♪♪♪ Dave Sumrall: Hey everyone,
welcome to "ITOWN TV." My name is Dave, and my wife
Kate and I pastor ITOWN Church. Thank you so much for joining us
today. Now, I have a question for you. What do you picture when I
mention the name Jesus?" Maybe some of you see a rosary
or a stainglass window. Or maybe it brings back memories
of going to church with grandma as a kid. Or maybe you see Jesus as a
heavy handed rule enforcer, someone who's honestly kind of
mean, who could probably never love you. Maybe if you're honest, you
don't really care for him either. You know, I think if you saw
Jesus for who he really is, you'd really love him. I want you to know that he
really loves you too. I shared a message recently with
our church about who Jesus really is and how all of us can
be more like him. I wanted to share it with you
today, so check this out. ♪♪♪ Dave: And I'm excited to
bring this week's message to you because we're talking about the
values, the culture of our church, which really determines
what happens around here in terms of how well we do in
moving the vision forward. Our vision here is to help you
move from where you are to where God wants you to be. And there's this interesting
passage in Mark chapter 4, where Jesus is talking about the
kingdom of heaven. He says, "This is what the
kingdom of heaven is like. A man scatters seed on the
ground." Now, anytime you see Jesus
talking about seed or the Bible talking about seed, it
represents the Word of God or the seeds that would produce
change in people's lives. And so, this farmer goes out and
scatters seed. The Bible says, "Night and day,
whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows,
though he does not know how." In other words, we preach the
gospel to people and then some respond and some don't. It doesn't matter how much you
work at that part of it, the seed isn't determined by how
much external things that we do to it. Some people respond and some
people don't. Here's another part that we can
control. We can scatter the seed, but
then verse 28 says, "It's the soil that produces grain." Read that with me at every
campus, "It's the soil that produces grain." One more time, "It's the soil
that produces grain." That's the part I want to talk
about for a few moments this weekend. It's the soil, it's the soil,
it's the soil that produces grain. So, in other words, what the
Bible is saying is that the environment that the seed is
planted in actually matters. The environment makes a
difference. And so, we are very intentional
about the environments that we create at ITOWN because we are
planting the incorruptible seed of the Word of God. Now, we can't control who
responds to it and who doesn't. Some people love the message of
the gospel, they open their hearts to it, they jump all in,
and their lives begin to change. Other people, maybe they're just
not in a place spiritually they're ready to receive it or
accept it, or they've got some things they're working through
in their life. Whether we sleep or get up, we
can't control that part of it. But what we can control is the
soil. Every good farmer knows they
have to control the condition of the soil. They're adding different things
to the soil, trying to keep harmful things out of the soil
to make sure that that seed has the best opportunity to grow. And so, as a church, we have to
be very intentional about protecting the soil of our
church. And the soil actually is, I
believe, the culture. The culture of our church is
kind of the environment that we're creating that gives people
the opportunity to grow in their journey of faith. Jot this down if you're taking
notes, every campus. "Culture is the underlying
values that guide the community." So, culture are the underlying
values that we would have that would shape or form the way we
treat people, the way we view God, the way we view one
another, and that's the soil of ministry. That's what really prepares the
environment for people to receive the message of the
gospel and for it to produce fruit in their lives, which is
the most important thing. So, as we were preparing to
plant ITOWN, we went on this little journey, Kate and I, to
talk about the values that Jesus embraced, the aspects of Jesus's
life that we thought would be transferrable to church life. Because the Bible says that
we're the body of Christ, and so the reality is if we're supposed
to be the body of Christ, then the local church should look and
feel like an interaction with Jesus. If we're supposed to look like
Jesus, then what was Jesus like? And so, we took these attributes
of Jesus, which I'm going to give you four of them today, and
then we built our cultural values as a church off of those
attributes. So, I'm going to give you the
attributes of Jesus and the values of our church, and I'm
going to help you see how it intentionally forms the soil or
the culture of our church to provide an environment where
people can take a spiritual journey. So, the first aspect of Jesus,
jot it down if you're taking notes, is that he was powerful. Jesus contained supernatural
power. And the Bible, Acts chapter 10
and verse 38, it says, "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with
the Holy Spirit and power." Now, pause right there, it's
important for you to understand where Jesus's power came from. Because we all see him as God. He was, the Bible says, fully
God and fully man. But he emptied himself, the
Bible says, of that which made him God. In other words, he gave up his
deity side in order to walk amongst us as a human. Because the Bible tells us that
the works and ministry, the supernatural power Jesus had,
came when he was water baptized by John, and then the Holy
Spirit came and baptized him, descending upon him like a dove. And from that point forward,
Jesus was anointed to do ministry. So, that's what this is talking
about, that he was anointed with the Holy Spirit. The reason why he did that is so
that we would understand that even though we are not God, we
could actually do the same things that Jesus did because
the method is the same. You and I could be baptized with
the Holy Spirit, contain the same power that Jesus had, and
then see the same signs and wonders. So, God anointed Jesus with the
Holy Spirit, with power, and then what did he do with it? "He went around doing good and
healing all who were under the power of the devil because God
was with him." So, Jesus took this power of the
Holy Spirit, this relationship with the Father, and turned it
into this supernatural ministry. And we just need to understand
at ITOWN that there is no substitute for the anointing. There's nothing that we could
ever do that would ever take the place of the presence and the
power of the Holy Spirit. It's a high value in our culture
because we know it's the anointing that breaks the yoke
of bondage, the Bible says, off of people's lives. So, if we're going to help
people take a spiritual journey, our environment, this soil has
to be saturated with the presence and with the power of
God. We love our musicians, they're
great, but there's no craftsmanship in singing or in
playing instruments, or even in the skinny jeans that they wear,
as cool as they all look, that will ever set someone--people
aren't going to come and be like, "Man, Pastor Brendan was
on point in those skinny jeans. I don't want drugs anymore,
praise the Lord." I love Pastor Brendan, but his
skinny jeans are not going to set people free from opioid
addiction or from issues of their past. They're not just going to be
like, "Man, it don't matter if I didn't have a dad. That was awesome." You know like--all that stuff is
important and it's great, but it's the anointing that breaks
the yoke of bondage. It's the presence of God that
makes a difference in people's lives, and that has to be a high
value. We have to have power. If we're going to make a
difference in the world around us, we have to have the manifest
supernatural presence of God in all of the environments that we
create. And I want you to have that
experience in your life because someone is going to be able to
beat your argument, but no one will ever be able to take away
your experience. And so, my prayer is that you
would experience this for yourself. Like the blind man, they came to
the blind man that Jesus healed, and they said, "Hey, you've been
blind your whole life. Was that the Son of God?" He was like, "I don't know if
he's the Son of God, but I know I was blind and now I can see. That's pretty awesome. Seems to me like he's a pretty
good dude, right?" So, if you have that story, I
was blind, I was addicted, I was broken, now I'm free, now my
life has changed, now I have peace, now I'm experiencing
life, you see the difference. This is God's model. God never intended for you to be
intellectually approaching God. It's important for us to
understand what we believe, but we have to have a demonstration
of the Spirit's power if we are going to see lives changed. 'Cause the reality is people who
are drowning don't need the Greek word for life raft, they
need you to throw them one. So look, we'll jump into the
deep end at ITOWN, we'll study Greek words, we get all up in
it, all right? But at the end of the day,
that's not the deal. That's not the main thing. It's the fact that we experience
God's power. Jesus was powerful, and that
only comes out of a love relationship with God. So, our first value is that we
have a passionate love for God because we want to be in love
with God. We actually want to act like
we're excited about the fact that we don't have to pay for
our sins by burning for all eternity in hell. Even if that's all God does for
us, that's pretty good news. You ever been burned by fire
before? That kind of stinks. How about all eternity, like
torturing for all eternity? That's a real place. Hell, I don't know if you know
this, everybody, let me straighten out your theology for
a minute, hell is real. Wow, it got quiet.
Hell is real. People will burn in torment for
all eternity who choose to pay for their own sins. And we don't have to do that
because we've accepted what Jesus has done for us. That is the good news of the
gospel, and we should look like, "Oh my goodness, I can't believe
he did that for me. I can't believe I've been set
free. I can't believe I get to serve
him with the rest of my life. I can't believe I get to be in
relationship with him." And out of that love
relationship flows the power of God that we desperately need in
every environment. Talking about the soil, we got
to have the power of God. We need to be in love with God,
right? Number two, Jesus was relatable. Jesus was relatable. He was a normal human, which I
don't think we often process. In Hebrews chapter 4, the Bible
says that we have a great high priest who has ascended into
heaven, Jesus the Son of God. Let me pause for just a minute
because I know this might be confusing to some of you, but in
the Old Testament--if you're new to all this, bear with me for a
moment. In the Old Testament, there was
a high priest. He was the one that would stand
before God for all the people. He was the only person that
could encounter the presence of God because God is a holy God. Thank God for Jesus and the
price he paid, now all of us can experience God's presence, but
there was just one back them. He would go in behalf of all the
people, and he would make a blood sacrifice of an animal to
atone for the sins of everyone else who had made mistakes and
even for himself. And so, what happened was people
would keep sinning, so they would have to keep killing
animals. And so, this high priest would
go in as a representative for God's people to keep making
these sacrifices of animals so that people wouldn't be
destroyed by their sin. And so, the Bible tells us that
Jesus now has taken that place as our high priest, and verse 15
says, "We don't have a high priest who is unable to
empathize with our weaknesses." So, Jesus our high priest, who's
petitioning before God on our behalf, knows what you're going
through. Why? Because he was a man. He was tempted in every way,
just as we are, but did not sin. So, Jesus went through this life
and experienced all the things that you and I experience. He was a carpenter, he hit
himself right on the thumb and went, "Praise the Lord." Never cussed, never had bad
attitudes, never sinned. He did the whole thing without
making a mistake. And so now, because of that, we
can approach the throne of grace with confidence. And we can find mercy and grace
to help us in our time of need. Now, this is very encouraging. And maybe I want to put a little
bit different perspective on it for those of you that have been
followers of Christ for a long time. Because in that Old Testament
model, there was an animal that they would sacrifice, and that
animal would cover the sins of the people until they sinned
again. Well, Jesus's sacrifice, the
Bible says, was the propitiation of all of our sin. In other words, that's a
theological term to say that his sacrifice was effective for all
humanity, for all sins that we ever have committed and ever
will commit, one sacrifice for all time. So, Jesus's sacrifice as the
sacrificial Lamb for our sins covers everything that we have
ever done. Now, that's the only thing
that's required to cover sin. Here's my thought. Jesus could have been the
perfect sacrifice and not had to have lived a human life. He could've made himself born 30
years old, still gone through all the pain and suffering of
the cross, and then gone back to heaven and that
would've--could've been fine. It would have appeased the
righteous judgment of God and made humanity right with God. But Jesus chose to live an
entire human life of 30 years leading up to earthly ministry,
and then modeled for us for three and a half years a public
ministry life that we have recorded in the gospels of how
to deal with pain and hardship and difficulties in life, and
then gave his life on the cross. He didn't have to do any of
that. He could've just come and died
in our place as the perfect sacrifice without experiencing
human life. But what he decided to do is to
come and to be born into conflict and controversy, born
into poverty. Nobody knew who his father was,
rejected by his family. And then he grew up having to
work in the family business and dealing with issues, and
probably financial pressure and social pressure of the community
not really accepting he and his family because of the way that
he was born. And then he had to build a team
and deal with trying to lead staff. God bless everybody that has a
staff today. Praise the Lord, y'all know what
managing people is all about, Jesus knows the pain. And then in the midst of--in the
midst of the garden--I love our team, our team is amazing. Not the ITOWN staff, that's not
what I'm talking about. And then in the midst of the
most painful moment of his life, they're asleep, the staff, it's
just like, "Bro, I'm about to die for you, you can't even stay
awake for a couple minutes?" And then he's wrestling in the
garden, "God, can you take this away from me? Is there any other way? But I have to surrender my will
to yours." Then he's dying on the cross,
and the Father's turning his back, and he's crying out, "God,
why?" His family showing up to his
earthly ministry crusades and going, "Sorry, he's crazy. Sorry, sorry." So, for all of us who have had
family that have ever betrayed you, or people who have walked
out on you, or someone in your life reject you, or people that
you have done something nice for, like the people Jesus
healed or the people who crucified him, like every time
we come to him, he's not like, "Aw man, I got nothing for you,
man. I made all this, I've never been
through that. I don't know how that feels." No, Jesus knows exactly how you
feel. Jesus knows exactly the pain
you're suffering with. Jesus knows exactly the
rejection and the pain. And so, he understands because
he's a high priest that's walked through all of these things in
life. He understands where we're at. And so, to him, he never looks
down at people and is like, "I don't know how you could've
gotten there." 'Cause I grew up kind of in a
religious culture that wasn't very loving of people, and so we
kind of had this mentality of, "I don't know, it's those people
that have those problems. It's those people. You know, those people." When I was a kid, it was the
smokers. Whew, can you believe? They smell like hell and that's
where they're going, people who smoke. I don't even know how you get
addicted to that, just filthy nicotine, filthy, filthy, just
killing everybody around them, it's just so selfish and
ridiculous. And it seems ridiculous people
can't control their kids, out there smoking weed until we find
pot in our kids' backpack, and then it's like, "Oh." We think people are insane who
sleep around before marriage until we get close to giving
away our virginity, and then we're like, "Whew, dodged a
bullet on that one, I can see how that--I see how that
happened." Think people that medicate with
some type of drugs or alcohol are weak and insane, until we
walk through a crisis and feel like we don't have anywhere to
turn, and we start medicating, and all of a sudden it's not as
bad as it seemed. I'm not saying sin's not bad,
I'm just saying people aren't those people. Jesus doesn't see them as those
people. And we're never going to reach
people if we keep seeing them as those people. We have to stop--praise God, we
got to stop seeing them as those people, start seeing them as
God's people. They're the people that Jesus
died for, they're the people that God loves, they're the
people that we're called to reach. And if we label them as those
people, and a problem, and ridiculous, then we're never
going to be in a place that we can reach them. And I just have always believed
that if we don't have a little bit of pot or a little bit of
crack on the doorstep, we don't have a few hungover people in
church, we ain't doing our job. We got to have that. We got to have them worshiping
with us, yeah. And I know people will always
talk. You know, religious folks love
to run their mouths and say, "Well, if ITOWN was really
preaching the gospel, half their church wouldn't be down in--
at the club." I always want to be like, "How
do you know? Were you there?" So, we have to have an authentic
love for people, that's our second value. We just got to love people, love
people. Open your heart to people and
realize they're not those people. It's easy to label people, but
I'm just telling you there's a path. There's a path that they've
walked, there's a reason why they're in that place. It doesn't make an excuse for
what they've gotten themselves wrapped up in, but it's not as
awful as you think. The Apostle Paul said it this
way, "I try to find common ground with everyone, doing
everything to save some." That's our goal, common ground
with everybody. Number three, Jesus, one of the
things I love about him is that he was excellent. Everything Jesus did was
excellent. In fact, the Bible says in Mark
chapter 7, "People were overwhelmed with amazement and
said, 'He has done everything well.'" I often laugh at that verse
'cause I wonder, you know, Jesus was a carpenter, I wonder
if his furniture was like the most valuable furniture on
the--like, "Oh, don't sit in that chair, that's a Jesus. Perfectly balanced, that thing
is unbelievable, it'll last forever. Get you a Jesus dinette set,
it's off the charts, you know?" Like you know it, you know it
was on point, right? Anyway, just random thought. He was excellent.
Everything he did was excellent. So, we have at ITOWN a
relentless commitment to excellence because it matters
the soil, it determines the soil in which people's lives are
going to change. You can't impress people with
massive chaos. And people are used to,
especially in our culture, in this area, people are used to
excellence. And it's always bothered me that
there is good and then there's good enough for church. I kind of grew up in that
culture. It was good, like good by
regular good standards, and then there was like, "Well, it's
church good. It's Christian good. It's good enough to play on the
Christian radio station. It's good enough to put on the
Christian flyer. It's good enough, it'll pass on
the church stage, but it would never cut it in the secular
environment." I always thought that was
backwards. In fact, if you look at the
first temple in 1 Kings, Queen of Sheba comes to visit Solomon
and she sees his wisdom, the palace that he built. She sees the food on his table
and the officers' seating arrangement, the organization of
his officials, the uniforms they wore, his cupbearers, and the
burnt offerings that he sacrificed to the Lord. And it left her breathless. She encountered God's people,
and the way that they dressed, and the way that they handled
themselves, and the way that they were led, and the way that
they worshiped their God, and the way that they sacrificed for
others. And that took away her breath. That should be the experience
that people have when they come and encounter God's church. It should be, "I can't believe
how excellent and amazing it was." So, don't be dropping off your
half-used furniture for us to put in the kid's area and go,
"Here, there's a piece of junk that we don't need at our house
anymore. Maybe the church can use it." We should be excellent. People should come--it's always
aggravated me. We have the Spirit of the
Almighty God the creator. It was the breath of God, the
Holy Spirit of God that created the universe. So, why should we be getting
pointers from the world on how to do things in the church? Why shouldn't secular concerts
be attending church services to figure out how to move their
lights and how to run their LED boards and how to do things with
excellence? Why shouldn't the world be
coming to study the organizational processes and
leadership structures of the body of Christ? We're supposed to have the
secret to it all because reality is every good business, every
good concert, every good environment that's secular is
just using biblical principles stripped of the power of God and
the credit to God. So, we should have the highest
level of excellence. So, at ITOWN, we pray like it
depends on God, but we work like it depends on us. We want to make sure that we're
picking up trash because we love to work hard. There's nobody's going to
outwork us, and we do it with a spirit of excellence, and I want
that for you in your own life because it's going to help you
excel. We're supposed to be like Jesus. And at ITOWN, we don't look for
perfection 'cause it's not possible, people are involved. But we do strive for excellence. We're doing it for the King of
all kings, it ought to be done right. Amen, everybody? The fourth one is that Jesus was
enjoyable, talking about the soil. It's the soil that produces the
growth, so we have to protect the soil of our church. We got to be in love with God,
we got to be in love with people. We need to do it with a spirit
of excellence. And then it just needs to be
fun, I think. In Psalm 122, it says, "I was
glad when they said to me, 'Let's go to the house
of the Lord.'" I know some people feel like it's sacrilegious to have
fun in church, but I just think that Jesus was a breath
of fresh air. Kids always wanted to be around
him. People who loved him and hated
him always wanted to be around Jesus. There was just something
magnetic about him. And my prayer is that church
would be that way as well. I think we ought to have fun, I
think we ought to smile. Like when's the last time you
really laughed? I'm tired of Christians looking
like they got baptized in vinegar. Always mad at everything, always
against everything, always upset about everything. Trying to win people to Jesus,
"You want Jesus in your life? You can go to heaven." You genuinely think like, "I
don't know if I want to go, are you going to be there? 'Cause if that's what heaven is
like." We need to have some fun. We want to make it hard to go to
hell by making it easy to go to church. There's two different reactions
to church, one of them is like, "Oh, thank God it's over. Praise the Lord. You grab the kids, I'll grab the
car. We'll be the first to lunch,
praise the Lord. We checked the box, we went to
church." The other one is like, "Oh man,
it's over? They're playing the keys
already, we're about to wrap this up? Man." The second one is better, y'all
know the second one is better. Church should be enjoyable. And so, at ITOWN, we have this
consistent commitment to fun, we want it to be fun. We want to enjoy the times that
we share together. And this is my prayer for you in
Psalm 51 and verse 2, "Restore to me the joy of your
salvation." Some of us need to recapture the
joy that's found in just following Christ 'cause it is
wonderful, it's a joyful thing to get to do. Dave: Restore to me the joy
of my salvation. You know, for some of us, the
idea of a relationship with Jesus just doesn't sound like
joy. But I want you to know it's in
him that our lives can be filled with a greater joy than you
could ever know. You know, it's different than
the idea that many of us grew up with about Jesus, but the truth
is he is enjoyable. And beyond that, I want you to
know he loves you. He loves you so much that he
gave up his life for you because he wanted to set you free from
your past and free from sin, and now you and I get to live in
this place called grace. It's not by trying harder that
we actually find our way to God, it's by surrendering to a
relationship with Jesus. If you're ready to take that
step, just bow your head and I'll lead you in a very simple
prayer. Just say, "Lord Jesus, please
forgive me today. For all of my sin and all my
mistakes, I repent. Come into my life and make me
brand new. Today, I surrender to you. In Jesus's name I pray." God, I think you for every
single person watching. We thank you that you're always
there for us, that we be filled with your power and with your
love and with your joy. God, give us grace to live every
single day and grace when we fall short. Thank you today for the
sacrifice of Jesus. It's in your name we pray, amen. Now, if you just named that
decision to give Jesus your life, I want you to know it's
the best decision that you can make, and I'm so proud of you. You know, our church is built
for people just like you. We'd love to come alongside you
to support you in this brand new journey of faith. If you just take a minute to
text the word "hope" to 63566, I'd love to send you a text
message. It'll help you know what next
steps to take in your relationship with God. Of course, I'd always love for
you to join us live in person or online for a Sunday service. You can find all those details
at itownchurch.com. Until then, I want you to know
we love you and we're praying for you. God bless. ♪♪♪ Mike Woods: Today, behind us,
we are setting up our Healthcare Heroes site, where healthcare
heroes can come through, receive hot coffee, a snack and some
prayer, and get 150 masks for their personal use. female: So, I work at
Community North Hospital on a COVID unit, so we know that
ITOWN's really helping all the healthcare workers. female: So, in this time
where there's a big shortage of masks like this, this just means
a lot for the frontline workers. male: Bye bye. ITOWN's awesome. female: These masks are
protection, you know? Not just for me, but for my
family. I go to work and I come home,
and you're not sure what you're bringing home with you. male: It means a whole lot. Thank and pray for ITOWN, and
God bless them for having this outreach 'cause it's going to
help a lot of people. female: Really it's a lot of
weight, but we have a lot of encouragement, so it's really
when we get helped, we help the community, so we really
appreciate it. male: ITOWN rocks, thank you. ...
