Pastor Brian and Jacque Lother
Jacque: Beautiful. Yes. Holy is the Lord. I love that song. Beautiful. Don't you love seeing the children here? That just blessed my heart. Misty brought her little nephew today and I just met him before church. His name is Ryan. He looked right at me. He is he eight? Nine. He said, "I've never been to a church before." I said "You haven't? Well, thank you for picking our church to come to for the first time." I have been praying for him this morning that his little heart will be touched through the worship, through Sunday school. God, we just pray for little Ryan. I know you love him so dearly and I just pray he feels your love for him. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for bringing him, Misty. Thank you. That touched me today. Everyone matters. Everyone matters. And then I just am supposed to talk about the poinsettia. If you want to buy a poinsettia in honor of one of your loved ones, I will be publishing all their names in December. Talk to Rachel at the back. And then we just want to talk for a moment about the Hope radio hour.
Brian: In two weeks or 13 days, we have the ladies tea, which is always a great event here, but the following Saturday, we are having the Hope Radio Hour. Normally, we have a dinner that goes along with that, but just because of all the stuff going on with COVID, we just felt like it might be a wiser thing not to serve a meal, but we are still going to have the Hope radio while we are all the players are here. We've got great writers. I've been reading some of the skits. I mean, I'm laughing when I'm reading these things. They are pretty funny. And so we have a lot of music that night, of course, those of you who have been there before, and we invite you to come and join us that evening
Jacque: For those that are new to our culture here, this is kind of our tradition. We've patterned this after the Prairie Home Companion.
Brian: The old radio hours where you had the Variety Show and a lot of music, but a lot of kind of radio skits and stuff like that. The military carries that on their military broadcast to all the troops around the world.
Jacque: We pretend that.
Brian: We pretend that. It's a fun night and Pastor Jeff does a great job with, directing all the players. And God has really gifted hope with a lot of wonderful musicians and singers. We just have a wonderful time together that night.
Jacque: So just plan to come, please if you can.
Brian: That will be Thursday or Saturday, the 11th, I believe.
Jacque: I forget numbers. I don't know.
Brian: It's the second Saturday in December. There is only four of them. It's the second one. So it's an easy one to remember. It's an easy one to remember. So is everybody doing good today? It's great to see all of you. I see some new faces here again today. Thank you for joining us and for coming out to visit, uh, I believe there is some new people watching online. We had our dear friend Jerry Uzel's Memorial service yesterday, and people talked with us all day long about how they watch our live stream and how that is so meaningful to us. The last 20 plus months has been a challenge for a lot of people, and we've been able to provide kind of an in-home church for many people. I'm so grateful for our technical crew for Micah, for Joel, for the people that do the projection and Pastor Jeff, our camper people, just so grateful for, for everybody, Don Rutledge and so forth.
They've really been able to raise the quality level of what we've been able to do on some grateful for that. We had a gal here yesterday, a lady from Florida that came up for the Memorial for Jerry, and she said, "I want to meet Pastor Robert. I watched you guys every week." So we took her to pass the Robert and then she goes up to Paula. She said, "I want to say hi to you, Paula. I watch you guys every week. Just want to thank you for everything." If you are in wherever you are, Arizona or Michigan or Oklahoma, or some of the other states that people watch us from on a regular basis and you are ever here, we would love to have you meet all of us, Pastor Jeff and everybody. So come to Hope Community. We love to have you here. How you doing?
Jacque: I'm good, but I should say one more thing that was not on the paper, but we need to do it. Today, we are going to decorate the church for Christmas.
Brian: And you don't have to fight for that either.
Jacque: We buy a little extra food, so we are going to have a light lunch and then get to work. So if you can join us, it'll be a lot of fun. We'll get it done quickly.
Brian: Yes. So last week I spoke on a message that I called spiritual asphyxiation. It's how oftentimes throughout church history the church has actually kind of put a knee on the neck of people and tried to coerce behavior and coerce even church attendance, and some of the things that I believe is a gift from God to us, but that's been done in such a way that really stifles people and it becomes a real religious endeavor.
When you think of the religious leaders at the time of Jesus, the Pharisees, it seemed like they irritated Jesus much more than anybody else. It seemed like people that had demonic issues in their lives, people that had sin issues in their lives, that Jesus just had so much compassion for. People that were struggling with the everyday things of life, even disease lepers, and, blind people and those who had weathered arms and those who had issues with their blood system and so forth: Jesus had so much compassion on them, but he seemed to get really irritated very quickly with the religious people. One day, he said to them, a very interesting verse. It's a very profound verse that we find in Matthew chapter 9, verse 13. I'd like you to just read this verse, Jacque.
Jacque: But go and learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice.
Brian: Now, interestingly enough, this was an Old Testament verse from the book of Hosea. I think it's Hosea 6:6 where Jesus is referencing this. He says to the religious leaders go and learn what this means that I desire mercy, not sacrifice another word for sacrifice there is religion. I desire mercy and not all sorts of religious activity. I think that we see that Jesus is saying that the God of the Bible wants a real ongoing relationship with us more than he desires rituals of religion. The fact of the matter is every relationship that we would ever have requires mercy. Every relationship, whether it's marriage relationship or friendships, or even our relationship with God, obviously most of us recognize the fact that we need mercy from God, but do you know what? You need mercy for one another in your marriages. You need mercy for one another in your friendships. You know why? Because we fail each other. We fail each other. We are not flawless. All relationships require a good dose of mercy.
This is one of the things that Jesus was trying to get across, go and learn what this means that God desires mercy more than the religious activity, sacrifice in this case. Now the word covenant, we hear that word a fair amount. We hear the word covenant, especially when we talk about the Bible. The word covenant refers to being in a way of being in relationship with one another. The word covenant is very much like the word contract, but it's much more of a relational word. When you think of a signing a contract, you kind of think of that as a business deal, don't you? It's very, very businessy. I'm not sure that's a word, but it's like businessy.
The word covenant has all of the makings of like a contract, but it has much more focus and emphasis on relationship between people. So when people would make a covenant with each other, it was something that had essence to it, agreements to it, but it was very relational. It wasn't intended to be a business thing. Now, most of us know that the Bible is divided up into two sections: the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament was written before Jesus came and the New Testament was written after Jesus came. The word testament, a synonym for the word testament is covenant. And so when we see the word New Testament, what we really need to understand is it's a new covenant. The New Testament is the new covenant that God has wanted to make with us and has made with us.
This new covenant is exactly what Jesus came to bring into the world, a whole new way of being in relationship with God and with each other. And so there was no longer going to be what a lot of the old Testament created with a lot of the rules, 1:06:00 regulations and so forth. In the Old Testament, there was a lot of separation. There was a separation between the priests and the people. There were separation between Gentiles and Jews. Basically, as I've said in previous messages, there was this pecking order of insiders versus outsiders.
Jacque: How many lives had the Pharisees come up with?
Brian: I think 613 or 14, something like that. 613. The religious leaders not only took the structure that God had given— I'm going to talk about this in a moment, but the structure that God had given in the Old Testament to help facilitate our relationship with him, they added another 613 rules and regulations to that. What it ended up being was a knee on the neck of the people in Jesus said that you put all these weights and burdens on them, and then you go around the world trying to make disciples after you guys, and you make them twice the sons of the devil that you are. I mean, that's what Jesus thought of all of that.
I think that we would all agree that virtually all relationships, uh, benefit from some type of structure. In other words, if you are married, it's really good to have regular date nights. It's really good if you are family to have regular family meals together where everybody is committed to coming together on a regular basis. Obviously, our schedules are very busy and you can look at your schedule during the week and what Jacque and I often do is say, what's your schedule like this week? Well, Jacque says, well, I've got the women's meeting on Thursday night and I've got this meeting with the tea and I've got this going on. I said, well, where do you have a window? Well, Friday at this time. Okay. Let's plan on going out for dinner or going out for lunch or whatever. We plan specific times. We structure things into our lives to enhance our relationships. So schedules have to be arranged and times and places determined.
All of these types of things can assist our relationships in growing deeper with each other and with, especially in marriages, but even with friends and family. Our relationships can become more meaningful if there is some structure to it.
Jacque: There is that word intentional.
Brian: Yes. Intentional. So in the same way, our relationship with God can benefit from structure, structure, like Sabbath keeping and assembling ourselves together and even tithing or prayer groups, et cetera. They can all help us grow in our faith and our trust in God. But here is the kicker. There is a built-in weakness in all of us as humans and that built in weakness is this: we have a propensity in our human nature. We have this tendency to exalt the structure as though the structure were God. We have this tendency to exalt the principles that we put in place to help facilitate our relationship.
We have this propensity to put that into place and treat this structure as though it were God. This is the way of religion. This is what religion does. This is what the Pharisees did. They put all of this structure added more structure and more structure. And then they idolized that structure as though the structure itself was God. Once the structure stopped serving relationships and the structure is substituted for the relationship, it has become the enemy of God. This is why if you might find this interesting that God instituted certain structure, and then later on, he said to Israel, "I hate all that stuff you are doing."
When you kind of first read that you think, well, God was the one that told them to do it in the first place. And now he is saying he hates all that stuff, but he wasn't telling them to do it because that was what was important. He was saying, here is a way that will reflect how you love me. Here is the way that if you put this into your life, if you honor the Sabbath every week, if you actually do give in tithes and offerings, that is going to create a new need to have to trust in me and have faith in me. Once the structure stopped serving relationships and it starts substituting for relationship, it has become the enemy of God. That's why God said, "I hate all this stuff that you are doing."
But the good news of the message of Jesus is that God is inviting us to participate in a new covenant, a new better way of relating to God and relating to each other. Do you know there is no record of Jesus ever using the word religion? That's interesting, isn't it? I can't remember how many times I was asked as a child, as a kid, what religion are you?
Jacque: Or when we couldn't do something, we would say it's against my religion.
Brian: We couldn't go to movies. We couldn't go to dances. Every Halloween, all the kids in school got to go to the movie theater for free, and we couldn't go because it was against our religion. So all of us, kids from our church went to our church basement and we watched a movie in our church basement. Even as like a seven-year-old I started thinking, well, this isn't making sense. Jesus never uses the word religion. He uses a much different word. He uses a different word to denote a heartfelt connection with God. God wants us to have a heartfelt connection to him. The word that he uses to express this heartfelt connection is the word faith. It's the word, faith. Now we at times have taken the word faith and made it to be something like something bigger and more difficult to acquire than what Jesus was really referring to. When he said that our relationship with him was based on faith, it's no different than I saying I have faith in you. What does that mean?
Jacque: You trust you.
Brian: I trust you. And really, isn't the problem with all of us when it comes to our relationship with God, we struggle with trust? Isn't it? When a big bill comes in and how are we going to pay for this? And then we get worried because worry is the by-product of a lack of peace. When you are in a real place of trust— I remember back when we took Cooper, who's no 12, almost 13 to our first 4th of July fireworks.
Jacque: Cooper is our grandson.
Brian: Cooper is our grandson. We took him to our first 4th of July fireworks. Well, you know, little children, I think he was about two, and loud noises and things like that can be frightful. He was sitting right next to me. And all of a sudden this thing just exploded and the sky lit up with fire. I could see he was scared, and I said, "Cooper just hold Papa's hand. You hold Papa's hand, and everything is going to be just fine." So he held onto my hand the whole night.
Well, it was interestingly enough, July in the summer in Minnesota, we can have some pretty good thunderstorms, can't we? And he was over at our house. We took care of them once or twice a week during those days. He was over at our house in this big storm, came through and it was thundering and lightning. And he said to me, "Papa, take my hand and let's go out and watch the storm." Because he knew if he was holding my hand, he would be safe. That's trust. That's trust.
Jesus describes things like prayer and baptism like pilgrimages. We've done some pilgrimages to the Holy Land, wonderful thing to do. What we would call Bible, study church, attendance, financial giving: Jesus describes all of these things as expressions of the spiritual life that God gives us, but he doesn't talk about them as events or activities that qualify us for spiritual life. There is a big difference. He doesn't say church attendance and tithing and Bible study and prayer and pilgrimages, all of the things that we associate with, shall we say, Christian behavior, none of those things he puts in the category of this is what you do to obtain spiritual life. This is not what you do to obtain it.
Maybe I can illustrate it this way. I don't kiss my wife to earn her love. I do it to express the love that we already have. We have a love that we already share. So I love to hug my wife. I like to kiss my wife. I like to hold her hand. We'll be sitting like yesterday at the Memorial service. She is sitting by me and I just put my hand out and she puts her hand in my hand. We hold hands. I'm 70. That never gets old when you love someone. You know what I don't do? I don't hold her hand or give her a hug or kiss her because I'm afraid if I don't, she is going to divorce me. I don't do those things because I'm fearful of what she is going to do. I do those things because there is something in my heart that has been affected by her that nobody else had the effect on me.
As a result, I want to display and show this kind of affection. The hugging and kissing in fear of getting served with divorce papers if I don't do that, that's what religion creates. But relationship with her creates a want to, to do these things. The good news message of Jesus includes this beautiful truth that God gives us spiritual life as a gift, which the Bible writers describe with the word, grace. The word, grace, is this word that the biblical writers use to describe this spiritual gift of relationship that we can have with God.
It is absolutely true that God wants us to live morally good lives. That is absolutely true. Some people have said to me, well, is like doing good not important? I said, absolutely. It's important if you don't think it's not important to do good, stop doing good to your wife and see what happens. It's absolutely true that God wants us to live morally good lives, but the goodness we live out in this world is an act of gratitude towards God, not a fear of what will happen to us if we don't.
I was meeting with a gentleman recently who has walked with the Lord for many years and he found himself in a place that he had really gone away from the things of God. It was affecting his marriage. He was separated. I met with him and I said this to him. God actually has an opinion on the things you are doing. He has an opinion about that. And if you have given your heart to Jesus, what that means is that you are to be a follower of Jesus. And as a follower of Jesus, don't you think it's important to ask him, what would you want me to do in this situation?
The goodness that we live out is an act of gratitude for the spiritual life that God has given to us. It's not a religious attempt who be good enough to earn the life, to earn that gift. Living a good life, living a loving life should be a joyful expression of a person who has already received eternal life. I actually don't do the things that I do for God, because I'm afraid if I don't, he is going to dangle me over hell. I do the things I do for God, I serve people, I sometimes have to turn the other cheek, sometimes I have to walk in forgiveness even when it's painful to do so, because I want to honor the one who loved me first. I am not trying to qualify for salvation when I come and I worship the Lord or when I serve people and I do what I do. I'm not trying to be, to be saved. You may not believe this, but sometimes I have an off day and kindness. If you don't believe me, just ask Jacque.
Jacque: Not very often.
Brian: Well, thank you. But you can never say I've never had off day in kindness.
Jacque: Well, neither have I.
Brian: Well, I'm not saying that.
Jacque: Okay.
Brian: Some days I have an off day in kindness.
Jacque: You are human.
Brian: What?
Jacque: You are human.
Brian: Yes. Much more so than people realize . But when I have an off day in kindness, I'm so grateful that my wife loves me unconditionally. I'm so thankful that she has a covenantal, unconditional love for me when I have that off day in kindness. When I have an off day in kindness, I can honestly say to you, I've never been fearful that I was going to be served with divorce papers the next day. Now, because of that unconditional love, it has done something in my heart that creates in me not an attitude of, well, let's see what I can get away with, but rather it motivates me to turn from my unkindness and repent and become the man that she thinks I am or hopes I am. You are great because I am loved unconditionally by my wife and my family. I do my best to quickly write the ship when I've capsized.
Jacque: You are doing so much better during football games. You are doing so much better.
Brian: Well, the key for me in football games is to not watch them, but anyways, let's move on.
Jacque: Sorry. Sorry.
Brian: I want to let them know that I value that I value the privilege and that I have gratitude that I've been the recipient of their love. I value that. And I have gratitude in that. I mean, of all the people in the world that she could have married, she married me and I value that. There are days where I take that for granted and I'm not always as kind as I should be, but there is a understanding that I have of her unconditional love that takes my unkindness, hard heart and change it to wanting to be a blessing and to value what she has become to me. It doesn't come because I'm fearful she is going to divorce me.
I knew of a man whose father was very manipulative in controlling. The father had accumulated a substantial amount of wealth during the course of his life. And as a result, there was a pretty large estate to be inherited at the passing of this father. Unfortunately, this father held writing out of his will over his son if he didn't comply to all of his wishes. Throughout much of this man's adult life, he had no relationship with his father to speak of other than doing whatever his father bided him to do, because he was afraid he would be written out of the will.
It's interesting that at that father's funeral, there were no tears shed for his death, from any of the family members, none of the children, none of the grandchildren. They all had dry eyes. What a difference between yesterday's Memorial service, how the family felt about Jerry to hear his brother, Jim, get up and speak and break down because of the loss. Often times, we think that this relationship with God is like what I've just described, that God is going to write us out of his will if we don't toll the line. But here is an interesting verse. We find it in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 8 through 10.
Jacque: God saved you by his grace when you believed and you can't take credit for this, it is a gift from God.
Brian: So God saved us by this incredible love and grace be and we had to, of course, believe in it, but belief is never thought of as an act of the will, in a sense or a work. It's an act of the will, but it's not at work. And so therefore the salvation, we can't take credit for it is a gift that God gives to us.
Jacque: Salvation is not a reward for the good things we've done.
Brian: Wow. Salvation is not a reward for all the good things that we've done.
Jacque: So none of us can boast about it.
Brian: Yes.
Brian: Yes. So if salvation is not based on all the good things we've done, why do we think we can lose it for something bad that we've done? If we can't gain it for all the good we've done, why do we think we can lose it for something bad we've done? I've had people say to me, who have walked with God their whole life, and then they've done this, maybe a terrible deed, something that just shouldn't have done, "God's going to send me to hell." If, why do we think that if salvation, isn't something based on what we do, why do we think salvation is something that we can lose by what you do? So let's go on
Jacque: For, we are God's masterpiece. I love that line. We are God's masterpiece. He has created us a new in Christ Jesus.
Brian: Excuse me, we are this masterpiece and he is creating something in us. So something will happen. And here is what he wants to happen.
Jacque: He created us a new in Christ Jesus so we can do the good he planned for us long ago.
Brian: God does care that we do good things. God does care that we live lives that reflect him. God does have an opinion on our behavior. He does, but notice that the gift of spiritual life comes first then the good works come. We have treated the kingdom of God and our local churches often, like the local country club. In order to get into the country club, you have to do what? You have to meet certain qualifications. It costs you certain amount of money. In some club you have to be a certain race and you, whatever or you can't be this and what have you. If you qualify for those things, you can join our club.
Jacque: Aren't there some clubs that make you wear a certain kind of shirt, even?
Brian: I think all golf clubs do that.
Jacque: Like with a collar, do you have to wear a collar to play golf all the time?
Brian: In some clubs you do. You qualify to belong to these clubs. Well, we've treated the church in the same way that you have to qualify. There are criteria you have to meet in order to belong here. And yet the gift of spiritual life comes first before the good works comes. And that's why I want Hope Community Church to be a place that doesn't focus on people's behavior, but we focus on giving people a place to belong. And if people have a place to belong, they are going to learn the word of God here. Hopefully, after they learn the word of God after a season, if their behavior isn't right, hopefully after belonging here and believing now the word of God, they will start to behave, but we are going to leave the behavior to God.
Our job is to give them a place to belong long, to love them and so forth because you see, we are not prisoners attempting to impress the warden to give us early parole. That's what we are not now. We've all been prisoners. We know that we've all been prisoners. We've been prisoners who have been unexpectedly and deservedly set free. Yes, that's who we are. And God gives us salvation. And God gives us life. And God gives us love. And he gives us everything we need up front. He gives us all these things up front, not after we started to behave. It gives us all these things front. And he said, all you've got to do is believe and you have all of this. You have all of this. And when we really realize this down deep in the depths of our heart, we then naturally live a life that expresses that gratitude by loving God and loving others.
I suspect that the reason there is so much animus at times in the body of Christ is because we just really haven't come to know how much God loves us. If we could come to that realization of how much God loves us, it's like drinking love potent number nine. You just go around kissing everything in sight. For those of you who are younger, you may not know that song, but look it up. It's a great song, fourth and vine or whatever. That's what it's like meeting Jesus. Everything changes that. That's why the woman at the well, who was ostracized had been in and out of marriage, relationships, some of her husbands may have died. But the implication in that whole story is that, that she had gone from relationship to relationship, to relationship, looking for something real.
She was skeptical of Jesus. And then she met the person who said, I am the rivers of life. I'm going to give you water. That if you drink of me, you'll never thirst again. And she ran back to the town that she had been ostracized from, had been rejected in and virtually the whole town came out to hear Jesus because of the transformation in her life. Religious people, miss this message and they turn to rituals. They turn to formulas. They turn to activities. They even turn to behavior to achieve from God what has already been offered to them as a free gift. They miss it all.
Let me tell you something; there is not one religion in the world that will lead people to God. There is not one. Religion does not lead people to God any more than a cup can quench your thirst. It's only what's in the cup that can quench your thirst. God wants us to come to him directly. And he does offer us tools. He offers us structure. I'm glad we have a facility to meet in. I'm glad we have things like the tea and the Hope Radio Hour, all the other things that we do as a church. We have Bible studies. We have men's meeting. We have women's meeting. We have all these. I'm glad we have all of that, but God wants us to come to him directly. And he offers us tools or structure to help in our relationship with him. But then we so often fall in love with the tools and we no longer love Jesus and that's when we become religious. That's why there is a whole group of people out there called the doners. They are done with church. They are done with church. I'm hoping that this church will help bring them back. I want to read another verse here from Jeremiah chapter 2, verse 13.
Jacque: From the Message Bible, my people have committed a compound sin.
Brian: So that's a multiple sin.
Jacque: They have walked out on me, the fountain of fresh waters, and then dug cistern that leak, cisterns that are no better than sieves.
Brian: So here we have this picture being created about— because the cistern was supposed to contain water. The water, of course, that was spoken of here is God himself living waters. He said you've committed a couple sins here. The first is you walked out on me. You've left me. And then what you've done is you've created a system that you thought could hold me, but it's got holes in it. It's not really what I wanted at all. God himself is the fountain of living water that quenches the human heart. God doesn't say to us, you are drinking from the wrong cup. He doesn't say that.
There are certain cups that are our favorites, I'm sure you have a favorite coffee cup or favorite mug. There are times where I look at, what am I going to drink? What glass do I want to put that in? It tastes better in this glass. Well, it really doesn't taste any different. It's just that I like that different. We are all that way. Some of us like worship one way, there are other people like different kind of worship and so forth. Over time we are hoping to expand because I'm who I am. I'm not Toby Mack. I'll never be Toby Mac. I'll never be able to do the stuff Toby Mack does. I probably can't even do the stuff Michael W. Smith does, you know, but I'm a decent pianist.
Jacque: You do the things Brian Lother does.
Brian: That's right.
That's right. And if only three people want to follow Brian Lother, that's okay. I'm helping to affect three people.
Jacque: We are going to get some more choices in here.
Brian: That's right. We'll get some more choices in here. But you know what we can't do? We can't look at the cups that are all different that the living waters come in and look at one cup is saying, that's not a good cup or this is not a good cup.
Jacque: It's what's in the cup.
Brian: Yes. It's what's in the cup to matter. So Jeremiah 17:13 says this.
Jacque: Oh God, you are the hope of Israel. All who leave you end up as fools, deserters with nothing to show for their lives, who walk off from God, fountain of living waters and wind up dead.
Brian: So God does not say you are drinking from the wrong cup, choose the right cup and then you'll please me. There is no one cup by which we can experience the thirst, quenching love of God. There are many ways that we can do that. God wants us to want him, not the vehicle that he arrives in. You go to another church this morning and some of the people in those churches, God is arriving in a different vehicle than he arrived in our church this morning. And we, as people like to look at those vehicles and say, that's not a good vehicle. We start to cast judgments, and then what ends up happening is we become religious in all of this.
Jacque: That is a big sign of religion judgment.
Brian: It is. So I want to finish with one verse here in John chapter 7 verse 37 and 38. Jesus had ridden Jesus' arrival was on the back of a donkey. So that was the vehicle that Jesus came into Jerusalem on that day. I don't think that he wanted us to make a theology out of symbolically having donkeys come into our church and say, now Jesus is here, but that's what religion does. Religion takes the vehicle and or the structure and idolizes it or emphasizes it rather than what the structure was carrying. Okay. So here is Jesus on this final day of the feast.
Jacque: On the final and climactic day of the feast, Jesus took his and he cried out, if anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink rivers of living water will brim and spill out of the depths of anyone who believes in me this way, just as a scriptures say.
Brian: Yes, he cried out, if anyone thirst— anybody thirsty today, if you are watching by livestream, or if you are here in person, if you are thirsty, just come to Jesus. That's what he is asking. Rivers of living water will brim and spill out of the very depths of anybody who believes in Jesus that way. This word “believe” really means to trust means to have faith. It's all relational. It's all relational. The greatest truth that I think any of us can learn and know is that God in heaven, the creator wants to have a relationship with every single one of his creation, every single one. He offers that today.
He offers it irrespective of behavior. He offers it to anyone who will believe. That's why, when you look at the exterior conduct, the woman at the well, or the woman caught adultery was much worse than any of the Pharisees were, yet in Jesus' eyes, they were the ones that he was drawn to. They were the ones that he blessed because they are the ones that actually had the faith and trust their faith and trust was in him, not in their system.
One of the things the Pharisees would say, "We have the law." They quoted that a lot. We have the law and they were basing their value and their acceptance by God on the fact that they had complied with rules and regulations. Jesus is saying, come to me, all you who are weary and our heavy laden, and I will give you rest. I will pour into you rivers of living water from the river of God that flows from the throne of God. I will give you something that actually will result in you never, ever, ever anymore needing or desiring else, but me.
So we thank you Lord, for that. Help us, God, to discern quickly when we are leaning into the area of religion, more than relationship. Help us, Jesus, with that, I'd like pastor Robert to come. He is just going to lead us in a prayer. When he is done, I think we might just sing a worship song to the Lord when we are done here today. But I'm so grateful for the relationship we can have with Jesus and it's not based on all of our external compliance with rules and regulations and feasts and Sabbaths and all of these things. These things can be very helpful to give us a structure in our relationship with God, but they have never ever by God intended to be substituted for our relationship with him.
Robert: Hallelujah. Man, that's good preaching. Oh man, I'm sitting there. I'm so fired up. I'm preaching next week. I'm so fired up. Good. Oh, that's good word right there. Amen. The Lord has put on my heart to do a little different something with the prayer this morning. Such a great word. Jesus is a bondage breaker. The breaker is here. Many of us here, me, you sitting in the chairs watching by livestream, we've been under religious rulership. If you are today and you've been told you are not good enough, if you think that you just can't get it right, you can't measure up, let me just help you. You can stop. He doesn't need you to. He needs you to have faith and trust in him. As a matter of fact, I think that's what I'm going to do next week, talk about faith, faith and trust in him. We are nothing without Christ in us. The great gift of God is that he allowed his spirit to be in us to make up for everything that we are not God religion has you striving and going home at night, thinking that you have to do something to gain God's approval and it's making you all messed up. Well, Jesus is here to break that this morning.
Father God, in the name of Jesus for everyone under the sound of my voice and watching by livestream, we come out of agreement with the of religion, everything that comes to choke the life of relationship out of us. We come out of agreement with it right now and we receive the Liberty and the freedom and grace that come through faith in Jesus Christ. We come out of agreement with mind control and manipulation and striving, everything that comes to hinder and get in the way of our relationship with God. We come out of agreement right now and we break those change right now in Jesus name. Every chain is breaking right now. I can hear them falling right now, falling off of your mind, falling off of your heart, falling off of your body. Many of us are weary in our bodies right now because of. We come out of agreement with it right now in the mighty name of Jesus.
And the fountain of Liberty and joyful relationship with the father is ready for you to dive in right now. Come dive into the fountain of Liberty, grace and mercy and love and friendship and expectation and growth and living. And now drink from that fountain so that you would never thirst again. We thank you, Lord, that the walls of separation are torn down. Every veil, every mediator is torn down right now. We thank you that in Jesus Christ, we can come boldly before you to obtain mercy and receive your help in the time of need. We thank you that we can approach you without fear, but with the expectation that you have every good for us. We thank you that when we fall down, we can get up in your presence.
So I pray for everyone here that you will receive the freedom of the good news. That's why it's good news. So that we can be free to serve him. I pray that we will all have a spirit of gratitude to serve the Lord freely, not out of a obligation, but out of a heartfelt gratitude for his kindness and his mercy towards each and every one of us. I thank you, Lord and I bless everyone here in your mighty name. Amen.
Brian: Amen. Let's stand together, shall we? Let's just sing this song about how good God is to us here.
Jacque: I love you, God. We love you, God
[Music 1:49:15-1:52:28]
Brian: Lord, you have been so good to give us this free gift up front. All you say is just believe in trust in me. So we believe in you today. Lord, we put our trust in you today for everything in our lives and everything in our futures, because we are in good hands when we are in the hands of God. Let's raise our hands together, receive from the Lord.
And 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 towards you and give you his peace, and may you be filled with the river of living water. This, we pray in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. If you want communion, Pastor Robert and Tequaris will be there to serve you communion today. God bless you. We look forward to sticking around and helping decorate for Christmas. God bless you. Have a great day.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 11-21-21. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.