Pastor Brian and Jacque Lother
Brian: Let's transition. I'd like to share today on a subject that I'm calling routine or relationship. Yes, the kids can go. Mary, you can go too. Thank you.
Jacque: I was supposed to say that. Sorry. Thank you, Mary.
Brian: Thank you. I get too excited about what I wanna share.
Jacque: We should have let you go 10 minutes ago.
Brian: Thank you, kids love you guys. I'm really thankful for my heritage. My father was a pastor. I was raised in the church and I think that environment was very good in many respects for me. It protected me from a lot of things that other kids, my age started to get into and became very detrimental in their lives. How many of you know that with every coin, there are two sides to it. With this coin, the coin of routine, because I don't ever remember a Sunday that I never woke up and I wasn't going to church in my whole life. I'm 71 now, and I do not remember a time in my life on a Sunday that I woke up and I wasn't going to be going to church or some kind of connection to a church service someplace.
The challenge, the flip side of that coin is that sometimes you can get into routines and your heart starts to dissipate. You just go through the motions. You just start going through the actions. God instituted certain routines for the nation of Israel. They began to just go through the motions and their heart was far from the Lord. He began to actually despise the very routines that he asked them to do.
I was reading recently, a quote from Gandhi and Gandhi was speaking to a group of Christians. To this group of Christians, he stated "I don't reject your Christ." A lot of people thought that Gandhi rejected Christ. And he said, "I don't reject your Christ. He said, in fact, I actually love your Christ. It's just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ," that he didn't want to associate himself with being a Christian. When I read this statement, I at first wondered if I was one of those people who were really unlike Christ. When I hear things like that, the first place I look is in my own heart and my own life. And through the years of my life, I've had a number of, shall we say, aha moments. Have you ever had an aha moment?
Through the years I've had a number of these aha moments where I realized in my life, my attitudes and my disposition towards other people. And even sometimes what became my conduct, that I was really the furthest thing from being like Christ. I felt like I contributed in some respects, not that Gandhi ever saw me, but that the behavior and the attitudes that sometimes I conveyed contributed to that kind of thinking. When I reflect on the person of Jesus, I reflect on his life and reflect on his teachings. He always put the emphasis of his teachings on the heart. He put the emphasis on the heart, not on behavioral routines. Jesus taught that if the heart was in the right place, generally speaking, loving actions would come out of that. These loving actions will follow, and Jesus is not content, for example, with people just not murdering. When he said, thou shall not kill, he wasn't content with people just not murdering, but he knew that people could go their entire life holding hatred in their hearts towards other people. He associated that as the same as actually murdering or killing somebody.
I'm thankful for the routines that I have implemented in my life. We do pauses on a regular basis. I take moments throughout the day to just stop and try to connect with God. I'm thankful for the routines of regularly scheduled church services and times together, Bible studies that we can do all the different things that we kind of schedule in a sense, I'm thankful for routines. I'm thankful for rituals or customs. I love our custom of a Christmas Eve service that we do. I love our good Friday services, which we do. I'm so thankful for some of the other routines that we implement and are kind of, in a sense, on our church calendar. These things actually enhance my relationship with God, but I could show up and my heart could be far from here. If that happens, then that tradition and that routine becomes something that actually undermines my relationship with God. Over time, intentional thoughtfulness can be lost because of routines.
This may sound strange, but you know, I'm the first one here on Sunday mornings and I kind of have a little bit of a routine. I do some finger exercises on the piano to warm up. I've found that the older I get, I need to warm up more. I need to stretch more. I do some just technical exercises, some scales, some things that I've learned through the years that I practice as a classical pianist. But one of the things I also do when I sit at the piano is I say a prayer to the Lord. I say, "Father, I pray that today won't be about me. It won't be about people's thinking, boy, can he play the piano really good, but rather father, may this be a day that honors you and glorifies you. May my heart be in what we do today." I don't wanna just sing songs that we've known for a while and I know the chord progressions and I can just kind of play them without thinking I want my heart. I want everything I do to be an expression of my love for Jesus Christ. Even though sometimes I'm here because of the routine I'm here because of the schedule, I wanna make sure my heart doesn't get lost in all of this.
Sometimes in our lives routine can do all the thinking for us. Tradition can do all the thinking for us and we are left with something that might look good on the outside, but is actually filled with nothing but the bones of a long dead relationship. Jesus criticized the religious leaders of his day for this very thing. We see this in Matthew chapter 23 versus 27 to 28. There are more verses in here that say this, but I just picked these two verses out here.
Jacque: What sorrow awaits you, teachers of religious law and you Pharisees hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the outside, but filled on the inside with dead people's bones and all sorts of impurity. Outwardly, you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness.
Brian: This is like "ouch", kind of a scripture, right? I mean, this, this isn't one of those verses you go read to feel good. This isn't in the book of Psalms where we want to just go meditate for a while. This is a stinging indictment by Jesus to religious leaders. In some respects, it would be easy for all of us to fall into that category of religious leaders because most of us find ourselves going to church on a regular basis. We find ourselves connecting with the family of faith in a structured way, on a regular basis. This verse is like one of these verses that I think we have to really take the heart and say, am I one of these whitewashed tombs? Am I one of these people who have an outward form of righteousness or godliness, but deny the power in our lives? Am I one of these people that at the end of the day, Jesus was actually directing quite a stinging compliment. It's not a compliment, but a statement to us. Jacque, you and I talked about this a lot over the last number of years, just the importance of our hearts, not becoming disconnected from what we do from what our job is. My employment, my vocation has been a pastor and pastors have certain structures and routines in their lives. And it's really easy to become— what you do is out of the routine and our hearts are far from what we do. We've had a lot of conversations about that.
Jacque: We have and just keep our hearts open. Not that my heart is totally pure, but I keep trying to keep a pure heart in the midst of disappointment or discouragement, and just making sure that we are examples and most of all, that our love for Jesus is true and the motivation for what we do. Going back to Gandhi's statement about so many of you people that call yourself Christians, you just don't act like Jesus. Sometimes in the ministry, you can begin to put your walls up because there are people that lash out at you, they bite at you. They are disappointed with you. They leave you. They abandon you. One of the challenges is for us to not put walls up,
Brian: Absolutely, to keep that soft heart.
Jacque: The only way to do that is to be intentional. It just doesn't come naturally. As a matter of fact, the more routine we get in our lives, the easier it is for us to do things by rote and our hearts to be far from what we are supposed to be doing or the relationship side of things.
Jacque: It's like, okay. I check off; I keep this checklist. I wanna keep developing good habits, like physically, spiritually, mentally, everything. I would list all the things I could get done in the morning and throughout the day and at the end of the day, I would feel so good if I checked off everything, but I decided to take my quiet time off that list. It can't just be on a list and think like, I'm okay now because I did it.
Brian: You wanted your heart to not be removed from it.
Jacque: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Brian: In reality form can compliment the substance of our relationship. I'm not saying that it's bad to have a routine. There is nothing wrong with routine, but when the routine itself becomes the goal, when the routine is, well, I did my devotions or I went to church this week or I went to this. I made my prayer confession or whatever it might be. When the routine becomes the goal, what happens then is the love starts to dissipate. The relationship starts to dissipate and eventually it's gone and all that we are left with is tradition with no love or any intimacy with the Lord. That's where the nation of visual Israel found themselves. That's where these religious leaders were.
I came across an author, a Canadian pastor, an author a few years ago. His name is Brooksie Cabey, a very interesting name, by the way, Brooksie Cabey. He's probably easy to find on the internet with a name like that. It's not like Bob Smith, oh no or Robert Smith or whatever. Someone looks up Robert Smith on the website and they might have to go all day long to find our pastor here. But if you wanna find pastor Robert Smith, just go to the hope website and you'll find a lot of good stuff on him. Brookise Cabey told this parable. I don't know if this was a real story that actually happened with one of his parishioners or was just a story of parables that he created. But as we know, Jesus taught in parables and he took stories from everyday life to help teach us certain things that would help us understand spiritual concepts.
Brooksie came up with this parable; it's about two people that are married. Their names are uh Bob and Sue, and a few years into their marriage., Sue, the wife felt the need to address with her husband, Bob, the absence of passion and romance in their relationship. Their marriage consisted of things that were very consistent and predictable and all those kinds of things and they began to get into their routine of life. And pretty soon the passion was starting to dissipate out of their relationship. They talked about it and Bob agreed and committed to taking some initiative to help rekindle some passion in their relationship.
On Tuesday evening, the doorbell rang; Sue went and answered the door and here was little Maurine who was their babysitter. She was very surprised because she hadn't scheduled the babysitter, which was normally the custom in their home. When they were going to do something, she would schedule a babysitter. Bob showed up at the door and welcomed Maurine in. He had called Maurine because he was gonna take Sue out on a night on the town.
She ran upstairs, got her favorite red dress on. They soon were in the car on their way to a nice little quaint Italian restaurant. And when they got to the restaurant, the Maître d welcomed them and ushered them in a sense, maybe that's not the correct word; that's a church word, maybe not ushering, but escorted them to a nice table in the back corner of the restaurant. At her plate setting was a card that Bob had written. It wasn't a hallmark card with a kind of standard predetermined writing stuff, but something he wrote from his heart just about how much he valued her and how much he loved his wife.
Next thing you know Sue is thinking that gee, something is coming back here. As the night went on, they began to talk about all sorts of things in their history that rekindled fond memories. When the dessert came, Bob reached under the table and pulled out a favorite flower of hers, a blue rose, and handed it to her. Bob hit a home run. That following week was one of the better weeks that Sue had had in a long time.
And then the next Tuesday came around and at 6:30, the doorbell rang again and it was Maurine and Bob said, "We're going out again." And Sue thought, "Well, I can get used to this." But then a little kind of a strange thing happened. Bob said to Sue, "Why don't you put that same red dress on?" She thought that was a little strange. And, but she came down and off, they went and then she started to see familiar territory and sure enough, Bob was going back to the same Italian restaurant and they were ushered to the same corner table. In that place-setting where she was gonna sit was a card and virtually the same words that had been sent on the previous card was set again, and the whole evening was a replication of the previous week. Sue was grateful for the evening, but she wasn't giving Bob passing grades on creativity. Let's just put it that way.
The next Tuesday night, the doorbell rang at 6:30 and it was Maurine again, it was a babysitter. And Bob, once again had planned an evening at the same restaurant talking about the same conversation. Pretty soon, Sue was getting images in her mind of that movie, Groundhog Day. right. The same red dress, the same conversation, the same thing written on the card. Today, if you were to ask Bob—and by the way, this happened like 10 weeks in a row. If you were to ask Bob how his marriage was going, he would say, "I romance my wife every week." If you were to ask Sue how things are going, you would get a different take on things. She feels trapped. She feels imprisoned. She feels like she's actually in a loveless relationship. She feels like your husband doesn't have a clue as to what relationship is all about.
What ended up happening is Bob mistook form for substance. He mistook this form, this ritual for a real relationship. What Bob actually did was he kind of turned their relationship into a kind of a religion where he went through the same routines all the time, but his relationship was absent out of everything. After months of this routine, Sue could have been having dinner with anybody as far as she was concerned and it would've lacked real meaning because this tradition that had been created by Bob, in this tradition, love became unnecessary because the tradition carried them through. The system that Bob had created, allowed him to basically set it on autopilot and everything took care of itself.
It's important to remember that tradition is really not the enemy. It's not the enemy, but the dependence upon tradition when our hearts aren't there, this routine to the point that we disengage from thoughtful, purposeful, intentional intimacy, that's where the danger comes in. And when this happens with God, he abhors it. He hates it. I wanna read just a couple of scriptures here, maybe three of them that really paint this picture. This has really everything to do with us as the church. This has everything to do with us as followers of Jesus because when our hearts disconnect and disengage from who the person of Jesus is, we find ourselves acting just like the Pharisees, just like the religious leaders of the day of Christ. He wasn't complimentary to them about their faith. So let's read Isaiah chapter one versus 10 through 18.
Jacque: Listen to the Lord, you leaders of Sodom. Listen to the law of our God, people of Gamora. What makes you think I want all your sacrifices, says the Lord. I am sick of your burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fatted cattle. I get no pleasure from the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to worship me, who asked you to parade through my courts with all your ceremony? Stop bringing me your meaningless gifts. The incense of your offerings disgusts me. As for your celebrations of the new moon and the Sabbath and your special days for fasting, they are all sinful and false. I want no more of your pious meetings. I hate your new moon celebrations and your annual festivals. They are a burden to me. I cannot stand them. When you lift up your hands in prayer, I will not look. Though you offer many prayers, I will not listen, for your hands are covered with the blood of innocent victims. Wash yourselves and be clean. Get your sins out of my sight. Give up your evil ways. Learn to do good. Seek justice, help the oppressed defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows. Come now; let's settle this, says the Lord. Though, your sins are like Scarlet, I will make them as white as snow though. They are red light Crimson. I will make them as white as wool
Brian: I love this 18th verse because God doesn't just stop with, shall we say, the condemnation or the indictment, but he gives them a way out. He doesn't say, if you will make your sins as white as snow, then you can come to me. He doesn't say that. He says, even though your sins are like scarlet, I can make them. But he makes them white by being in a relationship with him. He makes them disappear. Even though they may be read as crimson, he will make them disappear because of our intimacy and our relationship with him. The prophet Amos said it a little bit differently, but he said it this way in AMS, chapter 5 verses 21 to 24.
Jacque: I hate all your show and pretense, the hypocrisy of your religious festivals and solemn assemblies. I will not accept your burnt offerings and grain offerings. I won't even notice all your choice peace offerings. Away with your noisy hymns of praise. I will not listen to the music of your hearts. Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice and an endless river of righteous living.
Brian: If you go back to verse 17 of Isaiah chapter 1, the very first thing that Isaiah is saying in this book of Isaiah, he says, learn to do good, seek justice, help the oppressed, defend the cause of orphans, fight for the rights of widows or single mothers. Here we see him saying what he wanted to see was a mighty flood of justice and fairness. I really like how Eugene Peterson translates this verse because he kind of brings it into our 21st century with all of the conferences that we can schedule ourselves to go to.
Jacque: He calls the festivals conferences.
Brian: He calls these festivals that the prophet Amos writes about conferences. Let's read it in the message Bible.
Jacque: I can't stand your religious meetings.
Brian: Wow, I can't stand your religious meetings now. Why wouldn't God like a meeting that we were having together as Christians? Well, he goes on to explain.
Jacque: I'm fed up with your conferences and conventions. I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals. I'm sick of your fundraising schemes, your public relation and image making. I've had all I can take of your noisy ego music. When was the last time you sang to me?
Brian: Wow, listen to that. When was the last time you sang to me?
Jacque: Do you know what I want? I want justice, oceans of it. I want fairness, rivers of it. That's what I want. That's all I want.
Brian: Wow. We just can't go through religious motions and forget the heart of Christ in the middle of it all. We just can't do that. The prophet Micah says it this way, Micah 6:8.
Jacque: He has already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God is looking for in men and women. It's quite simple. Do what is fair and just to your neighbor. Be compassionate and loyal in your love and don't take yourself too seriously. Take God seriously.
Brian: Yeah, relationship as opposed to routine. It's so easy. We have this propensity as the human race to do what Peter did when he was experiencing Jesus on the mount of transfiguration. Let's build a temple. Let's build a structure. Let's do something like this. Let's get a routine to remember. The problem with routine is it can contribute to our hearts being far from God. Routine can also give us opportunities to come together with our hearts before the Lord. And so it doesn't happen naturally. You have to be intentional about always letting the Lord have your heart every day
Many times a day, I will pause and I will say, "Father, I give everything and everyone to you." Just pause and let his spirit kind of wash over me. Come saturate me. Sometimes it's 30 seconds. Sometimes it's a minute. Once in a while, it might be longer. But I'm intentionally saying father, I want my heart to be pure before you. I want my heart to be soft before you. I don't want my heart to be hardened because of disappointments or wounds or hurts. I want to be like you, Jesus. I don't want it said of me, well, I love your Jesus. I just don't like how you behave. I love your Jesus; I just don't like how you think.
I was brought back to one verse in the book of Psalm, Psalm 51. It's the scripture that David wrote after he had his falling with Bathsheba. It affected not only David and certainly not only Bathsheba, but it certainly affected Bathsheba's husband and it affected the nation of Israel because their king had really fallen. He in a place of true contriteness wrote this portion of scripture.
Jacque: Create in me a clean heart, oh, God; renew a loyal spirit within me.
Brian: I was saying to Jacque just yesterday— we were asked to go sing at the funeral of a wonderful lady, who probably none of you know who she is. She had heard us sing at some event some years back and when her husband died in 2019, she called Jacque nine as we would sing at her husband's funeral, so we did. It was in a suburb, quite a ways away from here. She recently passed and the family asked us to come back and sing at their mother's funeral, and we did that yesterday. As we were driving over to the funeral, the thought just hit me. If our hearts will always remain loyal to Jesus, then we won't struggle with what the Pharisees struggled with. When our hearts are really loyal to Jesus, when he has our hearts, when we come together and it's about giving our hearts once again to Jesus, when it's about giving our everything in our intervals, being to Christ, when we do this, then our routines and our structures and all of the traditions we have can be something that enhances our walk with God.
But when our hearts begin to wane in affection, and when we begin to lose the wonder of walking with God, when we begin to no longer be amazed at the wisdom and goodness of God, when we no longer have a passion to be in the presence of God, then our routines have become something that undermines the real essence of what it means to be in a relationship with Jesus Christ.
I would invite all of you every day to just say to the Lord, father, I come to you today and I want my spirit, I want my heart and my spirit to be loyal to you. When I'm loyal to my wife, I don't have eyes for another woman. When I'm loyal to you as a pastor and friends, I walk in integrity, even when I'm by myself, not just when I'm in front of you. When we are loyal in our hearts to Christ, then we will say no to those things that undermine the heart of Christ in our lives. When we are loyal to Jesus, we will begin to love the things that Jesus loves. We will begin to have passion and hearts full of mercy, as he was asking us to do here.
Do you know what I want? He says, "I want justice and I want oceans of it. I want fairness. I want rivers of it. That's what I want." I don't want the Lord when his presence comes to hope community church, when we gather together, because his word says where two of you or more are gathered in my name there am I in the midst of you, so when we are gathered in his name and his presence comes, I don't want him to say, I'm fed up with this. I don't want him to say I'm so tired of your image making. I'm so tired of your noisy ego music. Why don't you sing songs to me? That's one of the reasons why we often select the kind of songs that Jacque and I do a lot of, not exclusively, but a lot of our songs that we can actually sing to Jesus, sing to our father in heaven. So our hearts would follow those lyrics and really say them genuinely.
I remember when my sister and I were young and we would argue and fight, and it drove mom and dad nuts. They would grab the two of us, and then they would say to me, those words that I just despise to hear: give your sister a hug. Now tell her you love her. Let me tell you something, the motions were there, but the heart was far from it. Forgive me. What God doesn't want from us is for us to have these actions, these motions, and our hearts be so far from what those actions and motions and songs are to be all about you. Is there something you wanna say?
Jacque: When I feel like there is a wall and I can't experience God, so many times I've just seen this pattern that my mind is too much on me. When I go before the Lord and say, okay, what's wrong, he shows me something in my heart that I would need to confess, I would need to repent of. That loyalty is about obedience too. It can get settled so quickly with honesty before the Lord and just whatever you say, God.
Brian: Sometimes, it's the right thing to do to just in a sense, go through the emotions. But as you are going through the motions, as you are going through the motions, ask God to help soften your heart, ask God to help your heart be there. He understands all of these distractions. He understands all the challenges.
Jacque: He understands our weakness,
Brian: When we come together, let's make an effort every Sunday, every time we are together to say, father, I don't want my heart to be far from here. I want my heart to be loyal to you because Lord, if you can create a clean heart in me, please renew a loyal spirit in me, where I can be pleasing in your sight, where you can actually say, I enjoyed that song. I enjoyed watching you come together rather than the stinging indictment that Jesus gave to the religious leaders of his day. The fact of the matter is, in many respects, we are all religious leaders. We're a kingdom of priests. We're a holy nation. We are all religious leaders. And so this indictment that Jesus spoke against the Pharisees and the religious leaders pertains to us, and we have to guard our hearts. We have to make sure that there is a loyal spirit in us. Pastor Jeff, would you please come?
Jeff: Let's just close our eyes and open our hearts. If you are in your living room watching a live stream, you can join us. We wanna make sure we take advantage of this moment in this message, because it's intended to be personal. A couple weeks ago, I stumbled across a song. It was a contemporary artist singing an old religious song that most of us know. It was, "I went down in the river to pray, studying about that good old way and who shall wear the starry crown. Good Lord, show me the way." As I heard those words, "Good Lord, show me the way", I just started to realize that that is the heart that I want to have towards my (1:28:00) father in heaven. I want to have a heart that is always asking him for more, to take me where he wants me to go, to teach me the ways that are pleasing to him, to become like him in every way that I can. It seems like it's one step forward, two steps back a lot of the time.
But this is who we want to be. I was thinking, as you were sharing at the end, Pastor Brian, about Peter, you know, Jesus was washing his disciples feet and he got to Peter and Peter said, "No Lord, you'll never wash my feet." And Jesus said, "Well, if I don't wash you, you won't have any part in me." And Peter's response was, well, then wash my whole body. He wanted more than anything else to have Jesus. If we can enter into that longing, and that willingness and that hunger, then we will become more like Jesus.
So with your eyes close and your heart's open, let's just say together, Jesus, please save me from my empty routines and teach me how to love you more. Lord, I want my life to look like yours. I want my attitudes to be like yours. I want my words to be the kind of words you say. Make it real, lord. Thank you, Jesus.
If you are observing this from outside of a relationship with Jesus, if you've never actually known him yet, then now's a great time to say Jesus. I would like to know you. He'll introduce himself to you and he'll change your life forever. So if you are here today or if you are at home and you've never surrendered, you've never actually given your heart to Jesus, now is the time to do it. Thank you, Lord.
As technicians we are up there, we are running the live stream, it's easy to disengage from worship yeah because you are busy changing camera scenes, but there is nothing quite as good as just sitting up in the booth, closing your eyes and entering into worship. Sometimes, you miss a few shots you were supposed to catch. Sorry, livestream. I got lost. But that's how everyone of us wants to be. It's amazing how we can come to church Sunday after Sunday, after Sunday and we can check out of worship. The most precious thing that will ever happen when we join our hearts together like this is that we connect with Jesus. That's the most precious thing and that's the best way that we'll ever connect with each other too. Pastor Brian, I'm gonna turn it over to you now to bring us a blessing. Thank you.
Brian: I try to share just things from my personal life, be honest with you about just where my walk has been with the Lord and hopefully it helps all of you. I don't mean to be cavalier about this at all, but when I encounter Jesus, it's very much like that old song that many of us would remember, Love Potion Number Nine, because when I find myself becoming judgmental and gnarly about other people, the things that they've done to disappoint me or hurt me, or maybe it's a politician, a decision they made or something, they state said it, it can be anybody.
Jacque: Or something about football.
Brian: It could be a coach in football. It could be that or a draft pick that they missed on. I don't know. I find myself having this animus in my heart towards this person or this group of people or whatever it might be. I find that I don't want to go around kissing everything in sight but when I encounter Jesus and when I really have that place where his spirit just washes over me and my relationship with him is in such a rich place, then I have a whole different view of the whole world. I view the world differently. I view the world with more hope. I view the world with more possibilities. I view the world as not my enemy. I view the world as someone that God deeply cares about and loves deeply. A
I find myself at times, going back and forth with this perspective of what the world actually looks like to me, but I realize it's not my perspective. That is changing. It's my heart that keeps getting hardened and then re-softened and then hardened and re-softened by encountering Jesus. And so I just encourage us today, let's go take a drink from the water that Jesus gives. And I tell you what, you will want to go around, kissing everything and say, when Jesus touches your heart. Let's raise your 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 smile upon you, be gracious to you and may the Lord turn his face toward you and give you his peace. May you saturate yourself in the presence of Jesus. This, we pray in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. God bless you. Thank you for being here today. Thank you to those of you who are watching online. We love you. Stay in touch with us. God bless you.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 5-1-22. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.