Pastor Brian and Jacque Lother
Jacque: Thank you. Hey kids, you can be dismissed. Happy birthday, Marilyn. Happy birthday, Marilyn. She didn't hear me. Happy birthday, Marilyn. She still didn't hear me. Okay. Oh, it's so good to have the kids here. God, we bless you as you go, kids. We bless you. Just a couple announcements as Brian is coming. Today is our long-awaited day of prayer. We are going to be praying for six hours from one to seven, and it's all online on Zoom. It's just going to be such a blessing. I'm so excited. Every hour there is a different leader with just a few moments of inspiration on a certain topic and then prayer just flows. I promise you that hour goes by so fast. You can see all the different time topics and figure out your schedule when you would want to come and join us. You could even come for parts of a couple of whatever. When I get on there, I don't get off. It's just such a blessing. So, I just like to sit through it all, but that's not expected. If you have some time, come in. You can find that information on our website or how many of you get the Tuesday email? Do you get the Tuesday email? How many of you read the Tuesday email? Okay. That's the question. That's great. But anything you ever want to know about church is in the Tuesday email. It's called Hope Happenings. All the links are in there to everything. Call me if you need some information; I'll happily give it to you for you to join us. And then one more thing. Brian, you mentioned that we should say for our friends around the country that join us on livestream. It's central time.
Brian: Today, the prayer is from one to seven central standard time.
Jacque: Okay, there you go. And I can't figure it out.
Brian: Very soon, it'll be central daylight time.
Jacque: Okay. Yeah, that'll be good. And then one more thing: this Saturday, the women are gathering here at church for a brunch and I'm so excited because TaQuaris is going to be sharing. TaQuaris, we already feel like you've always been a part of us forever. But I'm so excited that we are going to get to hear more of her story this Saturday. She has a beautiful story of redemption. You are a beautiful, beautiful person. We love you. We are really excited to hear you share on Saturday. Nicki and Carrie are creating a waffle bar, ladies There is even going to be gluten free waffles there.
Brian: In Norwegian they are waffles.
Jacque: Waffles.
Brian: Yeah, waffles. Any Norwegians here? Okay. You'll come and have—
Jacque: I hope Ella wasn't listening to my pronunciation of that.
Brian: Jacque's Norwegian relatives say when she tries to speak Norwegian and they say she sounds so charming.
Jacque: That's their way of saying silly: charming.
Brian: I'm really excited about all the things that God is doing here at Hope. It has been a tough couple years in a lot of ways. I'm so thankful for our technical crew that helped us to kind of pivot at the beginning of COVID when there were so many restrictions that needed to be followed. Our online community is growing almost daily, weekly, and we are so thankful for all of you who watch regularly, who write to us and who also support us across the country. We are so thankful for that. We also have a home base here that God has been putting a team together over the last few months. We are so thankful for Pastor Robert and TaQuaris and the addition of their family to us. Let's just thank the Lord for that. I'm just very excited today to introduce to everybody our new youth director we've just hired. Dan, would you please come on up, please? It's good to have you here, buddy.
Dan: Thank you.
Brian: This is Dan Dan's a Bethel graduate, and his mom and dad are here. I believe his father is on the faculty of Bethel seminary. We are so thankful for your attendance today. I tell you what, there were two things that impressed me about Dan. The first was just how much passion he has to care for kids. I tell you what, if you are a youth director, you better have a passion and care for kids. Otherwise, you'll be most frustrated. But the other thing that I appreciated about Dan was obviously with COVID and planting of the starting of the influence church with Kelly and Catalin, there was an attrition rate that happened here with our young people and so forth. I said, "You are not coming into a situation where you are inheriting this large youth group, but rather, it's something that's going to need to be built from the ground up." His response was, "That's just what I want to do." Let's just thank you for that. Introduce yourself and just tell us a little bit about how excited you are to be a part of us.
Hello, my name is Daniel Soche. You can call me Dan, or you can call me Daniel. It is fine. As Brian said, I graduated from Bethel university in 2021. I went through COVID as a college student, which was just a great experience. I also gained experience there working with youth. I interned at a youth group for two years and one of the things I had to do there was figure out how to do youth group from the ground up because we had to go online because of COVID. So I'm really, really excited to come into this community and work with the youth. I feel really called to youth ministry. It's something that I've been passionate about for several years and I hope to be able to have an impact on the young people of this church.
Parents, if you are watching at home or parents, if you are here, I would love to get to know you because you are a much bigger influence in your kids' lives than I will ever be. And so I want to help you. I want to walk alongside your kids, and I want to walk alongside your families as the youth group develops and continues. Hopefully, soon we might do a meet and greet with me, like a luncheon type thing so that you can ask me questions, get to know me a little bit better, or we can get coffee or lunch or something. I'm also a big fan of lunch.
Brian: If you are a big fan of lunch, you are going to be a great pastor.
Dan: That's a little bit about me and my passion for youth. I don't know if there is anything else you want.
Brian: We are just excited to have you be a part of the team. Let's just thank the Lord and give Dan a welcome.
Dan: Thank you.
Brian: After the service, please introduce yourself to Dan. He is sitting right over here. He is not going to leave really quickly. Lunch isn't really important for him today. So he'll come and he'll be here to visit with the interview. So we'd love to have you spend some time with him. God bless you, Dan. Great to have you here.
Many of you know that Jacque and I took a few weeks off to get some R and R this January and February. Our first Sunday back from this little bit of an extended stay in Maslan, the Lord gave Pastor Robert a word for the church, and we want to just not just listen to it. We typed this out and we want to hand it out to everybody. I would like to just quickly review this word with us because it's very important that we assimilate this and understand that God is really working through us and for us here. There are some things that are happening right now with the city of Corcoran that I'm actually not quite yet at Liberty to talk about publicly, but it's all very, very good. It will have a really huge, positive impact upon our ability to really establish what God's vision was for us here when God first sent us out here over 20 years ago. The guys are handing this out to you so that you can read it. Take this home and over it and just be excited about it.
Jacque: I think it's really important that we read and we pray that God's will be done for us. We pray it.
Brian: I'm just going to go over this. Obviously, he started by saying it was good to have Jacque and I back and it's always nice to be wanted. How many know that it's nice to be wanted? One of the worst things that can be said to me after I've been gone for three weeks was, "Oh, were you gone? You were gone? Oh." It's nice to be missed. It's nice to be one on it. Pastor Robert said this "As I was standing there preparing to come up, I just had an impression in my spirit. Pastor Brian and Jacque, you left here to get a time of refreshing. And there were some things that as you left, you left behind. That was the truth. There were some things that we wanted to kind of leave, some of the things of 2021 behind us.
Jacque and I were a part of 21 funerals in 2021. There were six other funerals that we weren't able to attend because we were doing the funerals. One of those funerals was the man that was the best man in our wedding. We weren't even able to be a part of his funeral. And so in 2021, there were a lot of reasons to want to just leave it in the rear view mirror, but at the same time, there were so many things that God was faithful to Hope in 2021. At the end of the year, financially, we were better off financially at the end of 2021 than we'd ever been in the history of our church. So that is a very tremendous gift from God and it's a hallelujah. It's a hallelujah for us.
He said, "Now that you've returned, it's not just coming back home, but it's coming into a new season. I had a real sense of that. I believe that new season kind of started with Pastor Robert and TaQuaris coming on staff. But how many know that you want more than just a spring thaw. You want to keep moving into the late spring and early summer, and you can plant your crops and you can get a harvest in the fall. You don't want just to have a spring thaw. I kind of felt like Robert coming was kind of the spring thaw. It was like the line in the Witch and the Wardrobe where the snow was starting to melt and all that sort of stuff, and Aslan was starting to come back.
I felt like this was just kind of the beginning. We are coming into a new season. There are some different things on the horizon. And so God is saying that which is before, is gone and now today is a new day, and so to open up our expectations. I just want to focus on that for a second, that it's really important that we live in a place of expectation with God, that no matter how young you are or how old you are, God always has something more for us, no matter what our circumstance, there is another part of God that God wants to give to us. We need to live in that place of expectation to us. There are different things on the horizon. God is saying that which was gone before is gone, and now, today is a new day, so open up your expectations.
Open up your baskets because it's a new day, a new harvest, a new reaping, a transition, a transition for hope, a transition for the community and a transition in our hearts. We have to be ready to expect a greater harvest in so many different ways. I believe when we first came out here— and some of you've heard this story— this was just a cornfield. There was no development out here. I really felt like this was the place where we were to be. Jacque said to me, when we drove by this cornfield:
Jacque: Aren't you supposed to build a church where there are people?
Brian: Aren't you supposed to build—? It is interesting how God uses all sorts of things. Right about that time, the movie, Field of Dreams, had just come out. Of course, the mantra of that, that movie, if you build it, they will come. And so we built it and then the recession hit and nothing came, but we were faithful and we just remained faithful to the vision. We knew that God had spoken to us. And now in the last four or five years, development is happening in an incredible way. The city is actually partnering with Hope Community Church on a number of different levels to help facilitate that development that's coming to our community.
Many of you know that I served on the city council. So for just a short period of time as an interim council member to replace a gentleman that had to get off the council. In just the six-months period of time that I was on the council over a thousand houses were given permission to be built in just that six-month period of time. Jim, who has developed in Corcoran, knows that's a lot of houses for Corcoran. That's a lot of houses. The people are coming. There has been more development and more applications being brought into. So the people are coming and we have been put here for such a time as this.
Jacque: The Lord showed me later. I was just praying, why did you bring us here? What are you doing, God? And I saw it so clearly that we came out here and captured this land when it could be captured, when it could be afforded.
Brian: When we could afford it.
Jacque: We captured this land for the purposes of God. It is his shining light. The tower at night shines. It is his love and his light on this corner.
Brian: In this process, God is doing work in our hearts and in the hearts of our hope community. God is transforming our hearts to live in a place of expectancy. How many know that when you go kind of maybe year after year and you pray for things and the millstone of God grinds ever so slowly? But it does grind ever so finely. When God is done with his grinding, everything will be perfectly ready. That's kind of where we are right now.
Jacque: Brian, I can see how in our hearts, our lives, he has been working in our hearts all these years. I'm so grateful.
Brian: Thank you, Lord. God is transforming our hearts for what he is doing. And the oldness of our hearts had to be surgically removed by him for what he is because as we are going to God's transplant table, the old has to be rooted out. We need to all just ask the Lord, what do you want to take out of me to make me more ready for what you have for me in the future? Sometimes as a long time believer, it's easy to think that you have it all together. We fall into this state of lukewarmness, which is neither good for refreshing or good for warming up when you are really cold, as far as the drink goes. We need to do all of that. It's kind of like when you go in for knee surgery, they have to scrape the old stuff out and everything that was broken and tattered away, they have to clean it out for them to be able to put the new knee in there.
God is doing that and has done that with our hearts. God is in the works of transforming our hearts and changing our hearts, giving us a bigger heart for our community, giving us a bigger heart for the people who need the love of Christ. God wants to speak, and he says here— I see, in the last few weeks, quite a few younger people coming into the house. How many know that a church can't survive if it just has old people in it? We need multi-generations. Hope has always been a multi-generational church. That kind of transitioned the last few years through COVID and a number of other things. Now we have to be very intentional about being multi-generational again. That's one of the reasons I'm very excited about Dan and what he is going to bring to Hope Community Church. I'm just so thankful for a young man that's not afraid to get down and dirty and get his hands dirty and work because it takes a lot of work to do a lot of the stuff that needs to be done here.
We are thankful for what Justin and his worship team brought to the table while we were gone. We are still praying that some more things will happen out of that. I just think there is much to be said about this whole idea that God is going to be bringing more young people in here. We need to give them a place. We need to give them a place to have service, not just sit back and watch us do our thing. We need to make room. We need to make room for the people that God is bringing here. I want all of us to pay attention to that because it's not just happenstance nor is it just circumstance.
God is doing something in the house in this community and God is using all of us to be able to come together to receive that which is new and what the Lord is doing here. So we are all a part of it. We are all a part of it. We can't just say, well, that's the pastor's job or the servant council's job, or Dan's job, or Pastor Robert's job or whatever. It's all of our job to really be this house that will cultivate what God is wanting to do. I think there was some applause during that time, and then Pastor Robert said, yeah, we should all get excited about that because I'm excited about that. I'm excited that Robert is excited. I'm excited when you get excited because when we are all excited, it makes Hope a better place. It just does.
Jacque: And then Dan brings a whole other level of excitement. That's awesome.
Brian: I love Dan's laugh. I'm going to record it and play it for me from time to time. Just when I'm all splitting wood, I can put Dan's laugh out there and then I can be encouraged.
We just finished by saying, so we praise God for loving us. Isn't it wonderful that we are loved by God? God has not forgotten about us. I'll be honest with you; sometimes I thought, man, when this millstone was grinding so slowly, it's like, God, we are here, you know? It's easy to sometimes think that God's forgotten about us. That's our emotions talking. That's our feelings talking.
Jacque: Remember the verse that we named Hope from. It's on the building.
Brian: "I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to give you a future and a hope, plans to prosper and to bless you." What most people don't remember is Israel was actually in Babylonian captivity when that verse was given. They were in slavery or, or at least in captivity under the Babylonian empire. They had all been basically kidnapped away from their homeland, taken into Babylon. And God says, "I know the plans I have for you." So we've not been captured. We've not been taken into captivity. We know that God is with us. This place is a strategic place in this community, and we really believe that. We really believe God has placed us here very strategically.
For those of you who are new, that don't know this, but we actually own 60 acres out here. Our control in a sense goes all the way out to the corner and also behind us. God has put into our hearts, 20 years ago, plans for a medical facility, as well as seniors, housing development, as well as a hospice and memory care and so forth. These are things that our city is very excited about. I had a personal meeting with the mayor just before we went to Mexico, drove him around our property and told him what we would like to do. He said this would be great for our community. We are really partnering with the city and God wants to bless our community through what we want to do here.
Jacque: We will love them one person at a time because everybody matters. We will be able to minister to so many people physically and spiritually.
Brian: This place is a strategic place in this community, and that which was planted years ago is on the cusp of being manifested right now. I really feel like this is the time to say that we waited patiently and what we have waited for is now about to arrive. We thank the Lord for that. I ask that you just all keep praying about that and cultivating that in your hearts and take this prophetic word, this word that the Lord gave to Pastor Robert for our church and that's for all of us. Let's just really pray over it and cultivate it and water it and just watch God do a great thing.
Jacque: I want to thank the Lord for speaking to us. Lord, we thank you that you are with us and we thank you for your presence with us. We thank you that you do speak to us and you guide us and you lead us and we cherish. We cherish you and we cherish that you are speaking to us, father, and we thank you. Help us all to be faithful, to carry out and to live and to follow you that Hope will be a community that you've dreamed us to be, and that your will will be done, your plans will happen and we will be Jesus to this area. Thank you, God. Thank you.
Brian: I think it's really important the last number of years now. I really feel like we've been on a quest to really learn what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Jesus did not come to bring a new religion into the world. I want to talk to you today just for a short period of time on what I titled this message: the map or the treasure. How many know of that it's wonderful to have a treasure map Why is it good to have a treasure map treasure? So you can find the treasure. But some people have been content with loving the map and not taking the map and finding the treasure.
The Bible is far more than simply a religious holy book. It is virtually a library of what I would call ancient documents, because there were many letters that were compiled. But sometimes we miss the real point of the Bible because the Bible really points toward a surprisingly, what I would call, nonreligious spirituality that ultimately culminates in what the religious leaders at the time of Christ described as a subversive message and a subversive mission of Jesus. Jesus actually came to kind of undo the religious system and replace it with himself. He replaced it with himself and some of the rules and the rituals and the traditions and the laws found in the Bible, they are like a map that leads to a great treasure though they themselves are not the treasure.
The rituals and the rules and the regulations that we find in the scriptures, particularly the Old Testament, are not the treasure. They are simply the roadmap to get us to the treasure. Paul says it this way in Galatians that the law was given as a tutor or teacher or an instructor to bring us to Jesus, to bring us to Christ. Here's the kicker: Religious people often tend to confuse the treasure map with the treasure. Religious people do that. Jesus is the treasure. The primary mission of Jesus was to tear down religion as the foundation for how people connected with God and replace it with himself. He said, "I am the way the truth in the life, and no man comes to the father, but through me."
One of the things that really frustrated Jesus at the time of his soldiering on earth was all the roadblocks that the religious community put up between people and God and the hoops that people had to jump through to get to God or to appease God or somehow get God's attention. God was coming to us in our form and in our context, in the person of Jesus, and Jesus put on display for all people to see what the heart and love of God was for all people. Jesus demonstrated; the very life of Jesus demonstrated the personification of the heart of God and what God's heart was for all of us as humanity. The stories that Jesus told and the things that he taught, even the healings that he offered all helped in some way, shape or form to dismantle the smug assumptions of the religious people of his day.
How many of you notice how many miracles he did on the Sabbath? That was intentional? Yeah, that was intentional. He also had an aim. Jesus had another aim. We sometimes miss this, but he had an aim of destabilizing people's reliance or dependence on a system when implemented, we think it would somehow appease God or get his attention. Should I say that again? That was a mouthful. One of Jesus' quests was to dismantle the assumptions, which were very smug assumptions, of the religious people of that day that their assumption was you need our system to connect to God, you need to do this to connect to God, and it became a works mentality.
You notice the man that Jesus healed who was blind; I think he was blind for 38 years and Jesus healed him. If you've been blind for 38 years and Jesus came along healed you, do you think you'd keep it quiet? No. He started telling everybody. It didn't take long for a word to get back to the rank and file of the religious leaders. So they haul him in. Who did this? I don't know who did this. On and on becomes the interrogation. At the end, they become very frustrated when the man says, “I don't know anything about who Jesus is. I don't know anything about him, but I do know this: Once I was blind, but now I see." Once I was blind, but now I see. And their response was, "You are nothing but a sinner." They couldn't see the love and the manifold grace of God being poured out in this person's life because he was beneath them.
I want to begin today by just looking at what we call the first miracle that Jesus did. We know it to be the Wedding at Cana where he turned the water into wine. Let's read it really quick in John 2:1-11.
Jacque: The next day, there was a wedding celebration in the village of Cana in Galilee. Jesus's mother was there and Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the celebration. The wine supply ran out during the festivities. So Jesus' mother told him they have no more wine. "Dear woman, that's not our problem," Jesus replied. My time is not yet come," but his mother told the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."
Brian: I can just see this now. She has got one eye on Jesus and one eye on the servants. You know Jewish mothers. She says, "Do what he tells you." And then she looks at Jesus. Jesus, being a good boy, listened to his mother.
Jacque: She was a discerning woman.
Brian: She was a discerning woman.
Jacque: Standing nearby were six stone water jars, used for Jewish ceremonial washing.
Brian: This is a really key part of this whole story.
Jacque: Each could hold 20 to 30 gallons. Jesus told the servants, "Fill the jars with water." When the jars had been filled, he said, "Now dip some out and take it to the master of ceremonies." So the servants followed his instructions. When the master of ceremonies tasted the water that was now wine, not knowing what had come from though. Of course, the servants knew. I said that wrong. Just a second.
So the servants followed his instructions. When the master of ceremonies tasted the water, that was now wine, not knowing where it had come from, though, of course, the servants knew. He called the bride groom over. "A host always serves the best wine first," he said. "Then when everyone has had a lot to drink, he brings out the less expensive wine, but you have kept the best until now." This miraculous sign at Cana in Galilee was the first time Jesus revealed his glory and his disciples believed in him.
Brian: So how's that for a wedding gift: Six huge jars full of the best wine. John records that each jar would've held somewhere between 20 and 30 gallons, that's somewhere between 120 and 180 gallons of the best wine in Israel. If each person had a four-ounce glass of wine, that would've been 3000 glasses of wine. Jesus was ready to have a party, I guess. When John uses the word that we translate miracle, or I shouldn't say we, but is translated miracle and the English text, it's really the same word that means sign. I like how the NLT translates this as miraculous sign. They are almost like saying this "sign sign" is what they are saying.
The sign was something that points towards the true nature of Jesus and his message and his mission. This miracle is not just about providing refreshment for thirsty guests, but there is much more going on here in this story. I suspect that Mary was there to help the family. I love the portrayal of this story in The Chosen. They do it really well. Mary was probably there as a help and a friend to the family. Jesus, of course, was invited as well and some of his friends/ followers. I don't really believe that Jesus was invited as an honored guest because at this time, we have to remember that Jesus had done virtually no miracles. He had done no real ministry to speak of, public ministry.
I wouldn't be surprised if his mother had witnessed some miraculous things during the course of raising him to the age that he was when this took place, around I imagine 30 years old. Mary, being there to help, comes across some inside information that nobody else knows, and that is the wine has run out. And so she turns to Jesus for some help. I think more than likely aware of some of his supernatural abilities. Jewish believers would be very familiar with water being turned into another substance because Moses was granted the power to turn water into blood. We see that in Exodus 4:9. Now, Jesus comes and turns water into wine as a symbol of God's real blessing and joy.
Moses' action was more of a demonstration of God's judgment. But God had stated that one day he would raise up someone like Moses, which we know to be Jesus, and like is similar in some ways, but obviously different in others. Moses, of course, offered freedom from slavery in Egypt and Jesus offered us freedom from slavery to sin. So they are similar and yet different. Moses demonstrated that through this miracle that showed what God's judgment could be like, but Jesus offered this miracle by demonstrating God's grace and mercy. It's God's grace and mercy that really transforms our hearts. But back to the miracle here for a second.
Have you ever wondered why Jesus instructed these servants to use these sacred containers set aside for religious ritual? Because these stone jars were used for one thing and one thing only, and that is to ceremonially wash their hands, a ceremonial cleansing of their sin. Let's face it, if they had run out of wine, there should have been plenty of empties to fill up. Wouldn't you agree? There were plenty of empties lying around that he could have filled up, but Jesus said to use the ritual cleansing containers. Let's read it again in verse six and seven of chapter two
Jacque: Standing nearby, were six stone water jars used for Jewish ceremonial washing. Each could hold 20 to 30 gallons. Jesus told the servants, "Fill the jars with water."
Brian: If there were any religious people there, religious leaders there, especially this would've been— I mean, why do something so intentionally potentially offensive? Why do this? But it was no accident that Jesus told them to fill these jars because Jesus purposely chose the sacred jars to challenge the religious system of converting them from icons of personal purification into symbols of re relational celebration. Again, that's a mouthful. But he chose that specifically to change the perception that this was not about instituting another religious form, but he was really coming to say it's relationship that my father in heaven is after.
Jesus takes us from holy water to wedding wine; that is really what he does. He took us from holy water to wedding wine from legalism to life, from religion to relationship. Jesus seems to be saying that his message of love, his very radically accepting, embracing, gauging love is too great to be contained by the old ways of religious tradition. It's too great to be contained by that. I am personally on a quest, and I have been for a number of years and I invite you to join me in my quest. My quest is that I want to learn more about and more from Jesus, who thinks our world needs more relationship with him and less religion in our world. I think Jesus understands and his heart for the world is that people in our world need more relationship with Jesus and they need less and less religion. They need just less and less of it.
I think there are some things that can be helpful. Jacque and I were talking about this last night. Religion can be, oftentimes, thought of as form and structure. I think, for example, having a date night that you set aside after you are married once a week, I think that's a great thing to do. It's something that enhances your life. It would be something that would be cultivating in your relationship. But what would happen if on that first date night, you go out for dinner and you sit across the table from each other and all night long, you both are like this. And then the next week you go out on Tuesday night again and you sit across the table and you do this again all night long. Five years later, after going out every Tuesday night and looking at your phone across the table, what has happened in your relationship? It has become more and more and more deteriorated. Hasn't it?
The form isn't the problem. It's what you do with the form. But now, after five years, the wife is frustrated and she says, "I'm done with this relationship." And the husband is clueless. He says, "We've been going out every Tuesday night for the last five years. What's wrong with you?" He was substituting form for a relationship. When we substitute form for our relationship with Jesus, we find ourselves, actually, killing other people in the name of God. We find ourselves doing horrendously terrible things. We judge sinners as someone we need to stay away from instead of embracing and making room for them in our lives.
I'm on this quest; this quest is that I want less religion that tries to either appease God or somehow get God's attention. I want less of that at, and I want more of the real relationship that I can have with Jesus by reaching for more. Here are a couple verses as we close to give you a clear indication of the desires that God has for us. We find the first one in Amos, Old Testament scripture, chapter 5:21.
Jacque: I hate all your show and your pretense, the hypocrisy of your religious festivals and solemn assemblies.
Brian: Wow! I thought you wanted me to do all these solemn assemblies. God, I thought you wanted me to have all these rituals. I thought you wanted me to wear all these clothes. I thought you wanted me to— and the list can go on, on and on and on. He says this, "I hate all of that show and your pretense. I hate the hypocrisy of your religious festivals and your solemn assemblies." Because Israel was practicing traditions that had lost their meaning. They lost their meaning, rituals that had lost their relevance to their understanding and the rules that had lost their love that God wanted to express to mankind. God said, "I despise all of that religious stuff because none of it is helping you to have a relationship with me."
If your prayer is about making you feel good about yourself, you are actually undermining your relationship with God. But if your prayers bring you closer to Jesus and closer to our father in heaven, then your prayers are really affectual. We can't love the map more than we love the treasure. We can't. We can't love the map and miss the treasure. There is another verse. We find it in Hosea 6:6.
Jacque: I want you to show love, not offer sacrifices. I want you to know me more than I want burnt offerings.
Brian: When Jesus went into the temple shortly before his crucifixion and he kicked out the money changes and all of that, I did a message once where I said what Jesus did at that time was he actually made room for the marginalized because the only people left there that day were the sick, the infirmed and the needy. That's when he said, "Come unto me, all you who are willing and I'll give you life. I'll give you something to drink that you'll never thirst again," like he said to the woman at the well. Jesus refers to this particular verse in Hosea 6:6 when he says this in Matthew 9:9-13. Let's read it.
Jacque: As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at his tax collector's booth.
Brian: By the way, don't you love how The Chosen kind of pictures Matthew: this kind of, I don't know, autistic kind of guy, almost or at least ADD or something. I just think they did a tremendous job with that. Of course, he has other friends who are tax collectors and other people who are what the religious leaders called people of disrepute or whatever. Jesus is going along. Matthew is sitting in his tax booth, and I'm sure Matthew knows who Jesus is. The Chosen, again, paints that picture really cool. But Jesus looks at him and says, “Follow me."
Jacque: He just walked right up to the booth.
Brian: Yeah. He says, "Follow me." And you know what? That's what Jesus is asking of us: to follow him.
Jacque: "Follow me and be my disciple," Jesus said to him. So Matthew got up and followed him. Later, Matthew invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. But when the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with such scum?"
Brian: Let me stop here for just a sec. What a wonderful way to evangelize. Have people over to dinner. You don't have to put a soapbox out on the corner of Hennepin in Washington and start preaching. Just invite people over to your house for dinner that need Jesus and let the conversation take place. Talk to them or maybe invite someone who wants to share a story about what Jesus has done for them. What an incredible concept of evangelism here. Matthew invites all of his scummy friends over to dinner, and of course, Jesus and Matthew get in the necks of the religious leaders. What is Jesus' response?
Jacque: So when Jesus heard this, he said, "Healthy people don't need a doctor; sick people do." Then he added, "Now go and learn the meaning of this scripture."
Brian: And he quotes the scripture that we just read in Hosea.
Jacque: I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifices, for I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.
Brian: Jesus came not to help those who think they've got it all together, but rather he came for the rest of us who know that we don't. I'm not saying thank you for that. I'm not saying that we can just live carelessly and wantonly in our lives as followers of Jesus. I'm not saying that. But he came for the rest of us who know that we don't always have it all together. When the treasure map is no longer used to find the treasure, it becomes something God despises. When the treasure map is no longer used to bring us to Jesus, it has become something that is an offense to God and he actually hates it. Jesus really did preach, what I call, a religion-less love, marked by the end of all the animal sacrifices, as well as the end of many religious rituals, as well as the end of many religious regulations that divide people into us and them.
God's heart is not to divide the world into us and them. He will do the dividing at the end of the age, but for us, it's not to be us versus them. Here is the ironic twist to the plot that the religious leaders did. This ironic twist is that by arranging the killing of Christ, the people who had religious power and those leaders unwittingly participated in the very end of their own religious system. Because it was the death of Christ that did away with all that, because he became the ultimate sacrifice for our sin. We no longer need to go through a man. We no longer need to go through another human being. We no longer need to jump through hoops. We no longer need to go through some kind of sacrificial system. We no longer need to have religious attire. We don't need any of that. We just need Jesus. Jesus offers himself to the world. He said, "All who come to me, I will in no wise cast out."
Through the crucifixion, Jesus became the last sacrifice, which brought to a close, the old covenant and the old ways of doing things, which was God's plan all along. Jesus is now giving all of us, the world, a special invitation to come into relationship with him. And some might ask why. I am quoting this" It's because he loves us. He loves us. Because he loves us. Because he loves us. Because he loves us Because He loves us. We don't have to measure up. We don't have to go through a ceremonial cleansing. The reason Jesus turned the water into wine out of those containers was to demonstrate that he now was the way to cleansing. He now was the way to true joy and that the old system was being set aside. That new covenant was truly going to be new.
We have done, historically speaking, as the church, not a very good job of keeping religion dead. We keep resurrecting it. We keep coming up with more rules. We keep coming up with more ways that people have to do this, that, and what have you in order to please God. Jesus simply says, "Come to me. Come to me." Let's begin this quest of coming to Jesus, knowing him more, knowing him more deeply, following him more passionately and let's just see what God does here. Pastor Robert, would you come and pray?
Robert: Jesus said, "Here I am at the door knocking. Anyone that hears my voice and opens the door— See there are a lot of these conditions. First, Jesus is knocking at the door of your hearts. He says, “He that hears my voice,” but after hearing, you have to open the door. He said, "Then I will come in and I will eat with them and they with me." What is Jesus knocking at the door of your heart about today? And are you listening to what he is saying, or are you shutting him out? He wants to open the door. He wants you to open the door Of your heart today. Let him in that place that you hold sacred, that you are trying to hold onto, that you are trying to figure out. You can't figure it out. He has already, and he wants you to let him in.
Father, we hear Jesus knocking and the holy spirit is telling us, don't ignore it. So Lord, we stand here today, opening the door for you in our hearts, and we say have your way. I pray, Lord, that the stumbling blocks, the walls, the hindrances, the hurts, the disappointments, the anger, the resentment, the bitterness, they all block the pathway of that door and don't allow you to come in, but I stand with your people today with a commitment to remove whatever is blocking you from coming in. The beauty about you, Lord, is sometimes those hurts and those stumbling blocks are too heavy for us to remove, but the beauty of you, Lord, is we can ask for your help, and you roll up your sleeves and you help us remove it.
Help us remove the clutter, Lord, so that you can be in our lives in a greater way than we can ever imagine. Father, I pray that we truly learn to be more like you, that we would draw closer to you as we continue to know more of you. So I thank you Lord, for this season, for this space to be able to know you more, and, therefore, you can shine through us more and more to spread your way to spread your love in the mighty name of Jesus. We thank you, Lord. Amen.
Historically, before we came up with all these religious titles about Christianity, those that followed Jesus were called the way. That's what we need to be about: the way. Jesus says, "I am the way." When Pastor Brian and I were meeting before I came on board, one of the things he talked about was studying the words in red, the words of Jesus. When we connected, I had told him I was on this journey, this transformation of what it means to be more in Christ. When we had those conversations, I said this is the person I want to come and partner with. If he is about learning more of Jesus and what Jesus said, then I'm in the right place. God bless you.
Brian: I'm so thankful that you are here today. I thank all of you who were watching online. For those of you who are here in our sanctuary, Dave and Lou will be serving communion after the service for those of you who would like to receive communion over here. Please, everybody, descend upon Daniel at the end of the service here, and his mom and dad, and bring a greeting to them. Let's just raise their hands together.
And now may the Lord bless you and may the Lord keep you. And 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 fall in love with the treasure and not the map. This, we pray in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen man, God bless you. Have a wonderful day. Thank you for being here today.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 2-27-22. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.