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Mariners Church Weekend Messages
February 23 - The Cross and the Flag: How Much Should We Love Our Country? - Eric Geiger
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Welcome to Mariners Church weekend Message Podcast. Inspiring people to follow Jesus and fearlessly change the world. Discover your purpose and get connected by visiting MarinersChurch.org or click the link in the show notes.
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If we haven't met, my name is Eric. I'm the senior pastor here. I'm so glad you're with us today. You may not know, but Mariners Church has nine different locations, nine different congregations. And Alex is a part of our congregation that meets at Orange County Rescue Mission, who is tapped in right now via the message and really am so thankful for Alex's story. I love him passing out verses. Come on, man. If that didn't get you excited, you need to wake up. That was pretty awesome. Love it. And then you may not realize that we also. Not only do we have those nine different locations, but we have Mariners hosted here, where we take church into different environments. Homeless shelters, senior living facilities, youth military academies, mental health facilities. And Alex, who is a part of our congregation at Orange County Rescue Mission, volunteers at a Mariners hosted here at a senior living facility. We have about 100 volunteers in our church who do that, who take church to different environments. And all of that really happens because of collectively of our generosity. So you are a part of this through your giving. And I'm so thankful for you being a generous church. And we want to go to more Mariners hosted here. But for that to happen, it's going to take honestly more generosity for us to take the gospel to even more places. And if you've made Mariners your church home, I want to encourage you to give. It's the way that my wife and I give in a recurring way because the scripture teaches us to give in that way, to constantly fight greed in our lives, to continually be generous. If you wanna do so, you can go to our website or the Mariners app. You select Recurring Giving, you choose the frequency your congregation and you click next to confirm. All right, Next weekend, we launched a new teaching series called the Stories Jesus Told. We're gonna look at the parables of Jesus between now and Easter. I'm so excited about this teaching series. And you have friends and family members, neighbors who are intrigued by the stories Jesus told, and they wanna know what they mean. And we're gonna look at the words that Jesus spoke, these incredible messages, these parables, these stories, and we're gonna see how they really relate to our lives. Today, on your way out, you can pick up some invite cards to invite friends to join you. I encourage you to do so. That begins next weekend, but this weekend, today I'm gonna Finish up our teaching series on the table, where we've been putting some big questions that people have on the table and not shying away from them. And this one is one that I have felt personally every single year, and I feel it as a pastor going into July 4th weekend. You may not realize this, but pastors sometimes get online and talk smack about each other. And what happens going into July 4th weekend is, how patriotic should your church services be on July 4th? And so some people will say that your church should have, like, reenactments of historical events. There should be, like, lots of American flags and songs to your country. And then others are like, no, we'll have American flags, but not as many. And others will say, no, we don't change anything. And so there's all kinds of debates of what a church should do and what we do and what we've done for several years is three times a year, and one of those is July 4th. We do have American flags on our patio and in our worship center at all of our congregations. And there's some who would think our services on that weekend are not patriotic enough. And then there's others who would wrestle that we would have an American flag at all and in our worship services or on the patio. And in fact, a theologian and scholar who impacted my life greatly, Francis Schaeffer, he asked pastors to consider, what message are you sending if you have an American flag next to a Christian flag? Now, some of you may not even know that there's such a thing as a Christian flag. If you're like me with the public school, I didn't know there was a Christian flag, but there is. And Christian school kids typically do a pledge of allegiance every day to the America flag into the Christian flag. And if you've never seen what a Christian flag looks like, here's a picture of the Christian flag right there. I'm totally joking. I'm joking. It's not actually the Christian flag. Here's the Christian flag. That's actually the Christian flag. And so Francis Schaefer was asking, that one went good. It went good. He was asking, what message are you sending if you have both? Now, we don't have a Christian flag, but we do have a cross. And so he would say, the cross and the flag, if you have those together, what are you sending? Here's what he wrote. Does having the two flags in your church mean that Christianity and the American establishment are equal? If it does, you are really in trouble. These are not two equal loyalties. So this has caused a Lot of debate. Now. Francis Schaeffer's no longer with us. He's passed on to be with the lord. And every July 4th, I see it. And Lifeway Research did a bunch of research on this, because people fight about this all the time. And you'll see the. You'll see the messiness in the data. You'll see the dilemma in the data. Notice this. 60% of pastors believe they should add some special elements during these worship services. So 60% of pastors are like, we should do something on those days. Pray for our country, pray for leaders. We should do something on those days. Yet more than 50% of the pastors believe that some of the people they shepherd love their country more than they love God. And so those pastors are saying, I feel like we should do something, but I'm worried that our people already, or some of our people already love their country more than they love God. And I'm supposed to help them love God more. So what do we. What do we do? This is all part of a much bigger question, which is how much should a Christian love his or her country? Or should a Christian love his or her country? How much should one do? So I'm gonna bring you to one passage in Scripture which I think's gonna give you clarity on this question. Can I love my country? Should I love my country as a Christian? How much should I love my country as a Christian? But I wanna own my own personal experience before I bring us to the text, because all of us, we bring our own history into our reading of the scripture. And I just wanna share with you my life experience, the journey I've been through on this question. I. So I grew up in a very patriotic home. My parents loved Jesus first and foremost, but they would talk about their love for our country and how grateful they were for our country. Every national holiday, my dad would put flag out in front of our home. And a lot of our patriotism as a family really came from my grandfather. My grandfather, his family immigrated to the US From Germany. He was raised in a home that only spoke German in the house in Illinois. He then learned English by going to the school. And then when he graduated high school, he became an entrepreneur. He started a farm. And the farm grew and grew and grew to thousands of acres. My grandfather started a farm in Illinois that became one of the largest farms in central Illinois. So large, in fact, that when President Ronald Reagan in 1982 wanted to go speak to the farming community in the Midwest, he chose my grandfather's farm to deliver A speech from. Here's my uncle taking President Ronald Reagan around in one of the. The tractors. It was like the pinnacle of my grandfather's. I mean, he was like, so excited that the President came to speak at our family farm. You can find it on YouTube. My mom's maiden name is Weary. So it's the Weary's family farm. And President Ronald Reagan comes to speak there. And my grandfather would speak about how in America this could happen, how it couldn't come where his family immigrated from, how he loves America, from the freedom and the opportunities that he enjoys. Because he started from the bottom, now he's here. That's what he said. I was able to. Some of you caught that. I was able to just make so much of my life because of the freedoms that we enjoy here in the US So that's the family I grew up in. I also then had a lot of steady diet of Messages in the 80s. A kid in the 80s. So President Ronald Reagan at my family farm in 1982, 1984, there starts being all these movies that are patriotic. It's during the Cold War, there's fear that Russia's gonna attack America. And some movies were stirring our patriotism. 1982, the President is at my farm. 1984, red dawn comes out. Russia shows up at a high school, starts shooting at these kids. They're the Wolverines, that's their school mascot. They go into the woods and they save America, these high school kids do. And so my friends and I, we would play in the woods and call ourselves Wolverines. I mean, this was 1984. The very next year, Rocky IV comes out. 1985, Rocky 4 is released, another movie fighting against the Russians. Ivan Drago, I must break you. Rocky goes over to Russia, trains in the snow, while Ivan Drago's all juiced up on roids, training on these machines. And on Christmas Eve in Moscow, Rocky takes him down in front of everybody and the whole world unites. Rocky saves the world in 1985. And then the very next year is 1986, Top Gun comes out, another patriotic movie. And the Russians are in this one, too. Goose and Maverick, they turn over their airplane. They wave, but with one finger, and they take a picture, and they do the famous beach volleyball scene. And then the end of the movie, Iceman and Maverick take out the Russians, and Iceman says, you can be my wingman anytime. And the movie ends and we win. That was what happened, right? That is all of the patriotic movies that I saw as a child. And then the next movie, this Would have been even better. If only in Karate Kid. If only Danielson had drop kicked a Russian, it would have been the best. But it was just some squirrely white kid on the side sweep the leg and he drop kicked somebody. So those are the movies that I grew up that just stirred this patriotism in me. And still today, when the Olympics come on, man, I'm watching the medal count because I want to win. I want America to win. I still tear up anytime I watch those military homecoming videos tear up. Veterans Day. When we ask those of you who served our country to stand. It's not this for me. I mean, I'm in. I'm so thankful. So thankful. So that's how I began my journey. Then I became a follower of Jesus and I became a youth pastor. This is about 10 years later. I. I'm in my mid 20s, 24 years old is when I remember this first happening. I was a youth pastor at a church, and this was a very disorienting experience for me. The church I grew up in, in New Orleans, when we would sing songs, they were always songs about Jesus. But I'm at a worship service that became, I guess you would have to call it a patriotic worship service. And in the patriotic worship service, there was a mixing together of every everything. There's songs about Jesus and then there's songs about our country, but they're all mixed together. There's people who are getting up and reading passages in scripture. And I've been a Christian for several years now, and I've been studying the Bible. And I know that the passage the person's reading is not about America, but it's being read as if it's about America. And maybe this is me in my young 20s, mid-20s, and I'm just judgmental and immature. But it felt to me like many of the people in the room, they loved their country more than they loved Jesus. At least it felt that way, because when the songs were about Jesus, people were kind of like this. But when the song was about America, hands went up. People were screaming and singing at the top of their lungs. And here I was, 24 years old, and it just. I just felt, this is not what it's supposed to be. I love my country, but Jesus should be the hero of this gathering. It was so disorienting for me, and I'm embarrassed to tell you this now. Hopefully you'll hang with me to the end. I turned down my patriotism because it was so troubling. And I wasn't the only one. I Had friends of mine, some who really struggled with church for the rest of their lives because of those kinds of experiences where they're like, this is all mixed together. And I can't tell who we're really worshiping. I can't tell if it's Jesus or if Jesus is just a tool to help us have this country that we want. Like, who are we really after? Who really do we want to have our hearts? And so I turned down my patriotism. Several years later, I moved to Miami to pastor a church in Miami. My wife and I, okay, both of our daughters were born in Miami. And in our church, similar to here, it was beautiful to worship with people from different walks of life, different ethnicities, different backgrounds. We did a survey one time in our church, and we had people, people from 76 different countries who worshiped in our church. So when that is your context, Jesus has to be the center of the worship because he's the only one who can pull us all together. He's the only one who can unite us. And so I loved it so much. But then I started meeting people in our church who immigrated to the US and they talked of the US the same way my grandfather talked of the US People who came from Cuba, who came from other parts of Latin America, who spoke of the U.S. they came through the Freedom Tower in downtown Miami, known as the Ellis island of the South. And their families came and they talked of America like, this is the greatest place, the land of opportunity. Now, no matter where you land politically, if you lived in Miami, you would recognize this individual as a symbol of someone who could come. Whose family could come to America, and the whole family could be changed. Marco Rubio, who's now the Secretary of State for our country, was in our church. I pastored him. He was in a small group, he and his wife Jeanette, with my wife and I. And I taught a theology class. He came every single session, took notes, pressed in, full of wisdom, follows Jesus. He's a great man. And Marco was a symbol to lots of people in Miami of the story of those who immigrated to Miami, which was Marco, when he would speak, would say this. My father moved here with nothing, and he worked in the back of the hotel ballroom as a bartender. But one generation later, I'm in front of the hotel room speaking, and only in America can this happen. It was just like my grandfather. He was speaking like my grandfather spoke. And so now I was. I had both. I was able to hold both, that Jesus is the one who must be the ultimate object of my Affection and worship. And I can be grateful for my country at the same time, that I can hold both at the same time. And this passage of Scripture helps me get to the answer of the question, how much should a Christian love his or her country? This is Acts 17:26. The apostle Paul is teaching a sermon to a group of people in Athens. And I'm only going to give us one of the sentences, one of the verses in his sermon, but it really helps answer. This is God's word. Acts 17, verse 26. From one man. He God has made every nationality to live over the whole earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live. This is God's word. Now this is a weighty sentence. I want to walk you through it. Please press in. This will help you understand. Notice he says from one man. He's clearly referring back to the creation account in Genesis 1 and 2, that from Adam and then his wife Eve, all of us come. He was speaking to Greeks who viewed themselves as better than other people. And so he's really pushing against that belief by saying, all of us are connected. All of us came from one man, and all of us have the image of God placed on us. We've had horrific events happen throughout history where one group of people view another group of people as less than or as subhuman. And the Apostle Paul and other scriptures constantly say, no, this is wrong. All people have dignity and value on them. All people are created by God, have God's image placed on them. And we're all connected because we really come from this one family of Adam and Eve. This is the beginning of the verse. You've heard people say there's one human race. And that's true. According to this, from one man comes the human race. Sometimes, though, when people say there's one human race, they're also trying to minimize that there's different ethnicities, which the scripture doesn't do. You have to read the next part of the verse. That both can be true at the same time. That there is one human race, and yet God values the different ethnicities. Notice the next phrase. From one man. He has made every nationality that God actually loves. The beauty of different ethnicities. That God, in his creative design, created all of the different ethnic groups. In fact, he loves the different ethnicities so much that when you get to the end of the scripture in the book of Revelation, what you find is that every tribe, tongue and nation, there's people from every tribe, tongue and nation that are gathered before that. Even in heaven, there's no longer marriage. There's no marriage in heaven. Yet there's still people from every tribe, tongue and nation. That God doesn't eliminate the ethnicities that he loves, that there's different nationalities and he loves to receive worship from people from every single people group. That God is building for Himself a new people from every single people group. Now notice the next race. These different ethnicities, nationalities live over the whole earth. Now this also brings us back to the Book of Genesis. That God gives humanity the responsibility to subdue the Earth, to rule the earth. This is an echo here, that God then places different ethnicities, different nationalities in different parts of the world to subdue the Earth, to rule over the earth. One day when Christ returns, we will reign with him and we will subdue a perfect new earth with Him. Then notice the last phrase. He's chosen their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live. So God has set up boundaries of different nationalities. There's different nations. God's the one who set up the boundaries. And he chose when people would live, where they would live and the boundaries in which they would live. Which only gives great worth to every part of your life and every part of your day. Because that reminds you that the job you have, the cubicle you sit in, the office you sit in, was given to you by God. He chose where you would work and when you would work there. He chose the home you would live in and when you would live there, the condo you would live in. And he chose the nation you would live in and when you would live there. We also know, according to history and the text, that the boundaries of the nations of this world, they change. Babylonian kingdom small, grows large and is gone. Persian kingdom, small boundaries expand and is gone. Roman kingdom, small boundaries expand and is gone. And all of that points us to the glorious reality that we're a part of a kingdom whose boundaries will never contract. Because the kingdom of Jesus will only expand and will one day rule and reign over everything. The kingdom we're all, to me, a part of will never go away. Will never go away. But what about now? Can I love my country now? How much should a Christian love his or her country? You should love your country. Here's how I will sum up this passage. You should love here and long, love here and long for there. For a Christian to say, I love my country, I'm thankful for my country is really a beautiful statement of the Christian saying, I am thankful for God's sovereignty and wisdom to place me where he has placed me within the boundaries that he has placed me, which was wrong of me to overreact of a patriotic worship service that I don't think was pleasing to God. But. But it was wrong for me to overreact and turn down my patriotism because I should love where God has placed me. And that's not only true for those of us who live in America. When I travel around the world to visit our global partners, I see all of our global family speaking of how much they love their country. In India, in Haiti, in Uganda, in Egypt, places I've been over the last several years. I love that our global family members speak of their country that way. They will talk of their country like, this is the greatest place. I'm so thankful God has me here. The people are beautiful. The opportunities are beautiful. Why do I love that they speak of their country that way? I love it. Makes me want to help resource them more. Makes me want to come alongside them more. Why? Because you can't reach a people if you don't love a people. They couldn't reach their local countries if they didn't love their local countries. And you will not influence your world if you don't love where God's placed you. You won't influence your work if you don't love the people you work alongside. You will not influence your city if you don't love your city. And. And Christians will not make a difference in their country if they don't love their country. We should love where God has placed us. When you read through the Scripture, you see that Jesus loved Jerusalem even though the people there would kill him. There's the scripture where Jesus is weeping over the city of Jerusalem. The Apostle Paul, he loved his own countrymen so much that he wrote this in Romans, chapter nine. And it is staggering. It is a shocking verse. I want you to see how much the Apostle Paul loved his own people. He wrote this. I speak the truth in Christ. I'm not lying. My conscience testifies to me through the Holy Spirit. I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart, for I could wish. Notice he doesn't say, I do wish. He says, I could wish because he's making a metaphorical statement to pack a punch. He doesn't actually want to be cut off from Christ, but he's trying to illustrate how much he longs for his own countrymen to know Christ. He says, I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the benefit of my brothers and sisters, my own flesh and blood. He says, I love my people so much. That if I could, I could wish that I would go to hell so that they would not have to. That's how much he loved where he lived. He loved his own people. Jesus loved you so much that Jesus did actually experience hell on the cross for you. He experienced the separation from the Father, yelling out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And he experienced the anger poured out towards sin in his own flesh as he was crucified because all of our sin was placed on him. And Jesus absorbed in his flesh all of our sin and shame to remove the stain from our lives. He loved you so much, he was willing for six hours on a Friday afternoon to experience hell, in a sense, to make you his own. He did. It's how much he loved you. And when you then encounter the grace of Jesus, you're going to love where you live. You want people to encounter God's grace where you live. And you can't reach a people unless you love a people. Okay, so what would I say to Francis Schaeffer, who said, essentially, pastor Eric, have you thought about what message you're sending when you have American flags out? This is why I would say to Francis Schaeffer, if he was still alive, First, I would say, thank you. When I was 19 years old, your book, the Finished Work of Christ, which walked through the first eight chapters of Romans, gave me a hunger to study the Scripture verse by verse. Your writing changed my life. Thank you. Then I would say, second, I understand the concern, and I think it's a fair question because I've been in church services before where it felt as if Jesus was secondary in something else, including the American flag was primary. I share that same concern. But third, let me share with you why we do have American flags. Flags out on those days, Francis. On Mother's Day, we recognize moms. And if I, as the pastor didn't recognize moms, on Mother's Day, they would flog me. They would take me out and flog me. But we don't stop at moms. We go up to Jesus. We say, moms, thank you for how you've been compassionate and gracious to us. And the way you've treated us helps us understand God's tender mercy and compassion. Father's Day, we recognize dads, but we don't stop at dads. We go up and we say, we have a perfect heavenly Father. And on those weekends when we have an American flag, we don't stop on that weekend. On Memorial Day weekend, we are thankful for those who gave the ultimate sacrifice but we don't stop there. We go to Jesus who gave the ultimate sacrifice. On Veterans Day, we have people in our church stand and we recognize them, but we don't stop with them. We're thankful for them. We but we say, you point us to Jesus, who ultimately stepped into our cruel and broken world to save us on Independence Day. We have American flags, but we don't stop at Independence Day. We go up and we point to Jesus, the one who gave us ultimate independence, who rescued us from the captivity of our shame and our sin, who gives us ultimate liberation and ultimate freedom. We celebrate where God has placed us because we're thankful for where God has placed us. But we ultimately long for our everlasting home with Jesus because he's the ultimate savior. He's the ultimate Savior. So we love here and we long for there. Now, this statement should not be controversial. What am I about to say? When we are there in everlasting paradise, whether you die and are gathered with him or he returns and we're all gathered with him, and when we're all gathered with him before the throne of Jesus in everlasting paradise, we will not be singing about the glories of America. We will be singing about the glory of the one who rescued us and saved us and gave us everlasting life. He's the one who will be the center of our worship. He's the one who's ultimately on the throne. Revelation, chapter 7, verse 9 gives you a picture of the end. The scripture says this. This is what heaven will be like. There was a vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people and language, which no one could number standing before the throne and before the Lamb. Notice they're before the throne and the Lamb is on the throne. Jesus is the Lamb because he was slain to give us life, sacrificed to give us life. He's the one who's on the throne. Who else would be on the throne? There's no one else who's worthy to be on the throne. There's no one else who's rescued us, no one else who's given us life. No one else who's fulfilled the deepest desires of our hearts. Who else but Jesus is worthy to be on the throne? There's no one but Jesus who's worthy to receive that worship and that honor. And he will. And it's the reason heaven will be ultimately filled with joy, because you're ultimately filled with joy when Jesus is on the throne. When you take Jesus off the throne in your life, well, that's when problems start to Happen internally. And because we live in a broken world and none of us are perfect, we are always tempted to take Jesus off the throne in our lives. I do. I still sin. My pastor sins. Yeah, I do. I do. All of us, we take Jesus off the throne and we put something else there. We're tempted at all times. The Bible calls this idolatry. We're tempted. We remove Jesus from the throne and we make something else, our ultimate thing that becomes an idol, Something we put on the throne in our lives. And we can take good things and make them an idol. We can take our family and make our family our ultimate thing. It's not best for our family and it's not best for us, but we do it. We can take our career and make our career our ultimate hope, our ultimate desire. We can take our country and make our country our ultimate hope, our ultimate home. That's idolatry. Now, as your pastor, what do I do to get you to have Jesus on the throne of your life? What I've learned is it doesn't serve you well if I challenge you to love that thing less. Doesn't serve you well if I say to you, hey, love your family less this week. Welcome to church. Let's all love our families less. No, the problem is not that we love our families too much. It's that we love our God too little. The solution to idolatry isn't to love your family less, is to love your God more. The solution to loving your work more than you love God isn't to love your work less. It's to love your God more. I would never tell you, hey, this week, let's all go love our careers less. Cause some of you would show up at work and say, I can't sign up for that project. My pastor said, yo, I gotta love my job less. Gotta love this thing less. Man, I would never say to do that. Cause that's not the problem. The problem isn't that you love your career too much. It's that you love your guy too little. And some of you, at times, you have made an idol of your country. You have. You viewed it as your ultimate home. And it's only created angst in you. It's only made you frustrated and angry. But I'm not telling you to love your country less, because that's not the problem. You should love your country. But I am saying to love your God more. To love your God more. And if you love your God more, this is what's beautiful. You'll actually be a better Citizen, if you love your God more, you'll be a better wife, husband, sister, mother, son, brother. You'll be a better family member. If you love your God more, you'll be a better employer, entrepreneur, or business owner. If you love your God more. CS Lewis said it this way, if you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they've become so ineffective in this one. See, if you love God more, you actually. You actually start to love Southern California, your country, your city, as you should. I think we live in the best place in the world. I love our country. I also love where we live. I love Southern California. I love it so much. By God's grace, I would want to be here the rest of this life. And if he gave me another one, I'd stay here. I love. I love here. Some of you are trying to move out of here. I think it's really unwise of you to do so. I do, I do, I do. I mean, some of you will stop me in the patio and say, man, thinking about moving to, you know, Dallas, Austin, Boise or Nashville, One of those. And I often say, hey, before you make the final decision, I know you're looking at Zillow. You better pull up the weather app too, because, like, you're like, I'm getting a bonus room. You're gonna need a bonus room where you're going, bro. I've lived those places. It's not as awesome as here, but we don't need a bonus room here, man. We don't need a bonus room. It's awesome. So I love it here. But really, the best way for me to love here isn't just to love all that we get to enjoy here, whether the outside activities, the people who are amazing, the food, so many things we can do in Southern California. According to the scripture, the way you really love a place is by serving a place. And however long it is that you live here, I hope a long, long time. But whenever that you would go somewhere else, that you could look back at your time in Southern California and know that you didn't just consume from Southern California, that you serve Southern California. So when you came in today, we gave you this card of ways that our church is serving in our local communities. I just don't want you to consume. I want you to serve our cities. By the way, if you serve Southern California, you'll find yourself loving it, even More and you'll find yourself less angry. You'll find yourself realizing that you can make a difference in this world beyond posting something on social media. You'll find that you can make an impact by serving people. And so notice some ways that you can serve disaster relief. You just check one and drop it off at our outreach team on the patio. Disaster relief. We just had the fires in la. We have teams of people who are going to be a part of helping at risk youth tutoring. We have nine congregations, several in places that have under resourced communities such as Anaheim and Santa Ana. And we provide tutoring for at risk teenagers in those places. You can make an impact in a teenager's life. Esl, English is a second language. Every semester, every week, we have people who gather together in our community center and take ESL classes. Do you know every single semester, we have people who meet Jesus and become Christian. Because you know what we teach English. You know what we use to teach English to them? We use the Bible and God uses his word to grab people's hearts and change their lives. And you can be a part of that. You can be a part of that. We have an unborn ministry. You'll see a mobile clinic on the patio. We come alongside expectant mothers and walk alights alongside them and their child, who we are helping by God's grace for them to bring into this world. Military ministry, foster youth and families ministry, food pantry and thrift store. I'm so thankful many of you volunteer there already. We serve 2,000 families every single week through our food pantry and this location and other places where we have food pantries and then notice the last two, assisted living and homelessness. So you saw Alex's story. Alex became a part of our church Mariners at Orange County Rescue Mission. He now volunteers taking Mariners hosted here to senior living facilities. Come on, guys. Can you do that? Come on, can we do this? Can we serve where God has placed us? So how much should we love our country, man? You should love your country. You should love here and long for there. There we saw a picture of the everlasting gathering. Jesus is in the center of the throne. We're surrounded with people from every tribe, tongue and nation. This gathering's not perfect. You have an imperfect pastor, but it's a picture of heaven because we do have people from different ethnicities, different tribes, tongues and nations here. I love it. We should celebrate it. It's beautiful because it's a picture of what heaven's gonna look like. But here's how we make this gathering a better, more clear picture of what heaven's gonna be if we insist that the only one who gets our affection and our attention is Jesus the Lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world. That Jesus is the hero of our gathering. That when we come together we need our hearts to be crushed once again with his matrix grace that was poured out for us on the cross. That we want him to receive our affection and our attention because anything else that we give ourselves to is nothing compared to Him. It always fails. It's always less than him. That Jesus is the king, that Jesus is the everlasting one and only Jesus deserves our attention and our affection. All right, extend your hands, please, and let me pray a prayer of blessing over you as we go. Jesus, I pray you'd bless your sons and daughters this week, that you would remind them that you were gentle and approachable and that you love them, cause your face to shine on them. I pray they will experience your mercy and your joy this new week. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Go in peace. Have a great week.
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Thanks for tuning in to the Mariners Weekend Message Podcast to support the ministry of Mariners Church. You can click the link in the show notes or download the Mariners App at your favorite app store. If you've been navigating God's wisdom with us through this year's annual read and would like to hear personal reflections from pastors in your community, check out the Gospel Every Day podcast. Imagine feeding your heart, mind and soul with the kind of practical wisdom that will change your life. If you haven't picked up the annual read yet, visit MarinersChurch.org or download the Mariners app for more information on where to find it.