Pastor Jeff and Cheryl Orluck
Pastor Brian: Well, it's so good to be back home. Thank you. We had a wonderful time. I got a lot of reading in. Boy, do I have some stuff to give you over the next year. So fasten your seat belts. One of the things that Lord did in my spirit and my heart and my mind these last few weeks was actually kind of birthed by Pastor Jeff. I'm so thankful for the team that we have here at Hope. We are all different yet the same. One of the things that Pastor Jeff kind of planted here at Hope, maybe a little over a year ago was really like the ways of Jesus. The Lord started dropping into my heart, while we are on the way, we have to be like the way. While we are on the way, we have to be like the way where Jesus said he was the way.
There are ways of Jesus that are completely different than what our culture thrives on. So often in the church, we take all of these cultural ways and try to do the kingdom work the way that the culture does its work, and the two are diametrically opposed to each other. I'm excited to kind of start to really help us to go deeper from where Jeff has been digging and is digging. It's going to be a good year. It's going to be a good year to just discover more of the ways of Jesus while we are on the way with him. Hallelujah.
I'll do my introduction to that next week. But in the meantime, I've just always enjoyed Pastor Jeff's teaching. He always brings such rich stuff. And Pastor Cheryl, so thankful for you as well, and your help here at Hope and all that you do. Let's give Pastor Jeff a warm welcome as he comes and brings a second part of his message to us today. Thank you.
Pastor Jeff: Well, hello everybody. Hello. Great to be here. Great to be together. Actually, Pastor Robert, there is another birthday in February. I was talking with Deb Thompson this last week, and her birthday, I think is on the 15th. Is that right, Deb? 14th or 15th? It's coming up. 15th. Yep. So, happy birthday, Deb. Happy. As we are celebrating, Deb, I got a cool word this morning for you, Deb. I just woke up. It's so fun. I just woke up with this assurance over your healing, It's just like you don't have to strive for it. You just assured and it felt really good and it was very real. And then the Lord gave me this word, budding, budding.
Sometimes when we look at healing, we just expect a miracle, instantaneous boom, boom. I just got the word buddy. we've been waiting for your bone marrow to start producing the blood cells that are needed. We keep expecting good news on those blood reports, but I just had a sense that as spring is coming, a spring is coming into your body as well. It's not an instantaneous miracle, but a budding and a blossoming of health that the Lord is bringing to you. So don't grow impatient and don't get discouraged because the Lord is faithfully doing a fresh new thing in you and us as well. So happy birthday.
It's wonderful to be up here with this beautiful lady. We are taking a, a page out of chapter out of, out of Pastor Robert's playbook this morning. The title of the message is The Jesus Way: Take Up Your Cross. I think we've had Pastor Robert TaQuaris refer to that opportunity in a number of their messages over the last few months, and here we are again. It really isn't the title of choice for me. Cheryl suggested we just call the message just lose it and modify it a little bit. But I really feel like it probably is worthwhile to just title it with words that are old and overused for us.
I don't know how it is with you, but I've always had--- well, not recently, but for many years in my life, I really had this struggle that all of the scriptures had predetermined paths of understanding. Every time I opened up the Bible and I read a scripture, I always went down the same path. The paths that were taught to me or built in me in my early years of Christianity weren't necessarily even true paths or positive paths, but every time I opened a scripture, it took me down this path. And then you'd read the word and this is, oh yeah, I know that. You know, oh yeah, I know that.
At the danger of everybody checking out before you even start your message, I titled it Take Up Your Cross. Because we've heard that so many times. It's easiest for us to say, oh, he's talking about that again. I know all about that. Hopefully, Cheryl and I can just breathe a little fresh life and we'll divert the course of the, of the pathway that's already laid in your mind regarding some of these scriptures so that we can just embrace again, what the Holy Spirit wants to do in our life for real. Sometimes, using the Bible words, I get stuck anyways. I don't know about you, I just struggle with sometimes words like put to death the deeds of the flesh.
I struggle with what flesh is and take up your cross and lose your life. These things all have a certain sense to us. At least for me, I've gotta unpack them and bring them into the transactions of my daily life in order for them to have meaning. And that's the intent of this morning's message, is to remove them from the lofty, spiritual, scriptural, biblical words that we've glossed over so many times and tried to bring them into something that's meaningful in our everyday lives. Because that's what Jesus intended. He wasn't saying this to be religious. We are going to start with Luke 9:23 and then we are going to go from there to Matthew 16, and then we'll kind of find our way from there.
Cheryl: Then he said to the crowd, if any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way. Take up your cross daily and follow me.
Pastor Jeff: Give up your own way, take up the cross daily and follow me. This is interesting. this is not far along into Jesus’ ministry. we were talking about this. I mean, he hadn't taken up the cross yet. I'm not sure at this point if he knew he was going to have to. I'm not sure when he knew the whole story of what he was there for. I'm sure he didn't know it as a little boy. He knew his father, obviously, because when he was just eight or nine or 10, he was in the temple, and his mom and dad were all upset. And he said, well, didn't you know I'd be in my father's house? So even at that young age, he knew who his heavenly father was, and he might have even known who he was.
I'm not sure if he understood at that age the course that was charted for him. In one of the messages recently, pastor Bryan talked about how Jesus was born to die. But I'm not sure when he knew he was born to die. When he talked about taking up your cross, it could be that he was already anticipating that journey, that he knew it was going to have to come. If that's the case, I don't know about you, but if there is something that you have to do in the future that's really hard or you have to go through something like a surgery or something, you know, you carry a weight because it's not something you want to do. But eventually, you know, you have to go through it.
Taking up your cross, what it really refers to is having to go through something, having to pay a price, having to experience pain for some purpose or other. Actually, the real heartbeat of this message is that along the lines of taking up your cross, and the next scripture in Matthew, is that everything in your life that is precious and valuable, the most valuable things that you will ever have in your life cost you something. They cost you something. Taking up your cross has a lot to do with being willing to see it through and pay the price for the things that are most important in your life. Let's do Matthew 16, and then we'll talk more from there.
Cheryl: For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.
Pastor Jeff: There is a really awesome way of Jesus. There is so much there that we are not going to, we won't get to unpack at all. But the whole concept that if you live to for yourself, you lose everything that's valuable. If you are willing to lose the things that are most important to you, you gain the things that are most valuable. We'll get into that more as we, as we talk more specifically about it. It's really fun to do these messages with your spouse because we get to sit together and talk about them. We get to kick things back and forth and Cheryl comes up with great ideas, and I do. We end up creating a pathway for the message that is really both of us, not just one of us.
One of the things Cheryl said when we were talking about this, well, you gotta take up something, right? You are going to take up something. You can take up the cross that like Jesus said. You can be willing to pay that price, or you can take up fear. You can take up anger. You can take up rage, you can take up all kinds of things if you want to carry those. Jesus is offering for you to carry something else. You going to say something?
Cheryl: I think of throughout a day, how many things we pick up and carry. It's a lot of maybe good and bad stuff.
Pastor Jeff: Jesus gave us an option of what we want to carry. He gave us an alternative to carrying a bunch of crap. I mean, Moses gave this to--- Moses says, "I set before you life and death. Now choose." Jesus is offering an alternative to something other than the same old, same old struggles of negative emotions and frustrations and fears that plague most people's lives who live on the planet earth. He has got an alternative. It doesn't sound very appealing, but the reward is worth it.
Let's start with this. What is the most important and precious thing there is to God? What do you think? Take a gander. What's the most important and precious thing that there is to God? Us, I would agree with that. Me, our heart. Did someone say that? How about if we take another step from me and we say relationship with me. My best understanding of our father is that the most important thing in all of his world, however big, whatever his world is like, it obviously includes the entire universe that he created and who knows what else. The most important and precious thing that there is in all of this is me and relationship with me. He values that. He made us in his image. Cheryl pointed that out when we were talking.
Cheryl: I know there is many "mes" out there, but remember, it's all about you as an individual. I used to think if he didn't have me, you know, for a day, I thought he won't mind because he has all these other kids. But no, he misses me. He longs to be with me. He longs to pour himself out to me and take me places.
Pastor Jeff: When you are not present, your father feels a loss. You singular. When I am not present. Isn't that something? I mean, think about it. Just think about someone, a mother who lost one of her children and someone comes along and says, oh, that's all right. You got lots of other children. It doesn't work that way, does it? It doesn't work that way. Everyone of your children is precious to you all the time. You don't just lose one and you are okay with it because you got others. It's not like shoes. What did Jesus give up? What did it cost God to have relationship with us? That's part and parcel. The gospel. We talk about that all the time. It's probably best stated in Philippians two. Why don't we read that Philippians 2: 6 and 8.
Cheryl: Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to clinging to. Instead he gave up his divine privileges. He took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal's death on a cross.
Pastor Jeff: That was what he paid. That was a price that God paid in order to win the right to relationship with us. He had to go through it. He had, at some point in his life, he knew he was going to go through it. It was a heavy enough thing on him that in the garden he sweated blood. He asked the Father if there wasn't some other way. Because it was a hard--- It was a great cost, but he went through it because of the reward on the other side right now.
If we go on in Ephesians, it talks about how God raised him up and gave him a name above every other name, and at the name of Jesus, every knees shall bow. There is a tremendous reward for Jesus at the end of his sacrifice in terms of his position that he gains. But that's not why he went through it. He didn't go through everything with the cross in order to get a higher position. Never mind the throne. What he won in that transaction was you, you are the prize. I am the prize. We are the prize that Jesus got. We can even go to this one, Hebrews 12:2. It's just one section of the verse. But why don't you read that one, Cheryl?
Cheryl: Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame.
Pastor Jeff: Disregarding its shame because he was crucified as a criminal that he even wasn't. He was innocent. He was crucified. He was executed as a criminal. He disregarded all of that, even though he had to wear it. Regardless of his innocence, everybody in the world who saw him in the cross assumed he was guilty, spoke of him as if he was guilty. He disregarded that because of the joy that was set before him. We are the joy. We are the joy.
There is something else that, that kinda caught my fancy just a couple weeks ago when I was musing over this with the Lord. When God decided to become a man, that was an eternal decision. Jesus didn't go to heaven and, he was back into being an omnipresent being. Jesus is still in a body. His decision to become a man is an eternal decision. He is still a man. He was locked into being a man for all of eternity when he made that choice. Think of that. It wasn't just the cross, there is even repercussions beyond, because he's limited in space and time by a resurrected body, a perfected body, an eternal body, but a body nevertheless. He made that choice. God made that choice to limit himself in that way for us. He gave up everything he had to in order, in order to win us.
It's important to recognize all of these things that Jesus did for us. We talk about this a lot, so this is not new news. There was a cost to it. Where that takes us, and the reason Jesus told us take up your cross is because when we walk in his ways, we do the same thing. Ephesians 5:25. You can put that one up, Rosina. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ love the church and gave himself up for her. Husbands, love your wives. I actually, I'd suggest that this is a great message for all of us, not just husbands love your wives, but fathers love your children. Children love your parents. Brothers love your siblings. Church members love your friends.
This is the way of Jesus is not just a way of Jesus for husbands and their wives. This is a way of Jesus, for all of us to lay down our lives for each other, the way Christ laid down his life for us. We'll talk a little more about what that means. But let me just take a little detour here and talk for a little bit about the cost of forgiveness. We don't have to emphasize because it's been, we've talked about it much, much, much the cost that God paid for our forgiveness. Forgiveness isn't free. We all know that forgiveness isn't free. Someone paid a price. Okay? But let's bring it down. Let's bring down forgiveness into human terms because forgiveness is something that's required of us. I'm very happy. It seems like the church in general has the narrative on forgiveness has improved over the years.
Back when I was younger in the Lord, it was, well, you have to forgive her. You won't be forgiven. We've moved to a more compassionate understanding of forgiveness than that. We really try to help people do is come to a place of forgiveness because we understand that if you carry that bitterness in your own heart, it just locks you up. It destroys your life. Bitterness and unforgiveness in you doesn't hurt them. It hurts you. But what we need to also understand, and we need to add to our narrative about the topic of forgiveness is that there is a price when you forgive. You pay something, you lose something when you forgive. The greater the harm that's been done to you, the greater the price that you have to pay. Because what you actually deserve is justice. What you deserve is recompense.
I don't know about you, but we tend to cheer on the people in the movies who finally get their vengeance because that sense of justice is built into every single one of us. I I think the most telling little vignette story in the whole story of the Godfather is about the man whose daughter was beaten and raped by three men. They went to court and judged, dismissed all the charges, and they walked out of the courtroom smiling at him and smirking. He went to the Godfather and the godfather arranged for them all to be beaten within an inch of their lives. And then he went to the hospital where they were in traction and recovering from their getting beaten up. He walked around their beds and smirked at them. He got his justice. But that doesn't actually give you life.
But in order to forgive those men, after your daughter has been brutally raped and beaten within an inch of her life and there is no punishment, there is no recompense, there is no justice for you to come to a place where you actually release them and forgive them is a tremendous price to pay. I realized it's really important for us when we talk about forgiveness, to understand the price that people pay in order to do that. We can't be so glib about it. Cheryl and I taught on the whole idea of if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven, if you retain them, they are retained, and the powerful authority Jesus has given us to release redemption on the world by forgiving people of their sins. But what we failed to mention and what I didn't even understand at the time is that we can't be quite so glib about that. There is a price. There is a price to forgive.
Cheryl: It's like friends of ours had a son who was murdered and there was a court date and she was wanting to go to forgive, but she didn't know if she could, but she wanted to go and have that opportunity to forgive for the death of her son.
Pastor Jeff: Yeah, but that's a huge loss to just release, isn't it? Not that it's not good to forgive, not that there is not a reward at the end of it. You lose your life and you, and you gain something. But there is a cost to get there. So much of our lives, when it comes to the things that are really the most important, there is a cost. When Jesus said, take up your cross, and when he said lose your life to find it, that's what he was talking about. He was talking about see it through. Follow the path all the way to the end for those things that are most important. Because you don't want to get to your deathbed and find out you invested all of your energy in all the wrong things, which begs the next question. What's the most valuable and precious things to you? Cheryl had some thoughts on that one.
Cheryl: Is it your life, your job, your reputation or the comforts in life?
Pastor Jeff: I find the older I get, the comforts in life tends to come up a little higher.
Cheryl: They do
Pastor Jeff: Or is it your spouse, your children, your parents, your siblings, your friends, your fellow church members, people, relationships? Probably it would make sense to me if, if relationship with us is the most valuable and precious thing there is to God that relationships with each other might follow to be the same thing for us if we are following his path. Not that we don't invest in a lot of things in our lives. If you have a business, you invest a lot of blood, sweat, and tears in your business, and hopefully there is a reward at the end. But the truth is it's probably not the most valuable thing in your life. It's kind of part of what we do. But all of those things that Cheryl mentioned are all--- it's not that they have no value, but where do, where do we really want to be willing to pay the price? Anybody ever heard of Dr. John Robertson McQuian? He was the professor of Columbia Bible College. Anybody ever heard of him? He was a very respected, well renowned, kind of a statesman kind of leader. That's how college presidents are. His wife got Alzheimer's. There came a point in his life where he realized he had to choose one. He couldn't be a caretaker for his wife and be a college president. They both required a hundred percent of him. And so he resigned his position, and he made the choice to stop being a college professor. So many people came, what are you doing? You can't do that. This is such an important job. You contribute so much. All of that was true, but he made a choice for the most precious thing.
He tells the story after his wife had died. The one thing I remember about that story is, is that when his wife had lost her ability to even speak, the one thing that she could always say all the way up until she died was, I love you. I love you. Because he invested himself in the thing that was most precious. See? Do you know what Billy Graham says? He says, "I never met a dying man that said, I wished I'd spent more time in the office." I mean, do you think at her funeral that he regretted not being president anymore? I think not. I think not.
But any of you that have been married know there is quite a cost to having a meaningful marriage. It costs you a lot. Talk about dying to self. I mean, seriously? You have to give up a lot. The longer you were single, the more you feel it. But it doesn't matter. You are two completely different human beings, and you came from two completely different cultures of life and you've got to find a way to blend them together. There are a lot of edges that get cut off along the way. It's kind of like an onion. It doesn't all just get done in the first 10 years. Right?
How about children? There is nothing more rewarding than you'll ever experience in life than raising children. And there is nothing more demanding, difficult, frustrating and expensive. It costs you everything. Are you willing to pay the price? Most parents aren't willing to pay that much. There is a lot. It costs you a lot.
Cheryl: Oh, the reward.
Pastor Jeff: Oh, the reward. It costs you a lot to have people in your life that are chemically dependent, and you have to keep loving them and opening your heart to them. Many of you have had to live through that. You know what that's like. And on and on and on. Relationships are not easy in order for a church life. In order for a church community to be meaningful and vibrant and healthy, we have to be willing to lay down our lives for each other. I'm not talking about if someone has a gun, you jump in front of the gun. I'm talking about when you are irritated with somebody or offended by them and you let it go. I'm talking about when someone is different than you and you embrace them anyways. Because the Lord knows we are all different from each other.
You and I start talking about politics, we are going to be on two different ends of the spectrum. I guarantee it. Can we get around that? Can we somehow lose our lives enough to love each other? Can we do that? Can we get past our, our music preferences? Can we get past who our favorite speaker is? Can we get past all of that stuff? Oh, and their kids are impossible. This is what Jesus is talking about. Let's just come right down to home. When Jesus said, 'lose your life", he was talking about every transaction of every day. He's talking about how you think about other people, how you speak about other people. How do you speak about other people, people you don't like? How do you speak about your boss? How do you speak about your spouse? When you are with your friends? Do you build them up or tear them down? How do you speak to other people? How do you treat other people?
I've said this before: we all like to call ourselves servants of Jesus, but none of us likes it when we are treated like one. But some of us have a real affinity to mistreat people that we consider our servants. If you are in the kind of business like Cheryl's in and her daughters, where they clean other people's houses, you meet wonderful people who treat you as peers, and you meet other people who treat you as lowerings. Yeah. How do you treat the clerks in the stores? What if they don't get your Starbucks drink to you in three minutes? How do you treat the person who's handing you the drink? How do you treat the poor customer service person who has to deal with your wrath when you sat on hold for 60 minutes? Are you willing to lose your life?
Cheryl: It'll make life so much better if you know you are going, you are picking up that cross and you are getting somewhere in life. You don't want to stay where we are at, do we? Nope. We want to flourish and be blessed by the Lord and just go far. He has such great plans. Let's get there.
Pastor Jeff: Yeah, let's get there. What I intended to say was, the good news is that this promise that we have in Romans 12 and 13, what it assures us is if we choose to carry the cross, if we choose to take up our cross and see it through, we get good at it. We start to change. We become that person who is willing to let go. It isn't so hard all of your life. I mean, you always will come to new circumstances where you have to learn it all over again. The Lord, make sure to revisit it for you just to make sure you stay fresh.
It never becomes old hat because it's a daily choice. You take up your cross daily and every day brings different things. But what happens is there is a transformation of your character. Your person begins to be renewed and learning how to let go and learning how to love and learning how to say things that bring life instead of death. Learning to choose the way you think about others, that you don't even like, learning to speak properly about others. All of those things become more normal for you as you daily take up your cross. As you purpose, to make those choices that are pleasing to God and that bring life, it will become part of who you are. You will do it more naturally. Probably never be perfect at it on the face of the earth. But the promise, that encouraging thing is we actually do become more like Jesus.
Cheryl: I love that this whole thing is his idea for us
Pastor Jeff: Yep. All his idea.
Cheryl: And he'll be with us through it all.
Pastor Jeff: This is his way.
Cheryl: He will help us be strong in carrying our cross.
Pastor Jeff: Yep. This is his way. Shall we embrace his way? Seems like a good way. Not an easy way, but a good way. For the joy set before us, we carry that cross. For the joy set before us, we lay down our lives, we follow his pattern. He made that choice to do that for those who are most important to him, which is all of humanity. We can do the same. We can do the same.
So Father, thank you. We just thank you for what you are everyday teaching us and forming in our hearts, changing in us, challenging us, convicting us, and bringing us more and more and more into your ways. When we think about it this morning, father, there is really nothing better to carry in our lives than your cross. There is no better way to chart than to lose our lives that we might find them. And so we choose that pathway, your pathway, Lord Jesus, we choose that way. And we trust you to help us, and form in us, your heart. Holy Spirit, we thank you that you walk with us every day and every transaction, you are there. You are such a good friend. We need you and we trust you. Do a real and a deep work in us, every one of us, Lord. And we ask that because of all that Jesus gave up for us. Amen. Pastor Brian.
Pastor Brian: The scriptures are so rich when we see them through the lens of Jesus, but they can feel harsh and burdensome when we don't see them through the lens of Jesus. As I was sitting, just listening, thank you again, Pastor Jeff and Cheryl. It was wonderful. I felt like the Lord just was speaking to my heart saying, okay, what are you going to do? I had a little bit of a flashback at the old Untouchables movie where one fella had been shot and he is dying. And he grabs the untouchable guy, and he said, "what are you going to do?" What are you going to do here?
And what are we going to do? Are we going to take this and begin to live it more vividly in our lives? Are we going to be willing to take the scriptures that we find to be burdensome and harsh and leaving us in a path that we've all gone down before that doesn't seem to bring us much life? Maybe what we need is a, a different interpretation of how we've been reading the scriptures. So that interpretation is Jesus. Put Jesus over and all look through his life into the scriptures to see what he's saying to us.
So Father, we receive, again, we want to receive your word. We want our hearts to be open to your word. And if there is a way that we are understanding your word today 1:36:00 that causes heaviness in our heart or feels like weights are being put on us. Jesus, you came to take away the weights of the world. You came to bring freedom to our hearts and our spirits, our minds. People have used religion throughout the centuries, to bring burdens on people. But you came not to bring more requirements. You came to bring freedom in our relationship with you. And so we give ourselves to you. We want to be in relationship with you.
Lord, I want to love you the way that you love me. I want to live the kind of life that you've lived for me. I want to bring honor to your name in the way that you've honored us by how you have treated us. You've not treated us as we have deserved to be treated, but you have given to us Lord in such immeasurable ways of goodness when we weren't deserving of that. You simply are asking us to look at you and follow you.
Oftentimes, that takes us into places that we don't know where we are going. But that's okay because you know where you are going. And if we will follow you, we will end up exactly into the very, very best place for our life. We can rest in that and trust in you and be safe there. We don't have to worry. We don't have to be full of fear. We don't have to take up that fear. We can take up you. So we thank you Jesus. Thank you for that. Let's raise our hands together now.
And now may the Lord bless you. May the Lord keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you. Be gracious to you. And may the Lord turn his face towards you and give you his peace. This we pray in the name of the Father's Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. God bless you. Have a wonderful day. Pastor Robert and TaQuaris will be serving communion today, and we will have prayer, alter prayer people here for you if you need prayer for anything. God bless you. Have a wonderful day. Thanks for being here.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 2-12-23. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.