Sower Church

Thank you, Alex. Would you buy your heads in prayer with me? Oh, good and heavenly gracious father. We are so thankful that you are wise and almighty. Even now, Lord, all of your plans are being unfolded in history on the earth and at the very center of it is your people. You have called us to play a part. God. I thank you for your people here in the city, your church here in Lincoln where the gospel is being preached, where those who are endeavoring to glorify Christ in all things are proclaiming your word this morning and your people gathering around the ministry of your word this morning. I thank you for your people all over the city and the unfolding of your plan all over the city as well as the world. And so God, would you help us in this time to take away from this meeting with you? The very truth that you which to plant deeply into our hearts and to shape us with and to make us more and more like your son Jesus Christ. It’s in his name that I pray. Amen. Good night. Well, this morning, if you are curious whether or not we are crazy here at sewer church. Why would we combine a passage on divorce and remarriage with a parable about a man named Lazarus and the rich man. Like, what’s the connection there? Where are these guys going? Why would they even do that? Well, there’s a couple of reasons why first we do like to teach through the Bible and so that’s in the Bible and we have to deal with it. That is our posture here. We want to teach the word of God. We don’t want to run from or shy away from passages that make seem difficult or maybe at first glimpse may not appear to make a whole lot of sense to us. We want to be faithful to the word of God because it is the word of God. That’s why we stand at the reading of the word of God. Secondly, though it appears that the two, the passage on divorce and the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, though it appears there is no connection, there actually is a connection. They are very much related. In fact, the key is looking at verses 16 and 17, which we did not read, but I’ll read them briefly here to you and you’ll see why the two fit together. And verse 16, Jesus says that the law and the prophets were until John. Since then, the good news of the Kingdom of God is preached and everyone forces his way into it. What he’s saying is basically the Old Testament Revelation was given up until the time of John and John, the Baptist had prepared the way for Jesus to begin his earthly ministry proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God, which was taking place then now and he said everyone was forcing his way into it. And that’s a reference to the very tax collectors and sinners who were repenting and turning to God and the Pharisees are watching all of this and their charge against Jesus is that he has no regard for the law of God. So therefore, the reference to the law and the prophets, the law of God. And then in verse 17, Jesus says, but it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the law to become void. I think we need to let that sink in for a moment because as evangelicals, I know we love the gospel and we do. It’s one of our core values that Christ would be exalted and everything because he has come. But the gospel is not an enemy to the law. That’s what Jesus is saying. And so Jesus is proclaiming good news and the tax collectors and the sinners are forcing their way into the kingdom of God. They are doing so not because Jesus is laying aside the law, but because Jesus is fulfilling the law on their behalf. Furthermore, Jesus is showing the Pharisees that though they were entrusted with the teaching of the law to prepare the people for his arrival. They were failing at it massively, they did not understood, they did not understand the law. They didn’t unde…

Amen Herbert Dow, who is pictured here Uh is founded a company in 1895 called the Dow Chemical Company. And what he had done was he had invented a way that you could cheaply produce a chemical called bromine. And so he would sell it for 36 cents a pound around the US. He couldn’t sell it in Germany because there was a company there that also produced bromine and they had a monopoly on the market. And they uh and so so he was just constrained to the U. S. And so he did that for nine years. But in 1904 the business was kind of struggling and he knew, you know what, I really need to expand if I, you know if I want to make a go of this. And so he began to sell bromine in europe. And because he sold it for 36 cents per pound and the German company sold it for $0.49 per pound. He gained a lot of sales very quickly and started expanding like crazy. Now this german company was obviously outreach here, this guys coming in and so gaining all these sales and so they’re like, you know what, we are going to put this little guy in his place and we’re going to undercut him and put him out of business. So they began selling bromine in the United States for 15 cents a pound to just try to completely and utterly undercut this guy, make him go out of business. Now this is where Herbert dow demonstrated his, his shrewdness. So what he decided to do was he decided to take as much loans as he possibly could, and he began buying as much of the german bromine as he could for 15 cents a pound. Repackage it, put a new label on and then resold it in europe for 27 cents a pound. Now, the german company couldn’t understand why this guy wasn’t going out of business. They just, they kept selling all this product in the US and and he just kept hanging around. And so so they decide, you know what, we’re gonna lower it to 12 cents per pounds. He kept buying it and then they lowered it to 10 cents per pound and he kept buying it. And by the time they figured out what he was doing, uh he had broken that monopoly in europe and then they kind of came to this agreement that they’re both going to sell it at a good market price. And uh and so Del Dow chemical company still exists today because of the shrewdness of this man by the name of Herbert Dow. And that’s a fun story because we kind of like the idea of a small business taking on this giant company outsmarting them and this man becoming very wealthy, right? And and uh and it’s just kind of a fun story if you read uh stories of the richest people in the world today right now. What you find is you find people like this, who are very trude and who are passionately pursuing building wealth with all that they’ve got with all of their resources, with all their time with all of their energy. They are focused on making money and they’re good at it and they are extremely wealthy and that is how you become really rich by doing that. But here’s a question for you, what is better than being the richest person in the world? What’s better than being the richest person in the world as being the richest person in heaven? And today we’re gonna look at how to build heavenly wealth, Jesus provides lessons in this story for us and we’re gonna start going through the story here in the particulars. But before we do that, we have to remember the context that this takes place in and the last couple of weeks. So Jesus here is telling a series of stories in the book of luke and they are all linked together. First you tell the story of the lost sheep and then the story of the lost coin and then the Lost Son, which is what we looked at last week and then there’s this story about the shrewd manager and at the on the surface it seems like these stories are not linked together, but they are and jesus is communicating a clear point about what’s o…

Two things I regularly pray for my Children, my wife and I have five Children and two things that I regularly pray for them is first that they would know the Lord that they would know the love of God, that they would know it in such a way that it would change them, that it would ruin them for anything else other than a life committed to the Lord, jesus christ. And then the second thing that I’m constantly praying for them is that they would know how much the mother and I love them. I pray these things because I’m reminded of how I grew up, ignorant and oblivious to these two realities. Um I didn’t know the Lord growing up as a young child. So his love was not something that I was well acquainted with, although his blessings were all around me and although a very real sense this love kept me and kept me to a place where I would eventually come to know the Lord. But then when I also think about my relationship with my parents, the ingratitude, the inability to see the small sacrifices and the little things that they did that were tokens of their love for me that were expressions of their deep care and concern for my life that I took for granted. But later in life I realized how special it was. And so I’m thankful by the grace of God that I have a very good relationship with both of my parents and so when I think about today’s teaching and this story, the parable of the prodigal son we are dealing with family matters. We have a wayward son a forgiving father and a prideful brother and we have in this story, jesus telling it wrongly. I might add, when you think of the cultural circumstances, the cultural realities of his day, he tells it intentionally wrongly to drive home one point and that point is this, that God is more willing to embrace repentant sinners than you and I are even willing to admit that we’re sinners. This is the third parable that he has told to the same group of people in the same setting to make that point clear. And he uses family Story of a family, a father with two sons. And so before I impact that more, let me pray for you, let me pray for us. Let me pray for our time, Father in heaven, this is your world, you are God Almighty, you rule and you reign and this is your word that you’ve given to your people. I pray Lord that as your faithful ministers all over the globe on the sabbath day, open your word that many would be reminded of your great love, the great truth and power of the gospel of your son, jesus christ who gave his life to save many. I pray God that in places where there is great darkness that the light of this word would penetrate and have lasting impact, pray God that you would raise up faithful servants in every single place on this globe who will run the race with endurance, who will make disciples, who will continue to carry on this legacy of proclaiming, christ God, we want to see you glorified in our lifetime and in the lifetime of our Children’s Children. So God, this morning with our time work mightily, we ask it in jesus name, Amen, Amen again. This parable known by many as the parable of the Prodigal son. It may be the famous or the most famous of the parables that jesus told the parable of the good samaritan might be up there. A lot of people know about that when people, even outside of the church are familiar with that parable, but this parable here is incredibly popular. It is quite famous this story of the Prodigal son and again, it is a story dealing with a family and a family situation and now Jesus tells it based on a relationship with the father and two sons and I want to say from the onset that ladies don’t check out because this story and the principle behind it applies to everyone. It applied to everyone in that crowd. But jesus specifically chose to tell it in this way becaus…

Thank you bro. Thank you, john, good morning, welcome. My name is Mike, one of the pastors on staff here at sewer church. It’s an honor to be with you this morning and I’m excited to look at this passage. I just disclaimer, I spent my childhood with sheep, my dad had market lambs at the Adams County fair, we would show market lambs sheep in colorado and and I spent many summers of a bad teenage attitude grumbling and complaining about sheep and what they were doing. And the thing about me is I was this size in high school and you have to get like really low to show a sheep. So they flex their back, it’s like a bodybuilding contest for sheep. And and I always lose to these, this little batik blonde girl would beat me every single year. Um and so I, this is sheep, my childhood, there’s a lot of memories in this passage for me. And so it’s good to, it’s good to spend time look at this passage. And if you look with me at parables, there’s a parable, the lost sheep and then the parable, the lost coin. And then next week dan will button up this three parable story set, jesus is rolling out with the parable of the lost son. So I get the honor of looking at the first two parables, the lost sheep and the lost coin. And so how do you read parables? How do you get handles of what’s up of a parable, jesus parables and what do you do with them? And so the parable is supposed to have one short 10.1 short point And so the short point from today’s passage is that I’m looking at that. I hope you can grab onto and walk away with is you should be able to see the heart of God towards sinners. The heart of God towards centers and these two parables. And so if you bow your heads, let’s let’s pray. And I’m gonna ask for some help to do this. Well Lord, I thank you for luke 15 verse one. I thank you for all of these verses. We gotta look at the word of God is powerful and effective. It’s alive and it can change our lives. Lord, I ask that you just help the word of God to fall in hearts that are soft and tender that want to hear from you. I ask that you just really instruct us, convict us, challenge us and change us. Lord, I ask that the Holy spirit would genuinely change our hearts and our disposition. As we look at these passages as you see where we were, what is happening in the all the characters in this. In these scenes, we look at Lord and we hear the story at the heart of God would ring loud and clear through this word into our eyes and we would see that and make that part of our lives. I pray you just really just imprint our souls as a congregation with these parables Lord, we love you and commit this time to you in jesus name. Amen. Okay look at me at luke 15 verse one page 5 10. Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to him and the fair season describes grumbled saying this man receives sinners and eats with them, this man received sinners and eats with them. So if you remember last week we looked at some of the most hardest statements, jesus said some of the hardest words and hardest soundbites, jesus dropped about the cost of discipleship. I have to deny your own life, have to give everything you have have to you know, expect persecution from even your close family relationships. He laid an incredibly high standard of discipleship and the cause and effect of those hard words created a bunch of soft hearted centers who were sitting and gathering and spending time with jesus. So why were the tax collectors and sinners drawn to jesus? You should think that way. He says mean things to them, he calls them out on their stuff. He’s he’s got a very hard stance on sin and their famous sinners. The notorious sinners of their cities and they were drawn to jesus just had a morality that was more demanding than the religious leaders of t…

Thank you Chloe, thank you for coming this morning. My name is mike when the pastors on staff here at church, it’s honor to be with you this morning. It’s my honor to be able to spend some time looking at the word of God with you. I’ve spent some time this last week studying and praying preparing some thoughts for this passage and I just really do think it seems like if you think of the messaging of Christianity to non christian people, they’ve they’ve heard about a Christianity and they heard about it and they tried something they’d like, I tried that when I was younger, I tried that and I didn’t get that job or I tried that Christianity and then my dog got sick or I tried that Christianity and then I found out there’s hypocrites in church. I found I tried out Christianity and they seem like they just won a lot of time. I tried Christianity, talked about money, I tried Christianity and it didn’t work for me. And as I studied the passage and think about this passage and think about all the different paradigms, what you’re thinking, what you’ve said as people, I really do think we have been sold to Christianity that doesn’t exist biblically, we take american Christianity and we really try to doctor it up and round off the rough edges and take Christianity and package it and distribute it at mass consumption political, politically correct Christianity, a Christianity that like looks good, feels good, plays well with others. There’s this Christianity that I think is an american Christianity, especially on Youtube that is not biblically sound. Um, and I find this passage jarring, sobering, humbling words of our savior, jesus talking about what to expect. So there’s no gotcha, no hooks, no, but wait, there’s more, there’s none of this. I tried this before he lets you know exactly what to expect as you go along your christian life. I find it very sobering and heavy to work through this passage individually. I like to pray and commit this time to the Lord and ask that he would multiply if you bow your heads with me. Let’s pray and ask God to show up in this passage here and encourage our hearts. Lord, thank you for thank you for laying out the cost of discipleship here in luke 14 I ask that you just really instruct us. God help us to have our expectations calibrated correctly on what you say, christ help our, our spines to stiffen our resolve to settle, help us to know exactly what it looks like following you and we wouldn’t be surprised or taken, you know, or distracted or just discouraged and feel defeated as these challenges come along. That christ highlights for his would be followers. I said should encourage us and instruct us and convict us and open our eyes. We can see wonderful things in your work. If you don’t show up God, it is not worthwhile showing up here. We just love you and commit this time. You just name, we pray amen, I love the doctor luke who wrote this book luke 14, page 5, 10 in your house bibles, I love dr luke’s uh technicality as he goes through this passage in verse 25. If you look at me now, great crowds accompanied him, jesus and he turned and said to them and he jumps into a scathing reproach. It seems a very brutal passage, some of the most challenging things that jesus said, we’re looking at this morning and you see this rhythm jews would preach and do miracles and more and more crowds would come and then jesus would raise the expectations as the crowds expected as the crowds rose, the expectations rose and jesus goes and he goes right at it. That’s just straight initially. Let’s just acknowledge that is different than what we see in american Christianity. The larger the church, the easier it is to go. I’m reminded of uh messaging and branding. I’ve heard about some churches and it reminds me of a gym here…

Thank you Alex. Hello, Good morning. Um, if you are someone who’s brand new to seller, you might not know me. Um, but I would still love to meet you after the service. If you’re around. My name is Sam, I am the church plant resident here, which means I’m never here. So, so if you recently star start attending, you probably haven’t met, but I’ve been tasked to help to plant a church with a great cooperating church located in Bennet Nebraska called country bible church. And we’ve actually got some representatives here from country bible today. So if you happen to see them, uh, say hello, give them a big sewer welcome. Uh, because I love them. I’m not gonna ask them to stand up or anything like that because I love them or wave or anything. But if you see anyone who is, you know, wearing like a light plaid shirt and cowboy boots or one of them decided actually to wear a nice salmon sweater today. He’s the only one in attendance who’s, who’s doing that And he pulls it off really well but make them feel at home. This is the, these are some, some amazing guests, some elders who have uh, come with their wives. And so we’re so happy to have them today. Um, I’ll update you guys a little bit on our church plant. So we’re endeavoring to start a church plant a church in the city of Hickman and we feel that the Lord has called us to do this because there’s not a um, there’s not enough gospel presence in that town right now, we need, we need the gospel to be there. And the Lord has been raising up some incredible servants, uh, to bring the gospel there in new and profound ways. And as we look at what the Lord has prepared, it’s really amazing. Um, it’s obvious that he’s had this on his mind infinitely longer than any of us have had it on our mind. And so, uh, we’re so thankful for that as we’re progressing into things we are praying about and, and searching for the best possible place that we could all meet. Um, and so you could join us in praying for that pray that we’d be able to raise up some leaders pray also for just for country bible church in general. It’s a difficult task in sending out some of your best leaders also pray for us as we, uh, we’re trying to decide on a good church name, which probably happened this week or so. Um, much to mike’s dismay, we’re not gonna call it irrigation church, which was his first idea. Um, and I also have some insights from Pastor john here as well. Pastor john said you need to pick a name. Uh, that would encourage you to storm the gates of hell. And so we might name it church or something. Probably not, But uh, we thank you all for your, your ongoing prayers for us and for all the support that you’ve given us. I feel like a man must be the most supported church plan out there with all these people who care about us. So thank you very much. Um, I’m gonna go ahead and pray and then we’ll launch into uh, into the message. So father, we thank you for what you’ve done for the people that you brought together for the work that you’ve done for, the work that you um will do and father, we just thank you for bringing us all together for sort of a celebratory. Uh sunday I pray that you would just use your words here to speak to the hearts of all the people who have come today. Lord, we pray this in the name of jesus christ amen. So we’re gonna start off actually just where you guys left off last week. And so this is luke chapter 14 starting in verse 12 and jesus is in the exact same place he is in a meal that he’s been invited to buy some Pharisees sitting around the table uh and he begins to speak to them. So I’ll go ahead and read the first part here. This is starting in verse 12, he said also to the man who had invited him when you give a dinner or banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your …

Let’s pray father. We thank you for this day. You’ve gifted it to us. We thank you for this word that you’ve given to us. This is your word. It reveals who you are. It reveals what your character is like. It reveals your will for us and God, we are thankful for this revelation. And so Father, we ask that in the moment that we have together this morning on the day that you’ve gifted to us with the words that you’ve given to us God, that we would leave here with every everything that you intend for us to understand about this word. And lastly, the Lord, we give you thanks for jesus, christ your son our savior, who shed his blood for our sins, that we might be forgiven. It’s in his name, that we pray. Amen. Amen. Well, good morning. So our church. Some of you are awake this morning. Welcome to sword Church. If this is your first time, I haven’t met you. My name is dan. We’re glad you’re here. We hope that we can get connected with you and learn a little bit about your story, how God is working in your life and what drew you here. And so we’re glad that you’re here um church this morning. My question for you is this what are you looking for? What are you looking for? I think we’re looking for rest and by rest. I mean assurance and peace. We want some assurance about the future. We want some peace in the midst of everything we’re dealing with in life. Peace and assurance. Piece that everything that we’re dealing with? Everything that we’re facing isn’t going to overtake us or overwhelm us or set us back too far that we won’t ever be able to recover an assurance that there are good days ahead. There are good things waiting for us. I think we’re looking for that. Are you looking for that? That’s something I’m looking for. That’s something that I believe I found in jesus. And this morning, I hope that you’re able to see that some people are looking for peace and assurance and they aren’t looking for it in jesus. And so they can’t have it. They don’t find it, they don’t experience the benefit of it. And as we read this morning in the passage in Luke 14, everybody is watching, everybody is looking at someone, starting with the Pharisees, looking at jesus and then the rest of the hosts that were invited to the dinner party, looking at one another. Everybody’s watching everybody’s looking and everybody is looking for something. What do you think they were looking for? Have you ever been to a carnival? County Fair State Fair? It’s okay. You’re you’re not going to God’s not gonna be discouraged or upset at you for raising your hand saying that you’ve been to a carnival before in the past, Right? Um Some people might think that clowns were, you know, the invention of the devil, But, but carnivals are okay right there okay, Right, Cotton candy, right, ferris will, right? That’s okay. Right, so again, have any of you ever been to a carnival or a county fair or state fair? Yeah, there you go. We’re here this morning. We’re right here this morning. Have you ever been to one of those funhouse mirrors? You know, you walk in and the entire room is full of mirrors and each one presents a distorted image of yourself, right? Your eyes right like right here and massive, your chin is hanging down to your toes. You know, it’s made you look like a figure eight or something. I mean, just completely distorts the image. Right, Well, that’s what send us. It distorts the image. It distorts how we view God Ourselves and one another. Sin has distorted the view of the Pharisees as they’re looking at jesus, they’re watching jesus, but sin has distorted their view of him. They think that jesus is a lawbreaker, not man’s law, God’s law. They think that he is a lawbreaker. So what do they do? They invite him over for dinner? Now, this was a custom, jesus more than likel…

Good morning sir Church. So good to be with you all this morning. Want to start by asking a question, Z one here have any idea what it’s like to live in an earthly kingdom under the rule of an earthly king, anybody have any clue what that’s like. You grew up, you were a citizen of an earthly kingdom and you had an actual earthly king that you had to be subject to anybody. And the first service we had at least one person, You can always count on some of my international friends to bear witness to what I’m about to say today. But um, none in this service. No one isn’t it ironic that the Kingdom of God, probably the most dominant theme in all of the bible. It’s something we have very little context for. Do you find that ironic? The Kingdom of God throughout the scriptures, the Kingdom of God, a dominant theme And we are people, we have no context for what it means to live in a kingdom and be under a king from an earthly perspective. We have in many ways redefined what a kingdom is and what a king does. We’ve done it in cute little subtle ways, but we have for instance, we live in big red Kingdom husker kingdom. Right? And if you tuned in last night to some NFL football, you saw the Chiefs Kingdom secure their spot, you know, into the playoffs with the first round Bye. We think of kingdom as being a collection of followers or fans who are rowdy about the team or the individual or the thing that they support that they are excited about. That’s how we tend to define a kingdom. And then we redefined what it means to be a king. We think of the entertainment industry, there are various types of kings of various different aspects of entertainment. You think of little kids playing a game, What’s the title given to the person who’s the best the king we crown, that person, the king. So we’ve made a king, the person or the thing that we think is the best a kingdom is a collection of rowdy supporters and a king that which we think is the best. We have no context for the Kingdom of God. And yet it’s the most dominant theme in all of scripture. We need kingdom perspective and that’s my goal for this morning, is to give you some kingdom perspective from the bible, that’s also the title of the sermon, kingdom perspective. And you need kingdom perspective because if you believe in jesus, he is a king and you’re believing in him has brought you into his kingdom and you need to know how to represent him Well, you need to know how to live as a citizen of his kingdom. You need to know what that entails. You need to understand it. You need kingdom perspective. R. C. Sproul had a great quote about the Kingdom of God, the late dr R C Sproul, he said this, he said when jesus speaks of the kingdom of God, he speaks of a place where God reigns. Absolutely and that and that absolute rule is carried out according to justice, Mercy and righteousness. That’s kingdom perspective as kingdom perspective that we need the absolute rule and reign of King Jesus his mercy, his righteousness is justice. So let me pray for us and let’s look at this passage this morning and let’s look at the kingdom perspective that Jesus provides us. So let me pray Father in heaven. We seek kingdom perspective this morning. We understand that we don’t live under the Dominion of an earthly king and kingdom and we’re so thankful for that. But we seek kingdom perspective because you have made us through jesus christ citizens of your kingdom if we believe in him. So this morning helped me to preach your word with clarity and give us an earnest heart to receive kingdom perspective. I pray this in jesus name amen, come in sometimes. The way of the kingdom seems unimpressive and yet it’s filled with eternal significance. Sometimes the way of the kingdom seems unimpressive, insignificant of little…