Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Hello everyone.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is Pastor Benjamin.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, Orlando.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.
Sarah Brunner: Please stand with me as we ask the Holy Spirit to open our hearts to his word this morning.
Sarah Brunner: Give us understanding that we may keep your law and observe it with our whole hearts.
Sarah Brunner: Lead us in the path of your commandments, for we delight in it.
Sarah Brunner: Turn our eyes from looking at worthless things and give us life in your ways through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Sarah Brunner: Amen.
Sarah Brunner: Today's scripture reading comes from Psalm 16.
Sarah Brunner: Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
Sarah Brunner: I say to the Lord, You are my Lord, I have no good apart from you.
Sarah Brunner: As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones in whom is all my delight.
Sarah Brunner: The sorrows of those who run after another God shall multiply.
Sarah Brunner: Their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips.
Sarah Brunner: The Lord is my chosen portion in my cup.
Sarah Brunner: You hold my lot.
Sarah Brunner: The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.
Sarah Brunner: Indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
Sarah Brunner: I bless the Lord who gives me counsel.
Sarah Brunner: In the night also, my heart instructs me.
Sarah Brunner: I have set the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand.
Sarah Brunner: I shall not be shaken.
Sarah Brunner: Therefore, my heart is glad and my whole being rejoices.
Sarah Brunner: My flesh also dwells secure.
Sarah Brunner: For you will not abandon my soul to shield, or let your holy one see corruption.
Sarah Brunner: You make known to me the path of life.
Sarah Brunner: In your presence there is fullness of joy.
Sarah Brunner: At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Sarah Brunner: This is God's word.
Sarah Brunner: You may be seated.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The beginning of evil is.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Fill in the blank.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What would you put there?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, this is how the fourth century desert monk Abba Poeman finished that sentence.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The beginning of evil is distraction.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Really?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, there was a researcher at the University of Charleston Southern named Michael Ziggorelli, and he did a five-year worldwide study of more than 20,000 Christians.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's a big study.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And his point was to look at what are the obstacles to growth in the spiritual life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he found a five-fold pattern that is repeated.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And this is the fivefold pattern.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: First, Christians assimilate to a culture of busyness and distraction.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Second, because of that, God becomes marginalized in their lives.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They're too busy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Third, as a result of that, marginalization of God, their relationship with God deteriorates over time.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Which fourth makes them more vulnerable to adopting secular assumptions about life, which results in, fifth, rinse and repeat, more conformity to a secular culture of busyness, hurry, overload, and exhaustion.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And Michael Ziggorelli titled this research project Distracted from God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Distracted from God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So what is this distraction that we all know so well?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Where is it coming from?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The easy, more shallow answer would be it comes from this weapon of mass distraction in my f in my pocket called a smartphone.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And that would be true, but I think our distraction is deeper than our devices.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I think our distraction is a matter of our desires.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Our desires.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, in all of my research and reading and clinical work, I have tried to summarize and distill all of human desires into three things.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm a simple man, I like things as simple as possible.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I think all of your desires can be summarized under these three broad buckets: the desire for security, the desire for satisfaction, and the desire for significance.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If it's not our devices but our desires that are causing our distraction, then to inverse that would be to say that maybe if the beginning of evil is distraction, maybe the beginning of good is attention.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Simone Vey, the French philosopher, said it like this: attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Think about that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: When you're with somebody and they are attending to you fully, how generous that feels in an age of distraction.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so in this series called Subversive Spirituality, we've been looking at how the Psalms offer an ancient antidote to our modern maladies.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And today I want to look at the modern malady of distraction and the ancient antidote of attention.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And I get that from Psalm 16, verse 8.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you have a Bible or a device or the worship God, go ahead and get Psalm 16, verse 8 in front of you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I think this is David's spiritual secret.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Like it was a big deal when KFC released their secret sauce recipe, how they made their chicken.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is David releasing the recipe on how to walk with God in the world.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Right here, verse 8.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look with me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I have set the Lord always before me because he is at my right hand.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I shall not be shaken.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is attention.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: David has learned to attend.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Always, he says, always attending to the Lord, setting the Lord always before him, over and over and over again.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And this results in an unshakable life, according to David.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So with that, what I want to do is a little Christian psychology here of the modern malady of distraction and the ancient antidote of attention based on these deep desires that I think are the source of our distraction.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So I have three points.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That is the desire for security, the desire for satisfaction, and the desire for significance.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And then I'll get out of your way.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look with me at the desire for security in verse one.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Psalm 16, verse 1.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now listen, this is important.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Security, the desire for it is a good thing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The number one metaphor in the book of Psalms is the metaphor of refuge.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's not an overstatement to say that the book of Psalms exists in the Bible to teach you, to train you how to take refuge in God, how to find God to be your sanctuary.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I love that word sanctuary.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's a place of safety, it's a place of holiness, it's a place where you go to preserve life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: David is trying to teach us through this psalm how do we find our security in God?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, in the early 1900s, there was a man named John who was born in England.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And John grew up in a time and place when children were to be seen and not heard.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And in fact, if you gave them too much time and attention, you would spoil them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so he had about one hour of his mom's attention a day until he was seven years old.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And at seven years old, he got shipped off to boarding school.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, fast forward, like many of people who become therapists because of their family of origin, he became a world-renowned psychologist.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he really was doing his clinical training in the midst of and after World War II.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he was in a hospital working with orphans, children who'd been orphaned because of the Great War, World War II, that is.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And as he's working with these orphans, he found that there was this deep need and this deep desire for relational connection, what he termed attachment.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This man, of course, some of you know, is a man named John Bowlby.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He invented what's called attachment theory, which I'm gonna argue is maybe one of the greatest scientific advancements in the 20th century.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Not psychological advancements, scientific advancements.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Attachment theory gets closer to what it means to be human than any other theory, especially from the sciences of humanity, up until that point.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And John Bowlby really distilled three things that make the foundation of an attachment relationship.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The three things are a secure base, a safe haven, and proximity seeking.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now let me make that plain for a moment.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Imagine you're at a playground and you see some kids with their caregiver, mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, something like that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And and they're hugging grandpa's leg, and then they kind of run off to the playground to have fun and do something, and then they fall down and get hurt and they run back.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That leaving the caregiver is moving out from a secure base into a dangerous world.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what you need.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You have to have a secure base to explore a dangerous world.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But you also need a safe haven, a place you can come back to from that dangerous world and find security again.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And that pattern of going out and coming back, going out and coming back is what's called proximity-seeking behavior.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Does this sound like the book of Psalms to you?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Preserve me, O God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Proximity-seeking behavior.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For in you I take refuge.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're my secure base and my safe haven.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The psalmist can't help himself.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's regularly going, You're my fortress and my rock and my strong tower.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He could easily have said, My secure base and my safe haven.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, David had a securely attached relationship with the invisible God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I believe this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he's trying to train us how we can have that as well.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so listen, it is an oversimplification, but not too much, to say that the two things that fuel a human life are either fear or joy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The only two fuels for a human life, fear or joy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What fear would say if it could talk is it would say, I am powerless and alone.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And trauma researchers have shown that not everybody's traumatized by a traumatic event.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What makes the difference is in that event and in the aftermath of the event, did you feel powerless and alone?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's how you get a PTSD diagnosis.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But if Joy could talk, Joy would say this, I'm so glad to be with you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm so glad to be with you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the language of joy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the language of a securely attached relationship.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so here's my invitation.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What does it look like to find God as your refuge?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Here's what I think it means three things.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Notice, name, nearness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Here's what I mean by this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The first thing is you have to notice the moments when you feel insecure.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Some of you are like, I don't think I'm ever insecure.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: No, you're just not self-aware.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You are regularly insecure, and it looks like an increased heart rate.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Just subtle.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It looks like the chatter in your mind sounding like self-protection and self-promotion.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what it that's what you notice.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So you begin to notice those moments and situations and times where you feel insecure when you feel fear.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The second thing is, is you name it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Call it what it is.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm afraid right now.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Name it to yourself, to the Lord, to a somebody in your community, name it out loud.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you have a hard time with that, you can ask the Lord.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I believe the Lord wants to.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Uh as verse 7 says, I bless the Lord who gives me counsel.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I think the Lord's a good counselor.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And you simply go something like this: Lord, what am I afraid of right now?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Or where did I learn to be afraid of this?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Or, Lord, what do I typically do when I'm afraid?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Or, Lord, where what do you want me to know about this fear?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Or, Lord, what do you want me to do with this fear right now?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Ask those questions.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I can promise you, one of the primary things God will lead you to is to draw near.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So you not only notice, you name, and then you draw near to God in the fear.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And you tell him, you say, Lord, I'm afraid of this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm just telling you that right now.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Would you preserve me, O God?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For in you I take refuge.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is what it looks like to take your desire, your good desire for security, and to direct it to the only place that really can give you security beyond death, which is the Lord Himself.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So not only do we want to be safe, we also want to be full.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look with me at the desire for satisfaction.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The desire for satisfaction.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Verse 2.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I say to, now, L-O-R-D, all caps is Yahweh, the proper name of God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I say to Yahweh, you are my Adonai.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the word for Lord or King.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I say to Yahweh, you are my Adonai.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I have no good apart from you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Listen, the desire for satisfaction is always a felt sense of emptiness, longing for fullness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what the desire for satisfaction is.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so it doesn't really matter if it's food or sex or art or ambition.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're always, when you're dissatisfied, it's emptiness, longing for fullness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now listen, you were made with that desire.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A principle, a foundational principle of Christian psychology or anthropology is that evil does not have its own clay.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What do I mean?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: All that evil can do is to come in and to warp, pervert, distort, and bend God's good creation.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So the good creational desire for satisfaction, this emptiness, longing for fullness, evil comes in and warps and distorts and perverts and misdirects it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: One of the words translated iniquity in your Bible means bent.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You have a bentness in your desires.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so it's not the desire that's the problem, which is a real issue that Christians have to wrestle through.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Your longing, your emptiness, longing for fullness, what the Chilean poet Pablo Naruto calls the infinite ache is something given to you by God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The problem is when we take that infinite ache and put it on finite objects.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 4 with me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Verse 4 says it like this the sorrows of those who run after, underline that in your Bible or on whatever you got, those sorrows of those who run after another God shall multiply.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That language of run after is important.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: When you give your infinite ache to finite objects, you will find yourself on a treadmill.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A treadmill that gets faster and faster and faster and results in something psychologists call addiction.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The best definition of addiction I've ever heard is from C.S.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Lewis.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He says, addiction is an ever-increasing craving for an ever-diminishing pleasure.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the treadmill.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's running after false gods.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do you hear it?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The anxiety, the distraction, the frenetic, can I get more of what I need?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because I'm longing for fullness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Yes, you are.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You have an infinite ache.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And none of those finite objects will ever suffice.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So since we're around the time of the World Cup, there's a podcast episode called Goats on Greatness, where Zlatan Ibrahimovich interviews Tom Brady.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's amazing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Goats on Greatness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I don't know if I can commend it to you, but I can commend this portion of it to you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Ibrahimovich asks Tom Brady, he says, Did you ever enjoy your achievements?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: To which Tom immediately responds, No.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And they both laugh.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Did you ever enjoy your achievements?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Tom Brady?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: No, I never enjoyed any of them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: To which Ibrahimovich replies, I never enjoyed whatever I won.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I always wanted more.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Even now, I'm still not satisfied.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I cannot really enjoy it because I want more.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do you hear the desire for satisfaction?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do you hear the infinite ache beneath the surface of the goats of our generation?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so the danger is to say that the infinite ache is the problem.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's not the problem, it's the finite objects.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's putting the infinite ache on finite objects.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what creates the problem for us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so C.S.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Lewis said it like this if we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's why secularism is so suffocating.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's no transcendent reference point for any of your desires.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Your ache for satisfaction.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so what you do is you distract yourself to death doing what ironically is called an infinite scroll.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And what's happening?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're looking, you're longing for your emptiness to experience fullness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, this is where religious people come along and they say something like the problem is that you've been indulging your desires.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: No, no, no.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Instead, they won't use this word, but this is what they're saying.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Instead, you should repress those desires.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Repress them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The problem with repression is what psychologists call the revenge of repression.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Push those desires down, I dare you, it will pop out somewhere else, just like a beach ball in the pool.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what happens when we push our desires down.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Somebody said it like this the world offers a fast food diet.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You'll die pretty well on a fast food diet.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But then the church comes along and offers a starvation diet.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And people with enough willpower will go, Yeah, that's right.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm not gonna do fast food, I'm gonna starve myself, which also leads to death.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so either you'll starve yourself to death or you'll run back to the fast food diet because Christianity didn't really work out for you, anyways.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So if you're not supposed to indulge your desires, if you're not supposed to repress your desires, what are you supposed to do with this infinite ache, this emptiness, longing for fullness?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're supposed to direct them to the proper place.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Direct those desires and redirect those desires.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 2 again.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I say to the Lord, you are my Lord.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I have no good apart from you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Something really beautiful happening here because I'm confident there's people in this room who are not yet believers in Jesus, not yet disciples of Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Welcome.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We love having you here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're no more welcome anywhere in Orlando that I know of than you are right here, right now.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And I also know there's people in this room who think they know Jesus, but they really don't.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And that's a real concern in the scriptures.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In fact, in James 2, James, brother of Jesus, says it like this You believe that God is one, good on you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So do the devils.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The demons have good theology.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Good theology doesn't save anyone.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The devil can never say what the psalmist says here in verse 2.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I say to the Lord, you are my Lord.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The first step with your desire for satisfaction is to bring your desires under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus, you are Lord over my desires.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I don't get to determine what I do with them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm not what our cultural moment would say about you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I am not simply, merely my desires.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Whatever I feel, whatever I desire, whatever I long for, that's who I am.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus, I'm submitting and surrendering that to your lordship.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I say to the Lord, you are my Lord.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And then he goes on, he says, I have no good apart from you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I love this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's something brilliant in this in this insight here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: No good apart from the Lord.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The invitation here is to take everyday experiences of goodness as shafts of glory, as sunbeams that you follow back to the sun.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Every little bit of pleasure you experience, the enjoyment of it, and you respond and make it a channel for adoration.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Not just thanksgiving, although I think it's really important.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Experience good things.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Give thanks to God for them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That sounds like, God, thank you for filling the blank.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But even more is not thank you for these things, but thank you, the giver.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Praise you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I adore you, the giver of these good things.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: One of my favorite stories is uh Augustine of Hippo, who's walking on the Mediterranean beach and he's looking out at how beautiful the Mediterranean Sea is, and he ponders to himself, oh Lord, if these are the beauties afforded to sinful men, how much more do you have in store for those whose hearts are yours?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what it looks like to say, I say to the Lord, You are my Lord, I have no good apart from you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Every experience of goodness in your life is a channel for adoration.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's intended to draw your heart up to go, wow, God, you are amazing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If this sunset is so beautiful, how much more are you beautiful, the maker of that sunset?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the invitation.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so not only are we safe, needing safety, not only are we empty, longing for fullness, this infinite ache is a signature of our infinite author who's saying, Find that satisfaction in me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But we also wonder, do I matter?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the third and final point here is our desire for significance.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 5 with me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You hold my lot.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: When I say significance, what I mean by that is this question, this desire to have meaning or status or purpose or weight or a future, all of those things I'm kind of wrapping up in this sense of significance.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We were made to matter.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's a psychological literature base called the psychology of mattering.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Studying this thing right here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And it's actually important to note 30% of people, 10 to 19, do not feel like they matter to anybody.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We have the joy of being a multi-generational, intergenerational church.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Listen, if you're in your 30s or 40s in this room, you have a responsibility to communicate mattering to people in their 10s and 20s in this room.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, what does that look like?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's an acronym, SED, S-A-I-D.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It looks like this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You communicate to them you're significant, you're appreciated, you're invested in, and you're dependent on.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We need you, we want you, we delight in you, we enjoy you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: 30%, one in three, nine, 10 to 19-year-olds doesn't feel like they matter to anybody.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This longing to matter, this desire for significance is something God gave us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So what do we do?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, listen, in order to unpack verse 5, I've got to tell you the background.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's a story behind this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This fall will be in Deuteronomy, maybe next fall will be in Joshua.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Who knows?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Joshua is the story of how the people of Israel, 12 tribes, are entering into the promised land called Canaan.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And as they're going into the promised land, Joshua is told by the Lord to divvy up the land among the 12 tribes.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So you can imagine this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Handing out parcels, and you know, he's going to Gad.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's like, Gad, you get the gardens and the groves.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Reuben, you guys are gonna be ranchers, you're gonna get good hamburgers.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Uh I don't know if that's kosher actually.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Anyways, you get the hamburgers, and then the Lord looks at the Levites and says, Levites, you don't get land, you get me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now listen, for generations the people of Israel have been longing, aching to be in the land.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And now it gets parceled out, and eleven tribes get portions, except for one, the Levites, they get the Lord.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This might be a recipe for discontentment.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Honestly, it's kind of like maybe some of you, when you were kids, you grew up and your parents would say, Hey, can you go do this thing for me?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And you say, What do I get if I do?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And they replied, The satisfaction of a job well done.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And you're like, You could have just said nothing like that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Instead, you patronized me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Like, is that what the Levites are saying here to the Lord?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Are they like, Lord, we get you?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We wanted something more tangible, maybe.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Something we could grow crops on.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, in ancient Israel, land was the source of your wealth, your future.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: To be landless was a curse, not a blessing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what makes verse 5 so startling, so scandalous.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because King David of the tribe of Judah says, The Lord is my chosen portion.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's a Judahite, he had a portion in the land.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Not only that, he's not only a Judahite, he's the king.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In one sense, all of Israel belongs to him.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He has everything, and he says, I don't want it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I don't want all the significance that comes from owning all this land, being the king.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I want the Lord.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's my chosen portion.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I wish I was a Levite.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I wish I had what they had.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So I'm gonna choose that portion instead.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why is that?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, because David knows that if your significance is built on anything that can be taken away from you, it makes you profoundly vulnerable.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Profoundly vulnerable.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That causes a lot of distraction.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So I don't know, how would you fill in the blank here?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I matter if.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I matter if I'm noticed, I'm needed, I'm admired, I'm successful, feel in the blank.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I matter if whatever it is, if it's not some version of, I matter if I belong to the Lord, if he's my chosen portion, he's my inheritance, if it's not that, you're vulnerable.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you don't believe me, believe Warren Buffett, who was a pretty significant dude, is a pretty significant dude.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He says it like this the most dangerous distractions are the ones that you love but don't love you back.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How would you fill in the blank?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I matter if.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So listen, if distraction is the beginning of evil, and maybe attention is the beginning of good, let's end where we began with verse 8.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In verse 8, David says it like this I have set the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You hear this?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's invulnerable because it's the Lord who's his security, it's the Lord who's his satisfaction, it's the Lord who's his significance.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's why he's unshakable.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's saying, Lord, it's not control or my security system or my bank account.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's you are my security.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Lord, it's not more of whatever already is not satisfying me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's not just more of that thing, it's you are my satisfaction.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's not more of mattering to those who matter and being seen and looked at well in other people's life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's not that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's you, Lord, are my significance.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A modern example of this, maybe better than anybody else I know, is a guy named Frank Laubach.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Frank Laubach is a literacy genius.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He kind of proliferated literacy across the globe in a lot of ways.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Um, but but he has this book called Letters by a Modern Mystic.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's a good summer read by Frank Laubach.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And in that he talks about this thing he calls the game with minutes.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And what the game with minutes was is he he endeavored to think about God for at least one second of every minute of the day.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Not that easy, but he claims to have done it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the reason why he could do it is because it became a habit over time.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He just drew his attention back to God, back to God, back to God, back to God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And what starts as an action that requires willpower becomes a habit that requires a lot less willpower.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Dallas Willard says it like this if we learn to constantly redirect our attention back to God, our minds will return to God as the needle of a compass points north.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's a secret here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: David's showing you, Frank Laubach's showing you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is the secret to unshakable confidence right here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Setting the Lord always before you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So some of you in the room are going, okay, so if I hear you, what you're saying is if I develop a habit of always bringing God into my mind, or you know, one second of every minute or whatever it is, uh, if I do that, I will be safe, full, and never forgotten.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Sadly, no.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because we live in the tension of the times.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We live on this side of Eden and this side of the new heavens and new earth, and in the tension of the times, we find ourselves with these desires that go unmet.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In other words, there's harm.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's ache.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There is forgottenness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So where's the hope in all of this?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's in the last three verses.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look with me at verses nine through eleven.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Therefore, my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices, my flesh also dwells secure, for you will not abandon my soul to shaol or let your holy one seek corruption.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You make known to me the path of life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In your presence there is fullness of joy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Listen, the apostolic interpretation of these three verses come to us from the lips of Peter on the day of Pentecost, recorded in Acts 2.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And this is what Peter says about these three verses.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's a big deal.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Ready?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: David died.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Period.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: David's the one writing this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: David's going, You're not going to bend in my soul to Sheol.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're not going to let me see corruption.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm stoked because I'm not going to die and be buried like everybody else.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Or is he?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because Peter goes on, he says, David died, which is why we know David couldn't have been speaking about himself here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Peter says it like this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He says, quote, David says concerning Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Verses 9 through 11.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So the apostolic interpretation of this text is it's not until resurrection that we have the hope of the satisfaction of all of our desires.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, the resurrection of Jesus is the only hope.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It is the ultimate.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's why I can say to you, yes, if you belong to Jesus, you will ultimately be secure, ultimately be satisfied, ultimately be significant.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And in the here and now you get touches and tastes of that, I promise you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But let's end where the Psalm ends with verse 11.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It says, This, you make known to me the path of life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Proverbs has this way of saying this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It says, There's a way that seems right to man, but in its end it leads to death.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Listen to me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus walked that way.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The way of death, the Via Dolorosa, all the way to the cross of Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And on that cross, he died.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He died.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So that he could be to you the path of life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So you could take Jesus as the path of life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That means that Jesus Himself is our security.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But it goes on, it says, in your presence there is fullness of joy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do you notice that word?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Fullness of joy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Listen, Jesus is Emmanuel.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That means God with us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus opens up to us the access that we need to the presence of God, the place where fullness of joy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It says, in your presence, there of all places, in all of the cosmos, there is fullness of joy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus, God with us, is the place of fullness of joy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now listen, you will taste some of that joy in his presence.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I hope you do today.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: As you gather as his people, he's here with us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But you will never full have the infinite ache fully satisfied until you are with him with a resurrected body, with resurrected eyes, beholding the face of Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Imagine what taste is going to be like when you have resurrected taste buds.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Your infinite ache is for that moment, that time, then and there.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Finally, because Jesus is himself our satisfaction, we can hope for that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And look at verse 11, it says, At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Throughout the story of Scripture, the right hand is the place of significance.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's the place of significance.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I have a friend named Matt who lived in China for a little while.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You have to know this about Matt.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's Egyptian and Alabamian.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Alright?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's in China.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he's walking around for weeks and months, and he's not seeing anybody else that looks like him or talks like him.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Some of you know what it's like to be a cultural minority.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It could be exhausting.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And Matt walks into a room, and when he walks into the room, he overhears somebody talking, I think with a southern accent.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he looks across the room and he's like, somebody like me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Somebody familiar.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He goes and starts talking to this person, and it feels refreshing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Listen to me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The transcendent reference point of all of reality is the throne room of God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's the throne room of God in heaven.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And if you were to go there, you would feel like a cultural minority.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I promise you that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You'd be walking around, you'd be like, what is that thing with like eyes all around and six wings and seraphim, the burning ones?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You'd be like, what is happening?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It would be staggering.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And as you'd be looking around, you'd see that everybody's looking in the same place, and that the focal point of the throne room is the throne.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And on it, sitting on that throne is somebody familiar, somebody who looks like me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because the dust of earth is enthroned on the seat of heaven.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: His name is Jesus Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The point here is that you, if you belong to him by faith, Ephesians 2 says you are already raised up with him and seated with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So listen to me, Jesus Himself is our significance.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: As we look at this text, we see that Jesus is the path of life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus is the place where there's fullness of joy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus is already at the right hand of the Father, and if you belong to Him, so are you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And that means that you matter because He matters.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let's pray.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus, we thank you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We thank you that we have died and our life is hidden with Christ in you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Hidden in you, God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's our refuge.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Be to us the security you promise in the psalm.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Be to us the satisfaction for our infant ache.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Be to us the place where we matter.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Our significance, Jesus, is in you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's for your beautiful name we pray.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Amen.