The Church of Eleven22 - Saturated 2019 - Wednesday: Pastor Bryan Loritts

Episode Date: September 11, 2019

As the senior pastor of Abundant Life Christian Fellowship, Pastor Brian Leritz is a very humble man. When asked about why he pastors this church specifically, he said, Listen, I know where I'm at. I pastor in Silicon Valley, very accomplished people in my church. This is not some backwoods, unsophisticated country place. Pastor Brian is also an extremely humble author. When asked why his most recent book is selling so well, he said,

This book is no ordinary book. Everything you need is found right in there. It's in there. But why should we spend our hard-earned money on your book, Pastor Bryant? Shoot, I live in the Bay Area where a fixer-up is about $50 million, okay? Some of y'all are wondering if you can laugh at that. I don't let that awkward moment just hang. Pastor Brian humbly joined us on the Daniel Fest and was recently asked what he thought of his dinner.

Ma'am, I got to tell you, these peanuts, they were indeed off the chain. When asked his opinion on the human race's greatest accomplishment, he said, I love the karate kid, Ralph Machio. And when he was asked who the best preacher had saturated was going to be this year, he humbly said, Hey, hey, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here. Please welcome the most humble man preaching tonight, Pastor Brian Lawrence. My goodness. Oh, man. Please be seated. Please be seated. I don't even know what to do with that. I've spoken everywhere, and like that's like, that's never happened to me before. So, amazing, amazing. You editing people have a PhD in deceit. So what a joy it is to be here with you all. I have looked forward to this for quite some time.

Hate that I'm going to miss my dad tomorrow, although I am thankful that I am before him. All my life, I've been his opening act. I've been his vanilla ice to his Michael Jackson, whatever you want to call it. So that's kind of outdated. I need to update that analogy. Some of y'all like vanilla ice,

I have no idea who he is. Anyways, what a joy it is to be here. Met Joby several years ago. have heard many great things about him. I knew he was a man of God because we both love the Georgia Bulldogs. There's an anointing over here. So don't worry, Gators and Florida State people, y'all are people of character. Suffering brings about character.

And that's what's happening with you now. Hey, if you've got your Bibles, meet me in Hosea Chapter 3, whether in this room or across the other campuses. We're going to hang out together in Hosea Chapter 3. three as I was praying about what I should share with you. The Lord just gave me this word, and it's tucked away in Josea chapter three. I want to read to you the whole chapter. Calm down. It's just five verses. Hosea chapter three, pick me up in verse one. Josea writes, and the Lord said to me, go again. Love a woman who is loved by another.

man and is not used to be is not was is an adulteress even as the lord loves the children of israel though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins so underlined verse two i bought her watch the detail now for 15 shekels of silver and a homer in a leithic of barley And I said to her, you must dwell his mind for many days. You shall not play the whore or belong to another man. So will I also be to you. For the children of Israel, verse four, shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without Ephod or household gods.

Afterward, the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David, their king. And they shall come in fear to the Lord and to His goodness. the latter days. Oh, I just noticed, a little ticker on me, 36 minutes in 44, 43. Y'all got a timer on a chocolate preacher, boy, I tell you. All right, come on, the Holy Ghost only got 36 minutes. Let's pray. Father, we bless you in this place today. We thank you, Lord God. Thank you for the great work that's happening in this section of your vineyard, for the lives that are being saved, for the lives that are being changed and strengthened and renewed. Thank you for the leadership, for the vision.

God, we pray that greater is still ahead. There would be a greater harvest, Lord God, of people who will come to faith in you. Now, Lord God, would you speak a word to your people tonight? You have not promised to bless the words of a middle-aged man, but you have promised to bless your timeless, eternal word. In fact, your word says, I'm just giving it back to you. These aren't the words of a prosperity preacher. You say in your word that your word will not return void.

So I just throw it out there. And I pray, Lord God, that the seat of your word would fall on good ground. That it would take roots, that it would bear much fruit. As my grandmama used to say, God put shoe leather on your word tonight. make it plain, make it practical, show us how to walk in it. As the old African-American preachers say, Lord God, would you stand in my body? Think with my mind. Speak with my tongue, those things you'd have a snow say and do.

In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. If I was with my father, as he's going to be here tomorrow evening, one of the things I always say to my dad, it's a verse that I actually think every child should be able to say to their father just on recall it's Proverbs 1322

whenever I'm with the old man I quote Proverbs 1322 I've got it on speed dial it says a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children whenever I'm with Dr. Crawford-Loritz I always say that true story and I'll go Dad are you a good man

we're at the Cheesecake Factory not too far from his house. They're on the north side of Atlanta a couple years ago. I quote to him, Proverbs 1322, a good man leaves inheritance to his children's children. I say, Dad, are you a good man? He goes, true story. He goes, funny, you should bring that up. I've just made some changes to the will. Talk about a record scratching moment. Everything stops. My ears perk up. I say, pray tell, what changes have you made to the will? Here we are on the north side of Atlanta. My dad says to me, son, it's interesting.

sit down with my lawyer and my lawyer says, Dr. Luritz, I see you've got four kids. Three of them are biological. One of them are adopted. I'm excited to go through this process of making some amendments to your will, but you should understand before we set out that Georgia state law stipulates that at any given moment you can write out of, edit out of your will, your biological kids, but Georgia's state law also stipulates that at no given moment can you ever add out edit out that adopted child, your adopted child is secure. In Ephesians chapter one, Paul says, you need to know what happened to you when you got saved. You were adopted into the family of God. For so many years in my theological naivete, I thought that adoption was second-class citizenship.

When right on the heels of that, Paul then says, you were at the same time sealed. with the precious Holy Spirit. So that, theologically speaking, adoption is not second-class citizenship. It is first-rate security. That when God saved you, not by your good merits,

but by His grace, sealed, eternally secure, you're his, and none can pluck you out of his hand. It was the great Robert Smith, that great African-American homiletics professor there at Beeson Divinity School, he says, every New Testament point has an Old Testament picture.

Well, I've been trying to just work and explain to you the glorious riches of the gospel and honing in on this idea of being adopted. The astounding picture of that, the seminal picture of that, is found in the book of Josea. When we come to Josea, God is ticked off. Here is God. He's peering over the balcony of heaven. And he does not like what he sees. He calls Josea in for a closed door meeting.

And he says to Josea, Josea, I've got a problem on my hand. Here I am, Josea, I have entered into, watch it now, covenant with Israel. not contract. Contracts are performance-oriented. Contracts are quid pro quo. Contracts are transactional. You do your part. If I like how you perform,

there's bonuses that set aside for you. Some of you all are in sales. If you kill it one quarter, man, the bonus is coming. You're going on that great trip that the company's paying for. They're giving you the awards, but don't let a couple of bad quarters go by

and you may be looking for a job because contracts are what happens in the meritocracy. You are valued not for who you are, but for what you produce. So here's God. He's saying, I've entered into, not contract. I've entered into covenant. I've saved my people by my grace. What is God saying? God is saying my problem is that, I have married, entered into covenant, Hebrew word has said, with a serial adulterer.

My bride Israel, his words, not mine, they keep on hoaring after other gods. In fact, you need to understand every time we sin, we commit spiritual adultery. The essence of sin is me saying, God, I am not going to turn. to you as my ultimate source of identity, I am going to turn to other things to try to find fulfillment. That is why what Tim Keller said is so good that an idol is anything, even good things that have become ultimate things. So for some of us, our kids are our idol. We place on our kids the crushing weight of deity. We go to their sports games and we freak out and yell at the refs and yell at the kids.

And I just want to tell you what I tell my church all the time, calm down. Your kid ain't going pro. And I can say that with confidence because they've got your jeans. You can please email me if you have a problem with that at Pastor Joe be at money can be an idol. Or instead of turning the God for fulfillment, it's all about what I've got in my my bank accounts. Beauty

can be an idol where my sense of identity is staring back at me in the mirror and you should know beauty is a depreciating commodity. An idol is anything. Even good things that have become

ultimate things. And when we turn away from God to the idols of this world, we commit spiritual adultery. And yet here is God. God is saying, Josea, my real problem, though, is not that my bride is cheating on me and giving me biblical reason to

turn my back on her. My real problem is that in my holiness, I cannot abandon her. So, Josea, I need to show my people, Israel, that I've got more mercy than they've got mess. I need to show my people Israel that there is no expiration date on my grace. I need to show my people, Israel, that as far as the east is from the west is as far as I have removed their sins. So Jose is like, all right, God, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to preach a sermon?

Nah, not yet. God, do you want to write a book? That'll come later. Jose, I see you just graduated from seminary and you got the MDIV degree. got called to pastor your first church. I see that you're single, and I know you're feeling a little bit awkward about pastor your first church being single, but I'm going to fix all that. I got a girl picked out for you. I can see Josea getting excited right now. If I'm Jose, I'm like, well, what's her name? God says her name is Gomer. Now, at this point, I ain't

excited anymore because I ain't met a fine Gomer in my life. Sorry if that's your name. I'm so sorry. Well, God, what does she do? You ready, Jose? chapter one she's a prostitute if I'm Jose I'm like no no way God that's that's just too strange can you imagine my installation service God me and this

girl walking down the aisle and and the prophet with the prostitute the the man of God with the woman of the night no no God that is too strange and God says Josea

if you think that's strange I got a stranger one for you. The fact that I, a holy God, would stoop so low as to walk with you is an even stranger's sight. What does it look like to live this thing called the gospel out? What does it look like to, in the middle of the meritocracy, in the middle of the kingdom of this world, that says you are only valued for utilitarian purpose,

is to be kingdom of heaven people who rage against the machine. What does it look like to walk in this thing called gospel love? Our passage tells us that if it ain't strange, if it never gets weird in your relationships, you ain't living the gospel. Can I go here? My youngest son is a baller. Boy can ball.

He got his first college of Christ. as an eighth grader, you couldn't tell that boy, nothing, man. He, boy can ball. Around my house we call him RP, retirement plan. Boy can ball, boy can ball. When we lived in New York City, he made a couple all-city teams, and then we move out not to the left coast, the best coast. And when we move out to the best coast,

there he gets picked up on one of the best teams there in the bay. And first tournament, we drive from San Jose up north to San Francisco. My son's the two guard. We're sitting there in the stands watching my son's team play and we're sitting next to the point guards to moms, a lesbian couple. And they're just doing what couples do. And my wife and I get to know them and we enter into dialogue with them and we exchange numbers and the tournament ends and we hop into our car and we get on the 280 South driving from San

Francisco down to San Jose where our home is and my wife and I turn to each other and in so many ways we kind of wonder aloud, what if God's calling us not to change them? Because we can't even change ourselves. What if he's calling us to love them? So we invite them over to the house, and we lay the dinner out, man, and they come over to the house,

and we're sitting there having good food, good conversation, and they're holding hands. And I grew up in Atlanta in the 70s and 80s. This is all so new to me. But, you know, we're just kind of settling in, and we're hearing their story and hearing what they do and find out that they're atheists. And the whole time I'm going,

please don't ask me what I do for a living. And they don't ask me that evening. And they come over some more and some more. And this relationship is building. And finally right at the end of fall season, they say, hey, Brian, we've been hanging out for a while, man. We've never asked you, man. What do you do for a living?

I said, well, I'm a pastor. I have the joy of leading God's people. and telling people where to find true meaning, value, and significance in life through God's only son, Jesus Christ. Immediately, one of them gets up from the table and grabs her purse and mutters under her breath, didn't see that coming. And I want to say to her, and y'all call us judgmental, but as a pastor, you can't say everything you're thinking. So I keep my mouth shut. I crack a joke, diffuse a situation. She comes back and we begin to stitch the relationship back together.

A couple months later, spring season starts. They call me on the phone. They said, hey, Brian, we've been hanging out for a while. You know, our son is getting to the point now. He's 13 years of age. He's not really hearing us anymore. He needs a positive male role model in his life. So we want you to know we got out of the lease in our home, a half hour away from you.

We just entered into a lease in a home around the corner from you because we think you need to be the man to speak life in our son's heart. And in the same conversation, she goes, oh, and just to say, celebrate, we're having a bunch of friends over, would you come over and do one of those house blessing things? I'm like, as in talk to God. You got it. So after service, we rush over there, and from the looks of it, me and our family are the only heterosexual people in the joint. It's just wall to wall our friends in the gay community. God bless my youngest son, can't whisper to save his life. We're sitting there on the sofa, man, and it's just,

You know, it's weird. And he goes, are you uncomfortable? And it's strange. And I pray over the rooms, and I ask God's blessings. And for the gospel to make its way in. The whole time someone's taking a picture of us, man. And the next day I'm at the office, and my wife hits me up on a text. She says, they'd untagged us on Facebook, man.

A couple hours later, this dear sweet 80-something-year-old woman at our church one of the mother, she calls me up. She goes, Pastor, I was on Facebook. I'm like, oh gosh, I know where this is going. And she says, her words, not mine. Is my pastor party with homosexual? She says, because the Jesus I know wouldn't do it. Now, there's a verse in the Bible I hate. If I could just cut out one verse, it would be this one. Do not rebuke an older person. There's some seasoned saints who need to be rebuked. I said, mother, you might want to read a on Jesus again because the Jesus I know went to some strange places. A couple months later, we, after one of the tournaments week, my wife and I had been talking about this, we go up to

our friends and we said, hey look, big ask, we're about to go on vacation. We're going to go to New York City, take the whole family. We've rented a spot there, and then we're going to go down to a Christian camp just outside of Atlanta. We love to bring your son with us. We know it's a huge ask. We'll pay for everything, though. Y'all need to think about it. about it for a while. He said, we don't even need to think about it. He can go with you. We have a great time in New York. Eat good food. Go to this Christian camp. Last night at camp, this young man, the point guard says, hey, Pastor Larith, I'd love to talk with you. It's about 10 o'clock at night. We're walking down a lighted path. He goes, I've just been seeing you and how you've been

leading your family and loving your boys. And you know, I don't get that from my dad. And I've been hearing you talk about Jesus. Can you show me how to become a follower of Jesus? And on that lighted path, he prayed to receive Christ. We get back and about a week later, one of the moms calls me. She goes, I don't know what happened on that trip. But my boys have been back carrying a big Bible saying, we need Jesus. I've got to work on his evangelism techniques here. She says, actually, my wife and I are facing some things,

and we'd love to come to church with you. She goes, I just need to know is your church a safe place? I says as long as I'm the pastor, there it is. So if you come to my church on any given Sunday, you're liable to see the senior pastor and his wife sitting next to this gay couple hearing the gospel. Strange. How strange are your relationships? If people are still primarily coming to church out of relationships

with each other, then sanctuaries reflect dinner tables. So this is going to be a place of strangeness where people are gathering together who don't look like one another, vote like one another, act like one another. But what draws them together is this peculiar thing of the gospel. The problem with the body of Christ is that our relationships are far too typical. of course that's the Fox News Church. Of course that's the MSNBC Church. Of course that's the CNN Church.

Of course that's the Black Church, the White Church, where God is showing us where the gospel is intentionally practiced and preached. The Gomers and the Joseas, the prophets and the prostitutes gathered together. But I don't know when it happened, but it happened. By the time we come to chapter 3 This marriage is on life support We can read between the lines and tell That Gomer bears some culpability here

Verse 1 of chapter 3 God says listen I need you to go again Here is Josea If I'm Josea I'm going to say to God Okay God she cheated on me The text says she isn't adulterous She cheated on me Let me remind you what your word says

I actually have the right to divorce her. Let me just exercise my rights. I'm out. I'm moonwalking away from this relationship. Duce is I'm done. God then shows up and says, wait a minute, Jose, remember, this marriage ain't about your marriage. It is about mirroring to the world the depths of my love for all of humanity.

And if every time you send, I do to you what you want to do to her, you wouldn't have made it out the first day. So I need you to do to her what I do to you moment by moment throughout every day of your life. I need you to go again and go again and go again and go again. I can just stop right here and just meddle a little bit. Who have you stopped speaking to? Who have you cut off? Who are you praising God for caller ID for?

this passage in Matthew 18 teaches us an unforgiving Christian is an oxymoron. Who do you need to go again with? In chapter 3 in modern parlance, Gomer has gotten herself sex trafficked. The going rate to emancipate a woman in Gomer's position to emancipate her was 30 shekels of silver. But verse 2, after God tells him to go again, look at what Josea says, so I bought her, for 30 shekels, but for 15 shekels of silver and a homer and a leithic of barley. Scholars tell us that the reason why it goes into such detail and doesn't say I bought her for 30 shekels is because he didn't have 30 shekels. I can see him checking under his bed and

maybe in between the cushions of his sofa scraping up all the coins he could get was only 15 shekels going to the auctioneer saying, listen, that's my wife. I got to go get her. All I've got is 15 shekels. The auctioneer says, not enough. And then they're just kind of bartering back. Well, what if I add a homer to? Well, I'll take a homer in a leithic on top of the 15 shekels. Watch it now. To emancipate the one who cheated on him cost him everything he had. Dear friend, don't you see, if you ain't paying a price, it ain't love. But isn't that our problem. Our problem is we want Nordstrom quality community at thrift store prices. But you must understand the very nature of gospelized love is to be inconvenienced. It is to pay a cost.

Now watch the flow of the text as we land the plane. He gets connected to her. She cheats at infinite cost to himself. He redeems her. And then look at what he says in verse three. He then tells her, you must not play the whore. Love has a standard. A standardless love is tolerance. Tolerance is such a low ethic. I tolerate you. Thanks. So going back to our friends in the gay community as we've just been getting to know them. One of them is running for state Congress and she wanted to stick a sign in my yard. And so, well, what's your platform? And she says, I'm into women's reproductive health. She happens to be African American. I says, African American, you're okay with abortion? I said, I'm going to bring up Jesus. You ever

heard of a woman named Margaret Sanger? Margaret Sanger wanted to get rid of black people. We had this amazing conversation. In a couple weeks later, her and her wife said to me, Hey, Brian, we've been hanging out for a while. We would love if you would do our vowel renewal ceremony. You know, I love you right. We've been having a good time and hanging out. Everything's been cool and I'm hymn and hawn. But I can't.

Because my standard isn't your happiness. It's the Word of God. I love their response. Oh, you're being a little bit dramatic. We figured you couldn't do it. You know, technically I've been preaching this all wrong to you. This text is not ultimately about our relationships with one another. It's ultimately about how God relates to us.

Dear friends, don't you see that we are Gomer? We're the ones prone to wander, filled with sin, bent on doing things our own way, stepping into covenant with God, cheating on him repetitively, and what does God do in this strange relationship? He goes again and he goes again and he goes again and he goes again. he goes again and what did God do for us on the cross? On the cross, Jesus Christ, paid his 15 shekels of silver and a homer and a leithic of barley. Some of you are here today and I promise you're here under the sound of my voice. You don't know Christ as Lord and Savior. Maybe you're

a very good person, a very moral person, or maybe you're a very lettered person. You've got PhDs and all kinds of letters behind your name. Maybe your GPA is phenomenal. Maybe you live in that perfect zip code. Maybe all of that stuff. But you need to know when it comes to the economy of God, that means nothing. It's like every Friday night's game night in our house and I love

to dominate my family and monopoly. I love to dominate them in monopoly. But at no point at the end of monopoly do I take that stack of money and go to Bank of America. Why? Because while monopoly money has value within the kingdom of monopoly,

it means nothing within the kingdom of Bank of America. Your degrees may mean something. Your looks may mean something. Your accomplishments may mean something in the kingdom of this world, but in the kingdom of God, it's but rubbish. Please notice something here. Notice Josea doesn't give the standard and then emancipation.

her. He doesn't say don't play the whore, and if you don't play the whore, I'll set you free. Had he done that, he would have made her emancipation conditional upon her compliance. But instead, he redeems her first and then gives the standard. Why? So that her duty and compliance would be in the category of want to, not have to. Don't you see this is the gospel when God comes to Israel. In Egypt, he doesn't say, look, you're incarcerated to Egypt, you're enslaved to Egypt, do these ten things on these stone tablets, the ten commandments. If I like your performance, then I'll open the Red Sea.

No, he opens the Red Sea first and then gives them the law. Why? So that their obedience would be in the category of delight and not duty. Or hear Romans 2-4. It is God's kindness that leads to our repentance. It is not our repentance that leads to God's kindness. Oh, dear Gomer, which is all of us. If you have not said yes to Jesus, friends,

the good news of the gospel is God sees you as is, accepts you as is, loves you as is, saves you as is, and yet by His grace never leaves you as is. freedom and new life await you. I fly home tomorrow. Actually to L.A. I got board meetings. Fun. I've already looked at my Delta app. Praise the Lord, I got the upgrade. I'm diamond status with Delta, which means I fly way too much.

But diamond status is great because what it pretty much means is if there's an empty seat in first class, I have a really good chance at getting it. And while I love diamond status, I've had to learn the hard way that it's not really good to get the upgrade to first class when traveling with your wife who has no status and is back in coach. So what I'm learning to do when I travel with my wife, because of my status, I'll get the upgrade, but I'll sit down next to her and coach, which means I'm in someone else's seat. That person whose seat I'm sitting in will start barking at me. You're sitting in my seat, but I'll shut them up real quick by giving them my first class ticket. Now watch it. I haven't lost my status. I'm still diamond. I just refused to use my status for my own selfish means.

Friends, that's what Jesus Christ did. He was in the first class section of the universe called Heaven. Saw we centers languishing in the coach section called Earth, headed for an eternity in hell, came out of first class, took on flesh, dwelt among us, died on the cross for us so that we could get the upgrade with him to new life. That's the gospel. So I want to pray. I want to pray. Father, in the name of Jesus right now, as this community has been fasting, I believe your spirit is saturating this place today and the other campuses as well. I believe, Father, that there is someone here today who, under the sound of my voice, is for the first time in their life coming to terms with their gomer. And they have not said yes to the

to you. Maybe they've tried to fill what Blaze Pascal calls this whole in our soul with the things of this life, money with relationships, achievement, success, whatever it may be. And as the band you two sang years ago, they still haven't found what they're looking for. Oh, dear friend, if you're here today and you don't know Christ's Lord and Savior, he offers to you free of charge a relationship with him through his son Jesus Christ who at infinite cost to himself paid the price you should have but did not have the resources to pay and he saves you not by your moral strivings but he saves you by his abundant grace And as J.D. Greer says, the gospel is not just the diving board. This grace doesn't just get you started. It's the swimming pool. It's the daily waters we swim in. If you're here today and you don't know Christ is Lord and Savior, and you're understanding this gospel. And I tell you, I just sense it right now by the power of the spirit of God. You just feel compelled to say yes to Jesus. Would you slip your hand in the air?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I'm going to pray a prayer and a lot has been made over the issue of prayer and inviting Jesus into our hearts. And yes, I want you to pray this prayer, but that's just the starting line. The way that you know that this relationship is authentic is you're going to experience some new desires, as Ezekiel says, you're going to get a new heart, and God's going to give you a new paradigm for living. But if you raise your hands, would you just say this prayer with me? Dear God, thank you for sending your son, Jesus, to die on the cross for my sins. Thank you that Jesus lived the life I could not have lived, and died the death I should have died. I invite you to come into my life. now by the person of your Holy Spirit I confess my sin make me new cleanse me

in Jesus name we pray amen and amen