Pastor Brian and Jacque Lother
Jacque: I think spring is here. It's so good to see the greens, speaking of green spring. It is so beautiful. The temperature, it's like, I don't think we are going back. I think we are going to keep going forward to warmer weather. Easter is right around the corner. It's pretty exciting. Good times. It has been a long winter, but the winter is past and the spring time is here. Excited for Easter, Brian I'm so excited that we can actually be together this Easter. Last Easter—
Brian: Last Easter.
Jacque: It's hard to say.
Brian: It's hard to say that. It snowed.
Jacque: I remember.
Brian: We were in a complete lockdown and it was the first Easter that we never had anybody here to worship with. I think we were allowed 10 people in the building and seven of them were all of our tech crew. It was just you and I leading worship that Sunday. I just kind of want to say Easter is a great time to come back to church. There are some projections that since COVID that the new church, they are calling it the 40/60 church, that only 40% of the people that attended church prior to COVID are actually going to come back and attend regularly, and 60% are no longer going to attend. Maybe they will catch people online or something like that.
I would like to think that our church will be different than that. I would like to think differently that we value coming together. There is something that happens when we are together as the body of Christ, as opposed to just being inspired. I'm thankful for all the technology. I'm thankful for the Zoom meetings. I'm so grateful for all of that, our live stream. We are really connecting with people and really the bringing the message of Jesus to places around the world that we never actually dreamed that we would be impacting and it's happening. And so we are thankful for that, but there is something very unique and special about also being together. I don't like long distance churching. I don't think we like long distance relationships; you know, two people get engaged and then one moves across the world to go to school. It's not a good thing. That's hard,
Jacque: It's hard to have a relationship when you are not ever together. You've got to be in the same area.
Brian: Yeah. Proximity is really important for relationships. I think Easter Sunday would be a wonderful Sunday for all of us to say, "Hey, we are going to start being part of that 40% and raise that 40% back up to 60 or 70 or 80%." That would be a great. I make a plea to all of you. If you are just kind of visiting in Minnesota, you are watching live stream, you are from another part of the country and you are here, please come and join us. We would love to see you in person.
I would like to talk a little bit today, partly because I've been thinking about this whole thing of isolation and obviously in the last year there has been in quarantine and people have been staying home and there is this real sense of isolation. As I began to think of isolation, I began to actually think about the fact that there is actually even a more serious kind of isolation that takes place among ourselves other than just the forced isolation that this quarantine that we've been under the protocols because of this pandemic, what that has brought about.
I would like to read a portion of scripture; it's from Psalm 102. I'll just kind of give you a quick description of this Psalm, at least the early part of this Psalm. This Psalm is a prayer of a person whose life is completely falling apart, whose life is falling to pieces and this person feels like God is not aware of it. And so this person is going to let God know just how bad his life is. How many know that actually God is aware of the fact that your life is bad when it's bad? This writer seems to think that God is asleep or far away. He is making his petitions in his cries out to before the Lord and he pours out this lament to God. So here we go: Psalm 102 verses 1-12 to begin with here.
Jacque: From the message Bible. God, listen; listen to my prayer; listen to the pain in my cries. Don't turn your back on me just when I need you so desperately. Pay attention. This is a cry for help. And hurry, this can't wait.
Brian: Can you identify with this guy? This can't wait, God. How many times have we said that? Pay attention to me. This is a cry for help. And by the way, hurry. This can't wait.
Jacque: I'm wasting away to nothing. I'm burning up with fever. I'm a ghost of my former self, half consumed already by terminal illness. My jaws ache from gritting my teeth. I'm nothing but skin and bones. I'm like a buzzard in the desert, a crow perched on the rebel, insomniac. I twitter away mournful as a sparrow in the gutter. All day long, my enemies taunt me while others just curse. They bring in meals, casseroles of ashes. I draw drink from a barrel of my tears. There is nothing left of me, a withered weed, swept clean from the path.
Brian: How many of you are inspired after reading this?
Jacque: I think my life seems pretty good.
Brian: Yeah. I think we should all be thankful that we are not this guy. We are not this guy. Many years ago, I think it's many years ago. I don't know how long it is now, but Simon and Garfunkel, really a great group that I like. They recorded a song; it became very popular, called “I am a rock. I am an Island”. The essence of this song is that I'm tough. I don't need anybody. I can make it. I'm a rock.
Jacque: And a rock never fades and an Island never cries.
Brian: Yeah, something like that. The fact of the matter is we aren't islands. We were made for each other. We were made for God and we are not ourselves by ourselves. I think some of the frustrations that have come out of this past year with the isolation and so forth that has happened with the quarantine is people are starting to realize that we aren't ourselves when we are just by ourselves. We really need one another. There is another, there is another other that we need in one another, and that other is of course, God, because God created us in his image and his likeness. We are not complete without a real intimate relationship with God. That's why I'm really looking forward to these moments of reaching out for more, reaching for more of God.
We do pause this several times a day, and one of the things that I try to focus on in my pauses, when I just take a few moments during the day to just tell God not only how much I need him, but the fact that I'm not complete without him. I'm not complete without God and I need more of God in my life. I've served the Lord virtually my whole life. I had just turned 70 a couple of weeks ago, and God has been so faithful to me. And yet the cry of my heart is I'm not satisfied with where I'm at. I need more of you, Lord. I need more of you and this wonderful, compassionate God, this three person, God—Father, Son, Holy Spirit— who has created us in his image, he has created us, much of that image is about relationships, having a relationship with God.
We see in Genesis chapter 2, where God looked down and Adam had been created and everything else was very good, but God said it's not good for man to be alone. We were created for relationship. We were created for intimacy with God and with each other. When our relationships are severed, when our relationships get distorted, when sin becomes a part of how we function in our relationships, when our relationships start to get fragmented, when our relationships are more dysfunctional, if you are in an abusive relationship, we are all dealing with obviously, sin in these situations, and what ends up happening is we find ourselves isolating from one another when these things happen. When you are hurt and wounded did by somebody, is your propensity to run to them or run away from them? It's to run away from them, isn't it? It's to isolate.
Isolation is a huge issue in our culture today, and it wasn't caused by the endemic. It's caused by sin. It's caused by sin. We don't talk about sin a lot anymore, even in the church, I think because maybe how it was spoken of in the past. But the fact of the matter is when we don't honor God, when we don't do things God's way, then we fall short in that sin. When we allow sin to come into our lives or others sin against us, it creates an isolation that happens among us that is very, very destructive.
This Psalm gives a real clear, I think, picture of what sin has happened, what sin has done. This isolation has happened here. Early in this prayer, these images of solitary confinement or whatever really pile up. What I did was I looked at a bunch of different translations in this portion of scripture. I want to share some of the descriptions that these different translations use to describe these first 12 verses. The first one is shunned. How many of you ever been shunned before by an individual or somebody? It doesn't feel good, does it? It makes you feel isolated. There is another description here: shut up in a hot furnace. The things are just like burning up around you, being destroyed around you; grass cut from its roots and withered, or a vulture or an owl in an uninhabited place, a solitary bird in a bare rooftop, someone who is taunted by their enemies.
Generally speaking, you don't stand in front of a massive army and taunt the army. It's usually the other way around where this army is taunting you, because you are defeated. You are alone. You are isolated. This person was eking out a life on a diet of ashes and tears— that's another description here; alone or ignored or abandoned, godless and friendless. This is an incredibly depressing description of life. I feel bad because so many people in our world today, this is their life. This is their life.
We see pictures of people from all over the world and there is a deadness in their eyes. There is a deadness in their eyes, not just because they don't know the Lord. There is a deadness in their eyes because they have lived a life of isolation. They've lived in a way of suffering from sins committed against them.
Jacque: Isn't it interesting? They think they are protecting themselves so many times.
Brian: Yeah. And they build up walls. They build up walls. Now I want to go to verses 12 through 18 and see a shift here that happens. Read that for us, Jacque.
Jacque: Yet you, God are sovereign still, always and ever sovereign. You'll get up from your throne and help Zion. It's time for compassionate help. Oh, how your servants love this city's rebel and weep compassion over its dust. The godless nations will sit up and take notice, see your glory, worship your name when God rebuilds Zion. When he shows up in all his glory, when he attends to the prayer of the wretched, he won't dismiss their prayer.
Brian: I love that line: He won't dismiss their prayer. This person is actually crying out because Zion has become a wasteland. It has been ransacked by Babylon and so forth, the Babylonians and people carried off into captivity and so forth. But there is an assurance that this writer has.
Jacque: Write this down for the next generation, so people not yet born will praise God.
Brian: Wow. I like that. Write this down for whom?
Jacque: The next generation.
Brian: The next generation. We need to be thinking generationally. We need to be thinking about those coming after us. We need to be thinking of that. We just can't think of ourselves. I actually like the person has Hezekiah in the scriptures. He did a lot of great things. One of the things I liked about him is he grab the horns of the altar and he prayed and he went to God while certain things. Isaiah had come to him and said by the way, get your house in order, you are going to die and profits leaving the city. And he said, "I don't want to die." I don't want to die. So he goes and prays and God taps the prophet on the shoulder, go back and tell him, I just gave him 15 more years.
I like that kind of guy that can like wrestle with God. I know that theologically, this might cause some people to go tilt, but it feels like Hezekiah prayed so fervently that God changed his mind. You know what I'm saying? I don't know how that all fits together with sovereignty and omniscience and all that sort of stuff. But I like to think that when we pray, we have an influence on determining things with God. It gives me more passion in my prayers. And yet there was something that I was really bothered about by Hezekiah because there were consequences that were pronounced upon him because of some of the things that he had done in his response, “Well, at least it's not going to happen in my lifetime.”
Sometimes I think that's how we live as a culture. We live as consumers and we just live for ourselves and we really don't care what's happening with the people coming behind us. We have to have a different outlook. We have to have a different perspective on the generations. So he says, "Write this down for the next generation." Write this down for the next generation, so people not yet born will what?
Jacque: Praise God.
Brian: Will praise God. You and I have a responsibility to the next generation to make sure that we live in such a way that they will want to praise God, that they will want to serve God. We can't live this Christian life in such a way that it turns them all off and they want to have nothing to do with God, because that's not the way of generational blessings. So write this down for the next generation, so people not yet born will want to praise me.
Jacque: Want to love him.
Brian: And want to love him. Yes, yes.
Jacque: God looked out from his high holy place. From heaven, he surveyed the earth. He listened to the groans of the doomed. He opened the doors of their deaths cells.
Brian: Wasn't that great? So here he is, God high and lifted up in his holy mountain, and yet he looked over all the earth and he listened to the groans of the doomed. Sometimes we can feel doomed. Sometimes we can feel like we are between this rock and this hard place, no way out. And yet he opened the doors of their death cells. I love this portion of scripture because the pronouns and descriptions in here now changed from I and me, you know, my life, my wasteland, I'm this, changed to other, to God and to descriptions like thy servants, the nations, the kings of the earth, their supplications, generations to come, people yet unborn, the children of thy servants, thy posterity. There is a whole shift off of his problems to looking at something grander and greater.
Jacque: It's not all about him.
Brian: Yeah. It's not all about him.
Jacque: Sometimes I have to remind myself it's not all about me.
Brian: It's not about me. We should sing that more often. Anyways, whatever calamity and isolation have occurred because of sin that we saw in this early description, it's dwarfed by what we see about God in verses 12 through 17. What can happen to the person who feels as though they are living in verses 1 through 12 is that their hearts can be quieted by God's presence. Their hearts can be quieted by God's presence. It is true that Proverbs 13, 15 says that the way of the transgressors heart. I remember one of my teachers years ago used to say it's really hard on you not being a Christian. It's really hard on us when we are not Christians. But he also said it's really hard to be a Christian when you are not one. It's really hard to live for others and to put others first and to love your enemies. It's really hard to do that if you've never experienced the love of Christ in you.
If you've never really experienced forgiveness in the lifting of shame and sorrow from your life, if you've never experienced that, it's really hard for you not to be selfish because our nature, our propensity is— What's the one word none of us ever had to teach our children when they were one years old or two years old?
Jacque: Mine.
Brian: Mine, right? You never had to teach your kids that word; they just learned it. They just knew it and everything in the house belonged to them, mine, mine. That's just our nature. It takes a touch from God. It takes an awareness of our own selfishness and our own lostness and our own misery in our own sin for us to cry out to God. When we do that, a heart transformation takes place. And then all of a sudden our hearts can be quieted, and we desire now for something greater than just our own self-gratification.
That's why I'm really thankful. I'm so blessed by Pastor Jeff wanting to initiate this reaching for more because Andrae Crouch, again— I'm going back to old music that obviously impressed me back in the seventies, but he wrote a song that I think is just as relevant today as it was in the seventies when he wrote it, and that's, "Jesus is the answer for the world today. Above him, there is no other. Jesus is the way." We have to not ever step too far away from that idea, that Jesus is the answer for the world today. It's his presence that can quiet our hearts when we are in these times. Now let's go to verses 25 to 28. Next page, Psalm 102, 25 to 28.
Jacque: In the beginning, you laid the foundations of the earth and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain. They will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing, you will change them and they will be discarded, but you remain the same and your years will never end. The children of your servants will live in your presence. Their descendants will be established before you.
Brian: My heart gets just really encouraged when I read this because it talks about all of us who want to hold on to things and not see them change. And you know what? That is a recipe for disaster, because life is always in a state of flux. People come, people go, life changes. Yesterday, we laid to rest, Jerry's mom. Jerry Sabre's mom passed away. She was only 66. And yet God was with her in her and her graduation process. She had one foot on earth and one foot in heaven and she was having visions and seeing pictures of heaven and eternity. Jerry had a chance just to say, "Mom, Jesus loves you more than anybody." And she said, "I believe that. That's why I want to leave. I believe that that's what I want to leave here." Only God can do that in a person's heart.
I love life. I don't want to die yet. There are still things that I want to do and leave for the generations to come, but there is also a home prepared for all of us that far out-shines anything that we will ever have here. We can never lose sight of that. And yet the way to heaven is potholed by sin and sinners. And by the way, one of those sinners has your name on it, and some of those potholes have some of your sins in them. They just do. These sins have created at times isolation moments of isolation and disconnection from God, from each other. I think COVID this past year has even exposed some of those things. That's my opinion.
What is important to realize is that even Jesus wasn't insulated from all of this kind of stuff. He had people reject him. He had people that criticize him. He had people that shunned him and didn't want anything to do with him. At the end of the day, what did he do? He kept giving his life over to his father in heaven. That's why he said, "Father, I have given them the same glory, which is the love of God that you have given me."
When Moses asked for God to show him his glory, God said, okay, I'm going to tuck you right here in the rock, in the cleft of the rock. I'm going to put my hand over your face because if you were to see me in my fullness, you would die. I've got a job for you to do so we don't want that to happen yet. I'm going to put my hand over your face and I'm going to walk by you and I'm going to let you just see my backside. Moses is a saying, "Show me your glory." And God says, "I'm going to show you my love." Really, the glory of God, the best description of the glory of God is not radiant light. It's not blinding light. It's an all-consuming love. That's the best description of the glory of God.
And so Jesus said in his prayers to his father, he said, "Father, I have given them my glory in the same way that you've given me your glory." What was he meaning by that? He said, “I have loved them in the same way that you've loved me.” I've loved them the same way that you've loved me. And so remember, even when we feel isolated from God because of our sins or we feel rejected and it feels as though the heavens are brass, we must remember that he has never left us. He will never leave us. He'll never forsake us. So I would just say this, don't let your feelings have a vote. Don't let your feelings have a vote. Don't live by your feelings; just don't do it.
Sin does create isolation, but you know what brings restoration? Forgiveness. Isn't it great to forgive one another? What happens when that happens? This happens. This happens. What happens when someone says, "I will never forgive you"? And God is desiring us to have this. That's what he has made us for, with each other and with him, with each other and with him. We have a wonderful promise in first John chapter 1, verse 9. Why don't you read this, sweetie: 1 John chapter 1, verse 9.
Jacque: NIV. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just. I typed that wrong.
Brian: He's faithful and just.
Jacque: And will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
Brian: Isn't that great? If we what?
Jacque: If we confess our sin.
Brian: It's just a good thing to do. I've taken many a walk and said, okay, “God, it's me again. And boy, that thing that so easily besets me stills besetting me, so please forgive me. I need more of you. I need less of me." And you know what happens? He starts to purify me. He starts to cleanse me. Not only will he forgive us, but he purifies us as well. And yet no matter how old you are, don't forget to keep signing up for the lessons. I don't say this arrogantly, but I'm grateful; I'm 70 and I'm still taking piano lessons. I just had a lesson this past week from my piano professor, Julliard Gray. Every time I start to think I'm playing pretty good, I go have a lesson. And then he tells me all the things that I'm not doing good.
It's good to go to God and get lessons. It's good to go to God and get lessons. It's good to keep learning because sometimes the effects of sin create these holes in our heart. They create holes in our hearts. And you know what, when you have a hole in your heart, you can't function to your fullest. It's not a good diagnosis when a baby is born and they say, "Oh, he was born with a hole in his heart." We've got to do surgery. We've got to fix that because the long-term effects of a hole in your heart are not good. They are very destructive. Sin creates holes in our heart, not just the sins that we commit, but sins against us. Sometimes I think that the sins against us maybe make bigger holes in our hearts than the sins that we've created ourselves. It feels that way, anyways, to me. I don't know if that's biblically true or not, but I just know that sin creates a hole in our heart, and loss can be a very painful thing to cope with and to deal with. I can be a huge thing to deal with.
It doesn't really matter if it's, I think, a natural loss, like the loss of a loved one, like Jerry's mom passing, or if it's rejection or abuse, whatever it might be, all loss is painful. All loss is painful, but here is the solution when we have suffered loss and we have that hole in our heart and we find it in 1 John 4: 9-12.
Jacque: This is the kind of love we are talking about. Not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they've done to our relationship with God.
Brian: Isn't that a great line? Isn't that just a wonderful line that he came to clear away our sins and basically fixed the damage that those sins have done, not only in our relationship with God, but with each other as well. Go on.
Jacque: My dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God ever, but if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us; perfect love.
Brian: Perfect love. This perfect love that clears away our sins and clears away the damage that we either created or others created for us. As we recognize that love and we received that love into our hearts, that all that damage can be fixed. And that hole in your heart from all of the losses, you know what, my friends, it can only be filled by God. That's why Jesus is the answer for the world today. It can only be filled by God. He made us this way. I'm sure most of us have all done puzzles in the past. Sometimes, especially if you do maybe a little more complicated puzzle and you are just looking for that one piece that goes right here and you think you found it, it's the right color, it's the right thing, it looks like it fits and it just won't fit. It just won't fit. You know why? Because it's not the right piece. It's just not the right piece.
Jesus is that perfect puzzle piece that fits. The only person that can fit into the whole of our house is Jesus. He is the only one. Unfortunately, in our culture and around the world, we try to fix the hole in our hearts by all sorts of things that aren't legal, maybe drugs, relationships that we shouldn't be in. We try to medicate ourselves because of the pain, and the pain is real. Again, I'm so thankful for reaching out for more of God, because the more we have of God, the more the holes in our heart will be fixed. The more we have of Jesus, the more the holes in our hearts will be fixed.
I ask God really every day to fill up the hole in my heart to fill up that ache at times in my heart that pain and suffering and loss and disappointments can create. Jesus will clear away the damage that sin has brought into our lives, even yes, even the damage that maybe has happened in our relationships, not only with God, but with others because God's forgiveness to us is really the remedy for isolation and aloneness. It's God's forgiveness that is the true remedy for isolation and aloneness, because he is more than able to make a bridge to all who are isolated. His love goes to the whole world. It's available to the whole world. So I would just ask you today, Lord, would you please come in a new way into all of our lives?
Begin to fix the hole in our heart, Jesus. Begin to put that puzzle piece of Jesus firmly in place. Let our relationships with others because of our relationship with you being restored to fullness our relationship with others that are fragmented, that have been broken. They can be built. And maybe we are going to have to just love them unconditionally for a while, maybe a year or 2 or 5 or 10, and just keep loving because you first loved us. This is the kind of love we are talking about; not that we once upon a time loved you Lord, but that you loved us and sent your son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins, and to also clear away all of the damage that was done, not only in our relationship with you, but with each other.
So no longer would we need to suffer in isolation, no longer would we be a description of Psalm 102, verses 1 through 12, but that rather the description would be this, that your loved dwells within us deeply, and it dwells within us completely, this perfect love so that the holes in our heart are closing up and closing up, and our hearts become stronger in our love for you and our love for one another. This Jesus, we pray in your name and for your sake. Amen. Hallelujah.
Let's raise our hands together, shall we? I want to bless you. Jacque, why don't you stand here? Thank you, Lord. Isn't God good all the time? He wants to bless us, and all we need to do is be receptive to him. So 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. And may the Lord turn his face towards you and give you his peace, and may your heart be filled with the love of Jesus Christ who is the answer for the world today. This we pray in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. God bless you. Have a wonderful day.
Hey, bring a friend on Easter. Does that sound like a plan? Bring a friend to worship with us on Easter. God bless you, all of you who are watching by live stream. I'm so glad you joined us today. Thank you for being with us as well, and thank you for partnering with us in this ministry. Your love and support is so much of a blessing to us. We are so grateful. Hope to see you real soon. If not, hopefully you'll see us real soon. God bless you. Bye-bye.
Jacque: Remember, 6:45.
Brian: 6:45 tonight.
Jacque: Tonight.
Brian: Yes. God bless you. Have a great day.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 3-21-21. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.