Pastor Brian and Jacque Lother
Brian: How many know that's a good thing to adore Jesus? Come, let us adore him. At the very heart of Christmas, really is the celebration of the incarnation. Hi Mike. Good to see you, buddy. God bless you. Good to have you here. God's touching your body too. Amen. We've got a lot of cancer survivors in our church. Sometimes that can be a scary thing, that c word, but God seems to be doing some really cool things here. I don't know if it started with Carl, but we just keep trusting him. And God's keep touching you, Mike. Good to have you here today, buddy. God bless you.
I love what the angels said to Mary when he came to her and explained to her what was in her future. How many like to have God talk to you about your future like that? How would you like to have been Mary that day? That'd be a little disconcerting, a little bit, right? She's a young girl, not married, and these angel shows up on her doorstep. Let's read it. There was a quote from Isaiah chapter 7 verse 14, and this angel came with a message from God that had been prophesied about 700 years earlier. How many know that prophecy has a long shelf life? God can speak something, and then next week when it hasn't happened, you wonder, maybe I missed God, or maybe I didn't hear God. Or maybe that was pizza or something from the night before. We have to give God time to do his work. God's always at work. Isaiah the prophet, spoke about 700 years before the birth of Christ. This is what the angel's message was to Mary.
Jacque: The Virgin shall conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us.
Brian: I can't think of a better name than God with us. I can't. Names mean something, don't they? It's really interesting to do a study on names and your name and what does it mean? We just think people pick names, but I think God is a part of name picking more than what we might understand when our parents give us our names. This name Emmanuel, God with us, when we begin to really see what Christmas really means, I believe that the natural response in our hearts is to worship is to worship. When we really begin to see the problem is many people don't actually see what Christmas is intended to be, and therefore they get caught up in all of the other, dare I say, monstrosities, of what Christmas has become.
But when you really see what Christmas is really about, that God is with us, how many are thankful today that we don't have to do it alone. I know Deb Thompson today who we are celebrating some of this good news that she's received. One of the first things that she said when she got the news years ago was, "God's got this. God's with me. God is here. I'm so thankful today that God is with us through every situation: storms, mountaintops, successes, failures. I truly believe that today, worship is one of the missing elements in what Christmas has become.
We have, I don't want to use the word perverted because I enjoy all of the celebrations that we do for Christmas myself. I enjoy buying presents for my wife and my family and my grandchildren. I enjoy all of the different things we do to celebrate it. I like to make a big deal out of Christmas. I like to put up Christmas lights. I like to put up a Christmas village. I like to have a nice Christmas tree. I like to do all those things, but not at the expense of not worshiping worship needs to still be at the heart of everything that Christmas is all about. Many of the traditions that we incorporate into our lives at Christmas time bring us great joy. But I would also say that apart from real worship, those things that we incorporate into our Christmas celebration, they become inadequate responses to what Christmas really should be. They're inadequate responses to the reality of the savior's birth.
The first priority in all that we do, I hope this coming year is to become deeper worshipers of Jesus Christ, that we would be real worshipers of the Lord. I'm not really referring to more religious activity. I'm not referring to even something that happens even in our services or maybe at an altar or kneeling in a prayer closet or some kind of religious ritual that is meaningful to us, not even memorizing a prayer. What I'm really referring to is more than an activity that we do, but it is first and foremost a state of our hearts, just our heart's just having a place that we just have to say, "I worship you. I worship you."
Jacque: I love you, Lord. I love.
Brian: I love you, Lord and I lift my voice to worship you. I believe that one of God's chief aims in saving sinners, and this is another part of the message, he will save his people from their sins. Now, let's face it, that's a category we all fall into, isn't it? We are all sinners. We've all fallen short of God's glory. So we are all in that same boat together. And one of the great, I think chief aims that Jesus had, that God had in saving sinners is to convert them into worshipers, not just convert them into a certain philosophy or a way of thinking or anything like that, but it was to change our hearts so that our hearts would be inclined to want to honor God.
Jacque: To honor God with our words, with our thoughts, with our actions, with our love expressed.
Brian: Yes. A lot of times when we think of worship, we are very narrow minded in how we think of worship. Because we think of worship as something that we do when we are singing together in church.
Jacque: And some people say, "Oh, I don't sing."
Brian: I don't sing, so I can't really be much of a worshiper. I think I've told you the story of a gentleman who he's long since passed away. You and I were fortunate to be at his bedside when he passed. One of my first encounters with this man, we were up at a summer camp and we were sitting and we were there to help partly lead the corporate worship sessions. There was someone else leading worship for that morning. We were just sitting in the chair and he was sitting right behind me. To the honest of God's truth, I have never heard a person have a worse voice singing than this guy.
Jacque: He only knew one note.
Brian: And the note he knew it was in the cracks between the piano, between the keys. It wasn't even one of the notes. It was like in the cracks between the keys.
Jacque: And no matter what song or what key, he sang that note.
Brian: He sang that note. If the melody line went up, he sang louder. And if the melody line went down, he sang softer. But he stayed on that same in-the-crack tone.
Jacque: He was consistent.
Brian: Yes. I'm trying to worship and sing and whatever, and I'm getting really frustrated with this just terrible noise that's coming from behind me. I kind of whispered to prayer and I said, "God, can you make him stop?" And the Lord spoke to me. He said, "Why would I want him to stop? He sounds so much better than you do." Because he was worshiping from his heart. You don't have to be a singer to be a worshiper.
Jacque: No. God receives joy from our praises.
Brian: He was one of those guys that made a joyful noise unto the Lord.
Jacque: Your noise was not joy to God.
Brian: My voice wasn't joyful at all.
Jacque: It might have sounded better.
Brian: I don't know. True worship can be really expressed in many countless ways. We have a narrow, at times, view of what worship is. But I want to share just a few of those ways in which worship can be expressed to God that we find in scriptures. The first one I'd like to read is found in Romans chapter 12, verse 1. We'll read that.
Jacque: Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship.
Brian: We can offer ourselves. I think most of us realize that the scriptures teach that our bodies are where God dwells. He doesn't dwell on buildings anymore. I'm thankful for this facility. It facilitates all the things that we want to do with the ministry. But God doesn't dwell in this building, and he doesn't dwell in a building in Israel either or any other places on the earth. God's spirit dwells within us, and he calls us the temple of the Holy Spirit. In Romans chapter 12, verse 1, the apostle Paul says, I urge you in view of God's mercy, that we offer our bodies, we let our bodies be used as living sacrifices, holding places to God, which is our true and proper worship.
How we take care of ourselves and what we give ourselves to, and, and so forth, this is a way that we can worship God. Another way that we can worship the Lord is found in Hebrews chapter 13 verses 15 through 16.
Jacque: So we no longer offer up a steady stream of blood sacrifices.
Brian: Let me stop you there for a second. You have to remember that in Israel, even though Christianity was growing and as a book of Acts says that there were people being added to the church daily, people were coming to know the Lord, still, the vast majority of the people living in Israel, especially those who were Jewish, kept going to the temple and offering animal blood sacrifices. This was still part of their daily, weekly, monthly, annual practices. And so the writer of Hebrews here is now making a correlation back to those animal sacrifices that many people at that time were still doing. And he says this:
Jacque: So we no longer offer up a steady stream of blood sacrifices, but through Jesus, we will offer up to God a steady stream of praise sacrifices.
Brian: And what are these praise sacrifices or these lambs? He kind of equates the word lambs as a praise sacrifice. Mm-hmm. He goes on to say this:
Jacque: These are the lambs we offer from our lips that celebrate his name.
Brian: These are the sacrifices we make.
Jacque: We will show mercy to the poor, and not miss an opportunity to do acts of kindness for others, for these are the true sacrifices that delight God's heart.
Brian: Service to others is also a way that we worship. Doing acts of mercy to the poor, doing acts of kindness for other people. Shoveling somebody's sidewalk can be an act of worship, mowing somebody's lawn for them, helping them change a flat tire is all, can be an act of worship. What were you going to say?
Jacque: I was going to say, like Pastor Robert tells us, taking the time to stop and notice someone and say hello and to care.
Brian: Service to other people, serving other people is one of the ways that we actually worship God. And then let's go to Romans 15, verse 16
Jacque: Brian, so the men that are serving for the tea and all the volunteers are worshiping.
Brian: They are worshiping that day. Yes.
Jacque: Okay. Romans 15:16. I am simply underlining how very much I need your help in carrying out this highly focused assignment God gave me.
Brian: Most of us, probably, when we think of the Apostle Paul and the, dare I say, the giant that he was in the early church and all that God did through him miraculous conversion from conversion, from being the pharisees killing Christians, rounding Christians up to stamp out this new faith of Christ. He becomes converted to Jesus Christ. He meets him on the road to Damascus. He goes into, I call it, training for a while, a number years, actually. And later on, God speaks to him a couple of messages. One is, I want to show you how great things you must suffer for my sake. Well, I don't know of anybody that wants to sign up for that kind of thing. Let's follow Jesus so we can suffer. I mean, that's kind of not the way the Gospels presented today, is it? It's really not.
God says to him, Jesus says to him, that you are going to be a voice to the Gentiles. Here we have like the Pharisee of Pharisees who looked down on the Gentiles, thought of them as dogs in reality. And he's calling this Pharisee of Pharisees to bring this message of Jesus to the world that has been marginalized by the Jewish people, and being a voice of the Gentiles. He does this; he has these missionary journeys and all this incredible stuff that happens in very few of us would actually think that the apostle Paul would need help with that.
Here is a man that was taken into the third heaven, saw God went to heaven, wanted to stay there, but God said, no, I got things for you to do and sends him back. We might call that a near death experience or auto body experience. I'm not sure what we would call it, but we know that he was taken to heaven. God showed him all these things, a future, and what he had for him, and then sent him back. This man who had all this incredible power and anointing and gifting and wisdom and insights says this, "I'm simply underlining how much I need your help in carrying out the gospel." And might I add the Pastor Jeff, Pastor Robert, and myself and Jacque, we all need your help in carrying out the message and the mission of Hope Community Church. We can't do it by ourselves. We need everybody coming arm in arm. We need all of you who are our online community to pitch in and be a part of the vision and mission that God has called us to do here. And he goes on to say this:
Jacque: The assignment, this priestly and gospel work of serving the spiritual needs of the non-Jewish outsiders so they can be presented as an acceptable offering to God made whole and holy by God's Holy Spirit.
Brian: One of the ways that we also worship God now is proclaiming the good news of salvation. All of these things that we just said, presenting our bodies and, and helping the poor, giving a testimony, all of these basically say that worship is living one's life as a testimony of God's truth. It's where our lives actually embody the real truth of the scriptures. I believe that in 2023-- it's hard for me to think that we are already talking about 2023, but we are only about five weeks away from it. But it's, I believe that in 2023, the Lord is calling us to worship not only in the way that we just mentioned, but also in the way that the shepherds worshiped as well. I want to look at that really quickly. We see that they dropped everything. And let's read it in Luke chapter two, verses 15 and 16.
Jacque: When the angels had returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, let's go to Bethlehem. Let's see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about. They hurried to the village and found Maryn Joseph. And there was the baby lying in the manger.
Brian: They dropped everything they were doing to attend his birth. I reflect on my life and I thought to myself, oh, how many times have I just dropped everything and attended to the things of the Lord? I think most of us would fall into the category of, we want to honor the Lord when it's convenient for us. How many like to be inconvenienced? I don't. I have plans. You got plans, Mike? Yeah, I got plans. We all have plans. We get our plans so rigorously made that it's--
it reminds me of the story where this kind of disheveled older man that didn't have much money. He was wanted to go to this church, and he walked in and he wasn't made to feel welcome. He hadn't had a bath for a few weeks and nobody wanted to sit by him. Finally, one of the ushers told him he had to leave until he could clean up his act. He was sitting on a bus bench, didn't have a car. He was sad and Jesus came and sat down by him. Jesus said, "What's the matter?" He said, "I've just been trying to get into that church there and they don't want me." And Jesus put his arm around the guy and said, "Well, don't feel bad, mister. I've been trying to get in that church for 20 years and they don't want me."
Sometimes we just have to drop everything, don't we, like the shepherds? There was a sense of urgency in their hearts, godly determination. Let's go straight to Bethlehem. They went quickly. Another translation says they went in haste. They, they hurried off. But that wasn't all. Let's look what else happened in verses 17 and 18.
Jacque: Can I say something?
Brian: Yes, you can.
Jacque: That means that we have to-- like, I love to make lists. I have lists on my lists of my lists. I categorize my lists.
Brian: And then you get depressed about how much you have to do.
Jacque: Yes, but the point is that I'm trying to live by listening and letting God lead me and letting him take over my schedule.
Brian: Yeah. Make room.
Jacque: And listen, the Holy Spirit direct us.
Brian: That's right. Verses 17 and 18 is another aspect of the shepherds that I think is really important for us to tap into.
Jacque: After seeing him, the shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this child, all who heard the shepherds story were astonished.
Brian: Yeah. And I would dare say this, that when we start sharing the good news of Jesus and what Christ has done for us, that might astonish some other people as well. Wouldn't you agree? But they shared the news with everybody around them. And I think in 2023, 2023 is going to be the best year yet to speak to others about our savior. As things get worse in our world, that is the best time to share what Jesus has to offer. As things get worse, as more school shootings, more this, more that, more club shootings, more wars, more economic dishevelment, more people going hungry. That's just kind of the surface. That's not a deep dive on our problems. The more difficulty that our world seems to create as we keep moving forward in time, the more relevant the person of Jesus becomes to our world, the more relevant.
2023 will be the best year yet to speak to others about our Lord. I think this is one of the ways that we can actually adore him: by telling others who are broken, who are in need of unconditional love and grace, just telling others of the good things that Jesus has done for us. Sometimes we find ourselves being uncomfortable doing that. I thought about this. As I thinking about just this whole concept, if somebody came and shoveled my sidewalk, for example, or plowed my driveway or cut my lawn or just some basic things like that, that helped me, would I be embarrassed to tell anybody about that? Of course not. So why would I be embarrassed when some of the deeper issues of my life that nobody else could fix except for Christ? Why would I be reluctant to tell somebody about those things?
When I was with our purpose in my life and Jesus came, when I was in need of wholeness and restoration, and Jesus came to me, when I had completely because of my own self-centeredness made such a mess out of my life. And Jesus came in and unconditionally loved me and took me back and made something out of my life, why would I ever be reluctant to share that with somebody else? It doesn't make sense, does it? One of the great ways that I can worship the Savior today is not just to sing, oh, come let us adore him, but it's to let people know what Christ has done in my life. That's one of the greatest ways that I can worship him. There is another way that we can worship him too.
Jacque: I love it that the shepherds just told the story. We just have to tell our story.
Brian: And like we sang today, the room in your heart for God to write his story.
Jacque: Yes. I love that word.
Brian: So then we have the magi, we call them the wise men. And we find that in Matthew chapter 2 verse 11.
Jacque: When they came into the house and saw the young child with Mary, his mother, they fell to the ground at his feet and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasure chest full of gifts and presented him with gold, frankincense and mer.
Brian: I want you to notice a sequence here. They didn't come in with their gifts and presented him their gifts to hopefully win his approval. But the first thing they did was they fell on their faces and they worshiped him. As a result of that worship and that adoration, they gave him their gifts. How often don't we come somehow with the mentality of bartering with God. I'll just do this for you, God. If you get me out of this foxhole, I will serve you. We've all prayed that prayer and some kind of dilemma, haven't we?
But the real worship that God wants to have is just this, in a sense, falling before him, which means yielding, just giving him our lives, our hearts, and then to bring him the gifts that he deserves. He has given all of us gifts and abilities and talents. Those gifts and talents and abilities, and that he's empowered and given to us. We should just simply use them to honor him.
Jacque: Not to try to earn his love, but to just love him.
Brian: We did this Christmas production years ago called The Birthday Party. There is a song in there that we've sung from time to time, what can I give to the king? What can I give to the one who has everything? And then it goes on to say, what are we to give him?
Jacque: Give him a heart that's opened up wide.
Brian: So open your hearts up to God.
Jacque: Oh, I'm sorry. Give him a love that's opened up wide. Give him a heart that's got nothing to hide. Give him a love that's tender and true and he'll give it all back to you.
Brian: These are things that we can give to the king. What can I give to the king today as a gift? Give him our hearts. Give them our strength. Jesus said it best when someone asked him, what's the greatest commandment? And he responded by saying, love the Lord. Thank God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. If we would simply give him our hearts, our souls, our minds, our strength, and say, use my mind today, Lord, help my mind be used to honor you, not become greedy, selfish, and self-centered. Help my spirit, my soul, to have emotions that would be beneficial to other people, not just myself. Help my body to have strength to serve and honor you. We all are at different places in bodily strength. And part of that is due to obviously, we live in a fallen world. We are fallen people; we are susceptible to the fallenness around us, so we age, we get older, we get, I was going to say crochety, but we don't need to get crochety. We just get creaky. We get creaky. Even children are susceptible at times to disease because we live in this fallen world. But whatever the measure of strength is that we have, let's use it to honor God. Let's use it to honor our Lord.
Jacque: I love that line that says "Give him a heart that's got nothing to hide." I think about where our failures are to confess that, to confess our sins to him. What a beautiful gift to give him.
Brian: Yeah. And you go back to the garden--
Jacque: And he gives us freedom back.
Brian: You go back to the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve disobeyed; they sin against the Lord. What was the first thing they did? They hid. They hid. That's what we do at times from God. We hide; we close our hearts up and, but let's give him a heart that has nothing to hide. Let's just confess our sins to the Lord and let's just be open. We need your help.
Jacque: Because she's the one that will help us overcome.
Brian: That's right. That's right. One other thing I want to just touch on really quickly and then we will be dismissed here: Luke 2:19 talks about the mother of Jesus, of Virgin Mary. She also worshiped him. Now again, this is a little bit hard to kind of comprehend, because she was, she birthed this child and there is a natural process that that happens there with the mother and her baby. We all adore our children, but not in the same sense that we are to adore God. Come, let us adore him. Let's worship him. But Mary understood who Jesus was even as an infant although I don't think she understood the totality of everything was going to do. But to her level of understanding that was given to her by the angels, she knew this stuff. We see this in Luke 2:19 that she did.
Jacque: But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.
Brian: I like that word "pondered". She worshiped through quiet reflection. Sometimes again, our lives get so hectic, don't they? We have so much to do. So many demands, so much noise. It's hard to ponder, isn't it? It's hard to just reflect and ponder when you are amidst chaos. That's why Jesus would get out into the wilderness and be by himself. It wasn't that he didn't want to be around people. It wasn't that he didn't care about people, but in order for him to have this place of reflection and connection to God, he needed to do this. And so, in the busyness and chaos of our lives, we still need to take time to meditate on him in his words. We can worship him by simply meditating on him, and let that meditation-- because the Psalmist said, "Let the meditations of my heart and the proclamations of my mouth be acceptable in your sight."
One other scripture, or actually we'll do two more scriptures, but this one is found in 2nd Corinthians 9:15 and how the Apostle Paul describes this wonderful person of Jesus.
Jacque: Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift.
Brian: Jesus has been described as an indescribable gift. Ask someone, "What did you get for Christmas?" "I can't even describe it to you." That's Jesus. I can't even describe it to you. I pray that our hearts will actually be overwhelmed with gratitude and adoration
Jacque: And wonder. Yeah. It's so amazing that almighty God is so connected to each one of us so intimately.
Brian: Sometimes, familiarity breeds contempt. You've heard that expression, right? And sometimes we get so familiar with God and the things of God and the Christmas story and so forth that it ceases to create wonder in us anymore. And we just have to be careful. I would pray that our hearts would be really overwhelmed with gratitude. Because if we don't allow ourselves to reflect on the goodness of God and be overwhelmed with gratitude, my concern is that we will miss so much of what God has for us. We'll miss so much of what God has for us. I want to finish with this scripture we find in Philippians chapter two, verse five through seven. This is what I think the Lord is asking of us.
Jacque: You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to clinging to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges. He took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being.
Brian: This may not be easy, but it's a goal that we all should strive for, to number one, have the same attitude that Christ had. One of the first things I think of is his prayer in the garden where he prayed, what?
Jacque: Not my will.
Brian: not my will
Jacque: Thine be done.
Brian: Thine be done.
Jacque: If you find yourself saying, "I just want to do what I want," just compare that statement with what Jesus was saying, "Not my will, but thine be done." And he goes on to say though he was God, and Jesus was God, he did not think of being equal with God or equality as something that he was trying to grasp or clinging to. Even though he was God, he didn't go around telling everybody, "I'm equal to God." That wasn't his message. But instead, he gave up his divine privileges. He gave them up and he took the humble position of a slave, a servant, and was born of a human being.
The song that I've sung a few times during the holiday seasons, one of the verses go of something like this: "Many a man has sought to be God destroying the world on their way, but only one God ever thought to be man. And he was born on Christmas day." There have been many men throughout history that have wanted to rule the world to be God. In their attempt to rule the world, they virtually destroyed the world or a good portion of it. But in all the religions that have come down the pike throughout man's history, there is only one, and I don't even want to call it a religion, but there is only one God that ever sought to be man. No gods in any of the other religions that man have embraced throughout history whether you go back to Mesopotamia or Egypt or the early areas of Turkey, Syria, and then the Far East, Asia, and you find and study world religions and not one of those religions did the God of that religion say, I want to become a man and live among my people. Not one.
There is only one that came and was born. His name is Jesus. He came to give himself to live among us, to take away our sins, to have God become part of us, to be God with us, so we would never be alone. He was born on Christmas day. That is our God. Pastor Robert, would you come?
Robert: Praise the Lord. It's time to get closer to him. By way of prayer this morning, I was asking the Lord, show me something. Give me something unique. I like all the different ways God can speak to us. So by way of prayer, I want us to pray this prayer together. It is actually from a song, the lyrics from a song by a guy named Jonathan McReynolds. It's a song called Make Room. For the prayer I, I liked us to pray this together and you can repeat after me. I find space for what I treasure. I make time for what I want. I choose my priorities. And Jesus, you are my number one. I will make room for you. I will prepare for two, so you don't feel that you can't live here. Please live in me. Thank you, Jesus.
Brian: Father, we just pray that prayer today, make room for two so that you can live in me. You are this indescribable gift. It truly is mind boggling and indescribable. What you have done, what you are willing to do and come. I do pray that Lord, we would be as the magi where when they entered their home, they fell to the ground at your feet and worshiped him. That was their initial responses simply to say I am unworthy, and you are worthy, and we lay down before you all of our desires, our accomplishments, all of our things that give us self-worth and value. And we just lay them all at your feet and we say, you are God. It is you who made us, not we ourselves.
We do stand amazed in the presence of one as yourself who has won our hearts. You didn't come to flex your muscles; you didn't come to conquer by force. You didn't come to coerce with threats of violence if we did not comply. But you came in meekness and tenderness and love to get at the most difficult place to get to, and that was our hearts. You've won our hearts, Lord.
You have won our hearts and we adore you today.
Help us to realize that as we come into this holiday season and we begin to open the door of 2023, that we would realize that there are so many different ways for us to worship you in this coming year, in serving and giving witness to what you've done and blessing others and pondering, treasuring, Lord, all these things that you have done for us. And yes, we can still bow down before you when it's the appropriate time to do so. We can hurry and let our other things wait till later. Help us Lord, to learn how to truly worship you and you mighty named me pray. Everybody said amen. Let's stand together, shall we?
Pastor Robert, if I could have you serve communion today, would you be able to do that, please? Thank you. It's a good week to be thankful and it's a good week to worship the Lord. Amen. Let's raise our hands together.
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. And may the Lord turn his face towards you and give you his peace. And may you worship the Lord with all your hearts soul, mind, strength. This, we pray, in the name of the Father, son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. God bless you. Have a wonderful day and may the Lord be with you.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 11-27-22. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.