Pastor Brian and Jacque Lother
Jacque: Beautiful. Oh, that was so beautiful. I don't know. I just really got it downloaded this morning. Did you? Yes. Just that beautiful piece. The love of God. It's just so good to be here together with him. We are here together with him. It's a blessing. Thank you so much, everybody. Well, happy anniversary, Brian.
Brian: Well, for those of you who don't know what we are talking about 25 years ago, on the third Sunday of August, we had our very first service as Hope Community Church. Today we kind of think of this as our 25th anniversary.
Jacque: It is, and
Brian: I have something for you.
Jacque: Thank you, my scriptures.
Yeah. You weren't sitting on it this time though.
Jacque: 25 years, a quarter of a century. That's amazing. It's amazing. This is what I always say: We are still here.
Brian: Yes. We are still here.
Jacque: We are still here and you are still here.
Brian: I don't know if we are irritants or whatever, but we are still here.
Jacque: no, I mean the church is still here, not you and I. The church is still here. we are so grateful. It's only God. It's only God. We just want to draw attention to a couple of our family church life events. So you'll go online and read all about it or call one of us and ask some questions. The lady's Bible study is going to begin on September 7th. We do it online and we will do it in person too. If anybody wants to come to church and then we'll do it with our online friends at the same time, a little hybrid class, let me know. I'll meet you over here at church. But we will have a wonderful time. We are continuing our study on the words of Jesus. We are going to go twice a month this year and then we are going to be opposite Wednesdays of Pastor Robert's class.
Brian: So that will work good.
Jacque: That will work out great.
Brian: Yeah. Yeah. That will work out good.
Jacque: And then on 9/11, we are going to give a good memory of 9/11 this year. For our church, we are going to have an all church lunch and then we are going to have a water baptism service. If You haven't been baptized in water, this is a wonderful opportunity. We are going to go to Jeff and Katie Rasha’s pool. So it will be a really lovely time. They just live a few miles away.
Brian: Maybe you were baptized too. Maybe you were baptized as an infant or when you were younger and then your relationship with the Lord took a detour, and now your relationship with Christ is more real than it was when you got baptized. It's okay to do it again. It's okay to do it again. It's a public confession of our faith. And so we encourage you if you were baptized at one time, but would like to be baptized again, those of you who are watching online, especially if you live in the Metro area, of course, if you want to drive in from Oklahoma for it, we'd be glad to baptize you there too. We encourage you to just talk with us and we'll have a wonderful day that day.
Jacque: Yes, that'd be great. And the last thing is we are going to have a picnic at our house and everyone's invited on Saturday, September 17th. We are going to play yard games and eat good food and just be together. I love what Bill said today. We need time together, talent and treasure. Very good. So that time together is a treasure. It's a treasure. And then we'll let the kids go today. Also thank you, Cindy, for your work with the children. We need more children's workers. Remember that guys, and also please continue to pray for our dear friend, Deb Thompson. She's home now undergoing her chemotherapy treatments at home. Just pray for her healing, that we trust God for her.
Brian: Over the last few months we were talking as a staff. This conversation started earlier in the year about what we want to do for our 25th anniversary as a church. The more I reflected on it, the more I really felt like I wanted us to look forward, not backwards. I'm thankful for everything that God has done. I'm thankful for the many, many, many people who have come through the doors of Hope Community Church, who God has touched their lives. Believe it or not, there were many people that the Lord brought into our fellowship and they were terminally ill and we gave them a comforting place to be while they transition from this life to the next life. I'm so grateful for the vision and the mission that God has called us to here at Hope Community Church.
But one of the things I really felt I wanted to do and talk to Pastor Robert, Pastor Jeff and our staff was instead of going back and kind of do a historical documentation of all the things that have transpired in the last 25 years, I really wanted to have a greater focus on what God wants to do starting today and moving forward or this month and moving forward. With that in mind the Lord put into my heart a message today that I believe is of paramount importance. The title of my message is being Jesus to our community. I did a message just a few weeks ago on the golden rule. In fact, I thought it was a really good message. Of course, what I think about my messages isn't really as important as what you think about them, right?
Jacque: I thought it was a good message.
Brian: Good. And I actually had a number of people say that was the best message I ever heard on the golden rule. What I didn't say at the time when I gave that message was that the golden rule was actually not the gold standard that God has for us. When the golden rule is lived out by a genuinely good hearted person, it can be a really, really powerful north star. You know what I mean by that, don't you? Like a guiding point. It can be a real powerful guiding point for our actions and for our attitudes. However, if you look at the golden rule in and of itself, do unto others as you would have them doing unto you, the golden rule can actually suffer from what I call a lack of specificity. I'll give you an example of what I mean by that.
As we all know, in the middle of the 19th century, in our country, slavery was legal and there were abolitionists like Charles, who was the founder and president of Oberlin college and Finney was an abolitionist. By the way, Oberlin college, at that time, was a theological school. He was one of the great revivalists of our country, revival teachers, ministers, and even to the point when he started to take a stand against slavery there was a bounty put on his head from people in the south. Interestingly enough, Charles Finney used the golden rule to argue that slavery should be eliminated.
What I find is so ironic about the church's posture across our country during that time was that on the opposite side of that debate, which was a pro-slavery position, ministers, pastors, and priests who did not regard slavery as sin, they also used the golden rule to support the very opposite of what the abolitionists were teaching. Their argument was that ending slavery would disrupt the social and economic order of the south. By doing away with slavery, more harm would come to more people than would benefit that smaller group of people. So in the end, it all got back to who was the focus of the golden rule. If the slave was the focus of the golden rule, then you were opposed to slavery. But if the plantation owner and the economy of the south that benefited from all the free labor and what business wouldn't benefit from free labor, right? If the plantation owner and the economy of the south was the focus, then you became pro-slavery by using the golden rule.
What was astonishing to me as I have read some history on, obviously, the tragedy of slavery in our country is that the golden rule was actually used by ministers to perpetuate slavery rather than to abolish it. So if the golden rule was used by Christian ministers to support both sides of the slavery issue. You have the abolitionist who used the golden rule to prohibit slavery, and you had the pro-slavery people that use a golden rule to purport it. I began to think to myself and ask myself, there seems to be a real limitation here on the value of the golden rule. It all depends on who the focus is of it. And I concluded that we needed a different gold standard.
We needed a different standard to establish morality in our country and in our lives. We needed a different model to show us the way to love God as he has intended, or to simply love as he has intended. I believe that Jesus knew that his followers would need a more powerful and a more precise principle of life for us to follow at all times and in all situations. Because if morality is only based on certain circumstances, you have what's called existentialism. In God's eyes, morality is absolute. If it's wrong to murder in Minnesota, it should be wrong to murder in Texas, and it should be wrong to murder in the Ukraine, and it should be wrong to murder on Mars. Because it's an absolute principle and absolutely don't pertain just to certain geographical areas. It pertains to the entirety of the universe. And so Jesus knew that he needed something beyond the golden rule. It must be a moral standard all the time, not just part of the time or selectively part of the time. And so on the evening before his crucifixion, Jesus gave his disciples what he called a new command and that command was this. Let's read it: John 13: 34 and 35.
Jacque: So now I am giving you a new commandment: love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.
Brian: Just a few minutes later in that same evening and that same meal, he repeats himself in John 15 verse 12.
Jacque: This is my commandment, love each other in the same way I have loved you.
Brian: So Jesus is now establishing something that is above and beyond the golden rule, just do unto others. But he's establishing a new commandment and that new command is this: I'm commanding you to love each other as I have loved you, as I have loved you. I'm sure there were some head scratching going on by the disciples that night, because they already had been hearing how much he was saying to love each other. That was his message of love. I can just hear them saying, no, you've already taught us to love one another. Didn't you already instruct us to do all of this, Jesus? I mean, he even told us to love our enemies for crying out loud. Why are you now calling this a new command? Why are you calling this a new command?
But Jesus is moving his disciples beyond the golden rule into something even more radical, more absolute, something that can't be misconstrued. In my personal opinion, the people who use the golden rule to support slavery, misapplied it. That's my personal opinion. But there were thousands of ministers across the Southern part of our country, and maybe even some in the north that used the golden rule to support slavery. So there had to be something wrong with how that was applied.
What Jesus is trying to do is get us past and into something even more radical, but what is more radical and proactive than a golden rule culture, because wouldn't you agree that if our whole world actually lived by the golden rule, we would make a drastic improvement today, wouldn't we? We would. But Jesus is saying that we are to love one another, not as we love ourselves, nor even to love one another as we would like to be loved. He's not telling us to do that. But rather he's saying to us, we are to love in the same way that he has already loved us. It's a done deal, how he has already loved us.
With the golden rule, do unto others as you would want them to do unto you, that's kind of futuristic, isn't it? I'm going to treat you in a way that I would like you to treat me and that's good, but the context now that Jesus is taking his followers to is this: I want you to love in the way that I have already loved you. I want you to love in a way that models what I have already done for you. Jesus is making himself this new gold standard, or maybe I should say platinum or diamond standard. He's asking us, telling us to love in a way that only he has loved up to this point, this guiding ethical question for our relationship to others is no longer to be based on, well, how would I want to be treated? But rather it's based on how has Jesus already treated me? How has Jesus already treated me? It's not how I want to be treated, how I'm hoping to be treated, but rather how I have already been treated by Jesus.
Jacque: It's such a more humble way to approach it, remembering what we have received
Brian: You know what, that's one of the reasons we are to keep our eyes on Jesus. Because when I get my eyes on how you treated me, what is my response to how you treated me if how you treated me wasn't really how I wanted you to treat me? Well, I'll get you your comeuppance.
Jacque: Pride kind of comes in There.
Brian: Yeah. That's why we sing this song, have for years, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus; look full in his wonderful faith.” As we look at Jesus, oftentimes in our hearts, we will want to say, but they don't deserve my forgiveness. Jesus is looking at us and he says, don't look at them. Look at me. Do it for me.
Jacque: We remember that we didn't deserve his forgiveness.
Brian: That's right. The more humble we are, the more we remember that, don't we? So then Jesus goes on to say something really interesting here. He says that he has loved us in the same way that his father in heaven loved him. So we are to then live or I think the King James Version uses the word, abide, another translation and uses the word, stay, stay in his love. We see that in John 15 verse 9.
Jacque: I have loved you even as the father has loved me; remain in my love.
Brian: So as we remain, as we stay in that place of love— let's read that again from the message Bible.
Jacque: I have loved you the way my father has loved me; make yourselves at home in my love.
Brian: Just think of this expression, “make yourself at home.” I love so many of the expressions that Eugene Peterson uses in the Message Bible, make yourself at home. If someone comes to your place and you say, well, make yourself at home, you probably aren't telling him to go ahead and sleep in your bed. That's kind of an expression that we use. But what are we saying when we say to somebody make yourself at home? Well, if you want to get someone to eat, go to the refrigerator. I want you to relax, I want you to kind of be here. But when Jesus says, make yourself at home in me, he's okay with us sleeping in his bed because that's how he loves us in that sense. And so we are to abide there. We are to stay there. I don't know if this is me or not. Is that me, Joel? I don't know.
Jacque: I think of the word when I want people to feel at home in our house, I want them to be comfortable, to feel comfortable.
Brian: Comfortable. That's right. So like Jesus, we must focus on the love that we have received. He focused on how much his father loved him. As he focused on the love the father gave to him, he loved his disciples who were continually failing him, making mistakes, going astray. And so like Jesus, we must focus on the love that we've received and then share that same love with other people around us. Jesus offers himself as our guide and example, and he also makes Holy Spirit available to all of us to empower us because sometimes we just don't have much of a want to, do we?
Jacque: We want to love ourselves most.
Brian: Like I've said many times, I've had a wonderful love affair with myself most of my life. But we have to look at others because of what Jesus has done for us. So maybe just maybe loving others should start with asking God to show us how much he loves us. When we begin to see how much God loves us, what begins to happen in our hearts? They get softer. Don't they? We don't have as much angst with the world. For God so loved the world— John 3:17 says that God didn't send his son into the world to condemn the world. The reason Jesus showed up was cuz God loved us, not because he was sending somebody to clean up the mess and judge everybody. Jesus did come to clean up the mess. Don't get me wrong. But it wasn't in the context of getting back at the people who had gone astray. Loving others should start with asking God to show us how much he loves us. It starts by us actually receiving his love, not by trying to earn his approval or achieve his approval. Loving others comes by us, trusting in God, more trusting in Jesus more instead of trying to earn or qualify for some of his favor.
In order for us to love others, as Christ has loved us, we have to be willing to just learn how much God really loves us. That's so important. We live in a day and age where there has been failure in leadership on a mass scale like never before in human history. We can see it in certainly the political arena. We see it in, I think, the police arena at times. We see it in the judicial system. But where I believe it's been the most damaging to our world is where spiritual leaders have failed. And the level of woundedness in our world today— but let me just kind of speak more to America because I'm actually more familiar with America than I am any other country in the world. The level of woundedness in Americans, because of the failures of church leadership, whether you be Protestant or Catholic, the failure in church leadership has created more wounds, more walls, more skepticism regarding the message of Jesus Christ. And so the church has now perceived as an entity that all it does is bring judgment and condemnation to people. We point out everybody's failures. And so these walls have just grown huge in terms of people being skeptical of anything that the church “might do.”
And so we are at a point in our world's history where the only antidote to the level of skepticism, the level of woundedness, the level of unbelief is to love as Jesus has loved us. That's the only thing that is going to change. It's the only thing that will penetrate somebody's hearts. We have to move from treating others as you want to be treated to treating others the way Jesus has already treated us. We have to move in that direction. And there are two verses that I want to read here. The first is found in first John 4:19, and then the second is the Ephesians, but let's read first John 4:19.
Jacque: We love each other because he first loved us.
Brian: That's one reason why we do what we do. We love him because he's worthy, but we also love him because he first loved us. We didn't go on this adventure and discover how to find our way into heaven and we discovered God, and we said, "Hey, would you love me?" It was just the opposite. Wasn't it? He left his throne of glory. He left heaven to come and search for us. He was the adventurer. We were just doing our own lost thing. All we like sheep had what? Gone astray. He came and found us and he pulled us out of the crevice.
I have a short video. I have to play it for you one day. It's what Jesus has done for us. It shows the shepherd; the sheep is stuck down in this ravine, this little crevice, and he pulls him out by the back legs and he's "bahh" all over the place. He pulls him out and he takes four hops and right back into the ravine again, I thought that's shepherding. That's Jesus with us. But he said we love because he first loved us. And then Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 3 verses 16 to 19. I'm going to interrupt you here a few times as you read this Jacque, because there are so many cool things in here to look at. He's trying to help us understand this whole thing about how we love and what the source is and what we need infused into us to be able to love like Jesus loves. Go ahead.
Jacque: I pray that from his glorious unlimited resources, he will empower you with inner strength through his spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him.
Brian: Yeah. So Christ is to make his home; his desire is to make his home in our hearts, which means that our hearts are really desiring the things of Jesus and that our roots will what?
Jacque: Your roots will grow down into God's love and keep you strong.
Brian: So just think of the process of roots for a second. You plant a plant or you plant a tree and the roots are shallow, aren't they? But the roots of an Oak tree are much deeper than they were when that Oak tree started. That's the same process that our, the roots of our hearts, our souls are our minds, our beings, the roots are to go down deep into what? What does it say here?
Jacque: The soul.
Brian: Grow down into God's love. Our roots start to go down into how much God loves us. As those roots grow down into that, then we become strong. The problem, I think, with so many of us, as we struggle to love one another is our roots haven't gone down into the love of God. Our roots have gone down into other things, maybe the power gifts, maybe this, maybe that. I'm not sure. But until our roots go into the love of God, how much God loves you and how much he loves me, we will not be strong, at least not in the way that matters.
Jacque: And when our roots go down deep into God's love the fruit of the spirit is seen in our lives. Isn't it?
Brian: That's right. So let's go on though now.
Jacque: Your roots will grow down into God's love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand as God's people should.
Brian: Let me stop you there. He's saying may we have the power to understand as God's people should. So what does that actually imply? That we actually don't know what he's about to say. Some do, but not all do. And so what is available to us is not just what we should do, but what is available to us. And so he says, "And may you have the power to, as God's people—" let me just not put the should in there. May we have the power to understand as God's people. And what is it that he wants us to understand?
Jacque: How wide, how long, how high and how deep his love is.
Brian: So how wide and how long and how deep his love is for us, that we would know that. Not that we should know that, but that we would know this.
Jacque: May you experience the love of Christ though it is too great to understand fully . Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
Brian: Yes. And the reason Paul just kind of throws that little adjunct phrase in there is that it's actually too great to understand fully, I just have a personal opinion and that is this: We could be in heaven for 10,000 years and will never understand the total depth of the love of God for us. God is infinite. And even though we will be without end, we aren't infinite. He's the only infinite being; we were created. Because we were created, we have a limitation on how much we know, and we will always be learning and knowing more and more and more about our wonderful God. This is what Paul is asking. He said, "Even though we can't comprehend it fully here, nor will we actually comprehend it fully there, there is a place, a depth for us to keep learning and growing deeper and deeper and deeper understanding the love of God."
So moving from treating others as you want to be treated, to treat others as Jesus has already treated us is a shift in anyone's thinking that could potentially change much of this world if not all of this world, if we truly bought into it. It can change our inner world and it can change our outer world. I believe Hope Community has been set apart to be a safe, secure place of healing for people. We may fail in that from time to time, but we have to just keep our eyes on the prize. This is what God has called us to be: a place that's safe, a place that people that can come that are broken. They've been wounded.
As much as I love to hear stories of physical healing and the miraculous in that realm and I encourage that, there is not one disease that I would ever pray that someone would be healed for that I don't expect God to do. And yet, at the end of the day, God does healing, physical healing through his creative power in the same way that he spoke and the worlds came into order. The Centurion came to Jesus and he said, "All you have to do is say the word and my servant is going to be healed." All you have to do is say the word. He understood that in the beginning, God spoke and all these worlds came into order. So all God has to do is speak and people can be healed. But there is a deeper healing that is needed in our world today than the physical needs that people may have.
That deeper healing is the healing of the soul and the mind and the emotions and the heart. That healing doesn't happen through the creative power of God. That healing happens through the mercy and compassion of God, when somebody understands that this incredibly powerful being is not just angry and mad at us, but he actually wants to be in a relationship with us. There are those who need to learn how to trust again, because they've been broken by the leaders of the church. There are those who need to learn how to believe again. I have talked to many people and they said, "Oh, I believed at one time." That's such a sad story to me because they were used or abused by church leaders or church leaders failed them. People's dreamers have been broken. We have to learn how to dream again. So many people have lost their dreamers. They need to learn how to dream again. The world to a certain degree and the church for the most part have left a trail of broken wounded people in our wake. The only antidote for it is to love as Jesus has loved us.
Let me say this. We have to do it more than once. We have to do it over and over and over and over again. That's why it takes that kind of love to soften the hardness of people's hearts. I remember talking to a man once and I just wanted to share with him some scripture. He thought I was going to give him a prophetic word that was going to tell him what to do. He had received so many prophetic words that manipulated him that didn't come to pass that weren't of God, that he just went like this, "Stop" to me. That was an indication of where his heart was at. I just took a step back and the Lord just said to me, "He needs to be loved more. He needs to be loved more, Just be patient with him. Just love him as I've loved you." And that's where we are at. The world will change, I believe, because as we sang earlier today, the spirit of God is over the whole face of the earth as the waters cover the sea. But the love of Christ that will penetrate the broken hearted and the unbeliever and the skeptic is the love of Christ that someone will see in you and me. Jesus said, "A new commandment I've given to you, that you love each other as I have loved you." You have something?
Jacque: Yes. I just think about all the ways that Jesus loved us because sometimes I want you to give me a list of how to love like Jesus, but I just start to think of what he has done for me, one thing he sacrificed. He came, he gave of himself. God's just speaking to me about being more aware of ways that I can love, not just in word, but in deed, that I can be there more for someone. I just have to listen to the Holy Spirit telling me how to love like Jesus loves me.
And so today, as the walls and people's hearts grow taller, as their hearts have become harder and harder, I pray that you will help us keep our eyes on you so that we will love all people in the way that you have loved us and that Lord, these ways of people to protect themselves and to preserve themselves, they will start to be dismantled little by little, little by little so that the genuine love that you have for us will be truly felt and experienced, Jesus, in us and through us. We ask that Lord, that you show us more how you love us, in our workplaces as we are driving to and from the grocery store. As we are taking our families out to eat, as we might be going to a ball game, whatever it might be that we might be doing, I pray that you will speak to us. I love you like this. I love you like that. Help our hearts to be open to hearing that wonderful voice that is matchless, the voice of our savior, Jesus, as you speak to us.
Help us take all of this religious stuff and kind of set it aside, all the ways that we tried to win somehow your approval, help us to set it aside and know, and the deepest parts of our knowers, our inner man just how much you have loved us. May the roots of our heart go deep into that love, Lord. May it not be just something that we intellectually talk about, but maybe something in our hearts that we have truly experienced and know. As a congregation, keep moving into that direction, as we as a church keep becoming more like you, Jesus, and as we as a household of faith and a community of believers love as you have loved us, we will begin to be Jesus to our community. We will really be Jesus to those around us.
It's so easy for us to get our eyes on people's failures, what they've done to us, how they've heard us, how they have failed, how they deserve the bed that they've made, they can just sleep in it, all of these things. But Lord help us to cast our gaze in a different direction and help us to look at you. Help us to look into your eyes, your eyes of love and help us to see more clearly how you have loved me so that I can love like my father has loved. Help me abide in that place. Help me live in that place. Help me make my home in that place, Lord Jesus. This, we pray in your name for your sake. Amen.
You received this word today? Good, good. Thank you. Good. Jacque is going to be here to serve communion for anybody who wants to have communion after the service. God bless you all to you who have tuned in to livestream today. Thank you for joining us. Next week, we'll have another message kind of on top of this one and we are going to get the men next week. How about that? So there are a few of you guys here, so it's good to see you all. Let's raise your hand together.
Now may the Lord bless you and may the Lord keep you. May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you and may the Lord turn his face toward you and give you his peace. And may the roots of your heart go deep into the love of Christ. This, we pray in the name of the father, son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. God bless you. Thank you for being here today. Have a wonderful day. Enjoy the sunshine. Hallelujah. God bless you. Jacque will be here to serve communion and we will have people here to pray for you. If you have any prayer needs at the altar. God bless you all.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 8-21-22. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.