Lake Ridge Community Church Podcast

[00:00:02.930] Hi there. My name is Preston Pouteaux. Welcome to the Lake Ridge Community Church Podcast. This is where we share some of our messages from Sunday mornings. So we're glad you're here to listen. We'd love for you to join us in person. We meet on Sunday mornings at 10:30 a.m at Our Lady of Wisdom School here in Chestermere.[00:00:21.260] At our core, we're a community of.[00:00:23.190] People, so we gather on Sundays, but we also do a lot in the week. Together, we are people learning to follow Jesus and love our city. So to learn more, visit lakeridgecommunity.com. Hope to check in and visit with you soon. Take care, thanks for listening.[00:00:45.060] King Herod was the king. He was called Herod the Great. He built so many things. We got to visit all of his palaces. He had palaces here, there, everywhere. These palaces. We've seen more Herod palaces than right. Colin and Kayla are nodding. We've seen palaces. This guy was wanting to be a king that was never forgotten. He was the king, Herod the Great for a reason. He built so much stuff, he wanted to be remembered. But boy, was he overshadowed because his life coincided with Jesus's life. And Jesus kind of took the stage for history. We have a king that wanted to be at the center of the story, and then he got overshadowed. So here's a bit of the Christmas story. So Jesus was born in Bethlehem, in Judea, during the reign of King Herod, about the time some wise men from the eastern lands arrived in Jerusalem asking, where's the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star as it rose, and we have come to worship him. You can imagine that if you are Herod, this super king who wants to be the king known forever, whose reign wants to never end, and you hear somebody coming from faraway lands, from the east saying, hey, we've heard there's a new king to be born, you'd freak out a little bit.[00:01:59.290] And they did. It said this. Herod was deeply disturbed when he heard this, as was everyone in Jerusalem. The word from this would have been uproar. There was an uproar in Jerusalem when they heard that there could be another king. Impossible. King Herod is our king. Put a pin in that. We're going to come back to this uproar moment. So, Matthew 21, you have it there. I'm going to read it and unpack it a little bit because I think we're going to get a sense of what's going on in this story, and it's a pretty profound story. Jesus and his disciples approached Jerusalem. Well, where were they coming from before this? The triumphal entry story doesn't just begin approaching Jerusalem, but it begins somewhere farther away. If I put Jerusalem here, I need somebody to hold a piece of paper up. Can I have a paper holder here? Look at this, Ed. Here is Jerusalem. Ed, I'm going to have you hold it there. There is Jerusalem. Well, Jesus, he had come from first from the Galilee, which is a three day walk. Then he made his way down to probably about this far away from where Ed is.[00:03:15.640] He was in Jericho, the lowest city on the earth, 2700 meters below sea level, and he had to work his way up through really rough up and down to make his way over to Jerusalem. So there's a bit of a distance there and we're going to unpack what that's about Ed? Awesome. I will call you up ten more times. That was just so, so good. So Jesus, he is in Jericho, and he begins to proclaim the coming of his kingdom in ways before he even begins to come into Jerusalem. Did you know in all the ancient prophets of the bygone times when they prophesied that somebody would come? They said, Somebody will come who will make lame men walk and the blind to see. This is something the prophets never did, but they had hoped that one day someone would. And so here is Jesus. He's in Jericho just before this. And Jesus, he shows up, and not only does he heal one blind man, but he heals two. They were sitting by the road and they heard Jesus coming and they began shouting, lord, Son of David, have mercy on us. And the crowd, they said they yelled at him, Be quiet.[00:04:25.250] But they only shouted louder, lord, Son of David, have mercy on us. When Jesus heard them, he stopped. He said, what do you want me to do for you, Lord? They said, we want to see. And Jesus felt sorry for them and touched their eyes, and instantly they could see and they followed Him. Jesus had also met another man at a pool who had been lame for 30 some years. And he said the same thing. What do you want me to do for you two people who are obviously blind and lame? And he's asking them, what do you want? What do you want from your king? Well, we want to see. We want to walk. This is how Jesus is setting the stage to say, this is the kind of King that I'm at, that I am. You see, Herod, he was always cloistered away in his palaces. He didn't care if you couldn't see or walk. But he was a different kind of king, and Jesus was inaugurating something different. So Jesus goes from Jericho and begins his journey, which would have taken a good full day, and it would have been sweaty and hot, and he would have worked his way up to a place just outside of Jerusalem.[00:05:28.050] Jesus liked to walk. Jesus didn't have a car. We have no other reports of Him riding any animal except in this story, which we'll get to. But he walked. He hoofed it everywhere. He sent his disciples out to hoof it everywhere. He walked from way up the very, very north to the very south. And it would have taken days of walking anywhere in between. This picture of Jesus, who is maybe some gentle, gentle guy who kind of, I don't know, moves slowly through something, no picture a good mountain man or something, somebody who liked to walk, who got dusty and took his disciples and said, you're walking along with me. In a time when a lot of people maybe stayed in their place, he went out a king who walked, king Herod. He was often carried everywhere. He had a few people who had hoist him up. In fact, he had a gout so bad that he could barely walk, right? He was carried everywhere. And here's Jesus walking everywhere. So get this picture in your mind of a walking Jesus who's sweaty, who's dirty, and who is excited to move on to the next place.[00:06:38.740] So Jesus makes his way up from Jericho after healing, and there's people even following him. Then they're excited. Why is Jesus going up to Jerusalem? Well, he's going up to Jerusalem because it is Passover. And good Jews would go to Jerusalem for Passover and they would prepare to retell the story of how they were rescued, how God saved them. The Passover story is just a retelling of how God took people from Egypt and rescued them out of slavery. And God had a mighty hand of rescue save us. And God did. So Jesus, he works his way up from Jericho and he makes his way 3400ft, 15 miles and makes his way too close to Jerusalem. John Twelve said that he shows up in his friend's house. And if you read, if you want to have a really kind of amazing passion week, read all the different accounts because they all piece together some pieces of what happened. So John Twelve says this six days before Passover celebration began, jesus arrived in Bethany. Bethany is a town probably about, probably about an hour's walk outside of Jerusalem. Jerusalem, there's a valley and it goes down there's.[00:07:53.750] Bethany. You go up on the Mount of Olives, where there's Beth Phage, and you come down the other side and into Jerusalem while he comes to the base of it on the far side, on the east side. And he shows up there at a home of his friends, of his friend Lazarus, the man he had raised from the dead. It says in John. And a dinner was prepared for him in Jesus honor. Martha served, and Lazarus was among those who ate with him. Imagine sitting there with a man who is dead and buried, right, who you rose from the dead. Martha served, and Lazarus was among those who ate with him. Then Mary took a twelve ounce jar of expensive perfume made from the essence of Nard. I actually went and visited the Jerusalem Nard Maker, because who doesn't, right? I brought back some nard for my sister. Oh, yeah, you brought the nard good. I love just saying the word nard. It's just so fun to say. And he anointed Jesus's feet with it. Or she anointed Jesus's feet with it, wiping his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance.[00:08:58.860] So here Jesus. He's receiving this care from his friends. He's healing, he's coming in, they're anointing him. And all around this, Jesus is telling the story about how he's about to die. And his disciples aren't really getting their heads around it. Jesus is scary at, the disciple who would soon betray him, said the perfume was worth a year's wage. It should have been sold and the money given to the poor. Not that he cared for the poor. It says he was a thief. And since he was in charge of the disciples money, he often stole some for himself. But Jesus replied leave her alone. She did this in preparation for my burial. So here Jesus is getting ready. You see, there's so much more to the Triumphal entry than just him walking in. He's fulfilling some very important pieces. In fact, Jesus, as he's about to come into Jerusalem from the east, he is retracing the steps of one of Israel's favorite kings, king David, who actually fled from his son ABSALOM, going in that direction where one king once left. Here's Jesus, the King coming on that same road in in Micah four two.[00:10:14.220] It says that Messiah will come from the east with healing in his wings. Here's Jesus, he just healed these blind men and he's coming to the house of Lazarus, who he rose from the dead, and he's coming from the east. And anybody that knew their scripture at all would have been like, what's going on? Is the king coming back? He's healing where others couldn't, and now he's showing up from the east with healing in his wings. Is this the Messiah? Isaiah 40. It says he's going to come from the wilderness. And he does. He comes from the wilderness. Dusty, sweaty, ZECHARIAH nine nine that Leah read for us today is probably the one scripture that would have been ringing in this whole time. It's a scripture that shows a picture of what God is doing in Israel. It says, Rejoice, O people of Zion. Zion is another word for Jerusalem. Shout in triumph o people of Jerusalem Look, your King is coming to you. He is righteous and victorious. He is humble. Riding on a donkey. Riding on a donkey's colt. I will remove the battle chariots from Israel and the war horses from Jerusalem.[00:11:30.600] I will destroy all the weapons used in battle. And your King will bring peace to the nations. His realm will stretch from sea to sea. God is saying long before through all these prophets, that this is the way your King is going to come. Not in the way of King Herod, who's being pranced around to his palaces, but in the way of these of these prophets. And so Jesus begins to do what prophets have done for a long time, which is enact the grand story. He comes healing, he comes from the wilderness, he comes from the way of David, and he comes up and he's on his feet. But then he does something interesting. He decides for the last stretch, he's going to take a donkey. Jesus didn't need to ride a donkey. He's been on his feet the entire time. But he's about to make a statement that requires a donkey. So let's take a look here if you can find Matthew 21, and we're going to read this together and get a sense of what happens in these moments. Everything's building up. The tension is building for this moment as Jesus and his disciples approach Jerusalem.[00:12:37.980] So they're coming from the east and they're rising up. If you take a look at this map here, jesus is coming from this side of the map, okay? This is the way to Jericho. This is the way of the wilderness. And he's come up about this far to the base of it, where he's staying for a few days with his friends to just all to be covered in gnard, apparently. So he's smelling pretty delicious at this point, right? And he's coming and he's at Bethany, just about an hour's walk outside. But he instead of taking a donkey to ride up the mountain to get to the top of it, where Beth Phages, the Mount of Olives, he gets to the top and then he's going to ride a donkey down. If you're going to ride a donkey, you want it to take you up something because that's hard. But no, Jesus wasn't in it to ride a donkey because he needed the ride. He was in it for something else. So they came to the town of Bethfage on the Mount of Olives, and Jesus sent two of them ahead. He said, go into the village there, he said, and as soon as you enter it, you will see a donkey tied there with its colt beside it.[00:13:41.250] So a donkey, a mama donkey and a baby donkey, right? Some of the prophecies say that he is going to ride a donkey that hasn't been ridden before. And if you're going to ride a donkey that's not been ridden before, you probably need the mama along with it, because if there's going to be crowds, that little donkey isn't going to really well, the donkey could be quite impatient with the experience. Right, who's riding me? What's going on? So I even love this picture that he's riding on the baby and mama donkey is alongside, right? What a picture of a king coming in. This is not a war horse scenario. This is Jesus riding on a baby donkey with the mama there, because the donkey needs to stay calm. As soon as you enter it, you will see a donkey tied there with its colt beside it. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone asks you what you're doing, just say the Lord needs them and he will immediately let you take them. He needs them. Jesus can't walk downhill. He can't make the rest of the way. He's been walking for days, but now he needs a donkey.[00:14:45.280] You know why he needs a donkey? Because he needs to say what kind of king he is. He needs to say what he's about in a world of war horses and huge creations to talk about King Herod and now his three sons who rule everything in a terrible way. Now. The Lord needs them. He's about to do something. And then it says this. This took place to fulfill the prophecy that said, the whole point of this is to fulfill the grand story of God's people who've been waiting for so long. The prophecy says this. Tell the people of Jerusalem, look, your king is coming to you. King David once fled over the mountain that way, but now the king is coming to you. And this is it. He is humble, riding on a donkey. Riding on a donkey's colt. He's coming on a baby donkey. So the two disciples did as Jesus commanded. They brought the donkey and the colt to him and they threw their garment over the colt and he sat on it. He got off of his feet and now he's going to ride this donkey down. He's sitting on it. It would have been strange, I think, for people to see, but here he is, he's fulfilling prophecy, he's telling the story, and anybody watching would have been like, oh, my, this is a moment, I'm paying attention to something here.[00:16:03.350] So the two disciples did as Jesus commanded and they oh, yeah, and he sat on it. Now, most of the crowd spread their garments on the road ahead of him, and the others cut branches from trees and spread them on the road. This is where we get the idea, Palm Sunday, right? The idea that we're waving branches. I was once in Jerusalem years ago for a different festival. It's a festival, I don't even know what it is. It's celebrating some Jewish rabbi, but what they pretty much would do is go to every tree. It's very destructive festival, but all these Jewish kids would snap branches off of every tree they could find. Then they would drag them on the roofs of the houses and burn them and have this big burning festival. And they would also burn chairs and anything made of wood. So I was just watching kids, like six year old kids, just dragging doors and chairs and busted branches that looked like they were in good shape, and they're just destroying the place, all for this festival. But you wonder in this moment here what they are doing, right? Everybody's? You could just picture people bouncing on branches that they're going to snap these off to celebrate.[00:17:03.240] People are getting worked up. The crowd spread garments and now their others cut branches from trees and spread them down. When we were just there a couple of weeks ago, we walked down this road. We walked down from the top of Mount of Olives down into the valley. It was beautiful. And Jesus was at the center of the procession and the people all around him were shouting praise God, the Son of David. They know what's going on. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Praise God in the highest heaven. They are repeating these psalms. Psalm 113 to Psalm 118 are this bank of psalms that celebrates the coming of God and they are praising these out. These are the songs that they sing when God delivers them. And they are singing these songs god is here, he is with us. The king has come back. Celebration. And then this dramatic moment. The entire city of Jerusalem was in an uproar. Where have we heard that before? When they thought that baby King of the Jews was being born and King Herod at the birth of Jesus was worked up and the whole city then was in an uproar.[00:18:21.560] Now Matthew's pointing to it again and saying in this moment, as Jesus comes in, the entire city of Jerusalem is in an uproar as he entered. And then the question, who is this? Who is this? The grand story from him coming down from Galilee to being in Jericho coming all the way up, everything is being told. People are running ahead saying, I got healed. All these grand stories and they are saying, who is this? This is the big question of the whole Easter week. Who is this? C. S. Lewis he once said, Jesus can be one of three things. He can be a deceiver, somebody who is out there like all the other kings to manipulate a world for his benefit. He could be an absolute crazy, maniac fool who's convinced himself he is God and he is a nutcase and you should cast him off like that. And if he's a manipulator or a nutcase, those are the two that we don't want anything to do with. But there's only one other option, and that is he is God. Those are the only three. C. S. Lewis said you can't call him a good teacher.[00:19:38.090] If he's not God because he's a manipulator or a crazy person, he can only be God or one of those two. There's no other options logically for Jesus. So any idea that he's just a prophet, it just does not work here. He's more than that. So as the crowds replied, this was when they said, who is this? And the crowds replied, it's Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee. He has come. A prophet who has not done any of these things before, raised somebody from the dead, helped the blind to see, the lame to walk, and now he's coming in and he's coming in using all of this king language and they're trying to figure out, who is this guy? What is he doing? This is the question for our hearts, I think, today, is, who is this? Who is he to you? Is he somebody who offers some really good tidbits of advice that if you read some parts, there's actually some I think it was a publishing company once created a version of the Bible where they xed out all the parts that kind of applied to Jesus being God and just kept all the nice little phrases right.[00:20:49.860] It doesn't work quite that way. Take a look at this map on this other side of Jerusalem. I think this is a helpful one and one that you might want to carry with you throughout this week. It paints a picture of Jesus's journey into Jerusalem. We stayed actually, my sermon from last Sunday that I did on the video was down right in the bottom left corner. And Jerusalem University College where we studied at, was right down in that corner, too. And right where kind of in the middle here, there's a little pool there. It just says pool beside it up above Herod's Palace. That's where our hotel was. And so we spent our days poking all around Jerusalem. And so we become quite familiar with this. But I want to point to you a few stories of Jesus coming and going from Jerusalem in this really important week. Right now for Palm Sunday, we are celebrating one entry point and it's this little one where he comes in and he goes to the Temple Mount and he goes back out again. He comes in from Bethany and he comes by the pool of Bethesda. This is the pool where he where he healed a lame man who was lame for 38 years.[00:22:06.430] And this is the route that he comes from, down the Mount of Olives. And he comes in to enter into the Temple. Everything he's doing here is prophetic. Everything he's doing is setting the stage so that people know and they do come alert to it later, but when they know that he dies on the cross, that this isn't some ordinary criminal. But Jesus at every step of the way is fulfilling what all these prophets have been building up to so that there is no guess in people's mind who Jesus is saying that he is. He is God Himself, the Messiah, the Savior of the world coming in there. So there is the route where he comes in and he cleans out the Temple and he says, this is my Father's house because the place had become a place where people were just trying to make some money. And so he does that. And then a little while later, which is part of the Passion Week, and we'll explore this on Friday and Saturday. But then Jesus comes and he comes back from Bethany where he's staying with his friends. Where he comes down, you can see that arrow going way down to the bottom by the pool of Salom.[00:23:09.500] And he makes his way over to the traditional place of the upper room of his last supper. He shares passover there, which is all so symbolic of how Jesus of this saving God who rescued his people. And he says, Eat this bread and drink this cup in remembrance now of me, not of just your rescue from Egypt. Then he makes his way to follow those arrows where he goes to the garden of Gethsemane where late at night he says to his friends, stay up and pray. And he cries and blood drips down from him in this garden. And we had a chance to go to this garden where there's these ancient olive trees and they have a rock there that they built a church over where they say it's where Jesus prayed. But irregardless he prayed there and all of his disciples, they couldn't stay awake with him. And that's where he's arrested and betrayed by his friend Judas. And then he goes on a journey. You can watch the next line go through and it's a weaving line that takes him through several places, through Jerusalem, where he's tried on these hopped up charges before the high priest and then to Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas's palace.[00:24:13.770] And he's taken all the way through where he's eventually taken out to golgotha outside of the city walls where there's now a church over that and he's crucified died and is buried watching this, weaving through every moment of Jesus's life outside of this, but now brought into this tension moment in Jerusalem. It is all telling a story. And it brings us to the question that Matthew poses and the crowds ask, who is this? I hope this week, this Passion Week for you as you reflect, maybe you're going to read the Scripture yourself. I would recommend you read through the different gospels, the different accounts and become acquainted with it. But I hope that you will ask yourself this question who is this? Who is this Jesus guy? Is he crazy? Is he a manipulator? Or is he God? Because if this is God come to us, if this is our king return to us, if this is our true Savior, the Savior of all people, then this should change utterly how I live and what I give my allegiance to. This might be the best news we've ever heard. This is the good news of Palm Sunday.[00:25:21.890] Hosanna. Hosanna. Save us. Save us. The king is here. Would you stand with me? We're going to share together and it's going to show up on the screen. It's called a litany. It's a way of responding back and forth. And we're going to do this as our benediction. I hope it sets us up for this week of asking, who is this? Who is this jesus. Who is coming down and is he somebody who is coming into my life? Is this prophet, as they call him, from Galilee, from Nazareth in Galilee? Is this somebody more? Is this somebody who is working his way into my life? Is this somebody who can transform my city and come into my world? Can he be my king today in all that I'm going through? So let's read this together. I'm going to read the parts where it says Forgive us. That's the part that I'm going to ask you to read. So I am going to read a line and then for the forgive us part, that's the part you are going to read. So it goes like this. Today we have cheered you on as our champion and hailed you as our hero.[00:26:31.060] Forgive us tomorrow when our enthusiasm wanes. Today we have entrusted you to rescue us from our pitiful circumstances. Forgive us on Tuesday when we decide we can take care of ourselves. Today we have made you the centerpiece of our very existence. Forgive us on Wednesday when we forget to remember who you are. Today we have called you loudly by name. Forgive us on Thursday when we pretend that you've never met us. Today we have stared at you with the starstruck eyes of fans and groupies. Forgive us on Friday when we avert our eyes because it's too painful to see you on the cross. Today we have expressed our unsuppressed hopefulness in the future you have in store for us. Forgive us on Saturday when we believe all is lost. Today we have been boldly certain of the earthly ways you will redeem us, restore us on Sunday when we are startled and awed by your rising. Amen. Friends, we are about to enter a week, and it's a solemn week where there's a lot of emotion. I find this to be my most emotional week, but we're going to do something new that we've never done as a community, and we're going to have a good Friday service here, and we might need a bit of help with that.[00:27:53.820] We've never done one before, and it's a bit dramatic. I'm going to make it dramatic and it's going to be more of an experience than maybe a traditional service. And so if you're able to join us, that's going to be at 01:00 here. We're going to set up at 1030. But we get to leave it set up until Easter morning. So if you're able to come and join us at 1030 to do a little bit of setup, that'll help us a lot. But you don't got to help us take it down. We get to leave it set up. And so that'll be really special. And then on Sunday, April 9, at 1030 is our Easter service here, where we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. So hope you join us for all of those.

Guest Speaker | Ray Wall

Glenn Peterson joined us and explored how life's disruptions are met by God's peace, not just as an experience, but as a person. Jesus himself is our peace.

[00:00:03.130] - Speaker 1Hi there. My name is Preston Pouteaux. Welcome to the Lake Ridge Community Church Podcast. This is where we share some of our messages from Sunday mornings. So we're glad you're here to listen.[00:00:14.210] - Speaker 1We'd love for you to join us in person. We meet on Sunday mornings at 10:30 a.m at Our Lady of Wisdom School here in Chestermere. At our core, we're a community of people, so we gather on on Sundays, but we also do a lot in the week. Together. We are people learning to follow Jesus and love our city.[00:00:31.080] - Speaker 1So to learn more, visit lakeridgecommunity.com. Hope to check in and visit with you soon. Take care. Thanks for listening.[00:00:44.340] - Speaker 1I feel like I'm going through a bit of a renaissance of Jesus. Have you ever had those moments in your life where it's like, Jesus means more than he did before? Something is moving in you? Have you ever had that season of life? They're precious seasons because I've also had the seasons where it's kind of wintry and dry and you wonder if Jesus is anywhere.[00:01:02.760] - Speaker 1Some days I feel like I was explained to somebody, was like, what's it like to be a pastor? And I was like, sometimes it's like standing in a shower that's a hot water and cold water coming out of two direct faucets. So you're grateful that you're standing under hot water, but you're also standing under cold water. Do you kind of get the picture there? There's a lot that comes at us and I think Jesus meets us in it all.[00:01:27.010] - Speaker 1Hey. We are on a journey where we are, I called it Mission Friends. This is a phrase that is ancient in the covenant and piatism who we are. It was a phrase that was used and we are wrestling with what it is to be human, and it's hard to be human sometimes. We're standing under the hot and cold tap of life.[00:01:46.030] - Speaker 1There's something good and cold coming at us at the same time. We're like, how do I hold all these things? So we're taking a look a little bit here at Scripture and we're deeply diving in and we're going to be also exploring some wisdom, I think, from those who have gone before us. I'm a bit of a space nerd. I like spaces in my room growing up.[00:02:06.330] - Speaker 1My kids want to ask me all the time, like, what was your room like growing up? And I had Mum and dad put a big mural on the wall and it was like a spaceship overlooking Earth. And I would lay there pretending that I am like a spaceman or something, right? It was really cool and I loved it a lot. One of the things I really loved too, was space.[00:02:27.870] - Speaker 1Learning about space probes. Going to Mars as a young boy would track with every single one that would happen, and I still do. I have a little, like, notification to know if something's launching because that means I got to wait a few months and it's going to eventually get there and then I can follow up with this and it's really cool. Do you know how violent it is for something to travel, launch off, travel and then land? It is a multimillion dollar, sometimes billion dollar project to get something.[00:02:55.330] - Speaker 1It's the most important mission that some people spend their entire lives working on. And then they blast it off, hope it doesn't explode, hope it survives radiation and everything. Then it has to land in some violent way and stop on the planet. And when it gets there, do you know the first thing almost every single probe does when it lands? It puts out its solar panels and soaks up the sun.[00:03:22.580] - Speaker 1What an interesting thing. One of the first things that this thing, which has a very important mission to do, it has a long list of things it's to accomplish, but what's its first thing it does? It stops and soaks up the sun. It does a whole check of its systems and they run everything through and they do the smallest little things to make sure this thing is ready. The biggest challenge to anything going to Mars is dust, something that would build up over time on its solar panels, because the second those solar panels can't receive the sun anymore, the ticking time bomb is on, that this mission is over.[00:03:58.000] - Speaker 1I think we are people who are called to sit and soak up the sun. Your life is so important, what you are called to do here vital. There's no one else doing what you are doing right now. You are the one occupying your life. You are the one who's important to those around you.[00:04:14.390] - Speaker 1And your mission is vital. And yet sometimes we get on with it too quick before we know that we have to sit and soak in the sun, but to sit and find our place of rest in Jesus before we begin. This is not the way that the people of Israel were worshiping and coming close to living this one and beautiful life. In the Bible, Elijah was a prophet in a time of deep chaos, a time when there had been some good kings and then a series of bad kings, people named a kings named Ahab and Omri, his father. These were two leaders who were regarded terribly in the Bible for their leadership.[00:05:00.340] - Speaker 1They were kings that were on a mission of almost destruction. They disregarded God so deeply it led to assassinations and suicide and war. And at the end, these two were considered, it says in the Bible, they did more evil than all who were before them. There's a brutal vision of leadership that happens in the book of first Kings.[00:05:28.800] - Speaker 1Here they were a father and a son, Ahab and Omri. And one of the things that they did was they set up the nation to be economically stable for the first time, in a long time, they had established some trade routes and they were pretty good. For the first time ever, they were maybe rolling in some of the cash. They could build some things, they were building cities, and these cities were prospering. But these leaders were not going the way of god.[00:05:57.160] - Speaker 1They set up new places of worship. They actually were no longer just worshiping in Jerusalem, but they set up some new temples and some high places. High places were like these shrines, places where you could go and pray no longer with the whole community, but off to the side. You could go and have your own personal experience of god. But these gods weren't enough.[00:06:19.120] - Speaker 1These gods, the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob Yahweh, this this god was not, not exciting enough, actually. So they came up with they found two other gods that they could kind of come alongside, the god Ball and the god of Astreth. And I've been to some archeologists, have found some of these shrines and you can see there's like a rock for Ball of us. And they would often have a place where they'd put up a stick for Ashworth. And these are this, these are the types of gods that they would worship.[00:06:49.960] - Speaker 1It's one thing to be worshiping an idol, but these gods, these gods suited their every need. You see, Ball and Ashworth, they were ashworth was a sex goddess. And they would set up this sex goddess beside and they had a whole new way of worship. You see, it's the first time worship is given as a consumable experience. Worship is not coming and sitting beside god and saying god, I love you, shape me, let me follow you, let me live this one and beautiful life with, you know, Ball and Asterisk.[00:07:22.500] - Speaker 1These gods of this time, these were gods of convenient consumption, a consumable experience. Instead of prayer and songs of trust, it was self gratifying products. You were coming to get something out of these gods, not coming to set yourself before them. Eugene Peterson put it like this. He says, when you are terror stricken, you offer a sacrifice.[00:07:48.300] - Speaker 1When you're anxious about your crops, you make a visit to the temple prostitute. When you're joyful, you ingest the wind god feelings called the tune. Fears of panic, of terror, of desire and enthusiasm. You see, you were in charge of your worship experience under ahab and omri. These gods were simply there to appease your anxiety, meet your needs of your self governed life.[00:08:14.970] - Speaker 1You were in charge. They didn't care about you, they didn't want you around, but they were there. And if you brought something to them, they might see you for a second, but they don't like you. It's an ultimate religion for a world in chaos, actually, a world of wealth, a me world. It's perfect for those who want to get something out of their worship experience at their own pace.[00:08:40.070] - Speaker 1On their own terms and their own pleasure. As a result, the nation was in freefall. They finally had everything that they wanted. They had homes, they had gardens, they had all of these things. But they forgot that it wasn't all about him.[00:08:54.960] - Speaker 1And it says in one King 16, it provoked the Lord to anger. I sometimes get angry. I sometimes do. I sometimes do for the wrong reasons. Sometimes I do for the right reasons.[00:09:07.070] - Speaker 1I'm like, no, you smacking your sister around. That is not allowed in the putto home. That's not how we do things, right? God was angry because he's like, you guys treating each other like this, you guys treating this beautiful thing of faith into something that's just consumable. No, that isn't going to work here because it's going to destroy you.[00:09:27.810] - Speaker 1And it already was. God intended a better way. Not a frenetic religion reacting to a world in chaos and negotiating with these transacting idols, but a relationship that establishes peace, creates a land and a place of fruitfulness, a community of people who came together and trusted God and each other. A place where wrongs are set right, where love for God flourishes. Worship was always meant to be about awe and wonder, about beauty, with God leading the conversation and us responding, not the other way around.[00:10:10.920] - Speaker 1God imagine sex and food and friendship and money and work and government as a garden that flourishes when God's people have a right relationship with him, not to take what you can while you can and spit out the rest kind of world. So in comes Elijah into this story and we get a sense that he's called by God and he gives a sermon. It's the best sermon you've ever heard because it's only 17 words long in the original one, right? I bet you guys are like, man press. You can really take a page out of Elijah's preaching here, right?[00:10:47.460] - Speaker 1Quick and easy. Let's take a look here at what his sermon was. So he goes to Ahab and he preaches. The sermon is quick, it's easy. In, out, done.[00:11:00.070] - Speaker 1And he tackles a big topic here. This is what happens now, Elijah, who is from Tischbe in Gilad, in Gilead, told King Ahab, here's a sermon. As surely as the Lord God of Israel lives, the God I serve, there will be no due or reign during the next few years until I give the word full message. Amen and close, right? I'm going to read it again.[00:11:27.520] - Speaker 1As surely as the Lord God of Israel lives, the God I serve, there will be no due or rain during the next few years until I give the word. Here he is giving his sermon. And you can imagine, well, if you lived in this time, you would know what that is because did you know that Ball was a God of rain? This sermon is directly related to his God, this God that has utterly turned everybody's hearts away from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He's saying, a drought is coming.[00:12:06.220] - Speaker 1You see, this is the one thing that no idols or no new cities or no thriving economy could do without, and that was rain water. It would, in the words of Eugene Peterson, a drought would advertise the barrenness of these fertility gods. It would utterly show them up and say, this is a barren way to relate with God. It does not work. No orgies or fertility gods here.[00:12:34.760] - Speaker 1No life without God's provision. You see, life was on God's terms, not cheapened, destructive, selfish religion on my terms. Something that would masquerade as life. No, the masquerading is over. And Elijah comes with this message to say, party over.[00:12:55.180] - Speaker 1Instead of sticking around to see if the king likes his message, he gets out of Dodge. This is what I do after most of my sermons, right? Drop the mic, I'm out of here. Right? I get a lot of texts after, and they are often very awesome, but he was not on it.[00:13:13.140] - Speaker 1You see, he just said that everything about their whole scheme of anxiety driven, seeking to get something from God for them alone, without loving others and using up what they have in front of them, well, it led to this one. King 17, two to six. I'm going to read what happens next. And the Lord said to Elijah, go to the east and hide by Kerath Brook, near where it enters the Jordan River. Drink from the brook and eat what the ravens bring you.[00:13:44.930] - Speaker 1Pride commanded them to bring you food. So Elijah did as the Lord told him and count beside Carth Brook, east of the Jordan. The ravens brought him bread and meat each morning and evening, and he drank from the brook. He goes out. God sends him to this little hideaway place, a brook, little campsite where he's going to go, and something kind of interesting happens.[00:14:12.260] - Speaker 1God provides for him with, of all things, ravens. This is a Halloween decoration that I put outside of my home, but I pulled it out of my stuff because I think it was really, really cool. Ravens. Ravens are considered dirty animals. A good Jew would not ever eat a raven, for sure.[00:14:31.330] - Speaker 1Probably not want to be touched by one. And in the Bible, these birds are bringing something. They're probably not bringing chicken McNuggets. Right? What are they finding?[00:14:41.400] - Speaker 1I don't know. I don't know. Some people think that they might have been bringing carrion stuff that they found. Right. They might have been bringing meat, something that they found on the side of the road.[00:14:53.110] - Speaker 1Roadkill, right. But they were bringing meat to Elijah, and here he was with his raven friends. I have some art here by an artist that has done several pieces around this. I wonder if he could put it up. I love this picture of these ravens.[00:15:09.410] - Speaker 1And they come in with, like, a ton of character in this art, don't they? They're, they're kind of bouncing in. And here's Elijah gave his big sermon and said, well, the way of the King is not working here. God's way is going to be better. And here's this like hoard of ravens coming in with their treats.[00:15:26.080] - Speaker 1God commanded them. God said, go and bring some food over to Elijah. I think I have another one similar to this one's. Quite beautiful too. There's a lot going on in it.[00:15:37.620] - Speaker 1But here he's sitting and he has these books beside him and this raven who's coming gently. I just like the way that the artist has kind of captured these ravens who seem to be holding this holy space, holding together his humanity. They're feeding him, they're giving him food so that he can live, providing for him. God gives Elijah what he needs to live. And more than that, God talks with Elijah.[00:16:11.740] - Speaker 1He's telling him what to do. Go east to the kerath brook, drink from the book, eat from the ravens. I've commanded them to bring you food, provision and conversation. In a world where religion has been cheapened, where worship is something selfish, God is reestablishing. I think with Elijah real worship isn't he something relational, where people come, where Elijah comes and he receives from this dirty raven who turns out to be the one that's restoring his life.[00:16:45.640] - Speaker 1God's doing this life and love, friendship and hope, care and faith. It's here at Carthbrook. Have you ever had a kerath brook in your life? A place where you had to run and flee to, where you maybe something happened in your life and you shrunk down and you felt like everything was taken from you and suddenly God was the one who provided for you a little safe haven.[00:17:12.720] - Speaker 1Those are precious moments. Maybe right now you are in a place where you're wondering if you have a kerath brook. You're wondering if you have a safe place to go and flee to Elijah. He gets his relationship with God. He knows God provides.[00:17:29.720] - Speaker 1He does not need to free coat every day. He knows God is a table setting God who loves to be hospitable with his friends. Imagine having ravens that come. Just imagine sitting there and every day having this little guy hop over with you. Hop, hop, hop, hop.[00:17:47.420] - Speaker 1Spit something out. It would be a reminder. You would probably start to giggle a little bit and go, how did I end up here with this little raven bringing me a little I didn't plan for this. I thought my life might have been over. The God or the King is after me and here hop, hop, hop.[00:18:06.240] - Speaker 1I got fresh water, got these ravens and I'm fed. I think this is a tremendously beautiful way that God is providing. Surprising way.[00:18:24.170] - Speaker 1I remember once I was very broke. I went to seminary. Anybody goes to seminary? Anybody here? Yeah.[00:18:30.450] - Speaker 1That means you were broke for a good chunk of time. And I was and I remember I had nothing, like, very, very little. And I remember I was out and my car had hail damage, and I remember just being like, no, right? And the prayer of sometimes people in my position is we think that God should treat us a little bit better because, well, we are working for the big guy, right? Working for the big guy.[00:18:56.390] - Speaker 1I at least ought to be within his, like, inner rolodex of people. But here I am sitting under hail, and my car is just getting pounded. I'm going, Duh. Couldn't the hail have gone around me? Couldn't God have done that?[00:19:10.840] - Speaker 1And I prayed all those prayers. Maybe you prayed those two, and guess what? Insurance kicked in and I got money. It was a little moment. And I was like, what a funny thing.[00:19:25.150] - Speaker 1It wasn't a Kerath Brooke moment, but it was definitely this silly little moment that snapped me out of my selfish little myopic view of what God is doing, that if I just pray a certain thing, god will help me avoid all the hard stuff. God's like, no, no, you're going to go through the hard stuff and I'm going to cover you. I'm going to meet you. Psalm 34 says, many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. It's not going to be easy.[00:19:51.270] - Speaker 1Even now, Kelly is quite sick, and it doesn't look like it's getting better. And yet we were laughing this week, even in the middle of it all, because we came across some new things that doctors are doing to help her get better. And we're laughing. We're like god always seems to meet us everywhere we turn. This is bad, but we're laughing in this.[00:20:11.340] - Speaker 1We're being met. We've been met more than halfway. Ways that I didn't expect to be provided for, ways that I didn't think Jesus would still talk to me. And God is sending me ravens in the midst of my sorrow. I think it is elegant.[00:20:28.290] - Speaker 1I think God meets us in elegant ways. I think ravens are an elegant way. And I think God meeting Preston and Kelly in our story at this time, it is elegant. And we need to have a moment to stop and go, wow, how is God meeting you elegantly and going, wow, I was here and now I am here. I'm grateful for it.[00:20:49.690] - Speaker 1Has God met you with ravens? Maybe you're in a season where you do not know what you are doing next. Has God prepared a brook and ravens for you?[00:21:00.430] - Speaker 1I think it's interesting that Jesus, he built into some of his messages this story, the story of Ravens. And we read it earlier and Shay read it for us. Luke 1224. I love what Jesus says, and I think anybody that would have known their history would have known about a raven showing up.[00:21:24.550] - Speaker 1He says, this. Look at the ravens. They don't plant or harvest or store food in barns for God feeds them and you are far more valuable to him than any birds. I think people have been like, oh, ravens. Jesus's friend Elijah was cared for.[00:21:46.590] - Speaker 1The early Piatists are people who I think characterize this living faith in Jesus. We come from this roots of Piatism and there's a person named Philip Spinner who is kind of the grandfather, the granddaddy of Piatism. And he came to faith in the faith of Jesus like Elijah. He said it's by no means enough to have knowledge of the Christian faith. For Christianity exists rather of practice.[00:22:13.830] - Speaker 1Practice. He wanted to become a practicing Christian. You know what a practicing Christian is? It's a have a conversation with God by the brook kind of Christian. That's what a practicing Christian is.[00:22:27.450] - Speaker 1Somebody who knows how to find themselves at the brook and receive from God not frantically fussing around, worried about if we can peace God enough or if he will be there or if that hailstorm is going to leave lasting damage. No. A practicing Christian. What what Philip Spinner wanted was he wanted to be one who was like Elijah, who could sit with Jesus in peace and walk to this world in peace. And this is a guy who did not know peace.[00:22:55.250] - Speaker 1He was born near the end of something called the 30 Years War. All of Europe, the 16 hundreds, was inflamed. They say between four and a half and 8 million people died. Half of all of Germany was dead by the end of the 30 year war, catholics and Protestants were at each other. But at that point it didn't even mean anything anymore.[00:23:15.730] - Speaker 1These religious groups were just symbols for political fighting. There was so much fighting, so much fighting, in fact, that it had torn everything apart. And here just after this comes a guy named Philip Spinner and he decides that he's going to become a pastor. Fool to become a pastor in a time when everything is divisive, no one's going to pay any attention to what he has to say. Who wants to turn and sit with Jesus when the whole world is in fire?[00:23:47.170] - Speaker 1Well, here he goes. And he was known as a very well known guy in this time polarize Christopher Gertz. He writes that he says he had seen neighbors turn violently upon neighbors. He knew what it was like for people to be inclined towards vengeance rather than neighborly love. So it's in this context that he says, I think we should be a better church.[00:24:11.290] - Speaker 1I think we should. And so he actually comes up with six simple things, the most simple things. And we are actually my sermon series is based on this. First one is we have to read the Bible. We have to give the story of God into us again, we need to inhabit that story.[00:24:25.680] - Speaker 1Second one, it's not just a priest. We're all priests and that means we're all servants for one another. And the third one, the one that I'm preaching on today, is we need to know what it is to be loved by God so that we can love others. He asks that the church awaken in his words, a fervent love among our Christians, first towards one another and then towards all and put this love in practice. He says we got to accustomed people first to work, that is, inward to the laying out of the solar panels and then awaken love of God and neighbor.[00:25:05.410] - Speaker 1And so for him, his first thing was rest. After chaos he says we are frenetic in our seeking of what God wants. We need to rest. Like Elijah by the brook, pietis began turning to God to rest in his faithful care. Rest is not the antithesis of work.[00:25:22.690] - Speaker 1They had to rebuild so many things and pious were not lazy people. They worked hard. But rest is the start of our work. We can only rest after we put our solar panels out. We must be receptive to the presence of God if we're going to do the mission that's before us.[00:25:41.430] - Speaker 1I present myself to God and practice being present to the One who is always present in love for me. If we turn to God, then we can turn out to the world with God. I'm going to end with this story. Jesus had some friends too and he was trying to help them understand how to relate to him. And I think that they were pretty thick headed, probably a lot like me.[00:26:07.710] - Speaker 1Takes a long time to get through to me. It takes a lot of experiences for me to trust Jesus with my life. And so this story is one of Jesus taking his friends and he does something that I think is very profound. The story of the transfiguration says that six days later jesus took Peter and the two brothers, James and John, and led them up a high mountain to be alone. As the men watched, Jesus appearance was transformed so that his face shone like the sun and his clothes became as white as light.[00:26:43.310] - Speaker 1Suddenly get this suddenly I love this suddenly Moses and Elijah appeared and began talking with Jesus.[00:26:59.870] - Speaker 1I was thinking about this in the shower. I was crying again in the shower, but good thing I'm covered in water so I didn't have to. Here's Jesus. Can you imagine this? Jesus is here as a full human and he's trying to get his friends to come along.[00:27:14.120] - Speaker 1And his friends can barely understand Jesus. In fact they're often James and John. Not long around this time they were trying to call down firing brimstone on some of Jesus'neighbors. He's like no, you don't get it. Stick with me, I'll show you.[00:27:30.990] - Speaker 1We'll take another go at this. And here Jesus goes on a hill. Do you know who I think Jesus wants? To talk to. I think Jesus wants to talk to his friends.[00:27:40.670] - Speaker 1You know who Jesus friends were? Moses and Elijah. I think he's like, Man, I think he goes up and I'd love to hear what this is all pressed and filling it in here, but if Jesus is showing up with Moses and Elijah, two people who the Old Testament says talked to God, who sat by the brook, who Jesus fed with ravens, and they've had long conversations. They're friends of Jesus. And I think Jesus needed a moment with his friends.[00:28:09.430] - Speaker 1I think he's like, I got these yahoos with me. I miss you guys. I've been down here helping them understand what it is to love and sit with me, and here they are, wanting to destroy the world around them as though I'm some superpower to destroy things. I'm here to heal what is broken. And I think Jesus is there going, Guys, I need to talk to you.[00:28:31.550] - Speaker 1I need some sanity here. And the lie just like, Y'all, man, do you remember the time that I sat by the brook with the ravens? I was that was elegant. Yeah, I know. And I'm trying to provide for these guys.[00:28:40.710] - Speaker 1We're doing loaves and fishes and all this, but they don't understand. And guess what? In the middle of this conversation that they're having that's not recorded. But you can imagine Jesus is loving a little reprieve with his buddies, right? His buddies are probably comforting him, saying, Jesus, I know you're about to go through something hard.[00:28:59.270] - Speaker 1I know you're about to die for these people who you so love. Be encouraged, Jesus. Be encouraged. You I know it's going to hurt, but you're doing it for them and for us and for us all. And for those that aren't even here yet, jesus is like, I know.[00:29:14.170] - Speaker 1I know what my father's asked me to do. And here we are. And I think that they're chatting and then hearing it all. I love this. The absolute idiot.[00:29:21.700] - Speaker 1Peter. Peter exclaimed, Lord, it's wonderful for us to be here. And I think Jesus is like, can you see what I'm working with here? They can't even give me a moment peace with you guys and your peers. Like, if you don't hear me, Lord, it's wonderful for us to be here.[00:29:40.000] - Speaker 1If you want, I'll make three shelters. Yeah, we've got three shelters as memorials. One for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. Yeah. Is that good?[00:29:51.510] - Speaker 1Yeah. Is that yeah. Three. We're gonna make three shrines here. I think Jesus like, they don't get it.[00:29:59.450] - Speaker 1They want to pop up a shrine. They want to come and transact as though that's what we're doing here. It's not what we're doing here. We're in a relationship of trust and love and provision and conversation, and they love popping up shrines everywhere. They don't know that we can have this friendship.[00:30:22.540] - Speaker 1I got a feeling Jesus came down well even as. He spoke, a bright cloud overshadowed them and a voice from the cloud said, this is my dearly loved son who brings me great joy. Listen to him. Listen. Come and sit by a brook and receive provision and listen.[00:30:48.820] - Speaker 1Listen to what he says. He knows the way. He says, love God and love neighbors. He says, turn the other cheek. He says a whole bunch of things and you just listen to him.[00:31:00.780] - Speaker 1He brings me so much joy that we're having a moment, Peter. And so shut your yap for a second and enjoy the beauty of being with Jesus. So many people would love to be in the position you are in and so many, the Bible says so many are going to come after who will not see Jesus. But their faith will be so much richer because they believe. Listen to him.[00:31:28.150] - Speaker 1Spender or Elijah could have been stirred up in a frenzy of chaos around them. But instead they both came to rest in God conversation, provision and ultimately love and life found in Christ.[00:31:47.380] - Speaker 1I want to invite Kate up to play and we're just going to pray and wrap up here. Where is your carth? Creek. Where is the place where God is saying come and have a nap and have a snack. I got you.[00:32:03.980] - Speaker 1Come and sit and get away with me. I got you your mind. Don't worry about setting up some temple for me. All I want to do is be here with you. I want to be your friend.[00:32:17.920] - Speaker 1I want to be your friend first. I want to be your Lord. I want to provide for you when you don't know which way it is. You see, these ravens, I think, were for Elijah an epiphany moment, that God was always working for his people, that God would always provide for his people because they are gifts from a giver who wants to know his people today. And I think that if we want to follow along and be these people who are mission friends, I think we need to find what it is to be loved first by a friend who loves us.[00:32:57.980] - Speaker 1I think when this happens, when you are friend with Jesus, you can learn what it is to be a friend to somebody beside you. You can learn how to walk with them. You can see the provision in their life. You can see the Kerath creek that God has brought them to and maybe you can go sit with them in that and point it out and say, man, you're loved, man you're provided for, you cried out and God met you more than halfway.[00:33:27.220] - Speaker 1Many of the afflictions of God's people, we always get delivered from the wrong. We are not frenzied by the noises that promise that we will get what we want. Rather, we are people who are at peace with God, who is our everything. Can you stand?[00:33:51.340] - Speaker 1I think God hears your prayers and I think God knows what you're going through. And I think God wants us to sit with you and talk to you before he says to you, can you go and do some great thing for me? I think he says, maybe the greatest thing you can do is come and sit with me. Spread out your hands and receive from me. Be recharged by me.[00:34:12.580] - Speaker 1I do not need a great performer. What I need as a community of people who trust me and who join me, may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May Lord lift up his countenance upon you and grant you his peace by the brook of Kerath with some beautiful hopping ravens who've come to you and says you're going to be okay. Amen.[00:34:35.540] - Speaker 1Amen. Have a good week, everybody. Bless you. Amen.

Hi there. My name is Preston POUTEAUX. Welcome to the Lake Ridge Community Church Podcast. This is where we share some of our messages from Sunday mornings. So we're glad you're here to listen.[00:00:14.210] - Speaker 1We'd love for you to join us in person. We meet on Sunday mornings at 10:30 a.m at Our Lady of Wisdom School here in Chestermere. At our core, we're a community of people, so we gather on on Sundays, but we also do a lot in the week. Together, we are people learning to follow Jesus and love our city. So to learn more, visit lakeridgecommunity.com.[00:00:34.140] - Speaker 1Hope to check in and visit with you soon. Take care. Thanks for listening.[00:00:45.700] - Speaker 1Let's pray together. Father, you are good to us and we love you. Give us imagination, for your spirit is speaking to us today. May we find a new way. Show us the way.[00:01:00.110] - Speaker 1Jesus name, we pray. Amen. Amen.[00:01:06.360] - Speaker 1There is grace for this journey of faith in Jesus. You have a God who deeply loves you. He has thought of you before the creation of it all. He has made you nothing about you as a surprise to Him. Maybe sometimes you raise his eyebrow, I'm sure, but he has even accommodated for that, and it is good.[00:01:25.200] - Speaker 1We are on a long journey over this whole year to talk about what it is to be human in the hands of a loving God. And it's exciting and it's good. But maybe on your journey of figuring out what it is to follow Jesus and take a look at a world around you that is in shambles, you might pause for a second and come up with a strategy for being a Christian in a broken world. This is a little bit what we're going to talk about today, our journey, and I'm going to weave all these pieces together. We are talking about what is the mission, friends?[00:01:58.370] - Speaker 1A pious way to be human? We are in the Covenant Church, which has its roots in Piatism. We're going to unpack that for us a little bit here. But maybe you are standing there and reading the news. Maybe you're like me.[00:02:10.380] - Speaker 1I look at Twitter every day to see if Ukraine has finally got the Russians out. That's that's pretty much what I use Twitter for. And as I do, I go through a long, winding journey to figure out what to do in this world. What does following Jesus have to do with all the complexities of my human existence here? I'm going to show you five ways to start, and I'm not going to comment on them except to tell you what they are.[00:02:33.590] - Speaker 1And you might put a pin in some of these and go, oh, that's me. When I started following Jesus, that's how I thought the world would get changed. These are from a guy named Richard Neighbor. And Richard Neighbor, he might be rolling over in his grave when he sees how I summarize something that was deep and complex theological stuff into something as simplistic as I'm about to present it. So if you know a neighbor scholar, say, yeah, Preston probably butchered this, but I think that he might actually think that I did a pretty good job here.[00:03:00.300] - Speaker 1I'm going to show you five. He calls them different things, but I'm going to call them this. The first one on the far side. This is dealing with a world that's crazy. And you decide to follow Jesus.[00:03:11.450] - Speaker 1You might decide to be what's called what I call through Nebra. I call it a bunker Christianity. What is that? A bunker Christianity. The world is very bad.[00:03:21.940] - Speaker 1Very, very bad. And so I have found Jesus and I have found a safe tower, a safe bunker to go and hide. It has a four foot thick door. I'm going to get in it and close it. I know Jesus says, love neighbor, but have you seen my neighbors?[00:03:38.390] - Speaker 1They're crazy town, right? I'm going to live in a bunker, and hopefully pretty soon God will, I got a ticket to heaven, so God will extricate me from this terrible world and we'll be done. That I call Bunker Christianity. It's all bad. We hide, we separate and protect ourselves from the world around us.[00:03:57.630] - Speaker 1The next one. So if that's bunker Christianity, here's something I call bleeping Christianity.[00:04:06.100] - Speaker 1Bleeping Christianity. Yes, the world is bad, but we'll bleep out the swears, right? As long as we close our eyes, keep our head down, we have to go in the world because we need to work. We have to go in the world. And I guess God does say love neighbors, but I'm only going to really love certain ones.[00:04:23.630] - Speaker 1And really, if there's something bad, if we bleep it out, cross it out, create a veggie tail, subculture for it all, we can kind of close our eyes enough and keep our little circle healthy. Some permeable walls to let some people in, but we keep it clean. Close your eyes and figure a way through that's. The second one, third one, chainsaw Christianity. The world's kind of half good, half bad, right?[00:04:53.060] - Speaker 1But guess what? If we work together, we can cut out the bad parts, right? We can slice out the parts that are bad. And if we do this really well, we'll actually remove the bad and keep the good. And we've got to now work out what parts are cut out and what parts are kept, right?[00:05:10.280] - Speaker 1Chain cells, zoom zone. We're going to go through bit by bit as the church and figure this out. Have you put a pin in yet? Are you stopping in one of these? Here we go.[00:05:21.470] - Speaker 1Next one. Number four. I call this power suit Christianity, right? What does a power suit do? They know that the world isn't all bad.[00:05:32.610] - Speaker 1In fact, if I put on my power suit, if I figure out I can use the world's ways, I can use the world's techniques to get Jesus's accomplishments done, right. The world actually has some pretty good things. Like if we just vote for the Republicans or the Democrats, we are going to figure this out. Power suit Christianity. If we can get in places of power, then we will be in control, right.[00:05:57.530] - Speaker 1If our nation was only just ever Christian and we got there and we had enough people operating there, we would be good. God can use the bad things of the world to his advantage and recreate the world in a better way. At the very least. If I'm a lawyer or a businessman or parent, jesus has some little hot tips to help me get through things, right? I'm mostly of this way, but the pro tips of Jesus give me the advantage.[00:06:27.520] - Speaker 1I have some values advantage going on on my side if I follow Jesus a little bit. And the last one, hot tub Christianity. I like this one. Look at this. Chill dude.[00:06:40.090] - Speaker 1Whatever happens, happens. I don't want to look any different than my neighbor. I want to look like the world around me. Right? The world around me is going this direction.[00:06:49.090] - Speaker 1Well. Jesus helps me just go with the flow, dude. Right. All is well. I just soak in whatever feels good.[00:06:57.050] - Speaker 1I don't look any different than the culture around me. I am exactly like it in every way. If you were to put a taut tub Christian beside anybody who wasn't Christian, you would not really see a difference. They would be about the same. So you see from bunker Christianity all the way through, nebras points these out.[00:07:15.300] - Speaker 1He has different ways of talking about them in his Christian culture book. You have probably read it and we get to the other side with hot tub Christianity. What do you think? What do you think?[00:07:28.820] - Speaker 1Who are you? Or maybe it's easier to point figure out somebody else. Who is that Christian that you know, that you really don't like very much, right? Are you frustrated with the hot tub Christians that you know, oh, they're just caving in, right? Are you frustrated with the bunker Christians who is hiding away from the world or somebody in between?[00:07:49.000] - Speaker 1Richard Nebras points these five out. How do you go forward with it? What do you think is the right answer? Which is the best way? Is there another way?[00:08:03.280] - Speaker 1I think sometimes we have to pause and wonder at how Jesus is helping us navigate the world around us. And in this room I almost wonder if we have somebody in every one of those camps in one way or another. And so when we encounter each other, we go how are these people navigating the world? Why do they see it differently than me? Well, the pietists are these people who were dealing with the same things that you are in the world.[00:08:29.880] - Speaker 1But it was a long time ago so they didn't have running water or electricity, which made it just a little bit harder. But they still had great challenges around them in the world, and there were very major challenges. And there's a story, it's one of the starting stories of pietism. And I've shared this one other time, and a lot of people talk to me about it, but it's a story of a woman named Maria Nil's daughter. I came across it again as I was reading, and I wanted to share the story again.[00:08:56.560] - Speaker 1They called her Mother of Val Farm, or Mori Val, and she was a widow, mother of six, who in Sweden at that time. If your parents owed money to somebody else, you could give them your kids as a servitude to pay off your debt. Yeah. So your children would essentially become slaves to someone else, and they could be in that state for a long time. But if the parents passed away, these children, instead of going to an orphanage, they would go and they'd be in some sort of indentured servitude or even slavery to somebody else.[00:09:33.500] - Speaker 1And this woman, a mother of six, she was deeply moved by Jesus, and she saw this happen. And she probably she probably didn't know neighbor's construct, but she was probably looking and going, I could hide in a bunker and be away from these kids.[00:09:49.120] - Speaker 1I could maybe just keep my eyes closed. I could say, oh, this slavery is whatever. I could move all the way down, or maybe I could join in and buy a couple, too. They could be helpful around the house. Right?[00:10:03.800] - Speaker 1What do you think she did? She was so moved by the person of Jesus that she did something that I think is outside of these. Her response to a world of cruelty and sin and shame and anxiety was to serve it, to serve the world. And she went and she found these kids and she bought them and bought their freedom and took them into her home, and she made her home their home. She didn't make a big political statement about it.[00:10:36.160] - Speaker 1She wasn't like everybody else. They probably rolled her eyes and said, how are you going to afford it? You're a single mom. But she said, I have Jesus in my heart, and I am deeply moved by what Jesus has done for me, that I am stepping out into the world to be like Jesus, to serve a broken world. Her inner devotion turned into external action, and she became a servant of these children and the system around them.[00:11:02.550] - Speaker 1She served these kids neither a bunker Christian nor a hot tub Christian. She was what I'm going to call a tea towel Christian. What do you do with a tea towel? You wipe up spills, you set the table, you put something in the oven, you pull it out. She was serving the world.[00:11:19.100] - Speaker 1She didn't know how to solve the big problems, but she stepped in because she believed that the way of Jesus solves the world's problems. So I'm going to call this I have a slide for it. I call it servant Christianity, tea towel Christianity. I'm going to coin it here, right? Other people have.[00:11:37.380] - Speaker 1I'm just using it. Jesus washed the world's feet when his disciples came around a table. One of the first things he did at the Last Supper was he got on his knees and he wrapped some cloth around him and he pulled out a tea towel and he washed his disciples feet. He said, this is how you navigate a broken world. You serve it, you touch it, you pray for it, you bless it.[00:12:07.050] - Speaker 1Jesus then sacrifices himself for it. Like Maria Nil's daughter, she saw how Jesus gave his life up for another as the ultimate act of servitude. And she or she was giving up the comforts of her life to serve another. These carry the story of God in it. Let's unpack a little bit of scripture here and get a sense of something.[00:12:34.040] - Speaker 1Hebrews, the book of Hebrews was written for anxious Christians. Anxious Christians. Do you feel like an anxious Christian? I got some low level anxiety going on. I am there.[00:12:46.040] - Speaker 1And when I enter the book of Hebrews, maybe sometimes you enter the Bible thinking, I'm just going to tell you something that you don't got all altogether here. Maybe you go in with some anxiety. But the book of Hebrews was for those who thought they had to add something to the story of God to spice it up. For the bunker Christians who weren't enough to just follow Jesus. He had to go hide away from the world.[00:13:09.360] - Speaker 1The bleeping Christians, the chainsaw Christians, the power suit Christians, the hot tub Christians. This author of Hebrews reorients the people to a way of walking together with Jesus in the Jesus way in a broken world. And so the covenant, the early covenant people, these pietists, they called it a kind of common faith for the common good, a kind of faith that saves us from getting in the way so we can get on the way. I'm going to say that again. They came to the discovery of a kind of faith that saves us from getting in the way so we can get on the way to get at this, to get at serving like Jesus.[00:13:50.720] - Speaker 1How can we possibly serve this world? A world that's so contrary to life, so contrary to joy, to peace, to mercy? How can we love without anxiety? How can we possibly step into the chaos? How can we live another day for this?[00:14:06.840] - Speaker 1I think Hebrews unpacks the faith of Jesus people in the world, and they use this phrase called the priesthood. Now, what do you think when I say the word priests? Maybe a person in a big gown, maybe swinging an incense thing, right? Whatever your image is of a priest, maybe wearing a clergy collar or something? Well, the image in Jesus time was actually a whole class of citizens who worked in the temple.[00:14:35.460] - Speaker 1Their job was to keep the temple quite pure. They were gatekeepers. They were door openers to the life of God and the life of people. People, of course, are messy. God is pure.[00:14:48.230] - Speaker 1And in between were priests. And what they started to do in Jesus day is they were working harder to keep the door closed than open. If you came to the temple, you had to go through many layers to be clean enough to get into the life of God, right? And this is all set out in scripture, and we can talk about why that is, but it's set out in such a way that suddenly you could not easily go in unless you sacrifice something, unless you were holy and righteous and pure, you couldn't get in otherwise. And even then it got to a certain point where the Gentiles, the non Jews stayed way out.[00:15:22.460] - Speaker 1The Jewish women could get a little bit closer, and the men I don't know, it should have maybe been switched around, but anyway, the men were allowed even closer. Maybe this is where all the problems came in. They should have had some other ladies in there running the show, right? Anyway, so they got a little closer and closer and eventually it wasn't even the men were good enough. It was only one person a year who could really go right in.[00:15:43.460] - Speaker 1And even then it wasn't enough. Why am I talking about priesthood while Hebrews begins to break down something for us, this language of priest and this act of opening a door between God and the world actually was turned on its head. And in one Peter two nine, it says that you are a priesthood of believers, the whole church, you are all priests for God. And that for people would have been like what? You have a job of showing the goodness of God, not to protect God from people, but to turn around and be the people of God, bringing the hope and goodness of Jesus of God into the world.[00:16:25.230] - Speaker 1You are priesthood. You are the usherers of the goodness of God into the world. And the book of Hebrews takes all the anxiety out of this. It allows us to become people who serve Hebrews. One begins with this.[00:16:42.200] - Speaker 1It says, God promised everything to the sun, okay? The sun radiates God's own glory and expresses the very character of God. He sustains everything by his mighty power. It starts out and says, there is one priest, there is one who reflects God. Not one man going in, but there's one man who's coming out, and his name is Jesus.[00:17:04.370] - Speaker 1He reflects God and he's stepping into the world. And then the writer of the book of Hebrews begins to unpack this even more. And it is the most liberating thing I think we can hear today. Hebrews 414 goes on and it says this since. So then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, jesus, the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe.[00:17:27.460] - Speaker 1This high priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for we all faced no, for he faced all the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we receive his mercy and we will find grace to help us when we need it most. Hebrews turns it around. It's not going into the temple to encounter God, but the great High Priest is from there.[00:17:55.420] - Speaker 1And he says, ah, I know you are weak. I know you do not hear the voice of God in the way that you would hope. And so Jesus, he becomes this great high Priest who is on the journey out. And here's what he does. He steps into the world and he shows us how to step into the world.[00:18:12.100] - Speaker 1He knows we're weak, he knows we're tempted, but he did what he what we couldn't. He is sinless, utterly sinless. He is pure and blameless. He is holy and he has stepped into our world. So Hebrews ten, it breaks it down even more.[00:18:28.760] - Speaker 1I'm going to take us on a journey here. Hebrews 1014 says this there he waits until his enemies are humbled and made a footstool under his feet. For by the one offering, he forever made perfect those who are being made holy. Jesus, by this sacrifice on the cross, he enters into the world and he is the one who has made the sacrifice. Instead of people having to come into the temple and make a sacrifice and cover for themselves and try to make their world right again, jesus is the one who comes out and his sacrifice is enough.[00:19:06.980] - Speaker 1His sacrifice covers people so they can go around not feeling the shame and the guilt of their sin, not wondering when they're going to get out of the bunker and into the world, but invited in to become also priests too. No more sacrifices are needed covered. Your visa bill is paid in full. You owe nothing more. He laid down his life for the world.[00:19:30.860] - Speaker 1It says in verse 18, so we are forgiven. It is done. This is the great hope of Jesus, is that he has been the ultimate priest for us. He has covered us. And so it says in verse 16, so therefore then let us approach the throne with confidence.[00:19:49.780] - Speaker 1We can wander right into God's space. I remember my dad worked at an office growing up, and I would go through and there was layers of secretaries that he had out front, different people, and I would go through and I would just wave at them all. I'd go right in. Even if dad was on the phone with some up and up super power person, he'd put the phone down and I could go right into my dad's office any time of the day, and he'd always put his phone down and say, hey, I got to call you about my son's here, right? And he'd put it down.[00:20:27.740] - Speaker 1I remember when Kelly used to work as one of the many people out front, and she said to me, he's kind of scary, that guy. He is working hard. He is like the boss man in the corner office. And then we got married, and she saw my dad in his underwear, and it was like, whoa, this has changed everything, right? Yeah.[00:20:48.520] - Speaker 1Who hasn't?[00:20:53.460] - Speaker 1Something changes. I because I'm my dad's son, I'm allowed to go past all the important people and get right into his office, and he gives me his full attention. And then, guess what? When Kelly married me, she went from not just being some employee somewhere, but she went and she could come right into my dad's house. She becomes his daughter in law.[00:21:14.720] - Speaker 1She's allowed in. I'm allowed in. This is the reality of it. And in Jesus, we are allowed right into the very center of the life of God. And we can go by anything we think is a barrier and be like, hello.[00:21:26.980] - Speaker 1No, I am here as a child of God. I'm adopted. And, yes, I'm a Gentile. I wasn't a Jew. I'm a bunch of things.[00:21:35.300] - Speaker 1Yes, I'm a sinner. I got a lot of issues. But guess what? I'm allowed to go right in. Right in.[00:21:40.440] - Speaker 1And there is nothing blocking me because what Jesus has done.[00:21:46.760] - Speaker 1Hebrews three one takes this good news and it says this. And so, dear brothers and sisters who belong to God and our partners with those called to heaven, think carefully about this jesus, whom we declare to be God's messenger and high priest, for he was faithful to God who appointed him. Dear brothers and sisters who belong to God, we now belong to him. We are now part of the Fellowship of the Rings. We are now journeys on this.[00:22:19.360] - Speaker 1We are now brothers and sisters. Not just one person, but we are a crew. We are a team. We are a tribe. We are now a clan of people who together get access to God.[00:22:31.860] - Speaker 1What does this look like? Why is this important? Why am I talking about this today? Well, the early Piatus, they love this idea that they were priests. They were part of those who were opening the doors of God's family to the world.[00:22:47.080] - Speaker 1They were pulling back the shutters and the curtains. They were cracking open doors, and they were all able to go to God and then step into the world. Go to God and step into the world. In fact, priests were considered servants in ancient times. And their clothes, they were servant gowns, stoles were tea towels, and they would serve by setting the table for worship.[00:23:10.080] - Speaker 1They would set a place of worship, and they would set out a table, and they'd say, everyone's around everyone's, welcome to Jesus table. And these priests were tablesetters. They were saying come. Come to the table. These pietists took this very seriously.[00:23:25.630] - Speaker 1They loved this, that they too could be priests in the world, that Maria could be a priest in the world going out to find these kids and say, you are welcome. You are freed from your slavery, and I serve you, and that's going to change your life and mine. Come. Jesus is for you. They are priests revealing and responding to the presence of God in the world God loves.[00:23:49.880] - Speaker 1They are spreading the feast of hope, love, joy, and peace in the world that has none. They're not concerned with running to a bunker. How can I serve at a table when I'm hiding in a bunker? They're not firing up a chainsaw to cut something out of a world that they think has all gone bad. They're setting a table.[00:24:08.240] - Speaker 1They're serving it. They're wiping up spills. They sure aren't sitting in a hot tub. They're out there getting involved. They look different than the world around them.[00:24:17.340] - Speaker 1The world's selfish. Not these people in their service. They give up their whole lives. They were connecting God's world to our world in every sphere of life. And people called them weird for it, but they said common places are now holy places because of Jesus.[00:24:36.620] - Speaker 1Sweden and the new places that they're coming to. These people were movers and shakers because they would serve. That was the way that they saw the world changing. And each person could do this. Every single person was given the gift to be able to do this.[00:24:53.300] - Speaker 1One Corinthians two seven Calls talks about gifts for the common good. Every person has a tea towel and a handful of something to serve. Every person can. Each person is a priest with a tea towel. And they're serving up delicious goodness for all.[00:25:11.080] - Speaker 1They're opening all the doors to God's goodness and saying, everyone is welcome. Every home a table, a gathering place of sacred celebration. In fact, they were distraught. They called the early pious. They called horrid.[00:25:26.220] - Speaker 1That only the clergy got to be priests, that only the clergy got to set a table. Only the clergy could talk about the good news of Jesus, and everybody else just had to sit there. They said, this is horrid. This is absolutely not how it should be. These early piatists, they became pastors.[00:25:44.800] - Speaker 1Their pastors first modeled and then reminded and then challenged and invited all the people to use all their gifts as the full priesthood of believers. The Church of God fully activated to live out their faith in real ways. No pastor was sending people to a bunker or a hot tub. They were saying, no, let's get around the table and serve up a feast of God's goodness where we are.[00:26:10.060] - Speaker 1The church, according to Christopher Gertz, that does not have a common priesthood for the common good will and I quote, turn lay people from full participants in the mission of the church into fickle consumers and idle spectators, he says. Gen. Hatmaker says this framework sets leaders and followers up for failure, creating a church centric paradigm in which discipleship is staffled and program driven. This slowly builds a consumer culture wherein the spiritual responsibilities transferred from Christians to pastors, and it's a recipe for disaster. Did you know that it might serve my ego really well if I'm the center Lake Ridge and it will destroy me and destroy us all.[00:26:59.500] - Speaker 1I'm going to name it. Did you know that if I am the only one bringing my gifts to the table, it will destroy me and you, because you will not get to do what you are called to do, which is to be the servants of Jesus in your place. You are each as gifted as I am. I have particular gifts, but you are each as gifted, and you are being called to step into your gifts, into your world, and to be servant. Tea towel christians along with me.[00:27:30.280] - Speaker 1I might show you how. I might teach you how. You might come to me for advice. But this is Lake Ridge is yours to carry. So what does this mean for living this one and beautiful life?[00:27:43.450] - Speaker 1Well, first, I think it's to realize that you have a calling, that each person here altogether with those beside you, that you can fully grab hope of the truth. That your life is ground zero for seeing God in your life. Your life is ground zero for the holiest work that God can do. It happens here and now, not next week. Didn't happen four years ago when you went to that retreat somewhere.[00:28:08.440] - Speaker 1It is happening right now in you.[00:28:13.960] - Speaker 1It's happening in you. It's happening in me. This very moment and the next. You can serve your world and open up the doors to God's spirit. No anxiety.[00:28:22.210] - Speaker 1Whether you are good enough, Hebrews covers that. If you think I'm not good enough, Hebrews takes the anxiety away and says, don't worry. You don't have to worry about being good enough, smart enough, strong enough, fast enough. All of those things. Anxiety.[00:28:35.190] - Speaker 1Please be gone with that. Don't be afraid. Jesus got you covered. If you're wise enough, don't worry. You're you're covered by faith in Jesus.[00:28:44.960] - Speaker 1We can be a common priesthood for the common good. Chestermere has you. Chestermere has us. We are ground zero for the work of God in a broken world. Now, you might need to do some work to be a servant.[00:29:00.060] - Speaker 1You might need to learn a couple of things. I think if I today went and worked at Boston Pizza, I would be a terrible, terrible servant at the table. You'd be covered in spaghetti by the time the time is out. I know that. I'd be in the back kitchen.[00:29:12.310] - Speaker 1I I wouldn't know anything. You might have to go on a journey. Did you. Know, we have a youth ministry here, Lake Ridge. We love teens.[00:29:20.640] - Speaker 1You might say, Man, I feel called to love some teens. You might have to do some homework. You might have to read a book about teens. You might then have to learn some teens names and get to know their families. You might have to talk to some people about how to do teen ministry.[00:29:39.640] - Speaker 1And then you're going to have to be rejected by twelve teens before you get around to one of them going, hey, you are maybe kind of cool, but not really, but maybe one day, right?[00:29:49.720] - Speaker 1That's the journey of servant. When we take what you do and call it just volunteer work and say, come in and plug in here and be done. We are diminishing what you are called to do as God's people. And if you say, I do not have enough capacity, guess what Hebrew says you do? Hebrew says you're being given everything you need to serve.[00:30:14.420] - Speaker 1It's really hard to be a bunker Christian or a hot tub Christian, but to be a servant Christian, jesus shows us the way and we can step into it. But it might take a journey for you. You might have to take a class. You might need a mentor. You might need to go through a Bible study.[00:30:30.100] - Speaker 1You might need to change something in your life and move it around so that you are in a place to join the team of priests who are serving, to open the doors and let the hope of Jesus into our world. That might be work, but it is the good work. I bet it was very hard for Maria when she welcomed those kids into her home, but she knew no of no other way to serve the world than to serve like Jesus. So Jesus, this is what he does. He washes feet, he sets a table and he serves a world that hurts.[00:31:08.260] - Speaker 1He says, Come to the throne of grace and mercy and be transformed into the likeness of Jesus. And live not by your great skill or great anxiety, but by my gift to you. It's a gift to come and serve. How will we do this? Will we be pleased enough to have Preston serve as a priest?[00:31:32.840] - Speaker 1I hope not. I hope not. Will I be your pastor to remind you that you are priests of the city? Imagine what 100 people that's you could do to a city if you knew what you were about, if you knew what you could do with tea towels, if you knew what you could do with your one and beautiful life, to give it away and wash the feet of your city. You could serve kids, you could serve the poor, you could welcome newcomers.[00:32:07.310] - Speaker 1You could care for the addicted, the fearful, the ashamed, the proud, the sinners and the saints all served at this table and at your table. Something that I think that we might start doing soon is I think once a month we eat together at each other's tables every Sunday that I think we have communion. I'd love it if all of us went to each other's homes afterwards or something. I wonder about that.[00:32:34.480] - Speaker 1I'm going to end with this scripture and we're going to share and communion together.[00:32:42.340] - Speaker 1I want us to wrestle with this grand calling of being part of this grand team of people who are serving. Says this in John 13 before the Passover celebration. Jesus knew that his hour had come to leave this world and return to the Father. He had loved his disciples during his ministry on earth and now he loved them to the very end. It was time for supper, and the devil had already prompted Judas, son of Simon Escariot to betray Jesus.[00:33:14.150] - Speaker 1Jesus knew that the Father had given him authority over everything and that he had come from God and would return to God. So he got it from the table, took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist, poured water into a basin. Then he began to wash his disciples feet drying them with the towel he had wrapped around them.[00:33:44.430] - Speaker 1After washing feet, he put on his robe again and sat down and asked do you understand what I'm doing? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you're right, because that's what I am. Since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet you ought to wash each other's feet. I've given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you.[00:34:06.050] - Speaker 1I tell you the truth. Slaves are not greater than their master, nor is a messenger more important than the one who sends the message. Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them. Friends, will you come to this table? Come to a table for a God who washes your feet and says, welcome.[00:34:25.260] - Speaker 1Can you do this too? Can you do this thing and follow me? Can you wash others feet, too? Did you know Jesus washed Judas's feet? I think Jesus knew what was happening with Judas and he washes his feet.[00:34:41.790] - Speaker 1We aren't really supposed to pick and choose whose feet we're washing or who we serve. We change the world like Jesus by serving like Jesus. So will you come to the table that you might set the table for others? Will you let your life be a home for God's presence as part of the priesthood of believers who carries in you the very temple and presence of God with doors open to others? Will you do it in the Jesus way?[00:35:12.170] - Speaker 1Or do you prefer the power suit way? Chainsaw way, bunker way, bleeping way? Will we be this kind of community? Is it possible that you are the church? You are the presence of God?[00:35:27.710] - Speaker 1You are the priests of God? My role is simply a servant pastor who invites us all to take up the tea towel. So come to this table not because you must, but because you may. Not because you are strong, but because you are weak. Come.[00:35:45.170] - Speaker 1Not because of any goodness of your own gives you any right to come, but because you need mercy and help. Come because you love the Lord a little and would love to love him a lot. Come because he loves you and gave himself for you. Come and meet the risen Christ for we are his body, a priesthood who inhabit a universe of grace. Prince, we're going to eat at this table and I invite you to come.[00:36:15.970] - Speaker 1I'd maybe like to invite up our worship team to come and just play for us a little bit. I'd invite you to come and grab a little cup. There's some juice in there and I'll rip off a piece of bread and you can go and take it and sit down. We'll, we'll take it together. I want us to realize that we are the body of Christ broken, but the blood of Christ is a sacrifice for the world.[00:36:40.540] - Speaker 1And we, because of Jesus, get to be those who walk out into the world as priesthood, the priesthood of believers, common faith for common good servant Christians attell faith. Amen. Amen. Come, come to the table.[00:38:09.750] - Speaker 1Thank you.[00:40:22.550] - Speaker 1Christ alone cornerstone we made strong and singers love through the soul he is gone christine cornerstone we can make strong saviors love through the storm he is lonely[00:42:20.820] - Speaker 1my fellow priests, those who've been covered and forgiven. Those who have been given grace and abundant grace. Those who are always welcome at God's table. Those who are welcomed into the very inner family of God. All these things are true about you.[00:42:35.100] - Speaker 1You are created and loved and provided for. May this body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, may it remind you, may it may it nourish you and bring your whole heart and life into an imagination that you are part of this story, that he is in you. Amen. Amen. Amen.[00:43:02.150] - Speaker 1Please stand with me.[00:43:09.030] - Speaker 1Friends, this week I don't know what your homework is, but maybe your homework is this to try and serve. I don't know what that looks like. It's going to look different for every single person. You know what your gifts are, but I have a hunch that Jesus is nudging you to say, would you join me at the table? Would you pick up a tea towel and join me?[00:43:29.940] - Speaker 1The world sucks. It's hard, it's broken, but I know away. It involves washing some feet, it involves blessing, it involves setting a table. Would you join me in that? Friends, I trust that this week the Holy Spirit is going to show you some beautiful way that he's inviting you to be a servant along with him.[00:43:49.700] - Speaker 1I think in doing so, you'll join this beautiful group of mission friends who are joining with Jesus in this world. Amen. And you aren't alone. You're part of a community, right? You're part of a community.[00:44:00.390] - Speaker 1I'm not alone. You aren't alone. This is good news. May Lord bless you and keep you. May Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you.[00:44:07.950] - Speaker 1May Lord lift up his countenance upon you and grant you his peace as you go from here today. I'm going to pray now for our hot dogs because every hot dog needs prayer, right? Jesus, thank you for this community, for the tables that are set and for the ways that you come and serve us first so that we would be those who serve a world in need. May we be not afraid to be servants in this world. It seems small, but you showed us how.[00:44:36.050] - Speaker 1And may a world be changed because of us being servants in the Jesus way. Oh, Holy Spirit, this is a big calling to ask us to be servants, but may we do it. And may you empower us and give us eyes to see. And so bless our time together. May we see each other, serve each other, love each other and find you in doing so.[00:44:58.240] - Speaker 1So bless these hot dogs. Bless the ketchups and the mustards. May this be the place, the altar of our great love for each other and for you. Thank you for Dell and Pat. May this little lunch be a celebration of their years of service, too.[00:45:13.650] - Speaker 1In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

00:00:03.130] - Speaker 1Hi there. My name is Preston Pouteaux. Welcome to the Lake Ridge Community Church Podcast. This is where we share some of our messages from Sunday mornings. So we're glad you're here to listen. We'd love for you to join us in person. We meet on Sunday mornings at 10:30 a.m at Our Lady of Wisdom School here in Chestermere. At our core, we're a community of people, so we gather on on Sundays. But we also do a lot in the week together. We are people learning to follow Jesus and love our city. So to learn more, visit lakeridgecommunity.com. Hope to check in and visit with you soon. Take care. Thanks for listening.[00:00:44.240] - Speaker 2What do you think are in here? Look, I'm going to share with you what's in some of these things. You can sit on down. The sermon will peak in about five, six minutes and then it'll just all kind of slide down after that. Hey. We are on a journey all year long to talk what it is to have this one and beautiful life in Jesus. I just firmly believe that Jesus shows us do I got a question already about the whole sermon series about the end of the entire year? Yeah. Okay. We are exploring what it is and I think I'm proposing all year long that if we point our eyes towards Jesus, he will show us what to do with this one and beautiful life. And so we're going to be doing this throughout the year in lots of different ways, exploring what it is to be human in the hands of the loving God that made us. And so we are about to enter on a bit of a journey and and we are going to talk for the next few Sundays. Our sermon series is called Mission Friends. A Pious way to be human.[00:01:49.260] - Speaker 2That's a lot there. Isn't that's a mouthful? And that's why I'm going to unpack it over the next little while here the story of God. We come from a tradition as covenant people, part of the Evangelical Covenant Church, and as a group called Pietists, and I'll explain what that is, is that we deeply love the Bible. We think that the story of God makes sense of our lives today. We think that if we somehow were to get into God's story or have God's story get into us, some interesting weaving of God's story in our story, that somehow, in some way, we would begin to walk in a way that is a lot like Jesus. Did Jesus read the Bible? Did you ever think about that? Did Jesus read the Bible? What did Jesus think of the Bible? What did Jesus think of God's story? That's kind of a weird kind of mind trip, isn't it? Because we say that Jesus is God, so did he have to learn the Bible? What did he have to do with the story of God? We're going to unpack that a little bit kids. And I want to show you my first thing here.[00:03:00.240] - Speaker 2And it is a box. I got a box. It's my daughter's 9th birthday today. And she was given this beautiful box by her sister. And I thought it was lovely. Let's see what's inside. Another box. I know. How deep is this going to go? Did you know that when Jesus was young and all the way while Jesus was growing up, he would go to something called synagogue? This was the place where people would gather, kind of like this. And they would gather around and somebody would go to the back in the front, behind a curtain and pull out a box. And this box would be raised up high and carried. And it was a big box. This is a little box. But it was a big box that they lifted out. And suddenly this was very important. Suddenly the box would be opened and in it would come out a Bible. Well, the Bible looked a little different back then. The story of God was in a big scroll. The scroll was probably about this big. Sometimes it took two people to carry it, and it was covered in a big velvet thing and it was inside of a box.[00:04:12.660] - Speaker 2And the box was called the Arc of the Law, right? And Jesus, they would sometimes have people read. And one day, Jesus, they brought out this big scroll, pulled it out. You see, no one had a Bible, right? There was only one kept here. And they open it up and they'd unfold it. And Jesus would read from it. And one day, Jesus opened it up and he read from it, and he said, today, what I'm reading is come fulfilled. It's come alive. What I'm reading is suddenly coming out of the box, and it is now going to enter into the world. And everybody was like, what is he talking about? No, what you do with it, everybody thought, is you take it afterwards and you put it back in the box and then back in the other box and you put it away. And Jesus, he came out and he said, no, today this story goes out. What do you think about that? What do you think about something like that? Well, this is the next thing. So Jesus brings a story and it brings it out of the box. He takes it as a gift and he unwraps it.[00:05:26.570] - Speaker 2That's one of the most important things about the Bible, is we unwrap it. And the second one is this. Jesus did something even more. Look at this. This is every home has one of these. Does anybody guess what this is? A junk box. Yeah. This is a sewing kit. Look at this. This is a sewing kit. We got different colors of stuff, of thread in there. We have needles. Be careful if you put your fingers in there. And we have look at this. Where is it? We have patches. This pair of jeans that I'm wearing, these are my favorite pair of jeans. And look at the knee. I wore these today because look at what I did. Look at my patch job. What do you think of that? Terrible, right? That's a terrible patch job. I know nothing about patching things, but this is where I go to patch things up and sew something onto my favorite jeans. Well, guess what? Did you know that Jesus, he took the story of God and he sowed it into his heart. He sowed it into his life. The grand story of God became so connected to Jesus that he carried with it wherever he went.[00:06:38.970] - Speaker 2Did you know that Jesus, he knew the story of God so well? He knew the grand story. In fact, he refers to in his teachings. He refers to Adam and Eve and Abel and Noah and Lot. He refers to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He tells stories of Moses and David and Solomon, even the Queen of Sheba. Elijah naman Zechariah daniel Jonah. These are just a few. Then he starts to quote Psalms, and he quotes Isaiah and Malachi and Deuteronomy. Jesus was just telling the story of the Old Testament over and over again. Woven into his life was this grand story. It was his. Did you know one in ten things that Jesus says is directly just quoted from the Old Testament? 180 verses of the 1800 places where Jesus is talking about something. It is stories from the Old Testament, the story of God, it is etched in his heart. Or as I say, it is sown into him, he is carrying it with him. His heart is so etched in his heart, and it spills out in his life to heal, to remind, to forgive, to teach, and to guide his friends. You see, it's not locked away in a box.[00:07:58.800] - Speaker 2It is now brought by Jesus and sewed into his heart. That's what he's carrying around, is this grand story sowed into his heart. Last thing, what do I got here? This is a good backpack. This has served me well for, like, 20 years. There's a lot going on in this backpack. Act back. Look at this. Yeah, I got a bee on there. I got a beekeeper. Look. Put that inside. What am I doing here? What am I doing? Yeah. What am I doing? Yeah, I'm going somewhere with this man. I'm on the move, right? Did you know that Jesus, he didn't just put the Bible back into the box, it was stitched in his heart. But the Bible, his story of God that he's now carrying with him, is now on the move. He's taking it somewhere. One day, Jesus was on a journey, and he brought himself to this little mountain. It's called a mountain. It's called Mount Moray. And it isn't big, but on Mount Moray, at the base of Mount Moray, is this ancient, ancient long forgotten city, Schunum. And it was a place where a miracle happened in the Old Testament.[00:09:20.370] - Speaker 2It was a place where in the Old Testament, there was once a guy named Elijah. And Elisha, when he would pass by this mount, he'd stay in this family's house in Schunum. And when Jesus went and stayed at when Elisha went and stayed at the Schunumites house, these people, they wanted a kid really bad. So one day they had a little baby boy. And the baby boy grew up. And Elisha got to know this family and care for them as he's traveling around the land. Well, one day this boy dies, and they send out far away they send out a person who goes a day away to find Elisha and say, come back. This person is dead. This kid that you know, that you love is dead. And Elisha comes back and he does all these different things that eventually the boy, can you believe it? Rises from the dead. He comes back from the dead. And it's a major story. Well, one day, Jesus went to the same place. Now. It's called name. Let's see what happens to that story. Jesus is walking through at the base of Mount Moray at the same place, and guess what he sees coming out of the town?[00:10:39.220] - Speaker 2It is a procession, a funeral. These people are carrying a boy that had died. And Jesus comes into this town, and guess what he does? I'm going to read it for you. Jesus comes into this town and he sees that these parents, they're so sad, their baby boy died. And he steps in to this place. And here is what Luke says happens in that amazing story. Goes like this. See if my little eyes can spot it. Goes like this. Soon afterward, Jesus went with his disciples to the village of Nain. Now, people would know where this is, right besides where this great other story happened. And a large crowd followed him, and a funeral possession procession was coming out. As he approached the village gate, the young man who had died was a widow's only son. And a large crowd from the village was with her. When the Lord saw her, his heart was overflowed with compassion. Don't cry, he said. Then he walked over to the coffin and he touched it, and the bearers stopped. Young man, he said, I tell you, get up. And the dead boy, he sat up and began to talk.[00:12:02.070] - Speaker 2And Jesus gave him back to his mother. Great fear swept over the crowd, and they praised God, saying, a mighty prophet has risen among us, and God has visited his people today. And the news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding countryside. You see, Jesus, he wasn't just pleased to keep the story of God in a box. He had taken the story and he wove it into his life, and it became his story. And guess what? He did. He went out and he enacted the story. He said, no, god didn't just work once in the Old Testament. God is at work here among you. Now, the story of God is a story that's on the move in me. What would it have been like for you to be his disciple? Watching that going, I thought that happened 800 years ago, only it happens now. Jesus is doing this. He enacts the story. What a move from a box kept behind a curtain to something that's actually changing the world around them, changing lives around them, bringing this boy back up from the dead. Almost everything Jesus said or did was to help people see that God is alive among them now.[00:13:16.670] - Speaker 2God is working in them now. Piatism. What an old fashioned word is that. Look at that. Piatist. Our family of churches, if there was Peterson's and Andersons around Swedes, there's not many around these days. There's a few. We have some residual Swedishness in us. I sometimes buy Ikea stuff just to keep a connection to these roots. Right. I love meatballs and those often help me stay grounded in my faith. Right. Something happened a few hundred years ago where the church in Sweden was just a building you went to. People had lost their passion for Jesus. I think historians would be pretty unified on that. You went there because actually it was law to go there. If you wanted to be a citizen of Sweden, you had to go to a Lutheran, swedish Lutheran Church. You didn't need to read your Bible, you didn't need to have a personal enjoyment of following Jesus. You didn't need any of that. As long as you showed up at church and paid your dues, you were a good Swede and a good Lutheran all in one. Well, something happened and there's a group of people who are just not so pleased with that.[00:14:28.570] - Speaker 2A group of people started to say, there's got to be way more. There's got to be way more than just going to a building and singing some songs. And so these people, they called themselves The Pietists because they started to do something. They unwrapped the Bible for themselves. And the Lutherans weren't pleased with this. Lutheran said, no, the Bible stays in the building. You don't read it in groups. And so they started these little groups called conventicles, and they'd get together and they'd read it. And as they started to read it, they started to stitch it into their own lives, started to weave it in patchwork by patchwork. The story became part of them and they would carry these stories. And the State church didn't really like that either, but they were like, no, we're onto something here. We're following the way of Jesus. We got it out of the box, we're stitching it to us now. We're on the move. So these Pietis started to move out. A lot of them moved over to north america, and they started schools, and they started hospitals, and they started orphanages, and they started churches. And these people were made fun of because they were too emotional about their faith.[00:15:43.610] - Speaker 2They wore their heart on their sleeves. The Piasts were kind of known as being emotional people. They're my friends. I feel things, right? I'm like, I feel like I'm in good company here, right? But they were emotional because they suddenly had a story that gave their lives a whole new framework for being their faith wasn't just something that stayed in a box, stayed in a church, stayed away, but it was something that they could carry with them, and it was theirs. And when they started to see that the story of God could be fulfilled in them, in the real world, in the place around them, in their neighborhoods, in their families, when they started to see that happen, they were overjoyed. They were considered tremendously joyful people because they discovered something really potent about what the story of God can do in them. And so they went to Alaska, and I got to meet some Inuit. I had lunch with some Inuit people. Ivan Avenue, him and I, we had a supper, and he told me about the little village that he came from. And he said, years and years ago, some Covenant people, they came to his village, and the hope of Jesus was shared through all the villages and villages and villages.[00:17:03.670] - Speaker 2And people were deeply moved to the point now where there's not much in the way of swedes up there anymore. But, boy, is there a whole bunch of Covenant churches all over Alaska. Every second little village has people who are deeply moved by this because they got to unpack the Bible for themselves and stitch the story and feel the deep sense that Jesus is their story. Not one brought by the swedes, but one that has become theirs. Because the Piatus, they always wanted the story to be yours, not one that's kept in a box, but one that's brought out. And so they went to Canada, they went to the Congo. There are more Covenanters in the Congo than there are in North America and to the east side of Chicago and all these places. And they've called themselves the Mission Friends. The mission friends. They're on this mission to be a part of the unpacking of the hope and story of God together. They realized that this was a together project, a community project. I want to ask you, is a story of God true for you? I often have people ask me, maybe because I'm the pastor and this is a good question to ask, but they go, Preston, is this true?[00:18:23.390] - Speaker 2Is this true? I often put a pause in there, mostly for dramatic effect, but I put a pause in there. And the reason I put a pause in there is because my question is this it might be inherently true, but if it's not true for you, then it's not true if it just stays in the box. And we put it on a shelf and we say to ourselves, I believe the Bible is true. And I put it up over here. But I've agreed that it's true. Is it really true? Does something stay true when it's meant to be lived? When it's meant to be carried out? When it's meant to be carried in community together, into and relived and fulfilled every day in your life and in the world around you. But it stays away in a box or in your nightstand and it's not known. And it's not lived out. Can we still call it true? So I put the dramatic pause in there, because I go, maybe it's not true for you. Maybe it's not true if it stays off to one side. Not that it's not inherently true, but if it's not true in you, then it's not part of your story.[00:19:37.110] - Speaker 2And you'll always see it as a dusty book. You always will. That's why we need Jesus. Not we need Jesus who shows us how to unpack, how to stitch, and then how to carry Jesus back at name. Imagine if you were there on that day when you saw Jesus raise this boy from the dead. Imagine if you were there and you saw as Jesus did, you know Jesus was going down to Jerusalem. And if you were going down to Jerusalem, you were going to worship in the Temple. And if you're going to worship in the Temple, guess what? You don't touch a dead body. You don't touch anything that'll make you unclean for you to be able to not worship at the big temple. And so they saw Jesus, and they were watching closely. And here Jesus shows up. If he was ten minutes early or ten minutes late, he would have missed the procession, but he showed up right on time. Because I think Jesus had this deep sense that his life was so unfolded into the grand story of God that he was stepping in right on time, and he came in to enact, and he touched that coffin.[00:20:49.630] - Speaker 2He didn't care if it was making Him dirty. He didn't care what it would do for Him for the next day or what people would think about Him. But he touched that coffin and that boy came to life. What would that say to you about how to follow Jesus if you lived that way? Could we just be asked to live out the story of Jesus now again, to mimic Him, to step into our world and try these things, to eat with sinners and saints? Could we try that? To touch the poor and sick, actually meet them and know their names, to gather, to learn, to teach, to love our enemies and be the last to be meek? Could we try those things? I wonder, my great wondering, could this happen what if the whole point of Lake Ridge was to be a community of people who so knew the story of God? It was so far out of the box, so stitched and woven into our lives and so much on our backs that we were out there every day going, oh, this story is alive in us. It is true in me because it is true right before me.[00:22:02.150] - Speaker 2The Spirit of God is so at work in my life and in front of me that I can step in. And I am here also fulfilling the grand story of God every single day. Could it be that that's what it is that we are doing here? What if we could see the pathway that the Spirit of God lays out in front of us because our eyes have been attuned to the little hints of God at work in us? That when there's a Saturday afternoon that we want to do one thing and the Spirit is saying, hey, why don't you come over here and give a call to your friend? Maybe go over to their house, check in on them, see how they're doing. That you have eyes because you're wearing the story of God glasses, right? And you are on the move, even if the path is not clear, like the song said on that dusty desert road, that we would have faith because the story of God is woven into us. Could you see yourself doing this? What would be your first step? Wonder what would be your first step in joining Jesus to take the scripture out of the box, stitch it into your lives, and take it on the move?[00:23:13.780] - Speaker 2What in your life today? What would be your first step in trying that? Do you think you could trust Jesus to do the things that Jesus did? Do you think you could trust your life to be woven into God's life, that you would be living out this story here? Or what is this idea of maybe being a mission friend and finding a way of following Jesus together? What does it say about how we carry the story of God into the world? On February 7, I'm going to be starting. It's just a living room conversation. We'll see where it goes. If some people show up, great. But it might be the start of something we are going to talk about. Just like how to get a Bible, how to begin this. Maybe you have a Bible, but you don't even know which way it goes up. That's okay. We're calling it no Experience Necessary because you don't need much experience with it. Or maybe you'll be thinking about maybe getting your kids a Bible. Maybe they don't have one. Or what reading it might look like in your life or stitching it into you. When I went to college, I studied with some guys who are tree planters.[00:24:17.550] - Speaker 2And you know what they would do? They would plant trees, and they would tape a piece of the page of the Bible on their arm, and they'd spend the day planting trees, memorizing the Bible. And by the end of it, they all came back to college and they memorized the whole Book of Psalms or something. What can you do there? I'm going to end with this story, the story that changed me when I was a little boy and got me on the road to read the Bible for myself. And it goes like this. It was told to me and absolutely changed me. There's a story from a long time ago that a little girl was worshipping with her church community in their basement in China. You could not worship out in the open. And so she would worship with her family and her friends, and they would worship in the basement of these homes, and they would draw all the curtains and make sure that nobody could see and to see what it was that they were doing, they'd do in secret. And this community, they only had one Bible, and the pastor had this one Bible, and they kept it hidden away in case somebody ever came in and wanted to take their Bible away.[00:25:30.010] - Speaker 2It was kept precious. It was very valuable to them. And as a boy, I heard this story, and I was like, what happens next? Well, one day, a little girl in this community, I always imagine her being about my age, maybe nine or ten, she went to the pastor of the community after one of their little secret gatherings one day, and she went in and she said, pastor, could I take the Bible home tonight? And the pastor, he says, you realize this is our only one. We keep it secret, we keep it safe, because this is our story. This gives us the hope of Jesus. And if this thing was missing, we'd be in some trouble. But the pastor, bless his heart, he he laid out all the ground rules. He said, Listen, okay, every night you can take this and you can take it home. We'll wrap it up, you can keep it under your shirt and you can take it home. And if you bring it home, the next bring it back to me the next morning. It should be good. Are you fine with that? And the little girl, she she took it home, and she would do this day after day.[00:26:35.290] - Speaker 2They came up with a routine. She did it well, pastor's, please. Got the Bible every morning back. And then one day, she stopped bringing the Bible, stopped asking for the Bible, and took a few days, and the pastor finally said to her, my girl, why don't you take the Bible anymore? Do you not read it? What's happened? The little girl, she said, I'm done. You're done reading it? Never heard of anybody who finished the Bible that quick. She said, no, I'm done copying it. I finished. I stay awake every night and I write down the whole story of God, and I make a mind. I know this is the only Bible in the in the whole village, but now there's two, and this one's mine. Now I can read it whatever I want. When I was a boy and I heard that story, I i had no interest in reading the Bible before that, but when I heard that story, I was like, some people spend their whole lives hoping to find the hope of Jesus. Some people spend their whole lives hoping to find a story that gives their story meaning in life. And here's this girl, and she finally finds her story.[00:27:53.990] - Speaker 2She finds the hope of Jesus, and the hope of Jesus becomes so she stitched it to her life, and it becomes hers, and it goes on the move. You see, my friends, we aren't starting an institution when we come together as a church. We're starting a movement. We are a bunch of people who take the story of God and we put it on our backs, and we enter into the world because this is a story that lives out of us. It is a story that grows and multiplies. Friends, I am not the keeper of this. I don't have one copy. And you come and you get a piece of it, and you go away from it, and we put the box back. Now, if we are to be God's people in this place, my friends, there is really good news. You, too, can get one on Amazon today paperback. It's cheap. You know what? I got people in this church that if you can't afford $10, we'll cover your $10. Anybody want to cover someone's $1010 to $10 and give them a Bible? Okay, we we have a few hands. Look, look at those hands and get cash out of them, right today, friends, we are going to start a movement here, okay?[00:29:05.860] - Speaker 2We're going to start a movement not of one pastor who brings up his Bible once in a while and tries to stitch something, but that you would take the story of God and find in all the ways that you think, whether you're I actually don't really care what version it is. I don't care where what it looks like, if it's got leather and it's this thick and you need a cart to pull it in or whether it's little. But to take the story of God and weave it into our lives this is what being the people of God is about. And you will be unsatisfied until you do. Friends, I hope that we are the people of God and people of the story mission, friends, who are on the move. So we're going to start something over this year. It might sound old fashioned to you, depending on your tradition, it might sound brand new, but I'd like you to get a Bible, and I'd like you. To start to learn about what it is, what the story does. Maybe you've just tried and you landed somewhere in Lamentations and you slammed it shut and said, no, I've tried that before.[00:30:10.610] - Speaker 2Don't start with Lamentations, we'll start somewhere else. But I am hoping that this year will be a year of change for us as we become people of the story. Because you need it to get through what you're going through. You need the story to empower you for where you are going. It's empowered millions of others, billions of others, and it's the only thing that's going to empower us. What I hope is that we become a movement of people, every single person patchwork covered in the story of God. So whatever we face, whatever we hit, we are ready to move forward again and again and again until we become a people so alive to the grand story that is adopted into ours. We are going to start doing this in kids ministry. We are hoping to give every kid a Bible or have them bring their Bible. If you want to bring your Bible with you to church, I'm going to be preaching in a way that we'll get to open it up. Maybe you want to write underneath it. You can write in a Bible. Did you know that Kelly used to rip pages out and give it to people?[00:31:12.070] - Speaker 2I was offended. My wife. But you can do what you want with it. Because guess what? You can get another one. Friends, this is good news for us. We're people of a story. We're mission friends. We're on this journey together. I caught this picture because, look, there's two little people in the back of a boat. We're not alone. We're not alone. Please stand with me. I often wonder where that Chinese girl went. She's probably a woman now. Maybe she's an old lady now. I don't know how old this story is, but I wonder what was it like for her to read a scripture that she wrote with her own hands? I wonder what it would be like for us to read a scripture that is ours. Not one that was passed to us by a great grandparent, but ours, our story that gives us life in everything we do. I wonder what a community would happen if that became us. That's my great hope for our kids. For you. For me. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and grant you his peace.[00:32:23.090] - Speaker 2People of the story, it is yours. Go from here in peace. Amen. Amen. Have a good week, everybody. Bless you.

[00:00:03.130] - Speaker 1Hi there. My name is Preston Pouteaux. Welcome to the Lake Ridge Community Church Podcast. This is where we share some of our messages from Sunday mornings. So we're glad you're here to listen. We'd love for you to join us in person. We meet on Sunday mornings at 10:30 a.m at Our Lady of Wisdom School here in Chestermere. At our core, we're a community of people, so we gather on on Sundays, but we also do a lot in the week together. We are people learning to follow Jesus and love our city. So to learn more, visit lakeridgecommunity.com. Hope to check in and visit with you soon. Take care. Thanks for listening.[00:00:43.440] - Speaker 2This is the funny part of the whole story. I really don't. I gave some really good spiritual advice to somebody that came back to me after they said that was some of the best advice I'd ever been given. And I was like, I am embarrassed and apologized because I have no idea what I said. Some of you remember this is probably three, maybe four years ago, but I had some really weird neurological nerve thing going on. And they put me on like, there's this drug, this drug. And then they found something from I don't know what corner of what street they found it on, but I was out of the moon. The joke in our house is, after I was better, thank you to a lot of prayer and care from a lot of people. I got better. And it was actually, I think it's miraculous that I did. And sometime later, my brother in law who lives in our basement, he goes, can you make those cinnamon buns again? I said, I've never made cinnamon buns in my life. He said, no, you made the best cinnamon buns we have ever had. Don't you remember?[00:01:39.450] - Speaker 2And everybody was just like, yeah, those were just phenomenal. And it was when I was high as a kite, I made these most amazing cinnamon buns. I don't even remember, and I've been asked to make them since. And I just don't want to go down that path again. Sometimes I think of that story because I had no idea what I was making when I was making it. I was not there when I was making this thing. I needed to bruise something up. And somehow out of me came this amazing cinnamon bun feast. I think my question for that, in sharing that, as we talk about a little bit about ingredients, we're going to weave some of these stories together is that sometimes we wonder, did God know what he was doing when he was making us? I don't want to really imply that God as high as the kite when he was making us, but sometimes if you read the Psalms, we get these stories of God's people saying, god, do you know what you're doing here? Do you know what you are making? We identify God that you created everything. And we love that you created everything.[00:02:49.500] - Speaker 2But when it comes to people, when it comes to us, we are a little bit mystified. Do you know what you are doing here? Are we, as humans, a cosmic mix up? Are we a mistake? Are we a fluke of nature? There are many philosophies out there that would say we sure are right. Humans are a big byproduct of some weird cosmic gas situation. There's nothing behind it. Enjoy the ride while you have it. Good. Well, it's a question that these writers ask in their anxiety about what it is to be human. In Psalm eight, we get a little bit of this. It's a psalm of David. It says this when I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you set in place says, what are we, mere mortals? That you would think about them, human beings, that you should care for them. He takes a look at humans and he's wondering, what are these things? The world is so big, there's so much going on, and what's a human? We're mere mortals, we have a short lifespan. We're here and then we're gone. Maybe we pass some stuff onto our kids.[00:04:02.500] - Speaker 2But what is this about? Right? Do you know what you've made here? God? Maybe you're wondering this here today too. Maybe you enjoy a good existential crisis sometimes where you stop and lean back and say, what am I here for? What is this life about? What is it to be human? Do we just come here and we suffer a little bit and we're done? Do I work my job and try to save up enough for retirement, which disappears when I finally get there? What is this about? Well, the psalm cries a similar cry and then we read he goes on in it, the writer of this psalm, and it says this says, yet you made them a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor. You gave them charge of everything you made, putting all things under their authority. He tries to orient humans in God's big story. Humans are somehow not as low as worms. They aren't way down there, and they aren't as high as God. They're somewhere in between. They have been given by God this authority to occupy this middle space, higher than this, lower than this. Humans, the ancient songs say they have a place in God's world.[00:05:14.120] - Speaker 2Humans have a home here. And science would say that we live in this wee little thin layer around a planet that's spinning through cosmic space. If we go up a little higher, we will suffocate. If we go down below, we'll suffocate. But we're all happy, right, in this little layer, right? It's kind of weird when you step back with it. If this is too much for you, then you can go back to what a lot of us do, which is to say, I can't think about it. But these psalms, they unpack it. We stand above the soils and the minerals around us, but we are below the angels, who in turn belong to God. And this cry rings through what are we? Last week we asked, Where are we? And we learned about God finding God's people or finding this husband and wife, Adam and Eve, under the undergrowth and said, Where are you? I had to discover that. And in this, we wonder, along with all these before us, what are we? And so our big conversation that we're doing is we're going to ask these big questions about what it is to be human.[00:06:17.740] - Speaker 2Because what you believe about being human will shape your entire life. It will shape everything you do. Your perceived origin story, where you came from, your place in the vast universe and all that we can and cannot do. It will utterly form us. And it could make us hide under a rock and shake in fear or step out boldly into this life. I think we have one beautiful life to live. And I think in Jesus we can step out in a beautiful way. So into this whole vast story comes Jesus, who shows us and demonstrates to us not only what it is to be human, but he reframes everything in a way that we can see ourselves, others and our creator with. This resounding proclamation that humans, the very ones standing in front of him, every human he met, that they can know who they are and whose they are. We are not going around with our eyes closed, blind, but we are stepping in as followers of Jesus with a huge capacity to step into life as a full human. Jesus lays out the foundation for the quest for humanity and for purpose by becoming a human.[00:07:32.300] - Speaker 2And to show us how. I want to share just a few things here as to what we are. What we are. There's three really basic biblical principles that we stand on that often goes in contrast to what the world around us might tell us. And if we had even just these three to wake up to every morning, we would be on a good start. For something that I'm going to share here that I think Jesus does in us. And it's this number one, we are God's handiwork. We are his beautiful creation. He made us like a sculptor, make something he loves. But this is a living creation that super surpasses anything. I've been online playing with AI a little bit. Has anybody been playing with this stuff? You can ask a computer to say things and it sounds almost human, right? You can ask it to make art and it sounds almost human. But we are his handiwork. All these things are just trying to mimic what a human can do. Ephesians 210 says this for we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus. To do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.[00:08:41.890] - Speaker 2Christians start here. We start by declaring that we are God's design, made by God and in God's creative and abundant love. God made us where's handiwork his workmanship. We are owned by someone in his imagination. He thought of us and said this is just perfect. I want to make this. And creators are proud of what they made. Doesn't matter what it goes through. They are proud of what they made. And they look and they say this is good. And when God is proud of us, it means that he also has a purpose for us, even if we don't always see what that is. So we are God's handiwork number 1. Second, we are dependent on God. Humans have this amazing they occupy an amazing, unique place in the animal world. We are not like all the other animals. And I looked at scientists are trying to figure out why are humans so different from all the other animals? And humans have this amazing capacity to see themselves from outside. And philosophers, they say that humans can see themselves from outside. I actually saw a video of a bear. They had put up a mirror in a forest and this bear came around the corner and saw the mirror and just freaked out on it, right?[00:10:04.860] - Speaker 2Smashing it, going around behind it, wondering where the bar is, just not aware that it's just a mirror, right? We as humans, we can see ourselves from outside. And the more we see ourselves from outside, the more we get to actually see what it is we are made of. We like a pantry. We get to see and make sense and go, I'm made of this. This is inside of me. I have this capacity. And the more philosophers call this openness to the world. It is the ability for humans to have this amazing capacity for seeing so much in the future, in the past, in the present. And by having this huge expansive view, christian philosophers actually say then we must have someone who understands what this big burden is that we carry. We can think and dream and participate in the world. But guess what? We realize that for all that we are made of, we have not found something to fulfill us yet. You too? I still haven't found what I'm looking for. Right? We are longing for something. This huge expanse of imagination has only brought us to a place where we go.[00:11:09.660] - Speaker 2It's not found here. What I'm looking for isn't found here. It's not found at the mall, it's not found on the internet. And if you live long enough, guys like Solomon write great books that say, listen, I tried it all. I've had hundreds of wives. It's still not found there, right? And in the end, we wonder at this great sense of purposelessness. Even though we have the super ability to look at the meaning of it. All right? Humans are caught here. We see how in vain it is that we only have the short life and yet we long still for meaning. St. Augustine, he says this our hearts are restless until they find rest in thee, O God. We are made to be dependent on God. We are humans who are God's handiwork, and we need God for our purpose in life. These are the two foundations. We're God's handiwork, and we are dependent on God for our purpose. You can deviate from it. He'll follow you wherever you go looking for your purpose. He followed Solomon and he's like, Boy, that's a lot of wives. There my boy. But if I get 100 more, maybe okay, I'll be here in the end when you write your book saying it's all purposeless until I find God.[00:12:26.020] - Speaker 2Last one. We have a valuable origin story. We have been in our family. We have recently found out more information about Kelly's biological father. And it has been exciting. We are like we have learned more little tidbits of information that are weaving us to interesting distant family relatives. And we discovered, like this auntie. She's lovely. We even went to the same college, Kelly's biological auntie and I. And we're just like a little bit of this little origin story. A little taste of this origin story has brought some joy to us, and it's exciting. But imagine if we know our origin story in God. Imagine if we had an origin story that the Creator made us. Stan Grenz, he says that knowing our origin story comes from God. It does two things in us. It says that I am not the author of my story. Somebody else dreamed this story. Somebody else imagined how this story would go. That's number one. And number two, that we have meaning. That you are made to connect with your Creator, to have purpose, direction and resolve for your life. That being human means having value. Everyone wants to say what you're worth and what you do with your life.[00:13:42.220] - Speaker 2But having an origin story in God means that you know your value and your story is in God's hands. So these are the three quite unique Christian proclamations about being human and what we are made of. One, you are God's handiwork, you're dependent on God, and you have an origin story that gives you great value. When those three are held in our eyes and we meet Jesus, something profound happens in that because Jesus shows us how all those three things come alive in us. So Christian anthropology makes some really bold claims here. A Christian view of being human makes some very bold claims here. And either we believe those claims or we don't. There's really no easy middle ground there. Oftentimes in our faith we go, I'm kind of Christian in my worldview, actually. Our worldview needs to hold those things quite up and test stuff against it and say, Am. I really God's handiwork? Can I really depend on him? Does he really provide for me? And does my origin story start there? Or am I trying to write my own story every day? Couple words. Barra is the Hebrew word for create God.[00:15:00.210] - Speaker 2Bara everything. God created everything. All of the stuff that you are made of, the periodic table of elements, physics, chemistry, biology, that is God's creative work. Barra. But there's another word that comes a little bit after this. God created you. And you might believe this, and this alone might be your anthropology, that God started you and created you, your belief about humans and God in the created world. So what, God made me, and a lot of Christians stop here with bara. God creates you. You go, thanks. I'm here, I breathe. Now I'm going to find my own way. But there's another word. It's a word called ASA, and it means made. God made you. Did you know that when a child is born, it isn't that God creates the child? God created the mother and everything that made the child, and God created but God made the child. The child was formed in the mother's womb, right? Psalm 121 two says, my help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. It says God created everything, but here it's saying God made it. And this word is like an ongoing word. It means to make.[00:16:20.850] - Speaker 2He's making heaven and earth. God created everything and now he's in the business of upgrading it kind of like I talked about with the kids. God created all of the ingredients and now he's cooking, now he's making. Now he's bringing life to these ingredients and he is active in this. The word is assa. God made the heavens and the earth. This helping Lord, my help comes from the Lord who made heavens and the earth. My helping Lord, he is a maker to the present tense. He is ongoing in this making work. Not just back then, not once, not when you were born, not when your great grandparents were born, but he is ongoing in this making work. God's doing more than just great heaven and earth. He is he's building it up. He's mixing these raw ingredients. Humans are made in the image of God. Assa in the image of God. We are being made into the image of God. There was a moment in my story that's my hardest moment, my hardest moment. I've shared the story before, and I only share it once in a while because sometimes when you dig into a hard moment, you're like, I don't really want to go back there.[00:17:36.100] - Speaker 2It was a moment that some of you have heard about, but I was married before Kelly, and I was married for three years, and my wife had a series of affairs that just destroyed me. I was utterly undone. I lost my humanity in that. I lost £40. Everything I thought was true about me, that God has a plan for me, that God knows me, that God I'm His handiwork. No, that was all undone in this betraying experience. I was deeply hurt. And I remember one day I'll just tell the story for what it is. But I remember one day I stood I was in a basement street in Calgary where I was living, and I was a pastor and new pastor at this church. And I was just thinking of seeing everything disappear, even myself. I just wanted to shrivel up under the weight of this undoing. I remember I had one hand on this old dresser and another hand on this old dresser. I was standing there, and it's maybe the only time in my life that I've almost perhaps heard the voice of God. And this is what I heard. Preston, I am making you.[00:18:43.260] - Speaker 2I am making you. In this moment of my deepest undoing, I am encountering a God who is making me. Did you know that that's what I needed to hear more than anything else in my deep sorrow was that God was making me? That I wasn't just created and left to spin off into this world alone, but that I was being made by a God who sees me and knows how all the pieces go together. He knows the recipe. He knows how life comes to Preston. I am his handiwork. And he wasn't about to abandon his handiwork when I was needing the Creator the most. And he came close to me, and I believe he spoke to me. I am making you. What are you being made into today? I thought I was a worm. I thought this might be true. I thought I could maybe learn it in a book. But I was pretty educated at that time. But what I needed was I needed the presence of Jesus Himself to come to me and whisper into my heart what is true about me. My making and forming and being made is in Jesus. It is in a person.[00:19:55.160] - Speaker 2Not a philosophy of something that happened a long time ago, but it's something that is happening right now. He let me borrow his life in my moment when I did not know that I had anything going on. He said, Come and be in me. My life will be yours. The scriptures unpack this that we borrow the very make wholeness of Jesus. He is whole and complete as a human, and we get to enter into his wholeness and be made whole in Him. Two Corinthians 318 it says this and the Lord, who is Spirit, makes us more and more like Him. As we are changed into his glorious image, he is making us into what he looks like. I was a worm, and Jesus says that he wants to make me look like Him. I can't plan that I'm being made into Him. Not to be anxious or cynical or bitter or vindictive. And let me tell you, for 2 hours after I got the worst news in my life, I had 2 hours where I was not following Jesus. 2 hours where I made a master plan to go my own way, to tell my own story, to be my own strength, to figure my own way through.[00:21:16.830] - Speaker 2And in those 2 hours, Jesus, he impressed on me that he has never left me. And in those 2 hours, I made a decision that I would be formed into his image. And guess what? It took some time, but guess what I was able to do in the weeks following? I was able to forgive a person that hurt me a great deal. It was a sign that I was being made into the human that God imagined me to be. To begin to be formed into the likeness of Christ. To not carry the cynicism, the anger, the bitterness, the shame, the rage, all the things that were bubbling inside of me. I was being formed into Christ. Even in my darkest time, Jesus was betrayed too. He was sold out by a friend. He was sold out by Judas. He was denied by Peter, and all of his followers fled. If you and I were there, we wouldn't be there. We'd have been like what? Is that the way? Is that the door? We're going there. And I did that too. For two solid hours, I was out of the room until he found me. Jesus was there, alone and dehumanized on a cross, tortured and nailed to a tree.[00:22:32.820] - Speaker 2I want to end with this. The most beautiful words that Jesus shared as Jesus. This man, God come man to live in the world of all of the brokenness, who knew that every human he met was God's handiwork, that they were each dependent on God, that they had this valuable origin story. He knew all that inherently because he was the one who great gave it. And there he hung on the cross, dying a criminal's death. And he said this word when he died. His last words on the cross was this teta lisa tai which is the Greek word assa. It is finished. I made it. I did it on the cross. Jesus finishes making his people on the cross. He says, Ay, they are now complete. These people that I made in my image, I made them. And their completion is now full in me because I took on everything that is broken about them and it is in me now. That means they can live, is finished. I wonder if Jesus took his last breath as one of great pride, to feel like he was able to finish something that he started. That no sin, shame, brokenness and death would come between Him and his people anymore.[00:24:00.900] - Speaker 2That he created them. But now he made them done. Humans are done. They are whole. They are complete. When he rises from the dead, the job is over right now. You might be sitting here today and wondering. I don't feel that the goal isn't for you to sometimes feel it, but the goal isn't for you to the goal isn't for you to convince God to finish something he didn't ever finish. The goal is for you to accept what he already did for you. I finished you. I finished you. You are whole and complete. I made you. You are done. You can now be a new creation in me. All those things that cling to you to say you are undone, to say that you need to spend your life striving for some sort of career, for some sort of becoming a better parent, for becoming richer, for whatever it is you are pursuing after and going, I'm incomplete and I'm looking for these things. Jesus is saying, I finished. You already come live in me. Everything you are looking for your happiness, for your joy, for your purpose, how to live this one and beautiful life, it's fulfilled in me.[00:25:21.100] - Speaker 2I live in you and you live in me. And when you do, you get to be the complete human. You don't have to live with the cynicism and the anger and the fear anymore. You can leave that and let me show you even more and even more and even more. Our humanity is now bound in his, and it is the greatest gift I think we can give. It is the good news of the gospel, is that our humanity finds its completion in him. What are we? We are made and done in Christ and the Lord, who is Spirit, makes us more and more like Him and we are changed into his glorious image. Paul says in Psalm 22 31 says his righteous acts will be told to those not yet born and they will hear about everything he has done. Jesus, it is done. Amen. Heavenly Father, thank you that you have completed something. You created the world and then you made Jesus, who welcomes us, to be done in him too. To be completed, to be made to made whole. All the broken pieces are wrapped up in you. I pray for these my friends who have this one and beautiful life.[00:26:44.430] - Speaker 2I pray that they would discover what it is to be made in you, to be completed in you, to make their lives in you. And all the things that my friends in this room, these followers of Jesus along with me, are longing for in this life, this one and beautiful and good life, all the things they are pursuing, that are giving them anxiety, that are keeping them up at night, that are making them turn to all sorts of things that are into you. I pray that in that moment, as they grip onto the sides of their dressers, that they would know that you are making each and every one of them too, that they are not undone, but they are being made and that they can trust you with every step of the making, even if it hurts. Make us. Amen. Please stand with me. I did a funeral on Saturday, and it wasn't for I hope I'm not giving much away here. I might regret saying this, but it wasn't for a family that was explicit about their hope in Jesus. And throughout the whole time, I was giving the homily and all these things, and the family asked me to kind of stay in my lane.[00:28:04.050] - Speaker 2Right. I'm a Christian pastor, so they want at least a bit of me, but not all of me. Sorry I'm being crass, but I want to just scream out the hope of Jesus. I just wanted to just yell out and say, do you know there's great hope here? This person who has passed away, guess what? They are in the hands of someone who made them, who loves them, and so are all of you. This is not hopeless. This is good. May Lord bless you and keep you. May Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May Lord lift up his countenance upon you and grant you his peace. You are his handiwork. You can depend on him. And your story begins and ends with the One who dreamed you up and holds you in his imagination even now. Amen. Amen. Go peace, my friends. Have a good week. We'll see you next week here. Bless you all. Bye.

[00:00:03.090] Hi there. My name is Preston Pouteaux. Welcome to the Lake Ridge Community Church Podcast. This is where we share some of our messages from Sunday mornings. So we're glad you're here to listen. We'd love for you to join us in person. We meet on Sunday mornings at 10:30 a.m at Our Lady of Wisdom School here in Chestermere. At our core, we're a community of people, so we gather on Sundays, but we also do a lot in the week together. We are people learning to follow Jesus and love our city. So to learn more, visit. Hope to check in and visit with you soon. Take care. Thanks for listening.[00:00:40.390] Good morning. Nice response. Cool. So a couple of days ago, on Friday or Thursday, Friday, I was showing my sermon to Marilyn. If you don't know this Marilyn King, I actually live in her basement. It's actually kind of nice, me and her look after the dog together. And it's great. It's actually been a really great time. But I was showing her my sermon because she was unable to be here today. And she was inspired after listening to it and was like, I'm going to put something together. And so the sheets that were on your chairs, she just kind of took all the scriptures that I was using and put them onto a sheet and put through some images on there and made it look kind of nice and printed it off and be like, here, give this out. And I'm like, oh, that's so kind of you, Marilyn. Thank you. So these sheets put together are brought to you by Marilyn, who's not even here today. So anyway, I thought it was really nice of her. Anyway, a few I'm going to read opening Scripture right away. It's actually on your sheet. The top there, Luke 20 414, it says this he said to them, Jesus, Jesus is talking here.[00:01:58.710] This is what I told you while I was still with you. Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms. So everything that was just to explain a little bit, even though it's pretty self explanatory, I guess, but everything was already foretold about who Jesus is, including our Christmas story. And you can find that through the prophets, through the law of Moses, and through the Psalms. A few months ago, I did a sermon on Psalm 22 and we talked about it is finished. And we talked about how that was when Jesus said it is finished on the cross. That was actually a look back into the psalms in Psalm 22. And he was actually then referencing the entirety of Psalm 22 and what he was doing on the cross to finish. He was completing a prophecy found in Psalm 22. So you can find prophecy in the Psalms, but also in the prophets, in the law of Moses. And today I'm going to look at a place in the law of Moses. And I'm going to look at some places in prophets where we can find that it was actually foretold of Jesus is coming, and it just matches up ever so nicely.[00:03:19.210] So today we're going to look at look back in this Advent season because we're talking about Jesus, we're going to be talking about his birth, and we're going to talk about the beginning stages of his life and what that looks like and how we can have a posture towards Christmas this season. So the New Testament opens up in the Book of Matthew with a genealogy. I didn't put that in there because it's a whole bunch of names. And if you would like to know these names, you can go to Matthew, chapter one, verse one, and you can start reading all of the names found at the beginning of Matthew all the way. The first 17 verses are this genealogy. And for one thing that I learned when I was kind of going through this is I was like, oh, what? I found out that genealogy has kind of the same root word, the Hebrew root, root word that the word Genesis does. So in fact, the first 17 verses of Matthew isn't just like a list of names. So you can see Jesus great great great granddad for no reason at all. What Matthew is immediately doing here is he's saying, this is the genesis of Jesus.[00:04:36.340] This is the beginnings, the origins of Jesus. And so we're starting right away the very first chapter of the New Testament, matthew with, okay, the genesis of Jesus. And it's interesting, you can see famous if you look through the names, you'll see different names in there that you've recognized through the Old Testament. I know Rahab's in there. I know Solomon's in there, david's in there. There's a lot of names in there that kind of bring us back to the stories that are shared through the Old Testament. And so Matthew immediately is telling us, hey, this is actually a continued story. We're not starting something completely new here. This is a continuation of the story of God. And then after the first 17 verses, it continues into verse 18, which I have right on your sheet if you want to follow along. And I'm going to read through the Scripture and I'm going to stop and kind of explain a little bit. But this is the beginnings of Jesus. Verse 18 says, this is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about. Came about. His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.[00:06:02.210] Because Joseph, her husband, was faithful to the law and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in his mind to divorce her quietly. Flip open your Bible. I don't know about you. I was told to start in the New Testament when I picked up my Bible. So actually the first thing I read when I read the Bible for the first time on my own was, well, I mean, I guess I read Genesis, the first two chapters and I got bored. But then I was told, maybe start in the New Testament, learn about Jesus first. So I get there and you're opening up this book, and the first thing we're learning is that Joseph wants to divorce Mary. This is the beginnings of who Jesus is. The story of Jesus starts off with a genealogy and goes straight into Joseph wanting to quietly divorce Mary. What I want you to do through this story is I want to invite you into Mary's shoes. So, Mary, I did a little bit of research on this. No one actually knows how old Mary was. I've heard people say different things and the youngest I've seen is Mary was twelve or 13.[00:07:24.000] That seems a little bit young, but a few people have said that. And the oldest I've seen is 17. So what we do know for sure is Mary was a teenager, youngest twelve at the oldest, 17. Now, I don't know about you guys, but some of you might have teenagers in this room. Some of you guys might remember being a teenager. Now, I don't know about you, but being divorced at 16 seems a little rough. But that's seemingly what's happening here. Anyway, put yourself in Mary's shoes as I go through the scripture. What are you feeling? What are you experiencing? Because here's the thing. We actually don't know much about how Mary processed all of this. And I'm going to keep going. It's going to get rough. You've read the story, you'll know that. It's a bit of a roller coaster, but we do know if we look into a Luke 146 to 55, notice that the Magnificent, or Mary song, you can see how she prayed. You can see that her prayers are worded in a way of putting such trust in God through all of her circumstances. She uses phrases like how her soul magnifies the Lord.[00:08:51.680] And then this is I read one verse from that Luke section. I read it and I was and she says, generations after her will see her as blessed. And I read that in light of reading this section here. And I'm like, Whoa, that is some strong faith because let me continue, just continue in verse 20. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him, Joseph in a dream and said, joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to his son, and you are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet, the Virgin will conceive and give birth to his son, and they will call him Emmanuel. First Old Testament. Another Old Testament reference. Emmanuel means God. With verse 24 continues when Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate the marriage until she gave birth to his son.[00:10:14.780] He gave him the name Jesus. It continues in chapter two. After Jesus was born in Bethlehem, in Judea, during the time of King Herod, magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, where is the one who has been born King of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. So this is the story of the wiseman, these are the magi, the people who came bringing bearing gifts to Jesus, and a whole sermon series can be unpacked out of just that alone. This idea that God using astrologers to point out where Jesus is anyway, I'm just going to leave it at that. Interesting. I'm not condoning anything, but I'm just like what I think comes out of this is God is using someone and we know that they might be a little bit different than regular people. Anyway, when King Herod heard this, he was disturbed and all Jerusalem with him. When he had come together, all the people's, chief priests and teachers of Allah, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem, in Judea. They replied, for this is what the prophet has written.[00:11:37.500] But you, Bethlehem in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, where out of you will come a ruler will shepherd my people Israel. This is another prophecy referring to Micah five. This is a prophecy that directly fits in line with who Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Check. In the line of Judah. Check. We could see that through the genesis of Jesus. The first 17 verses, check out of this a baby will become a ruler. Check. Yes. Will shepherd Israel. So this is all things that are just being foretold and what Matthew is doing is being like just so you know it's coming. Yeah. And this book that is for telling the coming of Jesus was written half a millennium before he showed up. This is a story that was being written generations before Jesus was born, hundreds and hundreds of years ago. I bet you maybe someone in this room who took like a 23 and me might be able to tell me who their 500 years removed grandparents are. But that's a big chunk of time. And then the next few verses talk about how Herod tricks these magi or wise men to search for the child and to report back to him.[00:13:10.180] So these magi, these wise men, they found him, they gave gold, frankincense and merck, but then they received a dream from God to not report back to Herod. So they went back another way. So God was with them the whole time. And by the way, just so you know, this is actually a couple of years after Jesus is born. I think one thing that I knew that I was like surprised of and maybe you guys know this, maybe it's common knowledge, but when I look at the nativity scene, I see little baby infant Jesus. I forget that when the wiseman showed up, jesus is practically a toddler. And also there probably wasn't three wise men. There was three gifts. We know that. There was gold, frankincense and myrrh, but there's probably actually a whole caravan of people, like a traveling group of they made a scene, I'm sure. Yeah. This isn't just three wise men, this is a group of people. So anyway, this group of people, when they the wise men or magi had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, get up, take the child and mother and escape to Egypt.[00:14:22.180] Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him. Verse 14 it says, he got up. Joseph got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt where he stayed until the death of Herod. So let's go back to Mary. You're a young teenage woman. You are told if we bring it to today's time that the government is trying to murder your kid. Really put yourself into the feelings and the experience of this woman. The government is trying to kill your newborn kid. So what do you do? You run. And I don't have kids, so I can't say that I know from experience, but I can know from witnessing and being a part of different families and seeing that it can't be easy to take a toddler and run across the country away from the government. And yet Mary says in her song pounded luke, the generations will see her as blessed. This is the prayer of Mary. Despite, despite all that's going on, how is this a blessing? How is any of this, how could any of this could be considered a blessing?[00:16:08.880] If this was me, I would be terrified. I don't know how I would handle it. They don't have cars, they have a bunch of money. I guess because they were given all of this stuff from these wise men. But the fear I couldn't imagine living then I would certainly be questioning the goodness of God. I just know me. If all of this is happening, it's like Joseph's, like, I want to divorce you. Okay. Just kidding. Okay. Now we're going to go here and we're going to have a baby. But we're going to have to have a baby in like pretty much a cave or something or a place that's not really a good place to have a kid. And then we find that we have to be running away from the government. We're essentially vigilantes trying to run away from all of these things. And I would be questioning the goodness of God, but Mary does not. In fact, she takes it as blessing. And that's a little attention here. And here we find in what I think is the pinnacle of Matthew two and the origin story of Christ. The writer of Matthew corrects the course and says, no, my plan is here.[00:17:47.530] What's happening here fits into a larger story, and actually Matthew invites us into that larger story. And here's what I want to ask. Have you ever heard of a story where God let's remove thinking about Jesus. Have you ever heard of a story in the Old Testament where God raises up a deliverer and then an insecure, power hungry king tries to use violence and oppression to combat God's presence? Moses. Matthew says this in verse 15. The second half of verse 15, it says, and so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet. Out of Jesus three, out of Egypt I called my son, which is actually directly referencing Hosea eleven. And one thing that is often what we forget is Matthew or any of the New Testament writers specifically assume that you actually know your whole Bible very well, that when a sentence is said, you'll be like, oh yeah, of course he's meaning exactly that. But today, if you don't actually know that, if you don't know the Old Testament like the back of your hand, like a lot of the good Jewish people at the time did, you might not immediately pick up on the reference.[00:19:11.430] So I did some research, and here's the reference. So out of Egypt I called my son. I'm not going to read you all of Jose eleven. We don't have time. But I'll read you the first few verses. It says, When I, Israel with a child loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. But the more they were called, the more they went away from me. They sacrificed to the balls and they burned incense to images. It was I, God, who taught ephraim to walk, taking them by their arms, but they did not realize it was I who yielded them. This is the prophet Hosea, reflecting on the past while pointing towards the future. Let me continue reading here. It says verse 16. When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said in the prophet of Jeremiah was fulfilled. Another prophecy. A voice is heard in Rama, weeping in great morning, rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because there are no more.[00:20:33.700] Matthew wants us to see something here. He's pulling two stories together. Is this the first time a selfish I've asked this question before. Is this the first time a selfish, powerful human has tried to thwart God's purposes? No. Has that happened in the Old Testament several times? Yes. Has it happened in the New Testament? Yes. Is that happening today? Yes. You want to see? This is the pattern of Israel is continuing even in this story. Matthew is choosing a pattern here that recreates the Exodus story. He starts with the genesis of Jesus and then paints a picture of a recreation of the story of Israel from here. And here's how it's played out. So there's the journey to Egypt as played out in both the beginning of Exodus and Matthew. The Israel journeys. So do marry Joseph Jesus. Then an oppressive king tries to kill babies. Found in Exodus, found in Matthew beginning of Jesus, God's son, called out of Egypt as highlighted and connected in Hosea eleven, connecting the two stories in Matthew two. And even if you want to continue this trend, you'll see that the Israelites then spent 40 years in the desert.[00:21:58.880] Well, straight before going to Jesus ministry, jesus spent 40 days in the desert. This is a story that Matthew was trying to say, like, this is actually like, this is not unfamiliar. And any Jewish person reading this would be like, Holy smokes, this is the same story. We've read this before we know this. Mary a smart Jewish girl who knew her scriptures probably better than you or I probably saw it too. And there's that knowledge and dedication to God that likely got her through this. Essentially, herod had become the new pharaoh. Amongst the most horrific circumstances. Is God surprised by the evil of Herod? Herod is trying to kill babies. I can't think of many more evil things you could possibly do. Is God surprise? No, we've seen this story before. Did God okay the evil of Herod, though? Let me ask that question just because God was not surprised, did God think it was okay for this evil to come across? What do you think? No, he didn't stop it. God is not surprised, though, because he has given us as human the choice whether to follow what is good or what is not.[00:23:43.940] And he leaves that to the hands of humanity. Yes, he intervenes from time to time, but for the most part, he is not surprised when evil occurs. Not surprised, but nor does he condone it, nor is it okay. In the midst of this terror, Matthew reminds us that God is still here. Yes, this is an evil experience. But despite that, God is still working his redemptive purposes this Christmas, even tease. And here's something we can reflect on. When money may feel tight, when tragedy seems to occur, when evil happens in your life, does God think that that is okay? I don't know. I don't think so. Does he condone it? I don't think so. But he's not surprised by it. And he walks with us through it. This Christmas will reflect on the truth that God, as Emanuel God, with us, is with us through it and not surprised by the evils of this world. That's what I have for you guys today. So let me pray. Let's take a stand and I'll pray for you guys. God, we know that there are hard things in this world. We know that tragedy occurs. We know that different people are going through really tough circumstances.[00:25:43.630] And it can be confusing to why it doesn't seem that you don't intervene. But this story tells us that you are not surprised by all everything that goes around and that despite all that, you are still here loving us. So may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord turn his face toward you and give you his peace this Christmas Eve. In thanks, guys.

This fall at Lake Ridge is less of a kick-off, than a root-down. We're reconnecting with God, with new rhythms of life, and with each other.

This fall at Lake Ridge is less of a kick-off, than a root-down. We're reconnecting with God, with new rhythms of life, and with each other.

Something is coming this fall... We've been working all summer to prepare to take a journey together as a community. Eugene Peterson says that “The life of faith isn't meant for tourists. It's meant for pilgrims." Join us as we begin to unpack the paradox of our longings for the good life, and the world we wake up to every morning. Jesus invites us to come closer and see further, and to consider a Kingdom unlike any we could make ourselves: His. Join us on a journey from residents, to citizens and neighbours! See you Sunday!

Parable of the Wheat and Weeds24 Here is another story Jesus told: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field. 25 But that night as the workers slept, his enemy came and planted weeds among the wheat, then slipped away. 26 When the crop began to grow and produce grain, the weeds also grew.27 “The farmer's workers went to him and said, ‘Sir, the field where you planted that good seed is full of weeds! Where did they come from?'28 “‘An enemy has done this!' the farmer exclaimed.“‘Should we pull out the weeds?' they asked.29 “‘No,' he replied, ‘you'll uproot the wheat if you do. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest. Then I will tell the harvesters to sort out the weeds, tie them into bundles, and burn them, and to put the wheat in the barn.'”

This fall at Lake Ridge is less of a kick-off, than a root-down. We're reconnecting with God, with new rhythms of life, and with each other.

This fall at Lake Ridge is less of a kick-off, than a root-down. We're reconnecting with God, with new rhythms of life, and with each other.

This fall at Lake Ridge is less of a kick-off, than a root-down. We're reconnecting with God, with new rhythms of life, and with each other.

This fall at Lake Ridge is less of a kick-off, than a root-down. We're reconnecting with God, with new rhythms of life, and with each other.

Join us as we explore the paradox, the strange, the characters, and the glimmers of hope in Genesis this summer. We hope along the way we'll all come to see that this one life we have may indeed be very good.

Join us as we explore the paradox, the strange, the characters, and the glimmers of hope in Genesis this summer. We hope along the way we'll all come to see that this one life we have may indeed be very good.

Join us as we explore the paradox, the strange, the characters, and the glimmers of hope in Genesis this summer. We hope along the way we'll all come to see that this one life we have may indeed be very good.

Join us as we explore the paradox, the strange, the characters, and the glimmers of hope in Genesis this summer. We hope along the way we'll all come to see that this one life we have may indeed be very good.

Join us as we explore the paradox, the strange, the characters, and the glimmers of hope in Genesis this summer. We hope along the way we'll all come to see that this one life we have may indeed be very good.

Sunday mornings this Summer at Lake Ridge are all about stories. We rewind the tape, like an old walkman, to listen again to our story and this time we might hear something different as we do. We're taking a journey through the book of Genesis to engage all the strange and wonderful moments where people experienced God. Through it all we're weaving a thread, a line straight from God when God made it all, leaned in, and "he saw that it was very good." Join us as we explore the paradox, the strange, the characters, and the glimmers of hope in Genesis this summer. We hope along the way we'll all come to see that this one life we have may indeed be very good.

Pastor Evan wraps our series and his final Sunday at Lake Ridge in our sermon series called, "Jesus Prayed." Jesus prayed about a lot of things; his friends, his followers, the future, and he even prayed for us before we were born. The way Jesus prays reveals his heart of love and invites us into our own conversations with God. This series we'll also be exploring some big questions about prayer as we name some of the things that makes praying so hard and foreign to us sometimes. We hope by listening in on Jesus we'll hear how Jesus sets the table and welcomes us in.

Sunday mornings this Summer at Lake Ridge are all about stories. We rewind the tape, like an old walkman, to listen again to our story and this time we might hear something different as we do. We're taking a journey through the book of Genesis to engage all the strange and wonderful moments where people experienced God. Through it all we're weaving a thread, a line straight from God when God made it all, leaned in, and "he saw that it was very good." Join us as we explore the paradox, the strange, the characters, and the glimmers of hope in Genesis this summer. We hope along the way we'll all come to see that this one life we have may indeed be very good.

Sunday mornings this Summer at Lake Ridge are all about stories. We rewind the tape, like an old walkman, to listen again to our story and this time we might hear something different as we do. We're taking a journey through the book of Genesis to engage all the strange and wonderful moments where people experienced God. Through it all we're weaving a thread, a line straight from God when God made it all, leaned in, and "he saw that it was very good." Join us as we explore the paradox, the strange, the characters, and the glimmers of hope in Genesis this summer. We hope along the way we'll all come to see that this one life we have may indeed be very good.

Pastor Evan continues in our sermon series called, "Jesus Prayed." Jesus prayed about a lot of things; his friends, his followers, the future, and he even prayed for us before we were born. The way Jesus prays reveals his heart of love and invites us into our own conversations with God. This series we'll also be exploring some big questions about prayer as we name some of the things that makes praying so hard and foreign to us sometimes. We hope by listening in on Jesus we'll hear how Jesus sets the table and welcomes us in.

We continued in our sermon series called, "Jesus Prayed." Jesus prayed about a lot of things; his friends, his followers, the future, and he even prayed for us before we were born. The way Jesus prays reveals his heart of love and invites us into our own conversations with God. This series we'll also be exploring some big questions about prayer as we name some of the things that makes praying so hard and foreign to us sometimes. We hope by listening in on Jesus we'll hear how Jesus sets the table and welcomes us in.

Guest Preacher Shannon Johnson Friesen from Stonehouse Covenant Church in Steinbach, Manitoba.

Pastor Preston continues in our sermon series for Lent: Small Boat, Big Sea. Jesus spent several years of his ministry around a lake with his followers. Often he criss-crossed the Sea of Galilee on a boat, teaching, healing, and doing some surprising things that all pointed to God's work in making things right in a broken world. In many ways, our world today does not feel ‘right.' So many things seem broken. Jesus did a strange thing: taking a small group of friends out into a big world is risky and should be doomed to fail. Jesus showed that as long as he was on the boat, his followers were safe to venture out with him. Today we are a little boat on a big sea. We are always learning to trust God as the waves and wind push and pull. But we can live courageously knowing that Jesus is here, and knows the way. Join is for our Lenten journey to encounter Jesus, and his invitation into new life with him.

Pastor Evan continues in our sermon series for Lent: Small Boat, Big Sea. Jesus spent several years of his ministry around a lake with his followers. Often he criss-crossed the Sea of Galilee on a boat, teaching, healing, and doing some surprising things that all pointed to God's work in making things right in a broken world. In many ways, our world today does not feel ‘right.' So many things seem broken. Jesus did a strange thing: taking a small group of friends out into a big world is risky and should be doomed to fail. Jesus showed that as long as he was on the boat, his followers were safe to venture out with him. Today we are a little boat on a big sea. We are always learning to trust God as the waves and wind push and pull. But we can live courageously knowing that Jesus is here, and knows the way. Join is for our Lenten journey to encounter Jesus, and his invitation into new life with him.

Pastor Evan continues in our sermon series for Lent: Small Boat, Big Sea. Jesus spent several years of his ministry around a lake with his followers. Often he criss-crossed the Sea of Galilee on a boat, teaching, healing, and doing some surprising things that all pointed to God's work in making things right in a broken world. In many ways, our world today does not feel ‘right.' So many things seem broken. Jesus did a strange thing: taking a small group of friends out into a big world is risky and should be doomed to fail. Jesus showed that as long as he was on the boat, his followers were safe to venture out with him. Today we are a little boat on a big sea. We are always learning to trust God as the waves and wind push and pull. But we can live courageously knowing that Jesus is here, and knows the way. Join is for our Lenten journey to encounter Jesus, and his invitation into new life with him.

Pastor Evan continues in our sermon series for Lent: Small Boat, Big Sea. Jesus spent several years of his ministry around a lake with his followers. Often he criss-crossed the Sea of Galilee on a boat, teaching, healing, and doing some surprising things that all pointed to God's work in making things right in a broken world. In many ways, our world today does not feel ‘right.' So many things seem broken. Jesus did a strange thing: taking a small group of friends out into a big world is risky and should be doomed to fail. Jesus showed that as long as he was on the boat, his followers were safe to venture out with him. Today we are a little boat on a big sea. We are always learning to trust God as the waves and wind push and pull. But we can live courageously knowing that Jesus is here, and knows the way. Join is for our Lenten journey to encounter Jesus, and his invitation into new life with him.

Erik Davis, Youth Ministry Leader continues in our sermon series for Lent: Small Boat, Big Sea. Jesus spent several years of his ministry around a lake with his followers. Often he criss-crossed the Sea of Galilee on a boat, teaching, healing, and doing some surprising things that all pointed to God's work in making things right in a broken world. In many ways, our world today does not feel ‘right.' So many things seem broken. Jesus did a strange thing: taking a small group of friends out into a big world is risky and should be doomed to fail. Jesus showed that as long as he was on the boat, his followers were safe to venture out with him. Today we are a little boat on a big sea. We are always learning to trust God as the waves and wind push and pull. But we can live courageously knowing that Jesus is here, and knows the way. Join is for our Lenten journey to encounter Jesus, and his invitation into new life with him.