Pastor Brian and Jacque Lother, Pastor Jeff Orluck
Brian: Well, how is everybody doing today? Doing good? It's great to see you all. Thank you for tuning in my live stream. One of the things that I've missed really greatly during this whole COVID thing is having communion with our body of Christ and the Eucharist, the blood and body of the Lord is just really an important thing that we don't neglect to do. I'm not sure who did this, but we have come up with a COVID sensitive way of doing communion, and we are going to have communion next Sunday in the Sunday morning service. Everybody will have your own individually wrapped communion. That's going to be there at the door for you to pick up as you come in. We encourage you not to open it until we actually do communion together. No tasting ahead of time.
We are going to do communion next week and I'm just really excited about it. I love the presence of God when we gather around his table that is for all people. So we encourage you to come next week. If you aren't able to be here next week, but will be watching by live stream, make your own emblems at home and join us with communion. We did that actually on Good Friday, Good Friday service. It was just a really powerful time. It was really wonderful. The last Sunday of the month, we are scheduling another day of prayer. We had one maybe what, five, six weeks ago, and we are coming down the pike here towards some very important things in our country. We just want to have another day of prayer, but we are going to do this actually on a Sunday morning, from eight in the morning until eight at night. So part of our Sunday morning service will be a part of that. Jacque, you and Joanne have been putting a great team of leaders together. You have some things you would like to share about that
Jacque: I'm telling you, the first of all of day, 12 hours of prayer was so special. Wasn't it? It's like, I thought, well, I'll come like the first hour, maybe the third hour, bring it up at the end. I'm telling you, it's hard to break away. I ended up, several of us ended up staying there all day.
Jeff: We were there all day.
Jacque: All day. It was so beautiful to pray together with our brothers and sisters on Zoom and that allowed so many people to be a part. I'm just very excited for the next one, very excited. It's powerful,
Brian: And speaking of prayer, before we go on, I would like to just take a moment to pray for our president and our nation and what is horizon for us as a nation. So if you would please join me. Obviously, he is hospitalized right now with COVID. And so father, we lift up our president to you, your word, instructs us through the teachings of the apostle Paul in Romans that we are to pray for our leaders. It's so easy at times to want to judge them. It doesn't mean that we have to necessarily agree or approve of everything a leader does, but father, we should certainly, two to one outnumber our criticisms with prayer at least. We should always have more prayer for our leaders than criticisms. And so father, because you don't even actually allow room for criticism of leaders and in your word, and I don't want to add to your word Lord, but I just feel like we need to be a much more of a praying people, more of a praying nation for our leaders.
Boy, it's so easy just to criticize and the divide that we have in our nation today. I believe we've all contributed to that in some way, shape or form through the last 40, 50 years of our lives, but Lord, convict us today. Bring your church to a place of repentance. May Lord, your word, become alive in our heart to first follow you and do things your way. We pray for our president because you ask us to, but also because we desire to bless. We want to be a people of blessing. We bless our president, Lord, and we bless his health. We pray a restoration over his body and his respiratory system, his family, any other leaders that may be afflicted with COVID. It doesn't matter what side of the aisle they sit on. Lord, we pray for our leaders. We need, Lord your presence and your wisdom to come upon the leadership of this land. We pray in Jesus name for health and for safety and for protection over the leaders of our land, the leaders of our state.
I pray for our governor, Lord and those who sit in the house, in the Senate. I pray Lord for our mayor of our city and those of us who are on the counsel. I bless them all, Lord with wisdom on how to navigate in the governments on this earth so that we can be a people at peace. That's what your word says- Pray for your leaders so that you can live in peace. So we've found ourselves in not so peaceful a time right now. I'm wondering maybe it's because we haven't prayed enough as followers of you. It has been much easier to pick up stones and throw stones, Lord, and to criticize and throw verbal barbs at each other. But I pray Lord for the political leaders of our country, of our state and our community. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray blessings on them with wisdom and power from on high.
Your word says the King's heart is in the hand of the Lord and you turn it whatever way you want it to go, Lord. That's your word. That's what you've said. When your people were in captivity, you stirred up the spirit of Cyrus to make a proclamation that this remnant could come back to Israel. So Lord, nothing is too hard for you. You respond to the prayers of your people. Your word says, if my people which are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek your face and turn from their wicked ways then you will hear our prayers from heaven. So Lord, we pray that any wicked way in us show it to us as David prayed. If there be any wicked way in me, Lord, show it to us. We want to repent of that. We want to honor you, live honorable lives so that our prayers won't be hindered, Lord. And we do pray for our president or vice president or our Senate and our house of representatives, our Supreme Court. Lord, those who are placed in the leadership roles of our land, we pray blessings on them today, Lord, for your name sake, Halleluiah. So we'll do a whole day of that.
Jacque: We will. It's going to be powerful. It's going to be so encouraging.
Brian: Yes. Amen. Amen.
Jacque: Then one more thing. Can I say one more thing?
Brian: Sure.
Jacque: Are you getting those one minute videos twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays? We send them out via email. We put them on our church, Facebook page. Do you get them? Aren't they something? They are like one minute of a produced video from the services. And this last one was really... Do you want to talk about it, Jeff?
Jeff: Oh, it was just so compelling. Thursday's video just really impacted me, and I'm the guy that helps produce them. Just like wow, this is so powerful. For just a moment to help you understand; these videos are really not intended for the church community. We are sending it out to all of you, but it's intended for a much wider audience. Thursday's video was intended for people who have broken hearts, who are struggling in their lives because it gave so much hope and so much direction for who can actually help you in the middle of your crisis. What we really are excited about these little videos is that there are all kinds of people that we don't know, people you may know, people who may be known by the people that you know, and our hope is that these videos are going to get forwarded from us to our friends via emails, post them on your Facebook. And then our friends are going to be impacted. They are going to post them on their Facebook and their friends are going to be impacted.
We just believe that God is giving us a real gift here with Pastor Brian's messages in a real opportunity to trust or to impact the world far beyond the borders of this building or our local community, or even our state and nation. The way that will happen is if we take those videos and we share them. So share them with friends. You might watch a video and someone will come to your heart in your family or who you work with that's in a situation where that video would be an encouragement just forward to them. If you are on Facebook much at all, just put those videos on your Facebook so that all of your friends on Facebook can see them as well. And let's just watch how God is going to take these small snippets of truth that are so impactful and touch lives for real. I don't even know.
Jacque: That's right. And they are all on YouTube too at moments of hope. So you can go on to YouTube, watch one and just quick, so simply share it to people. You can text them. We just have this wonderful opportunity to so easily share the truth.
Brian: There was a discussion way back in the time of the Apostle Paul about when Jesus was going to return. That has been talked about for 2000 years, because he said he was going to come. And even the angel, after his ascension said, why do you stand up staring into clouds like this? For the same Jesus that went away will return like manner. So the return of Christ has always been like one of the blessing hopes of the church. Paul gave some qualifications to some things that were going to precede his coming. One of those things was that the gospel will first be preached throughout the whole world. Back in the day when the only way to do that was to get on a ship and go across the ocean someplace, it seemed like a task that could never be accomplished. But today with the web and the internet, the gospel can go any place in the world in a moment, in a moment. This is an incredible way to not only look for the second coming, but to hasten as Peter says, to hasten the return of the Lord by getting the gospel to all the world. These are simple little ways to do this. Thank you, Jeff and Micah and others who are part of the technical production of these videos. It's a great opportunity that we have to just be a witness in such a simple way.
We are coming down the home stretch to the Song of Songs. We are going to complete our session today. These verses that we are going to share with you today, I think are Jeff's favorite verses in the whole book. With that, I'm just going to turn it over to you and I'll try not to interrupt you very much this morning.
Jeff: We appreciate everything you and you have to say about this. Personally, I really prefer these formats for the Sunday morning message to just one of us standing up here and talking the whole time. I don't know what you guys think, but it just really seems to... The interaction was very enjoyable. So I sure like it. We are going to go to the Song of Songs, three different sections. How many of you are familiar with the song, I'm my beloved's and he is mine and his banner over me is love? If you've been in the church for very long, that's a song that's not unfamiliar.
Jacque: We dated ourselves.
Jeff: Yes. We sure did. And that's okay.
Brian: That just means we've been walking with Jesus for a while.
Jeff: I was driving to church... This is totally [inaudible 56:38]. I was driving to church this morning and I was realizing at Hope, there are a lot of mothers and fathers and even grandmas and grandpas. We are coming into a season where every single one of you is going to be desperately needed for all the young ones that are coming into the kingdom of God. So get ready. You are going to have a lot of work to do.
Jacque: Can I just say something real fast?
Jeff: Sure.
Jacque: This young man that we got a chance to minister to, we were texting him from jail and he started telling us I wish I could have had parents like you. That's what he said to us. I said we'll be your parents. We will. We love you. Well, but I've failed. It doesn't matter. We love you. And so then the next day he wrote us and he wrote me, dear parents.
Brian: We love you. We love you people.
Jacque: You are right, Jeff.
Jeff: There is nothing more real than the role that we will play in the lives of young people, mentoring, loving, embracing, and training them to love Jesus and serve him. So just get ready.
Brian: I heard a saying once that said... It was talking about the male side of things and he said anybody can be a father, but it takes a special person to be a dad. When the Apostle Paul was talking about how we can cry out to our father in heaven, but he used the word Abba, father, which means papa. It means papa, God. It's like calling him daddy. My boys, every once in a while they still call me daddy. To me, it's just a very affectionate term of endearment. I believe we, as those who are parents and grandparents in the natural realm are coming to a season where we need to be papa and mommy to a whole bunch of people that are going to be coming into the body of Christ, because their earthly parents have not really been there for them, and it has not been modeled for them. And we have a chance to truly model what that will be and what our father in heaven is going to be like. Hallelujah.
Jeff: Great. Okay, back to the song. So that song is... The words of that song are from the Song of Solomon, the Song of Songs. It stated three times throughout the song, but each time it changes a little bit. And there is a very interesting... What would you call it? Just change...
Brian: Progression.
Jeff: Progression, good word, from the first one to the last one. I just want to show you, because what it shows is how our relationship with Jesus matures and how the focus of our relationship changes over time as we begin to understand more and more his love for us, the very thing that even Jacque was talking about and in the middle of the service about how it's hard to imagine that he actually wants to be with us with each one of us individually. How can that be? I had a friend up in Toronto, she was... During the time of the Toronto blessing, she was up there and she was just in the manifest presence of God sitting on the father's lap. She had gone there with her husband and two friends. And so she is sitting on the father's lap and then just enjoying his cuddles. All of a sudden, she says, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, father, where is John, my husband, where are my friends? How come they are not here on the lap with us?" He said, "They are all on my lap, but each one of you gets to me all to yourself."
Jacque: That's amazing
Jeff: That's how that works. The first of her first encounter with her lover and as she is initially falling in love with him, she says, "My beloved is mine and I am his. My beloved is mine and I am his." And so the focus is... Oh, wait a minute. No, I'm sorry. It starts out, I am my Beloved's and my beloved is mine. Focus on, I am my beloved’s on me and he is mine on me. So the focus, when you first meet Jesus, he comes in, he changes your whole life. He gets you out of trouble, gets you out of jail, whatever you need at that time, all of a sudden the salvation comes and all kinds of things that are horrible in your life get turned around because Jesus is your savior. Anybody ever have that experience?
Brian: All of us, yes.
Jeff: So it's, I am my beloved’s. I am my beloved's and he is mine. Focus on me. You see? So then as time goes on, you begin to understand that it's actually not all about you. It's about him. He actually has a plan for your life. And he actually is more than just your savior. He is your Lord. You begin to understand that there is a calling and a purpose and a destiny that he actually had for you before you ever even met him. And so then what happened the second time she says it, she says, my beloved is mine and I am his, instead of, I am my beloved’s and he is mine. Now I am my beloved and I am his.
Brian: So she is halfway there.
Jeff: Yes. So now we've moved from, it's all about me and it's all about me to it's all about me and it's all about him. You see how that works? And then at the end of the song in chapter seven, she says I belong to my beloved and his desire is for me, focus on him, focus on him. This is the migration. This is what happens as we begin to truly understand how much he loves us. It goes from, well, he is taking care of me to I'm serving him to he loves me. This is a wonderful migration to experience in our personal lives. This is… Again, this is not doctrinal. This is real. This is experiential. This is the journey that our Lord wants to take us on; to take us from a place of understanding he is savior to a place where we understand he is Lord to a place where we understand he is our lover.
That's a magical transition that totally changes how we look at ourselves, how we look at our God and how we look at the world. When you have someone who calls you, who has failed and you are able to encourage them with no shame, the ability to do that comes because you've met Jesus as you lover. Oftentimes, when we just know Jesus is Lord, then we kind of don't have patience for people who failed, because obviously you haven't figured out yet that he is your Lord, so why did you do that? But when we begin to meet him as our lover or as our father who loves us unconditionally, or as our friend who is always there for us, that's who Holy Spirit is, then we understand that in the middle of our imperfection, we are loved perfectly. And so then we are able to love others perfectly when they fail. When the church comes to that place of knowing Jesus in that way and loving each other, the same way that he loves us is when we are going to really impact the world. That's the key. That's the first one. I love that transgression, that progression. I love that migration from...
Brian: I was thinking of a song that kind of reflects that, where it's... Again, it's an older. We probably sang it for many years, but turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face and the things of this world will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. And so again, the real essence of that song is the beauty of the Lords and how when we see him it no longer becomes about me or the things that I want in this life, material goods and what have you, but it becomes about just him and he becomes the pearl of great price. Or as we sang earlier today, he is our great reward. I see even in these three scriptures where this progression is, the reward becomes him. He is the reward here. Yeah. Yeah. It's really good. It's good.
Jeff: It's great. Okay. On to another concept, and this is probably truly my favorite verse in all of the Song of Songs, chapter 8, verse 5. In the Song of Songs, we have the Shulamite woman, the bride, we have the prince, her lover, her bridegroom, and then throughout the song, we have this chorus, we have this chorus of onlookers who are always commenting on the relationship as they are watching it unfold. In this section, it's actually the chorus that’s speaking and it's towards the end of the book, but they say, who is this coming up from the wilderness leaning on her lover? There are all kinds of... If we had the time, we could build a whole huge context about this, but I just want you to see that the wilderness experiences are the most significant opportunities in our life to lean on and come close to this God who loves us so intimately.
I don't really wish for any wilderness experiences. I don't wish them for you and I don't like them for me, and I don't count on them, hope for them, but when they come, the only way that I know through them is to trust Jesus. The only way I can have peace in some of the circumstances I find myself is to trust Jesus. The only way that I can have hope is to trust Jesus. What we find is that life for every single one of us brings moments when there is nothing else that we can do, but trust Jesus. But what happens in that moment is there is an intimacy that forms. There is a closeness, there is a bonding that comes between us and our Lord that we've never had before, and we find ourselves leaning on him. Have you had that experience? But what's really amazing here is that everybody else, the whole chorus, everybody who was watching saw the transformation. So it's like, oh yeah, we know that Shulamite, but now all of a sudden it's like, who is this?
Brian: Yeah. The wilderness...
Jeff: Who is this?
Brian: This wilderness represents, like you are saying darkness or adversity. My mind kind of just drifts over to the church in China where they've been under such great oppression or the church in Russia back before the iron curtain fell down and guys like Brother Andrew would be smuggling Bibles into Russia, and how the churches grew. I had a guy do my floor, put some flooring in my house for me, who at the time was a recent immigrant from Russia. He had become a believer, and of course there is persecution there. This is back during the pre-wall coming down days, the cold war days. The next thing you know, he is got a bunch of his friends that are believers, because he is witnessing to them. They are now in the Red Army and they are believers.
Pretty soon, like a whole regiment is now followers of Jesus in the Red Army, and the military didn't know what to do. We've got to split these guys up. So they split them up and sent them to the whole rest of the army, which is like go, ye into all the army to preach the gospel. But it was birthed out of persecution and darkness and difficulty. This is such a wonderful verse that talks about how she was leaning on him during the darkness, during the difficult times.
Jeff: And then leaning on him, he walked her out of the wilderness, but it's like, everybody who is watching is like, well, there is the prince, but who is that? You see, she has changed. I don't recognize her, because something transforms in our lives when our lover walks us through the wilderness, when we lean on him and we walk through. It's a transformation that's very powerful.
Brian: Even James talks, the purification of our faith. We all say, well, I'm a person of faith, and then our faith really gets tested, and we see how much of our faith really is faith. But what comes out of it is a purified faith when we come out of the darkness with him.
Jeff: And something you've done for me, Pastor Brian, that has been really significant in the last, your recent messages is, before when I thought of the purifying of my faith, it's hard to explain how I saw it, except that it was a little bit cold. It was kind of like, well, you've got to go through it because you are going to get stronger and...
Brian: Grit your teeth and bear.
Jeff: Yeah. What you've done for me is you've replaced or you've helped further define the concept of faith with the word trust. When we begin to understand that what faith really is, is trust. It's the ability to trust our savior then it becomes much more personal and intimate. And now that growth is relational. It's not like bodybuilding. That's a great concept. We sing songs about this, right?
Jacque: No pain, no gain.
Jeff: Yeah, no pain, no gain. You know all that kind of stuff. We all know it's true, but it sure is nice to have somebody there with you when you are going through it.
Brian: Amen.
Jeff: And he is with us. I think of times when I felt like there was no place to put my feet down. There was no solid ground under me. I had nothing to stand on. Anybody ever felt like that? I would close my eyes and I feel like I was floating and I couldn't find any solid space to put my feet down on. And then I realized, oh, he is holding me. I'm not floating. I'm in his hands. It's like he said, I'm rebuilding your foundation, so when it's ready, you'll be able to put your feet down, but until then, I'm going to hold you.
Brian: I think most of us has seen the poem or a little plaque where it talks about this person is now reflecting back on their life, and there are two sets of footprints in the sand and then there is a section of time where there is only one set, of course. Of course, the person's perspective was what was going on there? Why did you leave me? He said I didn't leave you. That's when I was carrying you, actually. That's when I'm carrying you. That's really the truth of, he will never leave us. He will never forsake. It's truly tested in the most trying times, just like what Stan and Katherine are going through with Angela, but God is not abandoning you in this. This is not a punishment. This is an opportunity for God to come and show himself and carry you, if needs be. Because sometimes we just don't have the strength. We just don't. He doesn't cast us down when those times happen. He just picks us up and carries us until we can walk again. It's so beautiful.
Speaker: Sometimes he uses others in that process.
Brian: Yes, he does. Sometimes he uses others in that process as well.
Jeff: He does. He brings people along at the right time and we can be thankful for that. As you said in the video on Thursday, we never have to do it alone. He is always there. He is always there. To me, that's a profound promise. One of the things that I often think of is the three Hebrews standing before Nebuchadnezzar when they wouldn't bow down to the idol. Because trusting the father in a place where we have no control doesn't mean that we get the guaranteed outcome that we are looking for. Trusting the father means that we can lean on him regardless of the outcome. That's another layer of trust that's hard to come to. It’s that place I talked about last week a little bit about, where he says I'm not going to take it away from you. I'm going to keep it for you, but you have to trust the whole thing to him.
The three Hebrew children, of course, Nebuchadnezzar says, “If you don't bow down, now I'm going to throw in the fiery furnace and what God can save you from my hand?” The three children say, “Our God will save us from your hand.” They are not mincing around, right? Our God will save us from your hand, but even if he doesn't, we are not bowing down. Their trust in God at that point was not just for him to keep him out of the furnace. It was for him to be with them, regardless of whether they went in the furnace or not. And then of course they did go in the furnace and he was with them.
Brian: There is a fourth guy in there.
Jeff: That's right.
Brian: Didn't we just throw three in there? Who is that fourth guy?
Jeff: So you see, we don't... We can't... This isn't like this isn't like the genie in the bottle. It's not like we get three wishes in whatever we ask, we get it. It doesn't always work that way. So many times we see God's intervention, we see miracles happen and we see wonderful things from our prayers being answered. But there are other times when they aren't answered the way we want. It doesn't mean that we can't lean on him. In any case, we can lean on him, and we are transformed. One of my most compelling memories is with our friends, John and Michelle, when we lost John to pancreatic cancer. In those years... It was a fairly long thing. He survived a lot longer than many, many people do. But in the end you could just see the sweetness of his relationship with Jesus was...
Brian: Genuine.
Jeff: Remarkable. He was having visions. I remember there was one time, and of course, many of you have seen this with loved ones when they've passed. In the days and weeks preceding, they actually kind of tend to go into heaven back and forth a little bit more. John had one of those episodes in heaven where he met his two sisters that his mom had miscarried when he was a child. It's just like all of these crazy things started to happen. We got to just see this amazing transformation in John, but then we also had to walk alongside of Michelle. Michelle, maybe you are watching, but the way you leaned on Jesus and the way your life has been transformed, we've all watched that too. And now we can look at you and we can say, who is this leaning on her lover that's coming out of the desert?
Jacque: That's so good.
Brian: I remember one of the transformations. John was still kind of hanging on and fighting because he cared for Michelle and obviously loved her and his family and felt they... In one of these moments where God took him to heaven and God just showed him the future and Michelle was going to be fine. When he came back, in a sense, his whole perspective had changed. It's like, I'm ready and I want to go, and everything is going to be fine and you are going to be fine. It was hard for her to believe that because she hadn't experienced that dimension the same way John had. And yet all was hinged on coming out of the darkness with his father. Those are things that we have access to and God makes available.
Jeff: We always do. He will walk you through the fire. He will be with you if it burns you up. He will walk you out of it. He will get it so you don't even have to go in the furnace. But in any case, we can lean on him. He is always there to lean on. And that's the transformational process that happens, is when we lean on him and there is nothing quite like it. Onto the last section, and this is pretty powerful. We are going to put up chapter 8 and we are just going to move into the next verse down 6 and 7. We've got that up, I think. Alec, you've got that up for us?
Here, he is speaking to her and he says, "Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm for love is as strong as death and its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like a blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love. Rivers cannot sweep it away. If one were to give all the wealth of one's house for love, it would be utterly scorned." Here we have the bridegroom talking to his bride about how powerful love is. And love is so powerful that you... I'll give you a million dollars and you give me your ability to love. I'll give you a million dollars and you give me your ability to be loved. Is that a deal? Never, never would, never would. Once we encounter that love, there is nothing like it.
Brian: Maybe Jack Benny. That would have worked with Jack Benny.
Jeff: Maybe Jack Benny.
Brian: But I doubt it. I doubt because he needed to be loved too. And he wanted to be loved.
Jeff: And you see what... Think about this. He says jealousy is unyielding as the grave. Love is as strong as death. This does give us a little bit of insight into crimes of passion. Although God is not as stalker and he is not about controlling us, but his love is very real. In Exodus when he gives Moses the 10 commandments before he even talks about them, he says, for your God is a jealous God. You see, outside of the Song of Songs that sounds a little bit intimidating. Like, your God is a jealous God. So you better not worship any other gods or I'm going to really get you. That's kind of the Old Testament portrayal, but you see when we get to the Song of Songs, we see something totally different. God is jealous over us because of his passionate love for us. He is jealous over us, just like a husband or wife is right to be jealous over their spouse.
If your spouse experienced a little jealousy, if you happen to go have a lunch meeting with a member of the opposite sex... Anybody here is uncomfortable if their spouses have those types of meetings? You should be. That's okay, because love is... I mean, that's what love is about. Love is a very vulnerable thing. When we truly love somebody and entrust our whole lives to them we are very vulnerable. Unfortunately, many, many people in our world in the last 50 years especially, have had their lives completely destroyed in their hearts completely broken because they completely trusted somebody who betrayed them. That's what divorce is about many, many times. Not always, but oftentimes. In the middle of a divorce like that, you have every right to be in a rage. When your spouse has been faithful to you, you have every right to be in a rage because you expect them to be true to the covenant that they made.
Brian: It's a righteous jealousy in a sense.
Jeff: Yeah, because you've entrusted everything to them, all of your most intimate details of your life, your whole heart, everything, and so...
Brian: It's even equated to a blazing fire. It's not just a little... It's not just a few embers or coals. It's a blazing fire. There is a big difference.
Jeff: There is a huge difference. We had the grandkids over last night, all of them. We had such a blast. Cheryl had the idea of lighting our Christmas tree ablaze. She went in the middle of the yard and she dug a hole and she stuck the stump of the tree down into the hole. This is a tree that has been drying out in the woods ever since December. And she took a match. All the kids are standing about 20 feet away. We got the hose out there just in case something goes wrong and she takes a match and she just lights the bottom, the heels of that thing and it starts to catch and pretty soon it is an absolute inferno. The flames are shooting up 20 feet high. It wasn't one of the greatest... How many of you have been to restaurants now with those birthday candles that shoot up sparks? It was like that, only it was like 20 times bigger. It was a blazing fire. I'm telling you. Cheryl says, "Can you imagine what a forest fire is like? That was one tree. Three or four minutes later, it was nothing but embers, but it was... A blazing fire consumes everything. See our God, it's [inaudible 1:25:35]. Our God is a consuming fire. But don't look at it as he is wrathful. He is not a wrathful consuming fire. He is a loving, consuming fire. His love for us is so strong that it consumes him and it consumes us. That's huge.
Jacque: We can trust. We can trust that love.
Jeff: We can. We can. What's of course amazing about God is that when we run off and flirt with other lovers, and the world presents all kinds other lovers. We have all kinds of other lovers and different ones of us are attracted to different ones, but they are always out there wooing you; trying to get you away from the lover of your soul, trying to get you to trust something else, somebody else.
Brian: A sin that easily besets us.
Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And somehow in this blazing fire of his love for us, he is able to be Hosea to us. You know the story of Hosea who married, the Lord said go marry a prostitute. He took her and they started a family and then what did she do?
Brian: She left.
Jacque: She left him.
Jeff: Went back into prostitution.
Brian: Got into slavery, was enslaved, and he went down to the market and publicly bought her back in front of everybody.
Jeff: What a picture?
Brian: That's ours God.
Jeff: What an amazing picture of our God.
Brian: That's our God.
Jeff: So when we peak his jealousy, he waits to win us back again, but the jealousy and the passion is so strong in him that he never looks and says, well, I'm done with her, let's go find someone else.
Brian: Aren't we thankful for that?
Jeff: Yeah, such a powerful picture. But when you think about your God being jealous, I mean, when you are tempted by other lovers in this world, just think about the love that this lover has for you, because it's really real. It's not pretend. It's not even just a spiritual metaphor. The love is real in this case.
Brian: Let's finish this last verse real quick here. I love this last verse- many waters cannot quench love. Many waters cannot quench it. Rivers cannot sweep it away. And then what you were referring to, if one were to give all the wealth of one's house for love, it would be utterly scorned. Just share a few more thoughts on that.
Jeff: You know, you can... Forest fires are like that. Except for a good rain, you never... You can pour all the water on them that you want, but these fires burn hot. This love is something that can't just be easily distinguished. You can't just easily quench it. It's always there. It's always burning and it’s burning for you. That's why, what you said earlier in the service about how it's hard to believe that he actually wants to be with us, he really can't wait to be with us. He really looks forward to being with us.
Brian: Yes, he does.
Jeff: You know when you fall in love, that's all you think about, right? I still have problems with that. Just mesmerized by my beautiful wife, thinking about her all the time, In the middle of the day and I'm in the middle of work and I'm just like, ah, text Cheryl, Hey, love you. Sure wish I was with you instead of here.
Jacque: Oh, that's how you are too, isn't it?
Brian: I am all the time.
Jacque: You tell me all the time.
Jeff: Honestly, I do get distracted once in a while.
Brian: I always say to Jacque that I was a smart one, because I picked her. That makes me the smart one.
Jeff: Oh, that's right.
Jacque: I just keep thinking of that line from… His is a love that will not let me go.
Brian: That's right. There is a love that will never let us go. It's the love of God. We are made by God to love and to be loved. The world is fragmented today and broken because people are not loved and they give their hearts to other things. Every time their heart is broken, a piece of their heart gets torn away. After a lifetime of your heart being broken, you have very little heart left to give, but Jesus is able to come into that brokenness and that chaos, like the video I shared on Thursday and restore and make whole again. Your life might look differently. It might look different, because you can't go back in time, but you can be whole. You can have something of substance to give. And that's what Jesus does for us. I would like to just pray as we want to come to a conclusion here. Thank you, Jeff, for this wonderful overview of this incredible book. I hope that you'll go back and read it again over and over, and we'll see it in a different light than maybe we've seen it before.
But father, I just am so thankful that you aren't ashamed to show your love for us. You are not ashamed to be seen with us. You love us with a love that will not let us go. And so today, father, I just ask that those of us who are here in the sanctuary and those who are watching by live stream, that Lord, our hearts would become open to hearing our beloved, that we are yours, Lord, and that you can escort us out of the darkness. You can escort us out of shame. You can escort us Lord out of even failures when we should have known better. Escort us out of our moments of doubt and unbelief and lack of trust, even when we should have known better. And so father today, we lift up this book to all of us to embrace it more deeply, because in it we are embracing you. Help us to see more clearly this wonderful truth that you have given to us to share with those who are broken and beaten down and wounded. We don't have to look very far to find people like that, Lord.
Oftentimes all that glitters is certainly not gold. Beneath the surface there is brokenness and questions and insecurity that you can bring Jesus, you can bring to these lives. So I pray that you will empower us to do this. Help us Lord hasten your return by bringing this good news to the whole world. We know people all across the country and we know people in other countries and we can text them and send them these words. Lord, put on our hearts, people that you would want us to send these little moments of hope to because you are the hope of the world today. So we bless your holy name. We thank you for this time together. I pray that you'll seal it in our hearts, Lord deeply. In your precious name, we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Let's raise our hands together. Now may the Lord bless you and may the Lord keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you and may the Lord turn his face towards you and give you his peace and may you know the love of our father, which is the love that will never let you go. This, we pray, in the name of the father, son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. God bless you. Thank you for being here with us today. Have a safe, wonderful afternoon and enjoy the sunshine. I think it's supposed to be a little warmer this week, so we can have a few more patio parties this week. So God bless you. Thanks for being here. Bye-bye.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 10-4-20. If you would like to watch the full service, click one of the links below.