Pastor Brian and Jacque Lother
Jacque: We have to enjoy every note of that ending. It's a beautiful ending. Thank you. Thank you, Brad. It's so good to be here. I was just thinking about what a beautiful community that we have here. I'm so appreciative and I love and appreciate every one of you. It's so good to see you all here and there. I was thinking of all the hell that we do together. We pray together, fervently. We cry together during hard times. We laugh together. We eat together and we study together and we just do life together. One thing I love to do together with my community is laugh. I do. It's so important that we have fun together too. Isn't it? And we are a fun group. So next Saturday, we are having a game day and I tell you, you'll hear a lot of laughter that day. So if you can come join us, just come join us. It's really simple. Come and join in on a game. If you have a special game you want to lead, just let Rachael know, She has the plans going for this day. It's going to be super. It's really fun to get to know each other better when we are together.
Brian: It is.
Jacque: I have to say one thing; I just can't stand to not say this. Did you know that Steve and Sophie Orluck are living back in Minnesota again?
Brian: I just found that out.
Jacque: Did you know that? They're on the front row, right here. They were Nevadians. Is that the right word for people that live in Nevada?
Brian: I'm not sure, but I'm glad they are Minnesotans.
Jacque: They are Minnesotans. It's good to have you here. Just a couple more things. We are in the Lenten season now just preparing our hearts for the good Friday and Easter season. We have a good Friday service coming up.
Brian: Easter is two weeks away.
Jacque: Oh boy. I know it's going to be glorious
Brian: What a wonderful day to celebrate and you know we are going to do something special on Easter. I just thought it'd be good to hear from the three amigos.
Jacque: And who and who of three amigos?
Brian: Well, me and Pastor Jeff and Robert. We are all going to be sharing that morning.
Jacque: Three chairs, three pastors.
Brian: I was thinking about— I've done a lot of Easter messages. I love to speak at Easter, and yet this year I thought I'm not the only guy that has something good to say about Easter. Pastor Robert's gut is full. We know Pastor Jeff does such a great job with so many things. I thought, why don't we have the three of us just share what Easter actually means to us personally and how it's impacted our lives. We are going to do that on Easter. It would be a trifecta. Remember, that's kind of a—
Jacque: I don't know what that word means.
Brian: That's a Kentucky Downs term.
Jacque: It must be good.
Brian: It's a betting term.
Jacque: Oh.
Brian: But anyways, if you bet and you win tie this 25% on anything that you win at the race track
Jacque: And you know what, the kids cannot wait to get to Sunday School.
Brian: Yeah. So they are leaving now.
Jacque: I'm always told to dismiss them last, but they are not waiting. It must be so exciting. Bye, kids. It's good to have you here. Yeah. Okay. And then, so Good Friday night—
Brian: Good Friday, we are going to have Good Friday service and on Good Friday, we do family communion. So we'll have people come forward and receive communion and pray with different individuals. It's a very, very special time.
Jacque: And then Jim and Brenda steam will be serving communion after service and we will have prayer leaders up here if you want some individual prayer also. Jim and Brenda, could I impose on you to come up here, Jim, and just talk for a minute about your prayer for family?
Brian: Grab a microphone over there.
Jacque: Brian told me to call you yesterday and I forgot. Sorry.
Brian: The grandkids came over and when the grandchildren are over, Jacque forgets about everything.
Jacque: Everything.
Jim: That's okay.
Jacque: Come right up here, Jim. We are starting again on Sundays after Sunday morning service, the second Sunday of every month. Let's tell everybody what's going to be happening.
Jim: Over the years, we've been praying for family members, "prodigals", family members that aren't really necessarily walking with the Lord right now. We want to pray them back into the kingdom and back into a relationship with Jesus. When we first started this, you are excited, you think things are going to happen right away and there were some things that did happen right away. We saw some changes in people that were going through difficult times and estranged from God and just different circumstances. But as time has gone by, one thing I've realized is that this is a long battle too. I've heard stories. I know we all have heard stories of people praying for people and they don't necessarily see the fruit of it, but God answers those prayers and it might be even after we are gone. God is faithful.
As I was thinking about this, I thought of a song by Brian Duncan, that talks about Abraham and Sarah waiting for their promise and time goes by. That's what it can be when we are praying for our family members that we love that are not walking with God. It can be a weight. It not necessarily always is, but God honors that faithfulness to continue pressing, to continue standing in the gap. God is looking for people that will stand in the gap for people, his children, whom he loves. That song says, "Sarah is waiting in a crown of silver hair. Maternal heartbeat is aching." Abraham, he is counting stars up in the sky, wondering if God has passed him by, but that's what praying for a prodigal is. We are going to continue believing in the promises of God.
God is the one who's faithful and will bring him back. We just need to trust him because he has not left. He has not forgotten his promise, his covenant. Second, Sunday, right. Shortly after service, we will go to the prayer room. It doesn't have to be a long time. I know Joanne talked about maybe we will come up with some way to have something, just to tie us over a little bit food wise, just something really simple so we are not starving. I welcome anybody to join and if there are people that watch online and you can't be here, if you could just send a note somehow to the church, we'll create a method that we can do this on zoom too, but we are going to start in the prayer room. But if we see there are other people that want to join that aren't here and they want to join remotely, we'll make a way for that. Thank you.
Jacque: Thank you so much, Jim.
Jim: You are welcome. Thank you for your faithfulness, you and Brenda.
Brian: Sometimes we are tempted to think about wasted years, all the wasted years, but I truly believe that when God is part of what we are doing, nothing is wasted. God redeems everything. He takes advantage of everything. And in the story of Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his brothers, he had a revelation and it's encouraged people for thousands of years and that revelation is this what Satan meant for evil. God can bring good out. Let's allow God to just bring good out of all of the situations. Do you have anything else?
Jacque: Nope. I'm ready to hear you.
Brian: I want to talk today about a message that I've titled, "It's not the cup, but it's what's inside that matters." How many of you know that? Remember the Holy Grail movie?
Pam: Indiana Jones.
Brian: Yeah, Indiana Jones and all the beautiful cups. They were trying to find the cup of Christ and what ended up containing the most important thing was probably the most plain cup that was there. What would you think of a person who had just, in the middle of a hot summer, completed a long walk on a very hot day, they were given a cup of cold water and when they were given this cup of cold water, they proceeded to simply lick the outside of the cup to quench their thirst? The fact of the matter is it can never quench a thirst. It's only what's inside the cup that can actually quench someone's thirst. The Pharisees, the religious leaders at the time of Christ, had a real tendency to focus on the cup. Even Jesus talked about the fact that they washed the outside of the cup, but inside the cup was all gnarly and full of yesterday's coffee grounds and maybe mold if it had been sitting there for a week.
Religious people have a tendency to focus on the cup and they lose sight of the content. Sometimes, we even find ourselves arguing about who has the best cup, don't we? We actually forget to actually drink. What's supposed to be inside the cup because we are arguing over who has the best cup. I'm sure just as God has made us all somewhat differently, we are all attracted to different kinds of cups, yet none of them will quench our thirst. None of them will do that. It's not religion that refreshes us. It's Jesus that refreshes us. As a matter of fact, whenever we think we have found the cup, we've already confused the contents of the cup with the container. We've already done that. We've confused substance with structure or faith with form. I'm thankful for the form that we have. We have a form in our worship. We have somewhat of a structure in our worship, but our form and our structure is not what nourishes us. It's what happens when Jesus comes into that form and comes into that structure and we get nourishment from that.
I love Hope Community Church. It's my favorite church in the whole world, but the day that I start believing that we are the only place that preaches the true gospel and that we are the very best cup in all of the world, or maybe I should just say in town, that's the day that I need to be replaced as the lead pastor of Hope Community Church. I do. Faith is expressed in a lot of different forms, but the form is not what satisfies. A lot of forms are connected to the cultures of the people of those forms. If you go to Africa and there is a whole different culture there and the people there will worship in a different way. If you go to Haiti, their services are five or six hours long and all of you just shutter to think of a six-hour service. I'll tell you right now; I know how you think, but it's a cultural thing. If you had nothing to do, if you had nothing that was attractive about your life and the very, very best thing that you had in your life was the time you got to go to church on a Sunday morning, because everything else was so wretched and compared to it, you would be glad to stay there five or six hours. That's their culture.
And yet we, at times, have confused form with substance. We've looked at different cultures who have different forms and now we've started to compare the outside of the cup or the cup with what is inside the cup. The story of the Bible, believe it or not, is the story of God wanting to come to all of us directly, completely directly. That's the story of the Bible. God wanted to come to you and wanted to come to me directly. He offers us at times tools to help our relationship with him. And then he broken heartedly watches as we fall in love with the tools, rather than him. There are different tools that we have to enhance our relationship with God or to help us really connect in our relationship with God. But those things are simply tools.
It's like this: I can get a lot of self-worth out reading my Bible every day. I do pauses during the day. I have an app on my phone that keeps track of the pauses I've done and how many in a row I've done. I look at that and woo, I'm doing pretty good. I can start to feel good about myself, but if I'm not becoming more like Jesus in my pauses, if I'm not becoming more like Jesus in my Bible reading, then I'm in love with the form, not the substance.
We need to understand that whatever forms we have, whatever routines we have, whatever things we do that are good things to do that enhance our relationship with Christ, if those things cease to do that, then they are no longer helpful in our lives. What has become in our lives is we've become religious and not relational with God. The real value and function of a tool is what it can build. It's not in the fact that you can have all sorts of tools hanging on the wall of your garage. Walk into some guy's garage and every tool is in its place. It's immaculate; the floor is clean, but the guy couldn't pound two, two by fours together. What good are the tools? Unless you know how to utilize them to build something. It's the same with the cup. The real value and function of a cup is what it contains. There is not a cup in the world that's ever been designed that can quench your thirst, not one. There is not one form that God makes available to us that actually will quench our thirst. It's what that form will help connect us to in the person of Jesus. I want to read a few verses here. The first one is found in Jeremiah chapter 2 verses 11 through 13,
Jacque: Has any nation ever traded its gods for new ones, even though they are not gods at all? Yet, my people have exchanged their glorious God for worthless idols. The heavens are shocked at such a thing and shrink back in horror and dismay, says the Lord, for my people have done two evil things: They have abandoned me the fountain of living water and they have dug for themselves, cracked cistern that can hold no water at all.
Brian: I was thinking about this concept. When we think about evil, when someone asks you what you think is the greatest evil in the world today, what comes into your mind? Like the war in the Ukraine, which is a horrible evil? Human sex trafficking: that's a terrible evil. There are so many different ways that we land on things that when we hear the word evil and yet God says my people have done two really evil things. They've abandoned me. They've abandoned me, who is the fountain of living water. And then they've dug themselves cisterns to hold stuff that actually are cracked. They actually don't hold things because the things you've been putting into those cisterns don't satisfy anyways. I wonder at times how many things we have built in our lives to hopefully find joy and peace and happiness and content it and all the things that our hearts long for. And yet we find after just a relatively short period of time, it's all leaked out and it no longer has the ability to bring contentment and satisfaction. I wonder if we actually equate those things with evil.
Jesus is the fountain of living water. It's he that quenches the human thirst. And God has never said to us, you are drinking out of the wrong cup. You are using the wrong form here; choose the right cup, and then you'll be pleasing me. But rather he invites us to directly come to him. Jesus had this beautiful encounter. Love how the series, The Chosen, portrays this particular story of the woman at the well. What is really amazing as you watch the other episodes after this particular story where Jesus meets this woman at the well, her complete conversion and her complete excitement about being with Jesus. She is such an irritant to everybody else because she just is there all the time. Wherever Jesus is, I'm going to be there.
Jacque: She is so excited.
Brian: She is so excited to be there. I want to read this story just seven verses from John 4 verse 7 through 14. And this is the encounter that Jesus had with this woman at the well.
Jacque: Soon as the Samaritan woman came to draw water and Jesus said to her, please give me a drink. He was alone at the time because his disciple had gone into the village to buy some food. The woman was surprised, for Jews refused to have anything to do with Samaritans.
Brian: Let me ask you a question. Sorry about that. Catch you in the middle of your breath.
Jacque: It's okay.
Brian: Again, when you read this, is it, is it religion or relationship that is at the heart of Jews refusing to have anything to do with Samaritans?
Jacque: Religion.
Brian: Yeah. Religion is a horrible thing. It really is. It's not at all what God had ever intended to bring to the earth. In fact, when Jesus came God's intent was not to start a new religion. The reason Jesus came was to break down all the barriers, tear down all the hindrances that separated man from God were going to see that later in another course of scripture. But what Jesus does when he comes into the life of a person is he starts to eliminate the us versus them mentality. The "I'm better than they" or "I didn't do what they did" mentality. He starts to eliminate all that stuff. You would never see with the true follower of Jesus that they would say, well, you are a Samaritan and distance themselves. The conversions of the disciples didn't happen instantaneously. I dare say our transformation hasn't been happening instantaneously either. Correct? My wife can say amen to that regarding me. That's for sure.
Jacque: Are you kidding? I keep a pen up here because when God tells me something, I need to write it down. I don't want to forget.
Brian: What did he tell you?
Jacque: He showed me a little religion in one of my attitudes and one of the issues that is kind of uppermost in my mind and I saw it so clearly. So I wrote it down.
Brian: Isn't it good when Jesus talks to us?
Jacque: I know it. We are constantly growing.
Brian: That's right, and in more ways than one you. I hang around some of Robert's friends like Ruby and I'm growing this way as well, hanging around Ruby.
Jacque: Don't go there.
Brian: Oh, I just told her the other day. Every time I walk—
Jacque: Erica, Erica.
Brian: Yeah. I said to them both, "Every time I walk by you, I go home and I weigh two more pounds. What's going on?"
Jacque: Okay, let's keep going. I'm sorry.
Brian: They're the best cooks. They really are. Where were we? I'm not sure.
Jacque: I know where I am. I know where we are. Okay. I got you, Brian,
Brian: Why are you asking me for a drink?
Jacque: She said to Jesus, you are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. Why are you asking me for a drink? Jesus replied, if you only knew the give God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me and I would give you living water.
Brian: Just ponder that again. This is what Jesus is saying to everybody in the whole world: If you only knew the gift that God has for you, if you only knew the gift that God has for you and who you are speaking to or who is speaking to you, because Jesus is always speaking to us, you would simply ask me and I would give you this water.
Jacque: We sang about it this morning. We sang you are the well, the one I'm drawing from. It is never empty. It's an endless supply. For whatever it is we need, we can draw from him.
Brian: And yet we so quickly fall back into our own way of quenching our thirst. So she says this,
Jacque: But sir, you don't have a rope or a bucket, she said, and this well is very deep. Where would you get this living water? And besides, do you think you are greater than our ancestor Jacob who gave us this well? How can you offer better water than he and his sons and his animals enjoyed. And Jesus replied, anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again.
Brian: Let me interrupt again. Do you notice here how Jesus doesn't always answer every question? He hasn't always answered every question we've asked, has he? But he does answer the right questions. So she asked him this question: do you think you are greater than our ancestor, Jacob? Well, Jesus could have said yeah. He could have said that, but he didn't go down that road. That wasn't what it was all about. It was about anyone who drinks of this water will soon become thirsty, but those who drink from the water that I will give them will never be thirsty again because what?
Jacque: It becomes a fresh bubbling spring within them giving them eternal life.
Brian: Sometimes later, this is shortly after the Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem. Jesus is now in the temple today. It's the last day of the great feast and there is a lot of religion going on. There are a lot of people having to buy their way into God's good graces. There is an exchange rate happening in the temple that is taking advantage of the poor and the disenfranchised. There are all sorts of things that actually don't represent what God's heart is and what God's desire was going on at the temple. So one of the things Jesus did is he cleansed the temple. We know the story where he turned over the money changes so forth. And he said, "My father's house is to be called the house of prayer." So the religious people all left. Who was left? The needy, the disenfranchised, those who were sick, those who were in need of healing, and Jesus said this.
Jacque: At the last day, the climax of the festival, Jesus stood and shouted to the crowds. Anyone who is thirsty may come to me and anyone who believes in me may come and drink, for the scriptures declare rivers of living water will flow from his heart. When he said living water, he was speaking of the spirit who would be given to everyone believing in him, but the spirit had not yet been given because Jesus had not yet entered into his glory.
Brian: So he gives this invitation that says anyone who will come to me, anyone who's thirsty, anyone who has a cry in your heart for something more than what this world seems to offer us, come to me. Come to me and I will give you rivers of living water. The Bible often compares God's spirit to liquids. It compares it to water in this case. In other places, it's compared to oil. Other places, it is compared to milk or wine. Jesus used liquid imagery to proclaim the end of man's trying to acquire God, the end of religion. The prophets had declared that a time was coming when living water would flow from the temple. We are going to read that portion just really soon here in the book of these Ezekiel. The prophet Ezekiel declared that a time was going to come where water would flow from the temple to the rest of the land, bringing this incredible spiritual refreshment.
Obviously, the religious leaders of the time of Christ knew this prophecy and they believed it pertained to the physical temple in Jerusalem, but that's not what the prophets were foretelling. Jesus knew this person of scripture and he basically claims it, but I want to read it. I'm going to read verse 1 through 12 here in Ezekiel 47. We are not going to focus on some of the details of this, just kind of the macro picture. There is a lot of stuff in here in the details, but that's not what I want to focus on this morning. Let's read it. This is a vision or a prophetic picture that God showed Ezekiel about what they refer to as the temple. How many know that when Ezekiel talked about the temple, he did not have a picture in his head of Jesus? Because there was no concept of that yet. We needed Jesus to actually give an overlay of the Old Testament. And the problem, how we oftentimes interpret scripture is we take the Old Testament and overlay it on top of Jesus. But Jesus needs to be overlaid on top of things. He needs to be overlaid on top of the Old Testament. So we now interpret the Old Testament through the life and person and words and teachings of Jesus. So with that in mind, let's read Ezekiel 47.
Jacque: In my vision, the man brought me back to the entrance of the temple there. I saw a stream flowing east from beneath the door of the temple and passing to the right of the altar on its south side. The man brought me outside the wall through the north gateway and led me around to the Eastern entrance there. I could see the water flowing out through the south side of the east gateway.
Brian: So there seems to be this temple, there is this place, this water now starts flowing out of it, and interestingly enough, the further it flows out, the bigger it gets, the wider it gets. We see this.
Jacque: Measuring as he went, he took me along the stream for 1,750 feet and then led me across; the water was up to my ankles. He measured off another 1,750 feet and led me across again. This time the water was up to my knees, then another 1,750 feet, and it was up to my waist. Then he measured another 1,750 feet, and the river was too deep to walk across. It was deep enough to swim in, but too deep to walk through.
Brian: How many know that it takes more faith to swim than to walk?
Jacque: He asked me, have you been watching Son of Man? Then he led me back along the riverbank. And when I returned, I was surprised by the sight of many trees growing on both sides of the river. Then he said to me, this river flows east through the desert, into the valley of the dead sea. The waters of this stream will make the salty waters of the Dead Sea fresh and pure.
Brian: Let's stop right there. How many have been to the Dead Sea? A number of you have been to the Dead Sea? The dead sea is so salty and it's so briny that you could literally walk out into the dead sea and after a while, once the water gets up to a little bit above your waist or about your chest, you are going to start to float vertically, not horizontally, but just vertically. You are like a Brianber that just kind of goes up and down. There is nothing that grows in the Dead Sea. It's saltier, I believe, than even the ocean. It's called the Dead Sea because everything is dead there. You don't have to have a doctorate degree in Greek and Hebrew language studies to know that dead means dead. It's dead. There is nothing that grows there. This river is running into the Dead Sea and all of a sudden something incredible happens in this dead sea.
Pam: There will be swarms of living things, wherever the water of this river flows, fish will abound in the deads sea, for its waters will become fresh. Life will flourish, wherever this water flows, fishermen will stand along the shores of the dead sea all the way from Ein Geddi to En Eglaim. The shores will be covered with nets drying in the sun. Fish of every kind will fill the dead sea just as they fill the Mediterranean.
Brian: When you think of the last couple chapters of the book of revelation, and you see what is depicted there about who's around the throne, who is around the throne?
Jacque: Every tribe, tongue and nation
Brian: Sounds to me like every kind of fish. It sounds to me like every kind of fish, every kind of fish. Fish of every kind will fill this dead sea. Let's go on.
Jacque: But the marshes and swamps will not be purified.
Brian: There are some areas that this river doesn't have an effect on. There are some areas.
Jacque: They will still be so fruit trees of all kinds will grow along both sides of the river. The leaves of these trees will never turn brown and fall and there will always be fruit on their branches. There will be a new crop every month for they are watered by the river, flowing from the temple. The fruit will be for food and the leaves for healing.
Brian: What a great picture. This is a very vivid picture of renewal, of awakening. Some other streams might say revival, but pictorial prophecies are often very difficult to interpret and the religious leaders at the time of Christ, they just got it all wrong. They interpreted this portion of scripture this way: the whole world was now going to come to the temple in Jerusalem to worship. The temple Jerusalem was what was going to be the attraction. And so obviously they hung onto that with tenacious vividness. We hear this declaration of water bubbling up from underneath the temple and this water flowing outward to cover this very and thirsty land. The question that we have to ask ourselves is, what does this picture really mean? Would the whole entire world one day quench their thirst by going to a geographical location coming to this temple to, once again, offer sacrifices? I say to you absolutely not. That is not the prophecy and the interpretation of this prophecy.
But rather the interpretation of this prophecy is that this water flowing from the temple here is to all of the world it's to every kind of fish it's to every kindred tribe and tongue. Rather than all of the world coming to the temple, what is flowing out of the temple is going to go to everybody in the world, and this temple is Jesus. This temple is Jesus. Jesus actually came to replace or to eliminate the whole system of striving to somehow appease and please God, he came to do away with that. Jesus knew this prophecy and he knew that his message was that he was the temple and that the water would flow out of that temple, meaning him, because he said, anyone who comes to me, I will give you waters that you'll never thirst again. He was this temple that the water would flow out of and that he was coming to replace the temple sacrificial system, and that through him, all of the world could receive his blessing. All of the world could be blessed and God's own spirit would flow out of him, him, meaning Jesus and that life and death, and his resurrection, which we are going to celebrate here in just a couple weeks, although I think we should really celebrate it all year long, his life and his death and his resurrection replace the entire temple system.
I'm willing to go on record today. And this may offend some people who are in the Christian realm, but God has no intention of restoring a sacrificial system in Jerusalem. He has no intention of doing that. The reason he does it, was all culminated in Jesus.
It all culminated in Jesus. The first early century church all understood that. The first century church was composed primarily of Jewish people who became believers, followers of Jesus, like the disciples. And then they in turn led other Jews to the Lord. And then the apostle Paul and Peter got nudged out of the nest and sent into Gentile regions. But the first believers, followers of Jesus were all Jews and they were no longer practicing their sacrificial system because they understood who and what Jesus was. Jesus became the sacrificial lamb and he became the priest offering the sacrifices and he also became the very temple himself. So that's why Paul says in him, meaning Jesus, we live and move and have a very being in him. We don't have this need to go back to a former system that was just a form or it was a cup to help us be introduced to something that was supposed to be inside the cup.
But later on, what ended up happening is that the law was simply to be given as a school master or teacher to bring us to Jesus. Jesus got left on the wayside because we started focusing on the law. That's what the religious leaders did. We have the law, we have Moses, we have this, we have that. And they forgot. They missed the ball game. They missed the whole thing. What Jesus was all about was I'm going to be contained in this form, but if you let the form become what you focus on, instead of what's inside the form, you are going to miss everything. And they did. The religious leaders did miss everything. The intention of Jesus was not to attach an addendum onto a religious system of his day. But rather it was his intention to supplant it altogether, to get rid of it altogether because it had become a hindrance to the people of that day.
It no longer served its purpose. It no longer was functioning the way that God wanted it to function. It was something that put heavy burdens on people. Jesus came to lift the burdens off of us. God was against any system that was going to put more burdens on people, more rules, more regulations, more this more, more that. That is not how God works. Jesus said, I want to come to you, me to you. I'm going to take everything out of the way. I'm going to eliminate everything out of the way. And now God was going to dwell in individuals. That's what he wanted. It's what he was offering. He was offering this water to flow into you and this water to flow into me and out of our innermost being will flow also that same river of living waters. This is what God wanted.
God was going to transform us from the inside out. That's what God wanted to do and no longer would there be a need to commute to a physical location to somehow make a connection with God. I'm thankful for a facility like this where we can gather together. But the fact of the matter is you nor I need this facility to connect with God. It helps us to connect with each other, and it's good to do that because a court of three strands is not easily broken. So this relationship with God was never intended to simply be an individual thing. It was always intended to be a communal thing where we are connected one to another. There is strength in that. But God's spirit would come to us and flow out of us through faith. After all was said and done, what God was saying is this: God is the way to God. God is the way to God. He has come directly to us in a way can all receive and that we can all believe. This person of Jesus is so amazing and he is so personable and he is so right there for everybody right there. I'd like to close by reading one more portion of scripture it's found. And Colossians 1 verses 15 through 20. This is a description of Jesus.
Jacque: Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation for, through him, God created everything and the heavenly realms and on Earth.
Brian: Again, he is Supreme over all of creation, whether that creation is what is on the earth or the heaven realm. Another way of saying that is those things that are in the physical universe, which is much more than just the earth or the spiritual universe, if I can use that, or spiritual dimension. He created it all. It is all subservient to him. So when we come up against strongholds in someone's life that are demonically in origin—
Jacque: Or in our own lives.
Brian: Or in our own lives, we have an authority over that realm because the spirit of Christ is living in us, and he said to us, all authority has been given to him, and then he gave that authority to you and I. We don't have to be subject to the whims and the schemes and the plans of the enemy for our lives. We don't have to be subject to it. We live in a fallen world. I understand that we are fallen creatures ourselves, but there is something living within us that can rise above all of that stuff. And that thing is of the spirit of Jesus Christ.
Jacque: That was good. He made the things we can see and the things we can't see such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through him and for him. He existed before anything else and he holds all creation together.
Brian: Sometimes we forget that even the fallen aim angels were created for him. We forget that. He still has authority over even all the fallen angels and that all things were created by him and for him. Even though they are not functioning in a way that honors God, he is determined to make sure even what they do. We'll somehow be turned around and bring glory to God. Wow. We can trust that. We can trust that in him.
Jacque: Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body. He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead. So he is first in everything. For God, in all his fullness, was pleased to live in Christ and through him, God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ's blood on the cross.
Brian: I'm not sure what things in heaven need to be made peaceful, but I know this: everything that needs to be made peaceful on earth has been done by God. It's made available to us. I'm not saying that there is peace everywhere. All I'm saying is that he made peace with everything in heaven and on earth. He has taken care of removing all the obstacles that would keep peace from happening. He has done that. Prior to the coming of cry and the atonement and the life and death and the resurrection of Jesus, the scriptures would say that that man was an enemy of God, that your sins have made a separation between you and me. And this was true, but with the coming of Jesus, and if you read second Corinthians chapter 5 very thoroughly, you see this, even more clearly, but Jesus has made peace with everything in heaven and everything on earth.
The question is, are we going to receive it? That's the question. From God's perspective, there is nothing between God and man. From God's perspective, all obstacles have been removed out of the way with the coming of Jesus and his death and resurrection. All the obstacles have been removed. Just because we don't always take advantage of receiving that, it doesn't mean that it's not available. All I'm saying is there is this incredible invitation that God has given the whole world through the person of Jesus Christ, that nothing stands between you and God. There is no chasm there anymore. There is nothing that you need to do to somehow leap this chasm. There is no bridge that needs to be built. There is no ladder that needs to be built to somehow connect with God in heaven.
Jacque: There is no work that needs to be done.
Brian: There is no work that needs to be done to do that. It has all been done. That's why Jesus said it's completed. It's finished. Nothing more needs to be done. We just have to receive it. We just have to receive it. Now, you know what, I can put money in an envelope for you and leave it at the front desk of the church and unless you go there and get it and pick it up that money doesn't do you any good,
Jacque: You have to open the envelope.
Brian: You have to open it. But you are not working for any of that. It's nothing you do. So we have to receive it. There is no question that there is a receiving that we need to do. That's why this thing is called faith. We have to believe, we have to receive, have to believe we have to receive, but that's all we have to do is believe and receive because all of the obstacles have been removed between God and us. If you are watching by livestream today, or you are here in the auditorium, if there is a part of your heart and I suspect there is because there is always a part of my heart that feels I haven't done enough. I haven't done enough and that somehow God is withholding favor. God's withholding blessings because I should have done more this week. I just ask you to join me in letting that go. Just join me in letting that go and come into a deeper place of really trusting in the goodness of God's plan in sending Jesus and the person of Jesus.
We don't need any more systems in place. There is no nourishment that comes from licking the outside of the cup. There is no quenching of our thirst by simply looking at how wonderful the tools hanging on the wall are, or the different cups we might have. The nourishment comes, the quenching of our thirst comes when we partake of what's in the cup.
Jacque: I just saw this picture in my mind. I think it's just here for one person maybe, but I've been playing the Wii with my grandkids. I see this little "Wii me" creature, but I see this conveyor belt, just like a moving sidewalk, just going straight into the heart of God and this little girl and this little boy, this person fell down. All we have to do is jump up and just get back on the sidewalk. It's all we have to do. Just get up from where we are. Just jump right on the sidewalk, that moving rock that moves us straight into God's heart, through the beauty of God's heart Through the beauty of God's love.
Brian: Pastor Robert, would you come please?
Robert: Praise the Lord. Ooh, Jesus help me. I'm supposed to come up here and do a closing prayer. I'm ready to have a revival meeting.
Jacque: Do it.
Robert: Pastor Brian, I've been here since September of 2021 and I'm sure I'll hear more sermons, but that was the most profound sermon that I've heard you preach. I'm ready to go out, put up a tent outside this church and preach all week about Jesus. I don't know if you all got it, but thankfully this is recorded. You need to replay it through this week and really get it if you missed it. I've been in Bible school a whole lot of time. There is no theological professor That has spoken about the person of Jesus more profound than what I heard today.
Jesus. Okay. I'm going to try to pray. I have a twofold prayer. I don't know who I'm speaking to, but if you are still searching for God, the answer is here right now. It is in the person of Jesus. You may be like the woman at the well, and if you try to do it your way, but you find yourself continually being thirsty, being empty, Jesus is that living water that wants to come inside you so that you would never thirst again. You've been on this journey, this spiritual journey and you are trying on this quest to find God. Well, he is right here. All you have to do is accept this precious gift of Jesus Christ. It is simple. He has made it simple for us. All you have to do is say, Jesus, I surrender to you. Come into my life and I will follow you. I accept your gift, your sacrifice that allows me to commune with the father. I surrender my life, my sins, everything that I have done to separate from my creator. I thank you for standing in the gap for me. And I declare in my heart that I will follow you all the days of my life all the days. And I will be yours and you will be my God.
I would also like to pray for those of us that have called ourselves Christ followers or Christians and have been in the church, but have a question. Do you know him? My prayer is that your ears, and I'm talking about your spiritual ears, are open today to hear the message of the person of Jesus Christ. I pray that through that opening of your spiritual ears, that in your inward man, you would receive the person of Jesus Christ and know what that means to you and what that means to the entire body of Christ. I pray that your heart, your ears are open to receive Christ today. You say pastor, I already received Christ's; no, receive Christ today and who he truly is and what he has done for you and I. Thank you, Lord for what you've done. Yes, the prayer of our pastor was answered. Jesus, you showed up today. We thank you for your presence. We thank you for your anointing. We thank you for your work in our lives. And most of all, we thank you for your love that you've had for your creation in Jesus name. Amen.
Brian: If you would like to have just some personal prayer after the service, we'll have people up here at the altar to pray with you. Jim and Brenda will be serving communion as well over here. Let's stand together, shall we? Let's raise our hands to the Lord and receive his blessings. 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 drink from the cup and not lick it. We pray this name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. God bless you. Have a great day.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 4-3-22. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.