Adjust Your Awe - Psalm 27 - Mercy Hill

All right, it is a pleasure to be with you.

Mercy here. Can we bless the Lord one more time for the worship team leading us? I am so thankful to be here today. As my father would say, give an honor to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is a pleasure to be in the house of the Lord with my mercy of family.

I am so grateful to be here. I love this church. I love your leadership, and I just love that we get to partner together in the kingdom of God, doing the work of God in the earth.

Amen. Let me take a moment very quickly and pray for us before we get into the word of God. Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for this day. God, I thank you for your incredible love and kindness. God, I pray as always that you would humble your servant now, God.

Make me as this microphone that I would simply magnify the things you've said into me. Lord, let this word be good seed sown into our hearts that is good soil that will produce a harvest in our lives. God, we pray right now that your glory is proclaimed, God, that we pray right now that we leave our time together, not saying what a great sermon, but saying what a great God. Father, we will give you the glory, the praise, and the honor. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Amen. Well, I have the distinct pleasure of pastoring Vertical Church in the little metropolitan area of Hillsboro, North Carolina, which simply means I'm a little country boy, and so I'm glad to be here with you all today. I want to take a moment and tell you a little bit about my family. I have four children. I have three boys and a little girl. My wife and I, we finally got our precious baby girl, London Grace.

Everybody say London Grace. Oh, she's the best. Oh, she has me wrapped around her finger, and she knows it, and I know it, and I'm unapologetic about it. I've told the boys, it's not going to be fair, gentlemen. Do not expect the same thing that she gets. When you turn 18, you got to go. She can stay until she's married, but you got to get out of here.

Gone. My London Grace is special to me, but she humbled me. She humbles me every Christmas season. Anybody like Christmas?

Come on now. London loves Christmas. Actually, London loves any type of celebration. She's seven years old. If your birthday is today, I promise you, she's probably more excited about your birthday than you are. But I remember a few years ago, London, she made a request after Christmas. She says, Daddy, can we leave the Christmas tree up? I said, well, baby, this thing got to come down, because Daddy, I rearranged the living room so we could have a Christmas tree in here, and I'm tired of it. And so she says, well, listen, can we at least leave it up until my birthday? So that way on my birthday, I can come downstairs and all my presents are under the Christmas tree, and I think I'll add balloons to the Christmas tree since it's my birthday.

I said, well, baby, your birthday is in April. She loves to celebrate. What humbled me, though, was just a few months before Christmas, during our time of prayer at night when I pray with my children, she would always start to ask God for Christmas gifts.

London's not the only one, don't look at me like that. She would pray, God, I want a baby doll, God, I want the Barbie cart, and she would start praying, and then I would pray with her, and then we would get up and leave the room, and she would say, oh, Daddy, don't forget to pray to God about my Christmas gifts. What was humbling to me was that even while I was in that moment, I remember God spoke to me so clearly. He said, Ryan, you're just like that. I said, what? Says, you're concerned about my gifts while you're in the presence of the giver.

Yeah, yeah, it's going to be that type of day to day, guys. I come to work, I come to work. God has sent me here because I really believe that what the word that the Lord has given me is something that we all need to wrestle with. Because I think sometimes when I learned about my daughter in those moments, when I learned about myself in those moments was that I have an issue with this thing called awe.

Write it down if you can, good students take notes. Awe, awe, let me say it again, awe. We all are in awe of something. The question I want to lift up tonight is what are you in awe of?

Because whatever you are in awe of is what you will be after. My daughter was in awe of these things. She wasn't in awe of her father. She was not in awe of the giver, but in awe of the gift. Now I would submit to you that she's not even in awe of the gift, she's actually in awe of herself. It is what the gifts do for her. It is what these things make her feel. And what I want to lift up to you is that we need to adjust our awe.

I don't know if you guys, anybody here from the country, but from the country, my mama would say, we might need to have an attitude adjustment. And I've been here, sent here to Mercy Hill for an awe adjustment. I believe one of the great places we see this is in the Psalm 27. Psalm 27, I want to read these verses. Psalm 27, I just want to lift up a few verses from there.

Psalm 27, starting at verse number one. It says, the Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh, my adversaries and foes, it is they who stumble and fall. Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. The war rise against me, yet I will be confident.

One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple. I would like to suggest to you today that your awe shapes almost everything that happens in your life. Your awe shapes how you live. Your awe shapes the decisions that you make. Your awe shapes the person that you married. Your awe shapes the school that you went to. Your awe shapes even what you eat. And I think sometimes we're not even aware of our awe. Our awe shapes so many things in our lives.

But does it inform and shape your pursuit of God? Stay with me, stay with me. If I can be honest in the hustle and bustle of life, if we're not careful, we can lose our awe of God.

Listen to me. We can be disenchanted with His beauty and His majesty. We can lose our wonder for His greatness.

And my heart has been broken. Because I can be honest and say there have been times in my life that I have not always been in awe of God. This idea of losing our awe of God will affect our faith in His Word. It will affect our expectation. It will affect our obedience to the mission. It will affect our urgency for the Gospel, our awe.

Because if we're not careful, losing our awe for God will cause us to wander away from Him all together. I would like to suggest that one of the biggest problems that we see not just in our world and not just in the church is not a sin problem. It's not a government problem. It's not an education problem. It's not a political problem. It's not even a theological problem.

It's not a leadership problem. It's an awe problem. We have to not just address our awe, but we want to adjust it.

So let me just give us a context here. Let's talk about it for a second because I can feel you asking the question, Pastor, what is awe? Write this down if you can.

Good students take notes. Awe is defined as reverential state or condition of mind and heart that results in respectful fear or genuine wonder. In a secular sense, a person can be in awe or sealed with awe of something or towards a place or a thing.

Let me give you an example. I remember when I graduated from high school, I remember my parents, we went out to Las Vegas and we drove out and we actually went out to go see the Grand Canyon. Anybody ever seen the Grand Canyon? Listen, when you see it, it puts you in what?

In awe. I remember we drove out there and we were looking like, where is it? We saw a little building and we were like, man, we don't know where the Grand Canyon is. My father was like, maybe we got the wrong directions. And we go up to the building and we're like, hey, listen, we're looking for the Grand Canyon.

Have you seen it? I remember the worker was like, listen, just walk this way and you'll see it. And sure enough, we're like, man, we don't know what it is. And we walked and there it was, a hole in the ground. My father being such a kind and generous man, he said, we need to go down into the Grand Canyon.

My mother says, how do you suppose that we will do this? Lucky for us, they had three modes of transportation. You could ride a bus about halfway down into the Grand Canyon. You could ride a donkey all the way down to the Grand Canyon, or you could go for the premium package and get a helicopter ride down into the Grand Canyon.

And my father, with all of his grace, said, let's all go. We're going to get a helicopter ride down to Grand Canyon. And we got on the Colorado River once we got down there. And I remember being on the Colorado River and looking up and seeing how big and how beautiful the Grand Canyon was.

And I was not in awe of the Grand Canyon. I was in awe of the God of the Grand Canyon. Here it is that this thing actually put me into a place where I was thinking about God differently. See, I want you to understand this, that we are created, we are created for awe.

Psalm 33 verse 8 says this, let all the earth fear the Lord. Let all the inhabitants of the world, watch this, stand in awe of Him. What's your awe? I want you to see this, that God has been calling us. We have been wired for awe.

This is not just a spiritual Christian issue. This is every human being on the face of the earth is wired to be in awe of something. But there's a challenge. The challenge is, is that all was designed, stay with me, for God and God alone. Everything we see was meant to point us to God and for us to be in awe of God because of the things that we see.

So stay with me. Every creation should put us in awe of the Creator. And the challenge that many of us have, and I'm guilty of this, is that I have oftentimes put my awe in the creation and not in the Creator.

Y'all stand up with me. This is comparative to trying to put your awe in a sign for grandma's pancake sampler at Cracker Barrel, as opposed to putting your awe in the actual thing. We have made the mistake, and I'm guilty of this, of putting my awe in something that points to God and not God Himself.

I'm going somewhere. Here is where the problem is for many of us. We look to creations to satisfy us. We look to creations to bring us hope. We look to creations to create peace. We look to creations to give us identity. We look to these things. We have been in awe of these things, and it causes us to miss God.

Let me say this for whoever's here for the first time. There is nothing on this earth that was created that will completely satisfy you. There is nothing on this earth, made of this earth, that will completely bring you peace.

No matter what your heart is longing for, there is no creation that is designed to fulfill what you desire, what you long for. I would suggest that the fall of mankind was not a fall in just sin. It was a fall of the awe.

Let's go there. Genesis chapter number three, verse six, stay with me. It says this, so when the woman saw the tree was good for food, uh-oh, awe.

Y'all see it? And that it was a delight to the eyes, I see it again, awe. And that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, awe.

She took up his fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate. The fall was a fall of awe. Their awe was not on God. Their awe was of his creation and what it could do for them.

Eve's issue was this, when the serpent says that you can be wise like God, that's where the fall happened, right there. When awe was exchanged for God, for self, when God is no longer sitting on the throne of your heart, there is an issue with your awe. Write this down, there are only two places for your awe, stay with me, only two places for your awe. You either have an awe of God or awe of God's creation. We either have a vertical awe or a horizontal awe. Your awe may be in what you do, it may be your career, it may be in what other people think about you, it may be where you live, it may be in other people's opinions, it may be in your spouse, it may be in your children. Misplaced awe. Come on now, some of you have ate food and said awe.

You saw that baby and what did you say? Awe. Your awe can be misplaced. Your awe must be in God. This starts, listen to me, early in life I just told you about my daughter. Listen, you can ask any child that has a toddler that refuses food, they have an awe problem already. They have already figured out, I don't like it.

I don't want it. I am an awe of myself, awe of God. And little people that have an awe problem that's never adjusted turn into big people that have an awe problem that's never adjusted.

Oh, I come to adjust some awes today. In this Psalm, David is writing here and he reveals, I love this, his awe. Most theologians would argue here that David's either writing in one or two situations.

Either one, he is fleeing from King Saul who wanted to kill him or he's fleeing Absalom, his son who wanted to kill him. Either way, this is not a situation where I would be in awe of God. But here's our first point, write this out if you can. I see this, that awe is personal.

Everybody say personal. If you're going to adjust your awe, it starts personally. Let's look at it right here Psalm 27 verse 1. It says this, the Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?

David is in quite the situation and he starts with theology. This is awesome. This is awesome because if it were me and all my enemies were encamped around me, can I be honest with you all?

I would say, Lord, get him. No? Am I the only one? Okay. Okay, okay. God bless you for the amen. He does not start with a request, he starts with the truth.

Do you see his awe yet? He says, the Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? What's the most important word in that very verse?

It's just a short word. It's the word my God, I love it. It's one thing to know that God is a salvation, it's another thing to know that he's the salvation, but it's something to know he's my salvation.

See, this is when your awe has been adjusted, God. You're not just the God, you're my God. You're not just a stronghold, you're my stronghold. You're not just a deliverer, you are my deliverer.

You're not just a healer, you are mine. All is personal. David says you are my light, my salvation, and my stronghold. It's a personal thing. David has to be looking back and thinking about all the different times that he's been saved and delivered by God.

It's personal, everybody say it's personal. I want to say this, that our theology of God is not just something that is a theology of the Bible but of the God of the Bible. A theology, stay with me, that is completely based on knowledge and understanding but has not touched your personal experience is extremely incomplete and lacking. Listen to me, I want to be biblically sound, I want to be sound in doctrine, but listen, I just can't have a cognitive understanding of God. No, when my cognitive understanding meets my personal experience, there's something beautiful that happens there. God doesn't just want you to have a knowledge of him as the Father, he says you need to have an experience of him as your Father.

It's personal, misplaced. Oh, and you got to ask yourself the question, where is my awe? I've seen Christians and believers spend themselves into debt trying to find life through material things, providing a false sense of security, horizontal awe. I've seen couples destroy one another in marriages, in families, searching for awe in someone else, in a person that was never meant to handle awe.

I've seen people treat the church like an ecclesiastical shopping mall, asking the church to provide all of their needs. Awe. Listen to me, misplaced awe will always lead to misplaced worship. Whatever your awe is, your worship is sure to follow. I know that you guys have been talking about the wise family, so let me just insert this right here, that I believe that the most important thing you can teach your children is to be in awe of God. The most important thing you can look for in your spouse and be praying for your spouse is that they will be in awe of God. The most important thing you can do for your family member is help them to see how great and mighty God is.

Oh my goodness, misplaced awe. I cannot be more concerned with my children disobeying me than I am them disobeying God. I cannot be more concerned with making sure they know what I want and I don't make sure they know what God wants. God is your salvation. God is your light. God is your life. God is your strength but is he your awe?

Mercy Hill, stay with me. The second thing we see here is that awe adjusts your perspective. So if awe is adjusted personally, then what it adjusts is your perspective.

Let's look at the text right here. Psalm 27 verse 2 and 3. When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh, my adversaries and foes, it is they who stumble and fall. Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear.

The war rise against me, yet I will be confident. David's awe of God, listen to me, changes his perspective in his life. David is encamped in a very dangerous situation but his perspective changes because of his awe of God. I want you to hear this today because I think sometimes we are waiting for God to change our situation instead of changing our perspective on the situation. Yeah, I grew up in church and my grandma would say, listen, I don't have time to tell God how big my problems are. I tell my problems how big my God is.

Yeah, I change my perspective and when I look at God longer than I look at the issue, when I look at God longer than I look at the situation, when I look at his love and kindness and grace, when I dwell upon the good news of Jesus Christ, it helps put everything else into perspective for me. Yeah, yeah. One of the ways I say it is like this, fear is the only solution for fear. Yeah, yeah, I meant to say that. Fear is the only solution for fear. What are you talking about? My fear of God disarms my fear of other things.

Okay. We look in 1 Samuel chapter number 17, we see where David fights Goliath. David here, just a shepherd boy, is confused because the army of Israel are not fighting this man. He is a giant.

Everyone is afraid of him. And David says, I'll fight him. David, come on now, brother. Come on now, brother. I got it.

Don't y'all worry. I know y'all are trained warriors, but I got this. Look at what David says in 1 Samuel chapter number 17, verse 36 through 37.

I want y'all to hear fear is the only solution for fear. Says your servant has struck down both lions and bears. And this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, for he has defiled the armies of the living God. And David said, the Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine. And Saul said to David, go and the Lord be with you.

I want y'all to see this. Where everybody else was afraid of Goliath, it was his fear of God that changed his perspective on the situation. I want you to see this now in chapter 27 of Psalm. David's awe is helping him see his situation differently.

He knew God would be his deliverer. I don't know who's in here today and maybe you're struggling with your faith. Maybe you feel like you're creating distance between you and God. You're finding it hard to read your Bible. You're finding it hard to pray because you have the voices of fear. And God says, just look at me. Yeah. Just look at me.

I will say this, that proper placed awe, proper placed awe of God will always change your perspective. Let me see if I can give you an example. Have any of y'all ever heard of the pilot fish? Pilot fish, pilot, pilot fish, pilot, pilot, pilot, pilot fish.

I thought if I said it more, no, still nothing. Pilot fish. The pilot fish is that weird little fish that we see swimming with sharks. Y'all ever seen the pilot fish? Y'all ever seen like, you know, it's been shark week, come on now, stay with me. And we see like the little fish that's like right next to the shark. And I don't know about you and I, I've always asked this question, why in the world doesn't the shark eat the pilot fish?

Thank you. The pilot fish from what I understand, I found out my administrative director, she was telling me that she saw God when she saw the pilot fish. I said, you saw God when you saw the pilot fish?

I said, tell me more. She said to me that when she was scuba diving, she found out that the pilot fish swims with the shark because the pilot fish actually eats the ectoparasites, which is a fancy word for the leftover flesh in the teeth of the shark. I don't know if y'all know this, sharks can't floss. Fins won't reach.

Some of you are really trying to like, oh yeah, I guess so. Here it is, here it is, that they have the pilot fish and the pilot fish actually eats all the leftover carcass that's in the mouth of the shark and in his gills. It eats it out of his mouth.

There are pictures of the pilot fish going into the mouth of the shark and the shark allowing it to eat leftover carcass out of a shark's mouth. I said, Lynette, I need you to help me understand, how did you see God in the pilot fish? She said, PR, because if God would think so much of the shark that he would create a fish just to clean his mouth, and if God would think so much of this fish that he would have a shark that would protect him from the other predators in the sea, how much more does he think of you? Okay, y'all need Bible, I know this is a Bible church.

Let me give it to you like this in Matthew chapter number six verse 25, preach Jesus, therefore I tell you, God help us, to not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on is not life more than food and the body more than clothing. This is what Jesus says. He says, I need you to be in all of God's creations. He says, look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap nor gather into the bars and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

Are you not more valuable than they? See, I want y'all to see this, that this is a creation that should point us to be in awe of the Creator. I'm glad y'all gonna go home and Google the pilot fish, but tonight is not a sermon about the pilot fish, tonight is a sermon about the God of the pilot fish, and he sent his Son, Jesus, to die on a cross for your sins that you might be in relationship with him and we should be in awe. Whew, it's awe.

Whatever you in awe of, that's what you'll pursue after. Are you in awe of God? He is holy. He is righteous.

He created the sun, the moon, and the stars, but are you in awe of him? Lastly, right here, number three, our awe, once it's been adjusted personally, it adjusts our perspective, now it adjusts our pursuit. Write it down if you can.

Good students, take notes. Our pursuit is right here, we're still in Psalm 27, look at verse four. He says, one thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after? God help us, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and inquire in his temple.

I hope y'all see this. David is surrounded by enemies on every side and he has a prayer and he only makes one request. His request is not that God would take down his enemies. His request was not that God would deliver him out of the situation. His request was not, God, would you make this easier on me? His request was not, God, lighten my load. His request was simply just, God, I just want to see you.

That is someone that is in awe of God. You are my pursuit. You are what I'm after. It's your house that I desire to dwell. It is your life, it is your work, it is who you are. I want to gaze upon your beauty because I am in awe. We live in a culture that is so consumeristic that we don't realize that the world around us is preying on your awe.

You see commercials, they always ask you questions. Tired of dot, dot, dot. And what do you say? I am tired of Cheerios in the floor and in the carpet.

I don't have anything to vacuum up both at the same time. That's always, who's spilling Cheerios like this? But do you see, the point is, we're going to deal with your awe. You want to know what your awe is? Phew.

I bet you I know your favorite name. Yours. All self is dangerous. Self awe deceives us into believing that when we are the object of our own affection, we will be satisfied. Many of us come to our careers, our jobs, even our spouses, trying to serve our own personal awe. Trying to serve yourself as a creation and not seeking the Creator is one of the greatest mistakes that you can make with your life. We are called and wired to be in awe of God. So how do we get back to awe of God? It starts with disconnection and reconnection.

Closing right here. I think one of the things we had to get better at is disconnecting from the world. Reconnecting with God. Listen, I need to disconnect so I can identify my awe. What is the thing that I'm awing at? Can I be honest with you all? When I practiced this and I was sharing this with our church, God told me my awe was my daughter.

London Grace was my awe. Your daughter? My daughter. I have two sisters.

One sister is younger than me, one sister is older than me. Yes, it was horrible. I thought my father mistreated me greatly.

He loves me, just not like them. My younger sister, I believe this, she has liquid gold in her eyes. You should see it work. It's amazing. Puts me in awe. But once I had my daughter, London, she was about three weeks old, and I remember I was just staring at her and I couldn't stop. I would be at work all day and I would come home. And my wife said, hey babe, I said, hey, how you doing?

And I would see London like, oh my God, what's up? I was in awe. I called my father, I said, hey man, I'm sorry.

He said, what are you sorry for, son? I said, all these years I've been holding this against you and now I understand I have my own daughter. And really what it was was that I wasn't in awe of my daughter. Listen to me, I was in awe of what I thought my daughter could provide for me. Stay with me. Because I watched my sister's love for my father and I longed for that kind of love. My wife loves me, I believe it, I'm sure of it.

But I feel like sometimes it's conditional. Fellas, just look at me. Look at me.

Don't you turn now. But in my daughter's eyes, I can do no wrong. Oh God. And here it was that this little girl at three weeks old, she had now, not even knowing, had the burden of filling my heart with love. I put pressure on her at three weeks old to see me as a superhero.

Love me no matter what. And God said, Ryan, you already have somebody. You already have somebody that can fulfill that desire. Don't put that pressure on your daughter. She's going to see who you really are one day. But I already know who you really are and I already love you.

She was my. I'm sharing this because I want us to think about what has captured your eye that is not God. What has captured your heart that is not God.

It may be a good thing, but it's not a God thing. Because that thing is something that you'll worship. Identify your awe. Identify the why of your awe.

The why of the awe for my daughter was the way that she looked at me. I was important. I couldn't preach a bad sermon. Y'all ain't hearing me. I couldn't make a bad leadership decision. I had put my awe in my child and it really wasn't my off child.

It was, it was me. This is what sin is like in the middle of the word sin is the letter what? Middle of your sin is what has captured your heart that is not God.

Let me give you a question that you can ask yourself this week. Anything that you're not willing to give up for God, that's an idol. Anything you're not willing to give up for God is your God.

That's what your awe is in. What are you looking for in other things that you should be looking to God for? What are you looking for in other people? Are you looking for people to affirm you when God's already said his word over your life? We have this habit, and I'm closing right here, in the church to make righteousness our all.

Well if I'm good enough, I cross enough T's and I dot enough I's and I don't do anything wrong. You've just defeated the purpose of the gospel. Jesus is enough. What's your awe? The last thing, we've got to increase our awareness of God.

I was going to title this destruction by distraction. Maybe today you didn't say I need to figure out a way to make my awareness of God greater. I need to carve out time for my awareness of God. This is why I encourage you. I didn't get it when I was younger, but now I'm a little older. Man, I like walking outside. I'm that old man just, where are you going? I'm just walking.

I'm that old guy. And my Jordan's just out there walking. Got nowhere to be. Just walking.

Here it was the Lord saying, listen, I have all my beauty around you. You drive by it every day, but you never take time to be aware of it. I know some of y'all ain't going to like this. Get outside. Like outside, outside. Not in your screened in porch.

No, outside, outside. All of creation points to the glory of my God. When I'm discouraged, I should look at the birds. When I don't know what God is going to do, I should look at the beautiful flowers of the fields. Don't lose your awe. Hold the gospel close because the gospel is the thing that keeps me in awe of God.

It's the only story where the hero dies for the villain. I'm in awe of his love for me with my jacked up self. I'm in awe of his incredible love for me that he adopted me into his family. He chose me. He wanted me.

He invited me to sit at his table. I'm in awe of God. Adjust your awe. The fall started with a misplaced awe, but I believe restoration in light of the gospel, it starts without awe of God's love through his son, Jesus Christ.

Every head bowed, every eye closed. Father, we are in awe of you. God, I still don't know why you love me, but I've stopped trying to figure it out. I'm just in awe of it. God, I love my wife.

I love my children. I love my church, but God, they just help me see you. God, help us to not put other things, other people, other ideas in your place where our awe should be. Holy Spirit, touch every heart in the room right now. God, I'm praying that there is a restoration of awe. Our awe is not in how easy things are, how comfortable things are, or how many things go according to our plan, but know our awe is in your beauty that we can say like David, regardless of our circumstance, there is one thing we desire.

That's to see you. Father, we love you. Lord, let the gospel overflow our hearts with awe. Yes, God. In Jesus' name we pray, the people of God say, Amen.