I am going to start a new series today kind of really actually
really excited about this. You know, I think we we often
feel, you know, I think if we're honest with ourselves, we often
times feel insecure. And my experience is that the
people that can hide their insecurities, the best are often
the people Well, that feel it. The most is that you found that
to be true. Yeah, a few people nodding.
It seems to be the way it is. Why are we so insecure, right?
And I think a lot of the time, it's because we believe things
about ourselves that just aren't true, right?
Because after all, were made in the image of God, right?
And he's not insecure, you know. And anyway, so the question is,
What did he create us to be? Like what are we supposed to be
like, what are The Lies? We believe about that and about
ourselves. And how do we get past those
wrong beliefs and become more like the people that were meant
to be that we've designed to be. And so that's what we're going
to be looking at in our new series which is called who are
we, who are we? And so we're going to look at
about a look at a few different things that we mentioned this
before, but we're going to look at who are we as I like, what
does that even mean? We look at that this morning
then we're going to look at who are we as a church, right?
So what are we supposed to do, right?
As a local body of Jesus Christ, you know what, what are we
supposed to be doing? What is what does that even look
like? Yeah, then we can look at, who
are we as individuals, you know, who does God say that we are?
And how does that affect the way that we live?
And the way that we relate to other people, And then we can
look at what does God want us to become, right?
Both both as individuals and as a, as a corporate body what does
God want us to be right? What needs changing in Us and
how do we make those changes? And so I'm excited about this.
It's going to be really good so we're going to begin this
morning with this. This question of what is a
Christian, right? And I need to apologize a little
bit to the linton's house Church cost because we looked at this
about a year and a half. Go.
And some of you might remember that and I keep going off and on
different tangents looking at this and I keep coming back to
the same thing. So there's going to be a lot of
review in this for you guys. That's right reviews.
Good for us. It was found that really good
for me because it's really important to to lay this
Foundation. All right?
So this year is a census year. We haven't had one for quite a
while. 2018 was the last time we had a census.
Remember, filling out all these forms and all that kind of
stuff. So in the 2018 census 37% of the
population in New Zealand identified themselves as
Christian. Let's say, take Christian on the
Christian box on the census from 37 percent.
Right? About 12% of the population said
that they are turn they attend church regularly That's quite a
disconnect there, isn't it? A huge number of people who said
they were Christians. Don't go to church.
Yeah, that's quite a disconnect when I was in Scotland.
That was you. We used to do just panting there
in Scotland and it was even more extreme.
There are about 60 percent ticks Christian on the census form and
about three and a half percent went to church.
Yep. So just yeah, massive
disconnect. So when you start analyzing this
you realize that the the difference comes down to.
How do you define Christian? What do you mean when you say
that right? If we ask this question you know
what is a Canadian we asked him people that question you
probably get 10 similar answers right it Canadian someone from
Canada. Oh you know something something
like that right? But you ask 10 different people.
What is a Christian you might get 10 different answers.
Yeah, true, right? Some people would sort of say,
well you know, it's just kind of a tradition that you're born
into, right? So people had that kind of
belief would say you know sometimes you'll hear a phrase
like I used to be Christian but I'm not other people would say
no no it's not about that at all.
It's about. Jesus Christ has died and paid
the price. That was ours to pay, right?
And so we turned it, turn to him and say we're sorry for what
we've done and we accept his rescue right here, sir.
Salvation, right? And that's, that's what a
Christian is. I'm other people say, no, no,
it's more than that, right? It's a follower of Christ.
So it's about dedicating your whole life to this and doing
what he wants us to do, right? So like I say yes, 10 different
people, you get 10 different answers.
And so, here's the thing about this, right?
The term Christian. And all of its derivatives only
appears in the Bible three times, right?
In the whole Bible. And so that means that there are
some Clues as to what it means, but it's not defined in any
great detail. And the other thing about it is,
it was a derogatory term, right? It was kind of a slander.
It was. Is it Des?
All right, that was sort of against these people who were
outside of mainstream Judaism. Because they followed the
teachings of Jesus Christ, but the, the followers of Jesus
never never called themselves Christians, right?
They never use this term to describe themselves.
It's kind of like, you know, the term, you know, nerd or geek
redneck or something like that. Right.
You know, if you think about geek, it was the, it was used as
a term to describe a group of people in a negative way.
I such a geek right? But over time, right people Have
kind of embraced this term. And there you see stuff like
this right, where the Geek Squad we're here to fix your computer
right there just kind of embraced it.
And that's kind of what we've done with the term Christian.
It was a, it was a - derogatory term.
But over time we've kind of we just embraced it when yeah,
that's us. And All three of the times when
we see the term Christian used in the Bible, it's being used by
Outsiders to describe this group of people who are all acting in
that in the same way and following the same person.
Right now years ago, when I have first, I looking at this, I
looked at what a lot of other people had written about this
and they sort of we're trying to do what I had done is try and
extract some Clues from the different text with the Swede
Christian appears. Let's see if they could figure
it out. Then I finally came across the
sermon that sort of dealt with the reality that this word is
not. Well, defined in scripture and
it it had a profound impact on me.
And so I kind of stole the outline a little bit and and
shared it with Outhouse Church in Scotland, they had a profound
impact on them. And and so we're going to start
off in Acts chapter 11. If you want to turn your Bibles
there or Point your app there Acts chapter 11, we're going to
look at this will be in about start about this.
Five. So just a bit of a sort of
background to hear. After the death of Jesus, this
huge persecution broke out against the people that follow
Jesus teachings, and they were usually known as followers of
the way. You'll see this term a few times
in the book of Acts, the followers of the way, right?
And there's this huge sort of persecution against them and so
a lot of them fled Jerusalem for their lives, you know,
persecution was pretty intense and so a lot of them left and
moved to two other. He's got out of Jerusalem and so
a bunch of them ended up living in a city, which is now in
southern turkey and it said he was called Antioch.
And so, you ended up in the first century here.
You end up with a fairly large number of these followers, of
the way now, living in Antioch and they began to tell other
Jewish people that live there. But also just the citizens of
Antioch. Hey, God has done something
incredible in the city of Absalom.
Right. And a man actually rose from the
dead and we saw him and and we know a lot of other people who
did too and and they shared that the truth of Jesus Christ and
and all that and her. So a whole bunch of these
greek-speaking Roman minded people in Antioch Embrace this
idea, right and embrace this this this new group this kind of
sect of Judaism if you like at the time and You know, accepted
that, you know, this Jesus back in Jerusalem, your rose died and
rose. Again, he paid the price for the
sins of everyone in the world and they connected with that and
a church gets established at Antioch.
And so back in Jerusalem, a bit of a map here just to kind of
point this out. So Jerusalem's right down the
bottom of your screen, is there antiox kind of in the middle?
And so back in Jerusalem, you've got whole bunch of the Apostles
there and you've got James and you got the other James, the
brother of Jesus, and you've got Peter and, and, and the others.
And so they decide to send Barnabas up to Antioch to sort
of provide some, some teaching and training and encouragement
and support for the Believers up there Itzhak.
And so one of us gets up there and when he when he arrives he
realizes there are so many Believers there that he's going
to need some help. Now Saul, who would later be
known by his the Greek version of his name.
Paul was just around the corner, just sort of across the bay at
Tarsus right visiting his hometown there.
And so Barnabas decides to go around to Tarsus and gets all
and bring him back to Antioch because he's going to need some
help. And so that's kind of where we
pick up the story here in Acts chapter 11.
So actually after live invest number 25 and it says this then
Barnabas do. Apoptosis to seek soul and when
he had found him, he brought him back to Antioch.
So it was that for a whole year, they assembled with the church
and they taught a great many people, right?
So again, you've got a large number of these sort of
greek-speaking people who have committed to this thing and then
check this out and the disciples and we'll come back to that in a
minute were first called Christians in Antioch.
Okay, now they didn't call themselves that All right, this
was a label that was put on them and we get a fascinating.
Look at this. From another piece of writing,
that's not actually in the Bible.
Some of you may have heard of this guy Roman historian by the
name of Cornelius tacitus. You might have heard the name
tacitus and Cornelius, tacitus wrote In the late, first
century. He died about, I think I got the
117 ad, he died, but he lived a long time and he wrote about
lots and lots of different about four or five different row.
A. Yep, kind of a story and a lot
of what we know about these Emperor's is written by tacitus
from the writings of testers and he wrote about one particular
Emperor called Nero. And actually, most of what we
know about Nero comes from from Tessa, this is writings, because
in 64, ad Nero did something extraordinary, all right?
Narrow looked out at the city of Rome and went.
Yeah, they liked it so much. I think we need a new one and
so, he decided to burn the The old one down.
And that's what he did. Right.
And so, you know, pretty crazy and as you can imagine that
didn't go down too. Well, you know, when you burn
down people's homes and their businesses and all that, and
they tend to get upset so Nero decided to blame the fire on who
On the Christians. Yeah.
You know how, you know that from a piece of writing that I'm
about to read you from written by test of this.
Here's what he said, listen, listen to how test this
describes this in the first century.
He says, consequently to get rid of the report, right?
This is the report that Nero himself burn down the city Nero,
fastened, the guilt and inflicted the most Exquisite
torches on a class, hated for their Abominations called
Christians. By the populace.
Okay, they didn't call themselves that right?
Christians didn't call themselves Christians.
That's what the general population referred to the mess.
Those Christians, right now, this is where it gets
interesting, right? That the word Christ is actually
a title. Right?
The the Hebrew word Messiah means, you know, that the
appointed one, the anointed one, the chosen one, right.
And and when you translated into Greek, it's a weird Christ has
the same kind of meaning it. So it goes on the end, it's a
bit like, you know, those lawyers who are qcs and they'll
little their name will be Fred Smith QC by this kind of the
tightly, the quaint, the Queen's counsel, I guess it's King's
Council Now. Isn't it?
Caicedo bkc Fred Smith Casey, right?
And so that that is a title, right?
Like me. Messiah, Jesus Messiah.
Jesus Christ, right? A lot of times we did, we don't
understand that, we kind of think that it was his last name,
you know, that there was, you know, Joseph Christ and Mary
Christ, you know, and they had Jesus Christ and and Jude Christ
and James Christ. And you know, the rest of the
Christ family, you know, but that it's actually not, it's a
title but evidently tested as didn't know that either.
And that's kind of helped what he was thinking, but here's what
he says next. This is pretty interesting, he
says, Christus from whom the name had its origin suffered,
the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands
of one of our procurator's Pontius Pilate.
Now obviously, this is an incredible piece of
corroborating evidence for the things that we see written in
the New Testament, right? Pontius Pilate was governor
Tiberius was the emperor Jesus was crucified, right?
The the extreme penalty. All of that.
But the point of this is that there was these Outsiders,
there's a bunch of Outsiders looking at this movement, trying
to come up with a name for it and they call these people
Christians, the Christians didn't call themselves that they
call themselves something far more terrifying, writes
something far more well-defined and something far more
disturbing and far more convicting than Christians.
Like we say one of the reasons you can't get five people to
Define Christianity. The same way is that it's not
defined with any great resolution in the Bible.
There's this passage that we just looked at the disciples
were first called Christians at Antioch.
There's a passage where Peter is talking about when you're being
persecuted as a Christian, he's talking about that and then
there's another passage where Paul is kind of standing in
front of a king and he's just describing what he believes.
And the guy says your Whispers Wade, me to become a Christian.
Yeah, let's the three times where we see it.
But if you look at the New Testament, the gospels, and
especially, in the book of Acts, there is a term that is used
very, very consistently to describe these people that were
part of this, kind of Jesus movement.
It's a terrifying term, and it is the term discipled, right?
Disciple. And the reason that it's a
Terrifying term. And that should disturb you is
because it's so clearly defined because you can kind of hide
behind the term Christian or Christianity a little bit
because you can it's not well-defined so you just give it
your own kind of definition a little bit.
You know, you can go to war in the name of Christianity or you
can do all kinds of things and you can Define it and redefine
it and mystifying it undefined it and do all kinds of things.
All kinds of stuff was Christian but I'm telling you what, you
you lock in To this word your and you get into the New
Testament and all my goodness, right?
So here's a few examples, right? So there's the one that we just
looked at acts 11:26 and the disciples were first called
Christians in Antioch and now so think about the significance of
this term. Now if you'd ask the followers
of Jesus, what they call themselves, they would have said
I'm a disciple. The disciples who called
themselves. The disciples were first called
Christians at Antioch. So what does the word disciple
mean? The English word means exactly
the same thing as the Greek word.
Translated from my feet. He's is the Greek word.
It means a learner, a pupil, and apprentice and adherent or a
follower of someone's teaching, Right?
So just to kind of put it in general terms.
The disciple is someone who says I'm trying to make a decision.
How would you handle this? Because that's how I handle it,
right? I'm trying to decide how to
respond to the situation. How would you, how would you
respond? Because, because that's the way
I'll do it, right? We would you go because that's
where I'll go. What would you do if you were
me? Because that's, that's what I'm
going to do. So, how would you react?
How would you live your life, how would you manage your
relationships? Because because that's how I'll
do it. That's, that's what a disciple.
Does it disciple is someone who's looking for instruction
and Direction on how to live life and the answer is, right?
How would you do this in before you even give me the answer?
My answer is yes. Right.
I'll, I'll do like what you tell me to do.
I'm your father, I am your disciple, right?
That's very different. Justin, isn't it?
That we give very broad. Definitions to Christians, not
well defined. But disciple really is it really
is. And so, you'll all be hoping at
the end of this, that I'm not going to say, which I'm not
right. Let's not call ourselves
Christians anymore. I let's just guys that which,
you know, which is kind of the point, right?
That'll be a little bit hokey but weird, but it's very hard to
to dodge the word disciple and just redefine it.
Yep. Here's a couple of other
examples and you'll find these throughout the New Testament.
This one's from Acts chapter 6. Verse number 7, then the word of
God spread and the number of the disciples multiplied, greatly in
Jerusalem and a great many of the priests were obedient to the
faith. Right?
So this thing is spreading more. People are connecting with their
Savior and connecting to the group and there are more
disciples. It's pretty this one's
interesting. This is just just acts chapter 9
and verse 26. Got a couple here from Acts
chapter 9, but I accept a 9 verse 26.
And remember, Paul, originally persecuted the church right, he
thought it was kind of a, some kind of aberrant cult, right?
He was trying to stamp it out and now he is one of them,
right? And now he's become one of them
and it says watch their reaction when he finds First turns up in
Jerusalem X. I'm 26.
And when Saul did come to Jerusalem, he tried to join the
disciples right now. This is not just the Twelve
Apostles, they're also called Disciples, but this is a much
much wider group than that. This is, but they were all
afraid of him. It did not believe that he was a
disciple, right? They thought he was trying to
infiltrate, this was some kind of trap right to arrest them
and, you know, put him in prison and maybe have them executed or
whatever, you know. No.
So he tries to join the disciples.
They didn't believe that he was a disciple.
Okay, this one verse 36, just about ten verses down Acts
chapter 9, verse 36 at Java. There was a certain disciple
named Tabitha which is translated Dorcas, okay?
So her name is Tabitha in Aramaic.
If you translated into Greek, its Dorcas, you translate it
into English Gizelle. Yeah, Tabitha's.
A nice name. Isn't it?
Gazelles a nice name. I'm not sure.
You know. Here's my daughter Dorcas.
Yep. Anyway, so we've got this, this
lady who's a disciple and says, nice things about her carries on
this woman was full of good works and charitable Deeds which
she did okay. So no gender barrier there,
right there were disciple. Let's as well.
Yep and women were disciples to and so the point is here you
know we can sort of hide behind the word Christian but if you
look into the New Testament, you ask, What were these people
really about? How did they, how did they
describe themselves? They referred to themselves and
each other as disciples. And this brings us to a kind of
a terrifying and disturbing question, which is this I'll we
disciples. We disciples.
Right? Well we just Christians.
Yeah a lot of people tick that box on a census form.
Are you a disciple of Jesus? Are you a follower of Jesus is
your answer? Yes.
Jesus. Right?
Doesn't matter what the question is, you know, how would you do
this? Because we're however, you tell
me that's what I'm going to do. Are you the sample?
That's that's kind of a lot more convicting, isn't it?
There's a lot more responsibility in that one.
So what I want to do now is just take us quickly to a passage
where Jesus talks about talks to people who want to be his
disciples and he gives them the okay if you're going to be
disciples and and you know not just something more vague.
Here's the bottom line, right? He says if you don't hear
anything else that I say or do anything else, I do, here's
here's your specific marching orders.
Yes. And this isn't going to be new,
right? If you've been in church for any
length of time, you're not going to hear this ago.
I didn't know that was in there, right?
It's not a new thing, but if the followers of Jesus had followed
just this one instruction that he gave them, you know, not not
the whole new testament or anything like that.
Just everything the Apostle Paul taught but if you just if we
just followed this one, teaching Jesus and got this right now and
Entire world would be an entirely different and better
place. So we're going to be injected in
Book of John Chapter 13 and and here's what happens here in it's
the last passover, right? And, and Jesus is going to be
meeting with his disciples and Judas has already left to go and
betray them to have them hand it over.
And so this is his last Jesus. Last moment to give his
disciples, some advice. Right before the whole
crucifixion thing, you know, gets into motion, and what's
going to tell them? You know, what advice?
Do you give last piece of advice?
He's going to give them here it is.
John Chapter 13 Verse number 33. Says, this is what he said,
little children. I shall be with you a little
while longer you'll seek me, and as I said to the Jews where I'm
going, you cannot come. And so now, I say to you, so
when he says, look, I'm leaving and you can't come everybody
kind of freaks out as you can imagine, you know, they put
their life into this and Peter in particular, you know, there's
this kind of freaks them out and you can imagine that would be
the case and you can imagine Kind of a kind of imagine the
thoughts are going on in their heads, you know.
And Peter says, what do you mean, you're going?
And we can't come and I can't come.
There's Andrew going. Are you just leaving me out?
What's, you know what? What's the deal here?
You know, it sort of starting to panic and so, Peters kind of
obsessed with this idea that you're going somewhere, we can't
go. But Jesus just kind of moves on
and he says this. A new commandment.
I give to you now. The Little Greek word there,
that's translated new can mean new but it means new.
That's a good translation but it means new in the terms in the
sense of unusual, right? Strange, little bit odd may be
impractical. Even the kind of the idea of you
never really thought of this before and sitting here most of
you know what's coming next, right?
You've probably heard this before.
And even at the time, this wasn't that new on the surface.
Oh Jesus like okay. Linen guys.
We had 12, we're down to 11. Listen up, you ready?
And here's what he says. A new commandment.
I give to you that you love one another and the disciples will
be thinking. Well it's not really new.
I don't think that's in the Old Testament and actually we've
heard you say it before. Love one another right B says a
new commandment. I give to you that you love one
another and he goes on. You love one another.
As I have loved you, That you also love one, another.
I want you to love one another. The way that I have loved you.
I know Jesus didn't do this but he could easily have gone around
the room, couldn't he? And he could have said, Matthew,
do you remember what we were doing when what you were doing
when we met and Matthew would have gone tax collector?
You know, is that that was pretty bad, bad thing to be
right in Jesus because said yeah that's right.
You are you betrayed your people, everybody hated you
Peter. You remember what happened?
When we met Matthew Peters like, yeah, you took us to a party at
his place where there was a whole bunch of those kind of
people so, you know, and they didn't like, to be around Tax
Collectors. There was sort of Sinners and
then there was Tax Collectors, right?
And that's Matthew. And you can say, Matthew,
remember how I treated you, That's what I want you to do.
Remember to the others. You know how I treated Matthew?
That's that's how I want you to treat each other.
I want you to love one another Nathaniel, right?
Remember, you know his brother came to him and said, hey, we
think we've found the Messiah comes out of Nazareth and
Nathaniel said, what good thing could come out of Nazareth?
Nothing, nothing good. Can come out of Nazareth, right?
He just dissed, Jesus whole family, right?
That's quite disrespectful, isn't it?
You know, you know, if someone just kind of does that to you we
are from Yeah, but how did Jesus treat him?
He said come be one. My follower and he could have
gone around the rooms. He every one of them and done
that, right? The way that I loved you.
That's how I want you to love each other, right?
That's what I want. I want that to be the thing that
characterizes your relationship with each other.
One another. And then he says this by this,
right by this kind of one Dynamic, this one, relational
breakthrough. By this all will know that you
are my what's the next word? Disciples.
If you have love one for
another, See, it's easy to say you a Christian because you can
give that a fairly wide definition.
Yeah. But a disciple means love people
the way Jesus loved them. Right?
And now we're in a much smaller box on.
WE it's a much tighter category when we, when we get to that.
That's, that's a lot tougher. Here's my favorite part about
this passage, right? This is big, right?
It's not how much you know about stuff or how much you know about
the Bible. It's not, you know, how many
things you're involved in and how many moral actions you
appear to have the litmus test? Jesus was saying, you know, the
the The bottom line characteristic that defines my
disciples is not going to be, you know, how loud they sing and
pray or anything. It's going to be how much they
love each other. How much they love each other
and Peter raises his hand. And Jesus says yes, Peter and
Peter says, so a decision. Well, we going there was just
sort of stuck in his head, you know, I can imagine going.
Okay. Okay.
Did you? Did you not hear what what I
just said and people would be like, yeah, no, that's cool, but
but I want to go with you. I want to be seen with you.
I want to die with you and Jesus.
The key look, Peter and a few hours, a teenage girl is going
to intimidate you It's saying you don't even know me.
I a like, no, no, I'm I'm willing to die for you, right?
And, and, and Jesus saying, look, Peter, I don't want you
right now to go where I'm going or Die For Me.
Yeah, that would come, you know, but he said, you know, I want
you to do something far more important than that.
What does that? I want you to love these guys
for the rest of your life. I want you to love them in such
a way that when people from the outside looking in and they sit
and they see the way they that you guys relate.
And, and the way you love each other, I want them to be drawn
to the edge and peer in and go. Look at the way they love each
other. You know, I want you to create a
community of people who are defined and characterized by
that kind of unconditional compassionate ridiculous.
Who would do that kind of love. I want people from the outside
to, to look in unafraid that they're going to be dragged into
something and unafraid that you're going to accuse them as
something. I want people to be able to come
to the edge of your T looking and go.
Look at the way the men treat the woman, right?
Look at the way they treat widows.
All right, look at how they treat sick people.
Look at how the weight the way the woman.
Honor their husbands. Look at the way the woman care
for each other. Look at the way, they honor
children how, you know, all of that, look at what they do with
their money, look at how they handle Oh my goodness, it's like
they don't even fear death, right?
Look at them. Love And she said, I want you to
go out and I want you to build communities like that.
And they got to grow and expand and grow and expand and people
from the outside of going to be drawn to the edge and - that
offer going to say, you know, I don't know if I want to become
one of those, but I certainly would like to work for them.
We for one of them, you know, I don't know if I want to become
one of those, but I actually wouldn't want employing them.
You know, when they mess up, they let you know, they're
honest, you know, to a fault right that willing to do the
right thing, even if it's going to cost them, Financially.
You know I don't know if I want to be one but I wouldn't mind my
daughter marrying somebody like that or my my son marrying you
know. One of the women like that and I
thought I'd be one but look at the way they love, right?
And eventually they just kind of draws people in.
Can you imagine in our community or in our neighborhood in our
workplace or schools or whatever?
Even if we just got this one thing, right?
What a difference? It would make, if we decided
forget Christian, we're going to be disciples.
We're going to love people, the way Jesus loved us, write the
way Jesus loves them. Could you imagine what impact
that would have on our whole country?
If we did that and I love the people around me, just like
Jesus, loved the people that followed him and Jesus knew
right? He knew that he could have
talked about anything. This was his last moment he
could have talked about marriage or honesty or anything else.
But this was the one thing that he said was going to be the
distinguishing feature that people would know.
They were a follower of his, okay.
So conclusion, Try this out this week.
All right, try this out this week and you're surrounded by
idiots. I know that, right?
But Jesus was God in a body, right?
And he had to put up with Peter going.
Wait, where are you going? And Jesus, still loved like this
right now. It won't come back to you.
You know, let's just not like one of those self-help books,
you know, we, you know, I did this for 10 days and now my
husband is a different person, right?
Nothing like that. All right, people won't treat
you any. There they crucified, Jesus,
right? Get ready.
Gary. But this is what it means to be
a disciple. This is Way Beyond the kind of
broad definition of Christian, right?
This is how the world changed. This is how an empire was
toppled without an army does. Because people crept to the edge
of these churches, right? These ridiculous, Jesus
communities. And and went look at the way
they treat each other. I'm not sure yet.
If I want to be a part of that but I you know, you know, I'm
not sure. But yeah, my baby.
I do want to be a part of that. Not sure I believe yet but I am.
You know, there's just something about that that draws people in.
We learn to love. Like that from Jesus who loves
so much. The Bible says he loved them to
the end. They can literally be translated
as he loved them to the uttermost.
Right, he went to the wall for us, right?
Yeah, that's pretty sobering isn't in calendar.
The fantastic job, you know, wanting us to that it communion
this morning. Now, some people have a very
negative view of Christianity and, and it, if I'd seen the
things that you've seen in an experience, you know, maybe I'd
feel the same way, but all of us feel full short, not only of
God's standard, but, you know, we've talked about this before
Ava understands, we set standards for ourselves, and
don't meet him, you know, And so we need to figure out what we're
going to do with our failure. And I would hate you to miss
that because Christianity has been poorly represented to you
in some way, right? And that, and it's been so badly
represented to you, that you miss, what it is that Jesus has
done for you, right? Tortured to death, right?
A punishment, you should have taken, that's how much he loved,
that's how much you love. If you, if you haven't ever
gone. I got, I'm sorry.
Please forgive me. You know, you know, thank you
for doing that. For me now is the time now is
the time if you want to talk to somebody about that find meal or
one of us and and have a chat do that.
If you've done that right disciples right?
That's how we Define ourselves. Love people like Jesus loved us.
You know, a lot of people like keep pointing to that one.
And he runs an illness like that.
Yeah. I love people like Jesus loved
us. Yeah.
Whoa, it's big, isn't it? All right, let's pray and then
I'll him back over to to create a father.
Again, we thank you for that love we thank you for What it
took for you as a father to give up.
Your only son. We thank you for Jesus coming in
instructing and teaching us and coming, knowing that he was
going to go through that. And even when he had options to
to not go through that, he did it anyway.
He looked he loved us to the uttermost and we thank you for
that this morning. Well, we just pray that we would
be a people who would be so impacting by that that it would
affect every relationship we have.
And that we would love each other with that.
And of love, and that people would see it be affected, be
drawn in and be changed. Let's separate this morning.
We just pray these things in Jesus name.
Amen. Right.
So we're going to carry on with the series will go will be and
going to start next week, Baro is going to give us an overview
of Peter and then we're going to get into first Peter and pull
out because what does it mean to love like that?
How do you how do you draw out? The you know, we can say I love
each other but how do we draw that and Peter defines out
really well for us. So we go through the book,
exciting stuff.