3ABN On the Road

Living The Jesus Creed

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Pr. Mike Tucker

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Series Code: OTR

Program Code: OTR000920


01:00 You know we're coming to you
01:01 from beautiful downtown Thompsonville.
01:03 I've noticed, that all of us who worked in big cities
01:06 used that term.
01:07 Danny really uses that term
01:09 beautiful downtown Thompsonville.
01:10 But those of us who have come from New York
01:12 or Jim from Dallas, who tend to say
01:14 beautiful downtown Thompsonville.
01:17 Though it kind of rings funny in our minds,
01:19 we say it anyway because we're happy to be here.
01:22 I was back in New York City just a couple of months ago
01:25 and I enjoyed my times there.
01:28 But when it was time to go, I was ready to go
01:31 and come back to beautiful downtown Thompsonville.
01:34 Praise the Lord.
01:36 We've adjusted quite well and quite nicely.
01:39 We want to begin our meeting with prayer
01:41 and talked to the Lord
01:42 and ask His blessing upon us this day.
01:44 Father God, we thank You so very much for Your love,
01:48 Your goodness, Your grace and Your mercy.
01:51 We thank You for the words that we have heard preached
01:53 with power and for the truth in those words.
01:57 And what the word does to bring life to our lives
02:02 and to turn our hearts and minds towards Jesus.
02:05 We ask now for Pastor Tucker,
02:08 Your blessing, Your anointing
02:11 so that he can speak the words of life with power.
02:15 And then we ask that
02:16 You would open up our hearts and minds
02:18 to be receptors of that word,
02:21 that we can be drawn closer to Jesus Christ.
02:24 And we thank You in Jesus' name, amen.
02:28 You know, the directors here are very specific about,
02:31 about lighting.
02:33 There is talking light and there is singing light.
02:37 I am now standing in talking light.
02:40 Now since I'm getting ready to sing,
02:41 I've got to move from talking light
02:43 over to singing light.
02:47 This is singing light. Can you see the difference?
02:49 Sure you can.
02:55 Really is because the monitors are here
02:57 and I have to listen to myself when I sing.
03:00 The song I like to do is in Shady Green Pastures.
03:04 God Leads His Dear Children Along.
03:05 It is a favorite of mine.
03:08 The words means so very much to me
03:10 because, in my life and I'm sure in many of yours,
03:13 you've gone through ups and downs,
03:15 through mountains and valleys.
03:16 You've had good times and hard times.
03:18 But the very first text that I committed to memory
03:22 was Joshua 1:9.
03:24 "Have not I commanded thee?
03:25 Be strong and of a good courage,
03:27 be not afraid,
03:28 neither be thou dismayed for the Lord thy God
03:31 is with thee whithersoever thou goest."
03:35 It talks about good times, bad times
03:37 that we have the assurance that God is with us
03:40 through all of those times.
03:42 We are never ever alone.
03:44 Amen? And amen.
03:46 Listen to the words.
03:59 In shady, green pastures
04:03 So rich and so sweet
04:08 God leads
04:09 His dear children along
04:16 Where the water's cool flow
04:20 Bathes the weary one's feet
04:25 God leads
04:27 His dear children along
04:33 Some through the water
04:37 Some through the flood
04:41 Some through the fire
04:45 But all through the blood
04:50 Some through great sorrow
04:54 Still God gives a song
04:59 In the night season
05:03 And all the day long
05:11 Sometimes on the mountain
05:14 Where the sun shine so bright
05:19 God leads
05:21 His dear children along
05:27 Sometimes in the valley
05:30 Through the darkest of night
05:35 God leads
05:37 His dear children along
05:45 Some through the water
05:49 Some through the flood
05:53 Some through the fire
05:57 But all through His blood
06:02 Some through great sorrow
06:06 But God gives a song
06:10 In the night season
06:14 And all the day long
06:21 Some through the water
06:28 Some through the flood
06:32 Some through great sorrow
06:36 But all through the blood
06:43 Some through great sorrow
06:47 Still God gives a song
06:52 In the night season
06:56 And all
07:00 The day long
07:25 Now I'm back to talking light.
07:28 We heard from him on yesterday
07:30 and it has been my pleasure to sort of reacquaint myself
07:33 with our friend, Pastor Michael Tucker.
07:37 As I said, I had a chance to preach at his church
07:40 some years ago for an international weekend,
07:42 and he was gracious, has been kind
07:44 and turning his pulpit over to me.
07:46 He pastors the church of some 1,900 members.
07:50 And I remember when I got to Ephesus Church
07:53 and I had someone...
07:55 I was talking with one of the elders
07:57 and I said, boy,
07:59 I have got 2,000 members to teach and direct.
08:03 And he said, well, you may have 2,000 people
08:05 telling you what to do.
08:08 But he has done a very fine job.
08:10 He's been there 16 years.
08:13 So that bespeaks something, he's doing something right
08:15 and God is blessing his ministry.
08:17 He's a nice guy.
08:19 You know, you like to know people
08:21 who are steeped into word, who love the Lord,
08:25 but are humble nice guys.
08:27 And I was teasing with him yesterday,
08:29 but he is indeed a nice guy.
08:32 And someone that I've come to love and respect.
08:36 He and his wife Gayle are pastors there.
08:38 They have a pastoral staff.
08:39 He is the speaker/director for Faith for Today
08:42 which as was said yesterday is the longest running
08:45 Christian television ministry.
08:47 He follows in a long line
08:49 of great leaders of that ministry.
08:51 So without further ado, please hear now
08:54 our pastor, our friend, Pastor Michael Tucker.
09:02 Thank you, C.A.
09:04 He is a fun man to tease with. I wanted you to know.
09:07 He's a lot of fun to, to hangout with.
09:10 Good guy.
09:11 Now, C.A., if I start to move around
09:14 and I move over here, do I have to sing
09:18 or can I continue to preach here?
09:19 Is that all right? Okay. All right.
09:22 I think they would like it better
09:24 if I kept with preaching.
09:27 I asked you to pray for Faith for Today.
09:30 This summer we're going to shoot another 26 episodes
09:33 of Lifestyle Magazine and that is a program
09:35 we'd use to reach secular men and women.
09:38 And we have changed it up a little bit.
09:40 We shot some last year.
09:42 We're gonna shoot some more this year.
09:44 And pray that we will get that right.
09:47 That we will create programs
09:48 that will truly reach the secular mind
09:50 and bring them to a knowledge of Jesus Christ.
09:53 That is the mission of Faith for Today
09:55 is to reach secular people.
09:56 And that's why our program looks a little different
09:58 than some of the others because we are appealing
10:01 to a secular mind that may not respond to me
10:03 standing up here and preaching.
10:05 But a talk show is less threatening to them
10:08 and they were able to introduce spiritual themes
10:10 through that show.
10:12 So be praying for us if you would please,
10:13 that we'll do that right
10:15 and that we'll be able to reach men and women
10:16 with the gospel of Jesus Christ,
10:18 that's what we want.
10:19 Open your Bible if you would please to Matthew 22 again.
10:22 We've been studying something we've called
10:24 the Jesus Creed.
10:26 What does it mean to live Christianly
10:29 in the world today?
10:30 What does it mean to live
10:32 as a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ?
10:34 What does that look like? What does that feel like?
10:37 What does that mean in today's context?
10:41 And we have found that Jesus has a creed or a mantra
10:45 if you will for living.
10:47 He was asked which was the greatest commandment.
10:49 Which was basically asking, how do you grow spiritually?
10:52 As far as the Jewish mind was concerned
10:54 and Jesus answered by giving us
10:57 what we find here in Matthew 22:37.
11:01 Jesus replied, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart,
11:05 with all your soul, with all your mind.'
11:08 This is the first and greatest commandment.
11:11 And the second is like it,
11:12 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'
11:14 All the Law and the Prophets
11:16 hang on these two commandments."
11:19 We call this the Jesus Creed. The Jesus creed is this.
11:22 We love God by following Jesus and loving others.
11:27 And that is the basis of Christianity. Is it not?
11:31 It boils down to this.
11:33 You want to live like Jesus Christ.
11:34 You want to be like Jesus Christ.
11:37 You understand the Jesus creed.
11:38 We're gonna love God and we're gonna do that
11:40 by following Jesus and by loving other people.
11:45 Now I'd like to focus today on the last half of that first
11:49 and then we'll get back to the first half of this.
11:51 We're gonna talk about right now loving people.
11:53 We talked about that quite a bit yesterday.
11:55 I'd like to add one more thing to this.
11:57 Yesterday, we talked about how it's important to love
11:59 not just the people around you who you like.
12:02 Not just the people you go to church with.
12:04 Although, sometimes that's a challenge too, isn't it?
12:07 I heard a big amen over some place.
12:11 Sometimes that's a challenge as well, isn't it?
12:13 But also to love the bum on skid road,
12:17 to love the drug dealer,
12:18 to love those people the way Jesus loves them.
12:21 That's a challenge.
12:22 But I'm telling you right now that
12:23 sometimes there's even bigger challenge
12:26 and that is to love the new you in Christ Jesus.
12:33 Very often we think of Christianity
12:35 as hating ourselves and loving others.
12:39 That's not really a good translation of this.
12:42 The truth is that we're to love ourselves
12:45 as Christ loves us.
12:46 We've to see ourselves as Christ sees us.
12:49 And He says that, when you come to Him,
12:51 He says you are then a new creation.
12:54 Did you know that?
12:55 You are a brand new creation,
12:58 a brand new person in Jesus Christ.
13:00 The old you has been washed away, it is gone.
13:03 Now, you are a new creature,
13:05 one who more closely resembles Jesus Christ Himself,
13:10 that's the new you.
13:13 Someone who more closely resembles
13:15 Jesus Christ Himself.
13:17 And that means, you are to love that new creation.
13:20 You are to believe in that new creation.
13:25 Believe that God can and will use that person.
13:32 Now you think about that for a moment.
13:34 God can and will use you.
13:37 He has said that He has given you authority.
13:40 You have authority in the name of Jesus Christ.
13:43 One of the places you have authority is over spirits.
13:47 You remember the story of Jesus
13:49 being on the Mount of Transfiguration
13:50 with Peter, James, and John.
13:52 And the other nine disciples were down
13:54 at the foot of the mountain.
13:55 And when they came down,
13:57 Jesus noticed that the other nine
13:59 have been trying to cast a demon out of a boy,
14:01 but they have been unsuccessful in doing so.
14:04 And he chided them for their lack of faith.
14:07 Some commentators look at that and they say, you know,
14:09 it wasn't their lack of faith in God
14:12 that prevented them from doing this.
14:15 It was their lack of faith in themselves
14:17 being an instrument that God would and could use.
14:22 Because remember they had already been
14:23 out on the speaking tour,
14:25 they had already done some miracles
14:26 but this seemed to be a real bad case.
14:29 And they just did not believe that God would use them.
14:34 And so Jesus said, oh, you have a little faith.
14:39 I think that he was saying,
14:41 you need to believe in the new you.
14:43 Believe that God will
14:45 and can work through you, even you.
14:51 From time to time, people come to me
14:53 and they tell me about demonic harassment
14:56 in their lives or in their home.
14:58 One family came to me and they said that
15:00 they were renting a house that had been owned previously
15:04 by drug dealers who are also Satan worshipers.
15:08 And when they had left the house,
15:10 they had left in a hurry and they left a female dog
15:12 and her puppies locked up in a bathroom
15:14 and the dog and the puppies died there.
15:18 And now, as they were living in this house every now and then,
15:22 they would hear scratching and growling
15:24 on the bathroom door.
15:26 And of course they would go there and no one was there.
15:28 They would feel a cold presence rushing to the room
15:31 and then the cat would leave the room, would run away.
15:35 The girl who was a teenager in academy, in high school
15:39 would be asleep and she would awaken
15:41 with a feeling of a cold icy hand on her throat.
15:45 Sits straight up and no one was there.
15:47 And they came to me and said,
15:49 would you come and help us with this?
15:50 I said I'll be happy to. You can do it yourself.
15:53 No, pastor, we need your help.
15:55 I said fine.
15:56 So I took one of my elders
15:57 and we prayed in every room of the house,
15:59 finding the demons, casting them out
16:01 and claiming that his territory
16:03 for these sons and daughters of Jesus Christ,
16:06 sons and daughters of God,
16:07 brothers of Jesus Christ, sisters.
16:09 These people belong to Jesus,
16:11 that means this territory belongs to them.
16:13 My elder and I did that in every room of the house.
16:15 We did it outside the house.
16:17 It's been years ago, they've never had
16:18 any other problems.
16:19 It's not because I have any great power over demons,
16:23 Jesus Christ has the authority over all demons.
16:27 He has vested that authority
16:28 graciously in His sons and daughters, His followers,
16:32 that is you and that is me
16:33 because we believe in the priesthood of all believers.
16:36 That means you have the same authority to do that
16:38 as I do.
16:40 You have to believe in the new you.
16:42 So another one of my members heard me preach that sermon
16:45 and tell that particular experience
16:47 and explain it that way,
16:48 that you have authority to do this.
16:50 She called me up.
16:51 She said, I teach,
16:53 I've just been assigned to a public school
16:54 and I'm a teacher there.
16:56 And at this public school it is known that
16:58 the school itself is haunted.
17:00 The elementary children
17:01 will not go to the bathroom by themselves
17:03 because of the noises and the experiences
17:05 that they have in the bathroom.
17:06 And so they are frightened at the school,
17:08 we will hear noises, we hear rappings,
17:10 we hear all sorts of noise
17:12 and children laughing where there are no children.
17:15 Everyone knows this place is haunted.
17:17 What can I do?
17:19 I said, well, I talked to her about
17:21 going through the rooms of that building
17:23 and claiming it as territory for Jesus Christ.
17:26 She said, "Now, are you sure that I can do this
17:28 and I don't have to have you?"
17:29 I said, sister, believe me, there is nothing in me
17:32 that is of value that can make this happen.
17:34 This is Jesus Christ and He can work through you,
17:37 just assuredly as He can through me.
17:39 She said, "Would you write out a sample prayer for me?"
17:41 So I did that and I send her an email with it.
17:44 She went through every room of that school
17:48 and prayed that prayer and cast out the demons.
17:52 So effective was that, that the children now
17:54 go to the bathroom by themselves.
17:57 They hear no more noises
17:59 because she believed in the new her.
18:02 By the way something else interesting happened.
18:04 Some of the other teachers came to her and said,
18:06 we understand...
18:08 She had not told anyone that she had done this.
18:10 We understand you cast out the demons in this place.
18:13 How did they know that? Number one.
18:15 They said and the people you set out
18:18 were actually children.
18:19 These were spirits of children and they don't understand
18:21 why you were so mean to them.
18:24 Isn't that crazy?
18:25 First of all, how did they know?
18:27 Well, you know I think we got a guess here
18:31 and these were teachers.
18:33 That's a little frightening.
18:35 But she held her ground.
18:37 You know, she had claimed that territory for Jesus Christ.
18:42 And she has the authority
18:44 because she is a new creature in Jesus Christ.
18:47 You ought to believe in the new you,
18:51 that new person,
18:52 that new creation in Jesus Christ
18:55 because He will and can and shall work through you.
19:02 When we follow the Jesus creed by following Jesus
19:05 and loving others,
19:07 one of the others we love is us.
19:11 We love ourselves as the new us,
19:13 the new creation that is now following Jesus Christ.
19:18 Now that first part of this, we love God by following Jesus.
19:22 This is not a casual following.
19:23 He's over here, I'm close enough.
19:26 You know I've see him going that way,
19:27 I'll follow in a little bit, I'm busy right now.
19:29 And then I kind of meandered that way.
19:31 No, this is a devoted following of Jesus Christ.
19:34 It is the number one priority in your life.
19:36 I am a devoted follower of Jesus Christ.
19:40 It even means that I will follow Jesus Christ,
19:44 even if following Him
19:46 disagrees with my previous interpretation of the law.
19:49 Does that make sense to you?
19:51 I grew up at times believing the law sets certain things
19:54 and yet as I examined the life of Christ,
19:55 sometimes He leads me in ways that are little bit different
19:57 than what I grew up believing.
20:00 And I have to reexamine my understanding of the law.
20:04 We find an example of this in Matthew Chapter 8.
20:10 Jesus had just issued a call for disciples.
20:12 He called them to follow Him and to follow Him all the way.
20:16 Follow Me He said.
20:18 And one disciple it says came to Him.
20:21 That means one who wanted to be a disciple
20:23 or one who was following Him from a distance,
20:25 certainly not one of the twelve.
20:27 And said I would like to follow You,
20:28 but he had a condition.
20:30 Look at this, Matthew 8:21.
20:32 "Another disciple said to him,
20:34 "Lord, first let me go and bury my father.
20:38 But Jesus told him, "Follow me,
20:40 and let the dead bury their own dead."
20:42 Now at first that seems rather cold, doesn't it?
20:45 It seems cold until you understand
20:47 the customs of the day.
20:49 And let me explain this to you.
20:51 When a person died on those days,
20:52 they were usually buried the same day that they died
20:56 because it's a dry arid land,
20:58 the body would disintegrate quickly
21:00 and it would be a health hazard.
21:01 So usually the same day that the person died,
21:04 they would anoint the body with oils and spices
21:06 and put it in a tomb
21:08 and that would be the first day.
21:10 Then the family would sit and they would grieve
21:14 and some thing called Shiva for seven days.
21:16 It was rare that they would ever come out of the house
21:18 during those seven days.
21:20 Relatives would bring them food if need be,
21:22 so that they could stay in the house
21:24 and grieve for seven days.
21:25 Then the morning would continue,
21:27 although they would reenter into,
21:29 to public life,
21:30 they would continue for up to one year.
21:32 At the end of the year,
21:34 the bones were then taken out of the tomb
21:36 where they have been laid the first place
21:38 and reburied.
21:40 So there were two burials.
21:42 This man spoke to Jesus obviously
21:45 not before his father was buried the first time
21:48 because that happened the same day.
21:50 It was extremely unlikely
21:52 that he talked to him during Shiva
21:54 because they didn't come out of the house
21:56 during that time.
21:58 What he was basically saying is,
22:01 at the one year anniversary of my father's death
22:03 we're going to rebury him.
22:04 Could you wait until then?
22:06 He may be asking Jesus to wait for him,
22:09 for up to a year before he followed him.
22:13 Jesus said, it's now or never.
22:16 It's all or nothing.
22:18 Now this man may have thought, hey, listen,
22:19 I'm following the law.
22:21 The law tells me to respect my parents.
22:23 The law tells me to care for them even in death.
22:26 And Jesus said, you have done enough.
22:28 You want to follow Me, follow Me.
22:31 Now that's what Jesus was speaking of
22:33 and that's why that passage tells us that at times
22:36 we have to reexamine our previous understanding
22:39 of what the law required in order to follow Jesus.
22:42 Does that make sense to you now?
22:45 If indeed you're faced with the situation
22:47 of either following Jesus
22:49 or following your previous understanding of the law,
22:52 always follow Jesus and understand this.
22:55 Jesus will never lead you outside
22:57 the precepts of the law, will He?
22:59 I mean, He's not gonna do that.
23:02 He's not gonna do that.
23:03 The laws are expression of his character.
23:06 So you are safe in following Jesus.
23:08 It may mean that you need to reexamine
23:10 what you thought the law taught.
23:13 You may need to reexamine that.
23:16 And this may be an experience of growth for you
23:18 for the rest of your life.
23:20 We have to follow Jesus
23:22 and when it comes down to a choice between
23:24 following Jesus or following our understanding of the law,
23:27 we always chose to follow Jesus.
23:31 Always chose to follow Jesus.
23:33 This, in order for that to happen
23:36 implies a personal relationship between you and Jesus Christ.
23:41 You have to know who Jesus Christ is
23:44 in order to follow Him.
23:47 You have to have a give and take relationship.
23:52 Now there are a lot of tools for doing that.
23:54 You know meditation is one, biblical meditation
23:57 by the way predates eastern meditation by a long shot.
24:00 And basically it should be a part of our Christian lives.
24:03 And we don't meditate by making our minds blank.
24:06 We meditate by filling it with scripture.
24:09 It's a biblical meditation and it predates the other.
24:12 And basically who was it?
24:14 Was asked, why he meditated?
24:18 And his response was because I'm a Christian,
24:21 because I'm a Christian.
24:23 I think it was Bonhoeffer who did that.
24:26 I'm a Christian.
24:27 And basically he thought that meditation
24:29 and Christianity went hand in hand.
24:31 This is a means of knowing Jesus Christ better.
24:35 It's a means of knowing Him better.
24:37 By the way if you like to know
24:38 a little something about meditation,
24:40 I have got a book entitled "Every Good Thing"
24:41 and it talks about spiritual disciplines,
24:44 tools for knowing Jesus better and that's one of the things
24:47 that we talk about in that book,
24:49 showing biblical examples of this.
24:51 So meditation is one of those tools.
24:52 Another tool would be Bible study.
24:54 Another tool is prayer.
24:56 Now I don't know about you but I'm one who has always
24:59 struggled with prayer.
25:00 I'm a doer you know.
25:03 And prayer always growing up seemed like a waste of time
25:06 because you should not be out doing the Lord's work
25:08 until someone pointed out to me that the work of the Lord
25:14 and the work of the Christian begins with prayer,
25:17 that is your work.
25:19 The work of the Christian is prayer.
25:21 God dares not blessed many of you endeavors for Him.
25:25 If you have not first bathed that endeavor in prayer
25:27 because otherwise you might think that
25:29 you did it yourself.
25:32 And you maybe doing the right thing,
25:34 but if you've not bathed it with prayer,
25:36 He dares not bless you
25:38 because you'll get to thinking I'm pretty good,
25:40 look at me.
25:41 Look at what I did for Jesus.
25:43 Now he did nothing for Jesus.
25:45 Jesus is the one who makes things happen
25:47 and you must bathe it with prayer.
25:49 So prayer has always been a struggle for me
25:51 and it was for the disciples as well.
25:52 The disciples watched Jesus praying.
25:55 He would get up early in the morning
25:56 and go out and He prayed for hours.
25:58 And they noticed that there seemed to be
26:00 a relationship between his prayer life
26:03 and the power that he had.
26:05 He had a relationship with the Father through prayer
26:09 and they wanted that.
26:10 And so they asked Him to teach them how to pray
26:12 and He gave them what we call now the Lord's prayer.
26:16 But he borrowed a portion of that prayer
26:18 from a liturgical prayer of the day,
26:21 that is the Kaddish.
26:24 The Kaddish is a prayer that goes like this.
26:27 This is magnified and sanctified
26:29 be His great name in the world,
26:31 the world He created according to His will.
26:34 May He establish His kingdom during your life
26:37 and during your days and during the life
26:39 of all the house of Israel speedily
26:41 and in the near future.
26:43 And say amen.
26:45 Now this is a prayer of praise to God.
26:48 It really focuses everything on God.
26:51 And it looks that everything from his point of view,
26:53 the only request is that His kingdom be established and
26:56 that it will be established quickly.
26:59 There is no personal request.
27:00 Everything is from God's point of view.
27:02 There are times when that is appropriate prayer.
27:05 There are times when that's the way to pray.
27:07 It's times when that's the way to worship
27:09 that everything is from God's point of view,
27:11 but that's not a personal relationship.
27:13 A personal relationship is give and take.
27:17 Now I have a lot of acquaintances.
27:20 Some of my acquaintances whenever they are with me,
27:22 it's all about them.
27:25 Sometimes as a pastor they are telling me their problems
27:28 and I'm praying with them and giving them counsel and all,
27:31 that's not a friendship.
27:33 I'm not their friend, I'm their counselor, I'm their pastor.
27:36 That makes sense to you?
27:38 I've got other friends who it's a give and take.
27:42 Some of it's about them, some of it's about me,
27:44 we're back and forth, that's a friendship
27:46 and that's a relationship.
27:47 The other, I'm a counselor.
27:50 Here I'm a friend.
27:53 Therefore, if we are to develop a relationship with God,
27:56 our prayers have to have a give and take.
27:59 Jesus understood that and that's why He gave us
28:02 the Lord's prayer.
28:03 I don't know about you but when I was growing up
28:05 and they were talking to me about prayer,
28:07 they said you got too many requests in your prayer.
28:10 Your prayer needs to be mainly praise.
28:13 But then I looked at all the biblical examples of prayer,
28:16 especially those that came from Jesus
28:18 and they seemed to be nothing
28:19 more than a long line of requests.
28:22 And if that's my pattern for prayer,
28:24 then it's all right to have request in your prayer.
28:27 And that's what we find with the Lord's prayer.
28:29 It is a series of request.
28:31 Now that request begins from God's perspective
28:33 but then it turns also to an individual perspective,
28:36 a personal perspective.
28:38 Let's take a look at this prayer in Matthew 6:9.
28:44 Because if we are to follow Jesus,
28:46 we must understand Jesus,
28:47 we must have a personal relationship with Jesus
28:49 in order to follow Him, in order to know His mind,
28:53 in order to know His heart, to know His will, right?
28:56 All right. Look at this prayer.
28:59 "This, then, is how you should pray.
29:02 "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
29:06 your kingdom come, your will be done on earth
29:09 as it is in heaven."
29:10 So far this is just
29:12 a reminiscent of the Kaddish, right?
29:14 Now it turns.
29:16 "Give us today our daily bread.
29:19 Forgive us our debts,
29:20 as we also have forgiven our debtors.
29:23 And lead us not into temptation,
29:26 but deliver us from the evil one."
29:27 Now in mine translation the last part of the prayer,
29:30 for thine is the kingdom of power,
29:31 the glory forever is not listed because that last,
29:34 the closing to the prayer is not found
29:36 in the oldest manuscripts.
29:38 It is possible and probably likely that, that phrase,
29:42 that ending was added by a scribe
29:44 at some point along the line
29:45 who just felt like it needed to be rounded out somehow.
29:48 And fortunately it does not do violence to the prayer,
29:52 so it's all right to have it in there.
29:53 It's not a big deal.
29:55 But it does not in the oldest translations,
29:57 the oldest manuscripts, pardon me,
29:59 and so some of the newer translations
30:01 have not included it in the Bible
30:03 that you are reading.
30:05 So that is the prayer that he has given to us.
30:07 Now notice that there is the give and the take.
30:09 We start off from God's perspective,
30:11 but then we go to the personal perspective.
30:13 Lord, I'd like to eat today.
30:16 Lord, I got these bills that are coming due
30:18 and I don't know what I'm gonna do.
30:20 Lord, would You help me manage my finances better?
30:23 Lord, I want a retirement income?
30:26 I don't know how?
30:27 You know what the price of gas these days?
30:29 I'm gonna wear out my tennis shoes.
30:33 Help me out, Lord.
30:34 That's one of the request here, isn't it?
30:36 Give us today our daily bread.
30:38 Forgive me my sins, Lord.
30:40 And, Father, there are people who have sinned against me,
30:42 I need to forgive.
30:44 In fact, I need to led go the grudges
30:46 I hold against them.
30:47 I've got to get over this, Lord,
30:49 and I can't do it by myself.
30:50 That's a personal request.
30:51 It's looking at my life
30:53 from my point of view, is it not?
30:55 And so this prayer that Jesus has given us
30:57 is an interaction, back and forth.
31:00 My perspective, God's perspective,
31:03 but notice how the prayer begins.
31:04 It says our Father, that's the word Abba.
31:09 Now, that is not something that the Jews of Jesus' day
31:12 were used to doing in their prayers.
31:15 A personal address of God as Father or Abba which may...
31:21 Some translator say that, that could be translated,
31:24 something as intimate as daddy.
31:27 That was not in their vocabulary.
31:29 That was not their experience.
31:31 Jesus is here saying
31:32 your relationship with the Father,
31:33 yes, is to be honored
31:35 and there's to be praised in awe and respect in reverence,
31:38 but there's another side to this relationship
31:41 and that is an intimate personal side.
31:44 He is your Father.
31:46 Jesus referred to God as His Father and the Pharisees
31:51 and the priest chided him for it.
31:55 It's too intimate.
31:56 In fact, they thought the name of God was so holy,
31:58 they wouldn't even say it.
31:59 Yahweh, they took the valves out
32:01 so that no one would know how to say it
32:03 and they were not allowed to refer to it
32:05 in spoken word.
32:07 And so the word Yahweh, we're not exactly sure
32:11 how that should be pronounced, that's a pretty good guess
32:14 because it was not pronounced for centuries,
32:16 so no one knows for sure.
32:18 That's how reverence they, they...
32:20 How high esteemed they held the name of God here,
32:23 but that had an opposite effect of distancing them from God
32:27 and taking away any possibility of relationship.
32:30 How do you have a relationship with a God
32:32 that is so holy, you can't even say His name?
32:35 So Jesus said, yes, He is holy
32:37 and He is sacred and He is other
32:39 and you need to be aware of that,
32:41 but He is also personal.
32:44 And He cares for you.
32:46 And He longs for intimacy with you.
32:50 Therefore, you can refer to Him as Father
32:55 because this implies an intimate personal relationship.
32:59 When I began to realize that,
33:01 it really changed my prayer life.
33:04 When I had the freedom not just to make everything
33:07 from God's perspective,
33:09 but to also include my perspective
33:11 and recognize that God is interested
33:13 in every detail of my life,
33:15 it changed my prayer life significantly.
33:19 Now I can talk to Him any day about anything,
33:23 about anything.
33:25 I can cry before Him. I can laugh before Him.
33:27 I can tell Him how angry I am.
33:30 You read the Psalms? The psalmist understood this.
33:32 The psalms are not just songs, they are prayers
33:35 and they are models of prayer.
33:37 And in fact, if you don't know how to pray,
33:38 one way to learn is to pray the Psalms.
33:41 Use them as your pattern.
33:43 Change the personal pronouns, make it fit you.
33:45 And you will learn from the Psalms
33:47 how to prayer because
33:48 every human emotion is listed in the Psalms.
33:51 Some of the ancients used to pray five psalms a day.
33:54 That really gets tedious when you're at Psalm 119,
33:57 let me tell you.
34:00 But I have taken one psalm a day
34:03 and I've done that for years,
34:04 where I've to pray one psalm a day
34:06 as a part of my regular prayer life.
34:08 I will also take the Lord's prayer
34:09 and use it as a pattern for prayer.
34:11 By the way, when it says in verse 9,
34:13 this then, is how you should pray.
34:16 A better translation of that might be
34:18 or when you pray repeat.
34:21 He's actually telling us that this is a prayer
34:23 that bears repetition.
34:26 That you can use this over and over again.
34:28 When you don't know what else to say
34:30 or how else to pray, you pray this prayer.
34:33 The other thing that I've used with these prayers,
34:35 I've used it as a pattern for my prayer life.
34:38 One of the best times for me to pray is
34:40 when I'm taking a morning walk
34:42 and I will use the Lord's prayer
34:45 on those morning walks.
34:47 And I'll start off with just the first word, Our.
34:50 And as I think about Our, I think about my fellowship
34:54 with the body of Christ,
34:56 because He is all of our Father, is He not?
34:59 We claim Him together.
35:01 But I also think about my kinship to the world,
35:04 to a world of lost people who are also His children
35:07 and my responsibility to my family members.
35:11 Whoever they are, wherever they maybe,
35:13 whatever country they maybe in, we're all brothers and sisters
35:17 and we all have one Father, one Father.
35:21 So that's, that's one of the things I do with that word.
35:24 I may just stop at that word and say,
35:25 Lord, give me a heart for others.
35:27 Help me to love them the lost, they're difficult to love.
35:31 And then that word Father, Abba,
35:34 that's a word that's difficult for some people to pray.
35:37 If you grew up with an angry or absentee
35:40 or abusive Father, that word may be loaded for you
35:45 and it may be negatively charged.
35:47 One of the things I've had people do is
35:49 to imagine the Father of your dreams,
35:51 the Father you've always wished you had.
35:55 The Father...
35:56 And when you do this, use a sanctified imagination.
36:00 I mean, make Him wonderful.
36:02 Make Him wonderful.
36:04 And when you've got that picture in your mind
36:05 of what that daddy is that you've always wanted
36:07 but never had, take that picture
36:09 and multiply it by a billion
36:11 and you scratch the surface of how good God is.
36:17 That's the Father you're praying too,
36:18 our Father which art in heaven.
36:22 That word heaven...
36:24 There are three things that are usually
36:25 referred to as heaven.
36:27 The dwelling place of God, the starry heavens
36:30 and the firmament, the air we breathe.
36:32 The most frequent use of the word heaven
36:36 was for the air they breathed.
36:38 So it may be that this prayer saying our Father
36:41 who is as close to us as the air we breathe.
36:46 Who is as ever present to me as is the atmosphere
36:48 in which I live.
36:51 Now that's a different picture for this.
36:52 Because our Father who art in heaven,
36:56 a million, billion miles away, trillion miles away,
36:59 that's different than the Father
37:01 who is just as close to me as the air
37:02 that rest upon my skin.
37:05 Who is intimately involved in every detail of my life.
37:09 And so I would take time
37:10 to acknowledge His presence with me
37:13 and to praise Him for that presence and to thank Him
37:15 and to thank Him for His involvement in my life,
37:17 for His caring for every detail of my life.
37:20 One lady went to her pastor and said, pastor,
37:22 shall we take all the things to God in prayer
37:25 or the small things or just the big things?
37:28 And he said, ma'am, what thing do you have
37:30 that God would consider to be big?
37:37 It's all small to Him, isn't it?
37:40 Someone wrote a book "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff"
37:42 and its subtitled is "It's All Small Stuff."
37:45 In God's eyes,
37:46 you've never known a big problem.
37:49 It's all small stuff to Him,
37:50 so take all of it to Him in prayer.
37:53 Don't try to categorize it.
37:55 Take it all to Him in prayer because your Father,
37:58 your Daddy, your Abba,
38:00 the one who is as close to you as the air you breathe
38:03 is concerned with every detail of your life.
38:06 That's a relationship.
38:08 That's a relationship of intimacy.
38:10 It's a personal relationship of caring between you
38:13 and a God who is intimately and infinitely
38:18 involved in your life,
38:21 that will change your prayer life.
38:24 And don't be afraid to use this prayer
38:25 over and over and over again
38:30 because He is involved with you and He wants to hear from you.
38:36 And the truth is, if you are like me,
38:38 you don't really know how to pray.
38:40 You don't know how...
38:42 You know I've been working at this
38:43 for I don't know how long.
38:44 And I still got to tell you, I don't know how to pray.
38:50 But my Father does and He's given me a pattern.
38:54 And so I use the pattern that Jesus gave me
38:57 and I let it guide my thoughts and guide my prayer life
39:01 and it keeps me on track.
39:03 And sometimes when I pray my mind wanders.
39:05 Am I the only one who has that happen?
39:08 Thank you because you just blessed me.
39:12 I thought I was the only one who was ADD
39:14 or whatever it be is, you know.
39:16 That I would start praying
39:18 and then my mind is on something else,
39:20 you know, the details of the day.
39:21 Oh, why not bring it back?
39:24 He understands that.
39:25 But you know, using a pattern for prayer,
39:28 to guide our prayers, helps keep my mind focused.
39:32 Sometimes I'll even type my prayers.
39:34 I sit at the computer
39:36 and I'll just write God a letter.
39:38 Just write Him a letter and I'll save that.
39:40 Sometimes I'll save a year's worth of them
39:42 and then I delete them all and start over again.
39:44 It just helps me keep focus.
39:46 Whatever keeps you focus
39:48 on this relationship of intimacy between you
39:51 and the God who loves you is, is usable.
39:55 And God understood that, that's why He gave you
39:57 a 150 prayers in the Psalms,
39:59 that's why He gave you the prayer of Jesus and John,
40:01 that's why He gave you the prayer of Jesus
40:03 here in Matthew, the Lord's prayer.
40:05 All the prayers of the Bible
40:06 are fit for you to use this way.
40:09 Look at them, examine them
40:11 and use them as a pattern for your relationship
40:14 with this God who cares for you.
40:15 You see this is the Jesus creed.
40:20 As a Christian we love God
40:23 and, we love God by following Jesus
40:27 and loving others.
40:29 And you know the longer I live, the more I realize
40:34 that I've got to make Christianity
40:35 just real simple or I'll never get it.
40:39 You know, when I was a young man, young pastor,
40:43 I used to pray that someone would ask me
40:45 about the 2,300 days.
40:48 Because I can do that.
40:51 Man, I could explain that.
40:53 I used to pray that someone would ask me about the Sabbath
40:55 because I can do that,
40:56 that's an Adventist preacher specialty you know.
40:59 We can do that.
41:01 I used to pray that someone would ask me
41:03 about the state of the dead.
41:06 But I also pray that no one would ask me
41:08 how to have a relationship with Jesus Christ
41:10 because I did not have a clue.
41:13 Did not have a clue.
41:16 It was not until I met Jesus personally.
41:19 It was not until I devoted myself
41:22 to finding relationship with Him,
41:25 that now I invite that question.
41:28 I'm open to that question.
41:29 You bring it on because what I can share with you is
41:33 how I found relationship with Him
41:34 and how it has changed my life.
41:37 And whether be the use of the Lord's prayer
41:39 that Jesus has taught us?
41:40 Or whether it would be my ability
41:44 by believing in the new creation
41:46 that He has made me,
41:48 to exercise the authority that He has given to me,
41:51 to even cast out demons.
41:55 I'm happy to share that with you
41:57 because that's a part of this give and take,
41:59 this relationship that grows
42:02 out of living daily the Jesus creed.
42:05 I've got to keep it simple because otherwise
42:09 I'm going to be a wash in a sea of confusion.
42:13 And every piece of doctrine then,
42:15 every doctrine that I believe in
42:18 and by the way a Seventh-day Adventist
42:19 we got a list of 28 that we accept.
42:22 Used to be 27, now it's 28, so I'm up with 28.
42:28 But every one of those doctrines
42:29 must be seen in light of this
42:32 because this is the heart of God's law,
42:34 it is the heart of God's character,
42:37 it is the heart of who we are as His sons and daughters.
42:41 And when I begin to look at it that way,
42:42 it begins to make sense.
42:44 And if something seems too harsh to me,
42:46 it usually means that I don't understand it.
42:48 I remember as a young pastor,
42:50 I had to go visit with the family
42:53 because they have just lost a child to death
42:55 and I was brand new with this, I had no clue what I was doing.
42:59 Not that I have any more of a clue now,
43:00 but I surely didn't back then.
43:04 And so before I went to visit them, I found out that
43:06 they were asking questions about
43:07 why would God let this happen to our baby?
43:11 So I called up an older retired pastor,
43:14 one that I knew and I thought well, this guy can help me.
43:17 And I explained the situation to him
43:19 and I said, now I've got to go visit them,
43:20 so what I'm gonna say?
43:22 And there was silence on the other end of the phone.
43:25 And then finally he said, you know, Mike,
43:28 I don't know what you're gonna say.
43:30 But remember this, whatever you say,
43:33 God's got to look good.
43:36 And I thought, this man is senile.
43:41 This man is lost... No wonder he's retired.
43:43 He has lost it long ago.
43:45 What do you mean, God's got... What does that mean?
43:48 He said just remember God's got to look good.
43:51 That was the end of the conversation.
43:54 I did not understand what he meant.
43:57 I've been in ministry now for about 33 years.
44:01 I understand now.
44:02 I heard someone say that. And you're right, brother.
44:05 You know sometimes you have to live a little life
44:07 before you began to understand something, don't you?
44:10 Sometimes you have to have a little heartache
44:11 before you understand.
44:14 And what I understand now is this.
44:16 Regardless of the question,
44:18 regardless of the topic I'm studying,
44:21 when I look at that picture,
44:22 if God does not look good to me,
44:24 it means I don't understand it yet.
44:30 Because when I truly understand it,
44:32 God is going to be absolutely positively irresistible.
44:40 Jesus cried and said, I be lifted up, I will, what?
44:44 Draw all men to me.
44:46 That's because He is irresistible.
44:49 When you see Him in His beauty and in His love,
44:52 He is absolutely positively irresistible,
44:56 that's our Jesus.
44:58 That's the God we follow.
44:59 That's the Jesus of the Jesus creed.
45:03 He is irresistible.
45:06 I grew up with the very different God than that.
45:09 I grew up in this church
45:11 and I cannot blame the men and women who raised me.
45:14 First of all my parents or the people who taught
45:16 my Sabbath school classes or even my elementary teachers,
45:19 they were doing the very best they knew how to do,
45:21 God love them.
45:23 They didn't know any better either.
45:26 But when I began to see a different God,
45:28 a different picture of God,
45:29 when I saw Him as He truly is...
45:31 And even now I don't know that I can say
45:33 I fully see Him that way.
45:36 I have a clearer picture of who He is.
45:38 I think it's gonna be the eternity for me.
45:41 But when I began to see that,
45:43 I thought, this is a God I can love.
45:47 This is a God I've got to know.
45:50 This is a God I long to serve.
45:56 I love God by following Jesus and loving others.
46:02 Because the truth is, God is in love with you.
46:07 And I don't care how bad the past has been.
46:11 I don't care how many times you have fallen.
46:13 He is in love with you and He will not let you go.
46:20 No matter how bad the sin, He will not let you go.
46:23 I think about a named John Newton,
46:27 a former captain of a slave ship.
46:29 Now he had quite a... You read his story.
46:31 He had a tough childhood himself.
46:34 And one time was even held as a slave himself
46:37 by the wife of the captain of the ship
46:40 that he was serving on as a boy,
46:42 was chained in the yard like a dog.
46:48 He came out of that abusive situation
46:50 and finally went to see...
46:52 He eventually became the captain of his own ship,
46:54 but it was a slave ship.
46:56 Now in those days there were a lot of people
46:58 who were working for the abolition of slavery,
47:01 especially in England where Newton grew up
47:03 and where his ship came from.
47:06 And they worked hard and finally,
47:09 finally they got a law passed that said
47:10 it was against the law to transport slaves by sea.
47:15 So it didn't outlaw slavery,
47:17 but it said you can't transport them.
47:19 But what this meant was that basically
47:23 if you were the captain of a slave ship
47:25 and you saw a British man, a war coming your way,
47:28 you knew that you were about to be arrested
47:30 or fined or your vessel seized
47:32 and you would take all the slaves on board
47:34 and throw them overboard.
47:36 Because that way you would avoid the fine
47:39 and you would avoid losing your ship
47:41 and maybe even your license to be captain.
47:44 You would start off
47:45 with a certain number of slaves on board,
47:47 but the disease was so bad and the conditions were so bad
47:50 that by the time you got to the point
47:51 where you're gonna sell them, half of them were dead.
47:55 And you would have thrown bodies overboard
47:57 and it would have been a mess living in that ship.
48:00 That was John Newton.
48:02 That's what he did for a living.
48:06 He was converted then eventually.
48:09 Became a Christian and even became a Christian pastor.
48:13 But for years he struggled with the idea
48:16 that God could forgive a worm such as I?
48:21 How could God forgive me?
48:23 People who were working in the abolitionist movement
48:27 begged him to write a story.
48:29 To write the accounts of his captaining the slave ship.
48:34 To give the names, the dates, the voyages, the ships
48:38 and he said I cannot, I cannot, I'm haunted by 20,000 faces.
48:45 And he struggled with those people
48:47 who had died under his charge,
48:48 the thousands who had died under his charge.
48:51 And he wondered how could God ever love or wretch
48:54 such as I?
48:55 How could He forgive me and yet he preached God's grace,
48:58 but to receive it himself, loving himself...
49:01 Oh, man,
49:02 it was easy to say that God's grace is good for you,
49:05 but to look himself in the mirror and say,
49:06 it is good for me?
49:08 He couldn't do that.
49:10 He just couldn't do it.
49:11 And so he couldn't write that book.
49:14 Finally towards the end of his life,
49:16 he was losing his eye sight
49:19 and he finally came to the point
49:20 where he believed that God really was that good,
49:24 that God really could forgive him.
49:29 And so he began to write the book
49:32 and he wrote it and he included names and dates
49:36 and the names of ships and the numbers,
49:39 he put it all in a book form.
49:41 And he gave it to Wilberforce who was the man in parliament,
49:44 who was working for the abolition of slavery,
49:46 who worked tirelessly for that in the British parliament.
49:49 He gave it to him. And he said it's all here.
49:52 It's all here.
49:53 Everything that I can remember,
49:55 all the names, all the dates, all the slave ships,
49:57 all the people, all the numbers,
50:00 all the ports, all the voyages, it's all here,
50:02 everything that I can remember it's here,
50:05 it's here, take it and use it.
50:09 My memory maybe failing he said,
50:12 but I do remember two things.
50:16 I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.
50:24 Folks, it's true for you today.
50:28 You're a great sinner, but Jesus is a great Savior
50:34 and He has forgiven you.
50:36 He has redeemed you.
50:38 He's washed your sins away so thoroughly that
50:41 God cannot even remember them any longer.
50:43 Praise God.
50:44 He says, I will remember your sins no more.
50:47 He can't remember.
50:49 He has chosen to,
50:50 to wash them in the sea of forgetfulness.
50:53 In one place the scripture says,
50:55 He's buried your sins at the depths of the ocean.
50:57 We know there's one place for the ocean
50:58 it's seven miles deep, that seven miles of salt water
51:00 covering your sin
51:01 and God puts a sign says no fishing allowed.
51:05 He's removed them as far from you
51:07 as the east is from the west.
51:09 He didn't say the north from the south
51:10 for a very specific reason.
51:11 You go do north and eventually you hit the North Pole.
51:13 Which way do you go from the North Pole?
51:15 Only one way to go from there and that's south.
51:18 North meet south but you can travel due east
51:20 throughout all eternity and you will never meet west
51:22 and you will never meet your sin again.
51:25 That's how completely our God forgives you.
51:28 That's how completely and how thoroughly He loves you.
51:33 That's a God worthy of your love,
51:35 worthy of your admiration, worthy of your service,
51:38 worthy of your trust.
51:40 And He calls you into relationship with Himself.
51:44 He says I want you to be fully devoted followers
51:46 of Jesus Christ.
51:48 And here's what you do, I want you to love God.
51:51 By following Me and loving others.
51:56 It really is that simple.
51:59 Would you pray with me?
52:01 Lord Jesus, today we claim You as the Lord of our lives.
52:05 We confess our sins before You Lord,
52:07 and we give glory to Your name that we're forgiven.
52:09 That our names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life.
52:11 Praise God.
52:13 Thank you Lord.
52:16 But today, Lord, we long to be Your followers,
52:18 we want to live Christianly in this secular sinful world.
52:22 So make us Lord adherence to the Jesus' creed.
52:25 Let us love God more deeply everyday and to do so
52:30 by following Jesus and by loving others.
52:34 And Lord one of those others is us.
52:37 May we love the new creation You have made us to be
52:41 and we promise, Lord, we will give You the glory
52:45 and we will give You the honor.
52:46 And on the day You claim us as yours
52:48 and we stand on the sea of glass,
52:50 we will sing praises to Your name,
52:52 we will cast our crowns at Your feet
52:54 because You and You alone are worthy.
52:57 For we prayed in the name of Jesus our Savior, amen, amen.


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