God created all of creation to sing praises to Him. Mankind was to tend to the earth to help it sing praises. God created all of creation to live in unity and harmony and after 6 days of creating out of nothing what God created was good, meaning it was fulfilling the purpose of creation. So how do we get back there? By purposely working on unity and harmony with our relationship with God and all of God’s creation. Simply put we are asked to love.

We tend to think change is an enemy. We don’t embrace change and sometimes for good reason. But change is not the enemy. Change happens and sometimes God directs us to those changes. Jesus told us to be adaptable to the way the Spirit moves. You can’t put new wine into old wine skins that don’t move, the new wine skin should be flexible.

We look at the story of the prodigal son as a story about us. As much as we may be like the prodigal son sometimes our actions are more like the older brother. We feel that someone has sinned against the Father and therefore us so someone needs to pay. Or sometimes in others being celebrated we feel unloved, but that isn’t the case. Grace is freely given and we are loved by the Father.

God called Moses and planned on using who he was and the things Moses had done to bring about glory for God and salvation for God’s chosen people. We tend to make the same excuses as Moses but really in those excuses we tell God he doesn’t know what He is doing.

In Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well we can learn a few lessons with interactions and conversations. Conversations are important, they can change the future of those who have the conversations and others

Over the course of this sermon series we hav looked at the Biblical vision of the church, and are now looking at the people. Today we look at a family that is outside the church and what they feel about the church. In the story of Zacchaeus we see the story of how Jesus interacts with those on the edges of society. We see that Jesus sees him for who they are in God’s eyes not for the way the crowd sees him. As a church it is easy for us to go along with the crowd but we have to put ourselves in the place of Jesus, as seeing people as God sees them.

Jesus’ interaction with the Syrophoenician woman changed his heart. Matthew referred to her as a Canaanite woman reminding the Jewish that were hearing this story that she was someone they usually wouldn’t have interacted with. And Jesus interacts with her and listens to her heart. Jesus was kind of harsh at first but then found out that her heart had more faith than he had seen in even the Jewish he interacted with. Because of her faith He gives her a seat at the table.

In response to being accused of welcoming and eating with the sinners Jesus responds with the parable of the sheep. Jesus starts out “what if one of you…” making this a personal question. What would you do to bring back someone whom you love? We tend to see outsiders as the enemy, we forget that those lost are loved by God. Loved so much that while they were still sinners Christ died for them.

The key to the church is recognizing the authority and power given to us.  We've been handed the keys, now we need to use them.

Proverbs 31 paints a wonderful picture of womanhood, but how many women feel like they fit the mold created in Proverbs 31? I would say not many. Maybe the most important part of that whole proverb is that a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. We aren’t all going to look like the woman in Proverbs 31. There will be different seasons in our lives. Much like the story of Mary and Martha, there will be a time God calls us to service and a time when God calls us to just sit at His feet. The key is being a person who listens to God.

The Church is described in the Bible as the Body of Christ. So we as the Body of Christ are called to continue on the mission of Christ described in Isaiah 61 which he quotes after being baptized. Jesus fulfilled this mission by being love here on earth. We are asked to do the same.

We are now starting into a sermon series called “These Are the People in Your Neighborhood”. If we think back to childhood we might remember a nursery rhyme where we clasped our hands together and said “Here is the church. Here is the steeple. Open the doors and see all the people.” We sometimes have to ask the questions what is the church and who are the people? This week we start with that question of what is the church? The church is described multiple ways in the New Testament including New Israel. We find in 1 Peter that Peter likens Christians, the Church as a chosen people. But to understand why Peter does that we have to understand the relationship between God and Israel, and that takes us back to the beginning.

We are a resurrection people. We are asked to share that hope with others. Just because this is Easter Sunday doesn’t mean this is the only day we should celebrate. We should celebrate the resurrection every day.

Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem was met with crowds crying hosanna, which translates into "Lord please save us". Many of the people there that day had their own ideas about how Jesus was going to save them. I would venture to guess that no-one knew that it was through Jesus' death and resurrection that they would be saved. On Psalm Sunday, we are confronted with the question of how many times we have put God in a box. We are confronted with the question of how many times we've told God to do something. We still today need to cry hosanna, please Lord save us and be ready for the ways in which He will liberate us.

In Matthew 7:1-6 Jesus speaks about judging others. We tend to go to extremes in this verse either by using it to judge others harshly or using it to justify not having rules. But the heart of what Jesus was saying was that we need to make sure our vision is clear before we ever start judging others. Really we need to make sure we are loving others correctly. If we aren’t following the basic commandments of loving God and loving others as ourselves we have a log that we need to dislodge.

At the end of Matthew chapter 5 Jesus tells us to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. This scripture is not separated from the passages around it but part of the passages around it. Leading up to this particular passage Jesus has given us direction on what the Jewish laws really mean, what is at the heart at each law. The heart of each that he touches on is to treat humans as humans, we can’t dehumanize them. So maybe perfection is a lot about how we treat others, maybe perfection is about the way we LOVE others. Maybe instead of ignoring this verse we need to ask God to show us how to love in the ways He did. Maybe that is how we can live out this verse.

We are called as Christians to live in the upside down kingdom culture that Jesus speaks to in His Sermon on the mount. Blessed are the peacemakers. How are you at peacemaking? In a world obsessed with violence are we being more like the world or are we living out as we will in the Kingdom of God?

Loran brings a message from the Old Testament and asks a few questions of us.

This week we are finishing up the fruit of the Spirit sermon series. We talk about gentleness and self-control. When we think of gentleness we think of softness or weakness but that isn’t the case. Gentleness can be powerful, it doesn’t indicate weakness. When we talk about self control most times we think about food, or our impulses but it also is self control over our behavior and emotions. We don’t have to accept every invitation we get to emotions. We also don’t have to accept every invitation we get to behave in a way we shouldn’t. We are called to be Christlike and that means we are called to be gentle and have self control.

Paul states that if we have a new life in the Spirit then we will show the Fruit of the Spirit. This week we look at kindness, goodness, and faithfulness. If we are living life in the Spirit these will be evident in our lives. One way we praise God is through showing these in our lives. We praise God not only through our words but through our actions as well.