0 (0s): Good morning church. 2 (3s): Let's stay on to worship this morning, but your coffee's down. We're in the house of the Lord. Let's worship. 3 (3m 25s): We worship you in spirit in truth this morning. 0 (3m 44s): breadth need a And see, we can hear the wind 5 (15m 59s): Jesus. You are so good. I'm just going to invite you all to close your eyes. I'm going to, I'm going to, I just want you to envision, this has we're worshiping this morning. It says before the throne, this revelation...
0 (0s): Good morning church. 2 (3s): Let's stay on to worship this morning, but your coffee's down. We're in the house of the Lord. Let's worship. 3 (3m 25s): We worship you in spirit in truth this morning. 0 (3m 44s): breadth need a And see, we can hear the wind 5 (15m 59s): Jesus. You are so good. I'm just going to invite you all to close your eyes. I'm going to, I'm going to, I just want you to envision, this has we're worshiping this morning. It says before the throne, this revelation four before the throne, there was a sea of glass like crystal and in the midst of the throne and around the throne were four living creatures, full of eyes in the front and the back. And the first living creature was Elian. The seventh, the second living creature was like a calf. And the third living creature had a face like a man. The fourth living creature was like a flying Eagle, the sick, the four, four living creatures, each live living six wings were full of eyes around and within. 5 (16m 44s): And they did not rest day and night singing. Holy holy, holy Lord. God almighty, who was and is, and is to come whenever the living creatures give glory and honor, and thanks to him who sits on the throne who lives forever and ever the 24 elders fall down before him and S who sits on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne saying you are worthy, oh Lord, to receive glory and honor and power for you created all things. And by your will, they exist and were created. Jesus, you are so good. 5 (17m 25s): You are worthy of all of the songs we have. You're worthy of all of our expressions of worship. Jesus you're you deserve it all. And so much more. Jesus, we thank you for just being with us. We thank you for who you are up on your throne, And that is such a powerful image. God, we thank you that you are so high and that you care for us and you love us so much. Jesus name. Amen. Amen. All right. You can take your seats. My name's Curtis, by the way. Hi. Hello. Hello. Just want to welcome you all here today. 5 (18m 7s): If it's your first time here, we just want to extend a special welcome. And like I always say, if it's your second time here, your third time, or you come all the time, we want to extend a special welcome to you as well. So everybody gets a special welcome. Does everybody feel good about that? Okay, good. Good. All right. So I've only got one announcement for you today. Okay. And it's because it's really important. So men, we have M six tomorrow. If you have not been to an MSX event, you're missing out, it's a thousand Hills ranches at six o'clock tomorrow. It's an incredible event of worship testimony and just a beautiful time. And there's also amazing food too. So there's that? 5 (18m 46s): Yeah. So definitely check this out tomorrow, six o'clock thousand Hills ranch with them and invite Jeremy up and he's going to help us celebrate our graduates a little bit. 6 (19m 4s): All right. Well welcome. My name's Jeremy. I'm the youth and family pastor here at harvest church. And today is promotion Sunday. So if you are graduating from sixth grade, eighth grade high school or college, I want you to come up in a line up in front of the stage here, and we'll start with our sixth graders down here. And our college graduates up here. Yep. Amanda, come on, Amanda. Amanda graduated college, come on command at. So today we really celebrate and honor these students. Who've, who've done the hard work put in the time and are graduating their grade. And you know, we, we don't know much about Jesus's childhood, but we knew that at 12, they said he grew in wisdom and stature. 6 (19m 50s): And so that is our heart's cry for the youth of this generation. They would grow in wisdom stature among their peers and amongst the church. And, and really, we have a, we have a gift for you guys to, to give you guys some Bibles, but we're so thankful for you. So what I'm actually going to do is I'm gonna pass the mic and you're going to say your name, what you're graduating from. And yeah, we'll just do that name graduation. 2 (20m 16s): I'm Amanda and I'm graduating with a bachelor's in psychology. 7 (20m 24s): I'm Nathan and I'm graduating from sixth grade 1 (20m 30s): And I'm moving into ninth grade. I'm Tyler and I just graduated high school. 8 (20m 38s): I just graduated high school, 1 (20m 42s): I'm burger weight. And I had just 9 (20m 43s): Graduated with Megan from high school. 1 (20m 46s): I'm 10 (20m 47s): Tyler to Blau. I just graduated from edgy high school. I'm Mikael. And I just graduated from eighth grade. 11 (20m 56s): I'm Jack and I graduated from sixth grade. I'm Catherine and I graduated eighth grade. I'm kinda in, I graduated from eighth grade 12 (21m 6s): I'm violet and I graduated from eighth grade I'm Celeste and I graduated from eighth grade 6 (21m 20s): So now we're just going to get a time to pray for these students as they're moving on into the next sphere of their lives. Next, next thing. Some of you are going far away for college. Some of you're staying here close by, but if you want to just reach out your hands, as we pray over these students, Lord Jesus, we thank you for these students, the Lord, and just how they've been a light and a witness amongst their peers on campus or at each of the schools, they're going to Lord. We pray that as they enter into their next Next school, that they would bring you with them or that they would be a light in that place, Lord God, that they would just light up the campus. 6 (22m 2s): So Jesus, thank you for how the areas that they serve here around church and, and do the things that maybe none of us recognize in the kid's ministry safety team. I've I've seen some of these students step up and play a part in this church source. So we thank you for them. Lord, Lord, go with them and help, help them to reach the nations for you. Jesus. Thank you then in Jesus name, we pray. Amen. All right. Thank you. 10 (22m 27s): All right. So we're 6 (22m 28s): Going to have a time, a meet and greet time. Now while all the students gather up over here and we're going to head on to our classes. So if you are fifth grade and up, we're going to be leaving now for, for class. You can stand up and say hi to someone around you. 17 (24m 29s): Christian fellowship is so fun. Don't you agree? Christian fellowship the best best there is. So my name is Ron. I serve as one of the pastors here and it's my privilege today to share the word with you. I have Steve and I pastor Steve and I are identical twins. You probably are wondering why, you know, I looked so much like him, so I just want to make that differentiation. So let's go ahead and, and let's pray one more time, Lord, we look to you today. Holy spirit, you are our teacher. You're the one that, that impacts our spirit, our soul, our body, our mind, our will and emotions. You're the one that helps us in those deep places of our life, where, where we seem hopeless to help ourselves. 17 (25m 16s): Lord, thank you that you, you, you love to bring transformation. You love to bring healing. You love to implant, you know, joy and, and contentment into our lives, where we're lacking those things. So Lord, we ask that you would speak to us today in the, in the very places where we have need Lord, you know, our needs even better than we do. And so Lord, we commit our time to you and we just give you thanks in Jesus name, we pray. Amen. Amen. So if you want to turn on your Bibles or maybe you have a device or whatever you use to follow along, we're going to be in the book of James today, James chapter two, I'm going to be picking up where pastor Steve left off last week and I'm going to be using the new living translation just because I like the way that it flows is we're going to be hopefully looking at verses one through 13 in James chapter two. 17 (26m 7s): So last, last month I shared a message that was titled that I titled healthy church leadership. And it was from the book of Hebrews chapter 13. So today I'd like to talk about a similar topic, which is healthy church life. And it's from James chapter two. So we talk about the life of the church. We're talking about the, the gathering of the saints, the community of believers. It's like what we do, not only here at harvest church, but in the broader Christian community on the central coast. And so in James we're, we're talking about that healthy church life healthy church has been put in place by God to help set the course for healthy church life they're interconnected. 17 (26m 53s): So that's my title for today. Healthy church life. As the apostle Paul was writing to Timothy, remember Timothy was, he looked at Paul as his mentor. He became the pastor of the church at Ephesus. And so Paul was, was helping teach Timothy about the role of the church in the world. And this is what he said in first Timothy chapter three, verse 15, he says, I'm writing to you Timothy so that you may know how to, how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and the ground of the truth. So that word ground implies foundation. 17 (27m 33s): So pillar, we think of maybe Roman pillars that gave stability to a structure that's built on this foundation. And if you go to Rome and various places in the world, you'll see these structures that are still standing because of the firm foundation and pillars that make up that structure. So what Paul is telling Timothy that the church of the living God that's us is the pillar and the foundation of truth in the world today. Healthy church life is super important because the church as Paul declares, Timothy is the pillar and the foundation of the truth in the world. 17 (28m 20s): It is the church's responsibility. So it's our responsibility, responsibility to accurately represent the Lord Jesus Christ to the world today. So we think about the church said, well, the church was born on the day of Pentecost, the new Testament church. And, and fast-forward the holy spirit is, have worked in generation through generation. And now the holy spirit, God is working in our generation. And so we have have taken on that mantle, that responsibility of being the pillar and the foundation of truth in our world today, it is the church's responsibility to accurately represent the Lord Jesus Christ to the world today. 17 (29m 7s): You know how it is a lot of people, they don't know the Lord. They may have heard about Christianity. They may have heard the name of Jesus, but then they meet you as a coworker, as somebody who moved to the neighborhood and they, you know, people find out, oh, those, those are the, those are the Christian people stay away from that guy. And so we have that responsibility to represent Jesus Christ, to people that don't know him. As we talk about church life from James' perspective in chapter two, he's actually going to come from the perspective of what not to do in terms of a healthy church. 17 (29m 51s): This is what you should not do. And so look with me now and James chapter two first one, my dear brothers and sisters. How can you claim to have faith in our glorious Lord? Jesus Christ. If you favor some people over others. So James starts out by identifying a problem within the church of his day. The problem is this favoring, some people in the church over other people in the church. And so the problem, there's a problem here and it's showing favoritism some other translations, use a word partiality. In other words, I'm, I'm partial to you as opposed to you having respect for one person over another, or sometimes the word is, is even used as discrimination or prejudice, prejudice, meaning I'm pre-judging you based on usually your outward appearance. 17 (30m 45s): So we hear a lot about discrimination and prejudice in our day. In fact, I think there is this. If we want to call it a demonic conspiracy to divide and conquer, to bring about so many barriers and hatred between people, groups that it's like, we can never get along. We can never come together. That's not God's plan. It is. It isn't always will be a problem within the human race, this idea of discrimination and prejudice, but we should not give place in the church. We should not give place to Dem discrimination or prejudice or favoritism or partiality in the church of Jesus Christ, which is again the pillar and the foundation of truth. 17 (31m 26s): So I want to give you a little bit of context here where James is coming from. So this letter was written by James and, and as you guys know, James is the half-brother of Jesus. So why is he the half brother? So James, his dad was Joseph. His mom was Mary. So Jesus' mother was Mary check-in with my brain who, who was, who was the father of Jesus. God. So see they're half-brothers because God, the father was the father of Jesus. And so it's this letter here is believed to be the earliest letter of all the letters in the new Testament. So James wrote during a time when the ancient world was filled with prejudice and hatred based on class and ethnicity, nationality and religious background, just so many reasons to divide people in that day in the ancient world, people were routinely and permanently categorized because they were Jew or Gentile. 17 (32m 28s): So again, when we speak of a Jewish person, we know they're, they're Jewish by birth. That's our ethnic background. A Gentile is basically anybody that's, that's not Jewish. People were categorized because they were Jew or Gentile slave or free rich or poor Greek or barbarian or whatever else. In fact, a significant aspect of the ministry of Jesus Christ was designed to break down the walls that divided people and to bring forth one new race of people to bring oneness in him in Christ. So again, back to the apostle Paul, just for a moment, I'm just kind of laying the foundation for this. 17 (33m 11s): He's speaking to the church at Ephesus, where Timothy was the pastor in Ephesians chapter two, verse 14, he says for Christ himself has brought peace to us. He United Jews and Gentiles into one people when in his own body, on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us. He did this by ending the system of law with its commandments and regulations. He made peace between Jews and Gentiles by creating in himself, one new people from the two groups. And then Paul continues talking to the believers in the city of Glacia Galatians chapter three, verse 26. 17 (33m 55s): You are all sons and daughters of God through faith in Christ. Jesus, for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor female for you are all one in Christ Jesus. So that's why Jesus came to bring about this oneness, this unity in him, the unity and the oneness of the early church actually was in stark opposition to the ancient world of the day. But this unity, it did not come automatically. 17 (34m 36s): So we can imagine the early church and after the day of Pentecost and it was predominantly Jewish people at that time. But gradually we had others coming into that community Gentiles, non Jews, Romans, and all other ethnic backgrounds. And in Christ, those early church members were meant to receive them, let them in show genuine Christian Love to anyone that wanted to come into the church community. As this command from James shows us the apostles had to teach the early church to never hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ with favoritism, partiality discrimination or prejudice. 17 (35m 19s): As we think about this, this is not a new, a new idea. This is not just a new Testament model that Jesus is establishing it. Actually, this was God's plan from the beginning. If we look at Deuteronomy chapter 10, verse 17, it says for the Lord, your God. So God is speaking to Moses, to the people of Israel for the Lord. Your God is the God of gods and Lord of Lords. He is the great God, the mighty and awesome God who shows no partiality there's that word and cannot be bribed. He ensures that orphans and widows receive justice. He shows love to the foreigners living among you and gives them food and clothing. 17 (36m 1s): So you too must show love the foreigners for you. Yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt. And that theme is repeated throughout the old Testament. As we read through the books of the old Testament. So imagine the Jewish people were in Egypt for about 400 years and they became slaves in bondage under the Pharaoh of Egypt. And so they cried out to the Lord and God sent a deliverer, sent Moses, and you know that the 10 plagues and God was showing not only to the people of Israel, but to the people of Egypt as well, that God, the father, the creator of the heavens and the earth is superior to all the gods of Egypt. One by one, he broke down and overshadowed the gods of Egypt. 17 (36m 45s): Now imagine you're, you're in Egyptian. You're not a Jew. And you're, you're witnessing all these things that are happening in the plagues that are coming. When the day of Exodus came, roughly 2 million Jews exited Egypt and I'm imagining, and I know there was a large group of Egyptians that said, we want to go with you. We want to become part of your community. We want to worship God with you, not the gods of Egypt, which we have known. And so through this, God has basically setting the stage to the Israelites, to the Jews. I want you to bring in the foreigners, let them worship among you, let them be circumcised with you, let them become part of the community of Israel and don't leave them as outcasts. 17 (37m 32s): So James is going to give us here as we continue in James, a real life example of what this might look like in the church. So James chapter two, verse two, he says, for example, can the example is favoritism, partiality discrimination and prejudice. So for example, suppose someone comes into your meeting, dressed in fancy clothes and expensive jewelry. And another comes in who is poor and dressed in dirty clothes. If you give special attention and a good seed to the rich person, but you say to the poor person to the poor one, you stand over there or else, sit on the, you can sit on the floor. 17 (38m 13s): Well, doesn't this discrimination show that your judgments are guided by evil motives. So this, this was happening in the ancient world, in the early church. And so just as a side note, I want to give a little commentary in Roman society. The wealthy wore rings on their left hand in great profusion. I'm just quoting here. It was a sign of wealth rings were worn with great Austin station. There were even shops in Rome where rings could be rented for special occasions. People come in, they want to come into the church. They're, they're interested in and, and, and I'm, I'm going down to the renter ring store and I'm looking at my best because I want to now I'm coming to the church. 17 (39m 6s): And, and how does the church receive, you know, this person and why is this such a big problem showing favoritism or, or partiality preferring? In this case, a rich person over a poor person, the guy who can't afford to go down to the soar and rendering the guy who can barely feed himself to support his family. So the problem is this, I'm going to give you three points. Number one, to show partiality. Your favoritism shows that we care more about the outward appearance of a person than we do the heart of that person, the inner person. And as we see through scripture, God looks on the heart man looks on the outward appearance. 17 (39m 52s): That's a problem. So number two, to show partiality or favoritism shows that we assume that the rich person is more important to God or more blessed by God. And thus, we put too much value on the material, riches, the material world, and the other problem. Number three, to show partiality or favoritism shows a selfish streak in us. Usually we favor the rich person over the poor person, because we believe that we can get more from the rich, they can do favors for us that a poor person. Can't I, I know, I don't know. 17 (40m 33s): Maybe it's a human dilemma or maybe it's just me. But oftentimes when I meet a person, I want to get to know them. I was like, you know, what's your name? What's your, what? What's the name of your family? What's your last name? And, and what's your occupation and where do you know what I'm doing is kind of sizing them up. And the evil part of me is thinking, can I benefit from this person? Should I get to know, should I make the investment in getting to know this person? Because maybe it will benefit me. Have you guys ever thought that when with people besides me, I know you have, I know you have because okay, rich person, someone with influence, they can do favors for us that the report person just can't. 17 (41m 20s): So now I want to, I want to look at this more in a, in a modern contrast, in, in today's situation, modern context. What if we had two people start showing up at a harvest church, both of them wanted to get involved, want to become a part of what God is doing here. One, one of the persons, one of the persons is named Elon Musk. The other person, I don't know his name, but he kind of smells. And I think he's living in his car. Would we, the church of Jesus Christ who represent the pillar and the foundation of truth, would we honestly treat both of them equally, treat them the same? 17 (42m 6s): Would we show genuine Christian Love to each of them in a similar way? I think God tests us with this sometimes in our life, you know, bringing people maybe into our circle or maybe into our church to really challenge us and see, you know, you talk about this, but will you really embrace this person? So James is, he's continuing with this line of thinking and James chapter two verses five through seven. He says, listen to me, dear brothers and sisters hasn't God shows him the poor in this world to be rich in faith. Aren't they, the ones who will inherit the kingdom, he promised to those who love him. 17 (42m 50s): But you dishonor the poor isn't, isn't it. The rich who oppress you and drag you into court? Are they the ones who slander Jesus Christ, whose noble name? You bear now grantees. He's kind of painting a broad brush here. The poor don't cause you any problems, but the rich, they have the resources to take you into court and bring accusation against you if they choose to. But again, he says, hasn't God chosen the poor in this world to be rich in faith. So why do you suppose God has chosen the poor to be rich in faith, perhaps, perhaps it's because a poor person has nowhere else to turn except to God to have their needs met. 17 (43m 33s): And for a rich person, it's easy for the rich person to trust in, in their riches, rather than to trust in God to meet their needs. I know you guys would never do this, but sometimes when I'm in a pinch, I'm like, how can I figure my way out of this situation? Do I have enough money to buy my way out of this situation? And when nothing else works, then I say, Lord, can you help me in my situation? Because we have resources. A lot of people, they have nothing. They only have God, if you've done much traveling, especially in some of the third world countries where people are are so living day to day, trusting that somehow they'll have enough to, to feed the family. 17 (44m 17s): And yet what you find when you're in those circumstances, there, they're so wonderful and warm and, and, and happy and blessed. They're looking to God to meet their needs literally every day. So you see poor, a poor person has nowhere else to go, except to God. It's not so much that God chooses the poor is that the poor are more likely to choose him because their needs are so great. So James continues in James chapter two, verse eight. He says, yes, indeed. It is good. When you obey the Royal law as found in the scriptures, love your neighbor as yourself. But if you favor some people over others, you're committing a sin and you are guilty of breaking the law. 17 (45m 1s): So this is a serious thing to God. And again, as we think about our responsibility to represent Jesus in our community, we have to look at this in our own lives personally, and in our church life corporately. And again, this is, this is not a new, a new idea, a new concept. This is something that's been in place since the beginning. In fact, in Leviticus, chapter 19, verse 34, it says the stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you. Part of the family. And you shall love him as yourself for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord, your God. 17 (45m 42s): So Paul brings us into the new Testament context as well in Galatians chapter five, verse 14, he says, for all the law is fulfilled in one word. Even this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So when we talk about, when we say, I love Jesus, I love the Lord. And if we are, if we show favoritism towards people and we're partial, we discriminate and we show respect for one over another. We're actually violating God's law and we're believing something. That's not true that we love Jesus. 17 (46m 23s): When in fact we're not really loving him fully James chapter two, verse 10 for the person who keeps all the laws, except one is as guilty as the person who is broken. All of God's laws for the same God who said, you must not commit. Adultery also said, you must not murder. So if you murder someone, but do not commit adultery, you've still broken the law. It's interesting. He's quading equating something like, okay, I'm showing favoritism towards this person over the other. And he's equating it with, with murder and adultery, but they're all violating God's law. Here's the bottom line showing favoritism or partiality is sin. 17 (47m 8s): It violates God's command to love your neighbor as yourself. It is just as serious as committing murder or adultery by God's evaluation. So you might be thinking that I don't get that. How can, how can those be equated? You know, in the same realm of breaking God's law. So Paul talks about this in Romans chapter 13, verse nine, he says, for the commandments, you shall not commit adultery and you shall not murder. And then he adds to it. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. You shall not covet. And if there's any other commandment, here's the, here's the key, all are summed up in this saying, namely, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. 17 (47m 50s): So they'll they'll come together. So James continues verse 12. So whatever you say, or whatever you do remember that you'll be judged by the law that sets you free. There will be no mercy for those who have not shown mercy to others. But if you have been merciful, God will be merciful when he judges you. Wow. So Lord, are you saying, if I Harbor, you know, prejudice and discrimination and favoritism and partiality towards, towards, I'm not showing mercy to that person. And when I stand before the judgment seat of Christ, so you're not going to show me mercy because I, I didn't show mercy to them. 17 (48m 37s): That's exactly what he's saying here. So obviously the, the incentive pot, what Paul's getting at James is getting, as we just need to love people. We need to show mercy and grace and forgiveness to everyone and anyone that God brings into our circle, whether it's here at church or out and about wherever we are, we have no freedom to, to prejudge in other person because God ultimately, he wants us to look at people through the eyes of God. And that is, we tend to look at the outward appearance. God doesn't do that. He looks through the outward appearance to the heart of a person, what I've found, and maybe you've experienced this too, is sometimes when I prejudge somebody and maybe they're new to the church. 17 (49m 26s): And, and I kinda, you know, I kind of evaluate their situation. And as I get to know that person and just open up my heart to them and really begin to love them and get to get to know more than just what I see on the outside. I am amazed at how, how beautiful people are on the inside. If we would just look through the exterior and, and let them into our heart. So this is serious. When I stand before the judgment seat of Christ, I want mercy. Do you want mercy? I know you do. This is serious. It means a lot to God that we show unconditional love to everyone, especially to those whom we might consider maybe less important or more lowly, or maybe the outcast or some, a ditch really quirky. 17 (50m 19s): Somebody that's really nerdy. Somebody who just doesn't seem to quite fit in. Then it's our job to help them fit in, to bring them in. Now, as we would expect, when people in the world, when they come into the church, they've got, they've got a lot of baggage, a lot of issues, a lot of bad sinful habits and things. That's okay, God can work with all that. So we bring them in and then we introduce them to the Lord Jesus Christ. And the holy spirit is the one who begins to make that transformation process. So we don't have to get bound up on all the things that they might believe or caught up in their lifestyle and all that. 17 (51m 1s): It doesn't matter. That's God's business. So our responsibility, our business is simply let them in. So if you find this difficult, you're not alone, you know, the PR I think part of the problem is we grow up with, in inbred, in us, prejudices comes from our family. Maybe our parents taught, it, made our community, the place we live, we grow up with these things and they just become part of our, you know, our, our DNA. And it's hard to break through that. It is difficult, but consider what again, Peter, this is the apostle Peter. He said in, in second, Peter chapter one, verse five in this, this has to do with, as we grow in maturity, as we walk with the Lord, he says, for this very reason, because the struggles that we have in life, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue and to virtue knowledge and to knowledge self-control to self-control perseverance, to perseverance, godliness, to godliness, brotherly kindness. 17 (52m 3s): That's what we're talking about. And to brotherly, kindness, love for, if these things are yours and they abound, you will neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord, Jesus Christ. What he's saying there is we're growing. We're maturing. We're a disciple of Jesus. We're walking and growing in all these things that he mentioned. And then lastly, one of the FA my favorite verses in all the new Testament is found in, in Philippians chapter two. I love this verse because it implies that if, if we're willing, if our heart is open to what God wants to do in our lives, God will gladly do what he desires to do with us in our lives. 17 (52m 43s): It's, it's Philippians two 13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for his good pleasure. It's God working in me. It's God working in you to do the things that are well pleasing to him. So, one, one more thought, do you know the sign of a healthy church, a healthy church, I believe is filled with all sorts of people, all kinds of people, all ages of people, all assortments of various ethnic backgrounds. The church is meant to be a very diverse, very diverse group of people, loving the Lord, growing together, genuinely loving each other in spite of our differences, not allowing those prejudices and, and, and discriminations and partiality is not allowing those things to divide us, but rather to bring us together, I want to be a part of that church. 17 (53m 43s): Do you want to be a part of that church? That's what we want for harvest church. We want to be that genuine sanctuary, a place where people can come and genuinely encounter the love of God through Jesus Christ, the Lord, through his people. All right. I want to go and invite the worship team to come up at this time. And I want to close with, I want to close with the gospel. So every time Steve teaches or maybe I teach, or Jeremy, whoever who's ever teaching, we, we weave the gospel into the message, but sometimes, you know, it's not absolutely totally clear what the gospel is. 17 (54m 28s): So the gospel that word gospel is simply means good news. And it's the good news that through Jesus Christ, we can be saved and we can have a relationship with God through him. So Paul talked about this in first Corinthians chapter 15, he said this moreover brethren, I want to declare to you the gospel, which I preach to you, which also you received and in which you stand by, which also you're saved. See we're saved through the gospel. The good news, if you hold fast, that word, which I preach to you, unless you believed in vain for, I delivered to you. First of all, that, which I also received now, here's, here's the gospel. 17 (55m 9s): It's kind of summarized into three points. I also received that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures and that he was buried and that he rose again the third day, according to the scriptures, If you don't know the Lord, Jesus Christ, and you would like to know him, here's how you can know him. And it's actually quite simple. In fact, I, I borrowed this from another guy, but it's basically the ABCs of salvation. It's helpful to remember it. Now, you know, a acknowledge acknowledge that there is a God in heaven who exists, that who created all things and admit that you have sinned against him, that you've, you've sinned against a holy God believe, believe that God sent his only son, Jesus Christ into the world in order to take the penalty of your sin upon himself. 17 (56m 14s): And he did that when he died on the cross, confess, confess your need for God in your life. Confess that Jesus died for your sins personally, and ask Jesus to save you from your sin and invite him into your life. And if you do that, if you acknowledge God and invite Jesus into your life, you will receive the holy spirit and he will fill you. And it's so simple, Lord, we just want to come to you today and we just want to give you thanks that you've given us that, that way of salvation through Jesus Christ, the Lord, Lord, I pray for anyone in our midst today that doesn't know you, that they would today make that decision. 17 (57m 8s): Invite Jesus in, invite him in. You simply open up your heart to him in prayer. Just there's no special words, no formula. It's just saying, God, I need you. I believe your son died for me. And I desire you to be in my life in my heart. Holy spirit. I welcome you to fill me in and bring the transformation that I need in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Let's stand. We're going to continue to worship. God bless you all. Thank you so much. 20 (59m 1s): Churches. We finished our service this morning. We can go out with some singing, the joy of the Lord. Now, bring it some, some, some noise. 4 (1h 1m 7s): Because we were the bag. Now we roiled C and we were the press. And now we run in free and we offer By his trade. 4 (1h 1m 54s): The house 20 (1h 2m 45s): Yes, Lord. That is just our declaration. This morning of we shout out your praise this morning in this place and Lord in our lives father, we thank you. We thank you for this time, Lord, we thank you for the message that we were able to say here today, father may it sink deep into our hearts. As we leave this place, father, it would be with us and walk alongside us this week. And one of the, the trials that we go through, father me, we just look to you in every circumstance when we love you. And we worship you. We praise you father. We pray these things and all of God's people said, amen.
