The passage this message was preached from, in full, with every other passage it reached for.
Isaiah 61Jesus unrolls the scroll in the synagogue and reads that the Spirit of the Lord is upon him to bring good news to the poor
1 The Lord Yahweh’s Spirit is on me; because Yahweh has anointed me to preach good news to the humble. He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to those who are bound;
2 to proclaim the year of Yahweh’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn;
3 to provide for those who mourn in Zion, to give to them a garland for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of Yahweh, that he may be glorified.
4 They will rebuild the old ruins. They will raise up the places long devastated. They will repair the ruined cities, that have been devastated for many generations.
5 Strangers will stand and feed your flocks, and foreigners will work your fields and your vineyards.
6 But you will be called Yahweh’s priests. Men will call you the servants of our God. You will eat the wealth of the nations, and you will boast in their glory.
7 Instead of your shame you will have double. Instead of dishonor, they will rejoice in their portion. Therefore in their land, they will possess double. Everlasting joy will be to them.
8 “For I, Yahweh, love justice. I hate robbery and iniquity. I will give them their reward in truth, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.
9 Their offspring will be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples. All who see them will acknowledge them, that they are the offspring which Yahweh has blessed.”
10 I will greatly rejoice in Yahweh! My soul will be joyful in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation. He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
11 For as the earth produces its bud, and as the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring up; so the Lord Yahweh will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.
Dave and Wesley read the opening of John together, leading to a daily Bible reading church community
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made through him. Without him was not anything made that has been made.
4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness hasn’t overcome it.
6 There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John.
7 The same came as a witness, that he might testify about the light, that all might believe through him.
8 He was not the light, but was sent that he might testify about the light.
9 The true light that enlightens everyone was coming into the world.
10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world didn’t recognize him.
11 He came to his own, and those who were his own didn’t receive him.
12 But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become God’s children, to those who believe in his name:
13 who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
14 The Word became flesh, and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the one and only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.
15 John testified about him. He cried out, saying, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me, for he was before me.’”
16 From his fullness we all received grace upon grace.
17 For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.
18 No one has seen God at any time. The one and only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.
19 This is John’s testimony, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?”
20 He declared, and didn’t deny, but he declared, “I am not the Christ.”
21 They asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.”
22 They said therefore to him, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”
23 He said, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as Isaiah the prophet said.”
24 The ones who had been sent were from the Pharisees.
25 They asked him, “Why then do you baptize, if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?”
26 John answered them, “I baptize in water, but among you stands one whom you don’t know.
27 He is the one who comes after me, who is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I’m not worthy to loosen.”
28 These things were done in Bethany beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
29 The next day, he saw Jesus coming to him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
30 This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who is preferred before me, for he was before me.’
31 I didn’t know him, but for this reason I came baptizing in water: that he would be revealed to Israel.”
32 John testified, saying, “I have seen the Spirit descending like a dove out of heaven, and it remained on him.
33 I didn’t recognize him, but he who sent me to baptize in water, he said to me, ‘On whomever you will see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.’
34 I have seen, and have testified that this is the Son of God.”
35 Again, the next day, John was standing with two of his disciples,
36 and he looked at Jesus as he walked, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!”
37 The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.
38 Jesus turned, and saw them following, and said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which is to say, being interpreted, Teacher), “where are you staying?”
39 He said to them, “Come, and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day. It was about the tenth hour.
40 One of the two who heard John, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother.
41 He first found his own brother, Simon, and said to him, “We have found the Messiah!” (which is, being interpreted, Christ).
42 He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him, and said, “You are Simon the son of Jonah. You shall be called Cephas” (which is by interpretation, Peter).
43 On the next day, he was determined to go out into Galilee, and he found Philip. Jesus said to him, “Follow me.”
44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, of the city of Andrew and Peter.
45 Philip found Nathanael, and said to him, “We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, wrote: Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
46 Nathanael said to him, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”
47 Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and said about him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit!”
48 Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.”
49 Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are King of Israel!”
50 Jesus answered him, “Because I told you, ‘I saw you underneath the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these!”
51 He said to him, “Most certainly, I tell you all, hereafter you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
do not speak evil against each other, cited as an expression of God's will
11 Don’t speak against one another, brothers. He who speaks against a brother and judges his brother, speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge.
love your enemies, do good to them, lend without expecting repayment
35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing back; and your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind toward the unthankful and evil.
do not copy the behavior of this world but let God transform you by changing the way you think, then you will know the will of God
1 Therefore I urge you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.
2 Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God.
3 For I say, through the grace that was given me, to every man who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think reasonably, as God has apportioned to each person a measure of faith.
4 For even as we have many members in one body, and all the members don’t have the same function,
5 so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.
6 Having gifts differing according to the grace that was given to us, if prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of our faith;
7 or service, let us give ourselves to service; or he who teaches, to his teaching;
8 or he who exhorts, to his exhorting: he who gives, let him do it with generosity; he who rules, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.
9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor that which is evil. Cling to that which is good.
10 In love of the brothers be tenderly affectionate to one another; in honor preferring one another;
11 not lagging in diligence; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord;
12 rejoicing in hope; enduring in troubles; continuing steadfastly in prayer;
13 contributing to the needs of the saints; given to hospitality.
14 Bless those who persecute you; bless, and don’t curse.
15 Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep.
16 Be of the same mind one toward another. Don’t set your mind on high things, but associate with the humble. Don’t be wise in your own conceits.
17 Repay no one evil for evil. Respect what is honorable in the sight of all men.
18 If it is possible, as much as it is up to you, be at peace with all men.
19 Don’t seek revenge yourselves, beloved, but give place to God’s wrath. For it is written, “Vengeance belongs to me; I will repay, says the Lord.”
20 Therefore “If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in doing so, you will heap coals of fire on his head.”
21 Don’t be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
The message in order, in a few minutes of reading.
Dave Hatfield, who serves with his wife Kim in Nakuru, Kenya, brought a message about what it actually looks like to love your neighbor and why that matters more than fixing the world around us. He drew on seven years of work in a dumpsite community, the conversion of a gang leader named Wesley, and daily Bible reading with a growing church of 120 to 200 people to show what the gospel does when it moves into a place where nothing else can.
What was said
Dave opened by pushing back on how Americans tend to hear the Beatitudes. We read "blessed are the poor" and think it is upside down, because wealth looks like freedom and options. But Dave argued the opposite: poverty and desperation are what drive people to seek God with their whole heart, and finding God is the greater blessing. The prayer requests that come in for sick family members and kids who are off the rails, he said, are moments of the same kind, because money cannot fix them and so people finally pray.
He told the story of how he arrived in Kenya with almost no Bible knowledge, began feeding children at a dumpsite, and started a school that has grown from 18 students to 320. Education matters, he said, and he believes it. But he came to see that education alone is not what changes a life. The only thing he has ever seen make a real difference is the saving grace of Jesus Christ and people who become His disciples.
That conviction grew out of what happened during COVID. Gang violence escalated, God told Dave to go back to Nakuru and make peace between the gangs, and he went. He ended up baptizing two rival gang members in the same water after they asked each other for forgiveness. One of them was Wesley. Rather than telling Wesley what to do next, Dave simply opened the book of John with him. Three more gang members sat down. The group kept growing, they built a structure with their own hands, and named it Love Light Church. By the time of this message they had read through the Bible together for 655 of the last 660 days.
From all that reading Dave said he has learned something about who the church is and what time in history it is living in. We are not in the time before Jesus came, and we are not yet in the time when He returns and sets everything right. We are in between, in the dark stretch, and the calling for that stretch is not to be angry that the world is broken but to be the light in it. He asked whether we are willing to say yes to God before we even know what He is asking, the way Wesley eventually did.
Dave then worked through what loving your neighbor actually requires. He went through Luke 6, where Jesus says to love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and lend without expecting repayment, twice in the same passage as if making sure nobody missed it. He connected that to the tongue passages in James, the warning against speaking evil and judging one another, and to Romans 12 and its call not to copy the behavior of this world but to let God transform the way we think. He was blunt that he loves himself more than his wife after thirty-four years of marriage, and that the coat in the closet is not a suggestion.
The reason loving your neighbor is so important, Dave said, is not simply that it is nice. It is the mechanism by which people are loved into a relationship with Christ, and when the Holy Spirit moves in, God goes to work from the inside. You do not have to nag anyone or argue anyone into anything. He pointed to Philippians 2:13, that God is working in them, giving them the desire and the power to do what pleases Him. Kim and her friend Kay going into the community every day to sit with survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, not able to fix anything but present and loving, is what that looks like in practice.
Dave closed by having the congregation say aloud, and then say to the person next to them, "I am the temple of the Holy Spirit." His point was that if we saw ourselves and others that way, including the wicked and unthankful ones, our whole posture would change. The enemy reminds us of our worst moments and we look at others in theirs. What if instead we looked at the person in front of us as someone built to hold the Spirit of God, someone to be loved into that relationship rather than judged out of it?
Doing a Bible study?
Here is a guide we have prepared for you: the passages
in order, questions for the group, and room to write.
Dave described the Beatitudes not as upside-down thinking but as the way God actually sees things, saying our poverty and lack are what drive us to seek God with our whole heart. Where in your own life has a situation you could not fix been the thing that brought you closest to God?
Dave said he went to Kenya having read maybe a quarter of the Bible, but he said yes anyway. What tends to hold you back from saying yes to God before you know exactly what he is asking you to do?
Dave HatfieldIt's a good game. If you had no home, you had no shelter, no food, no clothing, what would you be doing? Right. You'd be on your face. Think if the Beatitudes were...
He was talking to America, he would say, bless her to save. How many prayer requests have come through because our our floor... Sick or my kids are off the rails? Why? Your money can't do anything about those two.
Your money can't change anything with your daughter. So so what do you do? Oh, I have to pray. So you're blessed are those whose family members
Speaker 2are off the rails because
Dave Hatfieldyou get to come in with God. Because if you seek me with your whole heart, you will find me. And if you are in my presence, what is more blessed than be in the presence of God? And what drives us there? It's our lack.
It's our poverty. It's the things we can't fix. Right. That's what it says. Anyway, yeah, thank you.
Putting you back to your flush and strengthening your spirit. Guess why he's doing that? So that he can use you in harder situations. This is my... It's my weird theology.
Months in, he would've tried to fix it. I'm gonna try to fix it. With which ones? Wasn't Depending on who's around. If it's just me and the dude or me and Wes and the and the dude, I'll I'll talk to Gideon.
They talk back. For sure. But a lot of times, don't flee because What it says is, hey. You don't know when your last breath is. So be alert and be prepared and be in good...
Be doing what I want you to do when it happens. Okay. You know? I'm I'm pretty sure that it won't be my community that kills me. It won't be the criminal on their own that kills me.
It's gonna come from those who... It's Yep. I think they're gone, but it's online. Let me find my wife.
Speaker 2Good morning, everybody. Thank you. Good morning. Would you all stand with me? We're gonna sing lead on, oh king eternal.
And I actually might stand over behind the piano because I don't have any words in front of me. Hold on a sec. This is a good time to point out that the hymn books are right over here. If you'd like one, you can get it. This is hymn number seven twenty four.
And other than that, we can all just sing off the wall because the words will come up there. Yeah. I know you. It's hard to pronounce, but it means... Don't have one for this song.
Alright. My Easter... Lead on, oh, king eternal. Really? I could sing a solo.
Here it is right here.
Dave Hatfield2025, we're gonna be able
Speaker 2to Actually, maybe we'll go to the second song. Blake, would that work?
Dave HatfieldQuite a few tunes, I think, that'll come next year, which will be good. From The US. Yeah. Yeah. So...
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2You ready? It is well with my soul. Hymn number seven zero five. Can we do that, Jennifer? Amen.
This is a good one for this morning. Thank you.
Speaker 3My sin not in part, but the whole is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, oh my soul. It is well. With my soul.
It is well, it is well with my soul. Is well. It is well with my soul.
Speaker 2How about y'all have a seat? We will have a few announcements. The last one caught me by surprise in the first service. It is the time of year for Old Bills. Many of y'all probably went out to the Old Bills Fun Run yesterday.
Linda and I, I would say ran it, but we kinda walked it together. It was nice. We did the short course. But it... The Fun Run is over, but the giving season still persists.
So if you would like to give to any of the charitable organizations in town, of which there are many. There are like 300 and something of them here, primarily because of Old Bills Fund Run, which amplifies donations. If you'd
Speaker 3like to give to, say,
Speaker 2the First Be Benevolence Fund, and you give through Old Bills, a dollar in is usually about a dollar 50 out, which is nice. That's a good investment. It's the same for Samaritan... Good Samaritan Mission or for Compass Women's Care. All of those are listed on under that.
And that's happening. So Awana clubs. Awana clubs starts not tomorrow night, but next Monday night. So Awana clubs starts, and that is, believe it or not, Steve Baldock and Brian McCooey. I think that might be crazy hair I'm not sure.
Might be fake an injury night, but I think it's crazy hair night for Awana. On the slide at least. But tomorrow evening, 6PM, there is an Awana leaders meeting. We are gonna feed them. Right, Carl?
I think. Yes. We're gonna have supper together at 6PM in the Fellowship Hall. Awana leaders meeting for... In anticipation of starting up Awana the next week.
Is there anybody in this service that is gonna make this children's announcement? You're not... Just making sure I don't step on your toes. So the nine o'clock service has children's church, and that is at 09:30. Children's church starts for middle school and high school.
It also starts for for kindergarten, first, and second grade, and third through fifth grade. And we also are having now a preschool class. The preschool class will start at 09:30, but nursery includes up through preschool. Anybody six months up to two years old will be in the nursery. And then three to five are in the in the class.
You can leave three to five years old down there too, but they will... Three to four year olds. Gracious. I'm terrible at this. That's why they've been doing this announcement instead of me doing it.
But it'll be music, snack, and a Bible lesson for that. If you're new to children's church, there's a preschool class, three to four year olds. And that, if you take that out and use that QR code, that will take you to a text to Amy and Philip Jordan, and they can tell you more about what's happening there.
Dave HatfieldGood. I can...
Speaker 2Next, September 22, between services. So September 22, two weeks from now between services. Would y'all come early and be a part of this? This is the small group Jamboreeapalooza, and we are having a gathering for anybody. It's in order to equip and encourage the people who attend church here to be in small group fellowship with someone with a small group of people that attend here.
September 22 between services. If you host a group, if you lead a group, if you'd like to host or lead a group, or if you just attend a group. It's really for everybody. I've asked the first service to get up from these chairs and go down that hall and be involved and see how we can spur and stir one another up into love and good works. There is a men's lunch study.
Please do not take away from that slide that we will be feeding you. It's just happening during the lunch hour. So 11:55 to one. It is a great, group. We're studying second Peter together, and it's been fantastic.
I love that group. Carl loves that group. We all do. It's really good. We pray for one another.
We kinda... It's a small group of itself... In itself. But men's lunch study, Thursdays, 11:55 in the Fellowship Hall. You can come and go as you need it, but you know it'll be over at 01:00.
We're pretty persnickety about that. Y'all have done well on the moving up and in. I think I can skip that one in this, and this is the last one.
Dave HatfieldYeah. Yeah. Sorry about that. Yeah. So I
Speaker 2am 53 years old today. So... Yeah. And the clapping is not for me. I was huge.
My mother's little. It'd be for... Better for her, honestly. Twelve pound baby and a five foot tall little lady. Yeah.
Anyway, would you all stand? Would you all stand and sing with me? I appreciate the well wishing. In the garden.
Speaker 3The garden alone while the dew is still on the roses. And the voice I hear falling on my ear. The son of God discloses. And he walks
Speaker 2Jesus, we just wanna thank you. Hymn number seven ninety one. It's a nice chorus. I I had the benefit of hearing the sermon the first time around, and there was an emphasis on what it is that God has told us is his will for us. And one of them is that we be grateful.
This is God's will concerning you in Christ Jesus, that you be grateful. So Jesus, we just want to thank you.
Speaker 3Jesus, we just want to thank you. Jesus, we just want to thank you. We just want to thank you. Thank you for being so good. Jesus, we just want to praise you.
Jesus, we just want to praise you. Jesus, we just want to praise you. Praise you for being so good on the third. Savior, we just want to thank you. Savior, we just want to serve you.
Savior, we just want to serve you. Serve you for being so Jesus, we know you are coming. Jesus, we know you are Jesus, we know you are coming. Coming. Take us to live in your home.
Speaker 2Amen. Y'all can have a seat. I'm gonna invite the ushers to come forward. And if you would, pray with me. Lord God Almighty, to to thank you, to praise you, to serve you, and to look forward with anticipation.
Wow. Lord, we carry out your will. You said to your disciples that you were the light of the world. And then, you turned around and you said, and you are the light of the world. Lord, we want to continue to carry your love and your light to this dark world that is anything but loving.
Lord God Almighty, I pray that you would use the humble and obedient servants. That's plan a, Lord. That you would use your humble and obedient servants to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, to love and to live out the light. In Jesus name, we pray that you would be doing your will and your way. Lord, among us this morning, but through us from there forward.
In Jesus name, we're thankful. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Jennifer. So I'm gonna invite Dave to come up.
Dave Hatfield and Kim Hatfield have been serving in Nakuru, Kenya, primarily, serving here right now. And I'll just turn it over today, but I love you brother. And now I know what you've said, I'll just leave it to you instead of trying to introduce you further.
Dave HatfieldLove you too, Ray. That leads me right into my sermon. Thank you. So good morning, everyone. Good morning.
It's good to be here together again. God did... Has connected my wife. She's over there. Say hi.
Yeah. She's right there. That's Kim. God's connected us in a way that only he can. It was about seven years ago after we had sold our home, and we're in the process of giving our things away that he said go to the...
Go to Jackson and encourage the church. Does that seem weird to you guys? Well, it was weird to me because I'd never been to Jackson. I didn't know anybody in Jackson, and I certainly didn't know what church. And after we did that, actually, he's been talking to me saying, it wasn't like Jackson that I wanted you to come and be with.
It was Ray. Thanks for loving me, man. And Tanya and Pascal and Carl and Maddie and so many others that are in this family of God. But we did as he asked us to do. And also, we live in Nakuru.
We have kids like that. That's my assistant. You can see. We booked a VRBO here for a month. We got in our car, and God led us right here in the first b, and there's my wife encouraging some within the church.
And the beauty... Beautiful thing about the way God works is that, Frey and Tanya and Pascal and Carl came shortly thereafter and returned the favor and encouraged us in Nakuru, and here we are together again. So thank you for this time. Let's pray, and we can get started. Lord, thank you for the gift of today, and thank you for the way that you do make that family.
Thank you for choosing us. You adopt us as your own, and you tell us that we're heirs to you, that we are heirs to the king, and that the riches that we get are things like peace and patience, and goodness and kindness and and love. And thank you, Lord, that your spirit is welcome here, only in this building, but into our lives. And I ask that you connect us by that spirit. Teach us to love like you.
And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So how many of you have never met us before? This is your first time. Wow.
Well, welcome to first b. Well, I was a I was a stockbroker in Beverly Hills before I became a Christian. You wanna know what I looked like before I met Jesus? Are you ready? Look at that guy.
And I found Jesus at 46, and seven months later, he sent me on a short term mission trip to Kenya. I thought it was just kind of an adventure. I went with my thirteen year old son. I was completely naive with all the enthusiasm of a new Christian, and he told me to love the people. And so as he was busy making me into a new creation and changing my heart, he gave me a deep love for these people.
And I ended up in this place. It's a long way from Beverly Hills. It's a dumpsite in the fourth largest city in Kenya, and life can be very challenging there. God told us to bring his love and his light to these beautiful people, so that's what we did. And we did it really not knowing anything.
I hadn't I hadn't read much of this. I think I'd maybe read a quarter of it by the time I got there. But I said yes, and I and I went. I've read it now. It seems that the gospels...
You know, I love the gospels, and it it talks about Jesus. And right after he was baptized, he goes to his hometown. He goes into the into the synagogue on a Sabbath, and he stands up, and he he unrolls a scroll from Isaiah 61. And it says, hey. The spirit of the Lord is upon me, and I have come to bring the good news to who?
Finish that. Who's... What's it say? I came to bring the good news to the poor. Since the scriptures weren't written in English, that poor actually has a little bit deeper meaning than it does for us.
It meant not only those who are lacking, but those who are outcasts. And we know that that's true because I think of someone like Matthew, Levi, Matt... Who became Matthew. You know, Matthew wasn't poor. Matthew was rich.
Matthew was a tax collector. Ah, but Matthew was an outcast. He was despised by his Jewish brothers and sisters. They hated him. He wasn't welcome in the synagogue.
He was a tax collector. What I love about this... You know, the thing about Matthew is that scripture says as soon as Jesus said, follow me, it says he immediately left his tax booth and followed. If you had a cash cow business sitting there and Jesus said, hey. Follow me.
And you go, oh, sure. Fine. I'll just leave that over there. But that's who he came for. Think about it.
He came to bring the good news to the people who at that time the culture said, you are not welcome in the kingdom of God. Don't you come... You're not clean enough to come in my synagogue. Kingdom of heaven is not open for you. You're not a Jew.
You're not born into the right tribe. You can't become part of God's people. You're an outcast. I don't know how many of us are Jewish here, but in Kenya, we're all Gentiles. And even though the color of our skin is different, we're connected in our differentness and that we're in our outcastness because we aren't Jews.
We're we're... We are Gentiles. And so then here's this book that says, ah, the part of this kingdom is welcome is welcome for you. But when this was written, we weren't. But he does say the doors are open for you.
I came to bring the good news to you. The beautiful thing is is that good that good news has been shared by the faithful ever since. It's been shared to you and even to me. You know, you see a photo like like this here, and that scene can be quite overwhelming. We look at that, and we go, I mean, I was...
I'm an American man. I look at that, and I'm like, how can I fix this? There's got to be a way to fix it. How can I fix it for these kids and these women and these young men? How can I make a difference?
What can I do? And we we have such a tendency to overthink it. And when you see little kids that are sustaining themselves by eating trash, what you do is you come and fit... You come and feed them. It's not that hard.
It's simple. Feed the hungry. It's in here too. So that's what we started doing. We would serve meals to our community and begin to bond with them, and he he said, Dave, I want you guys to do a little bit more.
I want you to love them in a deeper way. And at that point, I had been told that education was the key to helping people escape poverty. Has anyone heard that? I believed it, and so we started a school. And then you see this picture.
This is our first school. Look at those kids. This was the most beautiful photo I had ever seen in my life. This was the most joyful I think I'd ever been because those children have bowls of rice in front of them, not trash. And they're together and that they had a place to go.
They had a place that they felt that they could belong other than being cast away where the trash is. If you live in trash, what do you think the city of a million people, how do you think they view you? God views them as beautiful. So we opened a school for 18 kids. This is what our school looked like at the time.
When Ray and Tanya and Pascal and Carl came, this is what our school looked like. There was a giant hole in the ground. That thing is a cistern that holds rainwater from the runoff on our roofs. It's three stories deep and slightly bigger than King Solomon's cistern, so it holds a lot of water. And here's that school today.
Underneath that building is where that big hole is. God's doing great things in the lives of these kids. He he is educating them, and education is important, and it is a gift. These children are learning to read and write. Our our four year olds are learning three languages.
They already know how to speak their mother tongue. They're learning Swahili in English also at age four. I don't know how many kids in our schools are learning three languages. So real education is happening there. They're learning about the environment.
They're learning to do math. They're learning about hygiene. And they're learning about this God who loves them and his name is Jesus. And he's being taught that through the loving actions and care of a Christian staff. We've grown from 18 students to 320 now, and we believe God is asking us to make it possible for another 70 to join us in January, so that'll be about 400 kids.
Right now, there's no room for our children, for more kids on our eight tenths of an acre. We are fully packed out. Look at those beautiful kids. Those are some of the ones that you saw in the first picture. I miss him.
I can't... Don't have me show any more slides of the kids, Ray. Okay? So he's given us this gift, this space to develop. It's five beautiful acres about thirty minutes away.
That's outside the chaos of the slum. It's beautiful. It's quiet, but it needs a lot of work. And we're hoping that that'll be the place in which we have a 100 students start in January, but we've got a lot of work to do. God is continuing to give us things to nurture and develop, things like land and even more important things like children.
So it brings me to this slide. I love this slide. Right? This this was one that just fed into that idea that education is what's going to get these kids out of poverty because they're taking what they learned in school and they took it right back into their environment in the dumpsite. They're in the...
These are five year olds writing in a composition book what they were learning. I'll get back to that a little bit later. I think they're gone, but out in the front, I had a couple of copies of my book. I wrote a book that gives a little bit more background, and it will fill in some more about the story I'm about to hear. It's called I'm Not a Grasshopper.
You'll understand why the title's that way once you get near the end. You know, but guys like me usually don't write books because we're too busy doing the stuff that's included in here to sit down and write. But for me, it wasn't only that I wanted to help have others learn from what God was teaching me about forgiveness and peace, but it was also therapy for me to write through it based on some of the things that I'd been through. It was it was a good process, and I hope you have an opportunity to read it. I'll tell you a little bit about it.
You know, during COVID, all the schools were closed. The the gang activity began to pick up in our community because the high school age boys were back in town. And one night, 27 guys raided one of our four year old girls' homes. Some of this is hard to hear. And they stabbed her uncle.
They threatened to kill her, and they and they threatened to burn down the house. And a couple of nights later, there were two murders. One guy was stabbed 53 times. Kim and I were living in California at the time in a small little apartment, and God said, go to the... I want you to go to Nakuru, and I'll make peace between the gangs through you.
So I got on a plane. I don't know how many of you traveled in the midst of COVID in 2020, but I got on a plane and I went, and I'm gonna save you a whole bunch of time reading this book. God did it. God did it. And I'm gonna ruin the end of the book, but I actually ended up baptizing two rival gang members in the same water after they asked each other for forgiveness and peace.
One of those guys, after seeing some more things that we did together, watching God act, Said, hey, Dave. I think God's wanting me to do something different with my life. Oh, it was music to my ears. I was like, yes. And I was thinking all these things.
They went, oh, he could do these things. And he said, you know, what do you think I should do? God's spirit kinda convicted me and said, I don't know, Wes. I don't know. I did have my list.
You know? Do we do that? We're like, hey, God. I know I want you to do it, but hey, here's a few suggestions that you could do. I would have messed it up.
I would never have dreamed of what was gonna happen, and so I just said, I don't know, Wesley. But you know what I do know? Let's search this book for wisdom and answers. Do you wanna know why? Because this is the truth.
This is the way, the truth, and the life. You guys get a bonus thing. I know I went over in the last sermon. I'm gonna go over again. You wanna...
You get a bonus. And I wish I was in charge of the church because I would forbid the beatitudes being taught as being upside down. No. The beatitudes are the way that God looks at things because they're his words and his truth, and he's the one that gets to set the GPS of our souls. And when he says things like, blessed are those who are poor.
Why? Because they get the kingdom of God. We think, oh, that's upside down. Blessed are the rich. They get choices and comfort, and you can do what you want.
You got no hassles. That's not what God says. You're upside down if that's the way you believe. Why? Why are you blessed if you're poor?
You don't have a home. You don't have food. You don't have clothes. You live in a dumpsite. Why are you blessed?
What are you gonna do? You're gonna be on your face reaching out to your father in heaven saying, God help me. I need you. And the word says that if you seek him with your whole heart, you will find him. It's in those moments of our lack.
It's in those moments of our desperation that we seek him and that we find him and that we're in his presence and you are blessed. Why? Because you have the kingdom of heaven, You have God. What's more blessed than that? If the beatitudes were written to America, I think they'd sound something like this.
Blessed are the sick. Blessed are the ones whose kids are off the rails. I don't know if you guys send around a prayer letter here, but it's gonna be pray for this person because they're sick. Pray for this one because they have cancer. Pray for this one.
Why? Because your money can't fix it. Why are you blessed if that happens? Because that's when you pray with your whole heart and you're gonna find God and you're gonna experience him. That was a side note, Ray.
We searched this book looking for the answers, and I didn't... I I never went to seminary. Doesn't mean you have to disregard everything. I have read this book, and I'll read some of it to you later. But we we read this book searching for answers, and I wanted Wes to know who Jesus is.
So I opened the book of John, which I guess you guys are gonna be studying soon. And as I got to the very... I'll ruin that book too. As I got to the first part of it, it says, in the beginning was the word. And, Wesley goes, hey.
I'm like, dude, don't interrupt me. I'm reading the word of God here. You know? Like, hey, can I go get some friends? Sure, Wes.
Get some guys. Three more of his gang guys sat down. The five of us read John one together. And I'm like, you guys want do that next week sometime? He said, no.
I'm like, okay. Tomorrow. I'm like, really? Wesley, you want me to come by tomorrow and read you John two? Yeah.
I do. I did, and there were eight people. Then the next day, we read John three, and there were more people. And then these guys went to work. There's...
Hi, Wesley. Take a good look at him right there because you're gonna see him in a bit. They went to work. They wanted to build the thing. They said, hey.
Let's get out of this sun. I wanna build a place. They went to work, and we kept reading, and they kept building. There's our church. Is that pretty awesome or what?
That was November... That was October 2022, and we've been reading the Bible together ever since, and more and more people are coming. So in a little over six hundred and fifty days, we've read it, the Bible together to this community for 655 of them. We've missed five days. We we preach verse by verse.
We want... By the end of this year, we will have read almost through the entire Bible. That's twelve years worth of Sundays. Every day is Sunday for me and Wes. You know, I I I teach that a church is a community of people centered around Jesus.
It's not a building. It's this community that's centered around him so we can build our lives around him and support one another and love one another, and Wes and I do teach nearly every day. More and more people are coming. Some walk five miles each way to come. Ladies that that that make tea and a and a small snack for everyone every day, they get there at 4AM so it can be ready by 09:30 so they can hear the sermon, the teaching.
And God is building this community. He is building this family, and even the little ones get to come. I... Gave me this vision for this church that it would be everyone, that there would be this little garden that we plant with grass and things, and the kids would be hanging out there praying while their relatives and their the the other... Their neighbors are are are learning the word of God, and we would be together as the people in this community, and that is exactly what he has done.
And kids are absolutely amazing. Look at this young child. By the way, now between a hundred and twenty and two hundred people come every day, seven days a week. Even today while I'm here, Wes is teaching. Sometimes they're, well, anyway, this...
Look at look look at this child. Do you see this? Our church is praying. By the way, we pray for the rich church because it's harder for the rich to get into the kingdom of God. So they pray for you.
But look at how this child prays. Stretched out, face up at heaven, just waiting for God to shine on her. And she is too young to know and she hasn't been in school yet or in church yet that has said, oh, you gotta get small and fold your hands and bow your head. Religion hasn't gotten a hold of this little one yet. That's the heart of a child reaching up to her father in heaven.
And it is the... Well... So sometimes when you read the Bible, there is an unhappy character in the crowd. So sometimes You
Speaker 3hear that?
Dave HatfieldBible, there is an unhappy character in the crowd. We have pigs that roll through our church. Read the Bible. Alright. Demon possessed guys, drunk people, pigs, it doesn't matter.
We keep going. The the... I love the new covenant by the way because I enjoy I enjoy bacon and things, but we just keep going. And it's the impact of the word of God moving in the lives of our people that is changing things. And and I didn't wanna name it a church, but I showed up as we finished the book of John and they put this sign up on on one of the posts, and it says, love light church.
And if you... When you get done with the book of John, you're gonna see a lot of love and light in there, and that's what they wanted. Not me. It's a Bible study. I just showed up and read...
Was reading the Bible with Wes, and a bunch of people showed up. But they wanted this. This is theirs. It's not mine. I didn't plant this church.
I just said yes to the next thing that God asked me to do. And now look at Wesley. Look at that smile. Love and light are shining brightly from him, and he's beginning to receive the love that he has craved his entire life. So in this photo, I've learned a new perspective.
Education is important. Education is a gift. You know, I'm gonna have 400 kids in school next year. I believe in it. But it's not the thing that's gonna change my community.
The only thing that I've ever seen change a life is the saving grace of Jesus Christ and people who become his disciples. That's the only thing I've ever seen make a difference, a real difference. I've seen it in Wesley. I hope my wife has seen it in me. We live in a difficult place.
We live in a very violent place in a city of a million people, my wife and her friend Kay are two of the most courageous people that I know. They are compelled and they're powered, empowered by their by their love. Every morning and every evening they go into the community to connect with those people who have been victims and survivors of domestic and sexual abuse. In the last three hundred and sixty five days, they've had 206 incidents. That's every thirty two hours.
They get called before anyone else. They get called before the police. They get called because they're trusted, and they get called because we love them, and they get called because they're seen as the people that Jesus had sent into that community to help them. It's two out every three days. Most of those things that are happening are just five or 600 yards away from our school.
God has given me an amazing wife. So you keep going. You keep going. This lady, when she got a Bible, she didn't think it was possible. She also got a mattress, and apparently she got a smile too.
And that's when the miracle happened. She accepted Christ as her savior and she was baptized. It was a great victory. God used the guy who got baptized at 46. That's me and the guy, Wesley, who was leading a gang who I baptized a couple years earlier.
And last November, we baptized 38 people. They never thought they were welcome in church because they were outsiders. They never thought they were welcome in church because they were poor. They never thought they were welcome in church because they were the criminal. They never saw themselves as the beautiful creation that they are, building God's image.
No one ever told them that they were God's masterpiece. No one ever told them they were God's God's prized possession. And and for this lady, the timing couldn't have been better because two months later, she was lit on fire and she passed. And look at this guy. Remember that picture of him building a church?
Oh, he's beautiful. Look at that smile. He's pretty intimidating. He's beautiful inside and out, and with that same charisma that can form a gang of 47 people and give them hope only through the collective power, their own collective power because they could enforce their will on everybody. It was now giving them hope through a life lived in the power of the Holy Spirit.
God has filled him with joy. Look at it. And he freely pours it out to his community. He has never told me no, not one time, no matter what I ask him. So by preaching the Bible so often and being in the word every day, God has begun to make some connections in my in my mind and in my heart, and there's a few things that I'd like to share with you before I go, some things that I've learned.
First of all, I... I'd like us to understand who we are. We, right now, the... Who we are. When I come to the churches in the West, Kim and I have been here for maybe five, six weeks and going from place to place, Seems to me that everybody's kinda angry.
Things just aren't the way they're supposed to be. Anybody feel that way? Like, inside? Right? Everything's wrong.
What's happened to America? Well, we're in such decline. Right? We're mad. We're angry.
And church, when that happens, we can become a little unloving and unwelcoming and all those kinds of things. And it's because we're so angry that things aren't right. Guess what? You're right. Things aren't right.
But I think we've forgotten what time in history this is. We're not in those old testament times prior to Jesus where where there were all these laws that we had to keep. We're we're we're in this time where he's come. He's set us free, but things aren't right. When does everything get set right?
When? When he returns. Church, we act like we want the we we want the world to be like he's already come back. We live in this time of darkness. We live in this time when it's not right.
So what does he want us to do? What does he want you and me to do? Have people ask me all the time where they say, hey, Dave. You were so lucky. You know the will of God.
I mean, you sold your house. You gave your stuff away. You know how many of these things. You move in this dumpsite. You do these crazy things.
You're so lucky. You know what God wants you to do. You know the will of God. And we think that the will of God are these grand things like sell all your stuff and move to Africa. Well, guess what?
Do you know what? You know it. You already know the will of God. You know the will of God in your life. It's right here.
He tells you what his will is. He says things like, well, who's your family? I mean, we all have the same father, so he doesn't say that, but he says, who's your... Who's my mother and who's my brothers? And what's the Bible tell us?
The ones who are my mother and my brothers, my family are the ones who do the will of God. Kinda interesting. Right? Because when you think about who who Jesus is talking about, the bloodline was everything. Right?
You were either in that Jewish bloodline or you weren't, so it's even more controversial than to say it now. But do we look at it that way? Do we look at the truth of the word that way and say, my family are the ones who do the will of God? If I'm a Christian, you are my brother and my sister. I think sometimes we look and we we look at it like there's an option in the truth of the word of God.
Like we say, yeah, I believe in you Jesus. I believe that you're my savior so I can get into heaven and everything's okay, but you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna kinda keep living this way. And the word tells us that, you know, if you wanna be my disciple, you have to follow me, not yourself. Those days are over. You don't get to make the choice.
You don't get to choose. Your life is not your own. You were bought for a price. If you're gonna follow me, guess what? You have to follow me.
How many of us, you know, say, yeah, I say yes to God. I've said yes to God. Let me ask you, are you willing to say yes to God before he asks you what it is that he wants you to do? Lord, I promise I'll do what you tell me to do, and I don't even need to know what it is. I wanna be so close to you.
I wanna feel your heartbeat. I wanna have ears so tuned to you that I hear your voice and I do it. I promise I'll do it. He's our Lord. He's our king.
He's in charge. He makes the rules and says, if you love me, you will obey my commands. That was right out of book of John that Wes and I started reading together. And, you know, how does Jesus synthesize all those laws that were going on at the time, like 613 of them? How did he...
What did he boil it all down to? How many? Two. Right? What are they?
Love God. Love your neighbor. Right? Can we all agree on that? I don't care.
First b, second b, third b, I don't know. Whatever. Right? With all these different denominations, I think we can come around and say, yep. Those two things, I agree that if you're a Christian, you're gonna love God and you're gonna love your neighbor.
Right? That's what we're supposed to do. It is impossible. I am a pretty loving guy. I'm not who I used to be, but I love me more still.
I look at the decisions I make and the way that I spend my money and the way that I do things, I love me more. I've been married for thirty four years. I still love myself more than I love my wife. I hate that about me. It's impossible.
You know, we read the word and... Oh, how many of us have two coats? Think about it. Alright. You know, I know it's cold here in Jackson, so how many of us have three coats?
I'll give you two. You can keep two. Right. Thank you for your honesty. Let's start there.
I... You know what? I look good in this coat. You know? And it's when it's between fifty and sixty, I wear this one and forty and fifty this one.
And if I'm going out on this one, I wear this one. I look good in this. I love this coat more than I love the guy that's freezing because I look good. That's... Yikes.
Right? Jesus is serious about this stuff. It's not a suggestion. If you have two coats is not a suggestion. That's what love looks like.
And over and over and over and over again, I'm in the pulpit. Oh my gosh. I forgot. Sorry about that. It's been seventeen years.
That's my first pulpit pound. I don't have a pulpit where we are. Ray, can I move this thing so I don't do it again? Over and over, he says, love your neighbor. Love your neighbor.
Love your neighbor. Like, Jesus, I heard you the third time, and he's like, no. Love your neighbor, Dave. Love your neighbor. And if I'm gonna follow him and I'm supposed to be like him, I'm supposed to love like him.
And and there he is. He he he stands up in the... He's he's just been baptized. He travels to his hometown. He stands up in the synagogue in Capernaum, you know, and and right after that, he goes he goes out, and there's a demon possessed guy.
Right? First place he goes, the first synagogue he goes into, there's a demon possessed guy. Stop his sermon. If you're a demon possessed person, I'm not saying you are, ma'am, but I'm looking at you. No.
If you're a demon possessed person, what is the best way I can love you? Honestly, cast them out. That's what love looks like. Because if you have a demon in you, all you are thinking about is when is this stupid demon that's keeping me up at night and driving me crazy? When is it gonna go?
And Jesus says, in my name, you go. Then he goes to Simon Simon's mother in law's house, and she's sick, and she's in bed. She has this high fever, but I don't know. Maybe she's dying. Whatever.
What's the best way you can love Simon and his mom? Heal her. How about a leper? What if I just cure your skin disease? But more than that, what if I come and touch you, brother?
No one's touched you in years because you're untouchable. You're dirty that way. That is what love looks like. And I don't know how many of you have watched The Chosen. Think about this sign...
The thing with the fishermen. Right? They're out there. They haven't caught anything. How do you love a fisherman that hasn't caught anything all night?
No money, no thing... No no fish to sell, no anything else. Right? You give him more fish than he's ever seen in his life. That's how you love the fisherman, you speak fish to him.
You know, we think it's a miracle sometimes. And maybe it is a miracle to give your coat, your third or fourth or fifth coat to someone. I don't know. But why is it so important? Why is it so important that we love our neighbor?
Is it because it's nice? Yeah. Maybe. But I mean, if you're gonna take all those laws and boil them down to two, don't you think it's super important that there's a reason for it that's really important? Why?
Why is it so important that we love our neighbors? Do you wanna know why? This is what he's told me. God wants us to love our neighbors because that way we we we we can love people into a relationship with Christ. That's how we get them there.
How many of you have argued on Facebook someone into the saving grace of Jesus Christ? Ouch. You condemn them for their behavior. You condemn them for their choices, and you expect people to go, yeah, man. Just bring on some more of that Jesus.
I wanna hang out with you. No. The way you do it is you love them. You show up like my wife does. Oh, man.
I can't even say it. You show up like my wife does when there's a five year old child that's been raped, and you don't know what to do, and you can't fix it. And you're with them and the and the mom, and you're just, I cannot fix this. I can't fix it. I can't fix it.
I can't make it go away. I can't make it. I can't undo it. I've got 15,000 people that are in that situation, and I can't fix it. But God told...
Has told me that because he lives in me, I can be with them. I can be with them in their pain and in their suffering and in their loneliness and in their grief. I can be with them. I can love them. Together we can become a family centered around Jesus and lift our our concerns up to him and let him go to work.
Let him do the rest. So that's the way we evangelize. We evangelize by loving our neighbors. And guess what? Excuse me.
Guess what? That's when the magic happens. Because when they accept Christ as their savior, that's when the Holy Spirit comes to live within them. He moves in. He begins his job of counseling them.
You don't have to do it. God lives in them, you guys, and God is gonna do his job. He promises it. He says it in his word. He says it in Philippians two thirteen.
For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him. God's doing it. God's working in them. He doesn't need Dave to nag at anybody. So through loving our neighbors, the the Holy Spirit moves into the person, and the Bible tells us that's why we were created, that we all were created, believer or not.
We were all created to be the temple of the Holy Spirit. It's just who lives inside that makes the difference. Who's in charge? Is it the spirit of the world? Or is it the spirit of God?
Has the Holy Spirit taken its rightful play, his rightful place in their lives? Church, that's when we stand a chance. If you wanna help somebody off of the way that their life is or what they believe or the way that God wants everything to be, love them into a relationship with Christ. Have the Holy Spirit move in them and then be patient. Do you wanna know God's will for your life?
Be patient. Be kind. Be good. Be faithful. There's there's so much of it in here of what his will is for our...
All of our lives. Have you ever have you ever read what what Jesus' brother had to say about anything? Well, man, I love the book of James. It is a lot of wisdom is here that's gained from the Sermon on the Mount and also the book of Proverbs. But how about, you know, let's let's open up James four eleven.
You wanna know the will for you, for God in your life? Don't speak evil against each other. You wanna know the will of God? Don't speak will of it. Don't speak evil against each other.
What if we just didn't do that anymore? What if people walked into church and they never heard anyone speak evil about anybody else? How about the next one? It says, you keep going. It says, don't criticize or judge anyone.
What if new people walked into church for the first time and they never heard any criticism? He's like, if... It goes on. If you criticize and judge each other, then you are criticizing and judging God's law. It's just the two because of loving your neighbor.
It's not loving to do those things. You're judging God's law, but your job... This is me. Dave, your job is to obey the law, not judge whether it applies to me. God alone gave the law, and he is the judge.
Why would I think I'm a better judge than God? So what right do you have to judge your neighbor? It says it right in here in the book of truth. It's hard though, right? And then if we flip back a couple of pages, James says, it's your tongue that lights fires.
How often do you wish you could swallow those words that already came out of your mouth when you're angry? The email. Delete. Delete. Delete.
Delete. Delete. When you do that, when you're ready to send the nasty email, just send it to yourself first, and then open it the next day and see how it goes. So does that mean if somebody's wrong and I really need to set them straight that I shouldn't do it? I mean, I'm a Christian.
Come on. It's my job. Yeah. Yeah. You should hold your tongue.
Just bite it. Yeah. I'm going to end on this because I love the gospels. I love the book of Luke. I mean, I get to there's so much Jesus in the gospels.
I love it. Luke six, he's talking about loving your neighbors. And he says, hey, he starts off. Luke six twenty seven, if you have ears to hear what do you think that means, if you have ears to hear? He's saying, if you are my people, if you're my people, if you're mine, if you're my followers, if you're my people, And it is truly a mystery of God to me why he, like, gives us the ability to listen or not.
He gives us a choice. We can listen to ourselves. We can listen to our culture. We can listen to whatever cable news channel it is that you listen to, whatever it is we're pouring in. I don't have a TV in Kenya, so it's awesome.
I don't have to make that choice. I don't even need self discipline in that area. I don't have a TV. But whatever it is that you're listening to, whatever it is that's pouring into you, that's what you develop ears to hear. But if you have ears to hear Jesus, he says love your enemies.
Seriously? He says, yeah, it's easy to love your friends. It's easy to want to love the ones that love you. Even the Gentiles do that. Even the sinners do that.
Even the ones without God do that. But love your enemies. And here's the hard part in this. You know, sometimes we think that it's like, oh, God is going to fill me so much with his spirit that I just love everyone. Rainbows, unicorns, bubbles, confetti, they just flow from me.
No one's my enemy. Oh, thanks for beating me. Thank you for stealing from me. Oh, thank you for torturing my children. That's not what it says.
Love is an action. It's an action. It says right here, verse 27. If you have ears to hear, say love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.
It's an action. Do good. And this cracks me up. I mean, and and I sit in Bible studies here in this in this country, and everybody goes, oh, what does that mean? What's the Greek for that?
It's like, oh, there's gotta be some deeper meaning. Do good to your enemies. You wanna know the will of God in your life? Do good to those who hate you. Do good to those who curse you.
Pray for those who hurt you. Do to to others what you would have do to them, and this is so... Either Jesus stutters like I do, or he has these points that he wants to really hit home because just a few verses later, he says, love your enemies. Verse 35, love your enemies. Do good to them.
Verse 27, verse 35, it's right there just in case you missed it. Same thing. And then he's... Then it's followed by something that it took me for a while to try and figure out. He's like, love your enemies.
Do good to them. Let... Lend to them without expecting to be repaid. First thing I thought about is, what are you talking about? My kids?
But why would that be there? Why would why would... Love your enemies. Blend to people, don't expect to to get paid back? And then it's like, oh, I can't have two masters.
I can't love both God and money. I gotta make a choice. Do I love my money more than I love the person I lend it to? Do I love being repaid and getting that money back in my pocket and the things it can do for me rather than loving the one that won't pay me back. Jesus was serious about this stuff.
He says, then your reward will be great. You'll be acting as children of the most high. And are you ready for this? It says, he is kind to those who are unthankful and wicked. God, God is kind to those who are unthankful and wicked.
You know those wicked people? You get to be kind to them. You want to know the will of God? You get to be kind to them. You get to be compassionate to them just as your father is compassionate.
We're supposed to have a family resemblance to God. If he's compassionate, we're to be compassionate. And then we're gonna love people into a place where they just have to be with Jesus. If we treat them that way, they will have never experienced that anywhere else except from those who say, is my father. Jesus is my lord.
Here's how it looks like. Here's what loves looks like. Here's what here's what this kingdom looks like, and they will have to have it. Life will mean nothing to them without it. So are you going to chase your culture?
Really? And then I think about how Jesus goes off to the cross, and, you know, I I... I've I've heard people teach it that, oh, Jesus just went off to the cross with such joy. Unless you read it, of course. He had had such anxiety that he was sweating blood.
He was saying, I don't want this. Dad, I don't want this. There has to be some other way to do this. There has to be some other way to bring salvation to people than to torture me to death. I don't want it.
But it's your will, not mine. So love your enemies. You know, while we were still sinners, Jesus died for us. So we all know where to find the will of God for our lives. It's right here.
You just have to look and see what it says. Romans 12 tells us not to copy the behavior of this world, but to let God transform us into a new creation by changing the way we think. Says then you'll know the will of God. You wanna know the will of God? Learn to think like God.
How are you gonna do that? You're gonna pour this in and let the Holy Spirit go to work on you, and you will change the way that you think, and you will be a new creation, and you're not gonna look like your culture. You're gonna look like somebody who loves our enemies. His will is for you to love your neighbor, whether they're blood relatives or not, whether they're friends or not, it's everyone. If they're a human being, they're created in the image of God, and they're built to be the holy...
The temple of the Holy Spirit, and so are you. Have you ever told yourself that? Have you ever told yourself I'm the temple of the Holy Spirit? Do you wake up in the morning and say, look in the mirror and go, hey, you're the temple of the Holy Spirit. Well, guess what?
You get a chance to do it right now. Let me hear you. I am the temple of the Holy Spirit. Are you ready? I'm the temple of the Holy Spirit.
Okay. Now I... Like like you're not afraid. Let's do it one more time. I am not the temple of the holy...
I am not. I am the temple of the Holy Spirit. Now what I want you to do is look to your left. Look in the eyes of the person on your left and tell them they're the temple of the Holy Spirit. And now the other person say it back, you are the temple of the Holy Spirit.
What if we told ourselves that? What if we told our neighbors that? You know, the enemy goes to work on our own shortcomings in our minds and reminds us of our worst moments. We don't look at ourselves that way, and we look at other people in their worst moments. What if we looked at them as you are the temple of the Holy Spirit?
You are built to hold God's spirit. You may not yet. You may need a new resident there, but that's why you're here. What if we looked at people that way? What if we looked at the wicked and unthankful ones and said, you are built to be the...
You are the temple of the Holy Spirit. What if I looked at it as my job to love them into a relationship with Christ? You wanna change your city? You wanna change your family? Love people in a relationship with Christ that the Holy Spirit can move within them, and then you can go to work, then you can disciple them because that God's spirit's gonna live inside of them and is gonna have a hunger and a thirst for the word, not the world.
It'll take time. You know, I I have people in our community, and I am probably the world's worst evangelist. I rarely do an altar call, but people run up on... Run up to me on the street and say, hey, daddy Dave. I wanna get saved.
I wanna get born again. And I'm like, wow. That's cool. And then I'm looking for Wes. I'm like, Wesley, this one wants to join the kingdom of God because it's not about me.
It's not about the white dude from the West. It's not my show. It's Wesley that's gonna be the shepherd in this community. He's only 26 years old. This kid's amazing.
I can't wait to see it. But he's the one that gets to lead them into the community of God. And so you guys, I I plead with you. Let's quit messing around. Let's quit playing church.
The wicked and the lost ones need it so badly for us to be the church that God wants us to be. Lord, thank you for this time together. Thank you for that advocate that you promised and that it actually happens when we believe upon you, the spirit of God moves in us. Thank you that you were willing to go through that death so that the one that would be sent would come to counsel and guide us and convict us and change us and to make us into your new creations. Lord, teach us how to love like you.
Help us bear each other's burdens. Help us reach out for the lonely. Help us look for those who are the outcasts. Let's look for those who are hurting because that is where you are. They may be in this building.
They may be just right around the corner. They may be on the other side of the world. Give us eyes to search for them. Let's search for the lost. Have us get rid of the coats in our closets, please.
Fill our hearts with your presence and thank you that we can gather together and worship you like this, that we can open your word like this, and thank you for the way that you love us. So teach us to love like you. And it's in Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen.
Thank you, Dave. Thank you.
Speaker 2So I kinda blew it in the service. During the offering, I forgot that we were doing two offerings. Usually, when we have somebody come in, I'll say, hey. We're doing two offerings in the service. It's not because you didn't give enough.
And I kinda said, we're gonna do the second one before Dave. I'll... Since I didn't say that in the first, I don't even have any ushers here. Oh, there they are. They're doing it.
So for the last... For... Jennifer, would you come forward? I saw $5.96, I surrender all, is up there. And during Dave's message, I mean, I know a lot of y'all, and I know that you are surrendered to do what it is that God has called you to do, and I lovingly appreciate that.
I know that that was a step for us way back when. And every day when we wake up, it's a step again to say, Lord, I surrender what I want. And I wanna know what it is that you want. So in the first service that kept coming to mind over and over and over quote that it's either yes, Lord, or it's no. Right?
If he's the Lord, it's gonna be yes, Lord. And if he's not, it's just gonna be a no. We're gonna stand and sing, and the ushers will be coming forward. This is gonna be... The secondary offering is gonna be for their ministry in Nakuru, Kenya and the surrounding areas.
And if you only made one and you already put it in the plate and you wanna designate that, you can talk to one of us afterwards, and we we change that around. But if you would, it's Jennifer.
Dave HatfieldThis is for you.
Speaker 2And y'all can keep your seats.
Dave HatfieldYou don't have
Speaker 2to stand.
Dave HatfieldThat's for you.
Speaker 2And now would you stand for just for a benediction. Lord, I pray that you would be impressing upon us whatever it is that you want for us to do. If it's wait, Lord, would we have the patience to wait? And if it's go, would you give us the strength to go? For those who speak, may they do so as those who speak the very oracles of God.
And for those who serve, may we all do it with the strength that you provide. In Jesus name, we ask that you would be showing your good news through us to a lost and dying world. Amen.
