Our life with God grows as the Body of Christ is our tutor. We learn to assign value to what really matters. We choose to decide for Him and progress in Spirit and Truth. Result: Unbelievers hear and see and believe. (Hebrews 4:16)

Speaker(s): Pastor Thomas Schaller, Pastor Renaldo Brown
Sermon 11843
6:30 PM on 2/23/2020

P. Schaller –

Good evening. Praise God! Halleluiah! Praise you, Jesus. Amen.
Christ is alive and he is here with us. Praise God! We are worshipers of God. We started a
series on Wed. night on the subject of worship and we quoted John. 4 that the Father seeks such
to worship him in spirit and in truth. This morning in our message, we wrote down these two
words: reason and feelings and said this is natural. How we naturally live by human reason and
by feelings. I’d like you to turn to two portions tonight.

Turn to Hebrews 11 is a portion many of you are familiar with. It’s fun to be here. I look at your guys and I love you. Really. The love we have is not sentimental. It’s not relational in the sense of our flesh. The love we have is spiritual and God has filled us with his Spirit and given us in our hearts a love for each other and God. God
loved us first. What does that mean? He loved us first. Wow! Then we love God. Look at Heb.
11, this is a general comment. Vs. 4. How many of you know P. Ganesh from India? The Voice of
the Martyrs has recorded a story of how he was almost killed as he was preaching in India in a
village. One hundred Hindu fundamentalists surrounded the house because he was in that
village preaching Christ and he kept at it and he got delivered.

I don’t know if two angels came. I don’t know what happened, but you can read that story. By faith Ganesh. By faith Abel. By faith Noah. Vs. 8. By faith Abraham. Vs. 11. By faith Sarah. By faith Jacob. By faith Isaac. By faith
Joseph. By faith Moses. Look on our board up here. If Noah – basically he started here, and he
actually got here and built an ark. Did he do it by faith? If he lived by reason, how far would he
have gotten? If he lived by his feelings, how far would he have gotten? How is the ark built? By
faith. How does reason and feelings play into your life so that you cut short what God is doing?
God wants to bring you from here to here in your life, like Sarah having a child by promise. It
happened. It happened not by reason but by God.

Watch this. God did it and we worship God and how do we worship God? By spirit and truth. How did Noah build an ark? By spirit and truth. How did Abraham live? By his flesh at times and then he believed God and was a
worshiper in spirit and truth. Abraham walked in the land by faith. He had a son by spirit and
truth, not by reason and feeling. Let’s park there for a second. Moses is in Egypt. He murdered a
man. He flees as a refugee. God says go back. I’m not going back. I’ll go to Cuba, Mexico, India,
but not back to Egypt. You’re going to go back to Egypt by spirit and by truth. What will happen
in the truth? By spirit and truth. How am I going to change? By spirit and truth. How am I going
to get free of my addictions? By spirit and truth.

How will I grow in the faith? By spirit and truth. How do I pray? By spirit and truth. I’m almost done with my message. I asked P. Renaldo to do the second part and he’s going to give an altar call. Part 2 comes in a second. Part 1, we can’t fly by this. How did David do it? How did David have a crazy family life? He lived by worshiping
God. The Spirit of God led him. In the beginning of our ministry up in Maine, we were in Bath,
Maine. There was – this is a funny story, a sad story but a woman in the area got saved. Her
husband got angry and jealous of the church. He was drunk in a bar room and boasted how he
was going to burn the church down.

He threw the gasoline in and lit the church on fire. The next morning, I went to an early morning prayer meeting and the church was burnt down. I thought that’s an amazing prayer meeting! We got fire in this church! That was the summer of 1972 and I didn’t know much about what was going on, but I remember P. Stevens and his spirit
and attitude that we are going to live by faith. We are going to live in doctrine. We are going to go into the world with the gospel. I have to ask you folks, how much of reason and feeling can
stop the work of God in our lives? It hurts sometimes. Life is hard sometimes. Life goes upside
down sometimes. It does.

We said this morning what we need is doctrine, Acts. 2:41-47. We have these words: apostolic doctrine, continued in fellowship, the breaking of bread, prayers and what happened? God added to the church daily. Daily people came into the church. They were listening to something sensible that required faith. They came in and they heard spirit and truth. 1 Corinthians 14, they came into the church. What’s going on? Why are people raising their
hands? Why are they free? Why are they smiling? Why are they making sense? Why are they
talking about God as if he exists? Why are they living this way?

The unbeliever says it. 1 Corinthians 14:23-25. These guys are good at the screen, aren’t they? Shocking how fast they are. Three verses. Think about these people coming into this assembly and sitting here and they are
unbelievers. They sit here with us and are watching and observing. They don’t know where they
are or what they are listening to. This is to glorify God. This shows us the format. The apostolic
doctrine is at the core of every one of these things. It’s the teachings of the Bible, the Spirit of
God. vs. 23. 1 Corinthians 14:23.

The Apostle Paul knew how crazy that could be. If everyone is
speaking in tongues and no one is understanding what is said, you are looking like you are
insane people. Is that what reaches the unbeliever? How does the unbeliever get reached? By
spirit and truth. Vs. 24. Prophecy means speaking the Word of God. Prophesying about future
events and this is the greatest event on future events. This is God’s mind about the world we
live in, the church, the future that we have, the promises. This is the mind of God on my
emotions. My Bible is falling apart at my feet!

This is the mind of God. if we prophecy, if we speak from the Spirit and the mind and the heart and we glorify Jesus Christ, then look. Vs. 24. If somebody comes and he doesn’t believe. He’s not a believer. He’s looking around and
thinking. You’re convincing me. I don’t know. Is it true? Is God real? We are worshipers of God
living in faith. The Spirit and truth is in us and we’re not any better than anybody. The grace of
God is in our worship. The unbeliever may be convinced of all. How many people started here?
3,000 became believers. They continued in apostolic doctrine, fellowship, breaking bread and
prayers and God added daily. Who did he add? Those people.

The unbelievers. I heard Jesus was raised from the dead. I don’t believe a word of it. Come and be with us. As they are with us and the Spirit of God is in our mind and fellowship and doctrine and prayers what happens to
them, vs. 25. Secrets of his heart. It means this: I don’t believe in God, but I’ll visit you in your
church. They come in and what? You believe. What’s happening in his heart? God is speaking to
his heart. There is something. He’s an unbeliever, but the church is here to have a testimony in
our worship. The worship is coming from our doctrine that teaches us the grace of God, the
nature of God.

Falling on his face, he will worship God and report that God is in you truthfully. Is
this what happened in Jerusalem with the 3,000 people that had this cleanliness, this purity,
this authority? Is this what happened when they assembled and became worshipers of God
and spoke with wisdom and had faith and were free and someone is playing music and laughing
in the corner. Someone has a gift of faith and a gift of wisdom. There’s a lot of compassion in
the heart. Unbelievers become believers because of meeting us. God added to the church
daily.

If we are a church that fails to live in that worship and we live in our reason, we could say our money, our property, our problems, our relationships, all the difficulties that happen in life
will stop us from building the ark because the ark will not happen by reason and feelings alone.
Feelings will not get us anywhere in our life. It must be something deeper. This is what God
gave you. We are learning in our life of faith, what it means. Then we have a Bible college. Then
our burned down church, we moved to Bath, Maine. It’s in my historical memory. We went into
a cellar of a Lutheran church in Bath, Maine.

It was there we learned to live by faith and do what we did with whatever we had. The church is not based on our property but spirit and truth. I remember leaving the classroom and I was speechless. I was speechless. I couldn’t
believe what I heard. This message was so amazing and touched me so deeply and made me a
worshiper. I started to realize if I could live in truth and be built up in it with the Body of
Christ, there is no limit to what God will do. We still don’t know what God will do in our lives
and ministry. We still don’t realize what can happen with a group of people that are believing
like this and living like this and living our life with what God is saying about us.

How much can happen. How many miracles can happen. How many disciples are trained. How many schools
can be born. How many evangelists can go out. How many villages and towns and so on. What
can happen by being worshipers. I forgot to announce we need nursery workers! They’re over
there sweating it out! If you can help them, go help them. Take one minute and anything you
want to say about that to your neighbor for a second would you do that. Feel free to talk to
your neighbor for a second about it. How many years ago – I don’t know how many years ago
when P. Brian was a Bible college student in Lenox and went as a missionary to France. Some
years later, he joined our team and we worked together for ten years and then another ten
years in Baltimore. He’s living in Budapest and l love him. He’s a friend.

P. Renaldo –

Hebrews 4, Just the last verse of the chapter. Vs. 16. It wasn’t always like this. Your life
with God wasn’t always like this. Remember the beginning when you didn’t know how to pray,
how to sing. Some of us still don’t know how to sing! You really didn’t know the Bible. You
didn’t know anything. Everything was new, fresh. You were dumb and didn’t know it. So much
about God you didn’t know, so much about the church you didn’t know, life you didn’t know.
And people, the Body of Christ became your teachers, your tutors. Where to sit. They raised
their hands. You raised your hands. You didn’t know why. They came prepared.

They had notebooks, pens, Bibles. You learned a lot being around the Body of Christ. They would give
advice. Show up early. Pay attention. Focus. You learn these things corporately. I remember my
beginning as a Christian. I didn’t know the Bible at all. You remember when you opened up a
certain chapter of the Bible and the first verse for me was John. 3:16. I looked it up in the book of
John. And this verse was the first verse I looked up in Hebrews. Someone said you need help.
Read Hebrews 4:16. I took it as an insult. Something is wrong with me. I need help. I didn’t see a
need to open Hebrews.

One day I found that chapter and read that verse and understood what
he meant. We all need help. Life is hard in Job. 14:1. Sometimes life is tough because we make
it tough and sometimes life is tough and it’s not our fault. That’s the worst tough of all. There’s
nothing we did. It’s just tough. It’s hard. When you read this verse, I remember thinking about this verse. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace. I thought to myself, is that
the only place I come when I’m in trouble? Is trouble the only reason why I come? When I
come, will I always receive something?

These are the questions in my mind when I read this
verse. That’s a lot of questions with one choice and I had to make one choice to come. Later in
years as I read the Bible and studied a little bit, I realized there are a lot of other people there
besides me when I come. Rev. 4 and 5, Isaiah 6, 2 Chronicles 18:18 there’s a lot of people around
the throne of God. It’s not just me. They have all made a choice too. They made a choice to
come to the throne of God just like I make a choice to come to the throne of God. They are
doing other things other than getting help.

Hebrews 4:16 is asking me to come and get help. I chose to do that. All these other folks around the throne of God made a choice to be around the throne but not getting help. It seems they are all doing the same thing, they are all worshiping. They are worshiping God. They all made the same choice to worship God. To worship. To
assign worth or value to God. To worship. They all decided that we are going to worship God,
that I am going to worship God. It seems their worship has no end. To assign worth or value to
God. When I worship God, I’m assigning worth or value to God. When I worship God, I’m saying
he’s important enough to be worshiped.

I’m ascribing a certain value to him. I don’t worship everything. Things I worship I ascribe a value to them. When I worship God, I’m saying he’s worthy of worship. There’s a value connected to it. That word assign is interesting. It means I chose to. Worship is a choice. I choose to. Everyone that was worshiping God around the
throne of God was able to make a choice to do that. Everyone in this room that worships God is
able to make a choice to do that. Worship is a choice as P. Schaller said earlier. It’s a choice by
faith but it is a choice. I choose to. Trees can’t worship God because they can’t choose to. Birds
can’t worship God because they can’t choose to. It’s not instinctual.

It’s a free will decision. We are the only beings beside angels that are equipped to worship God. That’s why God asks us to worship him because he equips us to worship him. That’s what makes it worship because I
chose to. So much of religion is mechanical. It’s not a choice. It’s a ritual. It’s a responsibility. It’s
a work. It’s a culture. God is not equipped us for culture or ritual. God has equipped us for
choice. You would choose to worship me. I’m asking you to choose. Not just salvation but to
choose to worship me. What choice has God given us that he hasn’t prepared us for. When has
God said choose and not empowered you to make the choice.

We have been empowered by God to choose to worship God. He knows I have the ability to do so when he says come boldly to the throne. Early in my walk with God, a lot of times that’s why I come to the throne. I come
to the throne to get help. My choice is narrow. I would love to tell you it’s full of worship when I
come to the throne to get help but no, it’s full of desperation. Worship is not in the mindset. I
need help. Not a bad place to be when you go to God. But is that the only place to be when
going to God? Is that the only place? Really? Worship. God has made us to worship. I only
assign value to something I find value in.

I will only worship something that I find worthy of worship. Maybe the reason my worship is so small, I don’t find enough things about God to worship him about. Show me your worship and I’ll show you your value. Show me what you worship, and I’ll show you what you value. Show me when you worship, and I’ll show you why
you worship. John 4:24 God is a spirit. Those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. It seems worship is a progressive learning experience by the Holy Spirit in the divine
reality of who God is. It seems worship is progressive in my life. Ever look at someone and say
how come they have an ability or a way of worship that I don’t have.

How can their worship be so amazing and mine be so pitiful? They’ve been to the college of worship, but me, I’m at the Sunday school of worship. I haven’t gotten there yet. Why is their worship so developed,
borderline professional but you feel like you can’t put two cords together? You don’t feel
comfortable worshiping. Why is that? There is a progressive, learned experience. It’s the Holy
Spirit that teaches us how to worship. It’s a Spirit taught choice. The Spirit of God teaches me.
He not only equips us to worship him, but he teaches me how to worship him. He does it first
through the revelation of the Spirit of who God is and what he has done.

If no revelation of the Spirit, there can’t be any worship. It’s personal. It may not be here, but it can happen in the
church. It can happen anywhere. There is a personal revelation of the Spirit of who God is.
Remember the moment in your life when God became real? Maybe you weren’t in the church.
Maybe you were in the car. You were out of control. The world became quiet and still. In that
moment, nothing else mattered. It was just you and God. You became God-conscious in that
moment. You had a personal revelation from the Holy Spirit of who God is and you were on the
road to being a worshiper.

In the little revelation you had, you could worship God in that. But it still was not a choice that you would make regularly. Then as we grow in the revelation of the Spirit, 1 Corinthians 2:14 we move into the illumination of the Spirit. John. 14:26, The Holy Spirit. begins to illuminate to you the worth of God, the value of God. Line upon line and precept upon precept, you begin to ascribe value and honor and worth to God. God becomes very important because he becomes very personal to you. He begins to invade your moments, your hours, your days,
your troubles. Instead of you coming to the throne, the throne comes to you. It gets personal.
In the Holy Spirit, you begin to think on these things.

Psalm. 1:2 You begin to meditate on God. Instead of meditating on your problems or how you feel or how people treat you or meditate on your future, you begin to meditate on the person of God. You begin to have your own
mental devotional. You begin to meditate on God himself. You think about God and the little
that you know. The small piece of truth you have, you begin to squeeze that tightly. You’ve
never been so interested in someone in your entire life like you are about God. You have more
and more questions. You meditate on the person of God with the Spirit of God and the Spirit
leads you. Israel 27:3 He waters your moments about himself.

He keeps showing you himself. In the illumination there is meditation. What has happened on the inside is expressed on the outside. Ephesians 5:19-20 it comes out. We’ve been taught that our life is full of concepts and precepts. Worship can be a concept. It’s a religious idea, a notion, created in the minds of people. It’s
conceived internally. It’s based on my personal perspective. People say you can worship any
way you want to. I’m conceiving the idea of it. I’m designing worship according to my own
understanding. It may be my life is a bunch of emergency pursuits in Hebrews 4:16 of going after
God and I call that worship because I perceive it that way.

Worship is a concept. When I first heard worship, I thought it was something I did with people towards God. I never saw it personal. It’s personal first before it’s corporate. God is after me among us. I walk in the Spirit
in Galatians 5:16 and we are being guided in the Spirit, John 16:13 and we are taught indirectly how to worship because we are being taught about the person of God, the character of God. We are
walking and learning a lesson about the character of God. As we walk and learn the lesson
about God, we are meeting the person of God and we begin to ascribe value to that person and
honor to that person, and he becomes the most important person in your life.

And then you find yourself worshiping but you don’t call it worship. It doesn’t have a title. It doesn’t fit a
religious position. I don’t want to stamp that and say that’s worship in my life and that’s not
worship in my life. I want to say it’s me and God and it’s me and God and me and God and me
and God and there is no one else. Different word for worship: Focus. Instead of worship, just
focus. I’m going to focus on God this minute. I move beyond a concept into a precept. All of a
sudden, my reality is guided by the Spirit and guided by the truth of God.

The boundary lines of my reality are the truth, the leading through it is the Spirit and it becomes a precept in my life. I
come boldly not with a request for help but a desire to meet the Helper. I trust I’ll get the help.
I begin to pursue the helper. I can ask for help but that’s part of the relationship. I’m taught by
the Spirit according to the truth of who God is, as I grow and learn in the Spirit, in the truth I
find worship, I find focus. I find a capacity for God. I find motivation and desire to focus on the
God that I have found because I have found value in him.

I have ascribed honor in him. Psalm 40:8 I will boast in the Lord and praise his name all the day long. I found focus in my storm and concentration in my community. There is no title in front of my name and there might not be a
Bible college degree in my hand, but I met God. I’m going to focus on the God I met. On the
other side of my faith are great and wondrous things in the person of God. Instead of boldly
coming to God, I can boast in the Lord towards God.

Please enjoy these sermon notes from the messages preached at Greater Grace Church in Baltimore. These notes are provided to aid in your study and understanding of the Word. Note that these notes do not represent complete, word-for-word transcriptions. Also, they may contain omissions as well as some errors in spelling and structure, etc., as we attempt to provide them as soon as possible. Our hope is that these notes serve as a way to help you search and connect with messages on related subjects and passages. Thank you for your interest in the ministry of Greater Grace.