Pastors Brian and Jacque Lother
Pastor Jacque: Beautiful. Those guitars. Wow. Great guitars. Yes. Hi everybody. So good to see everyone on this first Sunday of the new year. We are going to start out great by having lunch together. Ken has a great lunch planned, so please stay with us and enjoy one another. I was thinking today how wonderful it is to come together and enjoy the community that we have. Every time you sit with somebody and take a few moments and chat, you get to know them better. You learn more about each other. We get closer when we're in proximity. So please consider staying, and I know you'll love the food. Kids, you can be dismissed to Sunday school, to your classes, to your fun. Be dismissed to fun. Don't you love hearing those little feet run? Yes.
Pastor Brian: That's not to say we're not going to have some fun.
Pastor Jacque: Oh, you are right. You are always fun.
Pastor Brian: That's good.
Pastor Jacque: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We are. They are fun. Now we'll have our fine. I just want to encourage everybody now to keep getting your Tuesday email and reading about it.
Pastor Brian: It keeps us up to date.
Pastor Jacque: Yep. Keeps you up to date. We are not going to say as many announcements. Save a little time and just read it or go to our website.
Pastor Brian: Are you done already? Wow. You are implementing the new and the new year.
Pastor Jacque: And I suggested it.
Pastor Brian: And you suggested it.
Pastor Jacque: Yes. We can save a few moments here and there.
Pastor Brian: Yes. Happy New Year, everybody. God bless you. Happy New Year. All of you who are watching online, God bless you. Thank you for being a part of this faith community. Ever since Covid, things have changed. Some people come to church, some people watch online and they connect in other ways with us. I'm just thankful that we have ways of staying connected. Aren't you glad for that? I know that this device can cause a lot of problems, but only when you use it the wrong way. But this device can be a wonderful blessing when it's used the right way.
That's really what the word abuse means. Abuse is the wrong use of something, drug abuse. But I tell you what, when you are coming out of a major surgery, you are glad to have some morphine. Not all drugs are bad. Just the wrong use of drugs is bad. Sex isn't bad, as long as it's done in the parameters and confines of marriage. But outside of marriage, it becomes abuse. We are thankful today for all of the gifts that God has given us. But let's not abuse them. Let's use them the right way. And there's where we will find fulfillment. I want to drill down a little deeper this year. Many of you know that a number of years ago, Jacque and I were walking on the beach. I was walking on the beach with my baby.
Pastor Jacque: That's a joke, but we won't tell it.
Pastor Brian: That's an inside joke, but we won't tell you about that. If you want to know about that phrase, just come and talk to me about it later. I had this real revelation because when we would go to Mexico every January and I'd kind of use it as a time to recalibrate and kind of get a vision for the following year. It was a number of years ago that I was walking along the beach and the Lord really clearly spoke to me and said, "Really learn the words in red." That's all he said to me: Learn the words in red.The words in red are, and the words in red, of course, are the things that Jesus said and did. That was the beginning of an incredible journey for me, where hopefully I've been able to lead this church in a positive way that is becoming a greater reflection of the person of Jesus.
Many of you probably don't realize that there's about 35,000 Protestant denominations. Then you have on the other side of the fence, in a sense, the millions of people who are a part of the Catholic faith. All of these denominations and people have one person as a central figure. His name is Jesus. You think we could get along better. I think the reason we don't, and the world has used that against us and used it as an excuse to not actually want to commit their lives to our savior because we have not really modeled what it means to love one another. As I have loved you in the words of Jesus.
I think it's safe to say that the last words that someone speaks can often be thought of as the most important words that a person may have spoken. That's not always the case, but if you are on your deathbed, probably the last thing on your mind is watching a Mickey Mouse cartoon. I think Mickey Mouse is a nice character, but that's not what is usually on people's minds when they are lying on their deathbed. And often, what they say is some of the most important revelations of that person.
When it comes to the words of Jesus, I actually have a tendency to give all of his words pretty much equal value. But there is a passage that he spoke near the end of his life. These weren't the very last words he spoke. The last words he spoke was, "it is completed" on the cross. But this was really near the very end of his life. I think this portion of scripture can come under the "let me leave you with this" category.
If you were in a discussion with somebody and they said to you, now let, let me just leave you with this. What do you think you are probably going to remember the most? What he left you with. That last aspect of his conversation. We see this in Matthew 28:18- 20. This is one of those "let me leave you with this" conversations that Jesus had.
Pastor Jacque: Then Jesus came close to them and said--
Pastor Brian: I can just kind of picture this now. Even though they were like in a room, I kind of picture Jesus doing this, kinda looking around and saying, come here. And he came close to them. I have something I want to leave with you. And this is what he says:
Pastor Jacque: All authority of the universe has been given to me. Now, wherever you go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to faithfully follow all that I have commanded you, and never forget that I am with you every day, even to the completion of this age.
Pastor Brian: This portion of scripture has been I think incorrectly used by the church. It has been called the Great Commission to go into all the world and preach the gospel. We've heard that for decades, maybe centuries. But that's really not what Jesus is saying here. Jesus is not giving us or you a commission to go somewhere. He's giving us a commission to be something, not to go somewhere. Basically, he's saying this: when he came, he had already been given all the authority of the universe. When he came to this earth, all authority of the universe has been given to me.
I think we can safely assume that that was given to him by his father in heaven. And we talked a little bit, a few messages ago about the trinity and the whole nature of the Godhead and how the godhead, that's such an impersonal word to me, works. But that's what we do as humans. We put all these definitions to describe the eternal, because to be frankly honest with you, our finite minds just can't comprehend it very well. So we put all these human terms on God, I wonder if he gets bothered by that.
But at the end of the day, he's saying, “All authority has been given to me. in the whole universe has been given to me.” And the implication here is he's telling us now to do something that he's been doing and that we can actually do this in his name. What is he conveying to us? He's conveying to us that same authority that he has, but it's not an authority or commissioning to go somewhere. It's a commissioning to be something as we are going. This really should read more this way as you are going throughout the world, because very few people are born and live and die in one spot. Do they?
Are you in the same spot you were born with today? None of us are. None of us were born here. This building wasn't built when most of us were born. This commission is about being something as we are going. It's not so much a commission to go and do something. As we are going, wherever we go, we are to make disciples. The word disciple is very much what I call a biblical or spiritual term. I have a tendency to try and take some of those terms and bring them into more as I'm an American, American language, so that the people who aren't spiritual aren't churched, can have a clue about what I'm talking about. Because how many know that you have to talk to the language of the people that are listening to you if you are going to communicate well?
What this word disciple actually simply means, and we'll get into this a little bit more, but it means to be an apprentice. It's an apprentice. We'll talk about that momentarily. But as we are going throughout the world, we're making these apprentices and baptizing these people. And then he says, "Don't forget to faithfully follow all I've commanded you to do." He doesn't say, don't forget to believe all the things I've taught you.
He says, "Go and do the things I've taught you." He doesn't put a big emphasis on agreement appear in doctrine, in policy and all that. He puts a big emphasis on us getting along with each other, being kind to one another, loving one another, serving one another. And so then he finishes with, "And never forget that I'm with you every day." Don't you find it just a little bit ironic that Jesus tells his disciples that I'm with you every day just before he leaves? Don't you find that a little ironic? He's on his way out of this earth and he says, "I'm never going to leave you."
That wasn't computing with the disciples, with his apprentices, with his followers. But of course, this doesn't mean he was going to be in person as he was. It means that he was going to be present in a different way and manner that he had been present up to this point in time. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment.
One of the things that Jesus always zeroed in on was the motivation of people, the people, the motives of people's hearts, didn't he? He talked about that. He talks about "don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing." He didn't mean that we're supposed to hide things from each other. What he meant by that is when you are given an offering, don't tell everybody how much you are giving and who you are giving it to. Don't let those kinds of things happen. Don't pray to be seen by men. The only time you pray, don't just pray publicly to be thought of as spiritual.
He goes on to say that if you look after a woman to lust, you've already committed adultery with her. That has to do with the motives of the heart, doesn't it? It has nothing to do with the physical act. Jesus is always zeroing in on the heart and the motives of things. He said when we fast, how are we supposed to do that? Tell everybody, "I'm on a fast. I'm fasting this week." No, we're supposed to, supposed to do it quietly and then take extra showers, so we don't look too disheveled. We are supposed to do these things that draw us closer to the Lord, not in such a way to bring attention to ourselves, but in a way that would give true reflection on who Jesus is.
One thing that jumps out to me from this portion of scripture is the only motivation that I can find in this scripture to do what Jesus is asking us to do, to go and make apprentices, to go and make disciples wherever we go around the world, the only motivation that I can see in this is Jesus himself. No other motivation, no other reason. He is the motivation that we are to do this for. The reason for it is because all authority is his. Jesus should be our motivation for what I would call the great commission, do it to honor him. I remember, Love and Respect, Dr. Eggerich and his wife and the [inaudible 1:03:01] were part of his church, some years back. Wonderful, wonderful, probably the best marriage encounter type of teaching that I've ever personally come across. And there have been a lot of good ones; don't get me wrong. But this one really stands out called Love and Respect.
One of the things that he says in this is: when you are having a disagreement with your spouse, imagine Jesus standing behind your spouse saying to you, love her for me. Love her for my sake. Or if you are a woman, him standing behind your snarly husband and saying, respect him for me, for my sake. Forgive him for my sake. When Jesus becomes the motivation for what we do, what starts to strip off of us" Our own selfishness, doesn't it? Our own selfishness. Jesus should be our motivation for this great commission. Jesus should be the motivation for really all that we do.
Unfortunately, there's always that caveat. Unfortunately, we live in a world and much of that world has affected the thinking of the church. While we live in a world that's basically infiltrated with what's called secular humanism, and unfortunately, much of the ideological ideas of secular humanism has found its way into the church and how we operate and how we do ministry. Let me give you a quick definition. This is like my definition. You may not see this in a dictionary, but this is how I really define secular humanism. That the ultimate end, that humanity has as a goal-- the ultimate end that humanity has as a goal is the happiness of man. Whatever makes man happy.
On the surface, that sounds like not such a bad thing. I mean, isn't it great for everybody to be happy? Let's all just be happy. The problem is when what makes you happy makes me unhappy. Now we have conflicts, don't we? You like something I have; you want it; you take it. That might make you happy, but that doesn't make me happy. And eventually, secular humanism, which by the way, five or six decades ago, our Supreme Court defined it as a religion, by the way. I think it was in the sixties, our Supreme Court defined secular humanism as a religion, where the end of all being is just whatever makes man happy.
This whole theology, or I'm sorry, philosophy has found its way into the church so that our gospel presentation now goes something like this. You don't want to die and go to hell, do you? So why not accept Jesus and go to heaven when you die? On the surface, that sounds like a pretty good thing, but the problem is what is at the root of our problems is our selfish hearts, our greedy, selfish self-centered ways. When I just pray a prayer to have my sins forgiven so that I can go to heaven when I die, I've not really done anything to change my selfish heart.
The gospel isn't so much running away from something as it is running to a person, Jesus Christ. That's what the gospel is about. When we come to Jesus, what happens to all of our selfishness? What happens to all of our greed? What happens to all of that neocentricness that we've been so accustomed to living with?
Pastor Jacque: We are transformed.
Pastor Brian: We become transformed.
Pastor Jacque: I think somebody said that this morning.
Pastor Brian: Pastor Robert. The problem with secular humanism as a motivation in the gospel is that the real problem never gets solved. The solving of, how can I no longer live for myself supremely and try to start living for something that's more important and better and more valuable than me? When we read the scriptures, we learn something about Jesus, many things about Jesus. But one of the things we learned about Jesus is-- and I don't mean to be disrespectful when I say this, but he hogs all the authority for himself. He does, doesn't he? Including the scriptures.
Remember when he said, "you've heard it said," well, where did they hear it said" In the scriptures. "But I say to you, so you've heard it said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." Where did that come from?
Pastor Jacque: The Jewish law.
Pastor Brian: Leviticus?
Pastor Jacque: Yeah, the Jewish law.
Pastor Brian: The Jewish law in Leviticus. Yeah. But he says, "but I say to you." What's Jesus actually doing? He's actually setting himself up above the written scriptures because he is God. He is God. Understand this. Sometimes we think-- and I thought about that when I first read that years ago when Jesus said, "well, you've heard this said,'' And I thought that must've been just a Jewish tradition, you know, some man-made tradition. And then I went back and I--that's in the Bible and he's telling people not to live that way. I thought it was okay for me to poke another guy's eye out if he poked my eye out. If he knocked my tooth out, I can knock his tooth out.
And then Jesus is saying, "no, I'm telling you that if you want to be a follower of me, there's a different standard to live by, a different standard to live by" because he has all the authority. This actually makes sense seeing as authority is actually a relational concept, isn't it? You don't have authority over this cup, do you? I don't have authority over it even though it says Hope Community on here. I don't have an authority relationship with this cup. You can only have an authority relationship with another person, can't you?
You can't even, by the way, have an authority relationship with the document called the Constitution of the United States. It's just a piece of paper with things written on it. It takes people to enforce what's on that paper, doesn't it? It takes relationship for people to connect authority wise with one another. And if there's anything we can learn about this whole thing about Jesus and his authority, it's that he's a person and he is over all. He is over all.
Now, don't get me wrong, I can see the concern on some of your faces here. I love the Bible. I've been reading it very vociferously for over 50 years. I love the Bible. When I read the Bible, it's very much like me studying a treasure map when I read the Bible. But you know what the treasure is? It's Jesus. And if you read the treasure map and you don't find Jesus, you've not found the purpose for the map. You've not found the treasure.
Most treasure maps, when we envision them in our mind, there's an X on it somewhere. And then you got all these paths and trees and here's a cave and here's a valley, and X marks the spot and that's where the treasure is. The difference between that kind of treasure map and the Bible as a treasure map is there are thousands of places that you can find the treasure in the Bible. But unfortunately, we haven't done that. We've been really good at dividing into camps on what verses we agree on.
Some are really good on free will. Others land in election, predestination. Others land on absolute foreknowledge. Others land on “God can only know the things that are knowable. But future free will acts aren't knowable.” Boy, there's a can of worms. Some people land on “man is born sinful.” Other people land on “man is born good.” Other people land on “man is born somewhere in between.”
Pastor Jacque: And don't even go to Revelation.
Pastor Brian: Yeah, don't even go to the book of Revelation. Some people land on immersion for baptism. Others land on infant baptism and sprinkling. Others land on baptism is an expression of what has already transpired in our lives. Others say it's for the remission of our sins. And now we have lost sight of the treasure, who is Jesus? Jacque and I were talking about this last night, and she said, "Why are you like so passionate about this?" And I reminded her of a place we were at 45 years ago where, I'm sad to say this, but I could go into any group and divide them within an hour. I could create division among any group in less than an hour.
I had hot topics of debate all the time. Apologetics was something that was right up my alley. Debating all the time, arguing over what this verse means, what that verse means. And as I look back, there was a trail of broken bodies behind me. But I was speaking the truth, of course, as I saw it.
Pastor Jacque: You and lots of other people. You had become part of a crowd of Christians who were really intellectuals. And it was all about thinking and knowing.
Pastor Brian: Something that really fed my pride really well. I remember Jacque saying, "Aren't we ever going to talk about Jesus anymore?" And I said to her last night, "you know, you were the only one that really got it. You were the only one that really got it." All of us other intellectual people, guys with PhDs and master's degrees and all of this intellectual accomplishment, we were as lost as lost.
Jesus did not tell his disciples that all authority was vested in the books that they would write about him. He didn't say that. He said, "all authority is vested in me," meaning himself. As a matter of fact, when Paul wrote that all scriptures given by inspiration of God, he wasn't referring to one of the books of the New Testament, not one. He was referring to the Old Testament. And then when Jesus talks to the men on the road to Emmaus after the resurrection, he says this, Luke 24:27.
Pastor Jacque: And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he, Jesus carefully unveiled to them the revelation of himself throughout the scriptures.
Pastor Brian: I just wonder how amazed they must have been that day when Jesus himself took those guys and started to quote from the genesis and from the law and the prophets and all of these books from the Old Testament. And he said, this is me. See that there, that's me. See this there, that's me. That's referring to me. And they were blind by it. They didn't understand it. They didn't understand it.
A map is always the best guide on how to get somewhere. How many know that? Most guys don't know that, but ladies, ladies know that. We don't want directions. But a map is the best guide on getting somewhere. Now, we don't carry maps in our cars anymore. I remember traveling years ago with Jacque, and we'd have a map. What do they call it? An atlas or something, right? Each had a map of each state because we were traveling, crossing across the country. We would go to this state and I'd say, "Where are we at?" So she'd find on a map. "How far is it to here?" And then she would get the map out and she'd go, "Okay." She would get her fingers out and measure like this.
Pastor Jacque: It's this far.
Pastor Brian: It's this far. But a map is the best way to help us get to where we need to go. But once we get to where we're going, how many know that there's going to be somebody running the place? How do I get to the Mall of America? How do I get to US Bank Stadium? How do I get to this restaurant? Right now, we go, "Hey Siri." She'll pop up. There she is. Yep. How do I get here? I will say, "Siri, what's the address of this location?" She'll find it for me. "Can you give me directions to get there? " And she'll give me a map to follow. But once I get there, somebody is in charge when I get there.
When we read the Bible, we have to realize that Jesus is actually at the center of it all. Jesus is at the center of it all. There may be thousands of clues on the map, but they all lead to one place. Jesus leads to Jesus. I want to back up and go over a couple other verses. Let's do 28:19 again.
Pastor Jacque: Now wherever you go, make disciples of all nations.
Pastor Brian: He's really saying for us to make apprentices. An apprentice is someone who is learning where?
Pastor Jacque: On the job.
Pastor Brian: On the job. Quit waiting until you become an expert. Just start doing the work. Just start doing it. You are going to make mistakes. Keep doing it anyways. But the one mistake you can afford to make is not loving. That's the one mistake we can't afford to make: to not love like Jesus loves. And he says to teach them to obey everything that I've commanded you. If you were an apprentice as an electrician, you are learning to become an electrician or let's say like, like Ted, Jacque's dad hired me to work in his concrete company. I was a piano player. He was nuts.
Pastor Jacque: He was being nice.
Pastor Brian: He was being more than nice.
Pastor Jacque: He was helping.
Pastor Brian: He was helping. So I showed up with my boots and my whatever. Well, they didn't let me stand on the excavation site and just stand there and watch them all day. Did they?
Pastor Jacque: To learn, like learning that.
Pastor Brian: To learn, just watching. No. Move this wheelbarrow full of concrete from here to there. I started with the grunt work. And eventually I worked my way into leveling the concrete and then finishing the concrete, and then setting up the forms and then surveying so that you get the height of the wall just to the right place. But you know how I learned it? On the job. I didn't go to a school, take four years of learning what pouring concrete is like, otherwise I probably wouldn't have done it. And that's what making disciples is like. We are just making people to become followers of Jesus. I know that we all have an uneasy relationship with blind obedience, but let me say this. When someone who is pure love, who knows me better than I know myself, gives me an instruction, I should be really eager to obey it.
Pastor Jacque: Even though we don't understand it.
Pastor Brian: Even when we don't understand it. But see, that's the problem. We have removed Jesus out of the equation. The early church who walked with Jesus, they did not think of Jesus as a historical figure in a book. They didn't think of him that way. In the same way that if I should die this week, you won't think of me as simply a historical figure that you might read in a magazine. You'll think of me as someone you know, and you knew.
The early church, that's how they thought of Jesus. This was somebody that they not only knew, but they could continue to know. They could continue to know. And so we see this verse here again, and beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he carefully unveiled to them the revelation of himself. So let me say this, and I ask you to please not be offended by what I'm about to say. True Jesus followers don't follow the Bible. We use the Bible to follow Jesus. And I'm even afraid to say that statement.
Pastor Jacque: We use the Bible to find Jesus and follow Him.
Pastor Brian: That's right. I'm not at all-- I wouldn't be demeaning of a book that I have read more times than any other book in the world. But what I am saying is that people have taken the book and they've used it to commit violence because they didn't see the treasure in it. I heard an article; this was on TV yesterday of a pastor who taught his congregation that polygamy was a biblical concept that God endorses.
We all know when we read the Old Testament that we see those kinds of relationships. David had multiple wives. Solomon had many, many wives. We don't understand, at all, the culture, but it's there in the Old Testament. And he used it to manipulate his congregation and his wife so that he could have multiple sex partners. What I'm saying is when he read the Bible, he didn't find Jesus. He found what he wanted to find. He found what was already in his heart. He used it as an excuse to do whatever he wanted to do. And we can do that with the Bible.
There have been African Americans in the South that have been hung and the people doing it have used the Bible to do it. And what I'm saying is this: Hopefully, this coming year we will be able to say that we believe in the holy, infallible, inerrant, authoritative word of God. And his name is Jesus.
Pastor Jacque: In the beginning was the word.
Pastor Brian: And that was talking about Jesus.
Pastor Jacque: And the word was God.
Pastor Brian: And the word was God.
Pastor Jacque: With God
Pastor Brian: and with God. And so my passion is not against the wonderful teachings of the scriptures. My passion is to find the treasure of those scriptures, which is Jesus. He's here to have a relationship with us. When you read the Bible from here on out, I would ask you, before you read any verse, whether it's a devotional verse or just a Bible passage reading that you are going to read, ask the Lord to do this. Jesus, will you show me you when I read this? Jesus, show yourself to me when I read this. Jesus, you are the treasure. Jesus, you are the treasure. I sang that song a few, maybe a couple months ago. Jesus is the treasure, the reason that I'm living. And he'll still be the reason when I die.
Pastor Jacque: The better that we know him. And the more we treasure him, the more we begin to look like him. The more that we are close to him, the more he rubs off on us.
Pastor Brian: How many realize that, why does a mother say to her son or daughter who are teenagers? I don't want you hanging out with those people. Why does a mother say that? Well, because you've already done it. That's good. That's a great confession. That's a great confession. But it's because that child will more than likely become like the people they are hanging out with. Won't they? They become like the people they hang out with.
We used to sing this little song in Sunday School as a child. Be careful little eyes, what you see. Careful little ears, what you hear. And the feet where you go. Why? Because what you look at, what you listen to, where you go basically determines the kind of person you become. And that's why when I see somebody taking the Bible and pointing a finger of judgment and calling people names and just being full of anger and vengeance, I say to myself, "They have not spent enough time with Jesus."
Pastor Jacque: That's why so much of the world has turned their back on Jesus.
Pastor Brian: Yes. Or the church.
Pastor Jacque: The church, yeah.
Pastor Brian: I actually feel like more people are open to Jesus than they are to the church. But they just haven't seen much of that. In 2024-- and this is kind of part A, I'm going to do a part B on this next week. In 2024, I just want our passion to know Jesus more. When we read his word, the scriptures, when we read what has been written about him, not just in the gospels or not just in the books of the New Testament and the epistles, but any book written about Jesus, let's ask Jesus to show us more deeply who he is and how I can have a more intimate relationship with this person who actually has said to us all authority has been given to him and he's actually wanting to give us that authority so that we can actually be Christ ambassadors.
That's a term that I've heard since I was a child. That's kind of like another religious term and I try to actually stay away from them. But if I think of myself as an ambassador, if I'm an ambassador from the United States to another country, I just can't go to that country and give them my own agenda, do I? I only have the authority to say what the president or the government has told me. I can say I can't strike a deal with this other government that hasn't already been approved by my government. because otherwise I'm a false ambassador. I can only represent what my government says I can do and say.
Why are we then representing Jesus in such a way that he says it's not how he is. We have not been proper ambassadors as a church historically. Historically, the church has killed more people than most nations. Historically, the church has created more martyrs for the cause of Christ. The church. We are killing the church. Today, we don't do it with gallows; we just do it with our tongues. We just do it with division. We start our own group. The Lord is almost begging us today. Would you please get it right? Because the time is short? The time is short.
We all sense it. I'm not one of these guys that puts a date on the calendar when Jesus is going to return. But all we have to do is open up our eyes and look around the whole world. The world is at our fingertips. I get news from around the world every day on my phone and every place around the world. There are people killing each other, dying. There are people with plagues. We can't help but notice that we're very close to the culmination of the age. Very close. And if that very close is still 50 years from now, that's still pretty darn close. Wouldn't you say?
And so let's get it right. The Lord is pleading with us. Don't represent him in such a way that's not him. When we make disciples, we're not trying to make disciples of Brian and Jacque, little piano players and singers and whatever. I want to make a disciple of Jesus, someone who loves unconditionally. And how will they learn that? By me loving unconditionally, by me giving them space to make mistakes, by me being there for them when they fail, by me being Jesus with skin on. And so when we read the scriptures-- and I encourage you all to read your Bibles every day, but don't read it to learn something. Read it to meet somebody. Read it to meet somebody. And that somebody is Jesus. Let's pray.
We want to drill a little deeper Lord into the Jesus way. We want to just be like you. Help me be like you. May the words in my mouth and the meditations in my heart be like yours, Jesus. When you were about to leave, and you came close to your disciples, you were wanting them to make miniature likenesses of you. That's what an apprentice or disciple was. All of these ragtag guys that you took from all sorts of walks of life, different political backgrounds, they didn't get along with each other, they bickered, they fought. But by the time you left, they had learned to love. They had learned to be like you. And there was still more to learn because they were human, and they were finite.
But their main focus was to love as you had loved. It wasn't to get everybody to agree on a doctrinal position. It was to become like you, Jesus. Matthew and Mark and Luke and John, they took painstakingly efforts to write so we would know what you were like. They were meticulous in getting all the facts correct about you. And then later on, the apostle Paul came along and others that wrote some of the writings were included in what we call the canon of scripture. Others weren't included, but people wrote to reflect who you were so that we who were coming after them would know what it was like to be a true follower of Jesus. It wasn't so that we could argue with one another and split and divide and have another group start and another doctrine emphasized.
Lord, the thing that I want in my life to make me stand out is to be like you. Not what I believe, not what instrument I can play, not what I know, but to be like you. And so I pray that this year, 2024, will be truly a year of transformation in our hearts and our minds, and yes, even in our behaviors on how we reflect you, how I will be an ambassador for Jesus. This I pray in your name and for your sake. Amen.
I always love to bless people. I write people a lot of emails, sometimes texts, and usually at the end of it, I'll just say blessings. When I write people at the city hall or our city council, I'll put on it "blessings." When it's a contractor, someone in the business world, I'll put "blessings." I don't think I've ever heard anybody said, "I was really offended that you wanted me to be blessed." And so I love giving a blessing at the end of our services. God instructed Aaron to do that over the congregation of Israel. It has been done for thousands of years.
And I just know that when we open up our hands and arms to the Lord, to the heavens and I pray a blessing over you, the good things of God will come. They will come because God is a God of blessing and he wants to bless. So let's just raise our hands and let's receive from the Lord.
And now, may the Lord bless you and may the Lord keep you. May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. And may the Lord turn his face towards you and give you his peace. And may you truly reflect the love and nature of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This, we pray in the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen.
God bless you. Thank you for being here today. Please stay for lunch, get to know each other a little bit better. Happy New Year. God bless you. Jim and Brenda will be here to serve communion for anybody who wants to have communion, and we will have people to pray for you as well. God bless you.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 1-7-24. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.