Love God and Love People.

Clint Miller

[0:01] Well, good morning, Village Church. [0:03] My name is Clint, and it’s a privilege to be with you this morning and to open God’s [0:08] Word with you. [0:09] I serve here at Village as the Serve Team Coordinator, and I kind of do whatever else [0:16] is needed, whatever else I can get my hands on in the church. [0:18] That’s where you’ll likely find me.

[0:21] It’s been a while since I’ve been up in front and preached, and so a little bit nervous. [0:27] Some of you have been reminding me that I think I hold the record for longest sermon [0:32] ever at Village Church. [0:35] I think it was somewhere around an hour and 20 minutes, and so I’m not sure if people [0:42] were excited about it and they were hoping for that again. [0:45] I will say that the other times I’ve been up, it’s been much shorter, and so that’s

[0:51] the aim for today. [0:54] I teach social studies at a juvenile detention center. [0:57] It’s my full time, and so kind of the same deal this morning except for get to teach [1:04] from the Word of God, and that’s a real privilege and an honor and something I don’t take lightly. [1:11] The other thing I’m excited about this morning, too, is that you can’t really interrupt me [1:16] in mid-sentence like kids do in my classroom.

[1:19] You can do that, but we do have security, and we will call them, so don’t do that.

[1:31] So if you’ve been with us the last two weeks, we’ve been working through, we started off [1:35] this new series on the seven commands of Jesus, the seven basic commands of Jesus, and so [1:42] this morning we’re going to get into the third part of that series, which is going to be [1:47] Jesus’ command to love God and to love people.

[1:53] And so really what we’ve seen as far as we’ve seen that if we’re going to be followers [1:58] of Jesus, if we’re going to be real followers of Jesus, we have to repent and believe. [2:04] We have to repent, we have to turn from our sin, and we have to believe the gospel, and [2:09] that’s what we’re going to get into a little bit this morning as well. [2:13] Then last week we saw we also have to pray, and this week we get into loving God and loving [2:23] people.

[2:25] Our text, one of the texts we’ll work out of today is going to be Matthew 22, 36-40. [2:30] That’s Matthew 22, 36-40. [2:34] Let me read that for us. [2:37] It says, Teacher, which is the great command in the law? [2:40] And he said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all [2:45] your soul and with all your mind.

[2:48] This is the great and first command. [2:51] And a second is like it. [2:52] You shall love your neighbor as yourself. [2:55] On these two commands depend all the law and the prophets. [3:00] Pray with me. [3:02] Father, we are thankful for your word.

[3:05] We’re thankful that you’ve revealed yourself in Jesus. [3:08] And ultimately, Father, that you’ve made a way for us to love you. [3:12] I pray this morning as we talk about that, as we look at it, Lord, that you would well [3:17] up a worship in our heart that you would well up the love that you have for us extended [3:23] in Jesus. [3:24] I pray that it would well up in us and be sent back to you and also out to the people

[3:30] in this world who need that love. [3:33] Father, help us this morning. [3:35] Help me. [3:36] Pray this in your name. [3:38] Amen.

[3:40] So we see a couple of things in this text. [3:43] We see that Jesus is commanding and God’s always commanded from the beginning, but he’s [3:49] commanding us to love him. [3:51] Now, some of us might be tempted to look at this and say, man, how can you really command [3:58] somebody to love somebody? [4:00] I mean, isn’t love just something that wells up and you can’t really force it?

[4:05] You can’t just create it. [4:08] And others of us might think, man, love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and [4:12] soul. [4:13] I mean, that sounds pretty hard. [4:15] I mean, I love a lot of things if I think about it. [4:18] I love my family.

[4:21] I love my hobbies, I love my shoes, I love my clothes. [4:24] I love all kinds of things. [4:27] I mean, if you’re like me, you love chainsaws. [4:29] That’s probably not one of your loves, but it is one of mine. [4:33] But how are we supposed to love God? [4:36] How are we supposed to love him more than all these things?

[4:40] Former footballer, Torello, and said he loves him some him or I love me some me. [4:46] If we’re honest, we all love ourselves and we all probably love ourselves far more than [4:52] we love other things. [4:54] And so here’s God saying, love me, love me. [4:58] And then there’s some folks who we might be in the boat where you could go, you could [5:04] try this, you could experiment with it.

[5:06] I did a little bit over the past week or so. [5:09] But if you go around and ask people if they love God, the majority of people will say [5:14] yes. [5:15] Right. [5:16] You’re not going to get a whole lot of people are going to be like, oh, I don’t love God. [5:21] I mean, of course I don’t.

[5:22] Most people think, oh, of course I love God. [5:24] Of course I love God. [5:25] And so we kind of have that mindset because this American, we’re a semi-Christian nation, [5:32] even though we’ve definitely gotten far from that. [5:36] And so really, the question is, do we really love God? [5:41] Can we really love God?

[5:42] What do we need to love God? [5:45] Because he’s commanding us to. [5:47] He’s commanding us to love him. [5:48] And so that’s what we’re really going to get into. [5:50] How can we know that love? [5:52] Where do we get it from?

[5:53] And then how does it come out of us to God and then also to others? [5:58] So that’s really what we’re going to be looking at this morning. [6:01] So number one this morning, the gospel of Jesus is the only source of real love. [6:07] The gospel is the only source of real love. [6:10] And in a nutshell here, what we’re going to see is that we need to receive love so that [6:16] we can give love.

[6:17] We need to receive love so that we can give love. [6:19] And that’s exactly what we see in the gospel of Jesus. [6:24] The reason that Jesus leaves the Father and the Spirit to become a man, to live perfectly, [6:29] to die at the hands of man and then be raised, the reason that he does that is ultimately [6:35] to restore our relationship to him. [6:39] In the gospel, we get God.

[6:42] That’s the end of the gospel. [6:44] We get connected with God. [6:46] We get restored with him. [6:47] We know him and that’s really the good news. [6:50] That’s why it’s good news. [6:51] The gospel isn’t good news if we don’t get God.

[6:55] If we just get forgiveness, that’s okay. [6:58] But we’re really looking for God. [7:00] We’re really looking to know God. [7:04] He’s the one who created us. [7:05] We were created to know him. [7:08] And in sin happening, in Adam’s sinning, everything in the world is fractured and our relationship

[7:14] with God is messed up. [7:18] And so turn with me to 1 John 4, 7 to 10. [7:23] 1 John 4, 7 to 10. [7:26] Pay attention carefully to who does the loving here. [7:30] Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God and whoever loves has been born [7:35] of God and knows God.

[7:37] Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. [7:42] In this, the love of God was made manifest among him, among us, that God sent his only [7:50] son into the world so that we might live through him. [7:54] In this is love. [7:56] Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for [8:03] our sin.

[8:04] So what do we see here? [8:05] Do we see man loving God or do we see God loving man? [8:09] We see God loving man overwhelmingly. [8:13] And there’s a number of things that I want to draw our attention to. [8:16] First, God is love. [8:17] That phrase comes from verse nine.

[8:21] In fact, he is love. [8:24] That’s part of his it’s part of his character. [8:26] It’s part of his nature. [8:27] It’s part of the essence of who he is. [8:30] But as we talked about before, it does not mean that love is simply God. [8:35] It means that all love is from God, but it doesn’t mean that God is simply love.

[8:41] He’s also just. [8:42] He’s also holy. [8:43] He’s also righteous. [8:46] He’s also patient. [8:48] And so all these attributes of God come out in his interaction with man. [8:54] But God is love.

[8:56] We also understand that love is from God. [8:59] Love is from God. [9:00] And we get that from verse nine. [9:05] And so in these things, ultimately, he is the real source of love. [9:11] There is no other source of love.

[9:14] We can love things, but we love things wrongly. [9:17] We don’t have the love that we need. [9:19] And so we see this and we also see God loving us. [9:24] How does he love us? [9:25] Have you ever asked the question, man, how do I know that God loves me? [9:30] And we’ve all probably asked that question probably when you don’t feel like God loves you.

[9:36] But the real answer that we see here is in verse nine. [9:39] In verse nine, we see how God sent his son into the world so that we might live through him. [9:47] That’s how God defines love. [9:50] He shows it. [9:51] He displays it. [9:52] It’s kind of his coming out party.

[9:55] Without this, we don’t really know that God loves the world. [9:59] Without the picture of God sending his son into the world,

[10:05] coming in to the world through the womb of Mary. [10:09] I mean, think about that. [10:10] Jesus leaves. [10:12] He leaves the throne. [10:14] He comes in. [10:14] He allows himself to go into the womb of one he’s created.

[10:18] He comes out. [10:20] He’s subjected to all the things that come with humanity. [10:25] And he comes under this and he’s also going to then die at the hands of his creation. [10:33] He’s going to do that. [10:34] And so that’s the picture of love that we see. [10:37] That’s how God defines love.

[10:39] He defines love by sending his son, laying down his life for us. [10:44] And we don’t deserve it. [10:46] But the question is, how can we be reconciled? [10:49] How can we be reconciled to God? [10:51] Because he’s extending our he’s extending love to us. [10:55] But we know that there’s been a violation in our relationship with them.

[10:59] We know that sin exists between us. [11:02] We know that when somebody is just and right, they can’t simply say, I love you. [11:08] And just everything be good. [11:10] We know this in our own relationships. [11:12] And we think about things like a couple of examples might be you have a husband or a [11:18] wife who’s been cheated on and they still in a way love their spouse.

[11:24] But they can’t just can’t just go back and say, I love you. [11:29] It’s all good. [11:30] It’s all peachy. [11:31] Even in our relationships, even if you’re in our in our marriages, I’m guilty of this [11:38] all the time. [11:39] I’ll violate in some way.

[11:42] I’ll offend my wife. [11:45] And then I’ll just keep trying to love her. [11:48] Does it work? [11:49] Of course not. [11:51] Of course not. [11:52] She she doesn’t pretend like it just didn’t happen.

[11:55] I tend to just wake up and it’s all good again. [11:58] Right? [11:59] No, it’s not. [12:01] It’s not. [12:02] And so hopefully you guys know that if you’re married, I know you know that. [12:06] If you’re a guy, I know you know that.

[12:10] But you know, we can see this in all other kinds of relationships. [12:13] A criminal can’t just go to court after he’s committed a crime and the judge be like, [12:19] man, I really feel bad for your story. [12:21] And, you know, he kind of gives his sob story. [12:24] But at the end of the day, he’s committed a bad crime. [12:28] Can we just say I love you?

[12:30] We just say it’s all good. [12:32] Go home. [12:33] Go back out into society. [12:35] I mean, what would happen if that happened?

[12:38] That judge would be out of there. [12:40] That court would be held in contempt and it would be it would it would have to change. [12:45] That that’s the way it is with God. [12:47] And so we see that God loves us. [12:50] He extends his love to us and he reconciles us to him. [12:53] And ultimately, that’s why his love.

[12:55] Let’s look at let’s look at first, Sean, four, verse 10. [13:03] John tells us that God’s love reconciles us to him by becoming the propitiation for our sin. [13:10] On the cross, Jesus receives the wrath of God that it was reserved for the sins of all those who trust in him. [13:17] Propitiation simply means coming from under coming out from under God’s wrath into his favor. [13:23] And that’s what he does. [13:24] So he takes us out from under the wrath of God, the wrath that we’ve earned,

[13:28] the wrath that we all have coming as sinners who have offended him. [13:32] And he takes us and puts us under his favor. [13:36] And how does he do that? Well, he does it simply by paying the price for our sin through Jesus. [13:44] Romans five, eight, ten gives us this picture as well. [13:46] It says, But God shows his love for us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. [13:53] Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

[14:02] For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now are we reconciled. [14:10] Shall we be saved by his life? More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, [14:18] through whom we have now received reconciliation. [14:21] So we have to be reconciled. [14:24] We see God take that initiative. [14:26] His love literally is grace that pays a price.

[14:32] So grace is love that pays a price. [14:37] God extends his grace to us. [14:40] His grace is actually what saves us. [14:42] And the love can be one of the driving forces behind the extension of that grace. [14:47] And it’s love that pays a price. [14:49] And so that’s what we see in Jesus.

[14:50] So think of this, guys. [14:52] Think of this. We really need to think of the gospel. [14:54] We really need to. [14:55] Part of what I aim to do this morning is to bring us back to the gospel, because I know as as people who walk with Christ, [15:04] as people who are saved, we tend to drift in a direction where we were led kind of away from the gospel [15:12] and we can come into living in our own power.

[15:15] We’re trying to obey through our own things. [15:17] We can even come into the delusion that we’re good and that we don’t need Jesus anymore. [15:22] The reality, friends, is the gospel saved us and it’s saving us today. [15:27] And so I want you to see I want you to pay attention to to this to what we see in Romans 8. [15:34] We see God laying down his life for his enemies. [15:37] This is a king dying for the for the subjects, his rebellious subjects that are rebelling against them.

[15:45] I mean, think about that. Who would take the place of that kind of rebel? [15:52] Who would die for that kind of rebel? [15:54] I mean, none of us. I look at some of the kids that that I see at the juvenile center and some of them have committed crimes [16:00] that come with pretty long sentences, maybe 10, 20 years. [16:05] I look at them and I mean, I love them. [16:09] But would I take that 10 years for them?

[16:11] I mean, that’s just 10 years. Would you take that for them? [16:16] Would you take it? Would you take the 10 years for somebody who committed an offense against you?

[16:22] That’s a big deal. And here we see God and that’s just that’s just much larger. [16:27] It’s on a much larger scale. We’re talking about death. [16:30] We’re talking about eternal punishment. [16:31] We’re talking about the wrath of God being poured out on God himself and Jesus. [16:36] And so that’s what we see. [16:38] There is real forgiveness here.

[16:41] There’s real forgiveness in God reconciling to reconciling us to himself. [16:46] As I was talking about earlier, forgiveness has to occur if the relationship is going to be restored. [16:54] There has to be real forgiveness. [16:56] And that’s what we find in Jesus. He pays the price for that. [17:01] We’re not saved by love. We’re saved by grace, as I said, and grace is love poured out. [17:07] Now, getting back to the reason the reason this is such good news is that because God is reconciling us to him,

[17:16] he’s reconciling us to him. And that’s what we need. [17:19] Humanity needs God. We were meant for God. [17:23] As the events show that we’ve that we prayed about earlier, everybody needs God. [17:28] Ultimately, the reason we’re doing things that are crazy is because we don’t have God. [17:34] And without Jesus, we won’t have him. [17:38] God doesn’t love you by pointing to how great you are.

[17:41] He doesn’t. He’s not a God who’s so much just interested in helping you or making you feel better about yourself. [17:50] Our God is a God of love because he wants to give you exactly what you need. [17:55] And so love is looking out for the interests of people. [17:59] We want them. We want the best for them. [18:01] It’s a good definition of love. And God’s definition of love is that you need God. [18:08] That’s his definition that I’m going to love you by giving you what you need. And that’s me.

[18:14] You need me. You need my love. And that love needs to come into you. [18:18] It needs to well up inside you. And it needs to go out and come back to me. [18:22] And it also needs to go out into other people. And so that’s what he does for us. [18:27] The only way for man to love God is to receive the gospel of Jesus and trust it and follow him. [18:35] That’s the only way, friends. The people who say I love God, the people who say, yeah, I think I love him, you know, once in a while around Thanksgiving or Christmas or whatever, kind of as thankful feeling. [18:47] And, you know, I was making it. I had the kids that November’s the character count at school is gratitude is thankfulness.

[18:56] And so I had them make a list of what they were thankful for. [18:59] If you’ve ever tried to do this, sometimes kind of off the top, it’s hard, especially for some of them. [19:05] But they’ll get to like four. Right. And then they’ll really have trouble. [19:11] They really have trouble saying what they’re thankful for. [19:13] And a lot of people we might get to we might have more so we might have more to be thankful for. [19:19] But ultimately, it’s one of those where some people they get to it and it’s like, oh, yeah, God. Oh, yeah, God, I’m thankful for him.

[19:28] When really, if we love God, if we love him, how we’re supposed to, if we received his love so that it can go back up to him, he’s got to be number one. [19:36] He is what we love the most. Jesus says anyone who doesn’t love me more than anything is not fit to be my disciple. [19:47] And so God in his grace enables us to do that. [19:51] And so be thankful for that. And so number two this morning, number two this morning, we love God in living in the gospel. [20:02] We love God by living in the gospel. [20:04] So one of the things that I want to get at again this morning is this idea that the gospel is what keeps us from being stagnant, what keeps us having our eyes on Christ, having a real affection for him flowing out of our heart and an affection for him that’s going to carry over into obedience.

[20:22] If you love me, you’ll obey me. [20:24] As Jesus says that clear as day. [20:26] If you love me, you will obey me. [20:29] And so really the source of obedience has to be love. [20:34] The source of obedience has to be love. [20:38] And that’s what’s given in the gospel.

[20:40] The gospel creates a love for Jesus. [20:43] Consider what we’ll see in Luke 7. [20:46] We’ll pick it up in verse 40. [20:49] It’s Luke 7 verse 40. [20:51] Just to give you a little bit by way of background, the text tells of a Pharisee named Simon who invites Jesus over to eat. [20:57] Now, they’ve been teaching Psalms of Pharisee.

[21:00] They might have been doing some teaching earlier and they were going to come back to his house and eat. [21:05] And so Jesus is there and something happens while he’s there. [21:09] A woman who had seen him earlier, a woman who had been perhaps listening to his teaching and really had come to him, come to faith in him, shows up at this party. [21:20] And this woman is described as a woman of the city who was a sinner, a woman of the city who was a sinner. [21:29] Now, that’s code for prostitute. [21:33] That’s code for dirty.

[21:35] That’s code for something the Pharisees would have looked at as, I don’t have room for that filth in here. [21:43] And so this lady comes in and she’s a basket case. [21:48] She’s just weeping. [21:49] She falls to the feet of Jesus and she is weeping and she’s got tears flowing. [21:55] They’re coming down. [21:56] She’s at his feet.

[21:58] She’s wetting his feet with her tears. [22:00] She’s wiping with her hair. [22:01] She brings this expensive perfume and she gives it. [22:06] She puts it on him. [22:07] And the Pharisee watches this all the while in dismay. [22:11] He says, if this guy was a prophet, he would know that this woman is defiling him.

[22:15] He would know that she has no business being here. [22:20] And so we’ll pick it up in verse seven. [22:23] Jesus answering said to him, Simon, I have something to say to you. [22:28] And he answered, say it, teacher. [22:30] A certain moneylender who had two debtors, had two debtors, one owed 500 denarii, the other 50. [22:39] When they could not pay, he canceled the debt of both.

[22:43] Now, which of them will love him more? [22:45] Simon answered, the one, I suppose, from whom he had canceled the larger debt. [22:50] And he said to him, you’ve judged rightly.

[22:55] Then turning, even the Pharisee can see this. [22:59] Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, do you see this woman? [23:04] I entered your house. [23:05] You gave me no water for my feet. [23:08] But she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. [23:12] You gave me no kiss.

[23:14] But from the time I came in, she has not ceased to kiss my feet. [23:19] You did not anoint my head with oil. [23:21] But she has anointed my feet with ointment. [23:24] Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. [23:32] But he who is forgiven little, loves little. [23:35] And he said to her, your sins are forgiven.

[23:38] Now, don’t read this wrongly. [23:40] The cause and effect here is that this woman came to faith in Jesus before, [23:44] and she shows up at his feet because she’s received the love that he’s given her. [23:50] And now she’s reciprocating it. [23:52] She’s giving it back to him. [23:55] She doesn’t come in and demonstrate how much she loves Jesus.

[23:59] And then because of that, Jesus says, your sins are forgiven. [24:02] No, this is a response to the love that came from Jesus. [24:07] And so she’s a wreck. [24:09] And friends, I hope that at some point in your life when you’ve come to Christ, [24:14] when you think about the gospel, that you understand, you understand this picture. [24:20] That you can feel it.

[24:21] That you can know that Jesus showed up to save us from our sin. [24:28] And that, man, that’s a weight that is amazing. [24:32] It’s a weight that we’re broken over our sin. [24:35] And we know that we can’t do anything about it. [24:38] And so we just come and we kneel at the feet of Jesus and we love him. [24:43] And so that’s what we see here happening.

[24:47] She sees Jesus as the sinless Savior, the Lamb who came to take away the sins of the world. [24:53] There’s no confusing his identity with her. [24:57] She knows it. [24:58] And so Jesus gave her real love because she had received real love through the gospel of God. [25:06] Now, friends, you may not be, you may not have that in your background. [25:10] You may not have been a quote unquote woman from the city.

[25:14] A few of us probably were. [25:16] But, friends, our price to be paid is high. [25:19] We have much to be forgiven for. [25:22] We are sinful. [25:23] Don’t look at people who are women from the city and say, man, they’re far more sinful than I am. [25:34] OK, they’re not.

[25:37] We’re all sinful. [25:38] We’re all falling short. [25:39] We all are desperate to be forgiven for the price that’s owed to us. [25:44] And so keep your eyes on that. [25:49] Coming to faith means that we have been born again.

[25:56] Jesus knows our hearts and minds and so he knows that we need help. [26:00] We can see this even if we go back to Deuteronomy. [26:03] We see that God, after revealing himself to Israel and delivering them from Egypt, he makes them as people. [26:10] He knows they’re still going to fail, though. [26:13] Look at this in Deuteronomy 36. [26:15] He says, looking ahead to the time of Jesus, he says, in the Lord, your God will circumcise your heart.

[26:23] And your heart, I’m sorry, in the heart of your offspring so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul that you might live. [26:33] God knows that we can’t do this on our own. [26:37] And so he looks forward to a time when Jesus will come and he’ll actually circumcise our very hearts. [26:42] This is the new birth, folks. [26:43] It’s one of the things that should give us great confidence that we can love God with our all. [26:49] We can, and you need to know that.

[26:51] You need to believe it. [26:53] OK, and so we see this. [26:56] John Piper helps us. [26:57] He says, the new birth creates that connection. [27:00] The new birth is the act of the Holy Spirit connecting our dead, selfish hearts with God’s living, loving heart so that his life becomes our life and his love becomes our love. [27:11] As the Spirit of God dwells within us, it causes us to become more and more like Jesus.

[27:17] And Jesus loved God perfectly.

[27:22] Also, guys, so that should give us great hope in the fact that we know that God’s made a way for us to love him. [27:30] But we also need to sit in the gospel. [27:32] One of the ways I want us to see that this morning is First Corinthians 15, one to two. [27:39] First Corinthians 15, one to two. [27:41] The gospel sustains our love for God. [27:44] The gospel sustains our love for God.

[27:47] OK, we need to be living in it. [27:49] We need to be reminding ourselves of it. [27:51] And that’s exactly exactly Paul’s message here. [27:54] It says, now I remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preach to you, which you received, in which you stand and by which you are being saved. [28:03] If you hold fast to the word I preach to you, unless you believed in vain. [28:09] So Paul’s point here is that you need the gospel.

[28:13] It’s saving you today. [28:16] OK, understand that, Christian. [28:18] It’s saving you today. [28:20] Without it, you won’t make it. [28:23] OK, we blow it. [28:25] We blow it.

[28:25] We don’t love God with all our hearts, all our mind, all our soul, all the time. [28:31] We don’t. [28:32] We also don’t live perfectly. [28:34] I think we all know that. [28:36] We do have an affection and desire to become more holy, to become more obedient. [28:42] We should have those things.

[28:43] But friends, we do not do this perfectly. [28:46] And so we need the gospel today, just like we needed it the first time we came to faith in Christ. [28:54] And so remember that you need the gospel. [28:58] Now, a couple of things I just want to share with you. [29:02] I found these this week, and they’re really just some things that we need to consider that I want you guys to consider. [29:08] Really, they’re called, you know, just gospel checkers, I’ll call them, to make sure that we’re living under the gospel and not under religion.

[29:20] OK, to make sure that we haven’t drifted from gone to the place of that lady at the feet of Jesus. [29:25] And we’ve kind of walked into relying on our own obedience. [29:30] We’re just doing religious things to make ourselves feel at peace with God.

[29:40] So the first one of those, I’m accepted and therefore I obey, not I obey and therefore I’m accepted. [29:48] I’m accepted and therefore I obey. [29:52] This lady loved God after she was accepted by him in the gospel. [29:57] Motivations come from grateful joy, not fear and insecurity. [30:03] Motivations are from grateful joy, not fear and insecurity. [30:08] Here’s a religious perspective for you.

[30:10] I think this is an important one. [30:12] My self view swings between two poles. [30:17] If and when I am living up to my standards, I feel confident. [30:21] But then I’m prone to proud, to being proud and unsympathetic to failing people.

[30:29] If and when I am not living up to standards, I feel insecure and inadequate. [30:34] I’m not confident. I feel like a failure. [30:37] So that’s, if that’s you, you’re getting close to the side of religion. [30:42] Here’s how the gospel should help us in our self view. [30:45] It says, myself view is not based on a view of myself as a moral achiever. [30:51] In Christ I’m simultaneously sinful and yet accepted in Christ.

[30:56] I’m so bad he had to die for me and I’m so loved he was glad to die for me. [31:03] His, this leads me to deeper and deeper humility and confidence at the same time, [31:09] neither swaggering nor moping around. [31:12] And so how you perceive yourself is an indicator of how you’re trusting the gospel. [31:21] Are you leaning on yourself? [31:24] Do you find your self worth in the kind of place you’re at, the self esteem, if you will?

[31:30] Do you just feel that from your own obedience or are you feeling it because you know you’re received by Jesus? [31:38] So take those to heart.

[31:44] Number three this morning, number three this morning. [31:50] We love others by pointing them to the gospel. [31:53] We love others by pointing them to the gospel. [31:55] So we’ve seen that the gospel is God’s love for us. [31:59] He’s defined it by sending Jesus to die for us, to reconcile him, to reconcile us to himself. [32:06] And that’s really what he’s done.

[32:08] And so our love is rooted in that we have love now, we receive love, we can give love to God and we can also give it to others. [32:17] We can also love our neighbors. [32:19] We also have a new love for people that didn’t exist before we came to know the love of Jesus. [32:27] And so we receive, so we have something to give. [32:31] So the scripture confirms that Christians will be marked by their love and that’s because we have the source of love. [32:38] It is our very fabric, our DNA, the new nature that we have been given.

[32:44] The Christian who does not love their neighbor is an impossibility. [32:47] It can’t be, it can’t exist. [32:50] It can’t exist. [32:51] So friends, I want you to think about what’s your position towards people? [32:56] What’s your disposition towards people? [32:59] What’s it been like for you lately?

[33:02] Do you have an affection for them? [33:05] Do you want to love them with the love that God’s put in you? [33:09] Do you want to love them with that love? [33:11] Do you desire that they would come to know that love? [33:14] Or do you see them as kind of a pain? [33:17] Do you see them as something that maybe you’ll get to at some point if things work out?

[33:25] Do you see them as people who are sinners? [33:30] Or do we see them as people who need to receive the love that we’ve been given?

[33:37] If we look at 1 John 4, 11 and 12, we get to see this. [33:44] It says, Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. [33:49] No one has ever seen God. [33:53] If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

[34:02] So friends, if God so loved us, if God so loved us, what does that really mean? [34:06] If God so loved us, really that refers to the manner in which he loved us. [34:10] He loved us by becoming the propitiation for our sin. [34:14] So in that manner is how we ought to love other people. [34:17] We ought to love other people with the hope and the desire. [34:22] We ought to lay down our lives in order that they might come to know Jesus.

[34:27] That’s the love that we have to love other people with. [34:30] We can’t make it up. [34:31] God’s defined love, and so if that love’s dwelling in us through the Holy Spirit, [34:38] we cannot just redefine love. [34:42] We can’t get our definition of love from the culture. [34:45] We can’t just say, oh yeah, I’ve been loving everybody.

[34:49] I’ve been loving my neighbor. [34:51] I’m nice to him. I do this. I do that. [34:54] No, we have to love them with the love of Jesus. [34:56] We have to love them with the gospel. [34:58] We have to point them to the gospel where it’s not love. [35:02] It won’t be love. It’ll fall short.

[35:06] So that’s the love that we need to do. [35:09] Now, there’s something else in this text that says that the love of God is expressed [35:13] in the death and resurrection of Jesus, and everyone needs this love, [35:16] but how will they get it? [35:17] God is extending it and displaying his love, [35:20] not some love that we’re kind of mustering up in ourselves.

[35:24] Rather, it is his love. [35:25] His love for the world is being displayed and issued in and through us. [35:33] Okay, so we talk about mission here a lot at Village. [35:36] We talk about having a heart for people. [35:39] We talk about the fact that we’ve been reconciled. [35:43] Let’s just look at it here in 2 Corinthians 5, 18 to 21.

[35:48] It says, All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself [35:53] and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. [35:57] That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, [36:01] not counting their trespasses against them, [36:04] and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. [36:07] Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.

[36:14] We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. [36:19] For our sake, he made sin to be sin, who knew no sin, [36:23] so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. [36:28] This is one of our favorite texts here at Village, [36:30] and it is because we understand that we’ve been reconciled to God, [36:34] and now our whole purpose in life is to see people reconciled to God as well,

[36:42] because God’s our treasure, also because the love of God dwells in us, [36:46] and it is through his church and through his people [36:50] that other people will come to know his great love for us in Jesus. [36:54] That’s how it’s going to happen. [36:56] It’s not going to happen a different way. [36:59] And so that’s us.

[37:01] We are ambassadors. [37:02] He’s making his appeal through us. [37:06] That’s through our words, and that’s through our deeds. [37:10] That’s through our actions towards people. [37:13] They’re noticing us. [37:15] You carry the name of Christ and they know it.

[37:18] They’re getting their idea of Christ from us. [37:21] So think about that. [37:23] Think about what they’re seeing. [37:25] Are they seeing the love of God, or are they seeing something different? [37:29] Because they need to see the love of God, [37:32] and then we need to build relationships with people so that we can tell them about Jesus,

[37:38] so that we can tell them about Jesus. [37:41] Now, this is a big deal in that there’s no greater thing at stake. [37:51] There’s nothing more we should be invested in than loving our neighbors with the love of Jesus. [37:58] There’s nothing more than that. [38:01] There’s nothing more important that we could be doing. [38:04] Your life isn’t better spent somewhere else.

[38:08] And so what we need to do is we need to think about how it is that we’re actually determining what it is we do with our life. [38:18] We need to think about how do we make our schedules. [38:22] One of the ways that we can see that really what we need to see is that love requires an agenda. [38:32] One of the ways we need to see this is in another parable, which we’ll see in Luke 10. [38:42] This is a fairly well-known parable.

[38:48] I’ll kind of clue us in on it, and then we’ll look at Luke 10.37. [38:53] So this is a story of the Good Samaritan. [38:56] You’re probably familiar with it. [38:58] A man is on a road. [39:00] He gets robbed. [39:01] He gets beaten.

[39:03] He’s hung up. [39:05] He’s pretty much helpless on the side of the road. [39:08] And two folks pass him. [39:10] They pass by. [39:10] They see his need. [39:13] One of them’s even a Levi priest.

[39:15] He passes by him, right? [39:19] Doesn’t help him. [39:20] He’s got other things to do. [39:22] He has his own agenda. [39:24] And then we see a Samaritan who the Samaritans and Jews, if you know anything about them, they don’t get along. [39:30] There’s beef there.

[39:31] The Jews see the Samaritans as half-breeds. [39:35] They don’t even really recognize them. [39:37] But here we see a Samaritan come to the aid of this person. [39:42] He gets him up. [39:43] He takes him to an inn. [39:44] He pays for this guy to be fixed up.

[39:48] He gets him bandaged up. [39:49] He gets him back in gear. [39:52] But what we see here is Jesus used this to point out that the only guy who was a neighbor to this guy was actually the Samaritan. [40:02] We see that in chapter 10, verse 37. [40:06] The one who showed… [40:09] I’m sorry.

[40:11] First, let me set it up here. [40:12] Jesus asked, who was the neighbor to this man? [40:17] And we see in verse 10, 37, of course, the one who showed him mercy. [40:22] And Jesus said to him, you go and be likewise. [40:25] You go and do likewise.

[40:29] So was this guy really his neighbor in the sense that we think about neighbors? [40:33] I mean, he’s not the guy. [40:35] He’s not the people living next to us. [40:36] He’s not necessarily the people that we work with. [40:38] He’s just a guy. [40:40] But Jesus’s overall point here is that we need to take on an identity of Jesus.

[40:45] Jesus was all over the place. [40:46] He was everybody he came into contact with. [40:50] He was he saw them as his neighbor. [40:53] He was going to love that person. [40:54] Even even what we see with the with the lady who came up to him and was a lady from the city. [41:02] That that was Jesus’s neighbor.

[41:04] That’s that’s kind of crazy, right? [41:07] I mean, so what we need to see here is that we have to have an identity here. [41:13] We have to build in ourselves an identity. [41:15] We have to take on the identity of Jesus and really understand that everybody is our neighbor. [41:22] OK, everybody you’re in contact with is your neighbor. [41:26] Everybody that you know is your neighbor.

[41:32] And they need Jesus most.

[41:36] And so that’s what that’s what I want you to see.

[41:41] This means that we have to put this like I was saying before. [41:45] This means that we do have to have an agenda, that love has to have an agenda. [41:50] OK, we have agendas for almost everything. [41:54] But when we want to put that word with love, we think that for some reason, well, it’s not really love. [41:59] It’s not really love if it just doesn’t kind of magically happen, if it just doesn’t kind of spontaneously well up in me. [42:07] And I just go and build a relationship with somebody.

[42:12] No, we have to have intentionality with us. [42:15] God himself, the source of real love, had an agenda for his love. [42:21] His agenda was sending Jesus to die on the cross. [42:24] And so we do have agendas in our life, and we need to take those very seriously. [42:31] We need to understand that repentance for us in this area will probably look like it’ll probably look like us repenting of our schedules a little bit. [42:45] It’ll probably look like us intentionally making time to love people.

[42:50] That can be people inside our own community here at the church. [42:54] That can also be people who need Jesus, the people around you. [42:59] I know for us, we have almost a one year old now, and so we’ve kind of transitioned into this phase where that can really control our schedule. [43:14] She kind of needs to be in bed at 630 or 7, and if she’s not, it’s a problem. [43:21] It’s a problem. [43:23] And so that’s kind of in a way, it’s kind of made us kind of put up a little in some way barriers, in some way barriers, because we’re so focused on that that we don’t have Friday and Saturday night to go see if anybody wants to come over.

[43:41] The reality is we have to make that we have to figure out a way for it to work. [43:48] We have to readjust our schedule, and that means that means putting off what’s less important. [43:54] All the things that we probably want to do. [43:57] I know for me, I want to do things Saturday afternoon. [44:01] Well, if I want to love my neighbor, I’m probably going to have to rearrange that. [44:06] Probably going to have to try to love them Saturday afternoon because Saturday night is really hard for us right now.

[44:13] It really is. [44:15] And so it’s not that we just get a get out of jail free card here. [44:21] It’s not that the love of Jesus wells up in us and we just kind of push it off to the side. [44:26] It’s that we need to become intentional. [44:29] We need to have an agenda. [44:30] We need to make it our business.

[44:32] And friends, if you’re loving God, you’re going to make it your business. [44:38] The things that you love do control your schedule. [44:43] The things that you love do control your schedule. [44:46] They control what you do.

[44:49] If you don’t know, just stop doing everything and see what you can’t live without. [44:55] That will tell you what you’re loving. [44:56] And so, friends, this morning, I hope that at the end of the day, what we get from this, what we get from this is that we have to understand and think about in the gospel, Jesus has come to take us from a sinner who doesn’t love him, a sinner who doesn’t love other people, a sinner who in fact can’t love him or others. [45:27] And he’s given us that love. [45:29] He’s given us the ability to love him. [45:32] He saved us out of this life that was no good.

[45:36] He’s given us a new life. [45:37] He’s given us a new reality. [45:39] And we have to understand that we’re not finished. [45:45] We’re not finished. [45:46] It’s not all about forgiveness. [45:47] It’s not all about, I’m glad I got Jesus.

[45:51] I’m glad I got God. [45:52] No. [45:53] In the gospel, he’s never done with us. [45:55] He’s always taking us into something where he wants to see his grace extended to other people. [46:03] And so we have to get that bigger vision of what the gospel does to us once we’re saved. [46:09] If we live under the gospel, it’s going to drive us farther.

[46:14] It’s going to drive us more and more towards Christ. [46:17] It’s going to give us an appetite for our neighbors.

[46:22] Because we’re so caught up in the love that he’s extended to us, we want to see that love extended to others.

[46:31] And so this is of great importance, friends. [46:34] It is of great importance. [46:36] This is of the most importance. [46:38] Friends, are you loving God? [46:39] Are you living in the gospel? [46:41] Or have you kind of grown into compliance where you just kind of want to plateau?

[46:47] Right?

[46:49] You don’t really think about the love that God’s extended to us that much. [46:54] Think about our obedience. [46:57] Friends, get back to the gospel. [46:59] Get back to the feet of Jesus. [47:01] He is what the gospel is all about. [47:03] It’s good because we get him.

[47:06] It’s good because we get him. [47:07] Do you want more of him? [47:10] Do you want more of him? [47:11] One of the questions that is always helpful for me that John Piper asks, and it kind of has a way of helping me know my heart, where I’m at. [47:23] He says, basically, if you were to go to heaven today and Jesus wasn’t there, would you be okay with that? [47:34] You can give all the other perks of heaven, but Jesus himself isn’t there.

[47:38] Friends, that helps us know what we’re pursuing. [47:43] That helps us know what we’re pursuing. [47:45] If we are living in him today, if we want him today, it’s just going to be a smooth transition right to Jesus, right to him. [47:56] And so I hope that you’re living in that. [47:59] If you’re not living in that, I hope that you’ll be reconciled to Christ. [48:06] This morning as we transition into a time where we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we are celebrating the fact that Jesus has paid the price to reconcile us to himself.

[48:24] And he did that at the high cost of his own life, the high cost of coming under the wrath of God.

[48:33] He bled and he died. [48:35] And so, friends, if you’re trusting in that, join us in celebrating that, in celebrating his death and resurrection, [48:45] celebrating the fact that we’ve been reconciled to him and given new life. [48:49] If you’re not a believer in Jesus this morning, I would ask you to consider becoming one. [48:56] Consider the fact that God has made a way, he’s placed his love on you. [49:00] You’re an enemy of his if you don’t know him.

[49:05] But he has so much love that he wants to save you. [49:09] And so if that’s you this morning, there’ll be people in the back. [49:13] Talk to them.

[49:19] Friends, Jesus purchased us and he’s given us himself.

[49:26] So come this morning, participate in trusting him through communion.

[49:34] Come when you’re ready.