There's much to do when it comes
to obedience personally, in our conscience, in our personal lives. But not all of the things that
we do in obedience is necessarily prescribed for every believer
in obedience. However, there are some things
the Bible is clear that all people should do. Let me give an example
of both. The first, some people have this
idea that it's a sin to use alcohol or to watch movies or to take
pictures. But we know that the Bible doesn't
say that either of those three are sinful. Actually, the Bible
would tell us that we have the liberty to enjoy those things,
yet there is an issue when it comes to our conscience. We feel
like we should not be doing it, or that we are controlled by
something, or that we've made an idol of something, then personally
we may abstain from those things. That's a personal obedience.
But then the Bible would tell us very clearly to love the Lord
your God and to love your neighbor as yourself. So these are not
subject to our own conscience. These are subject to basically
our salvation. In the sense that we as those
who have been saved by grace and filled with the Spirit of
God, are compelled to know that this is something that we must
be doing. But we do that not because we
are forced to do or that we're obligated to do or it's some
kind of spiritual chore that makes God happy. We do it because
we enjoy honoring the Lord. Until we don't. And then when
we don't, we find ourselves in a place of disobedience. But
at the same time, even in our obedience and our disobedience,
our stand before the Lord has not changed. And that's the most
important reality of what it means to understand the gospel,
the good report of salvation in Jesus Christ. So therefore,
we find our identity in Christ, and in doing so, we find our
identity in our obedience, do we not? We find our identity
in this world by how we dress, by what we enjoy, by the hobbies
we have, by the job that we keep, by the place that we live, by
the sports team that we follow. And sometimes, you know, that's
all that people know about us. Some people think that our identity
is our name, but as we've learned last week, when it comes to obedience,
It's because of whose we are and who we are. And that's sort
of where I left it off. And I talked about the last thing I spoke
about is understanding obedience beyond legalism about the intrinsic
versus the extrinsic motivation, the internal and external motivation
to obey. And I think I said it this way,
that obedience stemming from the inside, internally motivated,
driven by our internal faith and our internal beliefs is more
authentic and enduring than out external obedience because, which
is driven by rewards or pressure or fear or anxiety, because it
is pure. It is motivated by something
greater. It's motivated by our understanding
of who we are in Christ, thus our identity is formed in our
obedience to Christ. And that's sort of where I left
it last week. So we have an intrinsic response in obeying the Lord
Jesus rather than adhering to a set
of rules and functioning in such a way that we fear Jesus. Now, we've all been on both sides
of the crazy coin when it comes to obeying things. We've all
been on that coin spinning around on its head and rolling down
into the toilet. And we've gone on both sides of absurdity in
this way. Some of us have been judgmental, there's the best
word, of others because we see them doing, acting, thinking,
or living in such a way that we don't approve of. And then
we've also been the target of those things, have we not? Whether
we know it or not, you have been. There's been somebody in the
church or in the community or somewhere along the way who has
looked at you and thought, yeah, I'm glad I'm not like that guy.
And we have said the same thing. And yet I'll remind us, as we
look many times in the preaching of this church, we always look
at that parable that Jesus talks about, about the publican and
the Pharisee, and that the publican tore their clothes and dared
not lift their eyes to heaven and said, propitiate for me a
sinner, while the Pharisee said, thank you, God, that you've done
such a mighty work. Thank you, God, that I'm not like them.
Thank you, God, that I'm able to be disciplined and tithe,
et cetera. Now there's something that needs
to be said as we continue in this conversation. And the first
thing is this, is that no one is prescribing what we would
call antinomianism, or licensure, to just carpe diem, live how
you want to do, do what you want to do. It doesn't matter. God
doesn't have really a standard anymore because Christ has paid
for it. Now, while this can be true in some tongue-in-cheek
sense, philosophically, it is not true literally and theologically. We know that the Bible tells
us to honor others, to submit to one another, to speak with
grace, season with salt. to not think of ourselves greater
than another, et cetera, and so on, and so on, and so forth.
To put away this, and to put away that, and to put away sexual
immorality, and to not steal, but work honestly with our hands.
We're not fools. We know what is good, and prudent,
and wise, but because we are recipients of the love of God
in Christ, we know that there is no condemnation, even when
we fail to perform these things, and even when we do perform these
things, they are to a minimum standard. They are not to righteousness,
but they are because of righteousness. As Peter continues in this letter,
and I said this last week, but I have to say it again. These
first two verses, excuse me, these first two verses and this
first section here all the way down into verse 21 of chapter
one is going to be the loud proclaiming megaphone of who these people
are and what they have received and what God has done for them.
Without this clearly in their minds, they will not understand
the simple application of everything else that's been said, especially
when we get to chapter three. And I want you to be in prayer
for me because over the last 23 years, I can't say 25 because
I don't have journals for some reason on those first two years,
but over the last 23 years, I have been troubled and battling with
things that I cannot stand. I'm gonna be honest with you,
that I cannot stand about biblical interpretation. Can't stand it. There are things that trouble
me. There are things that bother
me. There are things that seem out of place in Christendom,
in evangelical life, in Protestant life, in Reformed tradition.
But the beautiful thing is that if I stick to the Word of God
and I look at the Scriptures and I continue to be reminded
and meditate on that which God has shown me from even childhood
in His Word, And most importantly, I keep front of mind who I am
in Christ and who you are in Christ. If we keep front of mind
who we really are and our identity, we will parse out these little
nuanced disagreements in our own heads. But I'll tell you
this, beloved, it is okay to disagree and to not understand
and to not like something. And you have freedom and safety
in the confines of this spiritual family to say, I don't like that. and you will not be judged, you
will not be relegated to the apostate pile, and you certainly
will not be tagged reprobate. It is okay to not believe certain
things or not understand them, because in time, we believe sovereignly,
God will teach us all things. So, enough with the psychology. Now let's get into a couple of
things about obedience beyond legalism. The religious context
here, the spiritual context, is that grace-based obedience
is not a means, and this is repetitive, but is not a means to earn God's
favor. That's legalism. but a response
to the grace already received in Christ, like Galatians 2,
and it's a reflection. I want you to hear this, beloved.
Obedience is a reflection of our new identity in Christ. It's a reflection, because we
have been what? Sanctified by the Spirit, we've
been set apart by God the Holy Spirit, and have really been
working through some of my theology about God the Spirit. It's amazing. I had to go back and sort of
think like a second grader. And now it's becoming extremely
clear. That's another day. But we come to reflect our identity
in Christ. We've been sanctified and set
apart, made holy by the Spirit of God through the life, death,
and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the satisfaction of this work
that God has done. And because of that, now we are
something different. In 2 Corinthians 5, we see that
our identity is found in Christ, that our actions and then our
choices are rooted in our relationship with Him. Some weeks ago, I did
a little, what does Trey call those things, my soapbox or my
sidebars. I had a couple of sidebars, and
one of them was about a biblical worldview. And my head was running
in a thousand directions and it comes out of my mouth is often
not really clarifying or useful. But I will tell you this, that
when it comes to a biblical worldview, the center of that, of course,
is the gospel of grace. And then in the same spot, underneath
the blood of Christ is who we are, our identity. So Peter tells these people that
they are the what? The saints, the elect exiles.
He defines who they are by saying where they're from and where
they are in the context of the dispersion. He tells them who
they are according to the foreknowledge of God and His sovereignty and
His electing love. He tells them who they are that
because the Father loves them, they have been set apart, made
holy, righteous, declared to be God's people. How? By the Spirit of God Himself.
For what reason? To obey Christ. That is the reason
to obey Christ. Jesus even says it that way.
Right. He says that if you love me, you will do what I tell you
to do. If you love me, you will obey my commands. And the commands,
as John puts them in his first epistle, are not laborious. They're
not a grief. Because they are fueled out of
the obedience of Christ. And then he says, and for the
sprinkling with this blood, Grace and peace be multiplied to you.
If you don't remember the first sermon in this series, which
was four weeks ago, go back and listen to that. Because it's
instrumental on us understanding the adhesion of the rest of this
letter. There's a couple of theological
implications I want to address before we move forward. First
is that obedience should be understood as a fruit of salvation. And
the second thing is that obedience should be understood in the context
of Christian freedom. Let me say those two things again.
Obedience should be understood as a fruit of salvation, as something
that comes out of salvation. To what level? We'll talk about
that as we move forward. We already talked about sanctification,
right? So go back and listen to that last week or the week
before. but then also obedience in the context of Christian freedom
of liberty. Obedience is not restrictive.
Obedience is not something that keeps us from doing something.
Obedience is what opens the gates for us to do what we love. So sanctification, as we've learned,
is a definitive act of God, a declaration of God, and it sets the stage
for our life of obeying the Lord. This obedience is not self-generated.
I think the Bible teaches us very clearly that, as Paul would
say in Ephesians, he says what? He says that we are God's workmanship. That means we are God's doing,
out of God's hands and God's power. And we'll get into the
Psalms in just a minute because I want to read something out
of there for you. created in Christ Jesus to do good works
that He prepared before the foundations of the world for us to walk in.
So that even when we are walking in love for the Father, also
known as loving our neighbor as we love ourselves, and then
the greater intimate love also acting, doing for others as we
would want others to do for us, We see very clearly that this is freeing. It is something that God the
Holy Spirit is effecting in us. So we don't have to get up in
the morning and wring our hands and go, I just don't know if I can obey. Hallelujah,
you tell the truth. I just don't know that I can
love others. Absolutely. It's not intrinsic. Even people,
think about this for a second. And I don't want to make an indictment.
This is just generally speaking. I think that even people that
we would deem are great and loving, especially unbelievers, we say
these are the most loving people. They have genuine compassion.
They have genuine empathy. They can take themselves into
the place of feeling the feelings. Even in an unbeliever, And even in a believer, I think
sometimes, not sometimes, all the time, there is an element
of fleshliness in those things. How? Sometimes it comes off the
backside. Feigned humility. That's not me, it's the Lord.
Father, thank you today that I was able to love this person
actively and willfully, for it's not in me, and when it is in
me, I feel pretty proud of me. You see it? I mean, let's just
be honest. Let's quit pretending that we're
walking in this bumper sticker reality of wearing the Christian
t-shirts and the wristbands. Let's just be honest. We're showing
out. We're showing and telling. We're
trying to let the world see that we love Jesus so much that we
stick it on the wall and paint it on our cars. And every missionary journey
from here to Hallelujah is archived somewhere on some social media
site. Let's get a picture of us praying
over there. Let's get the Bible out and get a picture of us praying.
Johnny, somebody's praying, put up that party hat. You're supposed
to be serious, man. We're about to have some worship,
shut your mouth. I mean, you know, that kind of
stuff. And I'm not bringing an indictment. We're unaware that
these are the realities. I'm just telling us, brothers
and sisters, we are not pure in our obedience to God. We are
not pure in our love for others. But by the Spirit of God, He
works even in our impurity to bring out pure love and ministry
to others. So it doesn't matter what our
motives are. Just like when Paul is talking to the Philippians,
And they're really upset these charlatans are making hand. They're
just banking on the fact that Paul's out of the way and he
can't keep them off the streets. So they're emulating his message.
They don't believe it. They have no concern whatsoever.
They're getting the offerings at the end of the services. And Paul's out, let them preach.
They're preaching the correct message. Who cares what their pretense
is? If Paul is satisfied in that, we know that God is satisfied
in that. So I don't, and beloved, listen, I'm gonna say some things
in the next few months that are gonna really, it's gonna, I've
been working through them for the last two or three years and
some of those for the last two decades. You're gonna hear them
for the first time and I'm gonna pray that God would give me the
sensitivity to go, okay, what I'm about to say, we're gonna
work it and unpack it and show you biblically where I've come
from instead of just rushing through like a freight train
and hoping it all lands. But there are some things that we
need to be aware of that we're just not right about. That we're
just not right about. And one of those that I've learned
is there are a lot of heretics out there, theologically, who
love people better than the ones who have the security of the
gospel of grace. And I think we need to learn
from them what love looks like according to Christ. You heard me mention this a couple
of weeks ago that I was rebuked and I said, well, I retract the
rebuke, I take it back. I don't accept it anymore when
someone rebuked me for saying that the cults often love greater
than the church in America. It is the truth. It is the truth. If you look
at my most recent publishing, which is about 1.30 this morning,
you'll see where I'm going with that. So what does it mean? If our
identity is bound in the gospel, in the blood of Christ, in the
person of Christ, and our identity is also doubly found in the obedience
that we have and freedom, for freedom you have been set free
to live under the grace of God, what are some practical things? Before I move on, let's talk
about a couple of those things, that this freedom, that this
identity, that this point of obeying in love. Remember, we're
talking about love, and I'll get to it in a minute. I just
don't want you to be sitting here making a laundry list of things
you need to do to obey. Because if, why is stealing from your
neighbor wrong? Because it's hateful. You're
taking what they've worked hard for, you're not loving them if
you're stealing from them. Whether it be their money, or
their house, or their spouse. It's not loving, right? So it
all boils down to loving God by loving others. And you can
take the Decalogue, what is that, the Ten Commandments of Moses?
You can take that and you can break it down into every iteration
is about love. It's about love. That's why Jesus
said what he said. Just like the apostles define
Old Testament theology, they actually make it clear. Jesus
does the better job and he taught them. And when Jesus says that
the greatest of all the commandments is to love your Lord your God
with all your heart, mind, and strength, and the second of equal standing.
is to love your neighbor as you love yourself. Without this grasp
of how it is applied in our lives, we are just walking theological
encyclopedias. We have no purpose. What does
Paul say in 1 Corinthians 13 of someone who is just repeating
the mantra? You're a clanging cymbal or a
banging gong, or like I put it into contemporary times for those
of us who've had toddlers, a pot lid and a wooden spoon. I swear that'd be a great object
lesson. Have one of y'all's kids go ding, ding, ding while we're
in the service. Yes, see that's not love. It's not love when
the kids do it. Because it rakes against the
very nature of our DNA. Makes us want to kill things
that are precious to us. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,
ding. That is the theological fortitude of people who have
no love. Making sense? You gotta look
at the Bible with the central thread of it all. The glory of
God, that means how he's seen, like in his birthday suit, nothing
held back, everything's obvious. We're gonna look at him for what
he is, that's what glory means. The one thing that he has revealed
to us and the only thing he has revealed to us is that he is
love. And the implementation of that
love and the application of that love shows justice and righteousness
and wrath and all these things, but it's all about love, and Trey has preached that Thanksgiving
weekend 2020. And it ripped, it ripped some
people's souls out to say, in a sense, the exact same thing
I just said, but he said it in about 12 seconds and I said it
in about four minutes. I stand behind it as viable as
the thread of the entire Holy Writ. It is the undercurrent
of God's glory. that all that he is and always
will be and ever has been is love. Because when we start compartmentalizing
God, we make him human. So what's it gonna do for us?
We get the application at the beginning, we might think a little
bit differently of what we're about to hear. The first thing
is, I believe obedience cultivates a responsive heart. Any discipline is going to have
a little bit of resistance, even that which is very good. And
especially if there's anxiety or stress or PTSD or any type
of trauma related to anything in our lives, we have to do them.
You know, it's just like after Matthew, Hurricane Matthew, not the person
Matthew, Matthew's like, what did I do? Anyway, you know, after
Hurricane Matthew is the first time I've ever experienced that
type of power and helplessness. And as I heard it, you know,
peel up the layers of my roof and I sat there in the darkness,
sitting in the chair with nothing to do but keep the towels as
the water ran down the back wall of my house, both stories. And
I'm sitting there thinking, we're going to perish. And that under
rumble and that roll of that constant wind created a trauma in me that even
when I couldn't hear it with my audible ears, anytime there
was a low rumble, I began to panic and I had great anxiety
and I didn't know what was going on. And that was the beginning
of the end for the season of sanity for me. Heavens to Betsy if I saw a cloud
or there was some storm coming, which used to, I'd walk out and
look, and this is neat. I'm like, oh, the anxiety, the
stress, this trauma is real. I was sitting at my desk about
a year and a half later, and every afternoon at the same time,
I started to feel the same anxiety, the same absolute terror. I'm
like, what is wrong with me? I could drink a glass of water,
I could go outside and walk. Come to find out one day I'm sitting
there around the same time and it came again and I heard the
rumble. And the military base was doing
tank training or something. I could not hear it audibly for
the weeks before, but my body could feel the vibrations and
it was causing me to remember in my body, because the body
keeps the score, the trauma of that experience. So what do you
do? You learn. Now what's this got
to do with love? Because beloved, sometimes when
we love people, they hurt us. I want you to hear that. Sometimes
we love people and they hurt us, they turn around and bite
us. Sometimes it's intentional, sometimes it's unintentional
because of the trauma or the pain that they may be going through
or the illness. But just the same, it's there. You ever said
something sharp to your spouse or to your family? You can't
un-say it. You can't wind back the remote
and go, oh, I'll keep my mouth shut on that. No, it's there.
Even when it's reconciled, it's always there. When you smell
smoke, you think there's a fire until you realize there's no
fire. So when we go to love others, it's not always gonna be easy.
But the more we expose ourselves to the positive outcomes of these
disciplines, the positive outcome of love, the positive outcome
of the fact, you know what? I'm safe, it's okay, the more responsive
our heart will be. If we engage in regular spiritual
disciplines, not just loving, but the spiritual disciplines
that the Bible calls us to, what are they? What are these things
that we're supposed to be doing? Praying. You know what my prayer life's
been the last few months? Last night I laid in the bed
and I just prayed that God would help me pray. For an hour, prayed
that God would help me pray. And that's all I prayed, over
and over again, talking to my Father, that I am not able to
focus and pray like I used to be. And I feel distant, spiritually,
because of that. Meditation. Gospel meditation. Physical meditation. Breathing meditation. Whatever
it is, all sorts of focused attention on certain things. Spiritual
discipline. Beloved, you can pray all you
want to, but if all we're doing is talking, then we're not growing. We've got to meditate. And if
all we're doing is reading, reading, reading, and studying, studying,
studying, highlight, highlight, and then journal it, see, that's me. I
always have a conversation going, so I like to redirect the conversation
because I'm a very controlling person. So I direct my thoughts
on paper, and I write, and I write, and I'm not exaggerating when
I tell you that I write hundreds of pages a week of journaling.
Half of those may be audio, the other half may be on my phone,
but when I die, I hope it all burns down, because
some of that stuff y'all don't want to read. But we've got to take time out
sometimes to think. The Scripture talks about renewing
our minds. Obedience to the Bible includes understanding these
things, engaging in the discipline of meditating on Scripture, and
then studying Scripture. But why do we do it? Here's why
we do it often in the world that we live in. Because we're supposed
to, because we have to know. That's not why we do it. Remember how many times you've
probably heard me say that when we're dealing with a sin that
seems to overcome us, the worst thing that we could do is to
constantly focus on the sin that's overcoming us and trying to put
it away. It's not the old band-aid, rubber band, stupid stuff on
lust. I wish I could backhand the youth pastor that created
that. You walk around a summer camp
and you hear pop, pop, snap, snap, pop, pop, pop. misogynistic for one
and I don't want to get into it. The purity culture has killed
intimacy and killed grace and killed a lot of things. You can
read that book next year. But we need to understand that
we do these things and when we struggle in these disciplines,
we just need to focus on the cross. We need to focus on the
gospel. We need to focus on the love of God for us. because that
focus seals our identity in our own mind, then the outflow of
that is a relaxed, casual discipline. You ever put discipline and casual
and relaxed in the same sentence? No, but that's the problem. Spiritual
disciplines are at rest, at rest in the gospel of grace. These
people in this dispersion are suffering greatly in a lot of
ways and Peter's going to tell them that that suffering is worth
something and that they need to rest in the finished work
of Christ, the one who they love but has never seen and still
don't see. Now see, that's tough, because what we want is, I'm
gonna read my Bible, and things are gonna happen. I'm gonna pray,
and miracles are gonna take place. I'm gonna meditate on what I've
learned, and I'm gonna become this amazing Christian without
any problems. Steve Harvey can't find it. It's
not on the board, it's not there. You're not going to get the answers,
sorry, you're looking for. You're not gonna get it if you're
not resting And when we do all this, this practical application
of cultivating responsive heart through these disciplines, we
will begin to understand the will of God through his word.
And it will transform our lives and our desires and our actions. Something else I think we need
to do. Number two, practical application. We need to live authentically
in community. This is big. This is big and it's hard because
when we are trying to do things out of obligation, it's hard
to live authentically because we're always shielded and guarded.
So we practice obedience in the context of the Christian community.
First and foremost, why do we do that? Because of all places,
we ought to be able to love one another in the family of faith. But unfortunately, it's become
the hardest place to love each other because we're not living
authentically. We're not being ourselves. We
don't even, some of us know who we are. Well, yeah, I know who
I am. My name's Bob. That's not who
you are. Well, I'm a teacher. That's not who you are. That's
what you're called and what you do. I'm a Christian, okay, but
what does that mean as far as your identity? Questions to ponder. Not gonna
find an answer for that today, are we? So we understand that
we're called to encourage. How does that look? As long as
it is called today, what? We encourage one another. We
build each other up that we may mature into love. Paul talks about that in Hebrews.
Peter is gonna do the same thing here. Exhort one another, encourage
one another. Paul even says to the church
of Ephesus that we're to grow up in the maturity into the head,
like our head, to mature and the whole test of maturity is
resting, hopeful love. Encouraging love, not controlling
love, not rebuking love, not correcting love, although you
can love in those things. There's a very small context
in which we have the right and the occasion to do those things,
and that is only found in the context of intimacy, not control. We address conflicts, we address
challenges in the church through the lens of grace-based obedience. striving for unity and mutual
edification. A little tongue-in-cheek there.
Another thing we should do is witness through obedient living. I don't like this idea that God
regenerates people by watching Christians. It doesn't work that
way. But I can tell you this, the message of the cross is ill-received
if it comes alongside hate and bigotry. Ask yourself this question. What would the world say about
the message of the Church of America generally? Unbelievers,
what did they say? I'll tell you what they say.
They say it's garbage, that it's a hot piece of trash, that it
is unloving, that it is bigoted, that it is sexist, that it is
hateful. You don't believe that? Just
ask somebody. Especially someone who claims
to be in the faith, or confesses, I don't want to say claim because
it has a negative connotation, who confesses to be in the faith
but now has been out of the local assembly of church for years. There's a reason. Beloved, I
can tell you right now, and this is going to shock you, sometimes the church is the most
dangerous place for a marriage. Let that sit for a minute. We'll unpack that when we get
to chapter three. But our obedience to Christ should
be a witness to others. Authentic grace-driven obedience
is a powerful testimony. How can you love them? What are
you doing? Peter talks about that, right? Always be prepared
to give a reason for the hope that you have. Right at the end
of all these things, that's actually second letter in it. First letter, there's a lot of
avoid this, avoid that, love this way, love that way. Hey,
pay attention. Why is he focusing on this? Because
they are Christ's sheep. They are God's children and they're
not bound to live the way the world lives. They're free from
it. No matter the suffering, no matter the pain, no matter
the hardship, no matter the sickness. Beloved, we need each other.
in order to do this. When we engage in acts of service,
when we live with compassion, when we love, it's not a checklist
of duties. There's nothing loving about
a chore, except that the chore is done
in love. But there's nothing worse than
love that feels like a chore. Acts of service and love should
be natural expressions of who we are in Christ. And a fourth application, I think
this whole thing, when we put it all down is we learn to deal
with failures and setbacks. When we fail, when we are lacking, We do what? I've already given
you this. We turn to Christ. We rest at His feet. Oh, how
I'd love to just go into Mary and Martha for the next 20 minutes. And understand the difference
in obligation, important things that need to be done versus just
putting it all aside and resting at the feet of Christ. for obedience to Jesus. We are going to grow and we're
going to learn every day. And we're going to grow and learn
backwards and we're going to grow and learn forwards. So we've
got to avoid the trap of guilt. We've got to avoid the trap of
self-condemnation. Listen to this, church. We've
got to avoid the trap of judgment on ourselves and others. We've
got to avoid that. Instead, we must rest in the
assurance that we are sanctified by the Spirit of God according
to His electing love and His foreknowledge for the sake of
being obedient to Jesus. So there's the end of the first
half of that to prepare us to really look at what obedience
are we talking about. And then we move on from that.
We move on to that. Go into the Old Testament a little
bit next week. peering into this sacrificial
system and understanding what the love of God looks like in
types and shadows and in the reality. Just to get a good,
just to slow down. We're in no hurry. I'm not in
a hurry. Are you? I'm not trying to get first Peter
in the books. I'm just trying to grow together
with you. Two weeks ago, I unpacked the
Old and New Testament view of sanctification in part, and I'm
gonna do the same thing a little bit in the context of obedience,
as it relates to loving others. Because as we're sitting here,
I've said it three times already this morning, the point of obedience
that we're discussing, and always discussing, is first and foremost,
loving your neighbor as yourself. And there's a lot of questions.
There's a lot of questions I'm still trying to answer from how
do I love this person when they're taking advantage of me? How do
I love this person who is just a real rear end? How do I love
this person who's threatening me? How do I love this person
who hates me? Jesus said, you've heard it said. To love. your brother, and to hate your
enemy. But I say to you, pray for your
enemy, love your enemy." You know what happened after
Jesus taught that? The Pharisees went and found a woman, and according to Deuteronomy,
when a woman and a man were caught in the act of adultery, they
were both to be stolen to death. But they dragged the woman out and let
the man go. And they brought her to Jesus and they threw her
naked down into the street. And so the law says she should
be put to death. And Jesus responds by doodling
something in the dirt. Now why do they do that? Because
they wanted to show that this man was a blasphemer. They wanted
to show that this Jesus of Nazareth, nothing good comes out of Nazareth,
right? We know who your daddy really is, born out of wedlock.
This is the public character of Jesus Christ according to
society during His ministry on earth. And so you say we should
love our enemies? What about this one? What about
this woman? And Jesus just doodles. And all the PhDs of the world
can tell you what he doodled, but they're wrong, they don't
know. Stop it. And he just looks up and he says,
that's right. So anybody here who was without
sin, worthy of death, without sin, because you know the way
they understood, Go ahead, just toss the stone. Start, get it
started. You get it started, and the rest will follow. And
he goes back to doodling in the dirt. And the scripture says that from
the oldest to the least, they dropped their stones and left.
And there's a message in that, too, that the older, the elder
people, the elder men and women in the church are the examples
to the younger. And I may be elder to some of you, but I'm
younger to some of you. We need each other. And then
after they've all gone, the woman and Jesus have a little tiny
dialogue and He says, where are your accusers? They've all gone
and all of your accusers are gone. I'm not going to accuse
you. I'm not going to condemn you.
You're free. So go and, you know, change your
sinful life. Don't sin like this. You see
the consequences of it, right? It's not prudent or wise. It's
not condemnation. It's consequential. You're free. That's the mercy of God. The Bible says in Matthew 22,
Jesus says in Matthew 22, you shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Jesus links this love of God
to the love of others. So our love is demonstrated in
obedience, and it's validated. Our love
for God is demonstrated and validated by our love for others. I know
that's repetitive, but it's repetitive in the Bible for a reason. And the worst thing we could
do in this sermon this morning is go, okay, move on, I get it,
yada yada yada. We get it. Well, I don't get
it. I understand it. I understand the implications,
but I'm still looking to land myself into this place. And so, yes, maybe I'm assuming
wrongly that we're all in this together, but I hope and pray
that you can see that we all need to love more. When Paul
writes to the church of Thessalonica, what does he say? He praises
God. He praises God. My hands are
dry. We give thanks to God always
for all of you constantly mention you in our prayers remembering
before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love
and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ for we
knew brothers loved by God that he's chosen you because our gospel
came to you not just in word but also in power and the Holy
Spirit and full conviction. And you know what kind of men
we proved to be among you for your sake. And you became imitators
of us and the Lord. And you received the word of
God in much pain and suffering with the joy of the Holy Spirit
so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia
and Achaia. For not only has the word of the Lord sounded
forth from you from Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in
God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything
when we arrive, for they themselves report to us the kind of reception
we had among you, and how you turned to God for miles to serve
the living and true God by loving others, and to wait for his Son
from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, who delivers us from
the wrath to come. And he continues to talk about
the appeal of the gospel. And then he goes on to say, and
I want you to continue to do this, I want you to love more
earnestly. To love more earnestly. So even
when we're doing it well, we need to do more. But we don't
need to do more out of obligation because we're not fitting the
bill. We do more out of expression of the love that was given to
us in the gospel. So love, I'll repeat myself,
is an action. not an emotion. Brothers and
sisters, emotions, especially as you age, especially as you've
been around, especially as you've had the same people in your life
for decades, emotions come and go and if we follow the emotions
we will set the world on fire and burn it to the ground. Let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth,
1 John 3.18. Love must be expressed in actions.
Feelings come and go. The New Testament teaches us the
nature of love. What is the nature of love as a Christian? I've
already mentioned it, 1 Corinthians chapter 13. What are those adjectives
there? Love is patient. Well, how am
I supposed to? What's the attitude in which
I approach? Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It's not arrogant. It's not rude. It does not insist on its own
way. It is not irritable. It is not resentful. It does
not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. These
attributes of love are explained by Paul in very practical ways. Therefore, when we see Peter
unpack this letter, when he talks about that we have been, according
to the electing love of God's sovereign grace, set apart by
the Spirit of God Himself for the sake of obedience unto Christ
and the sprinkling with His blood, we are talking about loving others. And now, we see the attributes
of this love in practical terms. Love is also a reflection of
God's love. A reflection of God's love. In
1 John 4, beloved, let us love one another for love is from
God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows, comprehends,
understands God. Moving right along, affection
and service are pathways to love. I've already said this. I just
get ahead of myself because notes are a bogged down business for
me. I've already said it. Basically,
love is not about feelings at all. It's not about feelings
at all. It's always about service. And
in serving, in doing for others, the affection, the feelings come.
We have a fondness, we have an emotional bond. Our bodies, beloved,
listen to this, our bodies, our physiological and biological
makeup are created in such a way that when we serve others, we
bond chemically. You might think, well, look at
the animal kingdom. We've got some red birds, some cardinals
in our property. They mate for life, and if one
of them dies, they never mate again. So if unthinking, unfeeling,
unintelligent, I don't want to be ugly, but you know, in comparison
to human beings, unintelligent creatures have the creative makeup
of bonding together and forming affection, what we would call
love, how much more so are we? The image of God in us is established
by the fact that we have a mind. And we know the ultimate end
of that is that Christ is the image of God in us. So love is action. And the Bible teaches us that
over and over again. Love is obedience to God, service
and sacrifices. You might say, well, how can
I really put that into a applying a method of my life? How can
I make it practical for me? Here's the way I think the scripture
unpacks it for us. I've already mentioned the text,
Philippians chapter 2, verse 3 and 4. Do nothing out of vain
conceit, selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count
others more significant than yourselves. And then he clarifies,
let each of you look not only to his own interest, but also
to the interests of others. When we practice that, you know
what happens? We practice that from a gospel
perspective of what God has done for us. How God, Psalm 40, tends
and leans down and hears us and makes attention for us. How the
incarnation is that God stepped into the world and created a
body for himself and became like us. What does that do? What does
that do? It grows us in love. It allows us to become truly
authentically, more than emotionally tied, but spiritually tied. And this is why I said earlier
that sometimes the Church of America is one of the most dangerous
places for a marriage. It's because we have forgotten
that, and we have butchered the gospel to placate to some sense
of cultural idealism that really only a small handful of people
are able to enjoy. An elitism, much like Phariseeism
of the day of Jesus. They enjoyed it. They reaped
the benefits. So the scripture is calling for
a radical reorientation of our priorities when it comes to how
we love, away from self-centeredness, away from, oh, look at me, to
a Christ-like focus on others. This is not a sentiment. It is
a sentiment, but it's not just a sentiment. It's a humble and selfless consideration
of others' needs and interests. And here's the beauty of it.
We can't help if we don't like it. We can't help if we don't
appreciate some other people. We can't help if we have no interest.
But when we are focused on the gospel and the interest of God
for us, you think God, if he were human, would have an interest
in James's hobbies? Look at all this macro photography
that I did, God. Yeah, I created that. I saw it. Look at this great chess strategy.
You know what? I gave you the brain to actually create that.
I mean, I created the rules here. Check out this math problem.
I created all the ins and wheres and the wouts the mathematical
world has never even understood. But that's not how he treats
us, is it? The Bible says that Jesus looks into our lives and
has an interest in the smallest of things. That if God the Father
notices and is concerned with, and we're going to pile emotions
on God now, but the Bible says that he's concerned with the
fact that a sparrow falls to the ground or that one hair from
our head hits the ground, that God takes note of it in his concern
for us. Beloved, when we see Peter talking
about the gospel in just a little while, a couple of months or
years or whatever, We need to recognize that it's
only the gospel because God is intently and intimately concerned
with us. That His glory is revealed in
that intention. So now ask the question, who
am I? Who am I? There's a lot to be said there. When we love from that filter, it begins to become joyful. It
begins to become powerful. It begins to fuel us. And you
know what happens when we stop? We lose that. We become stale. We become stagnant. We become
even stressed out to even engage in intimacy with someone else. The phone will ring, or the doorbell
will ring, or somebody will see you in town, or somebody will
message you on social media, or somebody walks up to you in
the service, you go, oh, the thunder's rolling and I'm freaking
out! You see? That is the moment where
we just resolve to know the Lord's purposes. Sometimes we need help
with that professionally and medically. Psychologically. Sometimes it's greater than just
personality. And that's okay. But when we love in those circumstances,
the next time it's better, the next time it's enjoyable, the
next time we're seeking out to try to love someone like that. But we have to set boundaries
in this love, right? We have to understand what the scripture
is calling us to, and as we go through 1 Peter, we will see
what that looks like. But the Lord knows you, and in
spite of that, the Lord loves you. Psalm 139, let's close with
that text today. O Lord, you have searched me
and known me. You know when I sit down and
when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from
afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted
with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it all together. You hem me in behind
and before and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too
wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it.
Where shall I go from your spirit? Or where shall I flee from your
presence? If I ascend to heaven, you're
there. If I make my bed in the grave, you're there. If I take
the wings of the morning and dwell in the utmost parts of
the sea, even there your hand shall lead me. Your right hand
shall hold me. If I say, surely the darkness
shall cover me and the light about me be night. Even the darkness
is not dark to you. The night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you. Go to John 1, Genesis 1. For you formed my inward parts. You knitted me together in my
mother's womb. I praise you. What a pretext. For I am fearfully and wonderfully
made. Wonderful are your works. My
soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from
you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in
the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance,
and in your book were written every one of them, the days that
were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. How precious
to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake and
I am still with you. Oh, that you would slay the wicked
of God, oh God. Oh, men of blood, depart from
me. They speak against you with malicious intent. Your enemies
take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate
you, oh Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with complete hatred. I count them my enemies. Look
at that authenticity. Search me, O God, and know my
heart. Try me and know my thoughts and
see if there be any grievous weight in me and lead me in the
way of everlasting. So if God knows us and loves
us, we can love and know others. I used to pray that prayer. I
used to pray a prayer out of Psalm 139, 24 every day. Father, lay my heart as a platter
before you and show me the things that do not please you." And
I would wrap up that time in prayer with a little bit of fear. One, that I would see things
I didn't want to see, and two, that God would be disappointed
in me. It's a character defect of mine. I'm sort of the center
of attention in my own world and thinking that I'm not. But now I look at that in a different
way. When God shows me the roach on my plate of my heart, I'm
not in disgust, but I'm in delight. Because He gave Himself for me
and He loved me in that way. Therefore now I can, without
shame, guilt, or obligation, love you. And it makes it not
just easier to stand here and to prepare for this every week,
but it makes it joyous. And I can't say that was the
case for the last few years, not because of you, because of
me and my view of things. But today, as we celebrate Christ's
work, we do so because we know what it means to obey Him. Beloved,
we'll move on from there next week. Let's pray. We thank you,
Father, for your love and for the everlasting hope that we
have because of it. Lord, thank you for allowing
me to express these things and to go through all these different
texts of scripture this week to show us that obedience is
truly a fruit of your work and that the main thing is to focus
on loving ourselves that we may love others as ourselves because
you have first loved us. That's how we love you. And we
pray that you would guide us, you would keep us, and you would
help us to walk away from things that don't please you or that
bring negative consequences in our lives. But Father, even when
we do what is right, we will still suffer, but we will do
so with delight, knowing that one day there is a glory that
we will see that will also be a part of us. And we pray these
things in the name of Christ. Amen.