Pastor Brian and Jacque Lother
Jacque: Beautiful. Thank you very much, guys. Thank you. It's beautiful. kids, you can go to Sunday school. It's nice to have you here. All your energy. I love your energy. Just a couple things... Next Sunday, remember, we are having an all church lunch, so come to church and stay for lunch. If you are part of our online community and you live close here in Minneapolis, come join us for lunch next week and we can meet you. It would be really good to have you here. We are going to have some fun getting to know Daniel, our new youth leader. Yes, he has energy. I can see it in staff meetings. He has got lots of energy. Perfect. That's what you need to be a youth leader. Let me tell you. That's where we started a few decades ago when we had lots of energy. So we welcome you. We are looking forward to next Sunday.
Brian: I think it was five decades ago.
Jacque: I think you are right.
Brian: Steve would remember. Yeah. Ping pong.
Jacque: Steve was in the youth group.
Brian: And he's retired.
Jacque: He's so young looking though.
Brian: He was in our youth group and he's retired.
Jacque: He's not retired. Okay. I won't let that lie happen. Almost. Oh, but he's so young looking. He couldn't be that.
Brian: So are you.
Jacque: Okay. Thank you.
Brian: Yes.
Jacque: Stop. Okay, moving on here. Easter Lilies, Easter is coming; spring is here. If you would like to buy an Easter Lily in honor of a loved one, you can do that. Call our office and the church will be filled with Easter. Lil's on Easter Sunday morning, resurrection day.
Brian: Easter is such a wonderful day to celebrate. It's just so appropriate. Spring is coming. The lilacs are about to come into bloom and the tulips are pushing out of the ground and everything is like in front of us. Isn't that what resurrection is about?
Jacque: I think Minnesotans probably can appreciate that analogy more than any other state.
Brian: Yeah, I think so.
Jacque: We, who have winter and then suddenly spring break, as long as it isn't snowing on Easter.
Brian: Well, a couple of Easters, we sang "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas".
Jacque: Okay. And then just one more thing for your calendar. April 9th, we are going to have another game day while we are still kind of inside more and we are going to have a lot of fun. So read about it online and sign up and come join us.
Brian: Today after the message, we are going to have communion together. We have communion every Sunday for those who want it, but I'd like to do this for the whole congregation. For those of you who are watching by livestream, you can join us with that. Just prepare your own emblems here in your home or wherever you might be and when we have communion, we can do it all together. It's just a very special time that God's presence just is a new work in our hearts. I'm so thankful for what we can remember in Jesus.
Jacque: One more thing is before COVID, we always had different people standing at the front at the close of the service so that anybody could come up and have individual prayer. And you know what, we are back. We can do that
Brian: We are going to start implementing that again. So we have prayer leaders and prayer people that if you want a specific thing to be prayed for, maybe a healing that's a little bit slow and coming or whatever it might be. Whatever need you might have, we will have people at the altar at the frontier after the service to pray for you
Jacque: And an encouragement, just to come and be encouraged, pray about whatever is in your heart. If you would like to be a part of one of those prayer teams contact me and we are setting up a schedule now.
Brian: The title of my message today is "Storybook Realities". When you think of the life of Jesus and the person of Jesus, so much of what he did, he did in storytelling. Many of us have read many books through the years. A book, of course, is written in words, but the words are really, believe it or not, the important thing in the book. What matters is the message in the book. What are the words conveying? It's the message. There is a meaning that is intended to be portrayed or conveyed through the words. Especially in theological circles, when people lose sight of, uh, the message or they don't really understand the message, they then begin to often fixate on just the words themselves. When we start to fixate on the words, of course, what happens is all sorts of arguments happen between people.
This happens, of course, in religious circles. It's very disappointing to me that this happens in this realm. It all really kind of begins over the debate over like one word in a portion of scripture or in a whole book of scriptures. It has even gotten to the point where we argue with each other over various translations of the scriptures. And what happens is when we begin to argue over the translations is because, well, I feel like you left this word out or this doesn't convey this or that, or what have you, what ends up happening is we lose sight of the message of what the totality of the book is all about. I can tell you this unequivocally, I don't care what translation you would read. If you read the Bible from Genesis to revelation, you could meet Jesus there. You could meet Jesus there. This is one reason why Jesus really taught through storytelling, because it's really hard to miss the message when you see the story. It's really hard to miss the message of the prodigal son. Isn't it? It's hard to miss the message there. What's the message? This love of this father that it didn’t matter how far his son went into a distant land, how much he wasted the inherit irritants that he asked for in advance, rather than waiting for his father to die and completely disrespecting him in that way. And when we get right down to it, haven't we all disrespected our father in heaven during the course of our lives? Yet this story talks about this wonderful compassionate love, how a father was looking for his son to return and how when he was a long ways off, he ran to him.
You can't really miss the message of that story. You can't really argue over theological terms with that message. I really don't think, personally, of Jesus as a theologian now, I bet you, God could probably discuss and argue theology with you much better than anybody else could. But I don't think of God or Jesus as a theologian. I think of Jesus as God who told stories and through the various narratives that Jesus showed us these various truths about God, he showed us truths about ourselves in a way that refuses to support some people's religious temptation to fixate on specific theological words that prove their specific theological preferences, I guess, is how I would put it. We can learn about the heart of God and we can learn about what God is like by the stories he told or by the parables that he told. We can learn so much about him.
We can learn so much about how God is by the things Jesus did. One of Jesus' main declarations was, well, if you've seen me, who else have you seen
Jacque: You have seen the father.
Brian: Yeah, you've seen the father in heaven. I don't know why it was this way in my life, but for many years in my life, I didn't really see my father in heaven as the same way I looked at Jesus. I looked at Jesus as the nice guy and our father in heaven as the angry guy. Have any of you ever been in that spot? You've been there? Maybe it's because you were hanging around me. I don't know. We see Jesus' declaration because the disciples and you know, were saying, "Well, show us the father."
You ever imagine what Jesus' facial expressions were at times? I can just see the disciples saying, "Well, show us; What's the father like?" And I can just see Jesus kind of scratching his head. What?! You've been with me all this time and you don't know that the father and I are one? If you've seen me, you've seen the father. I agree that if all we do is read the Old Testament, God can be personified or, or portrayed in a way that somehow we don't always get with Jesus. Jesus was the culmination of it all and the focus of it all. One of the goals that Jesus had was to, shall I say it this way, change people stinking thinking about God. I don't know if there is a theological term that can describe that, but Jesus wanted to change people stinking thinking about God.
In the first century city of Jerusalem, there was a place where sick people gathered everyday. It was called the pool of Bethesda. Ironically, interestingly enough, the word Bethesda actually means house of kindness. And so these people that were sick and infirmed and some were paralyzed and some were blind and so forth, they would go to this pool called Bethesda. People believed that every so often an angel or spirit would come and stir up the water, trouble the water. When the water would begin to be stirred up or to bubble, whatever term you want to use, the first person into the pool got healed. I kind of see this as compassion on a first come first serve basis.
There is compassion for you, but you have to get there first. It was kind of like survival of the fittest healing. Whoever had the best ability to get in the pool first, they got it. So if you had a running nose or a sore throat, or maybe a headache, you had a good chance of getting in the pool, but if you were paralyzed or blind or deaf and you didn't hear the bubbling of the waters or whatever chances are, you weren't going to get your healing. And those who were suffering from a more severe illness or injury that, shall we say, slowed you down that would be your tough luck.
Knowing the hearts of men, how selfish people are, self-centered people are, you can even see— Who would imagine that even Ukraine with all of the horrific death and destruction that is taking place there, that Ukrainian people would go into another person's house and steal goods that had just been bought, putting themselves first over someone who's just been separated from their home and their belongings. We see that all the time. I wouldn't be surprised if someone with less of a need, would've easily pushed someone out of the way to get there. First that is what's in the hearts of mankind. That's what Jesus came to deliver us from. Yes, that's what he did.
Sometimes I wonder if he saw this pool bubbling and just watched the actions of people and pushing and jostling and trying to get in the best position to get into the pool. First, I wonder how much we would've thought that this was a house of kindness, that the name of the pool was named after, or the definition of the pool.
Jacque: And it must have been their only hope. They had no other hope of healing, except for that one incident that could happen if by chance, right. They could get there. If this man was paralyzed and he jumped in the pool and it really wasn't true, he would be gone.
Brian: It depends on how deep the pool is. Jesus was always turning things upside down, or maybe we should say he was turning things right side up. He would say stuff like the last shall first, the first shall last, he would say stuff like, love your enemies. Or this is a tough one. Do good to those who spitefully use you and persecute you.
Jacque: And persecute you.
Brian: Yeah, and persecute you. I don't know about you, but I don't have a natural inclination to do good to people who spitefully use me. This whole Christianity thing or this whole following Jesus thing can't be done without following Jesus.
Jacque: It can't be done on our own. It can't be apart from him.
Brian: We have to have him in us, don't we? Christ in us, the hope of glory because our nature is such that we actually want to push a paralyzed person, who is struggling to get to the pool out of the way, so our headache can be healed. That's our nature. Jesus to this pool of Bethesda and he approaches this person who has, I would imagine, one of the least likely chances of being the first in the pool. He approaches him, a man who can't walk. He's laid out on a mat. I can just imagine. Water was hard to come by in Israel anyways. I imagine this fellow didn't bathe a couple times a day, and I imagine this mat that he had been lying on. In, again, the Chosen series, I really love how they portray this story.
They kind of do a back story where he was a little boy and he fell and he got paralyzed and he had a brother that helped him and took him everywhere. But then as they got older, he was really left alone. He's on this mat and now his beard is all scraggly and he's dirty. And he's laying on this crusty old mat that probably was all that he could afford for the last 30 years. The scripture says he had been now paralyzed for 38 years. How many of you know someone who has been in a wheelchair for 38 years? I don't know very many. I know a few. Jesus approaches this man who can't walk. He's laid out on this mat with nobody to help him. And we pick up the story right there in John chapter five. We are just going to read verse 5 through 10.
Jacque: One of the men lying there had been sick, paralyzed for 38 years. When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, "Would you like to get well?" "I can't, sir," the sick man said. "For, I have no one to put me into the pool. When the water bubbles up, someone else always gets there ahead of me. Jesus told him, "Stand up, pick up your mat and walk." Instantly, the man was healed. He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking. But this miracle happened on the Sabbath, so the Jewish leaders objected. They said to the man who was cured, "You can't work on the Sabbath. The law doesn't allow you to carry that sleeping mat."
Brian: Do you remember this mishnah, which was the oral traditions that later on became written down and it was all of the rules and interpretation that the religion just leaders had of the law of God. One of the interpretations of “Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy” was that you could only take so many steps, Sabbath day's journey. You've heard that expression. You can only walk so far on the Sabbath. You couldn't pick up sticks. You couldn't carry a mat. You couldn't carry a bed roll. That was considered work. As a matter of fact, I mentioned a couple weeks ago that you could put water in your porridge, but you couldn't stir it because that's working. I don't know why eating with the spoon wasn't work, but stirring was work. And so you had all these rules and regulations that the religious leaders, the rabbis had instituted throughout the centuries. Jesus comes along and he says for the man to stand up, pick up your mat and walk.
To some, this was extremely scandalous. How many know that Jesus was rather scandalous actually? Jesus heals a man who's been unable to walk for decades. He gives him some very specific instructions about carrying his mat. One might think that the mat would be completely irrelevant in this story. Like what in the world does the mat have to do with anything?
Jacque: I think he'd say throw that mat away.
Brian: Yeah. Throw that mat away. It's Dungy. You need a new mat. Just picture this for a second. What do you think was the expression on this guy's face after 38 years of lying on that mat?
Jacque: Total joy.
Brian: Total exuberance. Total exuberance, incredible celebration. This shows my ignorance, but for many years, I just thought that Jesus told him to pick up the mat because he's just reminding the man to not leave a mess. Pick up after yourself. Kids come in, throw their coat down on this and their shoes off. The grandkids come over and you say pick your shoes up; don't leave a mess. For years, I just thought that Jesus was telling this guy don't leave a mess. That shows how little I knew. Anyways, of course, Jesus knows what day of the week it is. He knows what day of the week it is. He knows it's the Sabbath, which was made for man. The Sabbath was made for man. Man wasn't made for the Sabbath. The Sabbath was a gift from God to us, so we could cease our labors and have a day set on to him and to each other.
It's not just the day of worship. We should worship on the Sabbath. We should come together. That's a gift that God has given to us, but it's also an opportunity to be with each other and be with our families and to do things that we don't have to normally do to survive in this life.
Jacque: Things that just fill up our spirits.
Brian: That's right. Fill up our spirits. That's right. What becomes obvious here is that the mat has absolutely nothing to do with the miracle, but everything to do with the message of Jesus. It has nothing to do with the miracle, but everything to do with the message of Jesus. It's the message of Jesus that we need to focus on. It's what he was saying to us, how we are to be what our attitudes need to be, what our attitudes towards others need to be. This is the message of Christ. Just imagine for a second, a friend of yours, or at least somebody you have come across a lot who you've known for four decades. Every time you've seen him, he has been in a wheelchair or they've been in a wheelchair. It might be one of those battery-powered ones, where you have a little switch that they can drive all over, but nevertheless, they are still paralyzed. Our friend, Don, is paralyzed from the neck down from a motorcycle accident. There are other people that we know that are paralyzed, that are in wheelchairs or electric ones and whatever. Some are in the push ones. Imagine that person coming to your house, knocking on the door and you see him standing there.
Jacque: Boy, I'm thinking of Rory Riss.
Brian: Rory, that's right.
Jacque: He cannot move.
Brian: Just think for a moment; what would your reaction be? If someone you knew was paralyzed for almost four decades came to you and you saw them for the first time, what would your reaction be?
Audience: Hallelujah.
Brian: Yeah. What happened? How did this happen?
Jacque: I think I'd scream and hug him so hard. I'd knock him down.
Brian: Look at you. Look at you, or let me look at you. You're all healed. I can't believe it. I'm so happy for you. Wouldn't that be our reaction? I'm so happy for you. But the religious leader's response was something entirely different. How dare you work on the Sabbath? How dare you carry your mat? A complete absence of compassion, complete void of compassion. I've been asking the Lord to help me in my latter years. I'm 71 now. So I have less years to live than I've lived. Logic would dictate that. I have less years to live than I've lived. I've been asking the Lord to please show me how I manifest an absence of compassion. Please show me when compassion is void in my life. The rules of expectation that I have on other people that causes me to have no compassion towards them. Show me that Lord.
Jacque: I got a real revelation about compassion and judgment this week. I really saw that when I want to judge someone or look at them in a think they are not doing enough, or I don't like how they are being, that I need to ask God for more compassion because when I get compassionate and I can see the backstory of where are all at, compassion kills judgment.
Brian: What becomes absent when you have compassion?
Jacque: Judgment.
Brian: Judgment.
Jacque: And let compassion
Brian: Our nature, our human nature is such that we will either have compassion or we will have judgment, but you really don't have a mixture of both simultaneously. You either have judgment or you have compassion.
Jacque: I want to have compassion.
Brian: That's right. No one has ever helped, no one has ever been redeemed through judgment. It's the goodness of God that leads us to repent. It's looking at the great goodness of God, not the fear of God, not the fear of wrath or judgment that changes us. You can coerce external behavior, but you can never change a person's heart. God is after our hearts. No one has ever been helped. No one has ever been redeemed through judgment. Compassion is where we are willing to walk with someone through their suffering. The house of the Lord, I'd like to call this the house of the Lord. I know that God dwells in people, not buildings. I understand that. I know that, but this building has been set aside and dedicated to honor Christ.
We do that in many different ways. We are going to let the Corcoran Police Department come in and do a firearm safety training in our building the next four Sunday nights. I think that's a way we can serve our community. That's a way that honors God,
Jacque: We have a daycare that meets here and a preschool that's right. Five days a week and this room is full of beautiful children. And it's a great way.
Brian: We had an open house with the city this past week, where about a hundred neighbors from our community came into this facility and the city just shared some of their plans for the future and development. That's a way we can honor God. We honor God by honoring the people who are in our community with it. When I say this building is dedicated to Christ and dedicated to God, I don't mean that all we can do is pray and read the Bible here. Although some people would think that's the only way you can. I was in that camp many years ago. Jacque didn't like me very much back then. I wasn't very likable.
Jacque: It was short lived.
Brian: I wasn't very likable back then.
Jacque: Let's say you had more judgment than compassion.
Brian: I certainly did. I certainly did. Those who are in leadership in faith communities have to have the same heart as Jesus. We can't have the kind of heart that the religious leaders of Jesus day did. I would pray and hope that the people who become connected to this faith family here at Hope Community, and those of you who are online and connected to us in the same way, I would hope that we would all grow in that direction of having the heart that Jesus has, that you see a man who is laid on a mat for 38 years and we ask him to get up and carry that dingy old mat away.
For so long in our history as the church, we have blamed victims for their suffering. I've seen people who are homeless or people who are in very difficult situations, or maybe they are in drug rehab and my first thought was, what did they do to deserve this suffering instead of having the heart that Jesus did. Remember a couple weeks ago, I talked about the man that was born blind and the disciples asked Jesus, the question well, who sinned. This man or his parents. Who is the sinner here that caused this?
Jacque: Who could we blame it on?
Brian: Who can we blame this on? Jesus said, neither; this isn't about trying to find who's wrong or the blame. This is an opportunity for God to show how much he loves a person through what God can do through you. Oftentimes, we come across people who we could categorize as victims. And sometimes they are a victim of themselves. Sometimes they are victims of others, but they are still victims. They might be victims of bad thinking. They even can be victims of disobedience or whatever category you want to put it in. But we haven't looked at these victims as an opportunity for us to become Jesus to them. I just encourage you today that there are so many opportunities for us to become Jesus to so many people who have needs. If you are full of religion, you'll figure out who to blame. But Jesus saw every situation of suffering as an opportunity to help and to see God work through him, through Jesus, to bring joy and alleviation of this suffering to this victim.
One of the wonderful values of the Bible, and I encourage you to read the scriptures every day. In it, there is life if we understand what the bible is all about. When I say what the Bible is all about, I don't mean all the theological implications in the Bible. The purpose for the scriptures is simply this: the true value of the Bible is that it can lead us to Jesus. That's the real value of the Bible. It can lead us to Jesus. It teaches us how his death and resurrection are central to everything that matters in our life. We should turn what we learned from the scriptures into a message of Jesus, the message of compassion, the message of forgiveness. Unfortunately, people take the scriptures and they begin to argue with each other over it. Those of you who have more than one child, what happened inside of you when your kids were fighting with each other? It frustrated you, didn't it? It hurts you when they argue and fight and they hurt each other.
God has given us the word of God to lead us to Jesus, not so that we could argue with each other over it. He has given us scores and scores of translations that this translation relates to this person better than this translation does. And then this translation relates to this person better. I find it interesting that the people who argue over the translations are the translations that have been translated into English. But I'm not sure if when the Bible is translated into Russian or Portuguese or Spanish or whatever, if they argue that much. I don't know. Maybe it's an American thing or an English thing. I don't know. But I just think it's a tragedy that this gift that God has given us in the scriptures, which was intended to bring us to Jesus, we fight over. We don't have compassion over it.
Most of the debates that Jesus had with the Pharisees were really how to interpret the Bible, or at that time would be the Torah or the scriptures. I want to read one more verse in this same chapter, John chapter five. These religious leaders were arguing with Jesus over healing, on the Sabbath and all this sort of stuff. They would follow him around just to nitpick and see where they could catch him doing something wrong in their eyes. This is what Jesus said.
Pam: You search the scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the scriptures point to me, yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life. If you really believe Moses, you would believe me because he wrote about me.
Brian: Jesus just flat out says that these people were searching the scriptures because they thought the scriptures gave eternal life. But he said that's really not the case because the scriptures can bring death if you don't see the real message in the scriptures. People have taken their Bible, walked into a forest and come out a heretic. People have used the Bible to justify slavery. People have used the Bible to justify killing. That's what the crusades were about. And yet Jesus says the scriptures point to me. It wasn't just the Testament scriptures. It was all of the Old Testament. Wouldn't you have loved to be one of those two disciples on the road to Emmaus after the resurrection where Jesus went from Genesis all the way to Malachi and showed these disciples all about him, taught them all about him from the Old Testament? What a sermon they, that would've been. I would have loved to hear that sermon.
Jesus is basically saying here you search the scriptures because you think they give you eternal life, but eternal life is in me and the scriptures point to me, yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life. And then he goes on to say you versus later in verse 46, if you really believe Moses, you would believe me because Moses wrote about me. One of the things that Jesus is saying here is, if you don't use the Bible to truly find a way to Jesus, if we don't really use the Bible to lead ourselves or lead others to Jesus, then we are doing it wrong. We are doing it wrong. Without Jesus in the middle of it all, we really won't know the word of God. Jesus has to be in the middle of it all.
When he came to this man who was paralyzed, he was going to undermine a system that people were being required to put their trust in, to come to God. That system was Judaism. We have our own systems and they are all wrong. The systems are all wrong. It's only Jesus that can give us eternal life. It's only Jesus that can bring us to our father in heaven. And what I love about Jesus, one of the things and not just what, but one of the things I love about Jesus is he was so inclusive except for the religious leaders, of course. But he was so inclusive.
Here is this guy, I'm sure he had received so much rejection in his life and of all the people there that day Jesus came to him. We have a couple pictures. I just want to show you this really quickly. Jacque and I were actually at this pool; it's in Jerusalem. This is going down the stairway to the pool. This pool now is under about maybe 40 feet roughly of, I wouldn't call it debris, but you know how back in those days a siege would be laid against the city. Jerusalem was besieged by Titus, the emperor in 70 AD and destroyed. What happened is, when they would do that, they would just knock all the walls down and knock everything down. And then when the city was rebuilt, they would just build on top of that. They wouldn't go back to the original foundation. This pool now, at the time of Jesus, I think it's about 35 or 40 feet under the normal, I guess, area where people walk. So this is on a stairway on the way down.
Jacque: I was reading about it and it's a spring-fed pool and there is still water down there.
Brian: We have one more picture that shows you the pool here. This is actually the pool. You can see the arches and all of that. That was what it was like during the time of Jesus. This pool is underground now; it wasn't at the time of Christ, of course. People would sit around the edges and try to get into this pool.
Jacque: They said there were five inaudible. There must have been five of those.
Brian: Yeah, something like that. Again, what I love about Christ is he's so inclusive and he goes to this guy that didn't have a snowball's chance you know where to make it to the pool and he says, "I'm here for you. I came here for you today." He begins to not only bring a miracle of complete release for this guy, but he begins to undermine any belief or anything that would be required of us to put our trust in that thing, to connect us to God. It's in Jesus, it's in Jesus. I encourage you when you read the Bible, I encourage you, every time you open up the pages, just say a simple prayer: father help my reading here today. Lead me to Jesus. Help my reading here today; lead me to Jesus. The one thing that Jesus did for everybody, he didn't hear everybody. He wasn't able to bring deliverance to everybody that needed it, not that he wasn't capable of it. He just wasn't in their vicinity. But the one thing Jesus did for everybody was that he died for everybody. He gave his life for everybody. That's what we celebrate this morning with communion.
Pat, if you would start passing out the emblems— I just want to take a moment to just talk about this wonderful inclusiveness of Christ and how prejudice and how rejection of people because of looks or even beliefs and all the different ways that we categorize people. Jesus looked at every single one of those people we have categorized, and he said, I have given my life for you. I have given my life for you. If there is one place where All are welcome, it's at the cross Of Christ. If there is one place that people should feel no rejection, it's at the cross.
As we take these emblems, which represent the body and blood of our Lord, we remember his words. I'm sure the disciples when they began to hear what Jesus was saying were scratching their heads a little bit because he took the bread and he broke it and he said, "This is my body, which is broken for you. Eat it and remember me." This had been implemented 1500 years earlier with the first Passover, and through the years, it took on different significance to some degree. But when Jesus comes on the scene, the bread represents the body of Christ. The first body was the lamb that was slain. And the instructions were to take the lamb and really bring it into the house and treat it like a pet so that there was an emotional connection to it. And then when the Lamb's life was taken, they were to put the blood over the doorpost of their homes. But then they were to take the lamb and eat it.
An interesting thing happened at that first Passover. When they would eat the lamb, everybody got healed. Because the scriptures say in the book of Psalms that everyone who left Egypt was whole. There was no sick among them. When we eat the bread, I believe that Jesus' body was broken for our healing, our physical healing, and even our emotional healing. The blood had to do with the sin, an issue of man. We'll talk about that in just a second. But the body of the Lord was broken. This is my body, which is broken for you. Eat this in remembrance of me. So when we do this together, what we are saying is I am going to put my trust wholly and completely in the person of Jesus, not in my knowledge of the scriptures, although it's good to know the word of God. I'm not going to put my trust in my knowledge. I'm not going to put my trust in my goodness, how good a person I've become since I've known Christ or known God. My future standing is based on one thing and one thing only: the person of Jesus.
And so father, I thank you that you loved us so much that you gave your one and only son that we, who would believe in him, would not be wasted, we wouldn't perish, but we could have eternal and everlasting life. But at this moment, as we eat this symbol, this emblem of your broken body, we believe that Lord, you did us for our healing. By your stripes and brokenness, we are healed. And so we believe today, and for some of us, who maybe believed for decades and our healing hasn't happened, I pray that you will resurrect, Lord, an expectancy in our hearts to just believe fully in you, that you are well able, that you are well able to bring healing to us. We may be praying for ourselves, we might be praying for somebody else, but Lord, you are well able to bring healing. Fuel us through your broken body. Let's eat the bread together.
After they had eaten the bread, Jesus took the cup and he blessed it and then he said, this cup is the blood of the new covenant, and it is shed for the remission of your sins. That's the first time that word remission was used in the scriptures. In the Old Testament, the blood of the lamb was thought of as a covering atonement to coffer, and it would cover a person's sin. But in the same way that you can have a lot of dirt and dust on your floor and you can put a rug over it and you can't see the dirt and dust, the dirt and dust are still there. But the word remission, isn't a covering. It's an elimination. It's like having a chalkboard or a whiteboard with all sorts of writing and marks and blotches on it. You can hang a cloth over it and those marks are still there. But Jesus doesn't hang a cloth over our sins. He removes them. He takes that erasure out and wipes it completely clean. That's why he says even though your sins are scarlet, they can be white as well. They can be removed as far as the east is from the west.
When he blessed the cup that day, this was entirely new for the disciples. This wasn't a 1500 year tradition that was being extended. This was something brand new for them that day when they heard the words, "and this is for the remission of your sins." This is the love that God has for us. Because you know the problem with simply covering something up, someone can come along and take that cover off. Many of us have thought at times that that's what God does. He just kind of covers our sins and then when we mess up, he pulls the cover back and says, well, you did this, this and this. I knew you would never change.
But the fact of the matter is most of the sins that we still live and regret over, God doesn't even remember because they've been remitted. They've been remitted. As Jesus went out with his disciples that day and said, this cup is the new covenant. It's the blood of the new covenant and it's my blood. It represents my blood, which is shed for the remission of your sins. When we drink this, we are remembering that all of our sins have not just kind of been set aside, they've been removed as far as the east is from the west.
Father, I thank you for this wonderful gift, the gift of Jesus to us, that makes a way for our sins to be removed, remitted. And we drink this cup Lord, believing that it's in you and only you can deal with our sin issue. There are not 10 alternatives to the sin issue of mankind. There is just one; it's you Jesus. And we place our full trust and confidence in you today that it was by your blood that we have been not only forgiven, but all sins have been removed. So we drink this cup together in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen. If you are watching by livestream or for those of you who are here, we just want to say a prayer together.
Father, I just thank you that your heart is full of compassion. And even though we are very flawed in so many ways, you can pour your grace and your love into us in such a way that we truly can become people of compassion, we can be full of forgiveness. Deliver us from religion, Lord, that says, what are you doing carrying your mat on the Sabbath? Deliver for us Lord from that thinking. May we have the heart of Christ that goes about doing the will of our father in heaven. We thank you for the cross and we thank you for the resurrection. We thank you for your word that brings us to Jesus. I ask, in Jesus' name, that you would Have the river of life that flows from your throne of grace. May it wash over us thoroughly and completely. May it saturate us from the top of our heads to the bottom mama feet.
Lord, I pray for those who are still just in an embryonic stage of their journey with you. Bring encouragement to their hearts today, Lord. And maybe today is the first day that you've ever really felt like you could believe in Jesus. I encourage you today that he is trustworthy. You can trust him with everything about your life here on earth and everything about your eternal future and destiny. He's worthy of your trust. He will not let you down. I pray that your lives will be saturated with an awareness of God's presence and that things that we have hoped for and longed for would begin to unfold and become manifest in your life.
For those of us who have seemingly waited for what seems like an eternity for your hand of deliverance and provision to come, I pray in Jesus' name for today to be the day. Resurrect our broken dreamers, Lord. Resurrect our broken expectations. And may we place our trust in you, whom to know as life eternal. This we pray Jesus in your name for your sake. Amen. Jacque and I would just want to bless you here. We invite any of you who are in the congregation here if you would like to have prayer up to the service, we'll have some prayer leaders up here to pray for you. Let's raise our hands together.
Now may the Lord bless you and may the Lord keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord turn his face towards you and give you his peace. And may your heart be filled with compassion because of the love of Jesus Christ. This, we pray in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. God bless you. Have a wonderful day. Don't forget that next Sunday we'll have lunch after church. Those of you here are watching by livestream, make an effort to be here and we'll get a chance to meet Dan in a better way. Bye-bye.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 3-20-22. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.