Celebrating Christ's Kingship and Our Transformative Journey

"There's some great things going on here at Livebook. And I was thinking about this. 2025 is going to be such a great year. I mean, just me personally, and I'll share some personal stuff with you. My wife and I are in the process of building. We're building a new home that we're going to build for ourselves, kind of our maybe forever home. We'll see. She likes to move every five years when it's time for a real deep clean. So we'll see what happens." [00:20:57] (19 seconds)


"You know, but I wanted to let you know something. I hope I don't get in trouble for this. I don't think I will. But our staff has been talking as a group and then privately, just like one -on -one conversations. And then we all come together. And it's like the Lord has put this thing, this drive inside of all of us here at Live Oak. And what we want to do is to really this year strive for excellence. And what I mean by that is to do the very best that we can do in every area of ministry. Because ultimately, we're going to be doing the best that we can do in every area of ministry. And ultimately, we're working unto the Lord. We're working for Jesus." [00:21:39] (33 seconds)


"It doesn't mean we're going to be perfect. We're going to make some mistakes. But what we want to do is we want to pursue excellence in every area of ministry. I mean from the preaching on Sunday mornings to cleaning the bathroom throughout the week. We want to pursue excellence. Because we believe in all of our hearts, we believe that we serve a risen king. And that he is worthy of our very best efforts." [00:22:11] (21 seconds)


"So today, what I want to do is I want to invite you to come to the church. And I want to invite you during this time. And this is usually the time we're talking about the offering. But I want to invite you right now to maybe make a commitment, some of you in your hearts, to join us here as a church in a pursuit of excellence. I mean from the way that we give, from the way that we pray, from the way that we study, from the way that we serve, to the way that we worship. Every single part. And if you support that, if you're on board with that, you can continue to pray for us. The letters of encouragement, the emails, the text messages. But you can also support us. You can support that financially. You can do that by giving online. The box is in the back just outside the doors. You can come by the church office throughout the week. You can use the church app. Whatever the Lord is leading you to do. Let's pray. Lord, we just come to you again and we thank you for allowing us to be in your sanctuary." [00:22:56] (50 seconds)


"And so here I am, student pastor, worship leader of this church, really new in the ministry and we're all just sitting there. In absolute silence, like what in the world just happened and what are we supposed to do? It's like minutes, nobody's saying a word. And all of a sudden, this sweet older lady leans up, looks right at me and says, well, I guess you're up. Shortest notice ever, trial by fire, guys. I was in my first semester of seminary. I had never really preached a sermon up to that point. It was all like student ministry and worship leader stuff. Man, I had no idea what I was doing. And so what I did is I got up and I told a really bad joke that no one laughed at, which embarrassed me even more at the moment. It was like lots of pressure, like sweats coming out of every part of you. It was in that moment I prayed and then a peace came over and we just started talking about the gospel and we started talking about Jesus." [00:32:35] (68 seconds)


"Now, Zechariah was written by Zechariah, the prophet and the priest. And it was written, most people dated around 538 BC. And this is, this is really, really cool because Zechariah was one of the documents, one of the scrolls that was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls in cave number four. That means that what we're reading today is what the people were reading before the time of Christ and in the first century. We know that. Let me explain this real quick because sometimes I fear that we mention things like the Dead Sea Scrolls and people don't always know what we're talking about. I think most of you do, but maybe there's a few who don't. That's okay. Not everybody does. And so I just want to make sure, you understand what we're talking about here. What happened, there was a group of people called the Essenes. And these people, they left out of the major surrounding cities, specifically around the religious areas of worship. And they went out and they formed their own community around a place called Qumran, near what's called the Dead Sea. And the reason they left is because they viewed the leadership at the temple, they viewed that as corrupt." [00:35:35] (66 seconds)


"Because he says the king is coming, and he's bringing with him salvation. Salvation. They were going to be saved because the king is on the way. So how do the people rejoice? Well, here in Zechariah 9, verse 9, they're told to shout. I know in church a lot of times, we're all like, hey, let's use our inside voices. Let's not get real loud. But we're called to shout. Read with me. This is an amazing psalm. Turn in your Bibles with me to Psalm 150. I want you to see this. Psalm 150. It's the very last psalm. I alluded to this psalm last week just very, very briefly. I want to share this with you." [00:38:42] (39 seconds)


"And the reason I want to share this with you, if you ever get to the point where you ask yourself, well, how am I really supposed to praise God? You don't have to ask that question. It's already spelled out for us in the scriptures. Okay? In Psalm 150, the last psalm, let's read it here. It says, praise the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary. That's where we are right now. Praise him in his mighty expanse everywhere. Praise him for his mighty deeds. Praise him according to his excellent greatness. Praise him with the trumpet sound. Praise him with harp and lyre. Lyre is like a small string instrument, kind of U -shaped. It's kind of weird. Praise him with timbrel. It's like a small hand drum or a tambourine. Praise him with dancing. Praise him with stringed instruments and pipe. Praise him with loud cymbals. Praise him with resounding cymbals. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord." [00:39:21] (55 seconds)


"His kingdom is based on the hearts and the lives of every single person who would come to him and submit their lives to him. Paul said it this way when he wrote to the church at Colossae. In Colossians chapter one, verse 13, Paul said, for he, God, rescued us from the domain of darkness and listen to the catch to this, and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son. In the context of what he's saying, Paul is saying that if you're in Christ, that our citizenship has been transferred from this earth to the kingdom of heaven. We were citizens of the world. And if you're in Jesus, you're no longer a citizen of the world. Your citizenship is in Jesus's kingdom. And Jesus is your king. Notice what he's saying here in verse 37 of chapter 18 in John. He says, for this purpose I was born. Jesus came to give you and I a choice of which kingdom you would serve, which kingdom you would be in. But this wasn't the first time this happened." [00:46:05] (65 seconds)


"Fast forward, 1 Samuel chapter eight, the people come and they're like, you know what, we've been led by God. God has rescued us from the wilderness. He rescued us from slavery. He's given us a land that we can live in. God has been so good. But can we have a king? And it's like, no, God's your king. Yeah, that's all fine and good. But can we have like a person king? See, they were never meant to have an earthly king, but they demanded one. And so the scriptures reveal that God gave them Saul. And Saul was a horrible king. And then they get David, who was okay, he had some issues. He was an okay king, but had some issues. And that was their existence for hundreds of years. The Jewish people would have a king who was good for a couple years and then went crazy. They would have bad kings who would just persecute them. They would go into slavery, into exile, be brought back, have a king over and over and over again. All because their mission misery because they rejected the one true king." [00:47:10] (60 seconds)


"Your life will revolve around that one true king if you are loyal to that king. I know last night I took some time by myself, I'd finished writing the message, I went off by myself and I began to pray about some things. And then even this morning on the ride here, I was like, I don't, man, I'm just not 100 % sure. And then as I walked to my office, I was like, okay, it's okay, you should do that. So last night as I was praying, I wanted to share this with you guys, and then today got the okay to do that just through prayer. Some of you know my story already, where I come from, so I won't go through all the details, but I'll tell you this. I didn't grow up in a Christian environment. Like, you would hear about God and you would hear people talk about church, but there was no church attendance. There were no Bibles or anything like that where I grew up. And I'd actually began to reject God completely." [00:55:29] (56 seconds)