Love God and Love One Another

Heat. Heat. [Music] Jo [Music] is for us. Lord Jesus Christ to free us. Holds me in his love. Neither height nor death could separate us.

Hell and death could not defeat us. He who gave his son to free us holds me in his love. Neither height nor death could separate us. Hell and death will not defeat us. He who gave his son to free. Oh his love.

Sing with joy now. Our God is for us. The Father's love is a strong and mighty fortress. Raise your voice now. All love is gater. Who can stand against us if our God is for us?

Sing with joy now. Our God is for us. The Father's love is a strong and mighty fortune. Raise your voice now. Your love is gater. Who can stand against us if our God is for us?

[Music] From the moment that I wake up. [Music] Your will be done, my God and father. As in heaven, so on earth. My heart is drawn to selfexing. Help me seek your kingdom first. As Jesus walked, so I shall walk.

Held by your same unchanging love. Be still my soul. Oh, lift your voice and pray. Father, not my will but yours be done. [Music] How in that garden he persisted, I may never fully know the fearful weight of true obedience. It was held by him alone.

What wondous faith to bear that cross to bear my sin. What a wondous love. My hope was sure. When there might seem, father, not my will but yours. When I am lost, when I am broken, in the night of fear and doubt, still I will trust in my good father. Yes, to wonder king I bow.

As Jesus rose, so I shall rise in ransom glory at the throne. My heart restored with all your saints I sing. Father, not my will but yours [Music] as we go forth. Our God and Father, lead us daily in the fight. Let all the world life see your glory and your name be lifted high and in his name we overcome. For you shall see us safely home.

Now as your church we lift our voice and pray for not my will but let your voice be done. And in his name we overcome for you shall see us safely home. Now as your church we lift our voice and pray. Father not my will but yours be done. Father, not my will but yours be done. Father, not my will but yours be done.

[Music] You give life. You are love. You bring light to the darkness. You give hope. You restore every heart that is broken. [Music] Great are you, Lord.

It's your breath in our lungs. So we pour out our praise. We pour out our praise. It's your in our lungs. So we pour out our praise to you, holy. [Music] You give life.

You give light, you are love. You bring light to the darkness. You give hope. You restore every heart that is broken. Great are you, Lord. It's your name in our lives.

So we pour out our praise. We pour out our praise. Your name in our lives. So we pour out our praise. We pour out our praise. Your name.

So we pour out our praise. We pour out our praise. your name in our lives. We pour out our praise to you. [Music] All the earth will shout your praise. Our hearts will cry.

These bones will sing. Great are you Lord. All the earth will shout your peace. Our hearts will cry. These will sing. [Music] on you.

Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Are you [Music] in our house? We pour out our praise. We pour out our praise.

Your name. So we pour out our praise. We pour out our praise. in our lives. So we pour out our praise. We pour out our praise.

Your name in our lives. So we pour out our praise to you. [Music] Great are you sing great are you? Where are you Lord? Great are you, [Music] heavenly father God. This morning we just acknowledge your greatness, your goodness to us that we do not deserve.

God, we have life because you give us life. And you deserve all of the glory for your creation. God, your greatness still exists even when we don't see it. We're blinded by sin and brokenness around us, by our own personal sin and brokenness. But when the clouds clear, God, we see that you have been ever present the whole time. You have not changed.

You have not been moved. You are still in your throne, God. [Music] God, may the just stir in our hearts. May we not be so easy to forget. [Music] May we look for you in the hard times and praise you even still. We love you, Lord.

I pray. Amen. You all may have a seat for a time of confession. In today's dialogue, we use the word love a lot in almost everything. You can hear people say it all the time. I love this restaurant.

I loved that movie. I love this person. I love my pets. We use the phrase, I love this thing. And it signifies that there's a joy or a gladness from the person or the thing that we're talking about. But when people look at your life, do people know that you are a disciple of Jesus by how you love one another in the church?

Does the world see a love that is selfless and sacrificial? A love that puts others before ourselves that gives up our time, our resources, and even our own lives for the good of others. Do people see that transforming grace has been given to us in Christ that frees us to love one another as he has loved us? This example Jesus gives us as his disciples as a new commandment in John 13. He says, "A new commandment I give to you that you love one another just as I have loved you. You are also to love one another.

By this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another." And in a world that often points us very inward, teaches us to love ourselves and pursue what is good for us, it's easy to justify why we do things that prove we love ourselves. But Jesus provides us with a model that cannot be mistaken. An illustration that can't be ignored. His life embodied the meaning of as I have loved you. Which is why he could say, do not think that I have come to abolish the law or prophets.

I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. Christ is our model for how we should live and how we should love one another. And it's because of his life and the grace that has been given to us that we can do this in a way that tr show shows true selfless and sacrificial love. Our Christlike love towards each other communicates to outsiders that we really do believe the gospel that we proclaim and it provides a limited but powerful illustration of the love that can be theirs in Christ Jesus. So in our time of confession, let us examine ourselves and ask the question, does my love for others, specifically my love for the people of God, confess to the world that I'm a disciple of Christ? Let us go to the Lord and confess where we have not loved one another as Jesus has loved us.

How we have not reflected and represented the grace that has been given to us in Jesus. Follow along with me in this prayer and you you'll read aloud with me at the underlined portions. Lord Jesus, love brought you from heaven to earth and from earth to the cross, from the cross to the grave. Love caused you to be weary, hungry, tempted, scorned, scourged, struck, spat on, crucified, and pierced. Love led you to bow your head in death. Let me see your love everywhere.

Not only in the cross, but in the fellowship of believers and in the world around me. When I feel the warmth of the sun, may I praise you who are the son of righteousness with healing power. When I feel the tender rain, may I think of the gospel showers that water my soul. Your infinite love is a mystery of mysteries and my eternal rest lies in the eternal enjoyment of it. May we always rest and enjoy this love that you gave to us. Let's take just a moment and just confess where we are not loving others as God has loved us and give that to the Lord.

Heavenly Father, we acknowledge our selfishness, our desire to trust our own selves, to focus on loving oursel and not loving others as well. God, sometimes we forget um the example of Christ and how in loving well he chose to love even the least of these. That he spent his life on mission for the sake of others. And God, your desire is that we would echo that example. God, would you stir in our hearts where we are not loving others well? Where we are not being the church?

Where we are not loving one another in truth and in grace? Where we are unwilling to give up our time. Where we are unwilling to give up um our personal boundaries for the sake of someone else who needs them. And God, we thank you for your forgiveness as we fall short. We thank you that you go beyond our weaknesses and our failures and that we can trust in you and that you have it, that you have us. Give us this morning in your name.

In our name we pray. Amen. Amen. Well, good morning church. This time we'll go ahead and dismiss our three to five year olds. Three to five year olds, you can head out for your class this morning.

Want to say happy new year to those uh who I've not had the chance to say that to or haven't seen you yet this new year. I hope everyone is um start off their new year on a good note. Uh maybe that's with some resolutions or uh maybe that's just hey we're gonna we're gonna make two uh the best year we've ever lived our life. Uh but I just want to tell you there's just bad news straight out of the gate. 2022 is going to have just as much tragedy, just as much loss, just as much heartache, just as much stress and anxiety um that probably 2021 had as well. And so you're kind of like, "All right, I take my happy new year back.

Um, thank you for that good and wonderful news. Um, but here is the good news in regards to that. If you were to go back a year ago to December 31st and of 2020 heading into 2021, God knew everything that was going to happen to each one of us in 2021. He knew every moment. He knew every thought. He knew every tragedy.

He knew every loss. He knew every single one of those moments. And what God did in those moments was he pursued you. He pursued you in order to love you in those moments, in order to care for you, in order to sanctify you, in order to love you in every single one of those. And he's going to be doing the the same thing throughout 2022. And you might kind of answer the or you might answer that with, well, he has a funny way of showing it uh when it comes to that.

But one of the tangible ways in which we've seen God show up and love us through all of junk that we've experienced in the last year or two years or whatever it looks like. One of the tangible ways that that has happened is just what we've seen throughout the lives of the people in our church where I know of of families who in a pinch needed child care whether that was due to workrelated things or whatever it might be and and community groups surround them and provide child care. I mean just at the drop of a hat we've seen all kinds of things that have happened. I know of stories where members needed um members were walking through a difficult time or having to go to difficult doctor appointments and other members uh stopping what they're doing in those moments and just praying for those times for those doctor appointments that were happening. I know of situations where the church contributed financially to others in our church who were in financial crisis or in financial need.

I know of situations uh or times where shoulders were cried on. I know of times where cop was drunk across the table uh from people who are just bearing their soul to one another because of the stress and anxiety that they're walking through in their life. I mean just like any other year 2020 was not or 2021 was not shy of loss and heartache. I also know of times where people were celebrated celebrated throughout the year whe whether that was through milestones in life. Specifically, I know of career changes, home purchases, baptisms, anniversaries, child births, and even just just celebrating someone for the for the sake of celebrating them because of accomplishments they've had in their life. I know of hundreds of encouraging conversations between members where they're just saying to one another, "Hey, I'm thinking about you.

I'm praying for you right now. I know of members who took one of our institute classes on how to share the gospel and then they walked into a bank and they shared the gospel with another person who was depositing some money. I mean just just in those moments of just taking something that happened and know and looking for opportunities in order to share good news. I know of times where I've walked into a coffee shop and I've seen two of our members sitting at a table with Bibles open and I've said, "Hey, what are you guys doing?" And they said, "We're just we're just reading God's word together. We're just studying the Bible together."

I know of groups in our churches that have got together and they said, "You know, we're just going to read through books of the Bible." Like, we might not have all the answers as we read through this, but we're just going to read through it. I know of a a group of men, for example, who have read through Ephesians together. They've read through James together. I believe they've read through a few others together. I just know of things that are going on in our church.

That is good. That's good news for us. Tons of meal trains were organized. I mean, in 2021, we celebrated eight baptisms throughout the year. Our covenant membership grew during this time. I I had the uh opportunity to talk to several of my church planting friends from around the country over the last couple of weeks where I know of churches that are 30 to 40% down in covenant membership and/or attendance on Sunday mornings and we grew during 2021.

I know of others that are having to like how do they how do they work through cutting budgets and we increased our budget into 2022. So, I know 2021 has had its ugliness, but at the same time, it has had its beauty as we've walked through and seeing God show up in our lives. And it's ultimately God's unflinching, unchanging, and never ending grace and goodness to us. God's moved in our lives this past year. And what I want to share with you today is is primarily the way in which God has moved in our lives as sought to love him by loving one another. And that's going to be one of our again one of our biggest pushes for 2022 is diving into this idea of how do we love God by loving one another.

I mean you hear that through the songs that we sang today. You're hearing that through the confession that was just shared. How do we love God by loving one another? And this really is our epiphany series that we're going to be walking through. Josh uh started it off last week with this idea of being united to Christ in order to be united to one another. And today, what we're going to be looking at is how we how we break this down or in the next four weeks is how do we break down the 59 one anothers.

And we kind of boiled them into four categories. And the first one today is the idea of of really a major goal. How do we worship God by fulfilling the great commandment to love God and to love others? How do we do that in a specific way? And so I want you to see that because you've probably heard that phrase. If you've been around church any time in your life, you've heard that phrase, love God, love one another.

It's it's the mission statement of probably half the churches in the country. Love God, love one another. Where does that come from? And so we're going to open up our Bibles. If you've got one, go ahead and open it up. Matthew 22 is where we're going to be starting out.

We'll bounce around to a couple of places, but this is going to be our primary text. Matthew 22, starting in verse 34, and we're going to look at this idea of where love God and love one another comes from. Starting in verse 34, it says this. But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, and those are just the religious Jewish religious leaders in Jesus's day at this time, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked Jesus a question to test him. He said, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?"

And he Jesus said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend the law and the prophets. So I want to frame this up for us today so that you can see how this all ties together.

We're going to look at the mission, the means, and the method of disciplehip. And this passage really gives us the primary mission for disciplehip in these two commands that are really just one commandment actually, but we'll get to that here in a minute. But these two commandments are this. Number one, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. That's where people get the idea of love God. That that is the goal of humanity is to love God and that is the primary way in which we worship God, we honor God, we glorify God is by devoting ourselves to loving him with all our heart, soul, with all our mind.

This is the great and first commandment. And then the second one is s is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Again, part of the mission, the mission of every believer is to love God and love your neighbor as yourself. And then Jesus goes on to say, "On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets." And here's what that means.

From the very beginning, God's design has been for humanity to live in such a way that God is honored, that God is loved, that God is worshiped, and that God is glorified. And that in that humanity is also loved well. And so, one of God's good graces has been giving us instructions on how to do this, instructions on how to love him and how to love others. And one of God's good graces has been giving us these instructions through, as he started with Moses, the Ten Commandments that were etched in stone. You know the story. He goes up on the mountain and he gets these ten commandments and he comes down and these commandments were given to him in order to train the people on what it looks like to live in such a way that God is honored and that people are loved.

That that that was the purpose of giving these commandments. He then also gave them more commandments to again continue elaborating, expanding and ultimately seeing that there are hundreds of way in order to love God and love one another. So much so that it gets to be over 600 commands. So it's not just the 10. There's a lot more that go into how to love God and how to love others in a way that God is worshiped. That he's worshiped.

And it's not bad news that he gave us actually more than we could handle or that we were even capable of following. Because that's the reality. If you look at 613 commandments and you try to put them out in a list and you're like, I'm going to follow these in order to love God and love others, you you're not going to measure up. You're not going to be able to do it yourself. You can't even do the 10. You can't even do the 10.

And even if it was just simply this, me saying love God and love others, you're even kind of wondering how do I do that? How do I do that? Well, now here's the key again. If I were to say that's our 22 2022 resolution as a church to love God and love one another, go do this. You would leave here thinking at least from a foundational perspective, sweet, I know what to do. I know what I'm supposed to do with my life, but again, I'm not exactly sure how to do it.

And what we'll find, just like the Israelites found, is that we've got these rules. We've got these commandments that Jesus said are good commandments. We've got them. But as we try to do them day after day, we're going to start to find guilt and shame come into our lives because we don't know how to do them well. or we go a day without doing it or a moment without doing it or seeing an opportunity and we fail to execute that opportunity. And so, how do we how do we kind of resolve this idea of love God and love one another?

If this is the great thing, if this is the great commandment, if if all of the law depends on God telling us to do this, how do we then resolve that in our lives? How do we actually execute what he's called us to do in order to worship him by loving him and loving others in this way? Because he didn't tell us to do it halfway. He never tells us to do anything halfway. He tells us to do everything perfectly. How do we do it perfectly?

So stay with me here. God gave us one goal. Love him, worship him, honor him, and do this with others. Love one another. That's the goal. That's the mission that we have.

How do we do it when we can't do it? Enter Advent. What we just celebrated? Because we can't do it. He has to send someone who can do it. And he sends Jesus.

And Jesus is born. He He Jesus is the only person born of both God and man. He's the son of God. He's the son of man. And he does this as we kind of theologically call hypothatic union where he's 100% man and he's 100% God. He sends him in order to live out all of these laws.

That this is what we talk about in the fulfillment of the scriptures, the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. Jesus does it all perfectly. He loves God with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his mind. And he loves others perfectly. Everything that was required in the law in order for this to happen, Jesus does it perfectly. Every thought, every action, every deed, every word, every motive, every moment in his life was perfectly loving God and loving others.

And that is incredibly significant for us because as we talk about the the gospel of Jesus Christ, it is often referred to as the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And the church oftenimes focuses on the death and resurrection because the death is paying your penalty for you so that you don't have to pay it. That's good news. I I don't want to die and I don't want to spend an eternity separated from him. I don't want to have the wrath of God and the judgment of God poured out on me. So Jesus pays that death for us.

That's good news. But that's not the only thing Jesus did. We also then harp on Easter and we focus on the resurrection that not only did he die for us, but he resurrected three days later so that he is the firstborn of the new fruits of the gospel. He is the first one who resurrects to this new glorified body and is guaranteeing the same for everyone who believes in him. That whenever we die physically here or if he returns, he will take us from these broken down hoopty bodies and he will give us new bodies where we get to spend eternity with him in a glorified state. The resurrection of Jesus Christ matters 100% absolutely.

It's not the only thing. It's not the only thing. What is hardly ever focused on is the actual life of Jesus. That for 33 years he was doing something for us. He died for us. He rose for us.

But he's also living for us. And what he's doing in living for us, earning something for you that you could not earn. He's earning something for you that you could not earn. And what that was is the ability to live a life that honors God and that loves others. Think about it this way in terms of of investing. Think about it in terms of investing.

Let's say you want to invest and your goal is to save up or earn a million dollars. A million dollars and you want to do this in let's say 33 years. All right? You want to retire with a million bucks in the bank. What you're going to need to do is you're going to need to invest and save and earn in such a way that you're saving and putting away about $30,000 a year in order to by the end of it have a million dollar in the bank. And so what Jesus is doing for 33 years is he's fulfilling each of the law and requirements of righteousness.

He's earning that. All right? He's fulfilling it. his bank account is earning this idea of of of being able to retire. And then he does one of the most scandalous things that has ever happened in the history of the world. He then freely gives it to those who didn't earn it.

And and then he takes their debt. I mean, no, no one would do this. No one would do this unless it's God himself with his perfect plan and will to give sinners who have only racked up debt to take it from them and deposit it to his own account so that he can then give you what he's earned. Right, eternity with God, relationship with your your creator, your father. That's what Jesus did. And that's honestly the reason why they killed him and murdered him.

is because he was going around forgiving people of their sins when they didn't deserve it. These Pharisees and Sadducees, they they didn't want that to happen. They wanted people to earn it because that was their way of making a living. That was their way of money. That was their way of of controlling the people was making them live this worksbased system so that it benefited them rather than ultimately honoring God. So, how dare someone come in and and declare to be God and then to declare a system of grace that is giving people something that they don't deserve and allowing them to not have to work for it or have to tithe extra for it.

So, let's get rid of him. But that's exactly what Jesus did for us. And then he takes it a step f further. Not only does he earn for you a perfect life of righteousness, which is what's necessary in order to love God and love others, he takes it a step further. And as Josh shared with us last week, he then unites himself to us. He comes to live inside us so that he can live through us so that when he commands you to love God and love others, you can now actually do it because of Jesus in you and Jesus through you.

You can now actually do this. This is why we see this in Galatians 2:20. This is the means of disciplehip. I've been crucified with Christ. That means your flesh, your sinful identity, your old self has been put to death with Jesus Christ on the cross. That's something supernatural and spiritual that God does.

He takes your old self, your old identity, and he puts it on Jesus on the cross, your sin, and he kills it. I've been crucified with Christ. And because it's put to death, I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. I no longer live. The the flesh sinful Dwayne Gibbs no longer lives. Christ gives me a new identity as Christ to live in me and now lives through me.

The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith, believing in Jesus, faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I love God by Jesus loving God through me. I love others by Jesus loving through me. By the miraculous union in which Christ comes to live in us and through us. This is good news. We can now with confidence be trained and equipped to actually love God and love one another in a way that honors and worships God.

We now have the means to live out the mission of doing this. That's all we need to worship God. Jesus. Jesus. That's all we need is Jesus to be able to worship God. We come back to him as our means to fulfill the mission.

This then leads into the method. So again, back to the framework. God gives us the goal of life. Honestly, these are again the only two revolving resolutions you ever need. You can like lose weight if you want or diet or you know whatever. The two great resolutions that you need every single year are just putting these two in front of you all the time.

Love God, love others. Love God, love others. That that's the mission. That's the resolution of our life. The means to execute it is we need Jesus to do that. I need Jesus to live in me, live through me, pray through me, help me with my prayer, help me with my study, help me with how I engage others, help me with how I steward my finances.

Jesus, I need you to help me with all of those things because you've done it perfectly already. Help me to do it that way as well. Now, yes, it's going to be imperfectly executed, but he's helping me grow in it so that it is getting closer and closer and closer to looking like how Jesus did it. Jesus, I need you to live through me. I need the means of that. So Jesus comes and fixes it.

But then Jesus also provides us with the method on how we are going to spread this throughout the world. How we are to actually go about loving others. I want you to turn with me to John 13 34 and 35 as we look at this because one of the things that we see here in the Matthew passage again Jesus is talking to Pharisees and Sadducees. So he's giving them kind of a bird's eye view of what the great commandments are. Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. Love others as you do yourself.

Bird's eye view. John 13, he brings it down to a specific example of how to do this. And so here Jesus is speaking with his disciples and he's providing them the method, the specific way specific way in which they're to fulfill this great commandment, the mission. Verse 34, a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. And here's the key. Just as I have loved you, just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

By this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. And so what does this mean? When Jesus turned 30, and I know a lot of us in this room are knocking on that door. When Jesus turned 30, I know that's depressing for some of you, but it's all right. He chose 12 men whom he was going to disciple, whom he was going to help them be more like him. He was going to help them follow Jesus through instruction and relationship.

And he was going to do this for three years. He was going to instruct them through relationship. During those three years, Jesus did some specific things for them. And if we're going to abide by and follow the command of Jesus to love God and love one another and and as Jesus tells us to do it just as he has done, then the real question to ask is how did Jesus love the 12? How did Jesus disciple the 12? Because this provides for us the method.

It provides for us the example. And one of my favorite books is called the master plan of evangelism by Robert E. Coleman. It's an older book uh but I think it is very timely. Master Plan of Evangelism. It's actually so it's older generationally that evangelism was the buzz term of the day of what it looked like to just disciple people just to go out and make disciples where evangelism now is kind of moved into that term of like how do I go to a stranger and tell them the good news of Jesus Christ.

All right. that that that's almost terrified us now to where now the buzzword is gospel centrality or disciplehip. And so back in this day when this was written, it was the master plan of evangelism. Getting the good news to others in order to make disciples so that they then go and make more disciples. That was kind of under the umbrella of what evangelism actually was. And one of the things that Robert E.

Pullman would do is he actually put together teams of disciples who would follow the Billy Graham crusades and spend months at a time in these cities to begin discipling these new converts, connecting them to local churches, connecting them to discipling relationships because he knew down at the end of that just making converts wasn't going to work in a strategy. like we need to make disciples who are then able to reproduce and make more disciples. And so what Roberty E Coleman did was he dove into how did Jesus make disciples? What do he embody with his life? And so he he kind of boiled it down into eight principles. And the book is eight chapters, eight principles of how to make disciples.

And it really is an easy fly through these eight principles so that you can kind of have an understanding kind of bird's eye view understanding of the way Jesus modeled disciplehip. How he expressed it in his instruction and relationship to the 12. And the first one was selection. The first method of Jesus for winning the world was to just choose average men, average women who were teachable, honest, and and understanding their need for a savior. Understanding their need for a savior. So he would pursue people in order to then select them and call them to follow him, call them to trust him.

The next thing that he did was he would then associate with them. Association was his second aspect of it. having selected his concentrated group. The essence of Jesus' training was to be with them and to have them follow him wherever he went. So disciplehip cannot just be what's happening right now on stage. This is a part of disciplehip, but this is not a primary means for disciplehip.

Disciplehip in community groups can go a little bit deeper because you can have dialogue, you can have a conversation with one another. But taking it even a step further is to be with one another as you walk through life together so that you can pray together and model prayer for one another so that you can study together and model studying the word of God together. So that you can talk through finances with one another. so that you can actually again be with one another and associate with one another so that you see example there. You've heard me talk about this so many times where I went to one of my mentors back in high school. I said, "I don't know how to pray."

And he said, "Why don't you go meet with Steve Escu and just start spending time with Steve Escu?" Because this guy just exudes prayer. He just prays all the time. And so I was like, "Hey, Steve, I would love to learn prayer." And he's like, "All right, meet me at 5:00 in the morning on Thursday." I'm like, "That sounds terrible.

I thought you could just pray anytime, but apparently it's 5:00 a. m. in the morning. So, I would just meet with Steve and we would just pray and he would pray for hours and I'm like, I got to go to school. And he's like, you go ahead. I'm going to keep praying.

But like I do I I was able to learn prayer by just seeing him and associating with him on what that looked like. Three was consecration in his chapter. I like to use the word submission here where Jesus valued loyalty before just intelligence from his people, from his followers. Joyful willingness to obey Jesus, to obey him. Not just uh we we like team Jesus. We like what Jesus stands for.

We like it's actuallying yourself to him. It's actually him like joyful obedience to Jesus. His consecration. Number four is impartation. Jesus gave away all that he had to his disciples including his peace, his joy, his keys to the kingdom, his glory, and even his life. He imparted his life to them.

Which means as disciples, we're not like, you know, I've, you know, I've cornered the best commentaries and so I'm going to hold those close to the heart. Or I, you know, I've figured out the best way to steward my resources and so I'm never going to share that with anybody. Or I've I've cornered the best way on how to have conversations with non-believers about the gospel of Jesus Christ. So I'm not going to share that because I want to keep that for myself. No, he imparted all of his knowledge and his wisdom and his spirituality to his disciples. Five is demonstration.

Jesus not only imparted it to him, but he demonstrated it for them. How to live, including how to pray, how to use scripture. Not just to study scripture, but how to use scripture. We got to remember scripture is the offensive tool of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Number six was delegation. In the beginning, Jesus's ministry looked like them following him.

Towards the end of the three years was him actually employing them to go out and do the ministry themselves. Number seven was supervision. They needed Jesus to correct them at times. They needed that because again, what what do we do? We're called to love God and love others perfectly, but we do that imperfectly because we're still sinners and we're working that out in our flesh relationship with our identity. And so we still do things messed up and we need Jesus sometimes to call us Satan, right?

I guess when Peter, get behind me, Satan, you don't know what you're talking about right now. We need at times one another to admonish each other. You'll see that in the coming weeks to edify one another to encourage one another to stop doing something and to start doing something else. We need that because Jesus was doing it for his disciples as well. And then the last one was reproduction. Jesus' strategy was to produce disciples who would reproduce.

And he gives that with the great commission. basically takes the mission love God, love one another and then puts it into the great commandment of go and make disciples of not just here in Jerusalem but also Judea and Samaria and also yeah to the ends of the world. Every nation go and make disciples. Those are the eight principles. Those are the methods that Jesus instilled in order to go and make more disciples. To sum it up for us, Jesus didn't teach his disciples through just instruction.

He taught them through relationship as well. Through relationship. And so that's why as you're kind of seeing us work this out in our church, we have a combination of both. We have institutes which are absolutely going to heir on the side of instruction. We need to grow in the knowledge of the word of God and the knowledge of how to pray and the knowledge of how to counsel and the knowledge of how to evangelize and all of those things are working themselves out and how we disciple one another. But at the same time, we need to also create relationship because disciplehip is done through relationship to be in each other's lives when it comes to community groups.

And as you're going to start to hear us, we're going to push that down even further just like Jesus did where yes, he chose 12, but he even had a specific three that he concentrated more time and energy on in Peter, James, and John. And so for us that is going to look like some informal like we're not going to create the three uh uh for every single one of you to find two to three people that in your life is going to be a group that we call these dr I really don't care what we call them as long as we're following in the model of Jesus. So there needs to be two to three people that you are meeting with on a weekly basis. I say meeting with that might be getting together for coffee. That might be through group text message. That might be through showing up at one another's house.

But a group of two to three people that this group of people are going to be the ones who hold you accountable to your discipling relationship with Jesus. How is prayer going? How is studying the word of God going? How is evangelism going? Are you terrified about that? When was the last time that you looked for an opportunity to with somebody?

What do you feel like you might lacking in your knowledge of the word of God? And is there an institute class coming up that we could go and participate in together? How does it look like your family life is going right now? Your relationship with your spouse, your relationship with your kids. Have you lost your lately? confess some things.

Let's confess those together to one another. Like some of this works itself out in community groups, but can we be honest with ourselves a little bit? We can still hide in community groups. It's just true. We get together and we play the part of how was your week? It was highs and lows and this and that.

There's still opportunity in those moments to hide and to not be honest. And what we're asking, what we're begging for is to get our people into groups of two to three, even further, so that when Jesus goes to pray on the side of a mountain, he's pulling us with him and he's saying, "I want you to pray as I'm going to." And I might even have to come back and rebuke falling asleep, walk with Christ. That's what we need is one another being willing to love each other in such a way that we're calling each other out when we're falling asleep out. But you can hear me and that's fine. We're just going to keep going.

We have the mission. We have the means. We have the method. And you might be asking, how does this work itself out in the 59 others? The reason why I'm focusing so much right now on the love one another is because 13 of the 59 one anothers is love one another. Love one another.

It's it's that imperative. We see it twice in John 13:34. We see it again in John 13:35. Love one another in John 15:12. Love one another in John 15:17. Love one another in Romans 13:8.

Love each other in First Thessalon. Love one another. John, I'm gonna move around just to see if that helps any. Love one another in 1 John 3:11. 1 John 3:23. 1 John 4:7.

1 John likes the idea of loving one another. You know, it might also be interesting that he loves that idea so much is because when it comes to the 12, John was considered the disciple whom Jesus loved, whom he loved. I mean, John is someone, this is this isn't an intellectual thing regurgitating to his congregation in Ephesus. This is something that he's experienced first first and foremost from the chest of Jesus as he's reclined Jesus at the last supper and experiencing this love from Jesus himself. I mean he adopted the language of Jesus in that last supper when Jesus says to my little children. John uses that same language as he's preaching to his church in Ephesus and he says to my little children.

He's been discipled by Christ. So much so that he talks like Jesus of one another. And we see this really come to fruition and how Jesus loved us by what he did in finishing his life by going to the cross. Like him him living the perfect life to earn for us righteousness culminates at him literally offering up his life as a sacrifice to finish the disciplehip. Like he didn't do it for earthly gain. He didn't position himself with disciples that were going to help his uh net income or to help his social status or to help him advance in his career.

He did it for one thing and one thing only, for the glory and renown of his father's name to spread over the entire earth. That's Habach 21:14. That's the goal of Jesus. spread my father's glory over the earth. And the way in which God spreads his glory over the earth is by laying his life down to the point of death on a cross. We see this in Romans 5:6 through8.

The way in which Jesus loves us is by dying for us. Dying for us. I mean, what a great way to segue into our communion time is as he says in Romans 5 6-8. For while we, you and I, we're still weak. Weak. All right.

That when you come back to love God, love one another, we're weak. We can't do it. At the right time, Jesus Christ died for the ungodly. For the ungodly. Then he kind of goes on for one will scarcely die for a righteous person though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. What he's kind of saying there is when it comes to earthly economics people are first willing to do something good for someone who's good or for someone who's like them.

Think about doing something in this regard, something good, having good will towards someone who has ill will towards you or is considered an enemy of you or is considered ungodly, unrighteous. Who would dare think to do something like that? God would. God would. While we were still weak, at the right time, Jesus Christ died for the ungodly. God shows his love his love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

But what that does for us when it comes to loving God and loving others is there's no judgment that we can cast on who we get to love, who we choose to love. who we choose to engage around us there. There we're not going to shoot for a target demographic. We're not going to shoot for someone who looks like us. We're going to shoot for those who are ungodly. That's who Jesus shot for.

Shoot for those who are sinners. And if you you are believing in Jesus today, you know the type of sinner that you were. Shoot for sinners. Love them and sacrifice your life. Take up your cross daily and follow Jesus. Sacrifice your life.

And what what that really means for us because we're not going to the the proverbial cross here. What that looks like is how am I managing my time so that I can create space to pursue the ungodly, to pursue those who don't know Jesus? How can I create space so that I mean, God help us? How often do we say, "I'm just too busy." I mean, we've got our work cut out for us in creating space for disciplehip. Because the way our culture preaches is that if you're not busy, you're not productive.

If you're not busy, you're not successful. If you're not busy, you're not you're not you're not contributing to society. You're not contributing to anything that's progressive right now. What we need to do is rep prioritize our lives in such a way that yes, absolutely we are successful in the sense of taking care of our families, but we need to at the same time make sure that we're not biting off more than we can chew and that we are not then being unfaithful to the commands that God has given us in following Jesus in loving God and loving others and making disciples. Making disciples. And we've got we've got tons of resources on like how to help with that.

One of those is just doing an audit of your life where you just examine. I mean, like you just literally pull out a piece of paper and you write down how you spend every hour. What' you do for this hour? What you do for this hour? Just fill it in. Fill it in.

It's I probably did one like five or six years ago and I need to do another one. But how you spend your time, you'll be able to start to see I can cut this out and I can cut this out and I can cut this out and all of a sudden now I've got I got six hours throughout that week that I can spend differently for the sake of following Jesus, loving God, and loving others. That's a step. There's so many others. There's books so many books out there right now because pastors and and and disciples and church members are exhausted from the busyiness of life. So, they're putting out resources.

A spacious life is one right now that I'm I'm going to start reading this coming week. There's others. Uh Reset is another good example of a book on just how to how to audit your life and look at spending it differently. rule of life. Just Google rule of life and you'll be able to see so many different resources. But we need to unclutter our lives so that we can create this space and just ask Lord how how do you want me to steward this so that I can be faithful to the command that you've given us to love you and love others?

He gives us the means, the fuel, the Christian energy, the lifeblood of a believer by dying on the cross for us, showing the ultimate act of love by laying down his life. And this allows us to basically answer as John says for us in 1 John 4:19, how do we love? We love because he first loved us. Like that's the fuel that you always have to come back to every single time. When you start to feel like this is exhausting. I don't know if I can go to this coffee meeting with my disciple group.

I'm going to go because he first came to me. He first loved me. He first saved me. He first sanctified me. He first matured me. He first grew me.

He first rebuked me. He first did all those things for me. And so now I've got some fuel to where I can take that to those who I'm loving now. Who I'm loving now. And so as we come to this time of communion, I'm gonna actually just go ahead and have you stand. Let's go ahead and stand up.

If you don't have the elements, I want you to go ahead and head back and grab those off the table. As we come to this time of communion, what as we push into these next few weeks, these next few weeks are going to be diving into to the other 46 one anothers as they're broken out into what it looks like to be in community in the one anothers into serving the one anothers and also reproducing the one anothers. It's going to be a lot of dues because they are commands. These are commands to love one another and to encourage one another and to serve one another and to spur one another on to love and good deeds. And so it is going to feel like it's an added expectation of you. And you're going to feel that throughout this year as we talk about our expectations of our covenant members when it comes to disciplehip.

You're going to feel like the bar is raising a bit in what we expect as Jesus has called us and commanded us to these things and that we are again if you are a believer and you understand his for you, it's going to be a joyful willingness and obedience and to submit to these things that God has called us to. And it's and if you want to really get to the idea of living a good living an abundant life, you're only going to live it if we are in joyful submission to these things that Jesus called us to. If you run from it, then you start to have an exhausted life and you start to have a frustrated life and you start to have a depressing life and whatnot when we're running from what he's called us to when it feels like it's extra. So, it's going to feel like extra at times, but I promise you, I promise you, it's going to be joyful. It's going to be abundant. It's going to be good for your soul.

But what we're going to need to come back to every time so that doesn't start to feel like a checklist is we need to come back to the source and the means that that fuels our disciplehip. And that's the love of Jesus as he's shown us in his life and ultimately in his death that he shed his sweat and his blood and his life in order to give us life. And so this meal that we partake of right now for believers who love and trust Jesus and are following him, this meal is to fuel our souls and our efforts in disciplehip as it says at the end of Colossians 1 that we strive forward not with our energy but with his energy and his might to ultimately make disciples. And so we remember Jesus breaking his body and shedding his blood as an act of love towards us. So that as we go out to begin loving God and loving others, we're doing it because we are remembering he first loved us. He first loved us.

So I'm going to pray for our meal and continue on in worship. Father, we thank you so much for what you have done in your ultimate plan and will of disciplehip in spreading your glory across the earth in seeing sinners become saints. And it all hinges on the life, death, and resurrection of your son Jesus whom you sent to earn for us righteousness that we could not earn. to pay the death penalty that we did earn and deserve and then to resurrect three days later with your generosity of giving us these glorified bodies that allow us to be in your presence for the rest of eternity. Thank you for what you have done. And right now, Lord, we remember your sacrifice at the cross as you broke your body and you shed your blood for the removal and forgiveness of our sins.

What a scandalous moment in time that was. We thank you. We honor you. And we worship you as the means of our relationship with the father. It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen.

[Music] We've come to join the song sung long before our lives to raise our voice along, heaven and earth. [Music] We've seen your faithful hand, your mercy with end. For the king who bled and died, for the God who sacriiceies, be thrown upon the praises of thousand generations. You are worthy, Lord of all. to you the slain and risen king. We lift a voice with heaven singing worthy Lord of all.

[Music] All through this life we lead onto eternity. Our endless praise will cry. Jesus be glorified. Jesus be glorified. Let's sing that again. All through this life we lead onto eternity.

Our endless praise will ride. Jesus be glorified. [Music] Jesus be glorified. [Music] Be enthroned upon the praises of the thousand generations. You are worthy Lord of all. To you the slain and rising king.

We lift a voice from heaven singing worthy Lord. Oh be thrown upon the praises of thousand generations. You are worthy. Oh, to you the slain and rising king. We lift your voice together worthy glory. [Music] Highest praises.

Highest. Praisees Lord of all. Let's worship him. Highest. [Music] Praise him Lord of all. He's the King of Kings.

Highest praise is Lord of King of the universe. Creator of everything. highest praise is Lord of all. Highest praise is Lord. Oh highest praisees. You are worthy.

Oh, enthroned upon the praises of the thousand generations. You are worthy. Glory. To you the slave is. We lift the voice. You are worthy.

Glor thrown upon the praises of the thousand generations. You are worthy. Glory to you the slain and risen king. We lift your voice from heaven singing worthy Lord. We enthroned upon the praises of a thousand generations. You are worthy Lord of all.

Unto you the slain and rising king. We lift a voice with heaven. Sing it worthy Lord of all. God, we just praise you for who you are. That the creator of