I remember the moments leading up to the birth of our first
born. Jane Susan's water broke, we
frantically grabbed all of our items and hurried off to the
hospital. There was all the excitement of
meeting my first child, followed by waiting and then more waiting
and then more waiting after that and after the process at the
hospital was was sort of jump started for us.
The waiting turned into labour pains but I was ready for this
because after all, I'd been through the birthing class.
So yeah, I knew all the moves and was fully prepared to give
my wife the much needed relief that she required.
OK, the moves didn't work, moments turned into hours and
the pain lasted through the night.
But eventually morning came and I began to get glimpses of my
little girl for the first time. I won't get into all the details
of exactly what I saw in all those moments, but I was excited
to meet her. OK, it's OK to laugh at that.
I'm talking about birthing pains, right?
It's kind of crazy, OK. When she came into this world
though, like, we wrapped her up and all of a sudden we were
parents and I was a father. And I'll never forget it.
And last week, I actually just watched the video of Jane
getting her first bath, and my eyes just started welling up
with tears. I should remember, like the love
I felt for this little girl in this moment, but it was a new
kind of love. I had never experienced this
type of love before. You see, when you become a
parent, the dynamic of your family changes.
And because of this, the dynamic of your love changes.
Parents, nod your head. If you're with me out there.
OK, you know what I'm talking about.
Most parents probably experience something like this.
And I think with dads in particular, there's this new
sense of care in protection and obligation and responsibility,
right? The the loyalty that that my
wife and I had for each other and towards each other now
included another person. The new family dynamic meant I
had to learn to live into a new kind of love.
Almost eight years later, I'm still learning how to fully live
into this new kind of committed love to my kids.
How many of us parents out there know it is not always easy
living into the type of love kids require?
No, this is the participation moment where you raise your hand
and you're honest. OK, Thank you.
I see you're out there. OK.
I know it's foggy, but you guys are you guys are responding.
OK, here we go. It's easy when it's when at
first, right? It's easy when they're cute.
It's easy when they're tiny. It's easy when they're little.
But then they grow up and they start saying things like why
should I or at the minor at a minor inconvenience.
They see that say things like, bruh, you know, and you're like,
what is going on here? You're 8 years old.
Parenting is not easy and and the kind of like loyal,
committed love that kids require so many parents and especially
dads. Often times we see don't live up
to the call and the role of fatherhood.
A recent literature review titled Father Wound and Its
Impact on Children's Psychological well-being is set
out to examine how a child's relationship with their father
shapes their emotional and psychological health.
They wanted to understand the deeper relational impact of
father absence, rejection, neglect, emotional
unavailability, etcetera. In other words, they were asking
what happens inside of a child when their father isn't present
and loyal. Their review found that father
wounds are consistently associated with higher risks of
depression and emotional struggles and behavioural
problems and reduced psychological well-being from
childhood into early adulthood. This is probably
self-explanatory for most of us, but the study also found a
hopeful counterpoint that warm, responsive, and emotionally
engaged fathers serve as a key protective factor in a child's
life. In plain terms, the presence of
a loving father helps shape a child's sense of self, their
ability to trust, their emotional stability, and their
capacity to flourish. In other words, when a father's
love is loyal and it's committed, faithful, and
present, the child often thrives.
All of us need this type of committed love in our lives.
Would you agree? All of us need this love and
maybe some of you in the room, you, you were meant to
experience that And, and that was not the type of love you
receive. And we have such compassion on
that. But all of us are designed to
have this type of love in our life.
And so today we're continuing on in our community series and
we're talking all about what Christian community actually is.
We use that word a lot community, but what is it
exactly? We've defined it this way.
That community is a spirit formed, diverse family gathered
around the presence of God. It's formed in the way of Jesus
and it's sent to live out the gospel of the Kingdom.
So Christian community then it's, it's a result of God
making a way for us to be adopted back to himself through
Jesus. That's good news.
We have a family in God and God is our father.
And a couple of weeks ago we mentioned that healthy Christian
community has three different dynamics.
Healthy Christian community has an an upward dynamic, an inward
dynamic, and an outward dynamic. When a church is healthy, we
move upward in worship, we move inward in love with one another,
and then we move outward in witness to the world.
So today we're going to be looking at an inward dynamic as
we look at the model in words of Jesus Himself.
So if you have your Bibles, turn to John 13.
We're going to be hanging out there today.
Always encourage physical Bibles if you have them, they're on the
back table as well. If you want to go grab one,
always just try and get this in front of you if you can.
John chapter 13. We're going to begin in verse 33
here, verse 33. This is these are Jesus's words
here, verse 33. My children love that language.
My children, I will be with you only a little longer.
You will look for me and just as I told the Jews, so now I tell
you where I am going. You cannot come.
A new command I give you love one another.
A new command I give you. Jesus says love one another.
The context of this passage is that Jesus is about to be
arrested and crucified. But first he gathers around his
disciples. These are his closest friends.
He calls them children, and he gives them some of his final
commands on how to actually love one another.
This idea of love and loving one another is not new in the Bible.
In fact, it's the great commandment that Jesus gives us
in the Bible. Love is the first fruit of the
Spirit, and it's said to sort of inform all the rest.
And yet Jesus says a new command I give you.
So how is it new? After all, even in the Old
Testament, the Israelites, God's people long before Jesus, were
commanded to love one another. And even in Leviticus, right,
which we know as maybe being kind of dry and like lots of law
and all of that, even in Leviticus 1918, this was the
command. Do not seek vengeance or bear a
grudge against anyone among your people, but read it with me.
Love your neighbor as yourself. Again, same chapter, when a
foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them.
The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native
born. Again, read it with me.
Love them as yourself. Now clearly Jesus and the
disciples would have been familiar with Leviticus.
They would have known this command.
In fact, in Matthew 22, Jesus reiterates it.
Jesus replied, Love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, with all your mind.
This is the first and greatest commandment 39 and the second is
like it one more time. Church together, love your
neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets
hang on these two commands. So Jesus is saying all of the
Old Testament, so all of this chunk in your Bibles right here,
all of it boils down to love God and to love people.
It's that simple. You want to know what
Christianity is all about? Love God, love people.
Some people say Christians are bigoted, they're hateful,
they're blah, blah, blah. No, no, no, those are the
Christians who aren't doing it quite right, right?
The the ones that are actually Christians and Christ followers,
they love God, they love people. There's no clearer message in
the scriptures than loving God and loving people earlier than
this. Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount
takes it even further and he says that we should even love
our enemies of all people. How we doing at that church?
We good at loving our enemies. We doing all right there?
Yeah. OK.
Ouch. Love has always been the command
of God. And yet Jesus, in his final
moments with his his disciples, he's saying a new command.
I give you love one another. So why does he say it's new?
Let's continue on John 13, verse 34.
A new command I give you love one another as I have loved you,
so you must love one another. By this everyone will know you
are my my disciples if you love one another.
So here Jesus doesn't just say, all right, love one another as
yourself. Jesus doesn't just say love your
enemies. No, Jesus takes it a step
further. He says do all of that, but do
all of it as I have already done for you.
Isn't that remarkable? Jesus goes deeper and broader
and he expands what it truly means to love one another.
He says this is a new commandment.
Do it like I did it. Do it like I did.
Love others like God himself loves you.
That's a powerful commandment. Pretty easy to do, right?
Right. Love people just like God loved
us. OK, A theologian, Joseph Dongle,
writes her this way. He says the command to love one
another's had been known for centuries, being deeply rooted
in the Mosaic law as well as in the preaching of the prophets.
So what was new about it? It was new because Jesus himself
now modeled the full nature of love as it never had been
modeled before. Wow, so then it begs the
question, what kind of love is this?
What kind of love did Jesus show?
And more than that, because Jesus was himself God, the very
nature of God, he was God. What kind of love does God have
towards us? Just a small question today for
us to answer. OK, you know this.
If you've ever tried to learn a new skill, you know how
important it is to have that skill modelled for you before
you try it. Would you agree?
If you're ever trying to learn something new, it's good to have
a teacher who can show you how to do it.
So maybe this, for instance, is like the nurse teaching you how
to swaddle up your baby for the first time.
Anyone remember that? Or watching mom comb and braid
your hair so you can learn how to do it yourself.
This is the moment many of you you guys maybe know this.
It's it's holding the flashlight for dad when he's like knee deep
in the engine Bay, right? And you're like trying to hold
it at just the right spot, watching him work, like holding
it with all your might, trying not to get distracted, right?
He's like sweating and grunting and like maybe cursing,
depending on your dad. OK?
Not mine, of course, but right. And you're like don't want to
get yelled at. So you got to hold it and write
the spot. You know, anyone out there?
OK, thank you. I'm not alone, OK?
But in those moments, you're learning how to do the thing we
all need, a model. And for the disciples, Jesus
served as the perfect master teacher that they could all
apprentice under to learn this new way of love.
He modelled it perfectly. He was a perfect example.
The type of love he demonstrated was a committed, loyal, faithful
kind of love. It was a kind of love that was
covenantal. Covenantal One of the most
important themes all throughout Scripture is that of God's loyal
love, his covenant to his people.
There's a word for this. This type of covenant love that
he shows all throughout Scripture is described by the
Hebrew word has said, OK, so everyone say that with me, say,
has said you got to get a little Hut in there.
OK. I don't know if that's actually
how you pronounce it, but we're going to go with it because it's
Hebrew, OK? This word reflects God's
steadfast, loyal, and enduring love for his people.
Let me put it this way, it's actually impossible to grasp for
the relationship God has with humanity without understanding
has said type of love. If you want to know what God's
love is like, you have to learn the meaning of has said OK in
the Old Testament, His covenant love is primarily associated
with God's promises, and it's his promises to the patriarchs
and the nation of Israel. So God makes promises to
Abraham, he makes promises to Isaac, promises to Jacob and the
entire Israelite people and has said is a love that's not merely
emotional, kind of like how we think about it in our culture.
We think of love, we think of like little, little pink heart
bubbles floating around people's heads that we swoon and say
that's so nice, It's sentiment, it's feeling right.
But this type of love is not just emotional, it's actually
deeply rooted in commitment and faithfulness.
Does that make sense? So it's not just feeling, it's
commitment and faithfulness. Has said has been translated
into English a number of different ways trying to capture
the meaning of this includes words like mercy, loving
kindness, unfailing love. And I love this one steadfast
love. So ultimately has said describes
an act of promise, keeping loyalty, but it's also motivated
by a deep personal care. God's love is not just
obligation, it's also deeply personal.
When he revealed himself to Moses and the covenant on Sinai,
we see illustrated God's covenant love as it reveals his
character in Exodus 34 verses 6 through 7.
And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming the Lord, the Lord,
the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in
love and faithfulness, maintaining said to thousands
and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin.
This is the type of Father's love for us.
This is God's character, abounding in love, patient with
us, compassionate. This is the type of love that
all fathers should model. So here covenant love is linked
with His mercy and His forgiveness, highlighting his
desire. Check this out God's desire for
lasting relationship with the Israelites and with us, even
despite their shortcomings, which were many by the way, the
Israelites were constantly tripping up.
They they could not figure it out and over and over and over
they would mess up and over and over and over.
God still loved them. He was committed to them.
OK, so has said love is a covenantal type of love.
It was 2009 or 10, I can't remember exactly, but I met my
wife and I was in a relationship at the time, but I kind of
noticed her in that moment. That night I met her, I noticed
she was kind of a cutie, but it was kind of weird because I like
she was still in high school, so I was already in a relationship.
So I was like, I want nothing to do with that.
OK? I'm a man of principle.
OK, But eventually what happened?
It was my senior year, it was my senior year and she came to
college. She was, she was a beautiful
little freshman, OK? But I was a senior religion
major. It was forbidden love, OK?
It couldn't be done. I was too, you know, dignified
and principled to, you know, quickly date someone right after
breaking up with another. And she didn't care.
She pursued me hard. OK, Let the record state she
came after me, OK? We fell in love very quickly.
All of the feelings. It was amazing, right?
And then came the time for an engagement and eventually
marriage. Now, when I married my wife, I
wasn't just entering into a contract on paper.
Much more importantly, by making vows to my my wife, we were
entering into a covenantal relationship with God and with
one another. It's a covenant.
OK, so what's the difference then between a contract and a
covenant? Here's the simple way to
remember it. A contract is strictly
transactional. So think of like a business
contract. So a business contract, it
outlines I'm going to hold up my end of the deal.
You hold up your end of the deal.
If one of us doesn't hold up their end of the deal, contract
is null and void. We cancel it out, We're in
breach of contract. Makes sense.
It's transactional. A covenant relationship is
different. There's still the bond, there's
still the agreements, but it's highly relational in nature.
So contract is transactional, but a covenant is relational.
When we were entering into a covenant with one another and
with God, we were saying, I'm going to stick it out
relationally and make promises to you.
So has said is this type of covenantal love makes sense,
kind of makes sense. What has said is all right.
To illustrate this has said is like a it's like the elderly
husband caring for his sick wife after decades of marriage.
Now if this husband only says I love you but does nothing to
care for her, that's not his said.
That's not loyal love if he only cares for how her out of cold
duty. However, that also misses the
point of his said. In this way, God's covenantal
has said love towards us. It's not just like an unfeeling
obligation to a group of people he doesn't really care for.
Rather, it's a it's a love that is relationally bonding to us,
faithful committed even when it's undeserved.
You catch that even when it's undeserved, God still pours out
his love for his people and for us.
We see this in Deuteronomy 79. Know therefore, that the Lord
your God is God. He is the faithful God keeping
his covenant of has said love to 1000 generations of those who
love him and keep his commandments.
I, I love this line from one of my children's books.
They have what's called the Jesus Storybook Bible.
Anyone so good you got to pick one up for your kids or
grandkids or whatever Jesus storybook Bible and over and
over they, they perfectly weave it out throughout the whole
Bible. There's this one line that talks
about God's love, and it says it this way, that God's love is a
never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever
love. Isn't that good?
Oh, it's just perfectly captures has said love church.
This is the kind of love that God has for you.
It's the type of love he has for me.
Never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever
love that's has said. And God fulfilled this covenant
promise, this covenant love, by sending his own Son Jesus to
rescue us all back to himself first.
John 49 says this is how God showed his love among us.
What did he do? He sent his one and only Son
into the world that we might live through him.
Is that good news for anyone here today?
Ephesians 2 says it this way. Like the rest, we were by nature
deserving of wrath that that's us.
We're we're deserving of wrath. We are not the ones to keep our
promises. We are filled with sin and our
thoughts and our actions. But verse 4 says, but because of
whose great love, his great love for us, God who is rich in
mercy. That's the that's the closest
word in the Greek we have to have said made us alive with
Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.
It is by grace that you have been saved.
In other words, God perfectly kept His loving promise to us by
sending the One He loved most in order to go all the way to death
so we might be able to live with Him.
You catch that? That's a never ending,
unbreaking, always and forever kind of love.
That is the love God has for you, and it's the love He has
for all of us who are in Him. Jesus himself modeled this
perfect kind of love. He committed his love to his
followers and to the lost. So going back then to our
passage in John 13, in John 13, where Jesus is with his
disciples, He's about to be crucified.
And in this very passage of Scripture, as he's telling them
to love one another, He's sitting next to both Judas and
Peter in the same room. They're chilling together, Peter
and Judas. Judas who would eventually sell
him out and betray him for self advancement, and Peter who would
deny him for self preservation. And Jesus is eating with them
both, knowing what they're about to do to him.
He still sits with them and he washes their feet and he loves
them anyway. He still sits with them and he
he, he has his presence with him and he goes to the cross anyway.
He's willing to love them to the very end.
John 13 one says, having loved his own who are in the world, He
loved them to the end. Listen to that.
He loved them to the end. That's a said type of love.
Never giving up love, even when it hurts.
And this, all of this is the context.
All of God's Old Testament has said love, all of Jesus's love
to the cross, all of this is the context.
And this is the moment where he looks at each of his followers
and he looks at each of us. And he says this in 34 A new
command I give you a new command.
I give you love one another. As I have loved you, so you must
love one another. By this everyone will know you
are my disciples if you love one another.
Wow, Joseph Dongle continues. He says Jesus himself now
modelled the full nature of love as it had never been modelled
before, A humble love which gave itself for others even unto
death. Now the command to love would
stand as the comprehensive principle governing all entering
God's family through faith in Jesus.
What's Joseph saying here? He's saying that if we're in the
family of God, which most of us may be in the room or not, or or
are, and if you're not, please let us know.
We'd love to introduce you to to Jesus.
But if we're in the family of God, we now have a comprehensive
principle governing our relationships.
In other words, followers of Jesus are to love one another
with a loyal, committed, and covenant love.
That's the principle. It governs over all of us.
Christian community, then, is covenantal by nature.
Does that make sense? Bonded to each other
relationally, obligated to one another continually.
Jesus tells us to love one another as he has loved us, as
God himself has loved us. So this new command then is what
this new command is to live into an ancient love.
Think about how many generations have passed of God just
continually pour out his love on and on and on.
No matter how how difficult the Israelites are, no matter how
difficult we are, God just continues to shower us with his
love. It's never ending.
So the new command that Jesus gives is a is a command to live
into this kind of ancient love, a said type of love.
You with me. You guys good so far.
Stretch it out a little bit. You guys seem a little stiff out
there. OK, you good.
All right, let me put it this way, Church.
This is the type of love that stays even when leaving would be
easier. This is the type of love that
honors promises when other people break theirs.
This is the type of love that welcomes people back when others
run away. This is the type of has said
love that God has for us. This is the type of love where
they have for each other. Is this the type of love we see
in our culture here today? Do you guys see this out in the
culture very much this type of has said type of love?
I would say probably not, right? This is radically
countercultural to the way that our culture views relationships.
If it's not benefiting me in some way or it inconveniences me
in some way, like dropped, see you later, right?
We're very quick to drop relationships when things get
sticky. We'd much prefer to cancel
people, to ghost them, to block, to unfollow them, right?
There's this thing called shadow banning where you ban someone,
but they don't even really know that you banned them, right?
I feel like so often we shadow ban people in our hearts, they
don't even know that we don't like them anymore.
They don't even know that there's conflict.
But yet we've just sort of written them off and said, good
luck to you, buddy, right? We do this all the time.
Very common in our culture today.
I once made a Facebook post that was condemning like a string of
violent acts, which should be pretty universally like agreed
upon. It wasn't necessarily political
by nature or anything like that. But afterwards I had two
different friends have beef with me, right?
11, friend immediately from college unfriended me and the
other one stopped sharing his online movies with me.
Joke's on him, I got to read a lot more and I'm improving
myself, thank you very much. So I'm good, you know, right now
we're, we're good now and we, we're still friends and all of
that. But the point still stands.
We're prone to walk away when there's conflict, not stick it
out. Pastor John Tyson, one of my
favourites, he's the GOAT. He puts it this way.
Our culture knows nothing about loyalty.
We break up with our friends, we move whenever we want, we get
married. We just tap out of the marriage
if it gets too hard. We are not a people trained to
keep our commandments with stubborn loyalty.
But thank goodness our call is the call to Jesus.
Look at Jesus's stubborn loyalty towards us.
He goes on elsewhere to write about the word duty and how duty
is not a word that our culture and our world loves today.
Would you agree? We love words like success.
Take, take me some success. Love that.
We love words like rewards. Love getting some rewards back.
ROI, return on investment. Yes, please.
I'll take some of that. Duty, not so much.
Duty is a four letter word in many ways.
And he argues that we need to recapture a healthy sense of
duty in our world to counteract the prevalent sense of despair
that so many men are facing. Detachment, estrangement and
families or even entitlement, That's something's owed to me.
We need to recapture that. And he goes on to speak to men
directly and he says men that we need to recapture our sense of
duty first to God, who gives them breath and life and
everything else. Duty to our wives who they vowed
to love as Christ loves the church.
Duty to our kids who need a model of dependability and
devotion. Duty to the church where they
contribute and don't just consume, and duty to the
community where they work for the common good.
We need to recapture the idea of being dutiful to one another.
Christians are to be a people who are stubbornly loyal to each
other. Stubbornly loyal.
I love that language. There ought to be a sense of
obligation that we have to one another's well-being because we
see this all throughout Scripture.
But one of my favorite pictures of this type of loyal love is
found in the book of Romans. Paul is emphasizing giving honor
where it's due, and he writes this in Romans 13.
He says let no debt remain outstanding except the
continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves
others has fulfilled the law. Do you hear the commitment
language here from the apostle Paul?
He's saying that you and I would do well to make sure that
everything we owe to others is paid back.
But there's one debt that will never fully pay back.
There's one debt we can't fully pay back.
And it's the ongoing debt to love one another.
Is that how you view each other? Like, do you walk into church
and you're just like, all right, who needs my love today?
You know, like, do you walk in and be like, I owe people love?
Whoever needs it, you've got it right?
Like I, there's a debt of love that I owe to one another.
So many of us, we're so wrapped up in our own worlds.
We're so wrapped up in raising our own kids, doing our own
jobs, pursuing our own futures, all of that, that we don't think
about the fact that we owe an obligation of love to our
brothers and sisters in Christ. Like perpetually, anytime we
interact, there's a debt that's owed and we get the privilege of
repaying it to continually to one another.
I love that vision. We're a stubbornly loyal group
of people to one another. I think we need to re engage
with the practice of willing indebtedness to one another.
Ah, willing indebtedness. Like every time we interact,
it's just like, whatever you need, you got it, I'm in debt to
you. What if we adopted that kind of
mentality? What if instead of dropping one
another when there's a disagreement, we practice
willing indebtedness to our brothers and sisters?
God showed his said love all throughout Scripture.
He kept his promise to Abraham and his promise to the
Israelites by sending Jesus the Messiah.
Jesus showed his disciples a said type of love by loving them
all the way to the end, pouring out his life so that they might
live. And he looks at us church and he
says you do it too. You all do it too.
Love one another in the same way that God himself has loved you.
Christian community is covenantal.
It's covenantal, bonded, committed together.
It's not circumstantial like most relationships.
Things get bad, I leave, it's not convenient, things get hard.
No thanks. Christian community is
covenantal. We're committed to one another.
So why is it so important to grasp the idea of Christian
community as a covenantal relationship?
There's many, many reasons out there, but here are a few that
help us understand the weight of living into this type of
community #1 real quick. Living in covenantal
relationships now is how we both survive today and prepare for
eternity. Survive today.
For the early church, unity wasn't optional.
It was necessary for survival under constant threat of
persecution. They needed to be able to fully
trust and lean on each other during hard times.
In the same way, if we're to be faithful to the teachings of
Jesus Church, we need each other.
This means we commit to one another relationally, we
continually relationally invest in one another, we pray for one
another, we strengthen one another.
Someone has a need, we seek to fill it.
We serve one another and we tell the truth to one another.
This remains church that we remain loyal even through the
trials. One of the biggest
misconceptions of love in our time is that it should always
feel pleasant. Love should always feel good,
should make me feel happy. Look, love is great, love is
beautiful. There's times of emotion, but
love is not always going to feel pleasant, right?
What we learn from Jesus is that sometime love bears pain for the
sake of another person. John 15 says my command is this,
love each other as I have loved you greater love has no one, no
one this to lay down one's life for his friend.
Is it pleasant to lay down your life for someone else?
No, Jesus was willing to bear that pain though for us, love
goes deeper #2 Christian community then is a, is a
commitment to reconciliation, which again is kind of like a
four letter word in our society today.
Reconciliation. Sometimes when we're in conflict
with our brothers and sisters, it's easy to forget that we're
going to be hanging out in heaven forever.
You thought about that. Like when we're in conflict,
like we just want to like butt heads and we want to just walk
away, but we need to remember we're literally going to be
spending forever together, right?
We'd be wise to remember that we'll be living on the same
cul-de-sac in our mansions in heaven.
Now, personally, I'm not prone to be stubbornly loyal or
willingly indebted by nature. When things get tense with
somebody else, OK? That's not in my nature, OK?
My flesh, I don't know about you guys.
Maybe you guys are better than me.
My flesh would rather blow things up.
You know what I'm saying? When things get tense, OK, I
hear like, is that nervous laughter?
I can't tell. My flesh would rather assert my
dominance. I'd rather burn bridges than
build them. OK.
I think sometimes even as men, right, we'd rather prove how
tough we are by being unfazed at losing a relationship rather
than being vulnerable, humble and trying to mend it.
It's always harder to press in and forgive.
It's always harder. So point blank church, this
might be the question of the morning.
Is there anyone in your life that you need to reconcile with?
God was deeply committed to reconciliation.
He sent his son to do it and then he commanded us to do the
same. He he essentially is like, hey,
don't even don't even bring your worship.
If you know that your brother has something against you, leave
your gift at the altar. Leave your worship over there
and go make it right with your brother first.
Then come back and worship. I just have a sense in the room.
There might be some people you need to reconcile with out
there. And look, I know it's hard and I
know sometimes it's not even possible and all of that.
But as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
As far as it depends on you, OK, I just feel like that's a word
for someone here today. Is there a brother or sister
that you'll be spending eternity with that God is calling you to
make amends with? If a name is popping up, I
consider you to to text them soon.
Now continuing on living in covenant relationships enables
us to do justice. Michael Micah 68, he has shown
you, our mortal, what is good and what does the Lord require
of you to act justly in the love mercy, to walk humbly with your
God has said love is actionable and it's sacrificial, not
sentimental. This means we do right by each
other and we do right by others. The strength we gain from having
this sort of unbreakable support system in the church allows us
then to turn outward and be a blessing and refresh others.
Proverbs reminds us that whoever refreshes others will be
refreshed. Christians, then, are to be some
of the most refreshing people in the world to be around.
Why? Because we're totally secure in
God's love for us. We're totally secure and safe in
God's love for us. We need a deeply interconnected
web of relationships that are living out sacrificially for
others. Finally, living in covenant
relationships is how we show the world God's love.
John 1335. By this everyone will know you
are my disciples if you love one another.
Church, This stubbornly loyal love isn't about us feeling
good, it's not about ourselves. It's not just about us taking
care of our own like the world is.
Tired of seeing people just look after themselves.
If Christians choose self preservation like Peter or
selfish gain like Judas, we'll blend right into the world's
value systems and faulty ideologies.
You agree? A person just trying to protect
themselves? The world says, been there, done
that. A greedy person just trying to
get money for themselves. The world says, yeah, that's
common. I've seen that show us something
new. People cutting off relationships
when it gets tough. What else is new?
The world says, but a people who choose self sacrifice, who
choose to give even when it hurts.
A people who lay down their life for their friends, their
brothers and even their enemies. They stand out in the world.
The world says, now that's something new.
That's something I've never seen before.
That might even be a people that I'd want to hang around, that
I'd want to spend time with. That might be something I want
to be a part of church. Sometimes I think the world
around us is more pained by the disunity in the church than we
are. They're aching for it.
They're the ones saying you're the supposed to be the ones who
have this figured out church. They want it.
They know there should be something better and they're
waiting for us to live into it. They're hungry and searching for
the kind of loyal love that God has given to us and we are
called to give to one another. This is a fatherly love that
doesn't give up. And maybe there's some of you in
today who like you haven't experienced that type of
fatherly love. And I just felt a prompting, I
wasn't planning on saying this, but like we first need to
understand something that God loves you like a perfect father,
not a broken one. God loves you with a never
ending love. No matter what you've done, no
matter if you didn't hold up your end of the bargain, no
matter if you feel like you did things that were unworthy of his
love or his attention or whatever.
I just need to say to you today, God loves you like a perfect
Father. He loves you so deeply and He
always will, and we just need to reach out to Him and receive
that love first and foremost. So I just want to encourage us
as a church, as the band comes up, my encouragement to you as
the people of God is to start making new commitments to one
another. Maybe you won't live into these
commitments and these promises perfectly at first, but
eventually you will grow into them.
It's like a marriage, you make the promise upfront to protect,
to serve, and to stick by not fully knowing what life is going
to throw your way. But when you are finally
married, it's the new family dynamic that pushes you to learn
the new kind of love. None of us are ready to be
parents before our kids are born, but in the same way,
you're never fully trained. But the new family dynamic of
having a new kid pushes you to learn a new kind of love.
And now that you're a part of the family of God, it pushes you
to learn Jesus's new command of love, to love one another as God
Himself has loved you. So start making commitments to
each other. I will sacrifice for my
community. I will choose to be stubbornly
loyal. I will choose willing and
deadness of love. And I will choose to reconcile
when things get hard. You may not live them out
perfectly all the time, but with God's grace, He will form us
more and more to become persons of love like Jesus for the sake
of others. And I just want to take a moment
to just express my gratitude to the people in my life who have
been stubbornly loyal in love. Any of you out there have people
in your life who have just been stubbornly loyal to you?
There's so many, even just dads in our church being Father's Day
stubbornly loyal dads out there, that I see you out there working
hard for your families. We see you holding down the Fort
while your wife is in the hospital.
We see you supporting children through difficult financial
crisis. We see you opening up your home
to Foster and adopt children. We see you working hard day in
and day out to provide well for your family.
We see you serving those in the next generation through kids
ministry and clubs and sports and beyond.
And I just want to say we see you to my own dad who's in the
room. Thank you for being stubbornly
loyal to me even when I was a pain in the butt and didn't hold
up my end of the deal. I honor you in that way.
To all of you fathers out there and parents out there and men
and women who are stubbornly loyal in their relationships,
way to go, way to go. You're living it out.
All of these people are are modeling.
The Father's never giving up love for us, this type of has
said love that never stopped looking for the wayward son and
embracing him when he finally comes home.
Way to go, be strong and courageous.
Men, women, families, keep going, we see you.
And to all of us as a church, may we continually learn to live
into this type of covenantal love so that the watching world
will see Jesus through us so that they'll see Jesus.
So in closing, because of God's loyal has said he promised
himself to a family and he fulfilled this promise in Jesus
the Messiah paid the price for you and for me by dying on a
cross for our sins that anyone who believes in him and
confesses with their mouth that he is indeed Lord.
Anyone who places their faith in the death and resurrection of
Jesus can also be saved, set free, forgiven and adopted back
into the family of God. And if that's you today, it
starts with just making a decision in your heart and
praying to God and asking for that and receiving that free
gift of salvation. It was Jesus who loved us to the
very end, and He told us to do the same.
May we now live into it.