The Lord Reigns Forever

We are spending our time this week looking at our mission and vision. We have a God that desires to be in a relationship with us individually and as the church. A God that loves us and desires to become closer to us.

We are reminded in our sermon today that we should be on a mission to serve “The Lord who Reigns Forever”. Our scripture comes from Psalm 146.

1 Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, my soul. 2 I will praise the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. 3 Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save.

4 When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing. 5 Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God.

6 He is the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them— he remains faithful forever. 7 He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free,

8the Lord gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves the righteous. 9 The Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. 10 The Lord reigns forever, our God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the Lord.

Please pray with me…

It is important for us to be reminded that the church is not about us. The church was formed and designed to worship God and to prepare the followers of God through Jesus to go out into the world. Those that are members of the church should be members in order to serve the church and those around us.

Our scripture for today reminds us why we should desire to worship and serve our God. Verse 6 tells us that we should worship God because he is the creator. He is the“Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them.”

We should desire to serve our God because he created us and everything around us. We exist because of God. We have food and water because of God. We are able to think and do what we want because of the way that God created us.

We have a choice if we want to follow God. We have a God that does not force us to do what he desires. We can go through life believing in God or not. We can go through life relying on God or not. It is a choice that we, meaning humanity, individually get to make.

I am making the assumption that if you are here today or watching on You Tube that you are either a follower of God through Jesus or at the very least that possibility is in your mind. We have already made the choice of following God, or we are in the process of trying to decide.

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This is why it is important to first focus on God and what our scripture points out he does for us. We are to find “our help” and “our hope” in God. Those that are followers of God through Jesus are to choose to attempt to live lives of hope. We are to not feel hopeless. We should have hope because of what Jesus did for us during his time on earth.

He offered a removal of the power of sin through sacrificing himself for us. He offered hope by never leaving us alone by leaving us the Holy Spirit to help guide and direct us. God assures us that our spirit lives on after our death and we get to reside with him forever.

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One of the missions that scripture directs us to follow can be found in the Old Testament. If you have been part of my time here at Church of the Good Shepherd, you have already heard me say this scripture a few times.

“We are to love the Lord our God with our heart, mind, soul, and strength and our neighbor as ourselves.” This mission points out the dichotomy of what followers of God are to do during their time on earth.

We are called to love God with our whole being. There is no part of who we are that should not be a part of our journey with God. We should put our whole selves into our relationship with him.

We show God that we are succeeding at following him by the way that we treat those around us. We are to desire to show the love of God to all that we meet. This would even include those that we may consider our enemies or those that cut us off on the freeway. We are to choose to love.

This is where the second part of what our scripture tells us God does for us comes in. Why,because we will often need God’s help to show love to all people. We may need God’s help to desire to be who he wants for us to be and to serve those he wants for us to serve.

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We find another mission statement within scripture in some of Jesus’ last words to his disciples. We find these words in our first reading. We have the disciples with an expectation. An understandable expectation that the Messiah at some point will end up conquering the enemies of the Jewish people.

This is one of the many reasons that the Pharisees struggled in accepting the possibility of Jesus being the Messiah. They wanted and expected a Messiah that would mistreat the Romans, the enemies of the Jewish people. Instead,Jesus spent much of his time chastising the Jewish people and specifically the Pharisees regarding their understanding of God.

Jesus doesn’t tell his disciples when he will do what they want him to do. He tells the disciples what they are to do. He gives them a mission. He tells them that after they receive the Holy Spirit, they are to be his “witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

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He is referring back to love your neighbor. He is pointing out to them that it is not about them individually. It is about loving, serving, and letting those around us know about Jesus and what Jesus did for us and for them.

He makes sure they know that there is no one who does not deserve to receive the message that they are to spread. They are to let those in Jerusalem know about Jesus. This would be speaking of their family, friends, and neighbors.

I would expect that you have people that are around you that do not have a church home or are not a follower of Jesus. We are called just like the disciples to let those that we are closest to know about the love of Jesus and that we know of a place they can worship Jesus.

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They are to let those in Judea know about Jesus. This is a mainly Jewish area. Jesus is telling them to let those that are like them know about Jesus. Tell those that they meet in their communities that the Jewish Savior has come and died for their sins.

This can often be the hardest for us to do. There may be times that God wants you to let a stranger know about what he has done for them. He may place you into a situation where you can speak into the heart of a person you run into in the grocery, a restaurant, or possibly while you are walking down the street. We need to be open to God and willing to respond when he creates scenarios that make possible for us to tell others about Jesus.

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The disciples are to let those in Samaria know about Jesus. They would struggle with this and we most likely would as well. The Samaritans were considered traitors and a people group that the Jewish people should not associate with.

They were the Jews that were left after the majority of the Jewish people were taken into slavery to Babylon. In order to survive they interacted and ended up marrying those around them who were not Jewish. When the Jewish people returned to the area the Samaritans were treated worse than others that they meant.

We are not to choose who we interact with. We may find ourselves speaking with or serving someone that we may not really like. Jesus is telling the disciples and us that we are to not focus on who someone is we are to show love to them because God first loved us.

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This brings us to “the ends of the earth”. Jesus is saying that if you think I am leaving anyone off the list of who you should serve and share the love of God with you are mistaken. They are to let the Gentiles know about Jesus. They are not to forget about those that do not have a Jewish heritage.

This means that they and us are called to tell those that are not like us about Jesus. We should not focus on skin color, social background, sexual orientation, political party, or any of the many other ways that society divides itself. All people deserve to hear about Jesus.

We know the disciples lived out this mission given to them by Jesus. The book of Acts shows us that they end up serving and sharing the word of God with all people. This means that we are also called to do the same. There is no one that we are not to tell about Jesus.

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This leads us to the mission statement for The Church of the Good Shepherd. Our mission statement tells us that we will “rely on God to help us connect with those around us, show the love of God to all people, and to grow in faith together.

This is how we will live out the two mission statements that we looked at today within scripture. We first need to recognize that we can only be successful in our mission with help from God. It goes back to our scripture reading.

We are to receive our hope and help from God. It is important that we trust that God is with us on this journey, that he has prepared the way and will continue to prepare the way for us in the future. It is only with God’s help that we will succeed, that we will be the church that God desires for us to be.

I don’t know what that means, it may mean that we don’t grow and remain small and fulfill our calling this way. It may mean we grow. What I do know is that we have to be listening to God and let him tell us what we are supposed to do.

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We are following the legacy of people that relied on God from the creation of this church in 1969 to worshipping in this building in 1974 to today. We release this mission and vision on all-saints Sunday to remind us that we are building on what the saints that came before us and some that are still here created those many years ago.

The first aspect of our mission statement is a focus on connecting with those around us. We are called to help those around us either begin or return to a relationship with God through a Christian community.

We are a friendly place that is welcome to all people. We should choose to let those around us that currently do not have a church look towards The Church of the Good Shepherd as a place that they can find community while also learning about Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

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We are a church that believes the church is called to love all people. It is why The Church of the Good Shepherd became a “Reconciling Ministry Church.” We want all people to feel welcome and know that they are loved.

The vision for the “Reconciling Ministry Network” is to see “a transformed Church that ensures justice, equity, and dignity for all of God’s children in their diverse intersecting identities.” We want to be a church that no matter who you are, we want you to feel the love of God in this place and by each one of us.

We are working towards discovering ways that we can reach out to our communities and show the love of God to all people. If you have ideas, please share them with someone on the leadership board or myself.

The last part of our mission is for us to “grow in faith together”. We want to be a place in which each person that is here is growing in their relationship with God. This goes back to loving God with all of your heart, mind, and soul.

It is through growing closer to God that we are able to become comfortable with sharing our faith and understanding of God with those around us. Becoming closer to God should lead us to also serve those that we meet.

We want to help you grow in faith through worship in person and online. We believe that spending time worshipping God allows us to feel more connected to God. We grow in faith by studying the word of God together.

We offer a Bible study after church on Sundays. This can allow you to connect with your fellow believers and learn from each other through discussing scripture. We are able to understand how we understand God when we learn other views.

We offer a devotional every weekday to let you hear and respond to scripture. You can find this on the church’s Facebook page. This ten-minute or less devotional allows you to focus on God every day. The devotional can also give you a way to share what we are doing here with those around us by sharing the video where you watch it on social media.

We as a church have a direction we are going. We now have a way for us to explain to those around us the way that we are living out the mission of God within our church. It is my hope that you will join me in connecting with our communities in love, loving all people, and growing in faith together.

Please pray with me…