Pastor Brian and Jacque Lother
Jacque: Our God reigns. That was the name of that song: Our God reigns. Reign in our hearts, God. Reign in this church, God. Just a couple thoughts before we move on. Today, we are having a summer kickoff lunch and the Joy group is putting it on. Thank you, Joy group. That's just older youth, 55 plus. So thanks to everybody who brought some food. We are going to be grilling. It's going to be great. So please stay for lunch today. And then the kids are having a summer kickoff party. Remember your Tuesday email. Check that Tuesday email out or jump on the website, either way, and you can find out all the details or call Rachel in the office or call Cindy or call me. Anywhere you want to find out the information, you can. Dan, will you come up and give us an announcement?
Dan: Hello. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Daniel Soche. I am the youth director here for the six through 12 youth group. If you didn't know, we haven't been having youth group since last June. But the announcement is that when we do this kickoff for the younger kids, we will also be kicking off the six through 12 youth group. So we are back. I'm also very excited. We will be here as well and we are going to be playing some volleyball out in the court over there. We are going to be grilling, which will be fun, have some burgers and whatnot. Perfect way to kick off the summer when school is out. Parents of kids who are of youth group age, I have been sending out emails with updates. So if you haven't been getting those emails, that means I don't have your info. I think we might have a slide with my email on it, if not that's okay. It's youth@myhopecommunity.com. If you haven't been getting my emails, shoot me an email and then I'll have your info and then I can get you in on those emails with updates and scheduling and whatnot for RSVPs because I need to know how much burger meat to get. So that would be very helpful.
Parents, it's an event for the whole family. If you've got a kid who's in grades six through 12, but you also want to come and play some volleyball and have a burger, then it will be a great time. I know Robert is excited to play some volleyball. I know Darryl is excited to play some volleyball too. We'll have a good time.
Brian: Thank you, Dan. Do you want to talk about your clip?
Jacque: Ladies, circle the date. June 18th, we've got a women's brunch here at church, and it's going to be fun. We are going to have some art involved. Tequaris is going to challenge us with the word and some good food and some great friendship and fun. So please come.
Brian: Yes. Some other things to talk about, like after the church service today, what's happening?
Jacque: I did that.
Brian: I know that, but you forgot something.
Jacque: You better tell everybody about it.
Brian: What do we have in the back of the auditorium?
Jacque: Oh that. Oh, okay. Yes. Thank you, dear. I didn't have it written down. Yesterday, we had a workday. Thank you all who came and worked. It was wonderful. We sorted through years of storage. It was wonderful. I feel lighter today. We did find a few things that we are going to— we just put them on a table back there. They are just giveaways. Some t-shirts that were from an event we did a few years ago that are so soft, I just couldn't get rid of them. I thought somebody is going to need a new paint shirt that's really comfortable. So check out the table back there.
Brian: Anyways. They are free. Free first come first serve. No fighting over the t-shirts. It's good to have the Lecisians back with us from North Carolina, South Carolina. God bless you. We could just kidnap them for a few months and let them stay here at least until the cold weather.
Jacque: Months, years.
Brian: Yes. Yes. Well, God bless you, everybody. It's great to be here today.
Jacque: You have to dismiss the kids.
Brian: I know that, but that's your job
Jacque: Kids, you can be dismissed. We do not plan any of this craziness and I'm trying to calm down.
Brian: It doesn't work. Can a Leopard change its spots? No, no. How many want Jacque to change? Nobody would like Jacque to change, right? Jacque is who she is. I married her for who she is.
Jacque: I have kind of loosened you up a little
Brian: I suppose.
Jacque: And you've calmed me down though.
Brian: No, I haven't.
Jacque: Seriously. What would I have been without you? It’s scary to think of.
Brian: Oh man. Okay. Anyways, let's move on here. It's so good to see everybody. Thank you all for watching a livestream as well. I appreciate all of the contacts and things that you send us. We are so appreciative of it. One of the things that our livestream community can do is invite a neighbor to come in and watch your live stream with you. In the same way that we are inviting people to come to church with us here, you can invite people to come to church in your home and watch the livestream, and we can keep influencing more and more people in the love of Christ. I'd like to talk today— It's kind of part two of last week's message. If you didn't hear last week's, go back to our livestream. We have our messages archived and you can go back and listen to it. I've titled this message, "The New and Improved Version". How many like new and improved things? Sometimes people talk about the good old days and they are referring to a time that they have forgotten most of what the good old days were like, when you had to carry water to the cabin or go out to the pump and get it and heat it for just a sponge bath, no hot showers. Some of those kinds of things. And let me tell you something; I do not long for the good old days. amen. I don't long for the good old days.
When Jesus came on the scene, he brought what he called and the New Testament calls a new covenant. And it wasn't just like an addendum attached to the old covenant. It wasn't just kind of, let's see how we can improve. But as I mentioned last week in the title that the old covenant went out of business; it died and a whole new covenant came in its place. This is a much new and improved version of what many of the Old Testament people lived under. Oftentimes, when God gave words to the prophets and gave them little snippets, little pictures of what it was going to be like when the Messiah came. They longed, in their hearts, for that. They longed, in their hearts, for that. We see something very interesting in, uh, the book of Acts chapter 19. I want to kind of set the stage here. Well, let's read it first, and then I'll give a little bit of a historical context to everything. Acts chapter 19:1-7. This situation happened on Paul's third missionary journey when Apollos went to Corinth and Paul went up to Ephesus, which is in Turkey.
Jacque: While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul traveled through the interior regions until he reached Ephesus on the coast where he found several believers. Did you receive the holy spirit when you believed he asked them? No, they replied. We haven't even heard that there is a holy spirit. Then what baptism did you experience? he asked. And they replied, the baptism of John. Paul said, John's baptism called for repentance from sin. But John himself told the people to believe in the one who would come later, meaning Jesus. As soon as they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then when Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them and they spoke in other tongues and prophesied. There were about 12 men in all.
Brian: This is such an interesting story to me because these approximately 12 men were Jewish believers. They, at one time, had gone back to Israel for probably some kind of celebration of a feast of some type of festival. While they were there, they heard this crazy man out in the desert preaching, whose name was John the Baptist. Their hearts got stirred by this message of John the Baptist, they believed and they were baptized. And then they went back home, which was back to Ephesus. You remember when I said a few weeks ago that the average person's lifespan lived within about a 15 mile radius their whole life. So to go from Israel up to Ephesus was a considerable journey. That was like the other side of the world for a lot of those people. These people were baptized in John's ministry. They go back to Ephesus. John is now arrested. He is executed.
Jesus comes on the scene. He has his ministry for three and a half years. He is now crucified, buried, resurrected, and ascended into heaven. The Holy Spirit comes on the de Pentecost, which by the way, today is Pentecost Sunday. The people that were gathered together were all filled with the Holy Spirit. They were then sent out to the far reaches of the world. Persecutions now started and the first martyr was Steven. There was a young man, holding the coats of those who were throwing the rocks at this first martyr. His name was Saul of Tarsus, soon to be called the apostle Paul. So on the road to Damascus, as Paul was persecuting Christians, he had his divine encounter with Jesus. He becomes a believer in Christ. He then kind of goes out into the Arabian desert for a number of years to just learn from God. He then ends up going back to Jerusalem, meeting some of the original apostles. And then he became one of these apostles to the Gentiles, but he was also— being a Pharisees of Pharisees, he has a lot of ins with Jewish people.
And so now he has a missionary journey that takes them all throughout the region and comes back home. He does a second missionary journey and comes back home. He does a third missionary journey and he comes across these original 12 guys that were baptized John the Baptist. This is probably a 20 year gap between the time they first met John the Baptist and their now encounter with the apostle Paul. He meets this little band of people. Obviously, there was a kind of a kinship there. He engages in what Pastor Robert calls evangelism 101, which is, "Hi, my name is Paul. I used to kill a bunch of people, but Jesus saved me and changed me." And they started saying, "Well, we are believers too." "Well, what belief did you come into believing with?" "Well, this crazy guy in Israel that was baptizing people." Oh yeah. John the Baptist. And then Paul says, "Well, have you been baptized in the holy spirit?" And their interesting response is, "We've never even heard of a holy spirit." Now, let me ask the question. Do you think their lack of knowledge and understanding limited their experience with God? It absolutely did. It absolutely did limit their experience and their power and their ministry with God. Their lack of knowledge did. Because if it didn't matter, Paul wouldn't have said, "Well, let's take care of this right now." And he baptized them in the name of Jesus. They didn't even know the name of Jesus. They didn't even know it.
John said, "There is somebody coming after me and I'll baptize you in a sense in his name," but they didn't know who he was. Now they come into knowledge because Paul brings them a greater revelation of understanding and more truth. And they get baptized in the name of Jesus. Paul lays hands on him. They get filled with the holy spirit. They speak in other tongues and they also began to prophesy. The old covenant that so many people were accustomed to living under in those days, which by the way, has long reaching tentacles into the 21st century. The old covenant was based on external law. This is what makes us a Christian. We do these things. And then of course, if you don't do these things, you then are not a Christian. So hence, all of the judgment that comes when you don't do what you are supposed to do.
Jacque: Different people interpret those don'ts differently.
Brian: Well, that's why we have about 35,000 Protestant denominations.
Jacque: It's very confusing.
Brian: I find it really interesting when people find out about Hope Community Church, where we are located. Oh, that's close to my home. What do you guys believe? What's your doctrinal statement? What are the dos and don'ts of how you believe, is really what they are asking. I usually try to figure out a way to skirt their question and say, why don't you just come and experience what we are all about? Because the way of thinking in the vast majority of people today is still old covenantal thinking. It's old covenantal thinking that Jesus came to do away with. As we know, the first covenant was written by the finger of God. Remember the 10 commandments movie, the lightning and the "they shall not"? The finger of God writes these commandments on stone. And then, of course, later it was hard to carry those big stones around. So Moses decided that he is going to write this stuff on a piece of parchment. It's a lot easier to be transportable. And so they did that and it was copied over and over and over. That's where the name scribe came from. They were scribes. They wrote these Old Testament things.
In the new covenant, Jeremiah says something different. This is one of those little snippets I was talking about that God gave future pictures of. He said in the new covenant God's own spirit will write on our hearts. God's spirit is going to write on our hearts and he will write on our minds, and that all people will be able to experience their own personal relationship with God, that everybody would be able to experience that personal relationship with God, and that when we come into that relationship with God, that our sins and our shame are no longer covered, but they are removed. They are eliminated. This new covenant will be marked by, of course, forgiveness, a real sense of forgiveness. It's interesting that in the old covenant, the day of atonement was the day that all sins were remembered. When the sacrifices were made, it was a reminder of your sin. Aren't you glad that when we come to Jesus, like we did this morning in worship, that he is not reminding us of all of our sins? Aren't you thankful for that today? That is one of the big distinctions between the old covenant and the new covenant.
Jacque: He says our sins are removed, never to be remembered again,
Brian: You read some of these verses.
Jacque: Oh, sorry. Oh, you are right. It's the next verse.
Brian: You've been reading ahead.
Jacque: I got excited.
Brian: You got excited. So anyways, this new covenant is going to be marked by forgiveness, a clean slate, a fresh start. And that, as Jacque said, God won't even remember any past failure. Let's read it really quickly: Hebrews 8:12.
Jacque: And I will forgive their wickedness and will never again remember their sin.
Brian: So there is not only forgiveness. I recall a person saying to me many years ago, "I remember every single thing somebody has done wrong against me." I thought to myself, what a terrible burden to carry particularly because she wasn't the most pleasant of people anyways, so she probably had a lot of people that had issues with her and she remembered all those people. I thought to myself how different that is from Jesus, where speaking of how God is, I will forgive not only their wickedness, but I will never again remember their sins. Hebrews 10:17, let's read that one.
Jacque: Then he says, I will never again, remember their sins and lawless deeds.
Brian: And this is actually a quotation from Jeremiah 31 34. So again, in the old covenant, the sacrifice was more about appeasement. I've got to satisfy the anger and wrath of God were going to appease him somehow to hold off judgment. But there really wasn't this free forgiveness and no longer remembering our sins anymore. What Jeremiah was talking about and what some other prophets were talking about was this: it's like we will be born all over again. And then, of course, that's why Jesus says— and sometimes we quote this, "you must be born again," like it's a command, but it's really not a command. It's an offer. It's an invitation. It's really more like this: You get to be born again.
How many of us like do-overs? I do. I love do overs. You know why? Because I usually mess up the first time and the second time and the third time and I like do-overs. I need to do that measure over, play that again. When my dad was still alive, we did a recording of him playing the trumpet. He was a really, really terrific trumpet player. But as he got older, he didn't practice as much and his lips and his teeth and his embouchure just weren't quite what they were when he was younger and he would flub some notes. He would try to hit a note, especially on an open valve note, and it would go like that. It stood out. We were making this very simple arrangement, playing a simple arrangement of Amazing Grace, and our good friend, Dan Willard, had a digital recording board where he could splice and overlay. We did our first take and there were a couple of flubs. And then Dan said, “Ed, just play this note." He got the note and Dan recorded it and then took that note and just kind of plugged it in where the flub was. He did this about three times. My dad was used to recording, but his recordings were all old analog tapes and analog recordings, and you couldn't do that with those kinds of tape machines.
And then Dan played everything back and there wasn't a mistake in the whole thing that my dad did. And dad goes, "I sound pretty good." I sound pretty good. Well, you know what? Jesus makes us pretty good. He keeps giving us these do overs and he puts his righteousness on us and into us. He looks at us and he says, "I like what I see." We see from the backside of the mural or whatever you call that.
Jacque: The tapestry.
Brian: The tapestry. We see from the back. How many have seen the backside of a tapestry before? You can't even make hide nor hair out of what that thing is, can you? But the front side is this beautiful picture. And the problem with us is we are always looking on the backside of the tapestry and Jesus is looking from the front side because he is working in our lives. So we get to be born again, this fresh, innocent beginning. Jacque and I were talking about this just the other day about when a new baby is born. Once they get cleaned up a little bit , but they are so fresh and so innocent. We were watching all these little kids just run around and play at the park. They are just innocent.
Jacque: Their bodies just work so perfectly and so good.
Brian: I wish that my body worked like that.
Jacque: They fall, and they jump up. It's so beautiful.
Brian: The biggest difference between me and the kid is when I fall, I stay there. They get up. I want to read Hebrews 36: 25 to 27. This was God's heart. This is his prophetic declaration about what it was going to be like when Jesus came Ezekiel 36: 25 to 27.
Jacque: Then I will sprinkle clean water on you. And you will be clean. Your filth will be washed away and you will no longer worship idols. And I will give you a new heart and I will put a new spirit in you.
Brian: Who's doing the work here?
Jacque: God is.
Brian: Yeah, God is doing the work. It's not you working, the outside law, not you conforming, not you doing the cleaning up. We do have to say, God, do this. We do have to say, Lord, I give everyone and everything to you.
Jacque: We have to be willing.
Brian: Yeah, we have to be willing. We have to come to a place of Lord, you work in me. So that's what, I hate to say what we do. It's not a "do" in the sense of to work, but we have to open up our hearts and become available.
Jacque: It's our part.
Brian: It's our part. It's a part. It is a partnership. Our part in the partnership is opening up our hearts, saying, okay, you take over. Let's go on.
Jacque: And I will take out your Stony stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. And I will put my spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations.
Brian: There are things, as Pastor Jeff was saying earlier, that cause our relationship to go stale with each other and with God, I'm not saying that there is nothing that we ever do. If I did nothing in my relationship with my wife, I'm telling you now, we wouldn't be married 48 years this coming June if I did nothing in my relationship with my wife. So I'm not saying that there is nothing we ever do with God, but we are doing it because we respond in love to him. We are not doing it because without doing this, I'm going to hell. That's not why we do it. So this promise from God goes even deeper than just forgiveness. It's much bigger than forgive and forget. The new covenant doesn't just offer what I call relational pardon. Relational, pardon is like this transactional deal between people. I have an offense with you. You have an offense with me. We forgive. That's like a relational pardon.
But the new covenant is much more than just us taking care of that relational pardon. The new covenant actually offers you and I an inward purity. It offers an inward purity. I know many people today who have prayed to get their sins forgiven, but they've not understood that God wants to give them a new heart, take out their Stony heart to give them a new heart, that God wants to do this work in them. And because they haven't understood that in the same way that the 12 people that were baptized under John's ministry never came into the fullness of all of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and all that got offered because they didn't know. This old covenant, the tentacles of the old covenant are reaching all the way into the 21st century and putting demands on people. You have to do this. You have to do this when Jesus is saying, no, I am doing it. I want to be the one to do it in your life. You had something you wanted to say.
Jacque: I remember when I would be disappointed with parts of my life or how I would act. And I would just think I have to change. I have to get better. My focus was on always me trying to change me. I remember the first time I heard, I think it was, Joyce Meyer. She started talking about, let God do the work. I thought, no, I have to do the work. Let God do the work. Just give it to God and be with him and let him change you from the inside out, life changing. How did I think that I could change me? I know I needed a miracle. I needed God's hand to do it.
Brian: There is an internal washing. I'm so thankful for that, that our sins are cleansed, our minds are cleansed and our souls are cleansed, but that inner washing is not the end. It's just the beginning step. It's just the first step. Maybe this is a good term that maybe more women would relate to than us guys, but extreme makeover. There is an extreme makeover that Jesus wants to do in us. Now, you know what? The person who's getting the extreme makeover does? They sit in the chair and then they let that person work on them. Don't they? We need to sit and let Jesus work on us instead of doing what you are trying to do, make yourself better. God promises that we will receive a new heart. He promises us that we will receive a new spirit. He promises that he will give us his own spirit to live within us. And we become in essence, the new sacred space.
You know what? We are in love with sacred spaces, but we love them a lot more than God does. There is no real sacred space to God, except right here in our hearts. You are the sacred space to God because he says your body is the temple of his Holy Spirit. You are the sacred space. And so in the old covenant— Paul says in second Corinthians five 17, that old things are passed away. Behold, all things become new. And a lot of times we look at that and we attach that verse to people's behavior. And then when they don't behave the way that we think they should behave, we think, well, they didn't ever really get saved or all this kind of stuff. But the thing that's really passed away is the old way of doing things, and the new thing that has come is to let Jesus do the work in our hearts, in our lives.
In this new covenant world, our new way of being in relationship with God and one another, we no longer need intermediaries. We don't need somebody to be an intermediary for us. We don't need somebody to pray for us. Not that we shouldn't pray for each other, but we don't need that in order for us to become connected to God. We don't need a prophet to hear from God to speak to us. God can speak to all of us. We don't need teachers. As much as I'm a teacher, we don't need teachers to teach us or even gurus to guide us. We don't even need holy places and sacred spaces to help us connect with God. We don't need those things. Those things are not required. Now, can we receive benefits from holy places and sacred spaces that are important to you? Can we receive from prophets? Can we receive from teachers? Absolutely. Absolutely. But they are not a required "do this or else" type of thing. The only thing we need is Jesus to come into our lives and start doing the extreme makeover on us. This is the new reality. God's desire is that we fall in love with him. That's God's desire. Not, what rule do I need to comply with to somehow earn his favor? What set of standards do I need to come into agreement with in order to somehow get his blessing? For he, the word of God says, has removed all of our sins. He has taken down the wall that was between us and God and that he has reconciled man with God. What we have to do is we have to sit in the chair and let him do his extreme makeover on us now.
Jacque: Just sit and be with him. Learn of his goodness. Talk to him and listen.
Brian: So this message that Jesus brought, created a lot of angst with the religious leaders that were alive at that day, partly because he was undermining their vocation. Many of them were getting very wealthy on the system that had been implemented, this old covenant system. Some of them might have to go out and get a job. The best training I ever had for the ministry was pouring concrete for my father-in-law. That was the best training I ever had for the ministry. I'll explain that at another time for those of you who are looking at me right now like the deer in the headlights. But Jesus, in talking to the religious leaders who were trying to find a way to trip him up and all this sort of stuff, came to him one day. We are going to read this verse in three different translations and then we'll be done. But they asked him, well, what's the greatest commandment? Again, law. So he says this Matthew 22 verse 37.
Jacque: Jesus replied, you must love the Lord, your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind.
Brian: That's the New Living Translation and the Message translates it this way.
Jacque: Jesus said, love the Lord, your God, all your passion and prayer and intelligence.
Brian: Sometimes I just think there are a lot of Christians who don't love God with their intelligence. Forgive me, Lord, if I'm judging. But sometimes I just think common sense tells us there are a lot of Christians who just don't love God with their intelligence. The Passion translation translates it this way.
Jacque: Jesus answered him: Love the Lord, your God, with every passion of your heart, with all the energy of your being and with every thought that is within you.
Brian: Wow. So I find myself praying because when I reflect upon my day, I thought to myself, boy, there were some things in my heart that I had great passion for that wasn't God. And there were some things that were very temporal in my life. There were a lot of thoughts in my mind that I certainly can't define as righteous or holy. And so I find myself at times, praying, Lord, just again; capture my heart. Our friend Kelly Willard recorded a song many years ago about a willing heart. You know some of the lyrics. Can you remember some?
Jacque: If you don't have a willing heart, ask him to give you one. If you can't seem to make the start trust in his power for the Lord of love is watching you. He sees what you are going through and he will make a way if you want him to. If you want him to, then tell him so.
Brian: So sometimes we reflect on our lives and all the failures and all the ways that we've messed up. And it's not that those things don't matter. They matter because they affect how we feel about ourselves and they affect our relationships with other people. But it doesn't affect how God feels about us. What we have to do— oftentimes, the best thing we could just do is say, father, I have a stubborn stony heart. Would you please give me your heart? Would you give me your heart? Would you take this stony heart out of me and give me your heart? Would you put your spirit in me and take this angry spirit that I carry inside of me out of me? Will you do your work that you promised that you would do in my life? Because Lord, about the best thing I do in my life is mess it up. And the best thing you do in my life is to fix up my messes. So would you come in and just open your heart to Jesus and let him have his way and let's let the old system begin to die. Let's let the old covenant stay dead and buried, because that's what Jesus came to do. And then let Jesus come in and begin to give us peace and joy and to want to. Because he even says, I will put my spirit in you so that you actually will follow what I want you to do. And you will actually be careful to want to obey me. But it's because of his spirit in us, it's not, you need to grit your teeth a little bit harder and try a little bit stronger. Because none of us have that level of strength.
And so Jesus, we asked that you come and give us your heart. And we asked that you take this stony heart out of us. Give us Lord a tender, responsive heart to you. And then when we have your heart, we can come certainly confidently before you, not fearfully before you. Lord, you don't want any of your children to come fearfully before you. You want us to come with certainly humility, but confidently that you love us so much and that you have changed our hearts and that this can be the new reality that we live in. Not the old reality of being reminded of all of our failures being reminded of all of our sin, but rather the new reality of our sins being removed as far as the east is from the west and a new reality of a heart that follows you because you have given us that heart. Pastor Robert, would you come?
Robert: Praise the Lord. By way of prayer today, I like to do a little quick devotion. I was listening to the message. What was coming to me is that it's interesting that in the new covenant church, we struggle with wanting to bring the old to us, which is a very stark contrast from those in the old covenant who were close to God. They were reaching for the new. If you do a Bible study, you look at what the prophets were saying they were pointing to the new covenant. One of my favorite Old Testament figures is David. What greater old covenant figure than David, King David. We often hear David described as a man after God's own heart, but do you really understand what that means? Well, I think Psalm 51 is a great example of what it means about David being after God's own heart.
Because here is the king of Israel; he had just been confronted with a big sin. He had just finished committing adultery with Bathsheba and the prophet Nathan came and confronted him. In comparison, if this was king Saul king Saul would run to the priest and try to make a sacrifice to atone for his sin. But listen to what King David does. This is Psalm 51. He says, have mercy on me, oh God, because of your unfailing love because of your great compassion, blot out the stain of my sins. Wash me clean for my guilt; purify me for my sin. He is asking God to do these things. For, I recognize my rebellion. So here is his part. "I recognize my rebellion. It haunts me day and night against you and you alone have I sinned. I have done what is evil in your sight. You will be proved right in what you say and your judgment against me is just. I want to go down a little bit to verse seven. Purify me from my sins and I will be clean; wash me and I will be wider than snow.
Verse nine: Don't keep looking at my sins; remove the stain of my guilt. These are my favorite verses here in verse 10: create in me a clean heart, oh God. Renew a loyal spirit within me. Do not banish me from your presence and don't take your holy spirit from me. Verse 16: you do not desire a sacrifice or I would offer you one. You don't want a burnt offering. Here is the king of Israel during the time of the sacrificial system. He is saying you do not desire a sacrifice or I would offer you one. He said, you don't want a burnt offering. He says, the sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, oh God.
My prayer this morning, Lord, is for us to come to you with a broken spirit and a contrite or repentant heart. And that we would ask you or God for you to come and clean us up from the inside out so that when our hearts are purified, we will be moved not to displease you, that our hearts would line up with you because of the work that you've done in us. We thank you, Lord, for the relationship that you've allotted for us with the giving of your spirit. So that all that you ask of us is to come humbly before you and surrender. And then you will renew us. We become a new creation, a new thing under a new covenant. Father, we pray that we would renew our understanding of who you are, that we would truly allow you to come into our lives to make us new.
Father, on this day of Pentecost, the one thing that we thank you for the most, not the speaking of tongues, not the prophecy, not the laying on of hands, but a renewed spirit where we can commune directly with the God of all creation and we can walk in a new living way forever in Jesus name. Amen.
Brian: Amen. The 12 people that we read about in Acts 19, they had a relationship with God. In our 20th and 21st century evangelical perspective, the question would be asked, well, would they go to heaven when they die? And my answer to that is I'm sure they would've. A lot of people are going to heaven after they die, but they don't have the fullness of what God has for them here. There are people who still live in a sense in an old covenant mentality and rather than understanding the new and in the same way that these 12 people that Paul encountered near Ephesus, they had a relationship with God, but they were missing out on so much. I would just encourage us day to let's be very intentional about letting that negative old covenant die and let that whole approach to walking with God, be gone and let his spirit come and put new hearts in us and, and new cleansing in us and just a new vibrancy in our relationship with God.
What we don't understand can still hinder us. What we don't know and what we don't believe can have a negative impact in our lives. But I'm thankful that God's love still over-arches all of that. As a pastor for your life and those of you watching him by livestream, I want you to experience the fullness of what Jesus came to give us. And so today we just welcome you, Holy Spirit, on this day of Pentecost to come again, dwell within us, put your spirit within us as you promised Lord. Create in us a new heart; take out our stony heart. Lord, give us this song that Kelly Willard wrote many years ago. If you don't have a willing heart, ask God to give you one. That's a simple thing to simply ask of God. Give me a willing heart, Lord, take this stubbornness out. Take this anger out. Take this hardness out so that I can be this multiple piece of clay in your hands. Let's raise our hands together.
And now may the Lord bless you. And may the Lord keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. And may the Lord turn his face towards you and give you his peace. And may Jesus come and really tenderize your heart. This, we pray the name of the father, son and Holy Spirit. Amen. God bless you. Thank you for being here today. We invite all of you to stay and have lunch with us. If you need some prayer at the altar, we have people here at the altar who will pray with you. Communion will be served as well for anybody who wants communion. God bless you have a wonderful day.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 6-5-22. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.