Pastor Brian and Jacque Lother
Brian: It's quiet in here. Dangerous prayers, ooh, I like that. I bet you, Lou likes that. Don't you, Lou? Yeah. I thought of you right away when I heard Kaleen talk about dangerous prayers. Wow. I'm looking forward to that. Of course, dangerous doesn't mean dangerous to humanity. It's dangerous to the demonic realm, dangerous to our foe. Jesus said that he came to do what? Destroy the works of the enemy.
Jacque: Of the enemy.
Brian: Yeah, that's right. And so when he prayed, woo, he had some dangerous prayers because demons would flee in every which directions. How are you doing today?
Jacque: Well, I'm really, really happy to be here. I have a little lower voice.
Brian: I'm really happy for you to be here. I don't want to fly solo anymore.
Jacque: That's so kind of you. You are a kind man.
Brian: Well, thank you.
Jacque: We kind of are a team.
Brian: Yes. Well, we've always been a team and you are the much better half.
Jacque: Oh, that's not true, we know, but thanks for saying it.
Brian: You are the wind beneath my wings.
Jacque: Oh no. You are the wind beneath my wings.
Brian: I don't think so. I don't think so.
Jacque: Oh boy. We will stop. Okay, all right.
Brian: Hey, welcome everybody. We are so glad you are here today. We are so thankful for those of you who are watching by live stream as well. I believe the Lord has got something really good for us today, as well as actually what's in store for us in the next few weeks. This is just going to be kind of an introductory message today. I'm just going to kind of start laying a little bit of ground work. I want to kind of give you the basis of how this all came about. I don't generally wake up in the middle of the night with other than thoughts of having to go to the bathroom, but I was just startled awake in the middle of the night early this past week. I'm just wide awake. I'm kind of a gradual waking up kind of person, but I was just wide awake and God just spoke really clear to me. He said, "You need to start teaching that we are all saved by grace." I said, "Wait a minute, God, I thought all of us knew that." He said "There is much more to it than what you think. There is so much more to it than what you think."
Today's message is actually going to be a little bit of a ground work in beginning this kind of series, which I'm not sure how long it's going to go, on the fact that we are saved by grace, but God changes us from the inside out. I believe this goes along with the last few messages that I've been giving about power-over versus power-under and how oftentimes the church historically has tried to coerce behavior out of people with putting external power over them, rather than allowing God's grace from within them to change their lives and change their hearts. Transformation comes this way.
There is no question that God desires transformation, I would say without a doubt that God is not happy with a lot of behavior in the world today, obviously, but when we focus on the behavior, rather than the hearts, then what we begin to do is we have this external coercion that isn't really how God really desires to do things. We are going to begin with this passage of scripture that we are all familiar with. It's found in Ephesians chapter 2, verses 4 and 5. Actually, if I went to verse 6, it would have been the verse that Jeff finished talking about, being seated with Christ in heavenly places. Let's read verses 4 and 5 of Ephesians chapter 2. We are going to first read an NIV and then I want to reiterate it with the message Bible.
Jacque: Okay. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy...
Brian: I like that.
Jacque: Made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions; made us alive in Christ even when we were dead in transgression.
Brian: Especially when we were dead in...
Jacque: It is by grace, you have been saved.
Brian: Yes. He made us alive while we were dead in our transgressions. Now let's read it from the message Bible here real quickly.
Jacque: We didn't have to be perfect before he made us alive.
Brian: No. I remember your dad didn't want to go to church until he kind of cleaned his life up.
Jacque: I know. He wanted to get all cleaned up and then he could...
Brian: He wanted to get all cleaned up then he could be presentable to God. That's so often our mentality; that we got to clean ourselves up so that somehow we will become acceptable to God. Let's go into the message Bible.
Jacque: In the message Bible... Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own with no help from us.
Brian: Your dad could have learned a little bit about that from that verse, right? God didn't need Ted's help to clean himself up.
Jacque: He just had to give him his sin dead life.
Brian: That's right. He had to give God his sin dead life. That's one of the things that God wants us to do. There is another really interesting verse that I want to draw our attention to. It's found in the first chapter of Romans. Romans really was a book written to Gentile Christians who were living in Rome. Most of the actual epistles were written to Jewish Christians, but the book of Romans was actually written to Gentile Christians who were living in Rome. That must have been a little tough, don't you think? Every place everybody went the greeting was "Caesar is Lord." If you were a Christian, Jesus was Lord. To have someone say, Caesar is Lord, and you go, wait a minute here. Jesus is Lord, that's kind of like a capital offense if you are living in Rome. So Paul writes this book to encourage the Christians in Rome. He begins in chapter 1. I'm going to just begin with verse 1 through verse 4. Verse 4 is kind of what I want to focus on, but started at verse 1.
Jacque: Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God, the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, regarding his son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David and who through the spirit of holiness...
Brian: Grab on to that for a second, who through the spirit of holiness; see, we don't think of holiness like that, do we? We kind of think of holiness oftentimes as like something that we try to achieve, but it's really something that is achieved in us through God.
Jacque: That's good.
Brian: Through the spirit of holiness.
Jacque: Through the spirit of holiness was appointed or declared the son of God in power, by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Brian: We know that Jesus died and we know that his mortal body was dead, but there is a part of us that don't really connect his deadness in the same way that we have been dead or could be dead. Yet the scripture says that the spirit of holiness was declared over the son of God in power, by his resurrection. This spirit of holiness is really what created the deadness in Christ to become alive or the resurrection to happen.
Prior to COVID, I did some teaching, as many of you probably remember on the Sabbath and how the Sabbath was a gift to us from God. In the course of those messages, we introduced the idea of a pause, just like Pastor Jeff talked about this morning. Jackie and I, we do a pause several times a day. Sometimes it's one minute. Sometimes it's three minutes. Sometimes it's five; maybe once in a while it's longer. We just focus on the presence of God, and since that time... It has been about six months now, actually, you and I have done several pauses every day, as well as one right before we go to sleep at night. We do one every night before I go to sleep. One of the things that Jackie and I commit to during our pauses is to give everything in us for union with God. How many of you know that life can kind of get us fragmented from that union with God?
So we take several times during the day where we just take a minute or two or three and we just sit and we let God's presence come and we commit everything in us to be at oneness or union with God. In order for that to happen, of course we need less of us and more of God. We need more of God. One of the things that I prayed for, and I asked for is, God, I need more of you. I need more of the river of life from the throne of grace to come and saturate me and wash over me. As this has been happening, the last roughly six months, some of my concepts and our concepts and thoughts about God that have had a very strong influence on many areas of my life have started to be adjusted.
For example, in my early years, my understanding of holiness was such that if I did something wrong that I could like lose my salvation at any moment. I remember coming home a few times and my mom and dad were not home, and my mom was always home when I came home, and boy, I thought the rapture had taken place and I was left behind. Any of you ever have that experience in your life? And at any time that I could just like fall out of God's grace because of missing the mark. And then you talked with me about a situation that you had asked a teacher in the doctrine class that you did.
Jacque: Well, I got to be… I was raised in a wonderful church and had a wonderful pastor. When we were in junior high, we had to go through doctrine class.
Brian: Had to?
Jacque: Yeah, we had to. I remember asking, they were teaching about holiness and all this and being a Christian, and I asked my pastor, because my sister and I would fight a lot. We don't fight anymore, but we did that.
Brian: You got all the fighting out in your early years.
Jacque: We got all the fighting out, but we kind of had that kind of a relationship. I was quite a bit younger than her and I was kind of in the way. Anyway, I said to him, "If I have a really big fight with my sister before I go to bed and I don't repent and Jesus comes, will I go to hell?” I was asking a very serious question, because that was really a fear. I always had to measure up and at all times be right if anything happened. Well, I don't remember him giving me an answer.
Brian: He probably didn't have an answer.
Jacque: Maybe he gave me one, but it didn't resonate with me and it didn't connect to my heart, because I believe I was into my adulthood, well into my adulthood until I really started to understand grace.
Brian: Yes. Actually, at the heart of your question was actually a deeper question, whether you realized it or not.
Jacque: I probably didn't.
Brian: But that deeper question was this; there are actually two questions here. The first is, is God holy because he does not sin? Or the second question is, does God not sin because he's holy? Now it's the same number of words, the same words, but only just juxtapose a little bit. First is, is God holy because he does not sin? Or does God not sin because he's holy? This was really a holiness question that you had for your instructor there. If question number one is true, the question is, is God holy because he does not sin? If this question is true, then most of us probably envisioned God striving to just follow the rules. Is God holy because... So God is just striving to follow the rules. This external set of rules that somehow are in the universe that God himself is obligated to live by. Of course, we were optimistic that he can do it because he has done it for quite a while. After all, he's God.
But the problem I see with this view is that if we define God is holy simply by his actions. We also have to embrace the scary possibility that his actions might change. All of that, I think is just extremely horrible to contemplate in my opinion. If the second question is true, that God is Holy because of his nature, in a sense, then God's actions are the result of his nature. His actions are the result of his character and who he is. So in other words, God is not what he does, but rather God does who he is.
Jacque: Say that again.
Brian: Okay, I'll say that again. God is not what he does, but rather God does who he is. Who is God? Who is God? The scripture is very clear that love is not just one of the nifty things that God does. Oh, that's nice that God love. No, but rather love is the essence of who God is. It's the very essence of who he is. God's will for my life is good and it has to be good because God is good. God can't have a bad will for my life because God is not capable of doing bad because his essence is good. So everything that comes out of God for you will be good. Now, if God simply chose to be good and therefore, that's what made him good that could put us in a sticky wicket, but if the essence of God is love and the essence of God is goodness, then the only thing that can come out of God is goodness, then everything that God allows to come our way can be good in our lives. You see, we are never in a tough spot because God just got in a snit. Let's face it. We've all been treated in a snitty way at times from people because they are in a twit. I'm not even sure those are right words, but you know what I'm saying, right?
Jacque: We get the picture.
Brian: You get the picture. We all had these teachers that we went to school and some were perpetually crabby and some were nice, but once in a while, your nice teachers just were in a twit, right? They just were. But you see, we are never in a tough spot because God got himself into a twit or a snit. Even in our darkest valley, even in a season of, shall we say discipline or chastisement from God, because the Lord disciplines whom he loves, the book of James teaches that, I know God's will for me is because of his holiness, because the essence of his nature is good. It is God's holiness that makes me know that I am God's concern. It's his essence that allows me to know that God's focus is on me. He loves me. I never have the partial attention of God. I've never have this partial attention of a distractive God, hurrying me out of his office because he has got another appointment coming up. This is not God
I know I sound take the risk, it's sounding very self-centered [inaudible 58:08] centric when I say this, but I am God's only concern and you are God's only concern. It's easy to think with all this stuff that's going on in the universe and all this stuff that's going on that God, where are you? Has he forgotten about me? But the fact is the miracle of his omnipresence is not that part of God is everywhere at once, but the miracle of his omnipresence is that all of God is everywhere at once. All of God is available to us at once. And the holiness of God, this essence of who God is, is our assurance that God loves us, not that he needs to be appeased.
I remember my early years in this idea of holiness, there were certain things that were kind of either implied or sometimes said, maybe because my behavior was of the type that I needed some coercion. I don't know. But whenever the holiness of God was talked about, it was like very distant, that it was not something that I could ever somehow connect to or relate to. And yet I was very troubled by the scriptures. Let's say Leviticus, it says, "Be Holy for I am Holy." That's a pretty scary verse. If you think holiness is unattainable, right? Or even the book of Hebrews talks about holiness, without which no man will see God. So I thought I better start to understand this holiness thing a little better because the concept I had of holiness just didn't ever allow me to ever achieve it. Therefore, my next goal was in somehow appeasing this holy set apart, very distant, angry God and I could never please him or appease him or measure up and...
Jacque: You could never be good enough.
Brian: You can never be good enough. Yeah, you could never be good enough. I'm discovering in my older age that that's not what God is like. I’m so thankful that's not what God's like. The Pharisees had a great emphasis on holiness, but their holiness was from the outside end, wasn't it? The Pharisees could not wash their hands off it enough, could they? And when they did wash their hands they had to wash your hands with certain types of vessels, that actually they could do it without touching the vessels and stuff.
Jacque: They would have worked great during this COVID time.
Brian: Yes. Maybe so. I've got so many statements going through my mind right now, but I'm not going to say any of them.
Jacque: Good, good. Sorry I got you off. Sorry.
Brian: You are getting me down a rabbit trail.
Jacque: Sorry.
Brian: All right, all right. The Pharisees could not wash their hands often enough or the right way enough to cleanse their heart. They couldn't. Holiness from the outside in didn't work for them and it doesn't work for us. Holiness from the outside in didn't work for them and it doesn't work for us.
Jacque: It makes me think of that verse that Jesus said that they were like cups, that were clean on the other side and dirty on the inside.
Brian: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. An outside in approach to holiness never works, but what does work, what really does work is holiness from the inside out, holiness from the inside out. I read an interesting story just this past week of this little girl who picked a flower, like a little rose that was just starting to grow. She had come to her dad with this rose and she had tried to open the rose up, and of course it got all mangled. She said to her dad, "Daddy, how come when God opens a flower it is so pretty, but when I open it up, it looks so mangled?" Wow. Does anybody get the idea what's going on here? And then just intuitively, like the light bulb went on in her head and she said, "I know it's because God does it from the inside out."
Jacque: That's beautiful.
Brian: It's because God does this forming from the inside out, not the outside in. Holiness from the inside out looks beautiful, but holiness from the outside in is very mangled and it's not pretty at all. Holiness from the outside is this power-over coercion, beating down hard to achieve some behavioral goal without the heart actually having been touched and transformed. Remember Lori, our friend, one of these days she will come and maybe help lead worship with us on a Sunday. Hi, Lori, I'm sure you are watching today. I love one of the songs that she sings. Maybe when she comes, she can sing it, but she sings a pure heart, that's what I long for. Do you remember any of the other words?
Jacque: A heart that... Oh, I'm sorry...
Brian: Longeth after thee.
Jacque: Yeah.
Brian: Lori has to come and sing it. It's great.
Jacque: A heart full of compassion, oh yeah. It's beautiful song.
Brian: But a pure heart... Get this; when a heart becomes touched by the presence and love of God, the spirit of God's holiness, his grace, like we talked about in Ephesians, when that grace touches a person's heart and their heart start to become pure sooner or later, that will change how they behave. It will change how they behave. We just have to give God time because God does it from the inside out. The heart actually dictates our actions and a pure heart is a work of grace. It's a work of God's grace. We used to recite this little, I don't know if you call it a fairytale or whatever about Humpty Dumpty. Those of us here, we are old enough to know who Humpty Dumpty is. Maybe my grandchildren don't know who he is. Cooper, you can go look it up. I'm sure it's on the web someplace.
Humpty Dumpty could not be restored by his own efforts, could he? Humpty Dumpty couldn't even be restored by all the King's men. Sometimes we feel it's our responsibility to restore people and to put people back together and to fix them. And then when they don't get fixed, based on what our advice to them is, we get mad at them, don't we? This is not God's way, because even with Humpty Dumpty, all the King’s horses and all the King’ s men, couldn't put them back together again. Only the King himself could do it. Only the King himself could do it. It is God's pleasure to bring wholeness to those who are shattered. It's God's pleasure to bring wholeness to those who are shattered and to restore integrity to people's lives, especially those lives that had been fractured.
I got this picture of a mirror, you know, like a mirror fall and it stayed in the frame, but it got all fractured and you look at it and all of a sudden, now the image is distorted. It's fragmented. That's how many people find their lives today. It's just fragmented, fragmented. The great work of the Holy Spirit is to make broken lives whole. That's the great work of the Holy Spirit. That was the spirit of holiness that came upon Christ that resurrected his body.
We are going to look at another verse here. We find it in Genesis chapter 1, verse 2. Again, I want to read it from both the NIV and the message Bible, but the first time Holy Spirit is ever mentioned in all of scripture, is the second verse of the whole Bible, the second verse. Let's read it, sweetie.
Jacque: Now the earth was formless and empty
Brian: Earth was formless. It was empty. Isn't that kind of a current description of our world today, lacking purpose, empty, empty of real positive reasons to live?
Jacque: Darkness was over the surface of the deep.
Brian: Don't you feel like darkness is permeating the whole world today?
Jacque: And the spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
Brian: Yeah. The spirit of God began to hover over that darkness, over that loss newness, over that emptiness. The spirit of God began to do it. Read it in the message real quick.
Jacque: Earth was a soup of nothingness.
Brian: Doesn't that feels like our world today, like the soup of nothingness?
Jacque: A bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God's spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss.
Brian: And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. God was not content. God was not satisfied with chaos, with disorder, with darkness. God longed for order. He brought his very nature to bear on the darkness and the disorder. That's what God did, and that's what God does in grace. He brings his nature to bear on the darkened souls and minds of people who are lost. He desired to see light and life where there was darkness and chaos. He's the very same way today as he was way back in Genesis 1, verse 2. Wherever there is darkness, wherever there is chaos, his spirit is coming to hover over that to bring life, to bring order, to bring grace, to bring himself.
The passion of God is to breathe upon humanity, the very character and nature of God himself. That's the passion of God today. When we in our brokenness will come before God and just be there in his presence, he can breathe into us the same spirit, that same spirit of holiness that raised Christ from the dead. He can breathe into us that same spirit that brooded over the chaos in Genesis 1, verse 2. He can actually put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Maybe some of you who are watching by live stream feel your life is so shattered and broken that it can never be put back together again. I'm telling you, my friends, there is a love that will not let you go. There is a love that can heal the fragment to notice of your mind and your life and your history and your past and your emotions. He can put every broken tattered, helpless, hopeless life back together again. That's what the holiness of God can do. That's what the essence and the nature of God can do. I would just encourage all of us. You said something earlier this week about the hamster wheel.
Jacque: Oh, yes. I'm just sitting here thinking of the years that I wasted. God knew my heart. I wanted to be right, but I felt like I just have to change. I just have to do this right. Instead of just relaxing, surrendering...
Brian: Getting off the wheel.
Jacque: Releasing, and it was like a hamster running on a wheel. And then if you sinned, if really did wrong, you fell off and you had to run up and work so hard to catch up just to get back on the wheel again.
Brian: That's right, because the wheel is spinning pretty fast.
Jacque: And you are going nowhere.
Brian: You are going nowhere. But God has an invitation for all of us today. That invitation is, get off the hamster wheel. Get off the hamster wheel of running to appease God, to make him somehow happy with. It's time to get off the hamster wheel and let the spirit of God move on your darkness, on your chaos, on your uncertainty, and begin to change you from the inside out, begin to change you from the inside out. You don't have to do it. He can do it. You just have to get in his presence. You have to say yes to the presence of God. Let him love you. Let his love change you. Let his love transform you. I think there are a lot of us that would like to get off the hamster wheel. As we come into his presence, his spirit will hover over our darkness, will hover over our brokenness and he will speak. One of the first things God spoke was, he said, "Let there be light." Let there be light, and the light came upon the scene. He is speaking today for light to come into your heart, your soul, your mortal body, your mind, so that you can experience the great love of the transformation of a Holy God. Let's pray.
Father, I pray in the name of Jesus for this love to come, come from the throne of grace, saturate us. May this love cause us to have a union with you, Lord that will never be broken. May this love begin to transform our minds and our thinking. May Lord, your love begin to hover over the inky blackness of our history and our lives. May your love and spirit brood over us Lord, and may you speak those wonderful words- Let there be light. We welcome you to come in your majesty, your power, your glory, but most importantly, in your gentleness, in your Kindness. Come oh, Holy God, come into us. This, we pray, in your name.
Let's lift our hands together, shall we? Now may the Lord bless you and may the Lord keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord turn his face toward you and give you his peace and may you sense the voice of God crying out into the darkness of your soul, let there be light. This, we pray, in the name of the father, son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen.
God bless you. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for watching. I'll be on a Zoom chat after if you would like to just connect with me for a little bit, those of you are watching by live stream. Make sure you connect to all the videos that we send out during the week. If you are not on our email list, please write the office and we will make sure we give you these inspirational videos every week. God bless you. Have a great day.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 8-30-20. If you would like to watch the full service, click one of the links below.