Pastor Jeff and Cheryl Orluck
Jeff: Hallelujah. I'm on. Hallelujah. Well, hi everybody. Here we all are. Wow, Welton. You got sound there? Let's see here. We are not on. Try it now.
Cheryl: Good morning. Good morning. Good morning.
Jeff: Are we on? I
Cheryl: I don't know.
Jeff: There you go. There you go. Awesome.
Cheryl: Thank you, Joel.
Jeff: Thank you, Joel. Joel is one of those diamonds that we have. Thank you, Joel. I was going to say Welton, you preached the first half of our message this morning. Thank you. You make it so easy for us. It was really good. It was really good. We might as well drive in. The clock is ticking. Welcome to everybody online. I'll say that too. Good to have you with us. We are going to start a theme here this morning. We are going to kind of do an introduction to a theme that I think whenever Cheryl and I share over the course of the next year, it's going to be along the lines of this theme.
If you've listened to Pastor Brian at all and Pastor Robert you've heard over and over and over again, from the words of Jesus himself, how much the father loves us and how great his mercy is. Lately, we've been talking about how the law has passed and there is a new covenant that we are walking in, which relationship is the foundation. How many of us know it's wonderful to be loved by the father? What can be better? In fact, I really came to the conclusion that there are all kinds of revelations in the scriptures that teach us. They are like metaphors that give us examples, human earthly, examples of what God is like, but the important understanding you will ever have of God in your entire life is that of a loving father. We've talked about some of the roadblocks to that, but there is healing through past issues in your life with fathers into a relationship where you can have a father you never had before in your life and you can be loved like you've never been loved in your life. There is nothing better than that.
When we live as children of a loving father, we live with great blessing. We live with great favor. How many know that's a good thing? I am so thankful for the favor of God because my life is good because of his favor. But at the same time that we live underneath this wonderful love, we have to admit that our lives are oftentimes affected by choices that we make. Anybody found that out? It's really important for us to learn the ways that the Lord has ordained us to live that result in fullness and meaning and happiness and success. As much as the Lord favors and loves us, there are still repercussions in our lives to the choices that we make. When we make wrong choices, thankfully, he is there with his great mercy and he will help us through the repercussions, but there's something about the grace of God. As much as it's always there for us to believe in us and support us and help us, it doesn't always negate the results of the way that we've lived. Do you understand?
We've all lived that. I don't have to convince you because most of us have had to live with the consequences of life choices we've made either earlier or later in life. Many of us have testimonies that kind of go along the line of, "I messed up my life really good, and then Jesus came and then he saved me. And then I started learning how he wanted me to live. And now my life is different."
We want to start a theme and we are calling it the Jesus Way. What we are going to do is every time that we share, we want to share about one of the ways that Jesus has ordained us to live that results in blessing in our life, because we are living right now in a culture where everything is being turned upside down. There are all kinds of options that are being laid before you and your children and your grandchildren about choices you can make about life. Every one of those options is going to end up with a result. At the end,
Back in the sixties, I was still in high school, in the seventies and watching the hippie movement and the Woodstock era and the free love and sexual expression area, that whole thing that just kind of exploded in the sixties. I remember thinking to myself, I wonder what these high school and college kids with long hair, smoking pot and using other drugs and expressing themselves with all kinds of free sexual expression with no covenant or commitment, I wonder what that generation is going to look like when they are 50. I wonder what our world will look like when they are the leaders of the world. Well, welcome to that world. What do you think? Anyways—
Cheryl: Did you hear Pastor Brian? He said, "Right on, man."
Jeff: Thank you, Pastor Brian
Cheryl: Groovy.
Jeff: Not that we have anything as hippies die. We love hippies. The Jesus movement was God's answer to that, wasn't it? At the same time, there was a great experimentation happening in our world. That's really what it is. What we are experiencing right now with the whole transgender movement is a societal experiment. The results of this experiment aren't going to be seen. I think many of us have a great foreboding about the results, but right now it's an experiment. So you can say, I wonder what's going to happen when those young people are in charge. We are going to start with a scripture. It's a good place to start: Deuteronomy 30:19 and 20.
Cheryl: Today, I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessing and curses. Now, I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life so that your descendants might live. You can make this choice by loving the Lord your God, obeying him and committing yourself firmly to him. This is the key to your life.
Jeff: Wow. This is what Moses said to the people of Israel. After he had spent quite a long time instructing them in the details of the law that God had shown him when he was on the mountain. Of course, the heart and soul of that was the 10 commandments. I thought it was really interesting. I've never heard this perspective before, but on the 4th of July, Pastor Brian, or that weekend, when you talked about what a sad day in history it was that God actually had to write down things like don't steal, don't commit murder, and don't covet your neighbor's wife so that we could read them and say, oh, those are wrong instead of knowing, because of our relationship with the father, that those things are wrong. That was a sad day in the state of affairs that we had to write it down to know it was wrong. Not going any further with that, but we live in a world where now, even those things we had to take them down from all the walls of our courthouses. Now, if they are not suspect, they are certainly up for grabs in terms of whether they are truly right or wrong.
Those of us who are senior citizens now, we have grown up in a culture of deconstructionism, where everything that was a norm up until the fifties and sixties began to be reevaluated and deconstructed, so that now, it's all up for grabs. Where we have come to now is the scripture that I think many of us are familiar with, which is Isaiah 5:20.
Cheryl: Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
Jeff: There is no time that is more urgent in our lives than right now that we really learn and we remind ourselves that we teach our children and our grandchildren that there are ways to live that will bring life and goodness and there are ways you can live that will bring harm, and it's important to make the right choices in every area of your life. Some choices we make are very practical. If your parents teach you as a child, the importance of saving and being frugal with your money and not just spending it on everything that you want, you will grow up when you become a senior citizen, you might actually have some money in the bank to retire on. Some of us didn't learn that and we are struggling today.
It's a simple thing, but the reality of how we conduct our lives financially comes to roost when we stop working and all we have is social security. That's just one example. It's in every area of our lives, right? But in spiritual areas, in terms of living in the blessing of the Lord, there are ways that Jesus reflected, taught, lived, ways that are taught in the scripture that make a huge difference in how full our hearts are when we are senior citizens, after having lived with Jesus all of these years. A
If we came to Jesus late in life, there's still opportunity to learn those ways and sew into blessing. The point is that no matter what we try to suggest is right or wrong— and one thing I was thinking about the whole way that our culture is right now is there's one argument that has gained a lot of moment in the last 30 or 40 years, that the whole problem with our culture is that we judge each other. If we could just get rid of all the judgment— if all of us accept that everything is okay, then everything would be okay. The only reason something is wrong is because people are full of judgment and they are shaming those people and they are condemning those people. If we could just stop them from doing that, then it would be right and there would be no harm, no foul, but the law of sowing and reaping says otherwise, right. It has nothing to do with what you think or say, or what I think or say. It has nothing to do with judgment. It's just a spiritual reality. The law of sowing and reaping is true. It's a precept in every religion in the world in some way, shape or form.
In essence, that's what karma is. Karma is the law of sowing and reaping in Hinduism. I had a pastor friend I was talking to. His name is Mark Herringshaw. He is a pastor at North Heights Luther. He wrote a book called the karma of Jesus. The reason he wrote the book is because he was speaking one Sunday night and he had a small group at his, at the church and he was giving the message. There was a new guy who had been sitting in the back, who started to heckle him in the middle of his message. And so finally it got a little bit interruptive and finally said, "Hey buddy, I'll tell you what. I really appreciate that you are here. And I'd love to hear what you have to say, but how about if we have coffee tomorrow and you let me finish my message tonight?"
They had coffee the next day. They met at a coffee shop and they started talking. Pastor Mark said, "What do you believe? Why were you so upset with me last night?" And the guy said, "Well, I don't believe in Jesus." And he said, "Okay. What do you believe in?" The guy said, "Well, I believe in karma." And he said, "Okay, how's your karma?" The guy dropped his head. He said, "Well, honestly, not so good." Mark said, "Well, that's why Jesus came." So he wrote a book called The Karma of Jesus .
You can argue all you want philosophically, politically, religiously, spiritually, you can make all the argents you want, but you can't undo the law of sowing and reaping. It is just real. It just happens. What goes around comes around. That's the secular version of the law of sewing and reaping. You poke somebody in the eye; they poke you back. You dish out dirt; you get dirt back. You steal; stuff gets stolen and on and on and on and on and on. what we want to do, no matter where we are in our lives, no matter what we've done wrong, that's what the wonderful message that hope brings, is all about, no matter what we've done wrong, there's opportunity for redemption. There's a second chance, third chance, fourth chance, fifth chance, hundredth chance, because Jesus' love never ends for us. He is always there to redeem our lives no matter where we are at. But when we start to look to him, we want to learn his ways. Many of the things that we thought were his ways ended up not being his ways. Think so?
Pastor Robert and Brian and I were talking. We were having breakfast together this week, just talking about our vision for the future. We were talking about the word, what about the word? You've just got to get in the word. I said to Pastor Robert, "Pastor Robert, I've been a student of the word since I was 16 years old, and the first half of my life, I got it all wrong." See you, you can read the word and get it wrong. Do you understand? We need the holy spirit to teach us the ways of Jesus. We need the Holy Spirit to reveal his heart to us. We need to grasp the heart and the ways of Jesus. We want to live the way that he is teaching us to live. That's what the last two years of messages from Pastor Brian have been all about. That's what Robert has been teaching us as well. And so we are going to start here now. That's all. I'm sorry that's all introduction.
Cheryl: It's 11:15.
Jeff: You are just waiting patiently. In Deuteronomy 30, Moses said, you can make this choice by loving the Lord, your God, obey him and committing yourself firmly to him. Isn't that interesting? He had just finished going through the 10 commandments. You notice he didn't say, now you can make this choice if you just follow the 10 commandments. He had gone to a lot of work to get those commandments. He'd spent 40 days on the mountain fasting and no water, no food, supernaturally kept alive while God carved it out on stone, came back down, found Israel, worshiping a golden calf, smashed the tablets, and had to go back up on the mountain. This time he had to carve out the words himself, because God was only going to do it one time. Don't you think those are pretty important to Moses? But he didn't say, if you want to make this choice, follow the 10 commandments. Here they are. What did he say? Love the Lord, your God. Love the Lord, your God. Love the Lord, your God.
The key foundation to the ways of Jesus is everything that you've been hearing from this pulpit for a long time is relationship. That's where it starts. It is relationship. It is relationship with the father. It's love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and all your strength. And the second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself, relationship with the father, relationship with each other. That's a lot harder to figure out than the 10 commandments, but that's where life is. That's where life is: when we move into an intimate relationship with our God, when we learn how to talk to him, commune with him, hear him. Hallelujah. And then the next thing Moses said was obey him. And we got a scripture for that one: John 14: 23 and 24.
Cheryl: Jesus replied, anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My father will love them and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching.
Jeff: We were talking about this yesterday morning and we realized that it kind of sounds like God's love is conditional. Anyone who loves me will obey me. The way that we practice it in the world— you've heard all this before. If you loved me, you would— If you loved me, you would buy me that diamond ring. If you loved me, you would do what I'm telling you to do. Husbands, if you love me, you'll have sex with me. We have to prove our love by our actions. That's not what this is saying. This is actually the absolute reverse of that. This is not conditional love. What Jesus is saying is that in order to obey me, you need to love me first. If you don't love me, it's going to be really hard to obey me. You see, love is the motivation towards obedience. Obedience is not the proof of love. You don't have to obey God to prove that you love him. What you want to find is a love for your God that moves you into obedience. Do you see the difference? The father's love is not conditional, but our hope for our lives. Our greatest hope for our lives is to fall in love with him.
And then the last one is, commit yourself firmly to him. He says this is the key to life. This is the key to life. The key to life isn't the10 commandments. The key to life isn’t following a law. Pastor Brian has been telling us that. The key to life is loving him, obey him and committing ourselves firmly to him. if we will pursue him in this way, we will learn his ways. If we live in his ways, our lives will be blessed. If we teach our children to live in his ways, their lives will be blessed and our grandchildren, and it will go on for generation after generation.
We are going to touch on a couple. We are not going to teach on ways of Jesus, but I just wanted to highlight a couple just because we've kind of brought ourselves to that place. And then that will be the end of the message. One of the ways of Jesus that really plays into this whole commit yourself to him firmly is covenant. Covenant is one of the ways of Jesus. Covenant carries words like commitment, faithfulness, trustworthiness, loyalty, and sacrifice. Our relationship with God is covenantal. He covenanted with Abraham. A covenant is a promise you make that you never break. I don't know if he read the fine print or not before he made that covenant because the covenant was with you and your seed, which is why of course, Israel continues to be the chosen people of God.
But then what Paul points out is that the seed was not just Isaac. It was Jesus. So now God's covenant is with all of his children, us. When he bound himself to Abraham, he bound himself to us and he never breaks this covenant. A covenant is something you do that is never broken in. Covenants are what marriages are. Marriage is not a legal contract. Marriage is not marriage because it's sanctioned by the state. Marriage is marriage because you make a covenant. We live in a culture where covenant is no longer needed. It's no longer regarded as essential or even—I mean, most people don't even know what it is. Remember that dinner we were having down in South Carolina? Do you want to tell him about that?
Cheryl: We were sitting in an outside restaurant and there was a curtain between our restaurant and the next restaurant. The table right next to us had another couple and he and she were talking just really deeply. Jeff and I were trying to have our romantic dinner and I'm trying not to listen, but I couldn't help it. My heart just went out to them and for some reason, and I figured that was just a guiding of the Lord. I heard them arguing about something.
Jeff: Getting married.
Cheryl: Getting married.
Jeff: He is trying to convince her why marriage is just a piece of paper and you don't have to get married.
Cheryl: We found that out at the end because we told them and admitted we couldn't help, but overhearing you because we are right here. We talked and Jeff came up with the greatest word and the word was covenant. When he said that, I was like, oh, that's it. That's the word. We ended up sharing that with them and then we offered to marry them. We were staying at a bed breakfast called the Right Hand and we told them, we'll be here. You can come on and we'll have a beautiful wedding on the porch. The next morning we woke up and I was excited because there was going to be a wedding. Nobody ever came.
Jeff: It didn't happen.
Cheryl: So if you are out there, I hope you got married. I hope you made covenant.
Jeff: Yeah, that's good. We are still here.
Cheryl: We are still here, but not at on the porch of the Right Hand.
Jeff: I just said there's just one word you are forgetting in your conversation. The word is covenant. I said it's built inside of who we are. I looked at the guy and said no matter how hard you try to explain it away, there's covenant built inside of her and she will never be happy until she has a commitment from you. Covenant is essential for the wellbeing of our nation, for the wellbeing of our world, for the wellbeing of our lives. Commit yourself to him, make covenant back to God, make covenant to one another. Teach your children that free sexual expression does not bring life.
You probably know people. I know people that live outside of marriage and they seem perfectly happy for many years, but that doesn't mean that covenant isn't essential for our lives and for our culture. So bless them. I'm glad they are happy. But covenant is a very powerful thing that can change the whole fabric of our world. It's a Jesus way. I just want to make a little announcement. Next August, we are starting Pastor Brian, Robert and I are going to do a series each week for the month of August. As you know or maybe you don't know, this August Hope Community Church celebrates its 25th anniversary. Isn't that cool? We are going to do a series in August called Hope for the Future. The reason that we are doing that series is because as we started to talk about our 25th anniversary and what type of celebration we had, Pastor Brian just really shared his heart that he is very thankful for everybody who invested in the last 25 years, who made hope what it is today. So many people have given so much to bring us to where we are. It just really wasn't in his heart to look backwards, that we are in a season where he really wanted us to look forward.
And so Pastor Robert and myself and Pastor Brian are each going to share Sundays in that month. Every week is intended to be a casting vision for Hope Community Church for what God has for us in the future. Cheryl and I get to kick it off and we are going to start with the Jesus way. The Jesus way that we want to start with is prayer. Prayer is a Jesus way. I don't know about you, but when people start talking about prayer, for the most part, it feels tedious and I am uninspired. Anybody else feel that way? It gets talked about so much in Christianity It's like we've all been inoculated against it. It's like, oh yeah, prayer. Oh, prayer. I think for most of us as believers we have not experienced a lot of joy, success in our prayer lives. They have been either nonexistent or a struggle or a smattering of both. I'm really convinced and I've shared many times that I really see that we are in a season of answered prayer. So it's really important that we begin to understand the essence and the ways of prayer so that we can see the answers that God is waiting to release. And so we are going to talk about the Jesus way of prayer. On August 7th, we get to kick off the month and we want all of us to just begin to get excited about what prayer really means. We were talking about this and you said something about angels on a Sunday.
Cheryl: Something that helps me when I think of my prayers is— and I've said it to some of you because when we've prayed together, just while we are talking, I've said let's put angels on assignment. Let's give them something to do. I feel like the angels, I see this in my mind, they are at a starting line and they are in position to take off. And when we pray, they take off for the finish line where the prize is. I really think that's from the Lord. For me, it helps me put angels in motion, because they are real.
Jeff: She was reading this morning in Hebrews chapter 1, it says, and he makes his angels win and flames a fire Hebrews 1:7. It's actually quoting a Psalm, but I thought, isn't that interesting that on the day of Pentecost—did we lose me? Test. Test. There we are. On the day of Pentecost, there was wind in the room and tongues of fire. I don't if you remember I shared one a Sunday recently about how God spoke to me. And he said, "When I come with my court." So I realized that the angels preceded the outpour of the Holy Spirit in the upper room. I thought that's cool.
Anyways, one of the things that we are going to teach you— we are not going to give it away now, but one of the things that we are going to teach you on August 7th is how you can pray without ceasing. That is a real thing, and it's actually possible for all of us. It's actually quite exciting. Enough of that.
Other ways of Jesus that we might touch on: generosity is a way of Jesus. Kindness is a way of Jesus. Childlikeness is a way of Jesus. Suffering is a way of Jesus. If there is anything that's important in our world today, it's for us to know our identity. There's a way of Jesus that leads us into our true identity. There are a lot of good things we are going to talk about. In closing, we are going to read something similar to Deuteronomy. We are going to read the words of Jesus in Matthew 7, where he said something quite similar.
Cheryl: Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes and torrents and the flood waters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won't collapse because it's built on bedrock, but anyone who hears my teaching and doesn't obey it is foolish like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.
Jeff: We want to hear the ways of Jesus. We want to learn his ways and we want to learn to follow his ways. It will begin as we fall in love with him, as we grow in our love relationship with him, and it will continue as he helps us to transform our hearts to think like he does and live like he did. I think it's an exciting way to live. I think Pastor Brian has said this. We've said it often that we feel like we've lived fairytale lives. A part of that is because when we were very young, somebody taught us some of the ways of Jesus. When you walk in those ways, your life is blessed. It doesn't prevent tragedy. It doesn't prevent things from happening that are outside of your control. We still experience loss when we live in the ways of Jesus, but at least we are not undermining all the goodness of God that he has for us by choosing pathways that bring great harm. Jesus said in John 6: 63, the spirit alone gives eternal life. Human effort accomplishes nothing. Isn't that good? The very words I've spoken to you are spirit and they are life. They are spirit and their life.
Father, we just want to receive from you this morning, the life that is in your words. We open our hearts to your instruction and we choose to love you. Our desire is to obey you. And so we commit ourselves to you. Amen. Come and get prayer if you need anything. If you are struggling with any type of sickness, come and get prayer every week because we are in a season of answered prayer. There is going to be people here to pray for you. Come and get prayer. Come and take communion. That's another way to receive healing. Participate in what the Lord is offering us today and you'll be blessed for it. God bless you. Pastor Brian.
Brian: Thank you, Pastor Jeff and Cheryl. I remember the time when hell no longer was a motivating factor for me to serve the Lord. When I was young and listened to a lot of hail fire and brimstone sermons and that was my motivation to try and follow Jesus, but as I began to know the Lord more and fall in love with him more and began to experience his blessings in my life more, it was many years ago that the concept of going to hell for disobedience, that's not even on my radar anymore. To be quite honest with you, going to heaven really isn't either, although I'm very thankful for heaven and the fact that so many of my family are there and we will see them again someday.
I heard a minister once say if there was no hell, there would be no reason to follow Jesus and I thought to myself, what a sad way to understand what it means to follow Jesus. The blessings of following Jesus are inherent within the fabric of the choices of walking with him. You can't exchange those blessings for anything in this life. Those blessings are so far greater than anything else.
And so I encourage you; let's fall in love with the Lord more. Let's get to know his ways more. Let's get to know him more. As I said last week, when religion is based on thou shall not, it's about all the things that we shouldn't do. That's what religion is based on. But relationship with God is based on all the things that we can do for the Lord. It's based on all the ways that we can do unto others as we would want them to do unto us. I really like the contrast of Pastor Jeff sermon today. Even though he talks about the 10 commandments and this type of thing, the real blessings aren't in not doing something; it's in what we get to do in following Jesus.
Let's just ask our hearts to be tender before the Lord so we can learn his ways and follow his ways. As Pastor Jeff and us go into this next season of following and learning the ways of the Lord, I'm just excited to become more familiar with the Lord that I love. Aren't you? Hallelujah. Jacque and I have been married 48 years and I love my wife more today than I did the day I walked down the aisle with her. Actually, she walked down the aisle with her dad and met me at the altar. It's 48 years of covenant. Through those covenantal relationships, we've weathered a lot of storms. There has been a lot of storms in our lives in 48 years.
I look back and I say, I'm more in love with my wife today than I was the day I married her. And why is that? Because I have experienced such a richness of her life with me. Well, that's how it is with Jesus too. The longer we walk with Jesus, the more we've experienced the richness of him and the more we actually can fall in love with the Lord more.
So father, I pray that we would really fall in love with Jesus more and more, that our hearts would reflect back upon all that he has done, beginning with the cross and his sufferings, but all the things, Jesus, you have done for us in our life up to this point. We thank you, Lord, that we are given the opportunity to be able to follow you and to know you whom to know truly is eternal life. When we know you, we have life and life more abundantly. So father, I just pray that you will bless all those who are watching by livestream and those who are here today. Help us take this word deeper into our hearts, to reflect more of your goodness and to know that there are ways of the Lord to be followed and in them are blessings. Contained right in them, are blessings that you want to pour out upon us without measure, without end. This, we pray in your name. Let's raise our hands together and receive a blessing.
Now may the Lord bless you and may the Lord keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord turn his face towards you and give you his peace. And may we all learn the ways of the Lord in a greater way, as I pray in the name of the father, son, Holy Spirit. Amen. God bless you. We will have people to pray with you at the altar if you have any prayer needs and I will be over here at the communion table to serve communion for those who want it. God bless you. Have a wonderful day.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 7-17-22. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.