Communion - Bread and Wine. The Lord allowed His body to be broken like the bread and His blood to be poured out like the wine.
Bread so often is used to represent the Word.
Give us this day our daily bread, not only means physically, but spiritually.
Wine is so often used to describe the Spirit. God’s body was broken and His Spirit was poured out to us. Wine and bread. Spirit and Truth.
God seeks worshippers to worship Him in Spirit and Truth.
John 4
23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
Worship in the greek is the word proskuneó - besides laying prostrate or on one’s knees adoringly, in the opinion of most scholars, it is translated "to kiss”.
To me, worship is an intimate action. You have to be close enough to someone to kiss them. So often, we get caught up in the Father/son/daughter dynamic, that we forget we are the bride of Christ. Being His bride denotes intimacy. If we are to be the types of worshippers that God seeks, the way we worship must be intimate. And if He is telling us to worship Him in Spirit and Truth… our interaction with the Spirit and the truth must be intimate as well. And I want to delve into how we respond to God in Spirit and truth through the movie, the Book of Eli.
When Joe put it out there that we would be doing a movie series, I was excited. I feel like Christian culture has such a love/hate relationship with movies and Hollywood. So many Christians have checked out of participating with culture at large… and I don’t blame them. There’s a lot of terrible things out there. The problem is, if you choose not to participate with culture, you’ll miss where God shows up in the culture. And He does show up. Despite the intentions of those who make the movies. You’ll be surprised where you find God’s truth or inspiration. God can’t help but be glorified. We’re so busy being worried about the world infecting us that we don’t pay attention to the times where we infect the world. It happens more than you know. You might say, “But Pastor Dan, aren’t we supposed to be in the world but not of the world.” And I would say, “You are absolutely right. We are not of the world. But we are to be in the world. Read John 17:14-19 yourself and you’ll see, being not of this world is our identity. But He sends us into the world. In the world is where we should be. But our nature is not the same as the world’s. To sum it up, “Don’t be scared of the world, the world needs to be scared of you.” Amen? Amen. That’s a whole ’nother sermon. That one’s free.
I picked the Book of Eli, not because I went searching for movie sermons, or because I thought it was cool. I picked the Book of Eli because it stirred something in me. There was a love for the Word that bubbled up in me when I watched it. So let me set the stage for you.
Book of Eli
Thirty years after war turned the world into a wasteland, a lone warrior named Eli marches across the ruined landscape, carrying hope for humanity's redemption. You see Eli has the only known copy of the Bible that exists in this world. Only one other man, Carnegie, understands the power of what Eli carries, and he is determined to take it for himself. Though Eli prefers peace, he will risk death to protect his precious cargo, for he must fulfill his destiny to help restore mankind. Btw… it is a Rated “R” movie for violence and a little bit of language in case you’re sensitive to that or you have children.
This first clip, we pick up Eli being asked questions about the Bible by Mila Kunis’ character Solara. She’s never heard of the bible. Has no concept of what it is.
This clip addresses both "Truth" and "Spirit"
“Truth"
So many of us look at the Word of God as a chore. Yet the Word is not only a love letter from God to us, it explains our relationship to Him and all that comes with it. Reading the Word helps us fall deeper in love with God. Not only that, it shows us how to love Him. It shows us how God wants to be loved. That communication is so important in every relationship, why would it be different in our relationship with God? If your wife or girlfriend had a journal and in this journal, not only did it list her favorite things, what she likes to do, favorite color, what she’s passionate about…but it also had all of her feelings about you. All the things she loves about you, how proud of you she is, how happy she wants to make you, and all of your favorite things that she knows about you. And not only that, if that weren’t enough… it listed how to make up when you make a mistake in such a way that it would never be brought up again. I know some guys in here would like that. Tell me you wouldn’t read that book. Tell me that wouldn’t make you feel amazing about your girlfriend or wife. Tell me it wouldn’t make you value the relationship that you have with her in a whole new way. Yet so many of us have a disconnect when it comes to reading the Bible. It’s just a book. Oh, I’m not much of a reader. I don’t understand everything. If your wife or husband wrote it and it was as good as I’m saying it is, you would read it. You wouldn’t let that stop you. There’s a lot my wife tells me that I don’t understand, but it doesn’t mean I don’t want to.
In middle school, I had been a Christian for awhile at that point. I think I was 11 or 12 and I got such a hunger to read the Word. And only the King James version would do. I wanted the closest thing to the greek I could get. So many “Thee’s and Thou’s”. Though, I will say it reads more poetic than the later translations. But I couldn’t get enough. I believe in middle school and high school, I probably read through the Bible 4-5 times. And I’m not saying that to say that I was anybody special… God had gotten a grip on me and I was passionate about Him. It wasn’t just a book, it was a relationship. And I was figuring out who He was and who I was.
The more I learned what the truth was, the easier it was when something didn’t line up with that. I was a bouncer in Hollywood for many years and one of the things you do at a club is check ID’s. Now how do you know which ID’s are fake? You study a real one. The more you study a real one, the moment someone gives you a fake, you know it’s fake because you’ve spent time studying a real one. I had one fake ID a kid gave me and when I checked the Date of Birth, it said “On their birthday.” You can’t make this stuff up.
The more truth you know, the more you know God. Many of us have a relationship with God, but don’t have much understanding of who He is and who we are. Whatever we don’t know about God, we will fill in with our own understanding. Our own understanding is self-serving and will promote ourselves over God.
Proverbs 3
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
6 in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.
Not only does Eli read the Word every day, God speaks to him. God wants us to speak to Him and He wants to speak to us.
Ephesians 6
18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.
John 14
26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
John 15
15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
There’s an intimacy in being friends. So many of us end up on one side of the spectrum. You have your people that read the Word every day, but have no concept of God wanting to speak to them or of being led by the Spirit. And then you have people on the other side, they say God speaks to them all the time, but actually know very little about this God they serve. So a lot of times what they think is God speaking to them, is really themselves because they haven’t done the ID test with His Word. You want to know if what you’re hearing is from God or from you? Put it against the Word of God. If it contradicts it, then it’s from you. That was one of the greatest things about getting that Word foundation. Because when you hear a lot of different voices, you can discern what is true because it lines up with His Word. I’ll give you an example: For those of you who have seen Pulp Fiction and I’m not recommending all of you going out there and watching it, Samuel L. Jackson’s character quotes Ezekiel 25:17. It’s a pretty long verse. I remember watching the movie in the theater and realizing, that’s not in the bible. Literally, they only use the tail end of Ezekiel 25:17 and make up a ton of scripture. And when I went home and checked it out, I was right. How did I know that scripture was made up? Had I read Ezekiel recently? No. I knew it was made up because after years of reading the Word, I knew what it sounded like. And I knew the moment someone tried to imitate the Word that it was false. It becomes a part of you. I’ll show you what I mean with this next clip. Eli has had the bible stolen by the bad guy Carnegie. But Eli still goes west and ends up finding the last library on earth.
Intimacy is achieved.
Eli realized that he didn’t need a physical book anymore. It was written on his heart.
Hebrews 10
15 The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says:
16 “This is the covenant I will make with them
after that time, says the Lord.
I will put my laws in their hearts,
after that time, says the Lord.
I will put my laws in their hearts,
and I will write them on their minds.”
I knew a prophet who God actually allowed to memorize the Word named Kelley Varner. He could recall any spot in the bible you asked him. It was amazing. The Word is supernatural! It’s alive.
Hebrews 4:12
12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
Eli had such an intimate relationship with God, with the Spirit and the Word, it became a part of him. And isn’t that what intimacy is all about? Becoming one.
John 15
5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
The vine has branches. The branches are not separate from the vine. The branches are one with the vine.
God is seeking worshippers. He’s seeking lovers. Those He can be intimate with. And what do lovers do? They create life!
I’m not going to lie to you, sometimes I take the Bible for granted. I take my relationship I have with God for granted. Because He is faithful. He is always there. Watching this movie, convicted me to honor the intimate connection I have with God. To treat the relationship with God I have even more sacredly than I do. It reminded me how much I love the Word.
God is calling us… searching for us… for worshippers who will worship Him, in Spirit and Truth. God wants to create life in us. In our families, in our jobs, in our friends, in our country, in our world. You are the true worshippers that John talks about. That is who God created you to be. That is who you are.
If you would like prayer to kindle the fire in your heart for more intimacy with God, come on up. The prayer team will be up here. And as you go, watch this last clip.
