Pastor Brian Lother, Pastor Jeff Orluck and Pastor Robert Smith
Jacque: Oh, Lord, can you hear our hearts? Can you hear our hearts? We love you. We honor you. We bless you. We will honor you with our lips, our songs, and as we celebrate you today and the victory that you have won for all mankind and womankind, help us to honor you with our lives more than ever. God, that victory, the same spirit that raised from the dead living through me, living through us. We love you. We love you. And we thank you. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, God. I just need a minute. I'm supposed to make an announcement and I need a minute.
It's just so wonderful. It is such a privilege to be a part of this community. I just hope you know, for those of you who are visiting today, I get to be married to the pastor. I'm most blessed of all. It's such a privilege for us to be part of Hope Community and to do life with all of you. So thank you for being here. Thank you for being here, our online community too. We just have a couple things we want to just tell you about, and that is, we just had so many newcomers. We call people who are newer to Hope newcomers. We are going to have a newcomer fellowship, just a gathering on May 6th, Friday night, May 6th. If you've been coming to hope anytime in the last two years, if you are new to hope, we would love you to come to the church that night and the staff will be here. We'll just have an informal time of getting to know each other better. It's going to be a blessing. So you can find all the details online and you can RSVP online too.
I'm not going to take the time, but we have some exciting things coming up. So keep reading your Tuesday, email hope happenings. If you don't get that Tuesday email, let Rachael know and she'll make sure you get online. After service today, Pastor Robert and TaQuaris are going to be serving communion over here if you would like to have communion, we are so grateful that you are here with us. Children, you can be dismissed for a lot of fun and celebration. I put this here.
Brian: I felt a little confused up here this morning. I got a lot of help today. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Pastor Robert.
Jeff: Hi, everybody.
Brian: It's so good to have my closest companions helping me this morning. I'm so thankful for the day that Pastor Jeff and his family came to Hope Community. I think we both cried for the first six months. I'm not sure
Jeff: I don't know about you, but I did.
Brian: And then of course, God always takes a tragedy and brings good out of it. How many of you know that.Last year was a hard year for many of us. At Hope here, we lost a lot of people and two of the most precious people in our lives. My mother and my mother-in-law passed away last year. One of our longtime friends who loved Ruby, Arthur Johnson, AJ from Birmingham, Alabama, came up to the funeral and he shared at the funeral. We had him speak for us that weekend. I got a phone call from a guy that knew AJ. He said, "I'd like to spend some time with AJ; is that possible?" And I said, "Well, why don't you go pick him up at the airport?" That guy that picked him up was Pastor Robert. It was through Ruby's passing that we actually met Pastor Robert. It didn't take long for me to talk to AJ and AJ talked to me and we realized he would be a real good addition to this staff here at Hope Community.
We entered into discussions and I just tried to paint a picture of Hope that was honest and that we were kind of in a reboot. We were coming on the tail end of COVID and Kelly Catalin had started their church as well and we were just kind of in a place that we needed a relaunch. I just felt like he could be a really good booster rocket for that relaunch. He has been all of that and more. I value both Pastor Jeff and Pastor Robert. They are different from me. Thank God for that. But they bring something to the table for Hope Community that I can't bring. I don't have the abilities that both of these men have in certain areas. And then of course, if you heard them play the piano, you wouldn't be very impressed with that either. We all bring our unique giftings to the table and God has put this together in such a wonderful way.
I'm so glad and excited to share today, Easter, because I felt I've given a lot of Easter messages in the past and I love to tell the story of the resurrection and there is so much to say about it. I thought, well, why would you be the hog of it all? It reminds me of a story that happened here and our office administrator, Rachael, does a terrific job for us. She does a terrific job for us. She has just the right thing to say to people on the phone. We got a call sometime back, and it was a guy from Texas. You know how Texans are. This guy calls up and he said, "Is the head hog there?" And Rachael says "What?" Is the head hog there? What do you mean? You know, the head guy, the head hog. Is he there? And Rachael in her really wonderful demur way said, "Sir, we don't call our pastor the head hog here. We call him Pastor Brian, or sometimes just Brian, but we don't call him the head hog." The guy on the other end of the line says, "Well, Hey, I'm from Texas. And you know, we are a little different down here and I just want you know I have a $50,000 contribution I want to send to the church and I just wondered if the head hog was there." And Rachael said, "Just a minute. I think I see that little porker coming right now."
Jeff: You mean it was a joke?
Brian: But anyways, you can call me whatever you want, but I want you to call this guy, Pastor Robert and this guy Pastor Jeff. They are a great addition to our staff and I'm so thankful for them. I'm going to let Pastor Jeff start today and then Pastor Robert will share some of his thoughts. And then I'm going to wrap things up about some of the historicity of the resurrection. Don't you think it's good to laugh on Easter?
Jeff: And smile.
Brian: Smile and have fun.
Jeff: And celebrate. It's good that I get to go first. Who knows, I might use up all the time. We were talking about what we are going to share and for some reason it really popped up to me that I wanted to focus more on the passion of the Christ and his death and some of the significance of Jesus' death and how that reveals to us some very significant things about the nature of our heavenly father. I want to start with Matthew chapter 26. This is a very difficult day in Peter's life, especially Peter who swore to Jesus that he would die for him. And then we find that in the garden of Gethsemane, he was true to his word and he was ready to die for Jesus. He was willing to die for Jesus and Jesus wouldn't let him. What was even worse about it all is that as they were leaving the last supper, Jesus asked the disciples, do you have any swords? Peter says, yeah, Lord, look, we have two. He says, good. Bring them.
Matthew 26, this is out of the message, and this is just the end of it. So I'll just set the stage for you. They are in the garden. Jesus was praying and then suddenly, there was a group of Roman temple guards. I don't think it was Roman soldiers at that time. I don't remember. Temple guards and the Pharisees and Judas. They come in looking for Jesus and they are going to arrest Jesus. So Peter pulls out his sword lunges at one of the slaves of Caiaphas and cuts off his ear. Jesus told him to put away the sword and he heals the servant's ear. We are reading here and Jesus said, "Put your sword back where it belongs. All your swords are destroyed by swords. Don't you realize that I am able right now to call my father and 12 companions more. If I wanted, fighting angels would be here, battle ready." What's significant about that and what we have to realize is that Jesus was God. If I was the God of all power coming to the earth and I wanted to straighten things out, I think I would take over
Brian: With a sword probably.
Jeff: With a sword. He had his entire life, his entire ministry in the garden and on the cross at any time he wanted, he had all of the armies of heaven available to him. He could have taken out Rome with a snap of his fingers. He could have created a dominating empire that governed the entire earth and ushered in peace and Goodwill to all mankind by the sword. He had the power to do it. You have to remember, Brian has been teaching for a couple years now about the difference between power over and power under. How many of her have heard Pastor Brian talk about power over or power under? And you see in Isaiah 55, the Lord says "My ways are not your ways." Our ways are to come in with power, take over and make it alright.
Has anybody else ever wished they had enough money to start a secret vigilante group that would just take out all the bad guys and make the world a better place? Anybody think like me? I see some hands . If I had the money of Bill Gates, maybe I would use it differently, but not the father. His ways are higher than our ways. His ways are way higher than our ways as the heavens are higher than the earth. Jesus is trying to explain to Peter that that's not our way. In my mind that really messed Peter up, because Peter was ready to die for Jesus and now he couldn't die for Jesus. No wonder he denied Jesus. The poor guy was so confused. He had no idea which end was up.
He didn't deny Jesus because he was a coward. He denied Jesus because he was totally confused in my opinion. And so let me just take you to Philippians four, a scripture that we are all familiar with. We'll start in verse five because what Jesus did is he brought salvation to the world the way that God would bring salvation to the world because he was God and he did it God's way, because God is love and love. Doesn't do power over. Love does power under. In Philippians Paul's writing, he says, think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God, but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to that status no matter what, not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and he took on the status of a slave and he became human and having become human, he stayed human and it was incredibly humbling process and he didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless obedient life and then died a selfless obedient death.
That's the way of God. And of course, what Paul is suggesting is that if we are going to be followers of this, God, we want to learn his ways. Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ. Jesus, who being in the very form of God, didn't choose to be equal to God. One last verse and then we'll pass it on to Pastor Robert. Jesus alluded to this in John 15, John 15: 13, when he said greater love has no man than he laid down his life for his friends. Jesus said it because he understood that that was the truth. He lived what was true and then he calls us to live what is true. Laying down our lives starts in the very simple day-to-day affairs of our families, our marriages, our lives with our children, our lives with our coworkers and our lives with each other in church and our communities. If we can learn how to lay down our lives for each other, then we will actually be demonstrating the ways of the father.
As Jesus said, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another as I loved you. What happens when we love one another like he loved us? What happens? What did he say will happen? Anybody remembers? And then the world will know that you are my disciples. Pastor Robert.
Robert: Praise the Lord. Thank you, Pastor Jeff. What I wanted to share kind of in a good way, we didn't collaborate necessarily on what we were going to say, but I believe that what the Lord had put on my heart is an extension about the love that God has for us. If we think about God's love this creator loved us enough, not like the world loved. The world says it loves you, but then it wants to get as far away from you as possible. You know, I never understood what kind of love that is. But the love that the creator has for his creation is that he wants to spend eternal eternity with you. But there were two problems in the way that prevented his creation from being eternally with him, and that was sin and death. And so out of the love of the father, he said, we have to do something about that. I have to do something about that. I cannot be with my creation with this sin problem and this death problem.
When I think about the resurrection, Jesus' resurrection seals our destiny with God. Because of God's love, he had to send Jesus to take care of that sin and death, the problem. The first thing that Jesus' resurrection does is affirms that his death was sufficient to forgive our sins. I have a scripture in first Corinthians chapter 15 versus 3 to 4. I'm reading from the New Living translation. And this is Paul speaking. I passed onto you what was most important and what had also been passed onto me, Christ died for our sins just as the scriptures said. He was buried and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the scriptures sin.
And so it was prophesied about the sacrifice that Jesus would make. Here Paul is giving witness that Jesus is affirming what the scripture said. It said Christ died for our sins, Christ death took care of that sin problem. And it goes back to the love of God. What kind of love is this that even if we were not worthy, that this creator would send the second person of the Godhead to die for us.
Brian: That's amazing,
Robert: It is amazing. Just think about that, that you would lay down your life. The way we think of it is, why would I lay down my life for an enemy? Because that's what we really were if we look at it. That's what we were to God. But guess what? God didn't call us that he called his friend. Why? Because he didn't look at you in the state that you were in. He was looking towards your destiny, but he had to do something for our destiny to bring us into our destiny. And so he sent Jesus Christ to die for us to take care of our sins. But remember I said, there were two things that were in the way of us eternally being with our creator: sin and death. Because of sin, we had to die, but outside of Christ, our death means something else. If we die outside of Christ, we will be separated from God forever. But Jesus' resurrection defeated death.
First Corinthians chapter 15 verses 20 through 22: But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of the great harvest of all who have died. So you see, just as death came into the world through a man, now, the resurrection from the dead has begun through another man just as everyone dies, because we all belong to Adam. Everyone who belongs to Christ will be given a new life. Jesus Christ is the reason that our sins are taken away, our sins are paid for. And Jesus Christ is the reason that when we die, we have the hope of the resurrection that we would be with God forever and ever. When I think about Resurrection Sunday, Easter Sunday, wherever you want to call it, that's what I'm grateful for because God saw fit to make sure that I had a guaranteed path as I am in Christ, that I will be with God forever.
Brian: As I was growing up as a young boy, my father was a pastor. I grew up in the church. I remember as a young child and growing up as a teenager, trying to have conversations with people about things that were supernatural, uh, such as the resurrection. I remember being on the receiving end of scoffing and ridicule because that was just a fairy tale. Don't you know that science has proven that there is no God. And so as I became a late teenager, and in my early twenties, I heard of this thing called apologetics, which was a defense of the faith. It surprised me to find out that there was an organization called Institute of creation research, where there was over 5,000 PhDs who actually believed that God created the heavens in the earth and that there was a whole other branch of apologetic, whether it was philosophical, apologetics or historical apologetics.
I gravitated a lot to historical apologetics. And then there was a gentleman that wrote a book. His name was Josh McDowell. Have you ever heard of Josh McDowell? He wrote a book called evidence that demands a verdict. He took the same approach that someone would take as an attorney to prove their case in court. We use a term in our legal system to prove someone's guilt or innocence, and it is beyond a reasonable doubt. The fact of the matter is if you and I aren't there to witness something, then we have to look at the other exterior evidence so that we can draw conclusions. He did a marvelous job along with Duane Gish and a number of other professors, doctorate people who began to, what I like to use the term, give teeth to the belief in the resurrection. I'd like to share just a few of those things with you this morning.
One of the ironies of the Easter story is that those people who were the followers of Christ, neither anticipated nor believed that Jesus would rise from the dead. Did we ever think about that? Peter and John and the disciples and those who were followers of Jesus, after Jesus was crucified, they did not actually say, well, he's going to be back in three days. They don't say that. Do they? They knew death. People in that culture knew death. We are kind of shielded from death in our culture. Aren't we? If somebody dies, we don't want to look at the remains. The mortician comes and picks them up. And then the next time we see them— Well, a lot of times we don't because we want to be disconnected from it. But the people of that culture, the people of Jesus day knew death. They knew dead was dead. It and the disciples, the main followers of Jesus, not one of them anticipated nor believed that Jesus was going to rise from the dead. The other irony is that those people who opposed Jesus, the religious leaders, et cetera, et cetera, were afraid that there was going to be a resurrection.
The people who weren't followers were afraid there was going to be a resurrection and they did everything in their power to prevent it, or even to come across as though it happened. Never in the history of history, had a criminal given so much worry to those people after they were executed, as Jesus did. Never had a crucified man or a criminal been given the honor or distinction of having someone guard their tomb. We've had guards at people that we want to honor, like the tomb of the unknown soldier and et cetera, et cetera, but never a criminal. Nobody puts a guard at a criminals’ tomb. And the fact of the matter is the disciples all fled. I'd like to read a scripture. We find it in Matthew chapter 27. This was the day after the crucifixion. And it says that the next day on the Sabbath, the leading priest and Pharisees who were opposed to Jesus, went to see Pilot. And this is what they said to him: Sir, we remember what that deceiver once said while he was still alive. It's interesting that they remembered what Jesus said, but the disciples didn't remember what Jesus said.
We remember what this deceiver said that after three days I will rise from the dead. So we request that you seal the tomb until the third day, and this will prevent his disciples from coming and stealing his body, which would then give the appearance of a resurrection, a missing body and telling everybody he was raised from the dead. If that happens, then we are going to be worse off than we were at the first. The religious leaders knew in their hearts. If this resurrection thing happens, we are in trouble. They knew it. Pilot replied, "Well, then take guards and secure it the best you can." So they sealed the tomb and posted guards to protect it. I find it really interesting that the one thing they tried to do to keep the resurrection from happening is one of the things that substantiated the resurrection more than anything else, other than his appearance, of course, after the resurrection.
The disciples, for the most part, weren't brave men. They might have been confused, like pastor Jeff said, but they certainly couldn't be called brave. They all fled. The women, on the other hand, were much braver. They were willing to go to the tomb on Sunday morning. They weren't sure how they were going to get their stone rolled away, but they wanted to finish the body burial process. They all knew that Jesus was dead. As I said, in that culture, people knew what death was. Even after the resurrection, even after the women came to all the disciples, we've seen them, only two of them went to check it out. The other nine, because Judas had now taken his own life, they just kind of wandered away. Jesus actually met two of them on the road to Emmaus on Sunday morning after the resurrection and their words to him were: we had hoped, we thought. But nobody in the inner circle of Jesus who were all running for their lives actually anticipated and believed that there was going to be a resurrection.
In the book of acts, the fact of the resurrection, not the fact of the empty tomb is what was actually emphasized, the fact of the resurrection, not the fact of the empty tomb. The fact of the matter is everybody could go to the tomb and see that it was empty. Everybody could do that. It wasn't a hundred mile journey. It was just a short walk to see the tomb and anybody could go see that it was empty. When these claims started to come out, that the tomb was empty, anybody could go see it. The real question wasn't if the tomb was empty. The question was, why was the tomb empty? Number one, and the other question is what did this emptiness of this tomb actually mean and prove? What did it mean now? If the tomb wasn't empty, then it would be there for everybody to see that it wasn't empty.
If the tomb wasn't empty, we read in Matthew 28, I'm not going to read it here, but you could go look at it later, versus 11th through 15, when the resurrection actually happened, the Pharisees got the Roman guard to come and they bribed them, they paid them to say the disciples came and stole the body. If the tomb wasn't empty, why even bribe the guards? I mean, the tomb wouldn't be empty. You don't bribe the guards for something that isn't an empty tomb. The tomb was not a place by the way. In the early church, it wasn't a place of early pilgrimage. It wasn't a place where the early followers of Jesus went to revere it. The tomb had no significance because Jesus wasn't there. He was resurrected. Everybody knew his body wasn't there. In fact, the grave was closed, which is another really interesting thing. They were not stewing around the tomb.
If that had been you and I, that had kind of resuscitated and come back to life and we were trying to take these grave clothes off, what do you think they would look like? A mess, but we see that the body of Jesus had simply withdrawn itself through the grave clothes. When you of Lazarus, what did Jesus say about Lazarus? Unwrap him. You have to take this stuff off him, but with Jesus, he just went right through these grave clothes. There are many, many more convincing proofs of the resurrection, but to me, the greatest evidence of the resurrection was the transformed lives of the disciples after they saw the resurrected Lord. Prior to the resurrection, they were running for their lives. They were afraid that they were locked in their homes. Different movies have portrayed that really well. The women come and knock on the door and, and the guys, oh, who is here?
They weren't expecting a resurrection. One moment, they were cowering fear hiding in their homes and a few days later, they were publicly preaching in the temple courts of Jerusalem. When the religious leaders told them to keep silent, they said, "We can't help but speak about what we have seen." And the greatest evidence of the resurrected tomb, the resurrected Lord rather is the transformed lives of the disciples. The sermon that Peter preached in the book of Acts chapter 2 was not refuted by anybody there because they knew that the tomb was empty. They could see it because the empty tomb was just there for anybody to examine. Disproving the resurrection, if the early leaders, religious leaders could have done that, if they could have disproved the resurrection, it would've destroyed the whole foundation of what we call Christianity. Persecution didn't stop people from talking about the resurrection. You know why? Because they had seen them.
There was more to the resurrection than just Jesus resurrecting and then going to heaven or going to hell and letting those people free and then going to heaven without anybody seeing it. The witnesses number over 500 who saw Jesus after the resurrection. He was alive. They had touched him. They had eaten with him. He was alive and there have been many people throughout history who have died for things that are false. There have been many people throughout history who have believed in something that was false and they were willing to die for it. But there has never been anybody willing to die for something they know is false.
People will die for things that are false, but they believe it to be true. But you know something to be false, if you know something to be a lie, you will not die for that, and nobody will. The disciples who didn't expect a resurrection, who were cowering in fear when Jesus appeared to them became transformed, and now they became the most bold people. And the religious leaders didn't know what to do with them. They began to kill them one by one. Steven was the first one by one. They began to kill them. If they would've stolen the body and hidden some place else to give the appearance of a resurrection, not one of those disciples would've been willing to die for that, not one of them. But they knew because they had seen him. They had touched him. They had eaten with him. They had seen him multiple times after the resurrection. And so the transformed lives of the disciples is the greatest proof of the resurrection that anybody should ever want to have to put your faith in. None of these disciples would've been willing to die for what they knew was false, and all of them were willing to die, every single one of them. All I think, but John, church history says, did.
They all died for this belief, this faith, this reality of having known Jesus Christ because they had witnessed the resurrection. It was real. It wasn't a fairytale. It wasn't an illusion. It wasn't a figment of their imagination. It wasn't even something that they all desired to have happened, but didn't, because they didn't even believe it was going to happen. The first appearance that Jesus brought to them, he really rebuked them. He said, "You who are so slow to believe, why wouldn't you believe?" Isn't it ironic that the people who didn't want to follow Jesus, the people who actually were opposed to following Jesus and tried to stop him on every turn were the ones who actually believed that there was going to be a resurrection. And then those who were his followers, like Jeff was saying and like Peter said, I'll die for you, Jesus, those people who are that committed, who had seen all what he did, they didn't actually believe that there was going to be a resurrection. And so for those people to now change hearts and no longer live in fear, it could have only been because of one reason and one reason only: Jesus really did rise from the dead.
There was a power that came into that tomb that raised him up Roman soldiers who were used to being in battle. They were battle hardened. They were tough, tough, tough guys, fainted at the power of God demonstrated coming out of that tomb that day. That's why they were bribed. That's why they were paid. One other thing, if the disciples would've actually stolen the body, what do you think would've happened to those Roman guards> They would have been executed, derelict of duty, but there was a resurrection. They knew what they saw. They knew why they fainted. They were paid a bribe, which in my opinion, all the more proves the whole resurrection story. There are so many more proofs, but the greatest is the transformed lives of the disciples.
Today, I believe that one of the greatest continuums of the truth of the resurrection is your transformed life and my transformed life. Sometimes, people don't believe that we've changed. And so, you know what? We just have to give him time. We just have to give him time. That's all we need. Jesus is offering that same life to us today. He's offering that same empowerment that transformed the early disciples from being really full of fear and running for their lives, going from we had hoped he was the one to, he is risen. And he is risen indeed. In their lives, nobody could shut him up, not even with the threat of death, even after Steven lost his life and then James lost his life and others lost their lives, they went to the far corners of the earth to bring this incredible story of the resurrected Lord. The earth had never experienced anything like it, a God who would come give his life as a ransom for many and then rise from the dead So that we could have something to sink our teeth into with our faith.
It wasn't just trying to grab the mist, but rather something that we really could believe in and the resurrection, and this is why the apostle Paul says this. And then pastor Jeff wants you to come and pray. This is why the apostle Paul says this. If Christ be not risen from the dead, then all of our preaching is in vain. All of the gospel hinges on the resurrection. And it was the resurrection that conquered death hell and the grave. And today that same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead is offered by God to live inside of you and me.
Can you imagine that? Wouldn't you have liked to have been in that dark tomb next to the body of Jesus when that power came into that tomb? Wouldn't you have liked just be seeing it from the inside out instead of the outside, in and be in that tomb and see that power come into that grave and see that stone roll up the incline and the light emanating from that tune and the power from that tomb And to know this, that the same power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead dwells in all of us, if we want it, if we will simply ask for it? Pastor Jeff.
Jeff: The resurrection is true. It's real, historically real and verified in many of the lives of people who are sitting here today. And that really is, Pastor Brian, one of the most powerful truth is the millions of lives that have been radically changed, transformed, drug addicts who are no longer drug addicts, prostitutes who are no longer prostitutes, people who are suicidal, who are no longer suicidal and people like me who just had empty lives that are no longer empty, but meaningful. Look around you and you'll see people whose lives were changed, radically changed by Jesus in a moment when they believed. All it takes is a moment of belief and your life can change too.
Before we do anything else, we want to give every single listener who is here sitting in this room, every single listener who is watching us on livestream, if you've never trusted Jesus, never said I believe in you, never said I welcome, you never asked him, change your life to forgive your sin, we want you to take the first step today because everything changes with that first step. Everything changes. So if that's you, I just want you to close your eyes and just say these words with me:
Jesus Christ, I believe you are real. I believe you are real, that you died for me, for my sins, and rose from the dead. And I need you. I believe it's real. I ask that you fill my life with your love, with your forgiveness and your presence. Changed my life. I will follow you. It's a simple beginning. It's a lifelong process. Because as I said, when I shared earlier, his ways aren't our ways. You've been practicing all the wrong ways. You have new ways to learn, but they are good ways. When we learn his ways and we live his ways, life gets good. Life gets good. One of my friends here said when we heard their testimony, not easier, but better, not necessarily easier, but always. We also want to pray for you if you need a touch from God, for healing, or if you need help in your life in some way, believe it or not. What do you need today? Do you need a financial miracle? Do you need a healing miracle?
Brian: There are some bondages maybe in people's lives.
Jeff: Do you hear that? Pastor Brian is suggesting if there are some bondages in your lives, things that are just out of control and you need help with, if you need Jesus to do something for you, just put your hand up at home, put your hand up here. You are not putting it up for us. You are putting it up to Jesus. Lord, you see your hands. They are lifted to you cuz we trust you. We know that in the resurrection there is power and there is healing. There are miracles in that power. There is help in our time of need that you are present, you are willing and you are able As Pastor Robert and Brian and I sit up here right now, we just release your blessing, your favor and your miracles to the raised hands that are at home in that are in this room in Jesus' name. Just receive what you need. Receive what you need. Receive it from the Lord because he loves you and his favor rests on you. And he is willing. Thank you, Lord.
Brian: Pastor Robert, do you have anything you would like to pray for ?
Robert: I would just like to pray for Families today. We'll be with family, but it's inevitable that at some of those places, some family members will not be there. And so I just pray for and against every angst in the families, that the bondages of division and strife would be laid aside today and that the role to healing and reconciliation would begin, and that phone calls would be made, text would be sent, just an acknowledgement of love and appreciation even though there may not be agreement, but just acknowledge of love and appreciation. So I pray as we gather today— and I just pray for those that don't have anybody that they would be invited into homes, they would be invited into gatherings, not just for the nourishment of physical food, But that the love of Christ Would be shown and would be received and that we would be an extension of that love of Christ in someone's life today and that we will be a great witness of that love on this resurrection day in Jesus name.
Brian: Jacque, why don't you come up and join me here? It's an honor to serve all of you. It's a good joy to just be one of the pastors here at Hope Community. I'm so thankful for this lady standing next to me. Love you, babe. I'm so grateful for what God has done and is doing, the hope that he puts in our hearts for tomorrow. I'm so thankful that our past doesn't determine our tomorrows and yet he holds before us opportunities that if we could see them more clearly, it would blow our minds. I'm thankful for the kids we have. I love the noise out in the hallway. I used to be bothered by all of that stuff. Now I know that that's the future and we need them. I'm so thankful for them. I know that today is the first Easter for some of you without a loved one, a specific loved one. It could be a husband, a wife could be a child. It could be in our case, our mothers. This is the first Easter for Jacque and I to be parentless. Some of you have already experienced that.
But I know that the resurrection gives us hope for tomorrow. The resurrection gives us hope that we will see our family and friends again. I think I'm going to do a kind of a part two message next week on the resurrection and just what actually means for all of us. So I hope you can come back and join us next week to worship the Lord and hear that. We want to thank all of you who are watching on live streams. So many of our friends around the country and new friends, new people that are watching tuning in, thank you for being a part of our faith community here. We love all of you. Let's raise our hands together and let me bless you.
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 the power that raised Jesus from the dead dwell richly in you. This, we pray in the name of the father's son and holy spirit. Amen. God bless you. Happy Easter
Robert: TaQuaris and I will be serving communion, so if you like to receive communion, please join us.
Jeff: And if anybody would like more prayer, Cheryl's up here praying, so you can come and get direct hands laid hands on you and some prophetic prayer.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 4-17-22. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.