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True encounter with Jesus settles your identity and leads to the highest title in God's kingdom - servant. When we truly see Christ, we stop elevating ourselves and start surrendering ourselves, discovering that humility is the evidence of revelation. Scriptures: James 1:1, John 7:5, 1 Corinthians 15:7, Isaiah 6:5, Luke 6:46, Romans 6:22, Matthew 23:11
We are a local Church in Orange County California who are passionate to witness lives being renewed in Christ, strengthened through discipleship, and to thrive in the fullness of living for Christ.
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I got a phone call from, from a friend in Nashville. This is, this is actually the guy who saved my life ten and a half years ago. And, and he had an emergency quintuple bypass. I'd only ever heard of a triple bypass. But he never did things in half measures. He always did them in extremes. And so he went into an emergency surgery and I was able to fly out there and sit with him in the hotel. I didn't even get to eat Nashville hot chicken. I went from the airport to the hotel and slept on that recliner. And throughout that whole time, read scripture. Over his life. I read pretty much every Psalm and had William Augusto playing 24 7, praying within that room, praying for him, praying for his family. And I'll tell you, he was 20 hours in the ICU, which there is generally a minimum of one day, and he was out in the recovery rooms. He was up and walking very quickly. I did send out a text to a few people, thank you for praying and believing alongside. But as I was there and reading and he had fears that were coming in with such a major surgery, every time I read the scriptures, he would fall asleep. He would have peace. And there was a distinct presence of God in a place with so much hardship. And as I was reading through all of these scriptures, the Psalms and Isaiah and Philippians and Ephesians, and I also was reading through the book of James, and I love the book of James. This is the Proverbs of the New Testament. And it puts a lot of practicality to our faith and to our belief. And it's a spirit filled book from one of the pillars of the early church. And I was reading something that I so quickly just seemed to, to skip over in just an instant as I was sitting there and my brother is laying next to me and reading these scriptures. I read James 1, verse 1, and for the first time it leapt out to me with something that I would call a life revelation and what I would call a hidden revelation for this church that is revealed. And I want to tell you, like, we do not expound upon the Scriptures to make them what they're not. We expound upon the scriptures to show them what they are and the depths that they actually have. I believe there is no depth to the word of God that we can reach, that when you begin to seek and search in the word of God, one word will speak to you that hasn't spoken to someone else yet, and God is giving you a revelation. You might not say, oh, I'm not a preacher, I'm saying you are a preacher. You might go, oh, Joe, no, you're the preacher of this church. I'm not the preacher of this church. I'm the equipper of this church. You guys are the preachers of the gospel. You sometimes use words when you're preaching the gospel, but a lot of the time, it's the way that you live. It's the way that you proclaim. God has called you to be light in dark places, salt in a world that is decaying. And this jumped out to me as something that provides a foundation for the rest of the book of James. He says this. He says, james, the author of the book, James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is who I'm writing to. I'm writing to the 12 tribes in the dispersion Greetings. That's our scripture for today. It's the setup of the whole book of James, like I said before, is known as the proverbs of the New Testament. It's good to actually understand a little bit of the premise of the book and who is writing this book. And I believe that as we go along this, and I'm telling you this up front because I want to lay out this revelation for you today to take home and apply to your own life. The highest title that you can receive in the kingdom of God is not apostle. It's not prophet. It's not evangelist. It's not all the titles that we seek and search. CEO is not the highest title that you can receive in this world at your workplace. The highest title that you can receive is that of servant. It is that of servant. And in a world that is very distinctly chasing title or influence. I know this is not everyone. Some of us are like, you know, I want to live in a hut in a mountain. And I've got five people in my community and I have to drive four hours to get to the grocery store. That's great. But I am saying that there is a acknowledgement within our hearts and that we would like to be recognized for particular things. That there is an influence that we would like to have within our world. And here James is writing, I lay it all to the side and say, I am but a servant of God and of Jesus Christ. I look forward to breaking this down for us. That we would chase the highest, highest title in the kingdom of God. That we would be known as servant of God and of Christ Jesus. Well done, good and faithful servant. Not teacher, not apostle, not CEO, not owner of your own business. Well done, good and faithful oh, man, I was there at the start and I remain at the end as a servant, offering up my sacrifices to God, offering up my life and laying it down for our Father in heaven. This is what jumped out to me. James, this will be our first point today. True encounter settles identity. True encounter will settle your identity in Christ. So, James, this is the craziest thing. We can't walk by this, but James was the half brother of Jesus. And we say half brother because he had a different father. Okay, but what you could say he was Jesus brother. Jesus had four half brothers. He had four brothers. There was James, there was Joseph, there was Simon, and then there was the name Judas. Not the Judas Iscariot in the Bible that we know. I think it's an unfortunate thing that his brother was called Judas. I'm sure that made for some interesting jokes thereafter. But he had four brothers. He also had sisters. We don't know their names, but they're mentioned within the Bible. So James, he grew up with him. He shared a home with him. He ate with him. They fooled around together. They probably wrestled together. He was his brother. He was in the family. He saw him as a little child. Jesus looked after him and looked at him. They probably fought like brothers. They probably made fun of each other at particular times. James was the brother of Christ. And yet initially, all through Jesus life and ministry, it says James did not believe in him. Actually, all the brothers did not believe that Jesus was who he said he was. John 7:5 says, for not even his brothers believed in him. I want you to think about that. That familiarity can blind you from who Jesus is. You could grow up in his house. I would say this. I grew up in a Christian home and I thank God for the tree of faith that I was able to live under and grow under in the shadow of my father's faith. But there is a day when you step out in maturity and your faith is in the full, full blown sun. And there is a moment of that maturing that you actually understand. Is the faith that I hold my own or is it a tradition in my life? Is this familiarity? You know, I grew up in churches or there's so many churches within Orange county that, you know, this is just the way it is. And it's so familiar to me that I've lost reverence and I've lost honor and I've lost looking at Christ as deity, as the living God. Like, I don't want to mess around with this stuff. We serve. We serve a living God who is, though we count forward he is counted backwards. Right now there is a clock that is going down that he say, I am going to return on this earth. And he's not coming back with the lamb around his shoulders. He's coming back on a white horse. He's not coming in, in a donkey no more. He's coming with a coat dipped in blood. And it's our job as the church to be prepared and to begin preparing Orange county for this return. Not living as though it's some far off. Oh, yeah, that's gonna happen. That's gonna happen at this point or it's never gonna happen. No, no, no. We live with an anticipation within our hearts. And so if we just live our life well, we just live in the house and we begin to actually lose an honoring for who Jesus has called you to be and who Jesus actually is. Proximity did not produce faith in James life. Think about that. The proximity and the time around him. It's how you treat the time when you were with Jesus. It's how you invest your life and invest your faith when you're in the bride of Christ. A lot of people might say, I haven't gotten anything out of churches. And my response is, is because you have not yet invested fully into the midst of it. A lot of people think community is, what can I get out of this community, this place? I'm telling you, the first rule of community, you want to take it back to Acts 2, is what can you bring to the community? That's the first rule of it. Think about it. Take it in any other context. So it's not just about turning up and being like, okay, you know, what's all this about? And, you know, I'm just in the proxy, I'm just going to turn up and I'm just going to flop my hands around and. And I'm looking for an emotional experience within church. But Jesus is saying, I need you to step forward and have an encounter with the risen king. Because one encounter can change everything. Because that's exactly what happened to James. James, floundering about in his faith, didn't recognize, didn't realize, didn't confess yet. He was highly involved with the church, the temple at that time. In 1 Corinthians 15:17, it talks about Jesus coming back and appearing to the 500. And then it says he appeared to James and then to the apostles. And it was at that moment, bam, it turned from Jesus my brother, to Jesus my Savior, my Lord, who I will serve and give my life to. Encountering Christ will change everything in your World. I'll tell you this. The key of your discipleship is going to be having people in your world who will bring truth to your world, right? The word of God is good for teaching, for encouraging, and for rebuking and correction. We kind of leave that off. Just encourage me. Just teach me, you know, just. Just massage me. But sometimes we need to visit the chiropractor, a couple little cracks, you know, and so, so, so we can't just part and parcel particular things. The side of you receiving discipleship, well, for the rest of your life is that you make a commitment to encounter Jesus daily. That you say, I set aside this portion of my day to not just pray. And these are your keys for getting in. Not just my little devotional and notebook. No, I'm coming in to encounter the presence of the living God because, man, he's so desperate to meet with you. He so wants to meet with you. If we would just open the door. It says, he knocks at the door. And he who opens, I will come in and eat with him. Man, what a meal. Who doesn't want to eat with Jesus? Sometimes I've had people come over to the house, and I've got the music blasting so loud that I can't hear them knocking. Is there too much noise in your life? That Jesus is sitting here and he's a gentleman, and we're so distracted by everything else that's going on by running after whatever it is in life that we cannot hear the gentle knock at the door. He so wants to meet with you. And I'm telling you this, you are desperate, whether you realize it or not, to encounter his glory. It is the thirst of your soul, it is the hunger of your heavenly stomach that you would eat on food that satisfies, that you would drink from wells that fill up. One encounter will settle your identity. Your continued encounters will magnify that identity. James, in an instant, went from skeptic to surrendered brother, to bondservant, familiar to fully submitted to God. Reverend, like awesome God, this fearsome God that we serve. He went from brother who I used to give Kropeks and whatever you call them, burns, to, I don't know, brothers wrestling and stuff. Went from that to, you are the living God incarnate that came down on earth, the prophesied Messiah, to carry the cross for our sins here today. And now you live in heaven. And when James writes that, he says this a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. I find that language here today in today's culture. I say Orange county is a new age Mecca. There's a lot of ethereal language representing God. I hear it said a lot. I had some experiences this last week. God and the God within you and the God around you and mother nature God or the God in the crystal and the gods of this and the gods of that. The thing that separates us is Jesus Christ. Okay, this is. This is really important because he was a pillar in the church and now he was placing himself as the pillar of the new church in the new covenant. So this is controversial, what he's saying because there is still the temple sect that was happening and a division that was going on. And so for him to say, you know what? I serve God, but also I serve Jesus Christ at 2:1:1. And now the Spirit has come, the Trinity at work within this world. How potent are you in your language about revealing Christ in your life? He was so proud of you that he carried a cross. He so loved you that he carried a cross. I want to stimulate within us this passion to understand when I encounter Christ, it's not just for me. When I encounter light, it's not just for me. When I encounter freedom, it's not just for me. Me being set on the path and strengthened to be set free from drugs and alcohol, that wasn't just for me. That was for Christine. It was for my daughter, Charlie. It was for this church here today that God would set in motion a new purpose in your life. So you are not just a servant of some ethereal God. The language that is all around. We serve Jesus Christ, my friend. The one that they use as a swear word. No one says, oh, Buddha, no one, Right? No, Muhammad, no, you won't find that anywhere. But they will use that name because I'm telling you, I know you probably heard it before, but there is power in the name of Jesus and they want to drag it through the dirt as much as they can. They want to try and lessen. Read any of the religions you can look through. They all point to Christ as a very wise man with divine prophetic nature. They're not recognizing him as God. We recognize Jesus Christ as God. Christ is what sets us apart. And a real encounter with him will settle your identity infinitum. It's done. It's settled. Point number two. Humility is the evidence of revelation. If anyone could swing their clout, anyone could swing their clout, it'd be the brother of Jesus, right? Like, you know, when people use, they drop a name. Oh, what'd you do on the weekend? Oh, man, I was Just. I was just hanging out with Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson, my two favorites. You know, we use someone else's name so that we might be assigned something of the same nature, that you might trust me even more. I'm friends with this person and that person. Name drop him. We live in. It's California. Come on. We've all dropped a name and we've all heard the drop names before, right? Okay, so here James had the clout to do whatever he could have. He could have said, I'm the brother of Jesus, man. Jesus is my brother. But he doesn't. He says, servant of Jesus Christ. Because the revelation of who Jesus is killed his ego. It nailed any pride that was left within him to the cross of his risen brother. Look around and I see so many unattached accounts. And I'm talking to you as. As your pastor here today. You will see prophet so and so online, evangelist so and so online. We love the titles. Maybe it's something to do within the world, but they start claiming these particular things over their life. If anyone had the right as an apostle of the church, James as the brother of Christ, and yet he still chose to say servant of Christ. Jesus, Jude. Judas also wrote a book in the Bible. It's called Jude. He opens it up with the same lines. He says, jude, brother of James and servant of Christ. The highest title that you can gain in the kingdom of God is that you are a servant. And when you truly see Jesus, we stop elevating ourselves and we start surrendering ourselves. You start laying it down in Isaiah 6, 5 Isaiah, it says, one of the famous scriptures, you know. And there I saw him sitting on the throne, and the train of his robe fills the temple with glory. And he goes on and he says, this is what I experienced when I looked at this holy God. He said, woe is me, for I am lost. For I am a man of unclean lips. And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Thank goodness for Jesus and his sacrifice that we stand in that same place that Isaiah is. And God looks down and he says, I see my son. He doesn't say, he sees me. He says, I see the Son. In Isaiah. He's not saying, look at my calling or look at my condition. He's saying, man, I need to humble myself before such a holy God that I would serve his purposes and not my own. An issue in our day is that we have people who have learned the language of Christianity, but not the Posture of Christianity. We've got all the Christianese down and we know what to say and how to say it. We know how to slip out of it and slip into things and open this door and shut this door and stay hidden behind our Christian language. Well, never having the posture within our lives, the posture that stands up as man, I am a servant of God. I am confident in the authority he has given me to serve the purposes that God has given me. The deeper our revelation of Christ is, the lower our posture will be. You'll want less materialistic things, you want less titles, you want less influence, you want less platforms. And you will seek after real things, the riches of his glory. And when you get this, this humility, this revelation that lives within your world, real humility, you don't need any more validation. It will not demand recognition and it will not chase possession. Doesn't that sound less exhausting than the lives we live now? It's security. It's true security in Christ, that when we lay our lives down, and this is the whole message of the kingdom, it's the upside down of the world. You want a life, the kingdom says lay it down. You want more resources in your world than give. You want more peace in your world than be a bringer of peace into different circumstances. When you find this humility, it's not thinking of yourself less. It's not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less. You might think, that's Rick Warren. It's actually C.S. lewis. I know he made her famous. James is saying, I'm not here to build my name because I belong to his. And I tell you, when you seek first the kingdom of God as a servant, all the other things will be added. All the other things will be added. Point number three as we close, you belong to him, James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. To the twelve tribes in the dispersion, the word used for servant is not casual. Here it's doulos, which is where we get the word doula. Does anyone know what a doula is? All the parents do. Yeah. Doesn't mean. And in these times, it did not mean casual. Part time, didn't mean helper, it means bond. Servant. Actually, better translated, it's the word slave. I am a slave to God and to Jesus Christ. Not comfortable language, right? Not comfortable language. In our world, we want to be free. We want to make our own choices. I'm my own man, my own woman, do life my way. But here, the call and you see this word all through Go and look. Every time you see the word servant, look it up. It'll say Doulos. Doulos had no personal agenda, no independent authority, no separate will. Everything belonged to the Master. And that confronts a lot of our modern Christianity. Because a lot of the times we want a savior without a Lord, we want forgiveness without true surrender, and we want blessing in our lives without true obedience. Find a lot of the time we want Jesus the Redeemer, but not Jesus the Rabbi. And I'm telling you, when you receive Jesus as your Lord and not just Savior, your world will be turned upside down in the best way possible. Because right now your world might be the wrong way up, might be losing faith, and you're grinding the gears on your own, doing it on your own terms. I'm telling you, when you surrender to God and give him control, he leads you to green pastures. James is saying this. You don't just believe in Jesus, you belong to him, his servant. I want to serve purposes higher than my own in this life. I want to serve a purpose that is not my own agenda, my own made up. And I've been slapped and hit around by the truth so many occasions that I have to remind myself, humility. Humility is what comes from the revelation. I lay down, any title I lay down, any of my background, I lay down. And today I am a servant for the purposes of my God. Luke 6:46, it says, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I tell you? Why? It's a cry of his heart. It's not control over your life. My daughter, so desperately, where we used to live in la, she's like, I want to run out of the gates. There's a little gate to the side of our apartment complex led out onto a real busy street. She would get so angry with me because I wouldn't open the gate. So angry. And I can see myself like that with God sometimes. Why haven't you just opened it? Why haven't you just done, I want to do it my way. And he's saying, man, I put the gate there to protect you so you would not get beat up by a car, so you would not get beat up by bad decisions, by life. And the message that we receive is not always what we want, but I'm telling you, it is good for you. He's saying this because there's a broken heart that says, make I got the perfect way for you. I got the perfect truth for you. If you would just put it into play that we would stop talking or hearing it and actually do it. You cannot claim him as Savior and yet resist him as Lord. He's not some addition to our lives, but we hand over our whole lives to Him. And when we do that, that's where we get the scripture. Who the sun sets free is free indeed. Any agreements you've made within your life, any deeds that you feel like the enemy has tried to purchase in your life, indeed legally and with authority, you are free in Christ. Romans 6:22, and we can all stand here. But now you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God. I'm telling you, you didn't stop being a servant. You will always be serving something or somebody in your life. Bob Dylan wrote it awesomely, probably showing my age here. But you gotta serve somebody. You got, you. You will be serving somebody. And if you haven't chosen, if you haven't thoughtfully and intentionally said, this is who I am serving, then you're gonna be serving a little G somewhere. Be serving a little God. Success or money, approval of man, Comfort, self preservation. James is saying, I found the only master who is worth surrendering to. That's Jesus. Jesus was the greatest servant of all. And we as the church, as his people, his citizens, as his sons and daughters, as his servants, have to throw away all the titles for towels in our life. Jesus in the Last Supper, his time with his disciples. Savior, Messiah, the living God got down on his knees and put a towel over his hands and washed the disciples feet. They fought him, said, oh, you can't do that, you kid, you can't do that. He is preaching the most important message for his disciples is that we would humbly walk as servants of God, courageous in all that we do, throwing away any crown that this life gives and saying, like the elders in heaven. In Revelation they say, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. The kingdom is not built by those who want to be seen, but those who are willing to serve unseen. Matthew 23:11 says this. The greatest among you shall be your servant. You rise in the kingdom of God by kneeling and by surrendering. In this whole revelation, like I said from the beginning, this whole two lions, James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the dispersion. And then he goes on, on, and he writes one of my favorite books in the Bible. The revelation that he continues to expound upon in this book is founded upon that first line. And I'm telling you, when you understand it and you have that revelation and it comes to life in your life. Not just a knowledge of the mind, but an action of the hand, a stepping of the steps, a pulling up of the courageous faith within us to be lights in the world that he has placed us in. Oh man, I'm telling you, revelation will flow to you and it will flow through you. He goes on and he says one of the most famous scriptures. Count it all joy, my brothers. When you face trials of various kinds of oh, what a revelation to have that even as a servant you will face trials. When you face trials of various kinds. And it flows from the humble proclamation that he is a servant of Jesus Christ. God will elevate, he will reinforce, he will trust those who say, I am a servant of God. Because servants don't debate commands. The pre decided to stay, to act and to be faithful in such. It's not a part time thing, not a conditional surrender on our half, not in our own convenience, but fully surrendered in every area of our life. The reality is this, your life will always be shaped by what you belong to. So I want you to ask yourself, what now? What right now do I belong to? Who is it that I belong to? Are you living for yourself or are you living from surrender? I'm telling you and finding the answer. In encountering Christ, throwing away all of our own preferences, and in saying I will be a servant of the living God, he will reveal an identity that will not shift. He will give you a strength to stand in all seasons and he will reveal to you revelation after revelation. The ending scripture here is, he wrote this to the 12 tribes in the dispersion. And I want to remind you of this. In those days when the church was persecuted, they spread, right? They spread all around. All around different countries, to different regions. So he's writing this letter to all of those who have been dispersed from where they are supposed to be. And I want to let you know that the Word of God is not just reserved for those who are in the right place at the right time. You may feel far from God right now. You, you may feel dispersed from God right now. The Word of God has been written and delivered to you. You might feel far from his call for your life. You might feel far from living closely to Him. You might feel like, I have got this distance that is between us. I'm telling you that the Word of God is written and sent to you here today. Today. He loves you. It says that from a long way off. The Father and the Prodigal Son says, from a long way off he saw his son running back into his house. And he stood there with open arms. You were not cut off. You have not exempted yourself from the truth. His word is actively in pursuit of you. His spirit is in active pursuit of you. And his truth is available for you here today. Thank you.