The Way On The Way With The Way

Pastors Brian and Jacque Lother

Brian: How is everybody doing today? Good. I'm raring to go. I haven't preached for about a month, and I'm raring to go. Thank you, Pastor Jeff and Pastor Robert, for all the filling in, and everybody else while we were gone. We were back last week. It was great to lead worship last week. I just really appreciate Pastor Jeff and, and Pastor Robert's messages. I'm going to kind of just build a little bit on the messages, especially the one that Pastor Jeff shared last week. But before we do that, I'd like to read an opening scripture here, found in John chapter 14, verse 6. Get the setting here. This is kind of the setting of the, you know, the last supper, coming down to the end of his life. This is a very intimate, a very personal time that Jesus is having with his disciples. He says this incredible verse that we are all familiar with, but that we sometimes really grasp the totality of what it's talking about.

Jacque: Jesus told him, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.

Brian: I am the way, the truth and the life. The title of my message today is the Way on the Way with the Way.

Jacque: Can you say that again?

Brian: The way on the way with the way. I'm the way, the truth and the life. So many followers of Jesus, without thinking, actually embrace the ways and means of our culture. It's really easy to do because we are inundated with our culture and we are affected by our culture. Uh, this message today is not intended to be critical of anybody or anything we, as the church have done at all. I have no judgments to speak, but I do want to bring, in a sense, a caution to us all of how easy it is to fall into thinking like our culture instead of thinking like Jesus, because we are inundated with our culture.

So many followers without thinking embrace the ways and means of our culture as they go about their daily living in Jesus' name as Christians. But the ways that dominate our culture have been developed either in ignorance or in defiance of the ways of Jesus. I think many of them in ignorance of the ways of Jesus, because our flesh is strong, our appetites are strong. To many, the ways of Jesus are useful only as a compartmentalized area of life that we label religious something that we do on Sundays. Jesus is something we do on Sundays, and then the rest of the week, we live our lives. Even the church has created this distinction between the secular and the spiritual.

I remember talking to a gentleman once, uh, he was having issues in his business and I was trying to encourage him to try and bring the ways of Jesus into his business. And it was really shocking his response to me. He said, "I don't ever mix business with my religion." I don't ever mix business with my religion. That shows you how compartmentalize some people think of Jesus. Jesus is something we do on a Sunday morning.

But Jesus is an alternative to the very dominant ways of our culture. He is not to be thought of as simply a supplement to our culture, is he? He is not to be thought of as well. Jesus is this appendage that we kind of hook on to our, our lives to maybe give us a greater adventure, make our life a little bit more exciting.

Jacque: Or to get to go to heaven. Some people just look at that's the only thing Jesus is.

Brian: That's right. And that's so good. We've had friends in our lives in the past that it feels to me like the only reason they pray or the only reason they worship or the only reason they are part of a faith community is a fire escape in eternity. That's their view of it. It's to go to heaven when they die rather than go to hell. Their whole view of God is one of very strong judgment, angry, someone that needs to be pacified, the deity that needs to be pacified in some way, shape or form. And so we do these duties to somehow pacify him, and hopefully, when our time comes to leave this earth, we will have pacified that deity enough to be able to go to heaven when we die. But what a tragic--- God still loves these people, don't get me wrong, but what a tragic way to live a person's life, isn't it? Because Jesus said, "I come that you might have joy and life more what abundantly." Living in fear of where we are going to spend eternity can't contribute to an abundant life.

Jacque: How can you have a loving relationship with God if you think, he has just got the checklist out all the time and you are having to fill all the checks.

Brian: It's kind of like one of my Christmas sermons about the view of Santa Claus. He is got a list, he is checking it twice to see who's not in nice, right?

Jacque: That's right. Instead of coming, instead of being a part of Jesus because you love him, not just to do for him.

Brian: I know it. Yeah. And so much of our lives, isn't it tied up in doing? If you are going to get ahead in the job, you have to do. You need to excel beyond others so that you can get promoted. That's our culture. Our culture's not evil in and of itself. Don't get me wrong. There are certain things in our culture that we just need to do. If I'm going to hire you to work here at our church, I want you to have some expertise. I don't want to pay you a salary and you actually aren't capable of doing anything that would contribute to the wellbeing of this ministry. Every business is like that, and that's not evil. But the fact of the matter is, the way that Jesus went about saving and loving the world was deeply personal, wasn't it?

He became incarnate. That's very personal, isn't it? It's very relational. Jesus became very personal, relational when he became flesh. But so many of the ways employed in our North American culture are actually conspicuously, impersonal, not personal. We live in a culture today with what I would call the vocabulary of numbers is preferred rather than names. You have a question to an account that you have, you make a phone call and what do you get? You get a menu of where you need to go to get an answer to your question, but you don't get a person. Have you ever been frustrated? I need to talk to a person, and there is no person to talk to?

The prevailing ways and means in which we are all immersed in our North American culture, they really are designed to help us get ahead in whatever field that we are working in. It doesn't matter what field we are working in. It could be sales or marketing or politics or school or church or farming or construction, whatever it is. The whole idea is to get ahead. How can we get what we want out of this area. Whatever vocation you might go into, how can I get what I want out of this? That is how our culture thinks. Again, that is not evil. That's just how our culture thinks.

The whole North American culture is actually counter to the very rich and textured narrative that is laid out for us in scriptures. These words of life that instruct us in walking in the way of righteousness or these words that instruct us in listening to the voice of the spirit. That is not what our culture is about. Our culture gives very scanned attention to what it means to actually live the eternal life in our everyday timeframe. A lot of us think of eternal life as something that we are going to get when we die, but Jesus said that you can have life abundantly right now. He came to bring eternal life. Whoever it in him should have everlasting life, not when they die, but when they begin to believe, when they begin to believe.

For the most part in our culture, God really is not really worshiped. For the most part, Jesus is really not followed, and for the most part, the spirit is really not given a voice. When a board of a corporation gathers around the table to make a decision, how many times do they pause and say, let's see what the spirit of the Lord will instruct us to do in this situation. We've compartmentalized God and Jesus into something we do on a Sunday morning. It's not part of what we have in our everyday life, but Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life." We need to walk on the way with the way I want to read this text one more time.

Jacque: Jesus told him, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.

Brian: So the Jesus way wedded to the Jesus truth will bring about the Jesus life. Many of us who are followers of Jesus, we say, I really want the Jesus life. But we have to, wed--- you know what that means? Become one with. We have to wed the Jesus way with the Jesus truth in order to get the Jesus life. I think we as a church, I don't just mean Hope Community, but the church historically has had a huge focus on Jesus being the truth, the truth of Jesus. But we've absented ourselves from the way or ways of Jesus. I'm thankful for Pastor Jeff how he kind of birthed that in us, I think it was over a year ago or more that there are ways of Jesus that we need to walk in, in order to really, truly understand the truth of Jesus.

Jacque: Ways of Jesus we need to live out.

Brian: That's right. We can't proclaim the Jesus' truth, but then do the way any old which way we want. And we've done that, haven't we, Pastor Jeff as a church? We've proclaimed the truth, but we've not wedded the truth with the way of Jesus. most often when the truth gets separated from the ways of Jesus, then that's when we get a lot of judgment That's when we get a lot of religion that we begin to follow. And so we need to wed the ways of Jesus with the truth of Jesus. Jesus as the truth gets a lot more attention than Jesus as the way.

There is a way that seeth unto man, but the end thereof is death. So there are lots of ways. One of the most powerful committees, if I use that term in Washington, is the ways and means committee. That is like the most powerful entity in Washington DC You can look it up. I don't want to go down that rabbit hole because we could spend an hour talking about that. But in the scripture we just read, the way comes first, doesn't it? I'm the way, the truth and the light.

We cannot skip the way of Jesus in our hurry to get to the truth of Jesus. And the way of Jesus is the way that we practice and come to understand the truth of Jesus. much of the North American church--- and I'll speak mostly of the North American church. I know that the church is worldwide was inspired by what Pastor Jeff said today about Sunday is probably God's favorite day because all around the world, 24 hours, there are people gathering in his name to worship him, and that has to bring joy to his heart.

But I'm much more familiar with the North American church and mostly the American church than I am really any other aspects of the church around the world. The church here in America at the present time is conspicuous for replacing the Jesus way with the American way. Let me explain that to you. A faith community is really a group of people that come together, men, women, children who gather together for prayer, for worship, who as a community, they come together to learn more about Christ, become more conformed into the image of God, who then go into the world as salt and light as truly being Jesus to the world.

Sometimes we forget the reality that God wants to do something with us as a church. God wants to do something with us. He really wants to do something with us and he really wants to do it in a community of believers. I know that the organized church today is falling on hard times, but the church of Jesus Christ in worshiping him is something we are to do in community, not just individually, not just individually. They came together in won accord. That is so important and so critical. I love to go golfing and rarely do I have a really God moment on the golf course. Usually, it has to do with my golf game. But there are people who say I worship God on Sunday mornings on the golf course.

Well, you can be inspired by nature as Romans chapter one says, but that's not the kind of worship that God is wanting us to have as communities. He wants us to come together as a community, not be isolated individuals. God wants us as a community to get in on what he is doing. We are in on what God is doing and we are in on it together. Here is how we are in on it. We all bring ourselves to the altar of God. I don't necessarily mean a physical altar in a church somewhere, but I'm speaking more figuratively or metaphorically speaking, that we bring ourselves to the altar of God and we let God do with us what he wills.

I like the term a eucharistic life. If you look at the Eucharist, what Jesus did at that last supper was he took the bread, he blessed it, he broke it, and then he distributed it. What God wants of us is he wants us to offer ourselves to him so he can take us in the same way that he took the bread. He wants to bless us because that's what God does. But then he wants at times for us to become broken, not broken in a bad way, but broken in spirit. Blessed out of the poor and spirit for theirs is a kingdom of heaven wants us to be broken vessels so that what's in us will come out like a cracked jar. He wants us to be distributed in the same way that he took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and distributed it to his disciples. That's what he wants to do with us. That's a eucharistic life, where we offer ourselves to God, where we are in his hands, where he breaks us, he blesses us, he takes us, he blesses us, he breaks us in a good way, and then he distributes us to a culture that needs his love and grace and mercy.

Jacque: I kind of think broken that way, that I humble myself before him. I try to not have that pride in my heart, but I humble myself just like we did in worship this morning.

Brian: The challenge that we face today is that with the influence of our culture that we are inundated with every day, a large portion of the North American faith communities have actually turned into a consumer enterprise. The people that come to faith communities are coming not to give, not to be broken, not to be a eucharistic life. They are coming to get something. We've developed a culture here, especially in America, a culture of acquisition. We have an appetite for wanting more and requiring more. It's kind of like children at Christmas time: when's my next present? Where's my next present? What's next?

We even have obviously huge advertising industries that create appetites in us that none of us knew we even had. I didn't know my life was so miserable their product. There are whole industries of advertising. I listen to some ads, whether it's on a radio or tv, and I think, somebody got paid to come up with that? But we become insatiable as a culture. We have more than any other culture in the world, and we have some of the highest levels of dissatisfaction and unhappiness in our culture than any place in the world. We've become insatiable as a culture and as we, as a culture become insatiable, it actually didn't take very long for our faith communities to become consumer congregations as well.

The thinking went something like this. If we have a nation of consumers, then the quickest and most effective way to get those consumers into our congregation is to identify what they want and give it to them, give it to them. We'll just recast the gospel in consumer terms. We'll use terms like satisfaction guaranteed or the excited life. We might even call it the blessed life. We talk about entertainment. It's amazing how many people actually leave legitimately honorable, wonderful faith communities because to them, well, I'm not getting anything out of it. I didn't get anything on that.

We are the world's champion consumers here in America. So why shouldn't we have state-of-the art consumer churches? That's what many of the churches around have tried to do and are doing. I think there is only really one thing wrong with that and that is this: this is not the way in which God brings us into conformity to the life of Jesus. It's not getting what we want that gets us into the life of conformity to Jesus. Conforming to the life of Jesus is getting him what he wants, not what we want. This consumer mentality that is permeating so much of our churches today, because that's what our culture is inundated with. This is not the way we become less and Jesus becomes more.

Isn't that a struggle with all of us? Six days a week, I'm exposed in a sense to the culture and I have that culture telling my flesh and my appetites that they are not fulfilled enough and I need to do this and I need to do that and I need to go here and I need to have that in order for me to have a good life. And then I come to church and we are told again, well, you can have this and you can have that. You can go to heaven when you die. That's a pretty good one. As the entity that is supposed to be representing Jesus, we actually have become less like Jesus at times by going to church rather than becoming more like Jesus.

Jacque: Because we become the center.

Brian: We become the center.

Jacque: And he is not the center.

Brian: That's so good. When we become the center, this is not the way in which our lives of sacrifice become available to other people. When we become the center, that's when we think less and less of injustices and things that are not fair in our culture, acts of service. The cultivation of consumer spirituality really is the antithesis of denying yourself and taking up your cross. This wonderful scripture that Pastor Jeff shared on last week.

We can't suppress the Jesus way in order to sell the Jesus truth. There is a way. There is a Jesus way and there is a Jesus truth that's connected to it and they must be congruent together. Only when the Jesus way is joined with the Jesus truth, do we actually get the Jesus life. I want to read another scripture. It's the same scripture Jeff read last week. I'm going to take a few more in front of it and behind it. But I want to start with Mark chapter 8, verse 31. Jesus has been asking this question to his followers, his disciples, who do people say that I am? Peter, he gets this revelation. He said, "You are the Christ; you are the Messiah." And Jesus said, man, you got some insights here, Peter, but I want to show you how quickly you can go from having insights to being a tool of the devil here really quickly. Go ahead.

Jacque: Then Jesus began to tell them that the son of man must suffer many terrible things and be rejected by the elders, the leading priests and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed.

Brian: Wow. Let's stop here. Time out, Jesus. What do you mean you are going to suffer and killed? I thought you were going to be the next king. I thought we were going to kick Rome out of here. I thought we were going to get this independence, this freedom that you've been talking about. This is not computing. You are, you are going to die. Of course, he missed the next phrase, which is:

Jacque: But three days later he would rise from the dead.

Brian: Yeah. He forgot that that just went over his head.

Jacque: As he talked about this openly with his disciples, Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things.

Brian: Now, let’s get this picture. We got the servant telling the master how wrong he is. Then I thought to myself, how many times have I done that? How many times have I told the Lord that his plan just was not a very good one.

Jacque: Or in our prayers telling him exactly how we want it to be.

Brian: How it's supposed to be. And get this picture: just moments earlier. You are the Christ. You are the son of God. You are the Messiah. You are the sent one from God. Next breath, and I'm going to straighten you out on all the things that you are wrong about, Jesus. Jesus had a response to Peter and it was this.

Jacque: Jesus turned around and looked at his disciples and then reprimanded Peter. "Get away from me, Satan," he said. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God's.

Brian: Here's Peter. He goes from this incredible revelation, you are the Christ to being Satan. That's how quickly we can change when we start seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God's.

Jacque: I'll continue on.

Brian: Give me one second. You can interrupt me when I'm done. The human point of view is, what do I need to do to get ahead? The human point of view is, am I going to get anything out of that? The human point of view is what's it going to cost me? The God point of view is what Jesus was from the beginning. He came to serve everybody. He came as a servant. I like what Pastor Jeff said last week about how much we want to talk about being servants until we are actually asked to serve. And then we don't like it. We like the spiritual title servant, but we certainly don't like the function of servant, do we?

Because our culture and our appetites are natural, fallen, fleshly, appetites. They are all designed -- I don't know if they are designed this way, but, but they are this way now because sin, because of the fallenness of the world and sin that we want our own way. That's what we want. I want my way. I don't want to be told what to do. I don't want to yield my will to someone else. If we were really honest about it, we don't even like to yield their will to God. It's hard. That's that cross that we are to take up. But the Jesus way is where we actually do what Jesus said next. Read that sweetie.

Jacque: Then calling the crowd to join his disciples, Jesus said, "If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way. Take up your cross and follow me. If you try to hang onto your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, you will save it."

Brian: I really like what Pastor Jeff said last week where he said, really, another way to understand take up your cross is to just see it through. I'm going to start another series; this is actually the introduction to a series of messages I want to do. I'm going to call it do it anyway, not any old way. Do it anyway. There are things that God asks of us and we are reluctant to want to even start it because it's, it's a challenge. It's hard. It's hard to see it through, but carry it to the finish line because there is a reward on the other side. There is a kingdom life that we can walk into, not a life of just coming to church to get entertained, not coming to church to see what we can get.

I had a conversation with a person recently and he has gotten out of the habit of coming to the family of community of faith. He still reads his Bible. He still does all of this. He still has his devotions and he still loves the Lord. But he said, "I need to separate myself now and just kind of get alone with God." I said, "Well, what about all the people that need you? Would all the people in our community of faith that are going through the same things you are going through, that you can bless them with, how are they going to be blessed? How is God going to touch their lives if you are not there?"

And so often, it's not so much the end result, although I think that is important, but it's what perspective are we going to look at things from? Are we going to look at things from my perspective, I'm not getting anything out of this.? Or are we going to look at things from God's perspective? I want you to go here and do this, carry it through to the finish line.

Jacque: Can I just say something? Another thing, another reason why some people don't want to come into the body, "Well, some of those people really bug me." Yeah, I've heard that. It's hard to believe.

Brian: They are probably talking about me.

Jacque: And me too, maybe. But you know what? That's me, me. The word me is operative there. It's all about us. Whereas I heard the best thing yesterday. I was listening to a podcast and they say, every time somebody rubs you the wrong way, think of them as a teacher. They are going to show you. God wants to use them to show you something that he wants to touch in your life. I mean, that's part of being the body, purifying one another, but not making us the center point. Yes.

Brian: I did love what Pastor Jeff said last week: for the joy set before him, meaning Jesus, he endured the cross. There was an endurance that he did. He paid the price and that joy was the relationship he was desiring to have with us. That's just really unbelievable, isn't it? But instead of taking that truth and that revelation and saying, oh man, that is so wonderful. I need to serve other people, so more people can be, can come into that knowledge and understanding, many of us say that I'm the apple of his eye and I need more and more and more, rather than the real conversion that needs to take place in our hearts. When we walk in the ways, on the way with the way we actually become like Jesus. We can't become like Jesus if we are not really willing to come to that altar and say, take me, bless me. Break me and distribute me.

Jacque: Use me.

Brian: Use me. One thing that Jesus wasn't--- I'll finished with this one thing. He wasn't a consumer, was he? What was Jesus? He was a giver. He was a lover. He loved. He was a server.

As Jesus said, it's in giving that we received. I think the more we give and the more we look to serve, the greater the spiritual temperature will be in our lives because God made us first. We then became fallen in the world and culture we are in. But God made us first, and there is still some of that latent design in us from the very beginning of time. One of those latent things that's within us is that the way we are most fulfilled in our life, the way we have the greatest purpose in our lives, is actually yielding to him and doing it his way.

We have lived so many millennia as a human race, and so many of our individual lives. We've lived so much as consumers that that latent part of what was created in us at the very beginning sometimes gets on the bottom layer. But we have to scrape that stuff away so that that latent part of us can actually be exposed. There is where the real joy comes in walking with Jesus, doing it his way. When we become givers, and there are people who will take advantage of that. They took advantage of Jesus, didn't they? They were there for the miracles. They were there for what he could do for them. In his greatest time of need, he was pretty much alone.

You look at the Apostle Paul; he gave so much of his adult life in the service of Jesus. At the end of his life, he had hardly a handful of people that were around him. I think if we would've been with the Apostle Paul, we would've felt very bad for him. Where are all these people that you blessed and served and all these churches you started? Where are they? And the same with Jesus. But at the end of the day, if we will see it through, if we will do it anyways, we will receive a great reward. Most importantly, we will see the pleasure of his smile when we actually do it his way. Let's walk on the way; let's walk on the way. Let's walk in the ways while we are on the way with the way. Pastor Jeff, would you come, please?

Jeff: Well, now you whet our appetites. A little [inaudible 1:26:35] I need more, I need more specifics. Come on, come on. Dig in, dig in, dig in. You are going to dig in.

Brian: I'm going to dig in.

Jeff: He is going to dig in. I don't think I ever thought of that, that we differentiate between the truth. We are so good about arguing about what's truth. We are so busy trying to convince each other what the truth is, and we miss the simplicity of just living in love like Jesus did. His are just kind of transcendent from all the things we want to argue about.

Well, we do want to take a second just for anybody watching on live stream, anybody here who has never actually encountered Jesus the way, the truth and the life. He truly is all three of those things for us. And he is the one that makes us alive. He is the one that is at the very beginning of the transformation of our lives. I just want to take a second. If you are watching this production or if you are here and you've never actually asked him to come and be center in your life, to forgive your sins and to transform you, and to lead you on his way, then let's do that now. If you are in that place, it's so simple to open up your heart to God. It's so simple to say, Jesus, I've never really thought of it before, but I really need you.

That's all you have to say: Jesus, I need you. Please forgive me. Please fill me with your love and change my life and I will follow you. Such simple words, but when they are spoken out of our hearts, they bring such a profound transformation. Many of us might even remember the first time that love came to us and what happened in that moment. I'm sure all of us have experienced that love coming to us repeatedly in our lives, because that's what he does. I just want to pray that you will continue to visit every single one of us with your transforming love. We love to hear your voice. We love when you guide us, even when you correct us. It's so good to be with you. It's so good to be with him.

I want to thank you all for being here. Thank you everyone on our online community for joining us. We wouldn't be doing this if we weren't all here together. There is something that happens when we are all here together that is magical and I'm very thankful for it. I'm thankful for you, Pastor Brian.

Jacque: Another thing that's so important about being a part of the body is that we carry one another's burdens. When we struggle, we are here for each other. We sent out a prayer request for our sweet niece, Christie Peterson Ross. Last Sunday, she was found unresponsive and her body just went into a coma. And thank you for praying. She spent the most of the week, better of the week in a coma, breathing tube. We were just interceding for her, and at towards the end of the week, she woke up and now yesterday, for sure the tube is out. She is still a very sick woman. We just appreciate your prayers for her, but she is on her way.

Brian: Baby steps.

Jacque: Yes, baby steps. We thank you for your prayers. Keep praying.

Brian: Let's stand together, shall we? Let's raise our hands and let me bless you Now. May the Lord bless you and may the Lord keep you. May the Lord make his faces shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord turn his face towards you, and give you his peace. And may you be this week a better server than a consumer. This we pray in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

God bless you. Thank you so much for being here today. God bless you. Thank you, online community, for watching as well. Please send us a note, email contact, contact us. We'd love to hear from you. God bless you. Have a wonderful day.

Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 2-19-23. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.