Pastor Jeff and Cheryl Orluck
Brian: It's so good to see everybody. Thank you all for watching on livestream. God bless all of you who tune in and watched us regularly. Thank you for being part of our faith community and thank you who are here today in attendance, in person. We are always liking to see each other in person. How many know in person really is the best. It's really the best. And so we are so thankful that you are here today. We are so glad to see everybody.
A few years ago, I was walking on a beach in Mexico and I go there every year in January to kind of just recalibrate and kind of get direction from the Lord for the next year. Little did I know that the direction the Lord would give me about seven years ago was going to be keeping on, keeping on. But the words I got that day walking on the beach was, "You need to go back and really, really learn the letters in red," which of course are the words of Jesus.
I grew up in the church. My dad was a pastor, and I felt like, "an, I've read those words my whole life. I know those words." And this voice came into my head, which was this really still, small voice of the Lord who said, "You don't know anything yet about the words in read. So go back and start reading them." That was the beginning of a real focus for me, who had been in the ministry at that time for over 40 years, to go back and really go back to the most basic instructions from the word of God. Because Jesus said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father.
I would admit that I even had issues with my image of my Father in heaven. I know and had known because of so much counseling through the years, so many people had a bad image of their father in heaven. It was going back to see Jesus becoming a lens over all of the scriptures that gave me a clearer understanding of the purpose for this church and the purpose for my life. I'm very thankful for Pastor Robert and Pastor Jeff. we really have a very, very similar spiritual DNA although we have different giftings. We are three entirely different guys, but we really are the same in so many ways. And I always look forward to Pastor Jeff's messages and his speaking because he has been doing a series of messages on the way of Jesus.
In this day and age, there is nothing more important to us than knowing the way of Jesus in a world that seems to be just going in every possible direction. Jesus really is that mooring that can help us navigate on how to live in the culture we live in. Let's welcome Pastor Jeff as he comes. So grateful again for all of your wonderful instruction and the dedication you have to the church. God bless you. Love you, buddy.
Jeff: Good morning. I'm happy to be here. Happy to be here with Cheryl. She won't have to text this morning.
Cheryl: Aw, I could. I'll go get my phone.
Jeff: Of course, the amazing thing or I think, the expected thing about the ways of Jesus is that they run contrary to the ways that we would normally expect in the world that we live in, don't they? They tend, if you are following the ways of Jesus, you are typically swimming upstream. And of course, the first way that we talked on was a generosity of spirit. That's not the normal way: to be generous with people and gracious and giving and kind and merciful, but that's his way.
Cheryl and I are re-watching The Chosen here. I'll tell you, I just can't help but cry through those whole stupid episodes, , because every time I see__ and for me, it doesn't matter what show I'm watching or what book I'm reading or what story I'm hearing, if I see a demonstration of the generosity of Jesus, it makes me cry because there is nothing that is more powerful for me than to see his mercy in action. Our God is mercy, and he is love. As I've said many times, his number one goal for you is not just to make you loving. He does doesn't want to make you nice. He wants to make you love, just like He's love. That's a tall order. But it's possible. All things are possible with God.
Today, we are going to talk about another Jesus way, and that is child likeness. We are going to talk about being like children. Most of the world has lost that. Most of the adult world has lost that much of the child world has lost that much to my dismay. Too many children are being asked to grow up way too soon and grapple with issues that they should not have to grapple with when they are 10 years old. But such as our world. But Jesus has something better for us. We are going to look at the Jesus way of child likeness this morning. And we are going to start with Mark chapter 10, verse 13. Cheryl, how about if you start us out with that? This is in the New Living Translation.
Cheryl: One day some parents brought their children to Jesus so he could touch them and bless them, but the disciples scolded the parents for bothering him. When Jesus saw what was happening, he was angry with his disciples. He said to them, "Let the children come to me. Don't stop them, for the kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these. I tell you the truth; anyone who doesn't receive the kingdom of God, like a child will never enter it." Then he took the children in his arms and placed his hands on their head and bless them.
Jeff: There is actually quite a lot to unpack here. We are going to take our time to walk through it a little bit and walk through some things about what children are like. Cheryl, I'm married to the most childlike person I know, which is really fun. It's really important for me because I'm probably the least childlike person I know.
Cheryl: You are.
Jeff: So I'm preaching to me.
Cheryl: I have a hard job. I have a hard, hard job.
Jeff: You do. You do. We are going to, it's going to walk through some, some things here. What I want to start with about this verse is that we have to recognize that it was the parents who were bringing the children to get blessed by Jesus. And it was the parents who were rebuked for bringing their children to get blessed by Jesus. It's very important, parents, that we bring our children to be blessed by Jesus, parents and grandparents. There is nothing more important that you will ever do in your year. See how important that is.
Cheryl: Wow.
Jeff: Exclamation point.
Cheryl: This is where I come in. When I was a child, I am so thankful that my parents brought me to church. I lived on a farm and our property was actually connected to the church property, so I often could look at the old country church with the big white steeple. That was where I had gone to. And that was where we went to find out about God. My parents brought me there and my experience inside of that building and sitting there for a whole hour, that just seems so long, I could sit there and I could watch the worship. I could hear the old hymns.
I would listen to the words, holy, holy, holy, and I would look at the stained glass windows, which were beautiful in this church. It helped me get through the hour. I would just look at those colors and I would just stare at them like forever. And that was part of a child noticing, have awareness of what's around them. My parents would go up for communion and I think the kids would sit and wait if you were old enough. My dad would come back and sit down and I could smell the wine on his breath. I was just so curious about what is that? I want some of that.
Jeff: The pastor.
Cheryl: The pastor was like God to me. I knew he wasn't God, but I was__ I went to Sunday school as a child on the farm. I was lonely and that couldn't have been better for me to have God displayed to me that way. When my Sunday school teacher told me, which you've heard before, "I am always with you," is what God says, I was like, what? That is the best news for me. That was the beginning of, of any of my loneliness, anywhere in my childhood to be taken care of: that scripture that he was always with me.
So anyway, I just want to say that as parents, bringing your kids to church, it was just so important to me that they were involved. They went, came in and my dad was on some kind of counsel. My mom was in ladies' aid; she would help in the kitchen. I just watched all of that and it really has made good formations in my life, really good. I didn't question as a child anything that I heard or saw or watched in church. It was something that I really took in and believed.
Jeff: I don't know if the statistics had changed, but the last time I heard them, I think it was like 80% of all believers accept Jesus before they are 18. I don't know if any of you have discovered__ There is a song that is done by Elevation Worship called "Talking to Jesus". Anybody discovered that song? If you haven't, do a search on YouTube? it's really a wonderful song about the passing of Jesus from generation to generation to generation. It's just simply entitled, "Talking to Jesus" and really stirred my heart. But Jesus said, anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf is welcoming me. So that's pretty significant. I'd like to welcome Jesus. Of course, the opposite side of that, if you are not welcoming children on his behalf, you are probably not welcoming him. Right.
One of the first things we want to understand about child likeness is probably that it's important that we like children. It's probably important that they like us.
Cheryl: I think sometimes it creeps into us that we don't like children. I don't know, I think we kind of form that in our lives and we become that. And it really isn't the truth.
Jeff: Oh, if they just stop running and making noise. Actually, that's one of the most beautiful noises on the earth is children running and making noise, laughing. It's not always beautiful when they are fighting, but that's what children do. Here are a few things children do well, and the reason I'm bringing these up is because most of us, not most of us, many of us have lost our children's hearts, so we've forgotten how to do these things. But children play well. Children are full of delight and wonder, right. Have you lost your wonder? We were talking about this. Cheryl said children imagine and they create.
Cheryl: Growing up on the farm, we would go out in the alpha field. Do you know what that is? It's a thick green growth of hay, and it's what you feed your livestock. My brother and I would go out in there and we would crawl around in it and make these pads and we would make rooms and we would create this house. Oh, and then we would take it from there and it would just be a whole story of play all day. We would take the clothesline and six rocks and clothes, pins and blankets and make a tent. We would get the hammer and nails out and make some stilts and ramps for our bikes and trikes to fly off of. We just were so enthusiastic. If we wanted to do something, we could figure out how to do it. We would just do it. It was just so great. So great.
Jeff: Yeah. Children also trust very easily. They are open, but it also makes them vulnerable, doesn't it? That's right. We tend to learn in our adult lives not to be so open or vulnerable. Oftentimes, the wounds that we received have actually reversed that, and then we become cynical and cynical is a fairly destructive behavior pattern to have. It's not a positive one.
Cheryl: We carry them to this day, the good formations and there are some of the bad formations. We want to look at and we can take care of the ones that are bad. We can.
Jeff: Yeah. As parents, and even as adults in the church, we really want to consider what we are imparting to our children because they are going to receive what we impart. Is what we are imparting something that's going to be positive in their lives? Is it going to build them up or is it going to be negative in their lives? Is it going to tear them down? Pastor Brian has shared when he was a little boy in church, some of the negative experiences that he had and how he still remembers those to this day. But he's also told about people in his life who were meaningful in his life and he has remembered those to his day. Every one of us has those memories. We have negative and we have positive, you know, and both the negative and the positive follow us, especially those memories as children, because those things do follow us.
Sometimes what happens if there is more negative than positive, it closes us and we end up coming into adulthood, not trusting, not open. We end up closed; we end up not trusting. It takes a lot to get us to trust again. Jesus has to find ways to overcome what others have done to us so that we can trust him again. One very special thing about children is that they are not self-aware.
Cheryl: This is where I tell the underwear story.
Jeff: Yes. They are uninhibited.
Cheryl: Growing up on the farm in the summer only, of course I would get up in the morning and just go outside. I wouldn't even get dressed. I'd just have my underwear on and I would be in that all day on the hot summer day. A little girl just doing my thing and don't bother with putting on pants and a shirt. I had things to do. Then it was time to go to the grocery store. Well, my mom would be walking to the car and say, come on, we are going to the store and I would get in the car and we'd go to the store just like that. I was pretty little. But one time we did that and we were about ready to go into the store. I became aware of moderation. It just hit.
Jeff: Modesty.
Cheryl: Modesty, modesty. And it just hit me. And I was like, "Mom, I can't go in the store like this. I'm not dressed." And she was like, "Well, stay in the car then." So I jumped in the backseat, and I rolled myself into a ball on the floor. in the backseat the whole time she shopped. I'll never forget that. I was uninhibited until that moment that I was suddenly aware of modesty, which is a good thing. I just remember that so clearly.
Jeff: We all go from a, you know, child likeness to a place of self-awareness, most of us that typically comes to us about the time of adolescence. We become more self-aware. Unfortunately, with self-awareness also comes self-criticism and criticism of others in comparison to others. Typically, for many of us, that was in our, our middle school or junior high school years. I don’t know about you, but those were horrible years for me. My hair would never do what it was supposed to. You look in the mirror in the morning before school and nothing looked right, and you had to go to school and face all those other kids who were picking on you anyways. You felt so out of place and so awkward. And then you had those dreams. I don’t know, maybe you didn't have them, but you had those dreams of being in school and you forgot to put on your pants.
I remember once, I think it was in ninth grade and it was like one of the very first days back in school and I was in geometry class and I turned around and there was a kid behind me named Bill. He had obviously had a metamorphosis over his summer and he had long hair. I turned around and I said, hi Bill. I had a big smile on my face and he just stared at me. He didn't say hi. He just scowled at me. I turned around and I said, "I will never do that again. "You just so aware of yourself and your deficiencies and how people are treating you, and then, and then the reverse. You become aware of their deficiencies and that whole issue of self-awareness becomes just this horrible trap of self-criticism and judgements against yourself and against others. That just moves us right into a mess of an adulthood, doesn't it? Pondering this and I realized that this is the gift we received when we ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Adam and Eve were not self-aware. They were free. They ran around the garden naked and everything was fine. They had nothing to hide until they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The serpent told them, "You will become like God. You'll know the difference between good and evil." That was not a gift. That was not something that we ever wanted to know. Suddenly, they realized they had to cover themselves up and the whole human race, ever since then, we've known we had to hide ourselves, not just physically. We had to hide ourselves emotionally. We had to hide ourselves spiritually. We've been hiding ourselves ever since. We've lost our childlikeness because of the knowledge of good and evil. But Jesus said you need to receive the kingdom like a child. Boy, we are in big trouble here.
Let's see here. What are we going to do about this little dilemma that we are facing? Here is an interesting scripture. I've quoted this many times. It's the benefits of the Lord: Psalm 103. Marley, if we can pop over to that one.
Cheryl: Praise the Lord oh my soul, and forget not all of his benefits. Who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.
Jeff: Now, I've always thought of my youth being renewed as the Eagles, like this is the benefit of the Lord. I'm going to get my youthful vigor back. The older you get, the more you think about that. I need my youthful vigor back because it seems to be waning here. What if what the Lord is speaking about here is restoring to us our childhood? You see, everything that Jesus spoke about in terms of the metamorphosis of a relationship with him was spiritual. When he told Nicodemus, "You must be born again," even Nicodemus said, "How can I go back into my mother's womb?" And Jesus said, "No, no, no, no, what's born of flesh is flesh. But what's born of spirit is spirit." He was talking about a spiritual transaction that resulted in a heart transformation.
When Jesus said out of him shall flow rivers of living water, he was talking about the Holy Spirit. He was talking about a spiritual thing, from the inside, a flow of life coming out of us. When he spoke to the woman at the well, he told her that whoever drinks of this water, there will be a well springing up inside of them, and you'll never thirst again. He wasn't talking about physical thirst. He was talking about spiritual thirst. He was talking about your life being satisfied. When Jesus talked about entering into relationship with him, he wasn't talking about physical satisfaction. He was talking about a spiritual life that results in eternal satisfaction for every one of us.
What about when he said, your youth is renewed like the eagles, what if he's talking about an inner rejuvenation of the child heart that we were born with the child heart, that man had before he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What if he's talking about a restoration back to what he intended for us to have that we had tasted of it when we were children, but we've long since lost now what if he wants to bring us back to a place where we trust easily, where we are vulnerable, where we can imagine and create, where we can play, where we can receive freely.
He actually is looking for us to come to that place in order to come to him. I understand that. There are people who need to have their intellectual questions answered in order to come to a place to face. CS Lewis was one of them. If you read his books or if you watch the recent movie they did about him__ what was the name of that movie? The recent one, and it was the name of his book as well. I lost it. But it's all about all of his intellectual argents against Christianity being answered. But the thing about CS Lewis is, after all of those intellectual argents are answered, and he decided he had no more arguments, intellectually, he could no longer not believe in Jesus.
In the end, his faith wasn't intellectual. He met Jesus and he became like a child. His faith was real. It wasn't intellectual any longer; he was transformed into a child. He wrote children's books. You see, he began to imagine. That's how it is for every one of us. I mean, going into it. The Lord is so merciful, he will answer your intellectual questions. They are not important, but he will answer them for you because he wants to give you a doorway into faith. But at whatever point you come to faith when you meet him, you will become as a child because it's simply believing him.
Cheryl: What I love like about being a child is things don't have to be complicated. They can be simple and powerful.
Jeff: In fact, the more complicated you make them, the less you are going to understand him.
Cheryl: Other people won't understand you
Jeff: Mark 11:25, throw that one up. I think that's on the fourth page, maybe.
Cheryl: I praise you, father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the why and learned and revealed them two little children. Yes, father, for this is what you are pleased to do.
Jeff: This is what you were pleased to do. You see, we defer. We are living in a world that lives by facts and studies. Everything that we are supposed to do depends on the pile of papers. I had a friend describe it to me once. He says, we have all these studies, and whoever has the highest stack of papers wins, scientific studies. And we just argue by scientific studies. The lord says, I thank you Father, that you've hidden these things from the wise and the learned. You are not going to get there from here. The real issues of life, the real, deepest, heartfelt issues of life are given to children. That's us or it could be us if we will be like children, if we insist on being wise and learned, if we insist on holding to our theology, if we insist on holding to our doctrine, if we hold that up over what Jesus is seeking to release in us__ Whoa! Those are fighting words, right?
You have to be careful, pastor, that you don't get the wrong doctrine. Except, that whose doctrine is the right doctrine and whose doctrine is the wrong doctrine? Well, my pastor's doctrine is obviously the right doctrine. My denomination's doctrine is the right doctrine. The Pharisees doctrine was the right doctrine, but Jesus didn't have very kind words for the Pharisees.
My favorite scene in all of the two seasons of The Chosen is a scene where Nicodemus meets Jesus. Poor Nicodemus is trying to keep his position among the Pharisees, but he can't overcome his wonder because regardless of all, no matter how learn it he is, I mean, the way he's portrayed in The Chosen, regardless of how learn it he is in all his years of instruction and in his stately position and all that he is attained to, he is still a child at heart. He is full of wonder at the miracles that he has seen, and he can't describe him and he needs to meet the man who did them. He's undone and he becomes like a child.
Even the most learned can let go of all that and become like children. Every one of us can do that or not. You see, or not. But that's what the Lord offers us. He wants to renew our childhood. He wants to give you__ A lot of people might say, I had a horrible childhood. The last thing I want in my life is to go back to my childhood. A lot of us might say, my father beat me. My father was a drunk. My father abandoned me. I never knew my father. What God wants to do is give you the Father you never had.
You had a horrible childhood. What God wants to do is give you a childhood that you never had. This is the mercy of our Heavenly Father. He wants to give you the richness of a relationship with him that will give you something that you never had before. In his mercy and in his love, he wants to heal your broken heart. He wants to deliver you from the anger and the cynicism and the mistrust that has made you who you are as an adult. He wants to transform the kind of adults you are so that you are able to trust and love again. Because that's how you can have joy again. He wants you to find a way to play again. That is a Jesus way, playing.
I remember in Ukraine, our translators were young men in their twenties. These guys were pretty new believers. I was always so amazed, because they were the up and comers in the church. They were in Bible school and they loved God, but man, they wrestled and they played; they played so well. I just thought that was so cool. I just wanted to get on the ground and wrestle with him. Go ahead.
Cheryl: I had a good father, but when I met the Lord, it's true. I realized that he was the father of all fathers and he really did become the perfect Father Fathers can do well too, but they still are not perfect. It's so important for people to, I think, experience him as the father, the true father.
Jeff: That's really in the end__ the real heart of what the Lord wants to touch us with this morning is that he wants to restore to us the child's heart that he always intended us to have. The second thing is, and maybe even better than that, is he wants us to become like children so that we can have a relationship with him as children of our father, and we can know him as our father. We can hold his hand. You know how it is. If you are five years old and you are walking in a big city, you'd be terrified except that you are holding your dad's hand. And then it doesn't matter where you are going. You are oblivious all the traffic, all the sounds, all the noise, all the big buildings, all the honking, the big buses going by.
Cheryl: Bumping into people.
Jeff: Yeah, everything. It doesn't matter; you are holding your daddy's hand. That's what he wants to give us. He wants to teach us how to hold his hand again. He wants to give us that place as little children holding his hand because we are living in difficult situations. We are walking downtown, and the buildings are big and the buses are loud and there are a lot of people and it's kind of scary. And some of us are living in very difficult times. We are struggling in relationships. We are struggling in our finances; we are struggling in our jobs. I don't know about you, but I need to hold my daddy's hands sometimes. It's really nice to have a daddy to do that with. It's really nice to be childlike enough to be able to go to him and do that. That's where I want to learn how to live. The world doesn't get it. People can laugh at me. That's okay. How are you, Jeff? Oh, I'm great because of Jesus. That Jesus, he was quite a guy. Thank you, Lord. Anybody feel like this would be a good thing to get? Anybody feel like you need to get it? Let's just lift our hands to the Lord and let's just ask him to do a fresh work in us.
Jesus, we hear these things and we want to play again. We want to trust again. We want to be able to take hold of your hand and be at peace again. We want to imagine and create and dream and not be afraid. We just open our hearts to you, Holy Spirit. We just say yes. Yes. Renew our youth. Renew our childhoods. Renew the child in each one of us that's able to frolic before you to take your hand and trust you, to sit on your lap and snuggle with you, to love you, to know your love, to be content in your love, to be satisfied there. What a wonderful place to be. We love to see that you love us. We love to hear you say that you love us. We love to hear you say well done. We love that we can run to you. We choose that path, that way. Form in us, new hearts, childlike hearts, trusting hearts, young hearts. Call us out Holy Spirit, when we are crabby and complaining and old and set in our ways and cynical. I just see you just smiling and laughing a little bit and pushing us outside of our boundaries and we look at you and we are frustrated and you just laugh a little bit and we see it's just you. We can trust you. We'll go there with you. That's a good thing. We trust you for that. Thank you, Jesus.
If you would like to pray more about this, there will be people up here who will be happy to pray with you about it, or if you need prayer for healing or any other needs. Pastor Brian is going to be sharing communion, so you can go and receive the Lord's supper for any need that you have or just to, just to receive it and otherwise you can just fellowship together, pray for each other wherever you are. Have a wonderful Sunday and a great week. God bless you all. Come on up.
Brian: Thank you, Pastor Jeff. Let's all stand together, shall we? Let me just bless you. I'm so thankful that the Lord can restore lost innocence. So thankful that the Lord can restore those things that as the Old Testament says, the locus and canker worm has eaten, and that even though there may have been destruction in our lives at the schemes of the enemy or by the schemes of the enemy, God's plan of restoration is always greater. For where sin did abound, grace did much more abound, where the consequences of sin, abounded, restoration, and grace much more abound. So we are so thankful for that. Let's receive from the Lord.
Now, may the Lord bless you and may the Lord keep you. May the Lord make his face or 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 become like a child in the eyes of the Lord. This we pray in the name of the Father, Son, holy Spirit. Amen. Again, we'll have people to pray for you here. I'll be serving communion here in a few minutes if you want to come over to the communion table. Thank you for being here today. God bless you all for having watched online. Have a wonderful day. Bye-bye.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 11-6-22. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.