I don't know why I've been blessed with this opportunity in my life, but I've been, my wife and I have been to Rome, Italy on numerous occasions and traveled to St. Peter's Basilica, which if you've been there, you know is a incredibly grand, ornate edifice that probably took, well I know it took decades to build, and it was built that it would last hundreds of years. Quite a remarkable thing, architecturally. You can go into St. Peter's Basilica and you can look on the floor and it will show you where other cathedrals around the world would actually fit into that building. It's incredible. They actually planted the oak trees in preparation for needing the wood for the pews. Now that's a building program. Been to Notre Dame before its recent reconstruction slash renovation. And it too is an ornate, well all the churches and cathedrals throughout Europe are this way. Before the time of video and Facebook and social media and television, these are buildings that were meant to communicate something to whoever walked into them at whatever time. You can go throughout Italy and see churches with mosaics on the wall that before the printing press would have been the sermon for the day. You know, look over there, there it is. So it's phenomenal how these structures, one, last, and two, speak to people for hundreds and hundreds of years. That's the upside. The Duomo in Florence is another one. The doors across from the Duomo in Florence are incredible. You can tour these facilities, usually. You can put headphones on. You can hire a tour guide. And you can go through these facilities. And you can look at the artwork, the Raphaels, the Caravaggios. You can look at all of these incredible Renaissance works of art. You can see the Michelangelo's La Pieta in the St. Peter's Basilica, a beautiful, beautiful piece of art. You can go, of course, as you know, to the Sistine Chapel and you can look up at the ceiling. You can see the Last Judgment behind the altar. And these things are quite phenomenal. Millions of people have traveled to these places to see these structures and these places, cathedrals of worship, sanctuaries. And there's even a modern day chapel you could go to in Magdala in Israel today and see the birthplace of Mary Magdalene and you could see, you could actually enjoy the acoustical phenomenon of being able to whisper on one end of the room and be heard by someone on the other end of the room. Phenomenal. You can do all of these things, and millions of people have, and they've come from all over the world for decades and decades and decades to see these structures, to experience these things. Some of them are believers and followers of Christ, others of them have an awareness of Christ, and others of them have adopted a totally different belief system. But it's the structure that brings them, it's the decor, it's the something about the mystique of it all that lures people into these places to pay money for tours and to walk through them. Said another way, I think the masses are captivated by these structures and by what these structures communicate historically and spiritually. In fact, probably the sole source of income for many of these cathedrals is a little box in the back where someone may put a coin or a dollar bill. The revenue generated by some of these spiritual museums of sorts far exceeds, when you add in government subsidies and tour guides and all the things put together, it far exceeds anybody giving out of an offering in a worship service. The worship services are humble and some of them are meagerly attended at masses around the world. It's really a phenomenal thing. What we have done is we have built these lasting structures to speak to what used to be, but is now no longer a majority of people's reality. Younger generations don't frequent these structures in European countries and these structures themselves have to be rebuilt because they're symbols of something that once was. Governments and fundraising campaigns will rebuild the structure, rebuild the house, but where's the spirit? Where's the joy? Where's the worship? And in some way, shape, or form, we have sort of been captivated by something that is inanimate, but represents something personal. It's inanimate and cold, literally, its marbles are cold, but in reality, the one who warms the human heart is only symbolized. That's all. Not always, but often. So where's the captivation with something personal with something friendly, someone loving, kind, tender, gracious, wise, available, where is the captivation with Christ? I have a message this morning, that's not the question. The question is, do you have the ears? I have no doubt I have a message. But is it one that will be pondered? Will it be discussed? Will it be meditated on? Will it be thought-provoking? Will it be transformative on some level? Will it be something like Mary that you ponder in your heart for a few days? Will it just be you in another somewhat beautiful, ornate sanctuary, I trust not, that you just visited and it was more like a museum than it was something that could actually touch your heart? I don't know. I have a pretty good idea of who is here and I know you're hungry. I know you are looking for something to be activated in your life. I know you're looking for something true and applicable. So you're probably the exception to the rule. But I have a message, do you have the ears? Are you here to take a tour? Are you here to be entertained? I don't know. Whatever the case may be, I trust that on some level you'll be captivated. by something of Christ that you'll be enthralled, thronged and pressed in and constrained by the love of Christ in some way that far exceeds your ability to conjure up some self-discipline or some vow that you may or may not make. I trust that something of the Spirit is pressing in on you and your heart, is changing the way you think and view the world and giving you a different focus and a different eye and a different tongue towards what you see, what you say, what you do, what you want. I'm not here for a tour. I'm not here to enjoy the trappings of the surroundings. I'm not here to stand in a sanctuary, sit in a sanctuary. I'm here to take sanctuary. It is a cold, hurried, harried world out there, and I can tell you right now, We need to find a hiding place, in Christ our hiding place, and we need one to sing songs of deliverance over us and renew our hearts each and every week to go back on the court, back on the field, back on the course and play the game. I don't need to be here today if I'm not gonna be captivated on some level. I got better things to do and I know you do too. We're not here to visit a Tourist destination. We're not here to walk around and look, put some headphones on, learn something and move on. Who has the time or the desire for something like that? Last week I shared with you, mostly online, for Christ's love compels us, constrains us, because we are convinced that one died for all and therefore all die. 2 Corinthians 5 and 14. I mentioned last week that this idea of being constrained or captivated really means to be enthroned, like throngs of people pressing in on Christ that limited his movement, limited what he could say or do, and nobody could hear what he had to say, nobody could see him move, he's just pressed in upon. Well, what He wants for you and He wants for me is you and I to be thronged, pressed in upon by His love so that the limitations that we have are really limited to Him and His love coming through us and to us. That's really basically what the Bible's about. a vertical love to level with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and a horizontal love to love your neighbor as yourself. At the end of the day, that's all that we really have, and if it's left up to our own devices, our own discipline, our own desires, our own passions to love other people, listen. That is a life that may look good, but it's more a tour than it is anything else. I don't need you, nor do you need me, to conjure up the love I need to love you and you love me back or your spouse or your children or your grandchildren. What we need to do is be pressed in upon and constrained and imprisoned, arrested, seized by the love of Christ. I appreciate the effort, but no matter how good your effort is, it is substandard compared to the constraining love of Christ. And the first indication, as we talked about last week, of someone truly being captivated by Christ is the word sacrifice. And it was a brilliant illustration after the service that I got last week that just basically said it all. If you have something in your life that has become overly important, overly intense, too awfully potent or something that's going to be too important to you that comes between you and Christ being number one in your life, it's not that you have to seize yourself and give it up and discipline yourself, it's that as he increases in your life, your desire will wane for those idols in your life that you have. He will slowly but surely allow you the decency to make decisions in a process where he reveals himself and you begin to realize I had no idea how incredible he is in light of what I thought was incredible in my everyday life. He will slowly wean you from your desire for things that define you or things that are too overly important in your life. To do what, to make room for him. Any relationship, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, that is too important to defining your relationship, even your career, your skill set, your gifts, your ministry. Whatever it is that overly defines you, he will allow you to slowly stop the white knuckling process and let him have it. And you'll not regret it for one second. delight yourself in the Lord and he'll give you the desire of your heart. What everyone needs to realize is as you delight yourself in the Lord, he changes the desire of your heart. Good news is you always get what you want. You just don't want certain things anymore. Now make the opposite of that and you got legalism and dry bones, worthless, stinking religion that doesn't do squat for anybody. Elevate him, and what will decline are the things that are overly important to you, and frankly, when you look back on them, you're gonna say, man, what happened? That was ridiculous. Captivation. So the first thing is sacrifice, that probably something's gonna go, more than likely, something's gonna go, or something's gonna be downgrade in its importance. A captivated heart understands that. Frankly, now that I told you, you should expect it. And it's okay. You're gonna be fine. As you grow in him, something will wane. Said another way, I'll quote a guy, what's his name? John the Baptist. Never cut his hair and had a weird diet. As he increases, I decrease. There it is. It can be an attitude, a hobby. Not that these things aren't good, but sometimes they're too good. Could be money, could be status, could be your identity, but it's gonna be something. So I encourage you to loosen and lighten up. Loosen your grip and lighten up on the things that are overly important, if not more important than he is right now. Identity makers. And he will reorient, renew, and revive your perspective. The second indicator of a heart captivated sounds like a real bummer, but it's not, and it's sorrow. Sacrifice first, and then sorrow. Let's talk about King David for a minute. A lot of people like King David. Great guy, great leader, star of David, historical figure. David and Goliath, man after God's own heart, an all around great guy. What made him so great? Was it his spontaneity to dance in public? Was it his transparency? Was it him sharing his heart in the Psalms where you could just basically see right into who he was? Sure, all of those things are great. Was it that he was a great leader and a great warrior? Was it that he withheld himself from hurting Saul, God's anointed at the time? What makes him so great? And then what makes him so bad? Was it that he fell into sin? That he committed adultery and murder? No, what makes him great is not his sin and not necessarily his leadership, not his personality. What makes David great is his response to his sin, which was godly sorrow. To write a psalm like Psalm 51, or to immerse yourself in sackcloth and ashes, and then your baby dies, and then you get up. He purposes himself to be convicted of his sin, to embrace the consequences of his sin, and he just accepts responsibility. This is his greatness. He accepts the responsibilities for his failings and his shortcomings. And to do that from a position of kingship is even all that more spectacular. A captivated heart allows itself to be a broken heart. Said another way, if our hearts won't break over our shortcomings because they come between us and him, then it's not captivated. It's just a heart. A heart captivated is a heart that's willing and open to be broken, and that's fine. One of the greatest things that are endangered in our country right now is to own up to your own mistakes and responsibilities. It is almost unheard of. Not only are mistakes and shortcomings and sins overlooked, if you actually looked at them, it wouldn't even be bad. They're not even bad anymore. They're not even consequential. They're accepted. That's every day. But a great man, A great woman, a captivated heart, like David's, will accept responsibility for mistakes, unheard of today. Will actually accept responsibility, will receive the consequences, and will have a godly sorrow. Somebody, and I don't know who, has to teach our younger generation how to take responsibilities for themselves. Think about that. That's David's greatest attribute. He came out of a spiritual hibernation. Not too many weeks ago, I was thinking to myself, because you know, I go out at night to change this or do that or get something out of the truck or something. I'm always looking around, aren't you? I wonder if there's a bear out here, you know? Is there a bear out here? And then there comes a time when you think, nah, they're gone. I'm good. Like, I don't tiptoe out there. Sometimes I don't even have to turn the light on. I just go out there. I might get surprised one day. Because there's a warm snap that comes, and then you know they're not. They're out, man. They're out. And then it gets really cold for a couple of weeks, and you go, I'm good. They're hibernating. Safe. That's where we are right now. What happens when you hibernate? Well, you're cold, and you're sedentary. Frankly, you're fat. And spiritually speaking, we can go into spiritual hibernation. We're cold, cold to one another, cold to the Lord, and we're fat. We're gorging ourselves on all kinds of things other than Him, and we just lay around. David had this ability to come out of spiritual hibernation. And when he felt his coldest and the most distant from the Lord and the most deserving of that distance and that chasm, I mean, come on. He committed two of the sins for which there was no sacrifice. He's really up a creek. Godly sorrow. That's a captivated heart. Captivated heart will allow itself to be broken. Second Corinthians chapter seven, verse five through 12. For indeed, when we came to Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, exhausted. Are you exhausted today? Physically? Emotionally? Spiritually? Are you tired? They had no rest, but we were troubled on every side. You got stress? You got problems thronging in on you instead of the love of Christ? Usually that means When your problems are big, he's not big enough. Think about that. The bigger he is, the smaller your problems are. Outside, we're conflicts. Inside, we're fears. Listen, there are all kinds of people you can watch on television or watch messages online of everybody that says that they're never afraid, or fear is this, or sin, or this, or whatever. Anybody with a little common sense will be afraid every once in a while. I mean, come on. Here's an apostle kind of wigged out. I find comfort in that. Outside were conflicts, inside were fears. Nevertheless, God, who confronts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus. And not only by his coming, but also by the consolation with which he was comforted in you when he told us of your earnest desire. Here it is, your mourning. Listen, he's writing for the second if not the third time to a church that was so messed up, so sin laden, where the elders are messing around with their stepmother. I mean, you're talking about a church that's toxic and dysfunctional. And he's probably rejoicing because they're mourning. Now, I give them a little slack. I mean, across the street from the church is a temple with 1,000 temple prostitutes. I think they came up walking to the bus in grade school every day with this idea of what spirituality was supposed to be. I'm not saying they didn't have a bad influence. What I'm saying is they were now mourning. They were now having a sense of sorrow. He told us of your earnest desire, your mourning, your zeal for me. Now they are warming up to someone who's been correcting them the whole entire time so that I rejoice even more. Here's an occasion where you can actually rejoice over someone's sorrow. Their heart's been pricked and they realize, man, are we off. Man, are we off. And that brought him great joy. For even if I made you sorry with my letter, Previous letter, he scolded him. I do not regret it. That's one of the worst things about this job. I do not regret it, though I did regret it, for I perceive that the same epistle made you sorry, though only for a while. See, they don't necessarily realize this, because the canon of Scripture didn't come together until 397 A.D. in Carthage, North Africa, at a synod. But when he writes in these letters, he doesn't realize it, but this is actually going to be canonized in the Bible. They're actually reading the Bible without realizing a Bible is going to exist. So it's no less inspired, it's no less corrective, it's no less a use of training, it's no less a use of a rebuke in this case. Just like you and I have the retrospect to look back and know that that book in your lap there is actually something that he was writing to these people. Now they're being corrected by it. He says, even if I made you sorry with my letter, I do not regret it, though I do regret it. For I perceive that the same epistle made you sorry Though only for a while, now I rejoice that you may be made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance. For you were made sorry in a godly manner. You were made sorry in a godly manner. you might suffer loss from us as nothing. For godly sorrow produces repentance, leading to salvation, not to be regretted, but the sorrow of the world produces death. For observe this one thing, that you sorrowed in a godly manner, what diligence it produced in you, what clearing of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what vindication, exclamation point, in all things you proved yourselves to be clear in this matter. Therefore, although I wrote to you, I did not do it for the sake of him who had done wrong, nor the sake of him who suffered wrong, but that all care for you in the sight of God might appear to you. See, captivation is not emotionalism. You can go to various places in the country if you want, you can go to the right places and experience emotionalism. You can make an art form out of providing emotionalism. It's usually not 100%, it's usually some percentage of what you hear in ministry is emotionalism. That's not to say emotion isn't wrong, but emotionalism is. What emotion we're trying to avoid in ministry in this country right now is repentance and sorrow. Let's avoid that with the plague. You can't fill a house with that kind of discussion. You're not gonna get, people to pay to come to a conference, spend two or three days. If you're going to talk about godly sorrow, it's not popular, sorry. But it's no less true. You can use emotion, you can use a lot of things, manipulation if you want. You can even promise people that they're gonna get rich in the name of Christ. You can do whatever you wanna do. And it may captivate people, but like this situation, Only for a moment. Only for a moment. Show me a disciple who weathers and is joyful in times of lack and plenty. Show me one who's captivated by Christ and I'll show you one who can lead a people as a king and can step off his throne, be human, and have godly sorrow for his sin and his life. That was actually good preaching, in case you were not quite aware of what that is. Godly sorrow. We need it at every age, at every level. We don't need it to define us. We don't need it as a full-time job. We're not here hitting our backs with whips and paying penance for our sin. Come on, you know better than that. What I'm talking about is we are aware of our shortcomings and our failings, and it pricks our heart. That's what captivates. That's how you have a captivated heart. It really is. You take the sorrow out of a person's spiritual walk, it means their love relationship with Christ isn't being damaged by their sin. That's not captivated, that's deception. He doesn't just look the other way and say, doesn't that bother you? Like, doesn't that bother you? You're hibernating, that has to bother you. Some things should bother us, but they don't, I don't know why. They should bother us in our own life and in our world that we live in. We should be bothered by sin. I'm sorry, it's not a good thing. We don't need to judge everybody, need to condemn anybody, but to be captivated by Christ is to have a heart that could be broken. There's nothing wrong with that. And don't swoop in and keep somebody from feeling sorrow. That's not discipleship. That's not even love. Allow people to feel the pain of their mistakes, whether you're raising them or discipling them or mentoring them. Allow the entrance of pain. There's a guy, I'm trying to think of his name, who in no way, shape, or form avoided, Jesus, that's it, that's his name, did not avoid pain. That's a heart captivated by the Father. Right there, there it is. You cannot be captivated with Christ and be ambivalent to anything that compromises that captivation. You and I can ill afford with this precious relationship we have to be desensitized to sin. You've heard me say this before, the greatest enemy of the church is not a lack of faith. You only need a mustard seed. It's apathy. It is apathy. That's it. The opposite of being thronged and pressed in and constrained and arrested and seized by the love of Christ is whatever apathy. You cannot be on fire and simultaneously apathetic to what compromises the integrity of that fire. We mustn't take a tour of the church or a tabernacle or a cathedral and miss his indwelling spirit. And as I said last week, we must remove our religious shoes from our religious feet and see the clouds and darkness round about him, Psalm 97 and two. A church that a believer, a man, a woman, who doesn't experience respect, reverence, and the fear of the Lord every now and again is cherry picking. what it means to follow Christ, cherry picking a spiritual buffet and pulling out only the things you like to eat. And I say, taste and see today that the Lord is good, the whole buffet. Be emotional in your relationship with him, for he is emotional. But beware, my friend, of emotionalism. parading itself as something to keep us from godly sorrow. The captivated heart understands sacrifice. The captivated heart understands sorrow. The eucharist, charis, eucharist, charis means grace. The reason we can have godly sorrow is because we understand grace. He's not punitive. He's not destructive. He's not going to leave us. He wants us to understand grace, but he also wants to feel godly sorrow. This is what made King David the leader that he was. And this is what makes you the man he's called you to be. And this is what makes you the woman he's called you to be. I encourage you to pray for God to captivate your heart, but not at the expense of sacrifice and sorrow. Not just worldly sorrow, no, not that. Godly sorrow. As you come to this table this morning, this very church was given the very same instructions. Examine yourselves. Examine yourselves. Loosen and lighten any and everything that comes between you and Him.