Everyone has a least favorite teacher.
I had professors in college who'd read their PowerPoint out
loud the whole class. That was it. 90 minutes of read
aloud. Let's just say on Tuesdays and
Thursdays. Not a lot of students found
their way to those classrooms. Everyone also has a favorite
teacher. By far my favorite teacher was
my finance professor. First day of class he told us
there's no textbook, no PowerPoints, no lecture notes,
no homework. Your grade depends on 2 tests,
one halfway through the course and if you pass that one at the
end. And he said everything you need
to know for those tests will be spoken by me in this classroom.
When those are your teachers first words, you have reason to
hang on their every word. Let me tell you, finance was not
a class that I skipped for any reason.
And it turned out my professor was also a great teacher.
He was engaging, he was clear. It was clear he cared about the
topic that he was teaching about.
It was clear he knew something about what he was teaching
about. He was even funny at times.
Most importantly, he was effective.
He'd learned finance himself. He was able to teach and train
others also. Multiple students, however,
still failed that first Test and had to drop the class.
By God's grace, I was not one of those.
I think the problem was with the students, not with the teacher.
If you're in Christ, the day of your conversion was your first
day in God's classroom. In God's classroom, there are
some subjects we must unlearn. There are other topics we have
yet to learn. There are also many lessons we
must keep learning. Turn your Bible to First
Thessalonians chapter 4. If you don't have a Bible, maybe
you forgot yours at home. Maybe you don't own one.
Just raise your hand. Somebody will bring you a Bible.
Just raise it high. Great.
We've been learning from Paul's letter to the one year old
church in Thessalonica. Paul was so concerned about this
suffering church plant that he sent his protege Timothy to
check on them. Paul was so comforted by
Timothy's report that he sent this letter to encourage them.
Last week we saw that Paul ended chapter 3 with a pastoral
prayer. He prayed for two things.
He prayed for their holiness before God and their love for
one another. In chapter 4, we saw Paul exhort
them to keep walking in holiness.
Today Paul exhorts them to keep loving one another.
Listen to God's word as I read verses 9 to 12.
Now concerning brotherly love. You have no need for anyone to
write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love
one another, for that indeed is what you are doing to all the
brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do
this more and more and to aspire to live quietly and to mind your
own affairs, and to work with your hands as we instructed you,
so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be
dependent on no one. Friends, notice how similar
these verses are to the previous ones we looked at to verses 1 to
8. Look at verse one.
Paul urges them to please God with holiness in their
sexuality. Paul encourage them, verse one,
that they're already doing this and to do it more and more.
Now look at verses 9 to 12. Paul reminds them to love one
another and Paul encourages them, verse 10 that they're
already doing this and to do it more and more.
In verses 1 to 12, we see two topics, holiness and love, that
belong together. Paul begins verse one with how
they ought to walk before God. Paul ends verse 12 with how they
ought to walk before outsiders. So really verses 9 to 12 are
kind of like Part 2 to the same question we asked last week,
which was how can you please God?
See the answer from verses 9:00 to 12:00.
So simple. Keep loving one another, keep
loving one another. Love for one another is the
heartbeat of this passage. There's 4 verses in the passage.
We'll take each of them 1 by 1 four points.
Here's the 1st 1.1. Love one another as God taught
you. Love one another as God taught
you. Look at verse 9 again now
concerning brotherly love. You have no need for anyone to
write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love
one another. Paul obviously shifts topics
from holiness to love. Not just any love.
Paul says. Brotherly love. 2 words in
English, one word in the Greek. Many of you are probably
familiar with it. Philadelphia.
We've got a city named after it, the city of Brotherly Love.
And as I mentioned earlier, Paul's previously prayed for
their love for one another end of chapter 3 to increase to
abound. In chapter 1, Paul thanked God
for their love. He called it a labor of love.
Apparently the Thessalonians love for one another excelled to
such a degree that Paul can say in verse one you have no need
for anyone to write to you about this.
Their love was observable, but to some their love was strange,
especially to non Christians. One second century Roman
rhetorician commented on the brotherly love of Christians.
He says hardly have they met when they love each other
indiscriminately. They call each other brother and
sister. Perhaps you're a non Christian
sitting here. Are all these people related?
I keep sitting here. Hey brother, how are you?
Hey sister, how can I pray for you?
To outside observers, this love was different.
It was familial love. For those outside your family,
it was a new kind of love. As I was doing the dishes
earlier this week, I heard one of my kids ran up the stairs to
tell me someone else wasn't using a gentle tongue.
That's a good phrase, I thought to myself.
That's a new phrase. So I asked my child to come
here, and I asked them, Who taught you that?
The answer learned it at school. This particular child is being
homeschooled, meaning their mother taught them.
Seems Hannah's been teaching the Proverbs.
Who taught the Thessalonians this new love?
Who taught them to love like this?
Look at verse one. The Thessalonians were taught by
God. You may be wondering.
Paul and his missionary team taught them, didn't they?
They taught them the scripture over 3 Sabbaths when they
planted the church. Paul continually taught them for
weeks or even months before he had to flee.
Yes, Paul is even going to instruct them on their love for
one another in these verses. But Paul was not their primary
teacher. They'd been taught by God.
The prophets prophesied a day when God would no longer write
on tablets of stone, but on his people's very hearts.
The prophets promised today when God would no longer dwell in
tabernacles or temples, but in his very people, by his very
spirit. Through Christ's death and
resurrection and ascension, that day has come.
Every believer is a student in God's classroom.
God is our divine teacher. Good teachers are lifelong
learners. God is the only teacher who
teaches others without being taught himself.
What man shows him his counsel? The prophet Isaiah asks, or Paul
wonders who has been his counsellor?
There's a little game we've played as a staff.
Who would be your top five counsellors, living or dead?
Top five? I wonder what you'd pick.
You know, Spurgeon's mentioned Augustine, John Calvin.
Who would be your top five? What wisdom would be displayed
in the men and women you choose to just have access to to call
up a quick phone call? God has no top five.
He needs no top five. Imagine if one of the staff were
to say top five counsellors don't need any.
We'd think what that is just pride for God.
To not need any counsellors is to be God.
Good teachers store up wisdom from the ages.
God is the only teacher whose wisdom has no source and no end.
How unsearchable are his judgments?
Paul says. How inscrutable his ways?
How good is God, our teacher? He always knows what to say.
He always knows when to say it. He has the answer for any
question. He never needs to prep a lesson.
He always gives each student individual instruction according
to their needs, according to his purposes.
Every teacher teaches better than they live, except God.
His teaching always perfectly matches his character.
Who is a teacher like him? Eli, who asks?
And how does God teach us? He doesn't teach us everything,
everywhere, all at once. He does not upload the 66 books
of the Bible into our brains upon conversion.
He teaches us slowly by helping us observe the world He made and
leading us slowly as we study the word that He's given.
He teaches us as we receive divine mysteries by faith.
He teaches us through loving encouragement and gentle
critique, through hopeful stories and heart piercing
rebukes. He teaches us as we meditate on
His law day and night, as we sit under sermons, and as we counsel
one another with His Word. He teaches us in the school of
suffering through pain, sickness, uncertainty, sleepless
nights. He even teaches some through
donkeys and others through encounters with large fish.
In teaching us, he tests us not to tempt us, but to show us our
sin, to help us learn to rely less on ourselves and more on
Him. In other words, friend, God is
creatively and consistently using every circumstance you
face today to teach you to grow your faith and your hope and
your love so that you could declare, like David in Psalm 18,
this God. His way is perfect.
What lessons has God tailored for you today?
Pray you won't be dull of hearing.
If you're not a believer, think of all the things you've learned
in life. You've likely learned a whole
language, maybe even one or two. You've learned how to walk.
You've learned culture. You've learned different foods.
You learn how to cook, different skills, how to drive, You've
learned the skills required for your job.
You've learned so many things. The most important thing you
need to learn are spiritual truths.
You need to learn to live your life according to God and His
Word, which is the problem. If you're not a Christian,
you're hard headed. You're a stubborn student in
ignorance. You've resisted this divine
teacher. You've forgotten his
commandments. You've walked out of his
classroom. You've preferred the wisdom of
this world to the wisdom of God. And what are the stakes?
Flunking a test in college? You might fail to graduate.
If you refuse this divine teacher, you invite His wrath
upon you. But here's the good news.
God has a way of teaching those who've proved unteachable in
love. He sent his only Son, Jesus
Christ, to reveal God's hidden wisdom.
Jesus obeyed the Father perfectly.
He died sacrificially for sinners on the cross.
He bore God's wrath. 4 hard hearted, stubborn sinners stuck
in their ways. And the cross is the greatest
lesson of love. If you want to learn love.
Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life
for his friends. But the cross was more than a
lesson on love. Jesus rose again and ascended to
the Father. And if you turn from your sins
and trust in him, you will have salvation.
God loves to soften hearts of stone and to write His law on
our hearts and to send us His Spirit to train us in
righteousness. Brothers and sisters, this is
the glory of the New Covenant, God writing His law upon our
hearts. Jeremiah said no longer will one
teach his neighbor or his brother, saying know the Lord,
for they will all know me from the least to the greatest of
them. You know your Creator, you know
the love of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Nothing could ever separate you believer from his steadfast love
in Christ Jesus. And now, with God as your Father
and the Spirit as your Teacher, you can be like your older
brother Jesus. You can not only love your
enemies, you can even love one another.
We love one another because he first loved us.
Consider the love of God. For the Christian, the deep,
vast, unmeasured, boundless love of the Trinity is like a mighty
ocean. We brothers and sisters are
swimming in it. So what should this love in the
local church look like? It looks like verse verse 9,
brotherly love. In other words, it looks like
the love of a family in God's common grace.
Families were created to foster mutual love and affection and
care. But not everyone grows up in a
loving family. Kids in the congregation, are
you contributing to the love and the warmth and the affection of
your home? Or are you contributing to a war
zone? Good question to ask your
parents after the service. This church, according to God's
Word, is a family. Not a family by blood, but by
grace. When God reconciled you to
himself, he reconciled you to a people.
Mom and dad adopt you from the orphanage.
They take you home, and what do you find?
You've got brothers and sisters. Look around this room,
Christian. Seriously, These are your
brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus.
By God's grace, we can see a picture of brotherly love at
work in our own church. Love in our local church looks
like a lot of things. Here's a few Christians
submitting to and joining the church, staying after the
service for fellowship. Last week I told a brother or
sister, I can't remember who. We cannot get these people to
leave. They won't do.
It seems they love one another. It looks like initiating
spiritual conversations. Scheduling rides so other
members can get to church. Bringing meals to one another
when a member's in need. A family having the same single
brother or sister over every single week.
A single brother or sister bringing a meal to a family.
Men gathered around the scriptures weekly in the early
morning before the sun rises. Sisters meeting together weekly
for fellowship, for prayer, to study the Word.
Texting another member that you're praying for them.
Rebuking a brother or sister when it's the last thing you
want to do. Regularly encouraging others by
the spiritual growth you see in their life.
Helping a family move that you don't know very well.
Opening up your heart and your arms to new members in the
church. Greeting visitors you've never
met in your life before. So ordinary and so supernatural.
We are fulfilling by God's grace, our church covenant.
We will walk together in love as brothers and sisters, a family
whom God is saved by grace. If you look around this local
church and you see evidence of love, thank God that we have a
good teacher. If you look around this local
church and see love lacking, pray because it just means we
have more to learn. Is there someone in the church
that your love has grown cold towards?
Pray for them, initiate with them.
Is there someone in the church you need to move towards today
in love? Remember the love of Christ for
you. Pray for yourself.
Pray that every action and motivation and intention would
be love for God and for this family.
We have not loved perfectly, but perfect love is at work in us.
God is perfecting our love for one another.
We've been taught by God to love one another.
Would Paul also say to us, as he says to the Thessalonians, that
indeed is what you are doing. Point #2 friends, .1 was the
longest. We're going to speed up for the
rest. Look at verse 10.
Point #2 love one another more and more, love one another more
and more. Verse 10 For that indeed is what
you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia.
But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more.
God's love flows to the Thessalonian Church.
It fills them up, then overflows throughout the region of
Macedonia. Their love is a fountain.
Fountains don't just gush once and then stop.
They pump out water continually. Fountains were made to overflow
again and again and again. Or as Agustin says, 1 loving
heart sets another on fire. The fire that started in
Thessalonica was spreading throughout Macedonia.
How did the Thessalonians love travel throughout the region of
Macedonia? Some people speculate
Thessalonica was the economic and political center of
Macedonia. It could have been that
Christians from other cities needed housing as they were
passing through. When my wife and I lived in
Dubai, home to the world's busiest airport, we regularly
got texts calls, Hey I have a friend passing through, do you
have an extra room for them to say?
Paul could be referring here to Christian hospitality.
It's more likely, though, that Paul refers to the aid the
Thessalonians may have provided for needy Christians and
churches throughout the region. Paul mentions how the churches
of Macedonia in 2nd Corinthians 8 experience extreme poverty.
It could be that the Thessalonians heard about that
and sent help. Paul doesn't tell us, though,
exactly how the Thessalonians loved the churches of Macedonia.
He just tells us that they did, and he urges them, verse 10 do
this more and more. In other words, whatever they
were doing to love the other churches, they needed to keep
doing. Their love was already deep.
It needed to go deeper. It was already wide.
It needed to get wider. Now picture this.
The church in Thessalonica had its own problems, didn't it?
Lots of suffering, persecution. They could have just said we've
got enough issues here, we don't need to worry about what's going
on there. But the New Testament paints a
picture of the local church as both independent and
interdependent. Independent in that no local
church is subject to an outside authority.
Our church's authority is the congregation itself.
There are no bishops. There's no outside boards.
Interdependent, though, in that each local church must be
concerned about the health of other local churches.
Now, historically, the word used to describe churches caring for
other churches is catholicity. That's little C Catholic.
Catholic means worldwide or universal.
So what is Catholicity? I won't give you a definition.
Here's a description. It means, as one pastor says,
you are as interested in helping others win gold medals as you
are in winning them yourself. So there you are, competing at
the Olympics. You've worked years for this
moment, cheering as lane two over there passes you towards
the finish line. That's Catholicity.
In other words, it's praising God for revival when he sends it
to the church down the street. Or very practically for us,
praising God for rising Christchurch when He keeps
answering all our prayers for more collections at their church
downtown Chapel Hill. In our short life as a church,
we have been blessed by the catholicity of many local
churches. Praise the Lord when we consider
planting here, a number of a number of pastors encouraged us
to come. No feeling of competition.
There's more work to be done in this city as we raise money.
Lots of churches gave generously like Capitol Hill Baptist Church
in Washington DC, Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Mevin,
University Baptist Church in Fayetteville, AR, Redeemer in
Fuquay, Varina Denver Baptist Church in North Carolina, just
to name a few. Churches from all over the
United States partnered with us to see this little work become
reality. Many local churches generously
gave some of their best members you.
They sent out their best FBC. Durham was one of those
churches. They even hosted Us Weekly for
three months in their own building to help us get started
for free. Risen Christchurch, which was
just a year older than us, connected us with our first
meeting space, the Sheraton. Even the Anglicans helped us.
Cornerstone Anglican Church helped us find this current
meeting space here at Creekside. And I could go on.
It's an understatement to say that we've benefited from the
love of other churches. It's not been a trickle.
It's been a shower. Yet Jesus says it is more
blessed to give than to receive. We have received so much.
How can we grow in giving our love away to other local
churches? Here's some ways we try to love
and encourage and support other local churches.
As you've probably noticed, we publicly pray for other churches
in the Pastoral Prayer every single week.
We regularly recommend other churches to visitors.
If you're visiting today and live near Carrboro, Risen Christ
Church is a great church. I'd be glad to connect you with
one of the pastors there. If you're deeper into Durham,
FBC Durham and Mount Hermon Baptist Church also great
churches. It's not that we don't want you
to join our church, it's that there are other good churches
you could join. We regularly fellowship with
other pastors to strategize, to pray for one another, to
encourage one another. We send preachers like our
brother Joe Bird last week to other churches needing brothers
to preach. We have a pastoral internship
for brothers aspiring to pastoral ministry.
We hope to send out some of our best for the sake of the gospel
here and to the ends of the earth.
We want to grow in loving other churches.
Love either grows and overflows, or it wanes and then trickles
and then dies. A church could have a full
parking lot, a bustling children's ministry, and
expositional preaching. But if that church is an island
cut off from other churches, with no concern or affection for
other churches, it's a sick church.
It may look healthy on the outside, but something's wrong
on the inside. So how can we together as a
church, keep our hand on the pump and continue pouring out
love to churches in Durham and Chapel Hill and to the ends of
the earth? A couple things.
One, pray for other local churches in your family
Devotions. Get to know pastors and
missionaries at our evening service.
We regularly have them come through.
They usually stick around. Get to know some of those
brothers and sisters so you can pray for them better.
Be careful how you speak about other churches.
Build them up with your words when a critique is necessary.
Speak the truth in love. Imitate the faith, hope, and
love of other faithful churches and other faithful Christians.
I have met so many faithful pastors in this area, so many
other faithful Christians who aren't members of our church.
I've learned so much from them. Let's keep doing that.
Lastly, meditate on heaven, where every believer will gather
together in one assembly, a great multitude from every
nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.
Picture our love for other local churches five years from now, 10
years from now, even 50 years from now, when most of us will
be far gone. What would it look like?
It could look like helping revitalize dying churches in our
area, planting new churches in our region, sending out then
supporting missionary church planners to the ends of the
earth. Each one of those will come with
a great cost to us, but our losses will be the Kingdom's
game. As we love one another more and
more, our love will grow and overflow to North Carolina and
beyond. In verse 11, Paul zooms in on a
specific aspect of how we love one another.
Point #3 love one another by working with integrity.
Look at verse 11. Paul gets very specific, he
says. And to aspire to live quietly,
and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as
we instructed you. 3 commands. There you can see them.
Aspire to live quietly, mind your own affairs, work with your
hands. But why are those 3 commands
here? And what do they have to do with
love? Now one popular view is that the
Thessalonians got too eschatologically excited.
Perhaps they wondered, Christ is going to return.
Paul talked about that often. If he could return it every
moment, any moment, why should we work?
If that was their view, then Paul's message is get back to
work. The problem with this view,
however, I think, is Paul never mentions this is the reason.
In other words, it's just speculation.
Sure, he talks about the second coming and the next verse, but
as we've seen in every chapter he talks about the second
coming. I think a better option is
clarified in Paul's second letter to the Thessalonians.
If you have your Bible, turn there briefly.
Second thoughts in mind. You just have to turn one page.
Second Thessalonians, chapter 3, verses 6 to 15.
Here Paul addresses the sin of idleness in the church.
He says verse 11. Some were not busy at work, but
busy bodies. Paul exhorts them.
Do your work quietly. Earn your own living.
Verse 12. Some members weren't working
hard, but they were busy in other people's business.
They were lazy, living off the charity of others, Paul's
command to them. Verse 10.
If anyone's not willing to work, let him not eat.
Now back to First Thessalonians. In First Thessalonians 1
commentator says failure to work hard was a small flame, but it
had become a full blown fire by the time we get to 2nd
Thessalonians. In First Thessalonians, Paul
preached against idleness, and he practiced what he preached.
Like any good teacher, Paul's life proved his preaching.
Paul says First Thessalonians 2 verse 9.
You remember, brothers, our labor and toil.
We worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of
you. Paul practiced what he preached.
Now how are Paul's 3 commands connected to brotherly love?
They flow from love. I don't know about you, but
personally I do not like water parks.
You could even say I hate water parks.
But I love the lazy river. It is a paradox, I do not
understand it. I hate water parks, but I love
the lazy river. You just sit in that thing and
you just float. All they are.
You'd have to do a thing. The local church is not a lazy
river. You need to paddle.
And Brian was correcting how I paddle you.
Apparently you do both at the same time.
Not one, one after another. Every church member has an oar.
Everyone needs to be paddling. That's the picture of the local
church here. So failing to work when you can
work is a failure to love. Picture all of us in a boat.
All of us are rowing the boat. One of us is chilling.
That is not loving to your brothers and sisters.
In other words, Paul's focus here on working with integrity
is that it flows from loving your neighbor.
Brotherly love includes working hard and not taking advantage of
your brother and sister's generosity.
Paul tells the same idea to the church in Philippi.
Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to
the interests of others. Brotherly love works in both
directions. It's like being willing to help
those in need and not taking advantage of those willing to
help. It looks like sharing with those
in need and working as you're able.
So you're not in need, of course, and you know this.
There are exceptions to the rule.
There are times where sickness or job loss or physical ailments
prohibit work. Paul is not talking about that.
Paul is not talking about those who can't work but want to.
He's exhorting those who can work but won't.
So the question for us is, are we someone who needs to forsake
idleness? Are we someone who needs to stop
taking advantage of other people's generosity?
If that's you, pay careful attention to Paul's 3
exhortations. Love for brother rolls up its
sleeves and gets to work. First command, Paul mentions.
Aspire to live quietly. Make it your ambition to be
faithful with small responsibilities.
Kids, do your chores without being asked, even without
complaining. Stay at home.
Moms, you live a life of quiet faithfulness.
Keep loving your husbands and your children.
It's pleasing to the Lord. Living quietly may feel like
you're shrinking, but you're actually exploring the caverns
of brotherly love. Second, mind your own affairs.
In other words, you could say, mind your own business.
Don't be a busy body. There are some questions that we
can ask which pry at answers and don't serve in the interest of
love. Don't be a meddler.
Don't be a gossip or a walking tabloid or a private
investigator. You have enough going on in your
own life. You don't need to comment on
every controversy. You should have a gentle tongue.
Don't # the keys spending your days adding to the noise of
social media. Third, work with your own hands.
Working with integrity is an act of love.
Working when you can work frees you up to serve those who truly
can't work. Deliberately giving up your work
when you can work is a breach of love.
It's being a parasite on Christ's body.
God gave the gift of hard work before work was tainted by the
fall. Since the fall, though, work is
subjected to futility. For many, work is not aimed at
loving others. It's twisted and contorted to
serving self. Our work is often distorted by
the black hole that is self love.
We take God's gift of work and try to suck everyone and
everything into the service of our own little kingdoms.
When work serves self, not others, it always yields losses.
Is your work serving your family, or is your family
serving your work? Selfish love is a bottomless
pit. When you throw work in, it never
finds the end. One more e-mail, one more phone
call, one more trip, one last project, the next raise, the
next promotion, the next career. But at what cost?
How does brotherly love need to be brought to bear on your work?
Is your failure to work hindering this church family, or
is your incessant work harming your own family?
Get to work at working with integrity.
And as you work, don't forget that God is the one by His
Spirit working in you. The Divine Teacher is a holy
gardener. He loves cultivating the
Spirit's fruit of love for him and for others in your life.
When you work with integrity, you are opening up your arms in
love wide toward your brother or your sister.
When you work with integrity, you are extending your arm to
your brother or sister in their need.
When you work with integrity, your love and sacrifice.
An example spills out into the congregation and as we'll see in
verse 12, even beyond to the watching world .4 Finally, love
one another because the world's watching, because the world's
watching. Here's the purpose of Paul's
commands, verse 12, so that you may walk properly before
outsiders and be dependent on no one.
Keep loving one another by working with integrity because
the world is watching. Paul's concerned about how the
family of God loves one another, and Paul is concerned about the
reputation of God's family before the watching world.
As Jesus says, by this all people will know that you are my
disciples. If we have love for one another,
the world's watching Trinity Baptist Church.
They're watching how we walk. They can tell if we're people of
integrity. In other words, the world is
pressed up against the window of the church wondering, are these
Christians any different? Is their love different?
Is their work different? And Satan himself is scheming
against this church's love because if our love is
destroyed, then our witness will be too.
What do your neighbors think of our church?
What about your Co workers or your non Christian family
members? Do they see a family filled with
love, working with integrity? Or do they see a group of
gossips, busybodies, a Church of consumers, of getting without
ever giving? Brothers and sisters, if that's
our billboard, it's a picture empty of God's love.
The local church is a display of God's love to the world.
Pray that our church would tell the truth about God's love.
Friends, it's been so simple. Love God, love one another, work
with integrity. Aren't these lessons first
things, the basics? Christianity 101.
And yet these are the daily lessons in God's classroom.
No one gets the test out of this class.
No one can avoid this teacher. You will never graduate from
this school of love, but one day our love for God will be
perfected without any rivals. Our love for one another will be
purified without any division on the other side of Jordan.
We will keep learning of God's steadfast love in Christ Jesus
forever and ever, and we will keep loving one another forever
and ever. Let's pray, Father, we are
eternally grateful for the love that you've shown us in Christ
Jesus our Savior. And we pray, Lord, that we would
be faithful to extend that love to our brothers and sisters in
this church, to brothers and sisters in other churches, even
beyond this city. Lord, may our love for one
another be seen in our work and in our witness to the watching
world. We pray in Jesus name, Amen.