Pastor Jeff and Cheryl Orluck
Pastor Jeff: Pastor Brian, hallelujah. Some of you may know Steven; some may not. This is our son, Steven. The youngest. The message we are going to share today actually was his idea, so it seemed right for him to be on the platform with us. Before we go there, just a couple announcements we want to make. We want to really encourage you to join us on a Sunday, October 8th. Every once in a while we have an all day day of prayer, and we've moved them to Sundays starting at one o'clock after church. The prayer gathering is on Zoom, and every hour someone else will come onto the Zoom chat, and they'll lead another hour of prayer. Every hour has a different topic and theme that together we will pray over. It's the kind of a thing where if you, if you come in at one o'clock, you get captured by the Lord and you never want to leave, right, Jackie?
Joanne Ecklund, our dear friend Joanne Ecklund is the one who puts these together for us. And she has, she has an amazing lineup of prayer leaders and prayer topics for October 8th. If you want to join us on Zoom that Sunday, you can come in for 15 minutes of one hour. You can come in for one hour; you can come in for all six hours. You can come and go. There is no obligation. But if you are there, it'll be wonderful because we are going to just reach into heaven with some wonderful requests. It's going to touch the heart of God and it touches us as well.
The next thing is a wholly different topic, but on October the 29th, that's a Sunday afternoon. We have purchased a group of tickets to the old Log theater for all of our Joy group to see a show called The Million Dollar Quartet. The Million Dollar Quartet Happens to be a story about one day in history. One day only in history that Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Jerry, Jerry Lee Lewis, were all on a stage together.
Cheryl: That really happened.
Pastor Jeff: It really happened in 1956, the historic day in the rock music industry. I read that little bio about that show and I thought that one has gotta be cool. And so if you are interested in that, and if you'd like to spend an afternoon with all your friends from Joy, you just gotta be 50 or older, or if you, if you really want to go, we'll find room for you even if you are younger. Come on to the planning center, sign up. The tickets are only $40 a person. And then for anybody who wants to after the show, since it's a matinee, we have reservations at a lovely Irish pub in Excel here, about five minutes from the old Log theater. And so then we'll go out and have a wonderful dinner together as well. So the dinner will be on your own. The tickets are only 40 bucks for the show, and it should be a really fun time.
Cheryl: Please come.
Pastor Jeff: They are great. We've been going to the Chan House in the last couple years and they had a great show too, but when I saw this one, I thought, oh, let's mix it up. Let's do something different.
One of the favorite things we get to do when we get to share is before we get into our message, we get to honor somebody at Hope. And this morning we want to honor Ms. Ruby Ransom. There are people who God gives us in our church who provide something that we really, really need. For a long time, if I can kinda give you a sense of, of, of what I'm getting at here, there are many, many years of Hope from its inception until they went to heaven. We had Pastor Ed and Grace, and we had Ted and we had Ruby, Brian and Jackie's parents. And they weren't in the leadership. You didn't see him. You saw Pastor Ed on the platform once in a while, but you didn't see them on the platform, but they provided a kind of a covering that I felt that was really something that was important to the Lord. One by one, they all went to heaven. I was especially blessed with Jackie's mom, Ruby. because that woman never stopped praying. If you happened to go and visit her and you looked in the window of her basement apartment, she'd be praying.
Cheryl: I did one time. She was in her chair just praying away. She had no idea what was happening around her. Like the phone ringing.
Pastor Jeff: Over time, the Lord took them all home. And they are all still praying for us. They are in the great crowd of witnesses. But Ruby, I have to say that when the Lord brought you, the Lord brought us another ruby, I felt covered again because you brought something to us. We don't see you on the platform or in the staff meetings or in the pastoral meetings, but you bring something to us here at Hope that we all really, really need. I'm very thankful that the Lord brought you here because you are truly a gift to all of us. So,
Cheryl: This morning I said to Jeff, "Oh, I was praying for Ruby last night, and I got this word." And it was the word depend. What came out of that for you is that God is depending on you because he can. So that just says to me and solidifies that you are to be depended on by God and by us here. So thank you so much.
Pastor Jeff: Yeah. Amen. Ruby, the Lord spoke to me also. And, and, and what he said, and I think it's important for you to know that you have a high standing in the courts of heaven. Your reputation precedes you. When you make your petitions to heaven for your children or for people you care about or for us, the Father sends those out with an earmark of urgency. He applies a sense of urgency to your petitions because of the standing that you already carry with him and in heaven. It's important for you to know that when you make petitions for your children and your grandchildren, and I trust that you are making petitions for this church and for the pastors of this church and our, and our wives, because those petitions have a place in heaven that is very powerful and significant. And so keep making those petitions because they are not only heard, but they are marked with a sense of urgency that they be answered, and that your prayer answers be delivered as you have presented them to the Father. So bless you, and thank you for being one of ours.
I realized this morning, a month ago, Cheryl and I shared about the, the, the young and the old together, and here we are this morning, taking a step into the very essence of that message with Steven on the platform. As I said, this is, I don't know, sometime in July, he sent me a long text and it was a message that the Lord had dropped in his heart. Cheryl and I read it, and we thought, wow, that's pretty amazing. We started talking, I said, and right away a scripture came to mind in the gospel, I thought, this is a Jesus way. I said we need to teach this next. We already had planned our message for August, so we scheduled it for September. And then I just thought, well, you know, it's Steven's message. Maybe we should invite him to join us. So he's with us today. I'm actually going to let him take the platform here, and he's going to share the things that are on his heart. And then we will just see how much time is left, and we will finish it up from there. Steven, it's all yours.
Steven: All righty. Well, good morning. Good morning. Wow. Wow. It's good to be here. It's an honor to be up here. So many amazing preachers and speakers are up here. I was surprised when you asked me to be up here with you. I get these things sometimes and I like to, instead of just letting them leave my mind, I like to text my dad or let him know, Hey, this is what I'm thinking. What do you think about this because he always has a good answer every time.
This came from how I'm living right now. The base of the message is you are what you eat. And that's really simple. You are what you eat. If you eat McDonald's every single day of your life, well, you are not going to be very healthy. You are not going to be able to do things that you may have otherwise. But the word around that is consumption. Consumption is a big word and it's something that we do every single day. And we are not just talking about food either. Everything around us, we are consuming all the time. Constantly. Right now you are consuming. God. We are here consuming the spirit. And it's amazing. It's beautiful.
But today is Sunday; what about Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday? Now more than ever, adults, young teens, children with our phones and technology regularly consume short videos, 60 second content, swipe up, get another video, swipe up, get another video. A lot of those videos are full of anger, violence, nudity, hate, fear. Fear is a big one, and otherworldly impressions of our culture. That's another big one. Our culture is something we consume. We consume it so easily because it's normal and we embrace culture.
Culture can be beautiful. But where it is now and where it's going, it's transforming. And it's always been transformed to something not so great. A little too much freedom can be a bad thing as funny as that sounds. That's why parents have rules. That's why kids don't eat sugar before bed. It doesn't get any different. When we get older, it gets more complicated actually.
On a regular day, what do you think we consume? What's something normal we consume without maybe even thinking about it? The news is a big one. Fear-mongering news is something we consume. It might not affect you then when you are watching it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but every single night you plop down and watch something similar that's going to induce maybe a little fear or induce maybe a little anxiety. And you are not really paying attention to what you are consuming. That can be really dangerous. Especially when we are consuming constant news, constant TV shows of drama and gossip about the latest celebrities or who's doing what, who's dating who.
We know that a big one in our culture is sexual impurity. It's a huge one. It's one that we don't talk about a lot, but it's everywhere. Movies, pictures, TV shows. It's our culture. It's becoming our culture. It's scary. It's scary to say out loud, you know, but it's true and it's real. The more you consume things like this, and without even realizing, because it is a part of our daily lives, and it's become such a normal part of our daily lives, to consume this information, to consume this culture, to consume everything. The more you consume--and this was true to me, and this is where I got this message. The more I was consuming, the more I was conforming to the ways of the world without even realizing it.
I was conforming so easily. It was so sneaky because I didn't think anything was wrong. I was going the way I was going, and I felt great. And then before I knew it, I was empty. Even though everything was fine, everything was good. And so the result of con consumption is how, who we are. So as if we are consuming day in and day out, all this different stuff, we usually use one day of the week for the word for God, for Jesus. And this has been preached over and over again. But I think something that's very important is, how much do we get into the word ourselves?
It's great to come to church and to get things explained and to get things talked about and to preach to. I love that so much. But there is something to be said about taking the word for yourself because it's living and it's breathing. It's living and it's breathing. You could go to the same verse for 10 years and maybe it doesn't hit you like it should. And then you read that verse again 10 years later and you are like, wow, whoa. That's crazy. Because it's always changing. And for each and every single individual person, what I read and what I get isn't necessarily going to be the same meaning or word that you get. It's a broad term, but we all have different lives and God created us so differently. If we were all the same, what would be the point? What's the point?
An easy way to look at this, and something that I heard, and I've never forgotten since, is we are like gold. A lot of us wear gold. We have rings or earrings, and they are beautiful and shiny. If you heat gold to an extreme temperature where it melts, there are other metals in gold to make it beautiful, that will rise to the top. This liquid gold, all of a sudden you see different metals that they make to make it more shiny or more durable, comes up to the top, and then they scoop that out to make the gold pure.
We are the exact same. We are the exact same. When we get put under intense heat, intense pressure, intense fire, something comes out of us. And it's important to realize, and this is where it all comes together. When someone puts you in intense heat, the way you react, it's not because of what's happening to you. It's not because of the anxiety that's being caused around you or maybe someone is saying something to you, it's getting you really angry, or some things are happening that you just can't control and we are never going to be perfect. But the bottom line of that is you are not acting that way because of what's happening to you. You are acting that way because of what's inside you.
We all react differently to different things, and we are never going to be perfect. That's why Jesus came . And when you read the word and you are consuming the word and you are aware of what's around you, then when you get under intense pressure, intense heat, anxiety, depression, anger, it all is there. It's all inside of you. It's not because of what's happening around you. The more you consume the word, the more you are going to react differently. The more you are going to react like Jesus, the more you are going to think and refer back to the word based on situations of your life.
And that is for me-- I'm not new to the church. I mean, my dad is a pastor, but I've been lost. You can't be found unless you are lost. You can't. Now realizing how I'm coming back to what I know so well is what, what I was doing before was wrong or I was sStevenping. I would root for the team. But that was it. I was asStevenp inside. I didn't consume the word, even though I knew the word. I knew all the Jesus stories, and I knew the word, and I knew what was happening, but I didn't really consume it. I didn't let it affect me like I should. I didn't let it affect me like I let music affect me, like I let movies and TV shows affect me.
There is a verse here. Galatians 5: 19 through 21. This verse stuck out to me. The first sentence says it is obvious, so I highlighted that word. It says, it is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time. Obvious. And yet we do it; it's obvious, but we do it. If you have cotton candy in front of you or an apple in front of you, it's obvious which choice is better for you, but it's a Sunday. Cotton candy looks great. I'll choose that. And it's the same thing, everything in front of us. And like I said, so easier before now than ever. The movies, the tv, the phone, it's all right in front of us and it's all part of our culture.
Reading the word and getting and walking closer with Jesus isn't going to change anything that's in front of you. It's all going to stay the same. And it probably is going to get worse, but it's not going to affect you the way it was. And what comes out of you when you get put under intense pressure and intense heat moments in your life, what comes out of you will be what's inside you. What's inside you will be the word. So, yeah, that's what I got for now.
Pastor Jeff: Thank you. I like that. The more I consume, the more I conform. We were talking about that the other night and I said, well, that's Romans 12:1, isn't it? Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And then in Ephesians, it talks about the Lord who washes us with the water of the word. And so it turns out we are what we eat. Where this ties together in the gospels is John chapter six. Let's go to verse 35 of John chapter six in the New Living Translation.
Cheryl: Jesus replied, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
Pastor Jeff: Isn't that amazing? What a powerful statement. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. I would suggest that this isn't a one time in history thing. I think, um, when we come to Jesus, there is a powerful transformation that takes place because of who Jesus is. We've all experienced what happens when you open your heart to Jesus, something very powerful and supernatural happens inside of you. The world is a different place. Everything becomes different because you become different because you are born again. Something brand new has happened inside of you. Very, very powerful.
But most of us here have also experienced after that initial burst of supernatural experience with God over a period of, in many cases, a fairly short time, it all just kinda tones down. And then all that fullness and amazingness that we felt becomes dissatisfaction. Anybody ever experienced that? Probably because we need to come again. It's the same thing. After you have a really great dinner and you are just completely satisfied, sometimes you think you never need to eat again, right? Until you wake up the next morning.
How is it that Jesus can say you'll never be hungry again? It's not a one-time coming, is it? It's every time you come to him, he satisfies you. But we gotta keep coming to him every time we believe in him for the things we need. The thirst is quenched. But you see as the same way we talked about being light and salt, how the world needs flavor. And if the church doesn't, the church isn't salty, the world's going to go someplace else to get that flavor. It's the same thing with our appetites. Jesus satisfies all of our deepest inner needs. But if we are not receiving from him, if we are not believing in him, then that hunger, as it is in the case of people who've never met Jesus, takes us to other places to satisfy it.
Our culture, Steven just shared, is very happy to provide all kinds of food that isn't good for us to eat. Some of you might remember quite a few years ago now, there was a documentary that cannot, what was it called Food Nation.
Steven: Supersize Me.
Pastor Jeff: Supersize Me. How many of you saw the documentary Supersize Me? What happened to that guy after all he ate was McDonald's for 30 days. His doctor said, listen buddy, if you want to keep on living-- His vitals were all a mess. His blood pressure was up; his blood sugar was up. Everything was a mess.
Cheryl: It feels so good when you are taking in that McDonald's, doesn't it? When you want it, you go get; you take it in.
Pastor Jeff: Until 10 minutes later. Yeah.
Cheryl: You are like, nah, I'm good now. You know, until the next time.
You are going for something that's really like, kind of fake or something that's really true.
Pastor Jeff: Rosina, let's put up Isaiah 55 verse 1. It's verses one through three. This is in the New Living Translation. You want to read that one, Cheryl? That's on page three.
Cheryl: John 6?
Pastor Jeff: John 55.
Cheryl: 55?
Pastor Jeff: Or Isaiah 55, one through three.
Cheryl: Do I have the same paper? Yeah, I do. Okay. Is anyone thirsty? Come and drink even if you have no money, come and take your choice of wine or milk. It's all free. Why spend your money on food that does not give you strength? Why pay for food that does you no good? Listen to me and you'll eat what is good. You'll enjoy the finest food. Come to me with your ears wide open. Listen and you will find life.
Pastor Jeff: There is the same exhortation that we've been hearing to come to him, receive his word. Listen to the things that he has to say to you because in the things that He speaks to us both in the word, through the word, and as he speaks to our hearts, as we commune with him in worship, as we spend time with him in prayer, all of the ways that we spend time with Jesus, he's speaking to us. And the things that we receive from him give us life. They satisfy our hunger. They satisfy our thirst. They bring us fullness. If we don't have fullness from Jesus, we'll go looking for it elsewhere.
Here's the thing that really gets to me, is that we can be really passionately in love with Jesus. And we can be really in communion with Jesus. Steve, we talked about this Friday night. We can be in the Word and it's really popping for us. And all of this happens. And then somehow over time, we find, somehow, over time, we find ourselves drifting into the motions of our Christian religion and losing our connection with the person who loves us. You all understand that, right? You've all experienced that. We end up doing church. We might even be reading the word some. We practice all the same things, especially when we are with our church friends. We put on the same face and it, but it becomes our religious practices rather than partaking of the Lord.
Steven: Yeah. It becomes a routine.
Pastor Jeff: It becomes a routine. And we end up being Christians who are hungry and thirsty and we are not being satisfied because we somehow lose the connection. We are still doing the practice, but we are not in the connection. And then we end up looking at other sources to satisfy our needs, our hungers, our thirsts. We find ourselves angry or frustrated or fearful or discouraged. Jesus' intention is to take care of all of that stuff. As Steven said, it doesn't change the outside pressures. It changes the inner man. It changes our response to those things.
Cheryl: There is a building up when we choose the right thing. And there is a tearing down when we choose the wrong thing. Why wouldn't we want to be building?
Pastor Jeff: You've heard it since you were a kid. If you eat your vegetables, you will build up your body. What's really cool about vegetables is if you actually start eating them, you start to love them.
Cheryl: And you start to look different.
Pastor Jeff: If you show up sugar and drink alcohol all the time, guess what?
Cheryl: It shows up
Pastor Jeff: You look like it and you feel like it. Not that I have anything against sugar or alcohol in moderation. But you need to understand what your diet consists of. What's our spiritual diet consist of? Cheryl had a really interesting take on this. When we were talking, you talked about the fear of the Lord. Do you remember that or should I go on? That's on page one, number two in blue.
Cheryl: Oh, that was Friday night. . I dunno if I can remember that. The fear of the Lord.
Pastor Jeff: Proverbs 22: 4, through humility and the fear of the Lord. Putting her on the spot here.
Cheryl: It will come to me. The fear of the Lord is a good thing. No, some people think that fearing is all around bad, but some people don't know that when you fear the Lord, it's a place you step into that helps you in your walk. Okay? The fear of the Lord is a great thing, and it's because he's the one that you are living for honoring. He is in you. He is your house and you are walking with him.
Pastor Jeff: You are his house actually.
Cheryl: You are his house. But he's living in my heart, like it's very important that when I live my life, I don't offend him with this house that he's living in. Is that what I said? It's different every day.
Pastor Jeff: I had a profound experience. My life was revolutionized, during a missions trip in Ukraine back in the late 1990s. I don't have time to tell you the whole story, but in essence, the father gave me a dream that woke me up. Jesus walked into my bedroom that morning, not physically, but very profoundly. I was consumed, I was completely overwhelmed with his presence in a way I had never been in my entire life.
Some of you have experienced this, but it's quite a profound thing to walk in the glory of God in this bubble of his glory wherever you go. It's hard to even express how amazing it is, but that's where I was. I was in this bubble of the glory of, of the Holy Spirit of the Lord and his presence was palpable.
I was in my room, and then I just had this thought that maybe I'll just go out and I'll walk through the community. This is in a city in Ukraine called Cvo Rogue. I found myself in a marketplace, kind of like what we would describe as a flea market. All these tents and stuff were up. I was interceding and, uh, praying for the nation and just walking in this profound grace and mercy of the Lord and this intercessory heart for the people that were all around me, and just seeing what God's heart was and seeing what he wanted to do in this nation, and walking through and just looking at the wares, and being there.
And yet I was kind of not there because I was in a place with the father that was very special at that time. I came upon a place that they sold music, and so they had a rack out front, and they had all kinds of cassette tapes. I was kinda looking over the cassette tapes for us bands and stuff. And then as I got down, I was looking through the cassette tapes, and there is a cassette tape with a naked lady on the front. And I thought, well, that's a strange cover for a music cassette, you know? I looked down and then there is another one. And I looked, and then there is another one. And I lingered over that naked woman a little too long.
The presence of the Holy Spirit lifted just like that. All of a sudden I was back on planet Earth drab, dark planet earth without that glory that had surrounded me. It was night and day. It was shocking to realize that my whole life, my whole Christian life, I had never known the difference between being in his presence and not being in his presence. I was so grieved. I said, oh, Jesus, I'm so sorry. Please forgive me. And wash me with the blood. And as soon as I repented and prayed that prayer, the glory came back and I was back in the bubble just like that glory.
It changed my life forever because I realized there was a difference between being in his presence and not being in his presence. And the simple things that we consume through the course of the day, when we don't, when we are not aware that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit, we make choices to consume things. In our normal everyday life here on planet Earth, we don't typically experience how profoundly that affects us.
But the fear of the Lord is that awareness that he's with us. And we want to be careful what our thoughts are and where our eyes are settling and what we are taking in. Because we don't want, as Cheryl said, we don't want to offend him. We want Jesus to be with us. We want to commune with him. Let's see here. Rosina, let's go to John 6: 53. Let's do that section if you would.
Cheryl: So Jesus said again, I tell you the truth, unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you cannot have eternal life within you. But anyone who eats my flesh and drinks, my blood has eternal life, and I will raise that person at the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Anyone who eats my flesh and drinks, my blood remains in me and I in him. I live because of the living Father who sent me in the same way. Anyone who feeds on me will live because of me.
Pastor Jeff: There is a pretty provocative statement. He lost a lot of disciples over that one. All the Jews who thought he was crazy left thinking he really was crazy. And all the Jews who thought he might be the Messiah left thinking, I guess I was wrong. And then it tells us, after everybody left him, he looked at the 12 disciples he had called. And he said, "Are you going to leave me too?" And that's when Peter said, "Well, Lord, where are we going to go? You are the only one that has the words of eternal life."
I think we can all be comforted by the fact that Jesus isn't talking about cannibalism here. In fact, he actually gave us a practice when he instituted the last Supper with the disciples. And he said, as often as you drink this wine and eat this bread, remember me because his blood purchased our redemption and washes away our sins. And the breaking of his body results in the restoration of our bodies and our lives.
When we remember what Jesus did for us through his flesh and through his blood, it has everything to do with acknowledging and understanding and embracing the redemption that he brings. But he's still talking about feeding on him. Another word might be partaking of him. He's calling us to partake of him.
Cheryl: You are what you eat.
Pastor Jeff: You are what you eat. It's really interesting here. He says, I live because of the living Father who sent me in the same way. Anyone who feeds on me will live because of me. And you see these things. Jesus stayed up all night and he prayed. Jesus sent his disciples away in the boat, and he went up into the hills and prayed. Jesus was always looking for opportunities to be alone with his father. He didn't do that out of obligation. He did it out of necessity.
He lived because of the Father. The Father was his life. And so he needed to be with the Father because the Father was his life. And the more time he spent with the Father, the more he was able to be who he was called to be. It's no different than we are. He said, "In the same way that I live because of the Father, you will live because of me, but you have to feed on me." And so you see your prayer life or your devotional life, those are not obligatory if you are doing those things because you should. They are not going to produce what you want.
Do them. But the point is, you don't do them because you should. You do them because you need to, because you are hungry for him. Because you need him to satisfy those inner longings of your heart. And those longings are satisfied when Jesus is present in our lives. You don't have to walk around in the bubble of his glory. That was a pretty cool experience. But that's not my normal everyday experience. But I have a choice to walk in communion with him or not in communion with him. I have a choice to experience his intimate love or to be too busy for his intimate love.
There are so many times I've say, Lord, I'm so sorry. I know you love me so much. And I've been so busy, I haven't been paying attention. It's so easy to fall into our busy pathways and all the things that we need to do and consume and miss out on partaking of the one who gave everything that he was for us. When we partake of him is when we find ourselves completely satisfied. That's where our satisfaction in life comes. That's where the fullness and the meaning, the destiny, the purpose, it all comes when we are in communion with our lover, Jesus, with our Lord, Jesus, with our redeemer, Jesus. He's the one who does it.
Steven: It's a relationship, not a ritual.
Pastor Jeff: Yeah. It is easy to become a ritual.
Steven: So easy. Yeah.
Pastor Jeff: It's one of the reasons we need each other. Lots of times, I mean, at least when we are together and worshiping, sometimes there is just this extraordinary experience we have together that helps to shake us out of the-- sometimes if you gotta come every Sunday just to get shaken out of the doldrums, come please. But as Steve said, we don't want just Sunday to be the only day we are partaking of Jesus. We want it to stir us, to partake of him more. I think we can finish with this next verse. We want to go to Psalm 23. We actually got this from somebody else, but it's pretty cool thought.
Cheryl: You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
Pastor Jeff: Isn't that interesting? You prepare a table, you prepare a meal, you prepare a banquet for me in the presence of my enemies. That's for us to partake of him. What's on that table? What's on that table? Well, there is faith on that table. There is hope on that table. There is love on that table. Jesus is on that table, his flesh and his blood, him saying, "feed on me". And where does he set that table for us? In the presence of our enemies?
Cheryl and I were talking about this. Here's what I picture: I always picture a king like Hezeki, Jehosaphat. They have the two great stories about being delivered from these huge armies that there was no way that they could possibly defend themselves against. They cried out to the Lord, and the Lord delivered them. And I picture these hoards of Assyrians on their horses or their camels or whatever they are riding at the time with their armor and their weapons.
You know, like when you watch those kinds of movies like Braveheart and you have this massive army going full tilt on their horses and their spears and their swords running into this whole group of guys with their shields and their spears ready to stop them. You've all seen that scene, right? I picture that scene of the enemy armies just running full tilt at the armies of Israel. And there is Jehosaphat and all of his generals and all of his leaders sitting at a table, at a banquet table right in front of all of their troops, enjoying a wonderful dinner as the enemy hoards are bearing down on them.
The dinner table is set as the enemy is trying to dismantle you, destroy you, cause you to fear, cause you to panic, cause you great alarm, try to steal your fortune, try to steal your family, try to steal your heart. That's what the enemy wants to do. That's what the enemy comes to do, is to kill and to steal and destroy. And in the very moment of his attack, Jesus sets a table before us and he says, "eat of me". And so we are left with a great opportunity. We can focus on the enemy or we can focus on the food.
We tend to focus on the enemy. It's easy. I mean, just even today, Stephen was talking about culture, and it's going to get worse. You watch a little bit of the news and you hear about, oh man, Minnesota, now we've legalized all abortion all the way up to the time of birth and this and that. It's going to go worse, and it's going to get worse. And now we've legalized this, we've legalized that. Now, we are taxing this and we are taxing that. Now, you can't work in a hospital unless you get a vaccination and on and on and on and on and on.
We see things crumbling around us. And you know what? If you watch enough of that news or if you watch enough of the right-wing news, that actually makes it worse. I could never figure out why people watch Fox News, because you just leave more depressed. But they are the only ones that tell us what's really happening. Well, aren't you glad you know what's really happening? Doesn't that make you feel great? And so what we do is we live in a sense of panic, discouragement, despondency over the way the world is going. Why? Because we are watching the enemy hoards riding down on us. But Jesus, put a table there.
If you really think that you are going to win this battle by taking up your sword and your shield and whacking at them, you got it all wrong. The way you win this battle is you enjoy the banquet. That song, we raise a hallelujah in the presence of our enemies. Isn't that the song that was written by a Bethel worship leader? Yes. There was a pastor in the church whose young child was dying, and the whole church was praying for this child. And it was like, the word got out like this looks like it's her last night, you know? And this worship leader's alone in his room. He didn't even know how to pray, and he picks up his guitar and he starts to play that song.
That's where the song came from. He started to sing that song in the face of a little girl that they were all praying for, that they all loved, was going to die. When we focus on the banquet, the enemy has no victory when we are participating with Jesus. All of the things that the devil meant for harm, the Lord uses to release you into your destiny. And Pastor Brian talked about that last week with Joseph, right? The Lord shows Joseph that he's going to be great . And what follows that dream is he ends up a slave, he ends up in prison, right?
All of those things let him into the full destiny that God had for him. And when you are in prison, you have a choice. You can spend your time looking at your change. You can spend your time worshiping the Lord. And when we partake of Jesus, we win the war. That's how we win the war.
This theme that you brought to us, Steve, it's all through the scriptures in different ways, right? Jesus said, "I am the vine and you are the branches. He who remains in me will bear much fruit. "We just found out Steven has a stream and he has a brand that he just developed and what's it called?
Steven: The vine?
Pastor Jeff: Kiwi On the Vine?
Steven: Yeah.
Pastor Jeff: He has always been kiwi on his streams. But now he's kiwi on the vine.
Steven: Yeah. They don't know that yet.
Pastor Jeff: Oh, sorry.
Steven: They don't know what it corresponds to. They will though. They will.
Pastor Jeff: Moses said it when he delivered all of the commandments to the people of Israel. He said, "I set before you life and I set before you death. Now choose." It's your choice, but how you choose will affect your life. At least what I found is that when I choose Jesus, when I choose to hook up to Jesus, when I choose to partake of him, when I incline my ears to hear what he's saying, he who has ears to hear, my life is blessed and my destiny is fulfilled. And the enemy is a distraction. That's how we want to live. Amen. You guys got anything else?
Steven: No. It was great.
Pastor Jeff: Let's all stand together. Father, you are always speaking. We want to be listening. You set a table for us with spiritual delicacies, understandings, refreshment, callings, dreams, hopes, destiny. And so we just reach for you and we purpose, Lord, to reach for you. And we ask you Holy Spirit, to help us do that every day because it seems like every day we find so many reasons not to, but we just repent, Lord, of letting our appetites take us places that we don't belong.
We repent of trying to satisfy our hungers and our thirsting with things that end up being death. And we just confess, Lord, that we need you. As much as you needed the Father, we need you. And we purpose to live in communion with you, to our take of your love and your words and your very life. We open our hearts, Holy Spirit. Just come and fill us. Be present. Help us to be present. Thank you. Amen. Pastor Brian.
Pastor Brian: Thank you, Steven, Jeff, Cheryl. Proud of you guys. Thank you. Could you allow me just a minute to do an epilogue onto your sermon. The Passion Translation, Psalm 23, verse 5, which you read, really says it just like you said, pastor Jeff, you become my delicious feast even when my enemies dare to fight. You become my delicious feast, even when my enemies dare to fight. So why should I ever fear the future? Wow.
Why should we ever fear tomorrow when Jesus is what we can run into, when Jesus offers himself to us in his fullness? I always like to say this phrase, Jesus knows how to care for what belongs to him. He knows how to take care of what or who belongs to him. And so let's run to Jesus today, and let's let our nourishment come from him, not our culture, not the things around us, certainly not the things we fear. Let us run into Jesus. Let's raise our hands together.
And now, may the Lord bless you and may the Lord keep you. And 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 Jesus be what gives you your nourishment. This, we pray in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, amen. Amen.
God bless you. Have a wonderful, wonderful day. Stick around and visit. Keep playing, Adrian. It's wonderful. God bless you. We will have communion being served by Sean and Sherry over here, and we have people to pray for you at the altar. If you would like prayer, please come over and have communion.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 9-17-23. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.