I'm not too worried about it. There's a few places that I want
us to focus on with the theme of today. Now you've heard me
say these things many times and you'll hear me say these things
again. But we as a culture and as a
people as a congregation, as a community. I'm not quite sure
that we've yet to discover the reality of what love is. And there have been a lot of
failed attempts at trying to teach it. A lot of failed attempts. So
we teach it through the expression and the exposition of what the
Bible says. In other words, we expose what the Bible teaches.
So we teach that God is love and that love is God sending
His Son, God the Son, to the earth to be born into the world. And in His life, living as a
person, He fulfills all righteousness because He is righteousness.
He loves correctly, he lives correctly, he learns correctly,
he laughs correctly, and any other L that could pop out of
my head in one sequence. Jesus Christ is the absolute
quintessential reality of righteousness. He is love. God loves us, therefore
we love him. But we have really messed it
up. And you've heard me use the examples
about, you know, we love pizza, we love sports, we love movies.
Man, we hate this weather, blah, blah, blah. And so language and
experience and the things that we put in our minds has tainted
everything that we ought to be doing and being as a people.
And this is not an indictment, this is an observation. And six
years from now, it's not going to be any better for us. We're
not going to be stronger, more loving. But we must think about
this moment today. We spend too much time as human
beings in the wrong place. We spend too much time in the
future hoping to get to a better place, better me, better opportunity,
better this, better that, better vision. Or we spend too much time in
the past, in one of two ways. Wishing that it was as good as
it was back then, or lamenting on how bad it was back then. And so then it pushes us back
to the future. I hope it's better, I bet it's gonna be just as bad.
This is not living, this is worthless living. It's worthless thinking. I don't know who said this, but
some Christian psychologist probably said it's stinking thinking. It's beyond stinking. It's worthless. It's vain. And then we've done
a wonderful job as a culture. Christianity has done a wonderful
job over the centuries of expressing this good, pious way of life,
this freedom we have in Christ by surrendering us to put on
shackles, to become slaves, and then calling that slavery slaves
to righteousness. Aren't you glad you're free to
not breathe, not think, not eat, not smile. Put your smile away,
young lady. This is church. I mean, that would be one of
the most ironic but self-fulfilling prophecies. If we named a church,
No Smiles Baptist Church, and people would show up laughing
at them, like, take your smile away. We'd have shushers at the front
door instead of ushers. No laughing, no smiling. We don't have ushers. You just
got to find your own seat. And if somebody's in it, sit next
to them or sit in their lap. That would get a rise. What happened? I don't know, we were just sort
of playing musical chairs and he was in my chair. Yes, there are a lot of things
that I have come to be aware of in my own life, but I am one
of your pastors. And so when we, as God's teachers
to God's people, experience God's purposes, we are to then also
contextually express those purposes. You understand that preaching
the Bible is not classroom material. Preaching the Bible for the sake
of the church is to impress upon us as a people to know the word,
to know the Lord, and to know each other in an intimate way
that we cannot do so without the context of the assembly.
And part of that is that as teachers of the scripture, we go through
the squeezing just a couple of days or a couple of hours before
you get to hear about it. Any man that stands, any woman
that stands, any mother that stands, any father that stands,
any child that stands, old, young, or whatever, and stands as an
authority of what we ought to be doing, but yet in their own
lives has not come to learn that in wisdom through experience.
don't know what they're talking about. So as much as I have experience
in the Lord's discipline, I can say with absolute certainty,
this is how the Lord works. And the areas where I don't have
that experience, I can say, this is what the word says. But I
must be careful to recognize the difference in what God has
shown me and taught me and put me through and what God's word
says that I should understand about how to go through it. But sometimes we see this authoritative
thing, right? And many of you through the years,
I have done it as well. We take this person standing
here on this platform as this incredible example of godliness. And I've always said that that's
a problem for you to look at me that way. And everybody laughs
as if I'm a comic when I'm really just being honest. And then there is this nature
in us where we get into deeper theological things, nothing wrong
with that, but we get into the nuts and bolts of the spiritualized
side of the understanding of the Bible, and we wanna experience
that, and we wanna drive it, so we think, oh, we gotta get
more of that, gotta get more of that experience, gotta get
more of that emotion, we gotta get more of that, of this, of
whatever it is, we don't even know how to call it, so we think
that what we need to do is we need to study, and then the next
thing we know, we're studying ourselves out of love. We're
putting ourselves in a place where we don't even love ourselves.
We don't love the Lord, and we certainly don't love the Lord's
people. And then some well-meaning authority comes and says, we've
got to love one another. And then ding, dang it, we're all
back to the guilt place. We're shackled again in misery. And we're starting over. And
the squeaky wheel, the squeaky wheel gets the oil. The squeaky
wheel gets the love. The squeaky wheel gets the attention.
The squeaky wheel is not even messed up. It just squeaks while
the whole structure of the machine is falling apart. The engine
is tearing up. The electricity is drained. And
we're spending time with a squeak. And sometimes that squeak is
in our head, sometimes that squeak is our spouse, sometimes that
squeak is our children, our circumstances, what we wish we had, what we
wish we didn't have to go through. Beloved, we talk about the sovereignty
of God, and let me tell you something, if God were not sovereign, I
would not want to be here. And when I say be here, I'm not
talking about in this space, standing on this stage, I'm talking
about in this world. There is absolutely no purpose
outside of God's promises. But we as believers are not exempt
from the strain and the pressure and the posturing of wishing
that we could get the world under our grasp, not even in greed
ways, not even in maniacal ways, not even about controlling. We
just wish we could have a sense of just lazy river type living
for just a month. Can we just sit in the inner
tube without a sunburn for one day? I spent all day at the pool
yesterday, so I've got that on my mind. It's like, why can't
life just be normal for just a little while? Newsflash, that
is normal. It is normal. Tornadoes of the
mind, hurricanes of the soul, floods of the emotions. and light and beautiful weather
and awesome clouds and a gentle breeze. It's all part of the
experience. The only constant is the never
changingness of our Lord and Savior. So we as the church,
we as the elders, we as brothers and sisters have not just an
opportunity, but we have a responsibility to encourage each other in the
word. And beloved, do you know that it's easy to go a whole
week and not even tell anyone about the gospel? You know why
that is? Because we're not telling ourselves
about the gospel. That's why it's so attractive to get stuck
into the theological trainings of academia. That's why it's
so easy to get into the podcasts. Welcome to today's Heresy Watch.
We got a new man on the list, James Tippins. He's number six.
Hallelujah. And if somebody wants to give
me airtime or free rent, I'll fill it up with something for
them. And I pray that it would be hope
and joy and opportunity. But if the Bible hasn't promised
that our circumstances are going to get better, but the Bible
has promised that if our attention is on the love of God, that it
will be better. Love. The prayer in Ephesians
chapter 3 verse 14, for this reason. So much there. Trey,
you gotta hurry up and fill this in so I don't have to talk about
it. For this reason. For what reason? For this reason. the stewardship of God's grace,
me as a slave to you, the Gentiles, sharing with you the amazing
reality of two people, the picture of separation from God, the picture
of justice and righteousness and judgment. Because God has
established you in Christ, you are now all one in Christ because
of the love of God. By grace you have been saved.
You see, this is Paul's tenacity, and he's suffering. And he's
not worried about escaping his circumstances, he's worried,
he's not even worried, he's embracing the opportunity to rejoice in
them. I have to be careful, because
I can emphatically, with charisma, change your emotion right now.
Because I get excited about things, and I get in my flesh, and that
flesh is excitable. I like to have a good time. I
like to enjoy things. I like to laugh. I like to hide
behind comedy. Because it erases that whisper
of things are awful. Things should be better. I should
have done better. You know, that liar. But because of the promise of
Christ, Paul prays this prayer for this reason. I bow my knees
before the Father, from whom every family in heaven
and on earth is named that according to the riches
of His glory, He may grant you to be strengthened with power
through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell
in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded
in love, may have the strength to comprehend with all the rest
of the saints what is the breadth and the length
and the height and the depth. And to know the love of Christ
which surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with all the
fullness of God. Now, Paul says in Ephesians 3.20,
to him who is able to do far more than all that we could ask for
or all that we could think of, how, according to the power at
work within us, within us, to Him be the glory in the church
and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever
and ever. It is so. Amen. Let's pray and go home. If we did nothing else this week
but take those few sentences and embrace them and get up every
day and read them to ourselves and read them to our loved ones
and read them to our children and read them to our spouses. And discipline ourselves to just
be strengthened in our inner soul. The heaviness of this life
would not feel so heavy. It would still weigh. Exactly
the same, but we wouldn't be carrying it. I have spent the better part
of 10 years learning to apply biblical truth to lives. My terminal
instruction and academics is in applied epistemology, applied
theology. And the irony is that it focused
on the love of God. Yet in the deepest season of
the need of that, I couldn't find it. Because I've realized
that in those same 10 years, and I don't worry about what
was before all that, I was sort of on autopilot under a very
serious oppression of just like culture. Thought I had escaped
it, but no. But in those 10 years also, I've
learned that I've spent that time seeing that I have not learned
how to apply wisely the Bible. And there's freedom in that. Because it allows us, as Paul
would use that illustration, that imagery, wake up, oh sleeper,
and arise. Wake up. I mean, people write the movies
and books like The Matrix for a reason. Alice in Wonderland
for a reason. This is not new. It's not a new
idea. It's not science fiction. It's
psychology. It's spiritual. It has everything
to do with the thoughts and the minds and the affections and
the disciplines of the person inside of us. But if you study
like I do in certain philosophical circles, you realize that now
we've come to conclude there is nothing inside of us. And these people
are getting traction as they are told people to listen to
them who are nothing inside of anything. Okay, my brain just went to sleep.
The scripture teaches us differently. To arrest this understanding
that we don't really know what we're doing. We don't know that
just because it has been the practice doesn't make it correct.
Just because it has been the theology doesn't make it accurate.
Just because it has been the culture, of course it doesn't
make it right. And I'm not talking about the
world, I'm talking about us. I'm talking about me. And I want to talk this morning
about love. I know a love like this. I know a love like this that
loves me because of me and in spite of me. The Bible teaches this, and then
the Bible teaches me to love like this. I'm just getting started. I'm
just getting started, and I'll be 50 next year. And you know
what that makes me feel like? A failure. But you know what it really means?
God's got it. His purpose, His plan, His power.
What does it mean to love? Let me give you a philosophical definition of love. is to give or extend one's own
self to the needs, nah, scratch that, to the nurture of another's
spiritual growth. And I'm using spiritual there
in a secular sense, in a philosophical sense. But as a Christian, as
a believer, as a spiritual person, then we know that also includes
the spiritual sense of the gospel. Why? For the purpose of growing
them. So love seeks to grow another, to make sure that everything
that I do as a lover embraces everything that person needs
and wants to do for their own good joy and goals. Like I said, secular philosophical
definition. By expanding them, encouraging
them, helping them reach their goals. helping them thrive, having
their best interests at heart. Now, I can put passages of scripture
to everything that I just said. I can give a proof text and a
pretext, but it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm right. So test
my words by the word. But if you wanna test my words
by the culture, I'm not interested. If you wanna test my words by
your Google search, I'm not interested. If you wanna test my words by
the context, I'm always interested. God will teach you. He will teach
you. You don't need me. My job isn't
to make sure you get it right. My job is to make sure you hear
it, and God will get it right for you. Let's hear some of those proof
texts. Love one another with brotherly affection. Romans 12. I've been
in Romans 12 for a couple of weeks. It's there. Love one another
with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing
honor. Brotherly, sisterly affection.
It means familial affection. Sibling affection. It doesn't
mean masculine, male, boy, man. It means siblings. Paul would tell the church of
Philippi, do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility
count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of
you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interest
of others. Love then would say, okay, when
the interest of another that I love conflicts with my interests,
Paul would command husbands to lay down those interests. and command wives to lay down
those interests. You see, if we're both seeking to serve the
other, we're getting served, we're getting love, we're getting
needs, and I don't want to conflate these things, because there's
a difference between love, meeting needs, and adoration. Galatians 5, for you were called
to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use that freedom
as an opportunity for the flesh, but use that freedom to serve
one another, which is love. 1 Corinthians 13, we all know
this, love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does
not boast, it is not arrogant, it is not rude, it does not insist
on its own way, it is not irritable. We should add that to the marriage
vows. I will be irritable. It is not resentful. A contemptuous person is impossible
to love. But they're not. Because usually
they're contemptuous because you're impossible to love. You
see? It does not rejoice at wrong.
It rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, it believes
all things, it hopes all things, it endures all things, and later
Paul would say, it does not keep a record of wrong. I journal
every day, all day. Some of you see me pick my phone
up and start. I'm journaling. Journaling. Three, four, five,
six pages a day. And I've been doing that for
a long time, and I did not do that for two years. I started back
in September. And it was one of the worst things
I ever did, to not journal. Just a little tip. Hebrews 10,
let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good
works. Ephesians 4, I'll get there in a minute, with all humility
and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.
James says, if you really fulfill the royal law according to the
scripture, you will love your neighbor as you love yourself.
You're doing well. In 1 John 3, if anyone has the
world's goods and sees his brother in need yet closes his heart
against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children,
let's not just love in what we say and how we talk. Let's love
in what we do. John 15, 12, Jesus, this is my
commandment that you love one another in the same way that
I love you. Matthew 22, 39, and second is
this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. This is Jesus being
tested by the Pharisees. But here's the thing about love.
This serving, this sacrificial, this unconditioned, we confuse
it with the feeling, right? I think DC Talk said it best,
love is a verb. Love is a verb. It's an action.
How do we know the love of God? Because of what He has done for
us. Not what He said to us, what He's done for us. And what has
He done for us? Christ Jesus in the flesh, lived a perfect
life, died, sacrificial replacement, substitution, righteousness upheld,
and the forgiveness of His people. Oh, how do we know it worked?
He rose from the dead. Now we see the love of God manifest
completely and fully in all the glory. Birthday soup type glory.
I see you. And I see you love me. I see
you love me. How should I love you? How can
I love you? Let me count the ways. You know,
the poem. I've taken a stab at that kind
of stuff. But love is not about our feeling.
Love is sort of interesting because we think love sometimes then
is meeting needs. But that's not love either, is
it? Because can I not meet your needs and not care much about
you? Absolutely. I'm a hyper empath. I'm fighting
that. I'm being healed of that. It's not been an easy road. It's
been very difficult. It is a clinical issue, but I'm free. I'm free to feel, but not die. And so, yes, I can see somebody
on the street that I've never met, and after 30 seconds, I feel
something. I feel what they feel, and it's not easy, because then
I feel responsible. And I can't fix it. So it's not my responsibility
to fix it. But if they're hungry, I can
give them some food. So I can meet their needs without
loving them. But yet, if I love them and don't
meet that need, that's not love. You see? So we can care for people. I mean, doctors and nurses, they
care for people all the time, but they're not loving them. Counselors and therapists, they
can talk and care for people all the time and meet needs,
but they're not loving them. That would be strange. So you
can't really counsel or give therapy to your immediate family.
It's very difficult. Love is not required to meet
someone's needs yet. If you do love, it does require
meeting needs. And what happens, especially
in marriages and stale relationships, and we get into the mundane,
we just do the same thing over and over again in the church,
with our children even sometimes, we just meet needs, we meet needs,
we meet needs, we meet needs, I'm loving, I'm loving, I'm loving,
and we lose the feeling that we think is love, and then the
next thing you know, we're resentful. We're frustrated, we're bitter,
we're whatever. And then we are abusive. Emotionally,
verbally, sometimes people are physically. And then we are neglectful. And when we are abusive and neglectful,
there is no love present. When we dismiss and neglect those
we say we love, we are not loving them. We are literally doing
the opposite. And that's not to indict us in
guilt. That's to make us open our eyes, wake up and see. Love requires care. Don't believe
me, listen to this, Philippians 2. I've just said it. Look after
other people's interests, not just your own. Bear one another's
burdens and fulfill the law of Christ. Matthew 25, Jesus, they
ask, when did we ever see you hungry, naked, in prison, sick,
thirsty? I was hungry, you gave me food.
I was thirsty, you gave me drink. I was a stranger, you welcomed
me. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited
me. I was in prison, and you came to me. And when you did
unto the least of these, my brethren, you've done it unto me." See,
people think, oh, I just love the Lord Jesus. Be thou my vision. It's one of my favorite songs.
I love it. That's when I'm like a pipe organ
might even actually make me feel my I could feel more spiritual
if it was You know, I have to get up I
have to get a flag and start waving I might get a little Pentecostal
up in here Love it It makes me feel something. I feel something. I feel that
specialness. I feel that emotion. I feel that
affection I feel that yes And we're looking for that in love,
and that's not what love is, and that's not love when I feel
that, that's emotion. Cathexis is actually the clinical
term for it. And it can, that type of feeling
can happen with anything. I'm very sentimental, so I have
objects that were given to me by people who are no longer in
the world, and I'm attached to those objects. Not as much as
I used to be. You can be attached to ideas,
you can be emotionally attached, and it's okay to be attached
in a loving relationship. But don't confuse that feeling
of tenderness and affection and butterflies and all that stuff.
That will come and go depending on what's going on in your mind
and in your body and in your world. Because it will cause
us to look at things with a different set of glasses. I've got so many
sets of glasses now, I went from no glasses to too many glasses.
But I'm not going to be without them anymore. I'm not going to
step and break on two pairs in one week. We look wrongly because we're
not understanding what we're doing. And that's really what
happens when we find ourselves lost, right? We're not willing
to ask for directions. We're not willing to open up
the map. We're not willing to check beforehand. We find ourselves wandering around
and trying to go, well, I know where I'm going. And we just
go into circles. We end up in the wrong direction. Same thing with
a recipe. I know how to cook this. And
next thing you know, you're throwing it away and going to McDonald's. I know how to deal with this
issue. Let me just sit down with these people. And you don't think you don't
listen. There's a lot of stuff going on there. But we need to
realize that when we love God, it's not about how we feel toward
him. Those things come through discipline. We drive ourselves
to feel emotion and to feel affection and to feel connection. It's
an act of the will. It's not what causes us to know
if we love someone or not. If we love someone, it's because
we've chosen to love them no matter what they are or how we
feel. Love like Christ. So this nonsense
about I fell out of love is a bunch of hogwash. It's nonsense. This idea about,
you know, well, I just I don't feel anymore. I don't know anymore.
No, you do know you're making a willful choice not to. Because
it's not love. Religion that is pure and undefiled
before God the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in
their affliction and to keep oneself on staying in the world.
As you wish that others would do to you, do to them. As you
wish others would speak to you, speak to them. As you wish others
would give to you, give to them. As you wish others would see
you, see them. We who are strong have an obligation
to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves.
And beloved, I'm talking to me. Cathecting, cathexis, it's not
love. Because we can love things that
aren't sentient. I've loved a stuffed animal before
that I cried when I lost it as a kid. One of our dogs destroyed a stuffy
of one of my children's years and years ago and they wept.
Why? Because we personify inanimate
things and then we have a feeling toward them. That's catharsis. It's an emotional thing. It doesn't mean we care about
them and it doesn't mean we love them. Because if we're not looking
after their spiritual, emotional, physical well-being, if we're
not caring about growing with them, we're not loving them.
And even then we have to be careful because love is a willful choice. That's why marriage is a picture
of the gospel. God made a willful choice to
purchase a people through the death of his son. Marriage is
the most perfect picture of that. And it's because marriage lives
with two people who are independently selfish, who are commanded by
biology and theology to be interdependent, not codependent. Remember, I
talked about that about a month ago. It really is impossible because
we're really not compatible in our nature unless we're just
getting our own way. When we're deeply drawn to other
people, we invest feelings and emotions. And that person becomes
important to us because we've invested. You see the discipline
there? We choose to invest our time and emotions there. That's
the idea of love. These feelings come and go, but
the love that we have stays because it's the choice we've
made. We don't deserve God's love or grace. He gives it unconditionally.
We did not deserve to be counted righteous in the death of Christ,
but it was credited to us. And when given the opportunity,
we won't even make the right choice concerning that. Because
it's not a choice. It's a divine gift. And there's a lot of times where
our culture, they think that love is this feeling, love is
this emotion, love is this thing. No, love will produce that on
that which it wants to produce that. We will choose to give
ourselves emotionally and be emotionally available to the
things that we want to love. But if we don't want to love
those things, it is so easy to shut them out. The negative side
of that is that we see people just destroying relationships
because of their unwillingness to be honest about their emotions. And the other negative side of
that is it's not only about relationships. It can happen in politics. You know, nostalgia, like I said
earlier about the way things used to be. Oh man, it was just
like the old days. I mean, you sisters, do you really
want to go back in time? I asked Robin this question a
couple of weeks back. I said, if we could go back any
place in history, where would you want to go? She said, as
a participant or just an observer? As a participant, nowhere. As
a woman, I don't want to go back five years, much less 100. Being my own boss, running my
own company, doing my own stuff with agency and equality, to
be in property? Heck no. And the sad thing about
that is that women were in that place because people said the
Bible said they should be. That's satanic. I like the old school ways. That's a misplaced Catechesis.
I want nothing to do with it. We see it in ageism. We often
see it, you know, boomer. You know, you see that kind of
attitude. A lot of people, young people say that kind of stuff.
Because sometimes there's this affection that we have with ideas
and epochs. Man, I just miss the way it used
to be. How about be present today? This psychological term is not
in the Bible, but there are places that we can see the relationship
of Catechesis in terms of our affections, our focus, and our
devotion. So we learn to be devoted. The Bible teaches us that we
should learn to be devoted to produce the emotions, to produce
the affection for the things that we have decided to love.
And specifically speaking, two things. The Bible says for us
to love two things. What are they? and others. And in the others,
we are to love our spouse, our children, our family, our church,
our community, our world. And we're to do so by being disciplined, to learn how the Lord loves us.
Because it's really the fuel, beloved. It's really the fuel.
It's really what's going to keep Tippins from becoming apathetic
and cynical and fearful and anxious about relationships in the world.
And for those of you who've been with us, you know what I'm talking
about. And if you don't think that stuff affects all of our
relationships, it does. It's affected our relationship.
It's affected my home. It's affected the way I look
at the world. It's affected anything. It does. So first we must understand
that the Bible teaches us that we ought to put affection, we
have to be disciplined to create the space and to give time to
the thoughts and emotions that would make us see the world through
the lens of the love of God so that we might love Him through
the lens of Christ, that we might love one another and it starts
at home. Sometimes people get extremely
benevolent and get extremely, you know, community focused because
they want to overcompensate for their lack of discipline of loving
in the smaller circle. That's why multimillionaires
and billionaires later in life, they start giving away 90% of
their money because they're like, I got to do something good with
it. Where your treasure is there,
your heart will be also. How many misapplications have you
heard that? I mean, I remember being taught in my 20s, Robin
and I serving the Lord and trying to, thought we were, and being
told, you know, I want to look at your checkbook. I want to
see where you're spending your money to see if you're really
serving the Lord with your money. I'm like, yeah, that's not going
to happen. It's none of your business. I mean, that's legalism,
that's garbage. But we were told that. Set your minds on things that
are above, not on things that are on earth. Colossians 3. Delight
yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your
heart. See, these are commands. Set your mind, delight, love,
be affectionate. Put your emotions here, not here.
So the things that we feel, our feelings are ours to control. And when they're not where they
should be, it's because we're not letting them. We're stifling
them. I'm not kidding. We're stifling
them. And we're doing that sometimes by looking through a lens of
all the negative, to try to find the princess and the pea. You
know the story? Never understood the moral of the story. The princess
could be known to be the princess if she could feel the pea under
like 20 mattresses. I didn't sleep at all, the pee
kept me awake. Okay. I mean, who has the money
to buy 20 mattresses? Those things are ungodly. Expensive. Finally, brothers, whatever is
true, whatever is pure, whatever is honorable, whatever is just,
whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there's anything
that is excellent, if there's anything worthy of praise, think
about these things. That includes the divine, it includes the world,
it includes each other. And when we do these things,
we are actually then loving God. If we're not looking for the
good in one another, we are not loving God. If we are looking
to find all the problems, and they're there, and it's not that
we should ignore them. We should speak up as the church when we
see injustice in the world. But it's not our primary mission,
but it is something we must speak on. Because it is affecting us.
I didn't think it affected the church like it does. But it does. It does. Do not love the world or the
things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the Father is
not in him. Do not be conformed to this world, as we've talked
about over the last two weeks. Oh, how I love your word, your
law. It's my meditation all the day. You shall love the Lord your
God with all your heart and soul and mind. And this is the greatest
and the first of the commandments. The psalmist write in Psalm 119.
With my whole heart I seek you. Let me not wonder from your commandments.
I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin
against you." And I could go into Song of Solomon right now
and really blow your minds. As lovers come together to seek
each other intimately, pleasurably, it is a willful, decisive affection
that grows as a picture of our affection for the Lord. And I'll
just let that ride. But there's a lot of stuff that
gets in the way of this. So how do we grow into truly
lovers? Not just taking care of needs
with apathy or indifference. Not looking to feel, because
that's not true. I don't feel anymore, but I'm
loving. I willfully love, so I'm going to put my attention
to meet needs because of my love, and I'm going to put my attention
to grow emotionally closer and bond with someone because of
my love. So how do we do that? We do that
with shared experiences. And that's what the New Testament
talks about all the time, isn't it? Paul's like, I want to be
there, remember when we were together, we were doing this.
I've opened up my counseling practice again, very small, got
a couple of people I'm talking with, but you know, I'm expanding
this gift. And one of the primary things
that we always say is we ask the question, what brought, like
for example, like a marriage, what brought you together? And a lot of times it's infatuation. When did you make the choice
to love one another? That's what I ask now. When did
you make the choice to love one another? Make that choice today. Like a comedian tests jokes,
I test lines like this at my house. And you know why I love you? Because I choose to. It's not
very romantic. Nope. But it frames my purpose. And then when the romance is
there, oh man, it's great, but it's not the fuel that keeps
it. And when it's not there, it's not the fuel that burns
it down. Early love, early tenderness,
and this is biblical. We return, Revelation. I mean, John, he
talks, Jesus is telling him to write a letter to the church
of Ephesus, chapter two. I know the works. Oh, man, you're
serving. I know your toil and your labor
and your patient endurance. Man, you are tough. Y'all are
really doing everything right and how you cannot bear with
evil. You're standing for righteousness and you've tested those who call
themselves apostle and found to be false. Gosh, I know you
are enduring patiently and you're bearing up for my namesake and
you've not grown weary. You've really given it your all. But I have this against you. Listen to that. Jesus, if he
stood right now and says, hey, buddy, I point to an empty chair,
have this against you. I mean, this isn't like the guy
at the bank going, I don't like the way your cologne smells.
It's stifling me. I saw your YouTube video and
I just don't agree. This is God. I have this against
you. You have abandoned the love that
you had at first. Remember. Return. Oh, great. Remind, remain. There we go. There's the four
points of the sermon. Remember, therefore, from where you have
fallen, change your mind. That's what the word repent means.
Change the way you are thinking and put your mind on thinking
this way. Do the works that you did at
first. What were the works that you
do at first when you fall in love with Jesus? You remind yourself
of how you're loved by him. You remind yourself on what his
love is and what he's done for you. Not what he hasn't done
for you today. What have you done for me lately?
A lot of songs like that. It's a good question, and I think
as those who are to love one another, we ought to ask ourselves
that question, what have I done for them today? How have I encouraged
them today? How have I built them up today? Have I prayed for them? Have
I remembered who they really are? Or am I looking at who they're
acting to be right now? Remember the beginning, Jesus
says, and if not, if not, I will come to you and I will remove
your light from its place unless you change the way you think. Remind back to Ephesians, you
know, being built up in love. Speaking the truth in love, living
in love, my calling. So crazy. How much responsibility
I've put on myself for everything for so long. My responsibility
is to remind us of the love of God and to remind us of how to
live as loving people. It's up to you to do it, to teach
you how to do, how to grow so that you may do the work of the
ministry. And yet we need help, we need
other people, we need other men and women in the church to lead,
to be examples and to help structure the environment for that. I remind
us, I teach, I pray, I lead by example, and then we all do the
work. And the work is not fulfilled
in the context of what? Of doing or providing a structured
program for you. I can't create a program of loving
your neighbor. If we have needs with the neighbor,
then we as a church can meet those needs. But who are we going
to help this week? Who are we going to help this
week? What are we going to learn this week? This isn't living.
It's not organic. It's like taping leaves to a
plant and saying that it's growing. Look at all the leaves. Oh, crap,
half of them died. Let's tape some more. And that's
where I feel like the ministry can be so quickly if we're not
careful. It becomes sterile and fake. And then we end up just buying
a silk plant that we just have to dust. And then we get mad because
we're the only one dusting it. You know how I dust this plant
every week? Ooh, such an energy expression. Just blow on it. You know, Johnny
up here never dusts. I'm the only duster. Resentment.
He's a sorry person, contempt. I don't care about Johnny. Change the way you think. Being
built up in love. How is it going to work? Because
now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than anything
we could think of or ask for. To be strengthened. Paul prayed
this prayer and it was answered. Are you not strengthened in the
gospel? I don't feel strong because we're not putting our mind on
the love of God and we're not loving others as God has called
us to. And you know what else? I actually misspoke. There's
three ways we're supposed to love. Three objects of our affection. And one of them is yourself. Husbands, love your wife as Christ
loved the church. Husbands, as your own body, love
your wives. Nourish, care, clean, feed. For no one despises his own body. And we need to remain in this.
We need to remain in this love. Nothing can separate us. Romans
8, nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing can
separate us from the love of God. People will come into our lives
in the context of our fellowship, come into our lives in the context
of our friendships, and we are responsible for them as long
as they agree to stay. When it comes to marriage, we're
in a commitment. When it comes to our children,
there's not a whole lot we can do to get rid of them. But eventually they will leave
and they will become their own person, independent of us. Children must be independent
of their parents as they grow. Sometimes things get in the way
of even those relationships. But nothing can separate us from
the love of God. Nothing. Not even God Himself. Nothing. And all these things, as we are
being killed all the day long, regarded as sheep of slaughter,
a.k.a. normal life, we're more than conquerors through
Him who loved us. This is Romans 8.37, for I am
certain. I'm convinced, I'm sure, I'm
absolutely guaranteed to think these things are true. I am certain
that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor the
things present, nor things to come, nor any power, nor height,
nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation will be able
to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Nothing shall separate us. I know a love like this. I want to love like this. I want
you to love like this. It's going to take time. And
it's going to take not listening to the culture and not listening
to the Christian culture. Please. I believe the Christian
culture is more anti-Christ than the culture. And I'm going to
show you that in the months to come. This idea of love and care and
investment, emotional, mental energy, cathexis, choosing to
feel close and bond. Love forms the foundation of
our actions and attitudes toward each other. The Bible teaches
us to love one another selflessly and sacrificially as God has
loved us. It involves genuine care and
concern for the well-being and progress of others in every element
of life. This involves investing our emotional
and mental energy in something or someone. In the context of
caring for one another, it means directing our thoughts and affections
and attention toward their needs, their progress and success. It
is an intentional investment of our energy to support and
uplift them. It helps us be close. Care, it encompasses a whole
range of actions and attitudes that demonstrate love and concern
for others' needs. It involves actively looking
out for the well-being, the progress, the success of those around us.
You see those terms? Care can be shown through acts
of kindness, provision, encouragement, support, and service. But when
we put all these things together, and you might think, this is
some psychobabble. No, it's theology. Because now I can show you in
the very last moments, as I've already done, that Jesus Christ
exemplified all of these. He willfully chose to put His
affection and His emotion and His intention toward His people
in everything. Not just the grand scheme of
the meta-narrative of the universe, which come to be the sacrificial
lamb, but even in the daily things. Speaking the truth and love to
Jesus was not getting people to be called out because of their
error. It was loving them through it
and helping them feel confident that He alone could guide them
to the truth. And until they saw it perfectly,
and then, even though they would forget it later, it wouldn't
change their standing before Him. Does that sound familiar? Till
death do us part, and that Jesus will never die. He embraced the outcast, the
marginalized, the sinners, showing compassion, offering forgiveness
or teaching forgiveness. His love was selfless and all-encompassing. He invested his emotional and
mental energy ministering to people, demonstrated deep empathy,
understanding their struggles, loving them, weeping because
people weeped. He engaged with them on a personal
level. showing genuine interest and concern for their lives.
He cared for them by meeting their needs. Even though there
was a theological purpose for this, He showed the way and then
said we should do likewise. He healed the sick. He filled
the hungry. He comforted the brokenhearted. He spent time teaching, guiding,
empowering His disciples to go out and do the same. He went
out of His way to meet people where they were, like John 4,
like Nicodemus, like Zacchaeus. And He addressed their physical
needs, their emotional needs, and most importantly, their spiritual
needs. He healed the sick. He fed the hungry. He showed
love to sinners. He cared for people. And if this is the example of
what God's love is, and the example of what human love can be, we
need to get with it. And what does that mean? Be reminded of the gospel returning to our
first love and remaining there in our mind, our body and our
decisions and will. Let's pray. Father, I am tired. And many of us are tired. I can
see it. I can feel it. We're tired. And sometimes we don't even know
why, we just know that there's so many things that are just dragging
us down emotionally, that our energy, that our emotional energy
is gone, thus our physical energy is gone and our mental energy
is gone. And sometimes it's because we're not getting our physical
needs met, our emotional needs met, our spiritual needs met. So Lord, we have that responsibility
for each other that we would patiently just wait and love
as we wait. Father, as the Apostle Paul prayed
that we would be filled and strengthened with all power by the love of
Christ in us and the power that indwells us and is at work in
us, Lord, this spiritual truth that we seem to debunk and act
like it's just this mind thing, it's really working, drive us
to your Word. Father, there are members of
this congregation who we've not seen or heard from. And they
are neglecting your promises. And it breaks my heart. But it is not my responsibility
to change them. Nor is it any of our responsibilities
to change them. We can speak the truth and leave
the outcome to you. Lord, teach us even the practical
ways of learning how to talk with each other and to see each
other. As I think about perception and
how your word teaches us to view the world and to view everything,
let us view one another through the eyes of grace, forgiveness,
and reconciliation unto a love that is greater than it ever
was before. Get us away from the past and
longing for a different, better future. Help us to live the abundant
life now in the grace that you've given us in Christ. For He gave
His life, His body was broken and His blood was shed for us,
that His love might be seen and that his love might empower us
to love as we've seen. And we thank you for this in
his name we pray. Amen.