did you mean it? Well, sincerity doesn't save anybody. Jesus saves. The question is not did you mean it, but do you have

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Christ? Have you thrown yourself on his mercy as if you jumped off the cliff into his arms saying, if Christ doesn't catch me,

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I'll never be saved. He's all my hope. That's what it means to faith Christ. Well, might it be possible for us to be doing some things in our churches, very well -intentioned, that are actually detrimental to a biblical vision of God?

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I would say, unfortunately, yes. There could actually be lots of those things. Think for one example, don't get mad at me, but think for one example about the merry mingle, the happy greeter time, you know, it's almost become like inscripturated.

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After the first song, everybody spent 10 minutes shaking hands and saying hi to people you haven't seen. Well, that can be very well -intentioned.

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But at the same time, maybe it's things like that, that continue to persuade everybody that we're actually here for ourselves anyway.

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We're not here for God. Now, it would be nice if God decided to come, but we're doing pretty well without him.

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And as long as people will talk about me and make me feel, you know, really good about myself, then

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I'll continue to come. And if they won't do that, well, there's a hundred other places I could go that would do that for me. One thing we've done at our church is decided to do none of those sorts of things.

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As a matter of fact, we don't even greet our guests. We're not trying to be unfriendly, but if we were going to greet anybody, we'd greet our members because we're coming together as a family of God in Christ in effect to say, this is time in our living room with our

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Father. Anybody else is welcome to come. You can observe or participate. You're welcome here, but this is a family gathering where we're going to be in the living room of our

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Father, and he is going to be the dominating personality. We're going to listen to what he says in his word, and we're going to respond appropriately.

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You can watch or you can join in, but we don't say hi to you. We don't even say hi to our members for crying out loud because from beginning to end, we want at least one environment where the people of God can come and he's all the focus.

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I would challenge churches to consider whether or not God himself is the focus of every little component of what makes up a service.

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You could argue with the expressions that that needs to take and doesn't need to take, but to really pray through, is my ultimate ambition to make people feel more comfortable or to try to reel them in with something, bait and switch.

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We're going to reel you in with this, oh yeah, there's God too. Is your real ambition only and always to enjoy and elevate the person of God in Christ, in the power of the

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Holy Spirit? If you feel like you're in a congregation where first you believe yourself to be in Christ, you are trusting in Jesus Christ alone for the forgiveness of your sins and for the fulfillment of all of God's promises to you, including eternal life.

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He's your only hope. You're banking on Christ. However, you find yourself maybe in a congregation where though most or all would profess to know him as well, the spiritual climate seems very depleted.

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You're not being fed. My encouragement to you would be twofold.

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First, grow where you're planted. Don't assume that things are going to be better elsewhere.

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Part of God's judgment on our land is just like that of the days of Micaiah, an

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Old Testament prophet, where unfortunately one man, Micaiah, was telling the truth about God and 400 prophets who presumably also knew

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God were all saying the same thing, different than Micaiah. We're told in that passage that the reason it happened is because God had put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of the prophets.

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God was seeing to it that the people were being deceived. It's a challenging passage.

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There's a lot in it maybe that we won't understand until heaven, but we do know this much. When God judges a people, oftentimes it starts in the pulpit and in the church.

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Peter even said the same thing. It's time for judgment to begin with the household of God. The reason

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I would say don't just vacate that environment immediately is because of passages like Acts 20, where Paul says to the elders of the church of Ephesus, shepherd the flock of God among you which

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Christ purchased with his own blood. If it's a true church, the gospels preached, if it's a true church, then

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Christ has died, yes, for the individual believer, but husbands love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

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He's also shed his blood for the body of believers. Wouldn't it be a great testimony to his own glory if that church were revived, truly revived, really began to feast on the

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God of scripture and know him and follow him? Instead of vacating the premises, and you're one of the only maybe even true believers, what about getting on your face?

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What about digging a trench through prayer that you might not ever see filled in your lifetime, but the generation behind you will reap the reward of your sacrifice in the throne room of God, where you've begged him to do something great for his namesake, lift his judgment, raise up a generation of real believers, and in addition to that, pour yourself into the people.

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Not antagonistically against everything. Don't be known for what you're against. Be known for who you're for.

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Promote Christ. That's where I go to the second. If you cannot find any traction, if you simply cannot be fed, the gospel is not preached, then

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I would encourage you, after talking with your pastor, if he won't repent, to find a context where you could be fed, where you can grow.