Sermons tagged with Nathan

This is the, I don't know, the fourth or fifth part of our series called Obscure Heroes. We've been looking at people that exist in kind of the nooks and crannies of the Bible. We all know of some of the main characters, some of the heavy hitters, some of the more prominent players in the Bible that we see, some of the more prominent people through history. One of them is David. We know King David, right? We've heard of him, and we actually spent a couple summers ago, my first summer here, we went through the life of David for 11 weeks. It was one of the more fun series I've ever gotten to do. And we know about Moses, we know about Paul, we know about Abraham, but there's other people tucked away in some of the corners of the Bible that give us incredible examples. And their stories are in there for good reasons. And so this week, the hero that we're looking at is actually my namesake, Nathan the prophet. I double-checked with my parents. I was named after Nathan. Just so you know, the name Nathan means gift from God. So I'm just throwing that out there. But if my aunts and uncles taught me anything at Christmases growing up, it's that not all gifts are good. So you guys can just figure out if I'm good or not. But we're looking at Nathan in a conversation that he has with David in 2 Samuel chapter 12. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, there's one in the seat in front of you, and we'll be looking through that story. To understand what's going on with the conversation with Nathan and David, we have to know what David did. We have to know what's leading into this moment. David was the king of Israel. He was the second king of Israel. The first king was a guy named Saul, but God said some terrible words. He said, I regret making Saul king. And he took the kingdom away from Saul, and he handed it to David. And David, God said himself, was a man after God's own heart. We know about David. There's prophecies that when the Messiah comes, Jesus, that one day he's going to sit on the throne of David. The flag that flies over Israel now bears the star of David. He's the greatest king that Israel has ever seen. But David's human. And like a lot of us, like all of us, he messed up. And he had a lot of mess ups over the years, but this was the worst one, and God in his sovereignty chose to chronicle it in the Bible so that we could see it. So David had been king for a little while, and it says that it was in the spring when kings are off to war. And a lot of people like to make the point that David was in a place that he shouldn't be. Whatever was going on, he probably should have been on the battlefield with his men, leading them into war. And instead, he decided he was going to sit this season out, and he stayed at home. Maybe he was holding out for more money, I'm not sure. But he stayed back at the palace while his men are off to war. And one day, he decides to go out on the rooftop in the evening. And from what I understand, I've done a little bit of research about this, from what I understand, that was kind of like bath time in the ancient world, and that the baths were on the roof, and that it was kind of common practice to not go out there. If you could see on other people's roofs, kind of give people their privacy or whatever. And David chose to go out on his roof to see what he could see. And he knew very well what he could see. There's a woman named Bathsheba who lived next door to him apparently, and he saw her bathing on the roof. Now Bathsheba was the wife of a guy named Uriah the Hittite. Uriah was a bad dude. I don't know the rank, but Uriah is what is called in the Bible one of David's mighty men. Uriah was part of David's SEAL Team 6. He was a bad joker. And this means that David had fought many wars with him, many battles with him. I would be willing to bet that David and Uriah knew each other personally. You don't live next door to the king if he doesn't know who you are, especially if you're in his army. And Bathsheba was married to Uriah, but David was the king. And we know what men in power do. Often, when they're not being responsible, they take what they want. And he wanted Bathsheba. So he sent, he told the guys that worked for him, I don't know, go over there and get Bathsheba for me. Brought Bathsheba over to his quarters, and then he did what men like that do, and they slept together. And he sends her home. Well, word gets back to David somehow. We don't know how. Maybe they're talking. I don't know. Word gets back to David that Bathsheba is pregnant. And so David, you can just see the wheels turning. And it's so human to see this part of David. The actions that he takes, you can see the wheels turning in his head. Oh, shoot. She's pregnant. I have to cover this up. People can't find out about this. I have to make sure this doesn't get out. Because David, man, he's writing psalms. He's singing songs to the Lord. He plays the harp sometimes. He's a spiritual guy. Part of his leadership is established on his moral purity, his moral excellence. So he can't let word get out that behind the scenes he's not what he seems he is. So he starts scrambling, how am I going to cover this up and make Uriah not mad at me? So he hatches a plane and says, I know. He calls Uriah back from the front lines, back from the battlefield. He welcomes him in and he gives him this speech about how great he is and I just value you so much. And because I value you so much, because you're such a loyal servant, I wanted to just give you a night with your, resting at home with your wife, enjoy yourself. We'll send you out to bat on the next day. Very clear what he wants to have happen there. Wants Uriah to go in, spend the night with Bathsheba, leave the next day, and in nine months he thinks that's his kid. The problem is Uriah was so, he had so much integrity that he said, I cannot in good conscience sleep under a roof in a soft bed while my men are on the battlefield sleeping under the stars. So thank you, David. I appreciate this means so much to me, but I'm going to sleep outside. And he slept on the front stoop of his house. So the whole neighborhood knew. Uriah didn't go in there. He didn't see Bathsheba. And then he's about to head back to the front lines the next day. And the wheels turn with David again. He's like, okay, well, plan B. So he writes a letter to his general, Joab, seals it, gives it to Uriah to deliver to Joab. Uriah is so loyal that David didn't even think that he might peek in there to see what this letter said, because if he did, things would have changed. The letter told Joab, tomorrow in battle against the Philistines, I want you to put Uriah in the front lines, which was not typical of the mighty men. You put meat shields in the front lines. You put new people there. You don't put Uriah there, okay? He waits and he cleans up the mess. But he put them in the front lines. He says, then I want you to advance into the Philistine army. And when you give your signal, I want you to withdraw so that they surround him and kill him. Joab was a good soldier. He was a good general. He was trusted by David. So the next day, that's what they did. The army advanced with Uriah in the center, and then they withdrew. I would love to have seen Uriah. I bet Uriah fought the fight, man. But they withdrew, and they murdered him on King David's instruction. When news of Uriah's death gets back to Jerusalem, David, finishing out the plan, totally despicably, plays the part of the grieving king and the magnanimous husband and says, Bathsheba, you poor widow that has no one to provide for you. I will care for you. I will make you my wife, presumably in honor of my friend Uriah. And the sin is covered over. Now, that is a despicable thing that David did. And maybe a month's time, a couple weeks' time, David became a lying, thieving, adulterous murderer. One of, I think, the worst sins recorded in the Bible. And then he covers over it. And that's it. And I would have to imagine, I don't know for sure, I don't know this for sure, okay? This is just, sometimes I walk over here when I'm just making wild guesses and I have nothing to base this on. So pretend I'm talking from right here. David, he wrote most of the Psalms. I would be willing to bet in the time between he sinned with Bathsheba and the time to the story we're about to cover that he didn't do muchm writing. I would be willing to bet he felt pretty distant from his God during that time. I would be willing to bet he woke up most days thinking about how profoundly that act had changed his life, trying to get over it, trying to find a way to look himself in the mirror. I can't imagine how heavily that weighed on him. Maybe it didn't. And if that's the case, I can't imagine all the other stuff he had to do up to that moment to get a conscience that wasn't seared by that, or hurt by that, rather. But in Samuel 12, we see a conversation that Nathan has with David about this sin. Nathan was a prophet. Prophets, we understand in the Old Testament, they're not charged with telling the future. That's a very small percentage of what they do. When we think prophet, we think somebody that tells us what's going to happen at the end of times. And really, a prophet is someone with their ear to God and their mouth to the people. They're listening to God, and then they're telling the truth to the people even when it's hard, and that's what Nathan had to do. He was tasked by God to go and confront David about his sin. So he goes into David humbly, and he tells him a story. He says, David, in your kingdom, there's a rich man. He's got a ton of sheep on a ton of hills. He's got everything he could possibly want. His neighbor was poor. His family had one sheep. And because they only had one sheep, they couldn't bring themselves to slaughter it. It actually became like the family pet. They would bring it in and use it for milk and use it for wool, and they would feed it from their own table. They loved this sheep like a family member. And one day, an unexpected visitor came to see the rich man. And it's important that we understand that in this culture, hospitality is a huge deal. Someone comes to your house, you cook some stuff, you get it ready, like you show them a good time. You want to be hospitable. So it is incumbent upon the rich man to feed his guests. And the rich man, for whatever reason, he's cheap, he must have drove a Nissan Leaf, he decides to go next door and take his neighbor's lamb and murder it and feed that to their guests. And then Nathan says, what should be done to this man? And Scripture tells us in 2 Samuel 12 that it says that David was enraged. And he says, this man surely deserves to die. He should pay back what he took fourfold. And Nathan says, that's interesting, David, because that man is you and the poor man is Uriah, and that's what you did. And then he proceeds to detail to David from God exactly what the punishment for this action is going to be, including losing the child that is a result of this sin. And David responds, and he could have responded in a bunch of different ways. He could have said, get out of here. He could have had Nathan killed. He could have covered it up again. He could have been rebellious. He could have been defiant. But David says, I have sinned against the Lord. And he immediately repents. Now, as a side note, I've long thought that what made David a man after God's own heart is not the lack of sin in his life, is not the perfect moral life that he lived, but it's his repentance and sorrow in the face of sin. Because he went back to Psalm writing after this, most pointedly Psalm 52 as a result of this sin. And we see his brokenness there. And I think that's why David was a man after God's own heart. But I want us to understand as Nathan goes in and confronts David exactly what's at stake when he does this. Think about if you would do this. If you're the prophet in ancient Israel and the king has sinned in this way and God has tasked you with being the one that confronts him about it. Because you're not the only one that knows. All the servants that were around that day, they know. They know good and well what happened. They absolutely know what's going on. But none of them told David, did they? None of them for a second told David, hey, but you probably don't want to do that. Hey, David, wait. You can't do that to Uriah. David, don't send that letter to Joab. They could have, but they didn't. And we can call them cowards for not doing it, but maybe we should call them smart because they can get killed for saying something like that. This is the king, man. There's not a justice system. He's the justice system. I would love to be there when God tells Nathan, hey, I need you to go do this thing. If I were that Nathan, I'd be like, you got to find another guy, man. That does not sound like a good prospect. He could lose his life for this. At the very least, he could lose his position. Think about it. This is his career. This is what he does. This is the empire that he's built. He is so good. I mean, from a human perspective, he's so good at being a prophet, at being a spiritual leader, that he has risen above all the other spiritual leaders in a very spiritual nation to be the advisor to the king, to be the prophet that's allowed in Israel, in Jerusalem, into the palace. He's the guy. And to do this, at the very least, if it doesn't throw away his life, it throws away his career. He might have nothing after this. And I've even thought if I were Nathan, I could make a pretty good argument to justify not doing this. Right? How hard is that? Wouldn't you just have to say, well, you know, I mean, if you had friends around and you say, hey, I felt like God's asking me to do this. I don't know what I should do. Couldn't you convince your friends if you said, listen, my concern is I'm happy to do it. I'm happy to go confront David. But my concern is if I do that, he's going to shut me out. He's not going to listen to me anymore. David doesn't have any other spiritual voices in his life. I'm his pastor. I'm his spiritual leader. He doesn't have anybody else in his life that he's listening to, and he's in a bad place right now. He needs people in his life influencing him towards God. And if I go in and I say something, he's going to shut me out and push me away, and there's not going to be anybody influencing David, and he's just going to run amok with whatever he wants to do. So it is better for the kingdom if I keep my mouth shut and maintain my influence with David? Who's going to tell me I'm wrong? But Nathan doesn't do any of that. He hears the instruction from the Lord, and he goes in, and he confronts him. And he did it. He had to have done it believing this is going to cost him his position. It could cost him his life. It's going to cost him his influence. It's going to cost him everything that he has with David. It's going to cost him his friendship with David and all the perks that come along with it. But what I think is remarkable about Nathan, and the reason that he's the hero today, is that Nathan was somebody who decided that he loved David more than he loved David's friendship. Nathan was someone who had decided that he loved David more than he loved David's friendship. He cared so much for David that he could not bear to see him go down this path. That he loved him enough to jerk him out of it, to hold a mirror up to himself and say, dude, this is you. You've got to stop it. Knowing full well this could cost him his friendship. He loved David more than he loved David's friendship. The easy application for us is that we need to be like Nathan. The people that are in our life that we love and care about, we need to love them more than we love our friendship with them. We need to be willing to say the hard things to them if it's the right thing, even if we don't know what it's going to cost us. And for some of us, this is the right application today. Some of us hate confrontation. Some of you would rather peel your skin off of your body and run away from that lump on the ground than actually confront your friend about sin in their life. That's a super difficult thing. And so for some of us today, we need the application of, man, you need to be like Nathan. We need to love the people in our life more than we love our friendship with them. For some of us, that's a very good application. But I think that there's a better application today. I think the better application is that we need to invite Nathans into our life. Not just like me for lunch and golf, but we need to actually invite Nathans into our life to hold us accountable for things. People who embody the verse. It's in Proverbs. Profuse are the kisses of an enemy. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. Our friends, the people who really love you, are willing to hurt you when it's the right thing. We need people in our lives who are willing to hurt us when it's the right thing. Do you know who wrote that verse, by the way? Solomon. Do you know Bathsheba was his mother? That his older sibling died as a result of his father's sin? That his spiritual heritage was a result of Nathan having the guts to go and confront his dad? And then years later, Solomon writes, faithful are the wounds of a friend. You don't think that carries some special impact? And here's why we need Nathans in our life. Nathans are life-changing. People who confront us, who are willing to tell us the truth, who are willing to love us more than they love their friendship with us, they change our lives. I remember when I was 20 or 21 years old, I worked at a summer camp called Look Up Lodge in Travelers Rest, South Carolina. There was a camp director there. He's still there named Greg Boone. Greg is to this day one of the most formative spiritual influences I have in my life. I saw him when I was 17 years old as a camper in the summer that changed my life. I walked in. I sat down. I'd heard things about him. I didn't know who this guy was. He walks out on the stage barefoot. That was his thing. It's Traveler's Rest, South Carolina, man. You can do what you want. So he walks out on the stage barefoot, and I still remember the first words that came out of his mouth over 20 years ago. And so when I had an opportunity to go on staff there, I wanted to work for that guy. I wanted to learn from him. I wanted to be around him. What he thought of me and my still relatively adolescent brain was hugely important to me. And it was the second summer that I was working there, learning from Greg and some of the other people. And time was tight during the summer. You worked 11 weeks. You didn't get any time off. When you got time off, it was like 24 or 36 hours, and you had to be back by a certain time for the meeting because we were kicking off camp. It was really serious, and that's fine. That's the way it should have been. But I had a little girlfriend running around in Charlotte that I wanted to go see, right? And so we get one of these windows where we get some time, and I'm like, I'm out of here. I'm going to go to Charlotte. I'm going to go see somebody. And I went over there, and we hung out. And the next day, I had to come back, and I had to be back at camp at 1030. I still remember. And I was rolling in late. It was like 1045, 11 o'clock. And I come walking into camp. I come walking into the meeting. I'm in the back of the room. Everybody's turning around, seeing me. They're kind of snickering. I'm kind of grinning like, you know, sit down. No big deal. It was a dumb meeting anyways. It was the same thing every week. Like, I get the drill. I've been doing this for two summers. I sit down. We kind of giggle. Meeting picks back up. Whatever. So then at the end of the meeting, I'm leaving, and I hear Greg say, hey, Nate, let me talk to you for a minute. Shoot. And I know the song and dance, right? Like, getting in trouble is not a new thing for me. So I'm like, I know the drill. Like, I'm really sorry. I was late. I shouldn't have been late. You're right. I'm the worst. Like, I know. I'm sorry. You're right. Like, I'm wrong. You're smart. I'm stupid. I get it. My bad. Like, I get it. I know how to do this. And I was ready for that. But he sits me down, and he says, Nate, let me ask you a question. If before this weekend, I would have gone around to all the staff members, there's about 20 of us, and said, hey, somebody's probably going to be late to our Monday meeting. Who do you think it's going to be? He said, how many staff members would have said you? And I said, I mean, probably all of them. He said, yeah. And you know that about yourself. He said, listen to me, son. You don't start taking things seriously and taking your ministry seriously and taking yourself seriously, you're never going to amount to anything. You're probably going to get hired by some church because they'll like you, but you're just going to bounce around from place to place and you're never going to make an impact for the kingdom. You need to get it together. Understand? And I said, yes, sir. And I went up to our dorm and cried for 45 minutes. It broke me down, man. It was hard to hear. But I remember it verbatim 20 years later. The conversation changed my life. It changed how I thought about things. Because Greg loved me enough to tell me the truth about myself. And it hurt. At the end of the summer, we didn't leave it there. We had a nice make-up conversation. But he meant what he said, and he was right. Nathans change our life. It's one of the reasons I've always said that we changed our mission statement to connecting people to Jesus and connecting people to people. And I always say when I'm talking about being connected to people, that we need people in our life who love us, who love Jesus, and who have permission to tell us the truth about ourselves. I think we all need that. And if you've been here for any time, you've heard me say that. We need people in our life who love us, who love Jesus, and who tell us the truth about ourselves. Have permission. We've invited them in to do this. Because if somebody loves us and loves Jesus, we might not have invited them in to call us out on our sin. And that's not for everybody to do, okay? That's a relational thing that's earned. If I don't know you very well and you come up to me after the service and be like, you know, I'm glad you preached that sermon. I've got a couple things I've noticed about you. You can keep it, okay? That's an earned thing. That's a relational thing. So we need permission. Now, if they love you and they have permission, but they don't love Jesus, I'm not saying that they're bad people, that their advice wouldn't even be good. But what I am saying is, if their advice isn't godly, biblical advice that's going to line up with God's priorities for you in your life, then it's not the best advice possible. So they need to love Jesus. And if they just love Jesus and love permission but don't love you, maybe give it a minute, all right? Let them come around and invite them in. We have to do those things. And we have to give people permission to do this. And the way that David responded, he gave Nathan permission. He responded by saying, I have sinned against the Lord. But what if David had nobody in his life that could have gone to him? What if nobody had permission to say anything to David? I thought as I went through the story, what would have happened if nobody ever said anything to him? And I think one of the things that would have happened clearly is that David would have been emboldened in his sin. He would have been callous to the Lord. He would have said, I got away with this. I can get away with whatever I want. And then there goes the ball steamrolling down the hill, right? But I think more importantly is, David, if I'm right about my guess that he wasn't doing much psalm writing right after this sin, I think David would have existed and lived his life with this idea that there was a wedge driven between him and God and that he could no longer be used by God because he had profoundly disappointed him and God would never care to see him used again. I think he would have carried around this guilt that went unresolved, assuming that God wanted nothing to do with him. And Nathan actually fixes this. I love this verse. It's towards the middle of the chapter, verse 13. After Nathan has detailed all these things, he tells him a little parable about the owners of the sheep, and David says he should die, and he said, that's you, and here's your punishment. After all those things, and this is what's said, David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said to David, this is great. David is a heap. He's a mess. He is at the height of shame in his life. Nathan the prophet is a representative of God that came to convict him about the wrong thing that he did. And as soon as David repents and says, I have sinned against the Lord, Nathan says, the Lord also has put away your sin. You shall not die. David says, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan says, you have. And you need to know that you're forgiven for it. If Nathan doesn't confront David, David never finds out that he's forgiven. And he walks with this sin for the rest of his life without knowing that he's forgiven for what he did. Nathan says, nevertheless, what you did was abhorrent to the Lord, but listen, it was a terrible thing, but you need to know that you're forgiven. And if Nathan never arrives in David's life, I'm not sure that he ever finds that out. The other thing is I thought more about this and inviting Nathans into our life is that we don't just need to invite people who love Jesus and who love us and have permission to tell us the truth. I think a crucial part of this, I want to amend that statement, is not only do we need people with permission, but also with access. Right? It's great to just throw out to your buddies, hey dude, listen, I know that you love me, I know that you love Jesus. Or your girlfriends, I know you love me, I know you love Jesus. If you see anything in my life that I need to fix, you have full permission to tell me the truth. I want to know about those things. Help me see my blind spots. It's one thing to say that. It's another thing to give people access so that they can actually do it. I had somebody one time, we went out to lunch together and he said, hey dude, listen, you're my pastor and I've just been thinking about something. Sometimes in meetings at my workplace, I get a little bit of an attitude. I have a tendency to kind of be mean to people. Sometimes I can steamroll folks. Sometimes I'll kind of say stuff that I regret. And that's really not who I want to be. That's not the witness that I want to have. So can I just, when I'm in these meetings, if I feel that coming on, can I just text you just a word or a phrase? And will you pray for me in those moments I said, man, I'd love to. That's great that God's brought you there. They came to somebody who loved them, who cared about them, who loved Jesus, and they gave me permission to say, hey, listen, I'm praying for you. How's that going? You know what they didn't give me? Access. You know how many texts I got from that guy about that? None. What's it matter? Who cares that we had that conversation? If he never texts me, how can I help? If we don't invite people in and give them access, how can they really speak into our lives with any truth? We need to invite people in to have access. You want to talk about access? How about we send each other screenshots of our screen time at the end of days? How about we start sharing locations with people if we really want to take this seriously? Because here's what I know. David was a good dude. David was a good man. David would have been an elder in any church that he went to. He would have been respected in any group of people that he spent his life with. Everybody that knew David would have looked up to him as a spiritual leader, as a dude with his head screwed on straight. He was the guy in church that when you dealt with your own crap, you'd look at David and be like, maybe someday I could be like him. David messed up. We don't invite people into our lives and give them access and permission because we're doing good. We invite them into our lives and give them access and permission because we know that what was in David is in us. One of the things I always say when I see the sin of other people is I'm two bad weeks away from that. And I think that's generous. What if David had given Nathan access? What if Nathan was like in the palace? What if he had so much access that he was around David all the time as a spiritual advisor and Nathan caught wind that Bathsheba had been invited over and he was able to duck his head into the chambers and be like, David, you good? Like, you just checking up on her because her husband's at war? Like, what's going on, buddy? Mind if I sit in here while you talk to her? Maybe I can bring her some comfort too if that's what you're doing. Maybe we can just do this together, keep everything above board. If Nathan had had access to David, this would have never happened. If people have permission and access for us at our best, then when we have those days and weeks and months and sometimes years when we're not at our best, they can be around us making sure, acting as boundaries, making sure that we don't get to our worst. I hope that if you need some Nathans, that you'll have the courage to ask them. I hope that if some of us are caught up in a sin that is our worst, that we'll have the courage to invite people into that. I have never once, not once, not with me personally, not with people sharing things with me, not hearing stories of other people sharing with others. Heard a story of someone opening up about a sin in their life and not be met with grace and love and kindness. Have the courage to do it. We need Nathans in our life. We need people who love us and who love Jesus and who have permission and access. We don't need them for the good times. We need them for when we're not so strong. And if you don't have them, I would really encourage you to pray about finding some. Let's pray. Father, we love you. You're so good to us. You provide for us in ways that, gosh, we just will never know about on this side of eternity. Lord, if there are folks here who don't have anybody with permission or access in their life, I pray that you would help them even as they think and process. Show them who they can trust. Give us the courage to take steps of radical accountability, of radical permission, of radical access to one another just so we can keep ourselves within some boundaries that we think are good and that you think are good. Father, I pray that if there's anybody here who's caught up in stuff that just isn't good for them, Lord, that you would help them see and find their way out. I know they don't want to be caught up in it. I know that it eats them up. Give them a glimpse of hope this morning that it doesn't have to always be the story. Father, we pray these things in your son's name. Amen.

Good morning. Good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. Thanks so much for being here. This is the seventh part in our series going through the book of John. We're going to continue this series through the week after Easter. So I'm thrilled to see all of you here. Hopefully, as I've been encouraging you every week, you've been reading along with us. I think it's hugely important for you guys to be reading the Gospel of John on your own as you process it and we go through it as a church so that my perspective isn't the only perspective that you're getting on this book. That's why it's such a bummer that I realized yesterday I forgot to update the reading plan and the one that we have out there is not current. So I'm real sorry about that. I had a wedding to do yesterday and then basketball, so I didn't get a chance to do the reading plan. But we'll have that done for you tomorrow. We'll get it out online and we'll have a physical copy for you next week when you get here. If you are following along in the reading plan, just read the next two chapters. We've been going at two chapters a week and you'll be good, okay? But as we've been going through this week, I had a sermon planned out of John 11, looking at the story of Lazarus and the shortest verse in the Bible, Jesus wept, John 11, 35. And I had been looking forward to that sermon. But as I got done last week and looked at the chapters that we had to cover this week, there's a portion, there's something happening in John chapter 13 that I just, I didn't feel right about doing a series in John where we don't cover this. There's been a ton that we've skipped over in the book of John. We didn't even stop on the most famous verse in the world, John 3.16. We haven't talked about that, which again is why we should be going through this on our own. But I just didn't feel like it was right to go through a series in John without focusing on what Jesus says in John chapter 13, verses 34 and 35. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, there's a seat back in front of you. And then later when I read the passage, it will be up on the screen. And I think we have it in your bulletin. There's really no reason, unless you're illiterate, to not read John chapter 13, 34, and 35 with us, okay? So in this verse, Jesus gives a summation of all of his teaching for the disciples. He's left with just the 11 faithful disciples that are with him, and we'll get to this in a minute, but he's giving them a summation of everything that he's ever taught them. And I find summaries like that to be the most helpful teaching or the most helpful advice, right? We know that good advice summarizes all the other advice and makes it a little bit more memorable. I think something that we can all relate to is many of us in this room have had kids. And we know that when you're about to have a kid, this is the time when you are receiving the most unsolicited advice you have ever received in your life. The only other thing I've ever experienced like it was when I was about to become a pastor. I had been named the senior pastor, and so I had kind of a month to get my affairs in order and then get up here and take over, at the time, Grace Community Church. And so everybody was giving me advice on how to be a senior pastor, including my atheistic uncle, who hadn't been in a church in like 35 or 40 years. I'm literally, I'm golfing with the guy. It's the last time I'm going to hang out with Uncle Dick. And he's in the fairway practicing, and then he like steps off the ball and he goes, Nathan, you know, I've been thinking about you becoming a pastor. And I'm like, what in the world is going on here? He goes, I just had something I wanted to tell you. And I'm thinking like, just like everybody else, come on, let's go. You haven't been in church in 40 years. Let's see what you got. It was okay advice, but I just thought it was hilarious that an atheist cared about advising me on being a senior pastor, right? And when you're a parent, you get all this parenting advice. It doesn't matter if they've had kids before. It just matters that they've read a book or seen something on Facebook. They will tell you what they saw. And sometimes this advice is even contradictory in nature, right? You got the camp over here saying you should use cloth diapers. And I'm like, you're crazy. And then you got this camp saying you should use regular disposable diapers. I'm like, these are my people, right? You got the camp that says when you get home, you do not let that child sleep in the bed with you. You put them in their room on night one or they are going to develop dependency issues. And you're like, holy crud, that sounds really hard. And then you have other people that are like, you let that child sleep in your bed until they are eight if they need to. They are your precious angel, you know? And Jen's reading books the whole time. Jen's my wife, not just some lady who reads books for me. So she's reading books the whole time. And she's getting all this advice. And it's contrary. This book says this thing, and this book says this thing. You're like, well, which person knows more about this? Who knows? Can I speak to their adult children to see if this worked out? You just don't know, and you're getting so much all the time. But one guy, this was super helpful, Kyle Hale, the worship pastor at the church that I was at at the time, I was on staff with him. He came up to me one day. He had three boys under five. So he had earned his dad's stripes, right? And he comes up to me and he goes, hey man, listen, a lot of people telling you a lot of stuff. And I'm like, yep, and here comes your thing. And he goes, listen, just for the first three months, just keep the kid healthy and stay sane. Whatever you have to do. Don't worry about what you're going to do to them. You're not going to do any permanent damage. Just keep the child healthy and stay sane. Try not to yell at Jen. That's it. Just do that. And I thought, this is good advice. I can do this. I don't know about all the other stuff. I don't know about the five S's and all the things, but I can do this. I can just try to take care of them, and I can try to not yell at Jen. This is good. This is actually how I still parent. Just make sure she's good and try not to get mad at Jen. That was good advice. It was a summation of all the other advice, right? It was memorable and easy and executable. And this is what Jesus does for the disciples in John chapter 13. Here's what's happening in John 13. I actually, I feel a little bit badly about the way that we've done this series in that we haven't done a lot to follow the chronology of Jesus through his ministry and through his life. We've dropped in on snippets of what he's taught and things that he did, but we haven't done a good job of following the chronology of Jesus. So here's what's happening in John chapter 13. Jesus has moved through his life. About the age of 30, he goes public with his ministry and begins calling disciples to him. And then they do ministry together through Israel. Israel is a relatively small country. It's really a small country by any measure. And so all over Israel, they're doing ministry and they're following Jesus around and he's teaching them how to do what he does. He's preparing them to hand them the keys to the kingdom. I don't know if you've ever thought about it this way, but why didn't Jesus just come to earth, live perfectly, become an adult, and die for our sins? Why did he dabble for three years with this public ministry? Why was it essential for him to do this in order to die on the cross for our sins? And I think the answer is Jesus knew he was going to have to leave behind his kingdom in the form of the church. And he knew he was going to have to entrust that to people. And so he wanted to invest three years of his life into some young men so that he can hand the church off to them as passing them the keys to the kingdom. So I'm convinced that he spent an extra three years here on planet Earth with us for the main purpose of training the disciples to get them to a place where they were ready to take over his kingdom called the church and propel it into the future, which they absolutely did, or you guys wouldn't be sitting here in a different continent 2,000 years later, right? So that's what Jesus is doing with the disciples. So about age 30, he goes public, he calls the disciples to them, he trains them for three years, and then at the age of 33, he's crucified. And that week leading into the crucifixion is called Holy Week. And we're in the period of Lent that's leading up to Holy Week now. So Palm Sunday, which this year we're going to celebrate on April the 14th, is the day that Jesus goes into Jerusalem. It's called the triumphal entry. He enters as a king. But this sets in motion a series of events that by Friday has him crucified. We call that Good Friday. And then Easter is when he resurrects on Sunday. So he is in the middle of Holy Week here. It is the end of his life. He's sitting around one night with the disciples. If you were here the first week, we know, you know, that Jesus has just looked at Judas who had betrayed him and said, the thing that you are about to do, go and do it quickly. So Judas has left. He's at the end of his ministry with the 11 faithful disciples who he will hand the keys to the kingdom to and entrust them with the church. And he looks at them and he says, I have a new commandment for you, which is an interesting thing. Because the Bible says that Jesus had that all authority on heaven and on earth had been given to him. He had come down from heaven as God. He was God in the flesh. He could have added all the rules that he wanted to. He could have been given out commandments left and right. He could have done anything that he wanted. He could have made any rules that he wanted. And he waits three years to do it. And right before, like a couple of days before he's going to go be arrested and die for us, he says, oh, by the way, I have a new commandment for you, in verse 33, he calls them little children. Come to me, little children. Jesus doesn't play the little children card a lot. That's like maximum God card, right? Because they're peers. He's a dude, they're dudes. But in this one, he says, little children, listen to me. So this is like, hey, pay attention. Jesus is playing the God card here. He doesn't do this a lot. What's he about to teach? He says, I have a new commandment for you. So we should be leaning in. This is the one rule that Jesus makes. He could have made any rule his whole life. He's made one, and it's going to be this, and it's going to be a summation of all his teachings. So Christians, church, we should lean into this. If you call God your Father and Jesus your Savior, you should be very interested in this new commandment that sums up everything that Jesus ever taught and did and said. Non-believers, if you're here and you're considering faith, you should be very interested in this because in this one commandment is the whole of the faith that you are considering. This is a hugely important, crucial passage. And this is what Jesus says to them that night before he prepares to go to heaven. He says this in verse 34. He leans in and he says, little children, disciples, church, for the rest of time, I'm going to give you, I have a new commandment for you. I want you to love one another as I have loved you. This is how the whole world will identify you from this moment on. I want you to love one another as I have loved you. Now, if you've been paying attention in the book of John, you should have some questions. How is this a summation of everything that Jesus teaches, and how is it different than things that he's taught in the past? Because at the beginning of the Gospels, in the beginning of Matthew, and at different places in John, he tells us that we are to, what, love our neighbor as ourselves, right? We know this commandment. This isn't new. This doesn't feel different. We know that we're supposed to love our neighbor as ourselves. In fact, it was commonly known then. Then there's a story where Jesus is talking to a lawyer, a young man who's been studying the law, which incidentally is the Bible, and he asked the lawyer, what do you think are the greatest commandments? And the lawyer says, love your God with all your heart, your soul, and your mind, amen, and love your neighbor as yourself. This was a commonly accepted teaching. So how is this different than this commonly accepted teaching? There's another theme that runs through John of what Jesus teaches. Over and over again, he continues to come back to this idea that it's our job to believe in him. We looked a couple weeks ago when people asked him, what do we do to inherit eternal life? How do we labor for eternity? He says, believe in the one that the Father has sent. When he prays, after he resurrects Lazarus, Lazarus is a friend of his who dies. Jesus shows up at the grave. He brings him back to life, and he prays, and he says, Father, I knew you were going to do this. I did this so that they would believe that I am who I say I am, so that they would believe in the one that you have sent. So over and over, we see this theme in John that Jesus admonishes us to believe in him as the Son of God. And if we see those themes, it's already commonly accepted practice and commonly accepted teaching that we should love our neighbor as ourself, and we know that we should love God as well, and that it's our job to believe in God. How is this a summation of those things that Jesus has taught us? Well, we start when we understand this. When you look at the command to love your neighbor as yourself, do you understand that you are the standard of love in that scenario? That when the admonishment, when the instruction is, love your neighbor like you love yourself. And to love somebody for all intents and purposes is simply to want what's best for them and to act in a way that would bring that about. We love somebody, so we want what's best for them, and we act in a way that would bring that about in their life. That's what we do. And so when we love somebody as we love ourselves, then we are the standard of love in their life. So however we love ourselves is how we ought to love other people. And that's a problem because we are imperfect and we love ourselves imperfectly. There have been seasons of my life where I did not do a good job at loving myself. And if I were to love you like I love myself, then I would probably owe you an apology, right? There are seasons of your life where you love yourself imperfectly. You're not taking care of yourself very well. You're not making the best decisions for yourself. You're not bringing about the best things in your life. And so if you started to love other people like you loved yourself, if we're honest, that's a pretty low bar. When we say that we should love our neighbor as we love ourself, that sets the bar at us. And you'll notice that Jesus says this at the beginning of his ministry, before the disciples have watched him relentlessly love everyone around him. But at the end of his ministry, when they've watched him for three years, graciously and patiently and givingly and sacrificially love everyone around him all the time, Jesus raises the bar on this command. And he says, it's no longer good enough for you to love other people as you love yourself. No, no, you need to love them as I have loved you. You need to go and love other people as you've seen me love them. And when that's the commandment, do you understand that Jesus is now the bar on that love? Before we set the standard, go love others as you love yourself. That's our standard. And he says, no, no, no. I want you to raise it to my standard. Go and love other people as I have loved you. He says this to the disciples who have watched him over the years. Bring sight back to the blind. Make people who can't walk be able to walk again. Love on people who are found in the middle of sin. Restore people who the world would condemn. Argue with the Pharisees. Teach the multitudes. Perform countless miracles. Sit patiently with them. They've watched all of this. And Jesus says, as you have seen me love on you and minister to you, I want you to love one another that way. He sets the bar at himself, not us. But the question then becomes, if I am to love other people as Jesus loved me, how is it that Jesus loves me? And how does that fulfill the instruction that we should believe in Jesus and love God? How can this possibly be a summation of everything that he's taught? And to answer that question, we need to look at the way that Jesus loves. Now, I'm going to give you kind of three categories or ways that Jesus loves us. I would encourage you in your small groups this week as you discuss this, you guys can probably think of more ways or more categories of ways that Jesus loves us. But here are my three this morning. There are three ways, main ways, I think that Jesus loves us. I think Jesus loves us sacrificially, he loves us restoratively, and he loves us recklessly. Sacrificially, restoratively, and recklessly, I think, are ways that Jesus loves us. Sacrificially is obvious, right? If you were to ask anybody, believer, non-believer, anybody who has a cursory knowledge of Scripture at all, how does Jesus love us? One of the answers would be sacrificially. He died for us, so he sacrificed, he gave of himself for us. But it's not just that he died on the cross for us. That's the biggest of sacrifices. But we see him time and again in the gospels give of his time and give of his energy and give of his attention and give of his patience. We see him constantly choosing other people over himself. He even chose homelessness. He has foxes have holds and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. He just wandered around loving on other people, not being concerned with himself. So if we're going to love like Jesus, we need to love sacrificially, which means that we need to give of our time and our effort and our energy and our resources in his name and for him. And this happens a lot. We have people over there who are watching kids so that young families can sit in here and go to church in peace. And some of these families just need to sleep right now. I'm not even mad at them for not paying attention because they just need rest because it's hard to be a parent sometimes, right? So we have people who are giving of their time on a Sunday morning and loving on them so that they can be in here. We have people who are teaching the kids in there, loving on them, giving of their time. We have servants all over the church who are loving well through sacrificing. I see that happening a lot in Grace. Once a month, we do this incredible thing when we go to Pender County that was impacted by the floods. And Florence came in, the hurricane came in, there was floods, and we're good, and everything's settled, everybody's got power. Except out there, there are dozens and dozens and dozens of homes that have been impacted by the floods that are unlivable. Insurance can't help them out, and these people have no options. And so Grace actually sends a team of people down once a month to go and help restore these people and restore their lives and fix their homes. And so the men and women who do that on a monthly basis are going and loving sacrificially. They are giving up a Saturday to be down there, which is a big deal, particularly in NCAA tournament time, to give up these Saturdays. Incidentally, the trip this month got canceled and got moved to this upcoming Saturday. So if that's a way you'd like to love sacrificially, you can sign up for that online or indicate it on your communication card, and that's fine. And so there are all these ways to go out and to love others outside of our homes and to kind of step into the lives of others and love sacrificially, show up for the food drive and love the people, the kids who might not be able to eat over spring break. That's good. But to me, the surest test to know if we're really loving others sacrificially is whether or not we're doing that in our home. It's easy to go out in fits and starts and to kind of drop in and make an appearance and love here and then retreat back to those who know us best and be selfish and need our space and our time and our TV and all the stuff, right? That's easy to do. It's easy to step out and love for a couple of hours and then step back into our shell. I learned this lesson when I was in high school. I was 17 or 18 years old and I had just gone off to summer camp, right? A place called Look Up Lodge in Traveler's Rest, South Carolina. And it made a huge impact on me. I had grown up in the church, grown up, I think, as a Christian. But this was the time, this was the week where I really, really got it. Something switched for me, and I understood Christianity in a way that I never had. And so I'm on fire for Jesus, right? I'm like the classic mountaintop experience kid coming back from camp. Like I am, I am so fired up. I'm ready to charge hell with a water pistol. And it doesn't have to be one of those pump kinds. It can just be like the single action. Like I'm still in, bring it on Satan. I'm coming for you. Like I am ready. And I'm, my hair is on fire for Jesus Jesus. I come back and I'm telling my parents who raised me in the church and who love God and who love me, are super involved with the church. I'm telling them all the things that I'm going to do. I've made all these commitments. I'm going to do all the things. I'm going to start all the Bible studies. I'm going to lead all the things. I'm going to teach the little kids. You've never seen a Christian like me, Dad. I'm going to change the world. Dad says, that's great, son. Be nice to your mom. I'm like, man, you really cut the legs out from under a guy. And at the time, I thought he was kind of a jerk for saying that. Maybe he still is. But the point that he made is right. That's great. That's wonderful that you've had this mountaintop experience. That's wonderful that you love Jesus. Be nice to your mom and love your sister. It's easy to run out and fake it and sacrifice for others. It's hardest with the people that we know best. That's why we're meanest to the people that we love the most. That's why we have the shortest fuse with them. That's why we sometimes fail to offer the grace to others, the grace inside our home that we offer outside our home. If we want to love sacrificially, then it looks like, for me, this is something that I struggle with, when I come home sometimes, I know we make jokes about pastors and our job, and it is stressful looking at Facebook and golfing a lot, but there are times when I do come home and I am stressed. I've had a lot of meetings and a lot of things, and we've made decisions, and I've had to work hard, and the last thing in the world I want to do is sit on a chair that is too small for me and make Play-Doh donuts. I don't want to do that. I want to sit on a couch that is too big for me and eat donuts. That's what I want to do. But if I love Lily and I love Jen, then I'll come home and I'll sit down and I'll play. And I'll give Jen the space she needs to do the things she needs to do because she hasn't had that space all day and I'll engage with my daughter. If we love our family, we'll come home and we'll sacrifice for them. If we love the people around us, then we will consider their needs before they have to consider their own. I think sacrificial love shows up first in the people that we know best. Jesus also loves us restoratively. He seeks to restore us. There are so many examples of this. A couple weeks ago, Kyle did a great job preaching about the woman at the well, who at that time had had five husbands and was living with the sixth man who she was not yet married to, which by any account throughout all of history is generally referred to as scandalous, right? And Jesus doesn't bring it up. He just mentioned it as if it's true, but he doesn't seek to condemn her about it. He's far more concerned about restoring her and letting her know about who he is and the promises that he makes and her need for him. In the book of John, there's a story that some versions include where there's a woman who's brought to him in adultery in the city streets. And the Pharisees, the religious leaders say, should we stone her? And he has this impossible question to answer. And he does this thing where he makes everybody, he convinces everybody to go away by riding in the dirt. And once everyone is gone, he looks at the woman and he says, is there anyone left to condemn you? And she says, no, Lord. And he says, and neither do I condemn you. Now go and sin no more. He's not there to condemn her. He's not there to convince her, hey, you know adultery is wrong and you really shouldn't do it. You know that the thing that you were doing was shameful and that I don't like it. And that when you do that, you trample on my love. Like I'm here to die for you because you do stuff like that. Could you maybe knock it off? He doesn't say that. He says, neither do I condemn you. Now go and sin no more. We've extended this series a week so that I can preach to you about the restoration of Peter after he messes up. Peter messes up big time. And Jesus comes to him and he has every right to get onto him and condemn him and he doesn't. He simply restores him. What we see in the ministry of Jesus over and over and over again is that he is far more concerned with restoring you than condemning you. And in the church, when we look at other people, it gets so easy to identify that as sin. Is that person sinning? Is that person doing something that's wrong? Look at what they're doing in their life. Doesn't that count as sin? And Jesus says, yeah, maybe, but how about we love them first? He doesn't let them off the hook. He says, go and sin no more. Go and don't do this thing anymore. But first, he says, neither do I condemn you. He's always, always, always more interested in restoring than condemning, in restoration than condemnation. And if we are going to love other people like Jesus loves us, then when we approach others, we should always be primarily concerned with their restoration to spiritual health, not condemning them and defining what they're doing. We restore people. We do not condemn. That's the Lord's job. And Jesus loves us recklessly. Now, I like this one because we're going to sing a song after the sermon called Reckless Love. I think it's called Reckless Love. I never know song titles. It should be called Reckless Love. And it's about the reckless love of God. And it was a popular song in Christian circles. But we had some debates and some discussions about it as a staff because part of the concern was that it was erroneous to call God's love reckless because reckless kind of infers that there's mistakes made, that it's just like reckless abandon, that there might be some mess up or some error to his love or some misjudgments within his love, but it's good and it's fine and we like God's love and so that's okay. So that maybe it was almost theologically inaccurate. But after we talked about it some more, we decided to go ahead and sing the song. And I'll confess to you that the first time I ever even looked at the lyrics of the song was when we were singing it on Sunday morning because I'm really bad about keeping current with worship songs. We do a playlist on Spotify with the songs that Grace Raleigh does, and that's my worship. That's what I listen to. And if it's not on there, I don't listen to it. So I had not heard this song before. And as we're going through it on Sunday and I'm looking at the lyrics and it talks about how he leaves the 99 and he comes after us and he always chases us and he always pursues us and there's no wall that he won't kick down and there's no mountain that he won't climb to come after us. What I realize about the recklessness of God is that it's talking about this emotional recklessness where he has no regard for how much we hurt him. He is always going to pursue us. That's the recklessness of God. It doesn't matter how many times someone rejects him. It doesn't matter how many times someone makes him a promise and says, God, I'm never going to do the thing again. And then they turn around and they do the thing. It doesn't matter how many times we betray God or we walk away from him or we break his heart or we break his rules or we hurt his spirit, he is always going to forgive us and he is always going to pursue us. It doesn't matter how many times he extends a hand to us and we knock the hand away and we say, I'm not interested. He is still going to extend the hand again. He recklessly pursues us. This is the picture that he lays out in the Old Testament when he has a prophet named Hosea marry a prostitute named Gomer. He says, I want you to go and I want you to take Gomer as your wife. She doesn't deserve you. I want you to go marry her anyway. So Hosea, in obedience, does it, marries her. Inevitably, she cheats on him, goes back to her old life, and God speaks to Hosea again and he says, go back and get her and marry her again, regardless of the toll that it takes on you. That's the reckless love of God. Because there is something very human and very natural to this idea that once our heart has been broken, once someone's turned us down enough times, once someone has disappointed us enough times, once someone has required our forgiveness more than a few times, there's a very natural human thing to do to recoil and to withdraw our love from them and to not pursue them as hard and to not go after them as hard because it's hurt us so many times in the past. And so we recoil out of this sense of self-protection and we build up walls and we don't let other people in because we've been hurt so many times, and we've been damaged so many times that we don't want to experience that again, so we learn to protect ourselves from the possibility of other people hurting us. And God's reckless love says, I don't care how many times you hurt me, I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna pursue you. That's the recklessness of God. And if we want to love like Jesus, then we love recklessly. This is how Jesus is able to tell Peter how many times to forgive people, right? Peter goes to Jesus and he says, Jesus, how many times should I forgive someone when they wronged me? When someone wrongs me, when they disappoint me, when they let me down, when they break my heart, when I thought I could count on them and they show me that I can't and it really, really hurts, how many times should I forgive them? Up to seven times seven. As many times as it takes, you forgive them until they do it right. You forgive them as many times as you have to. You recklessly pursue them with your love. That's what it means to love like Jesus loved. We love sacrificially, we love restoratively, and we love recklessly. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking about how to love in that way, what becomes very apparent is we are not able to do that. We are not able in and of ourselves to love in those ways, to love perfectly sacrificially, to always empathize and love with restoration in mind. We are not able to love recklessly. We do not possess the ability to do that. And this is how it fulfills Jesus' teaching that we ought also to believe in him. Because what we understand is it is impossible to love others like Jesus loved us without Jesus's possession of and power in our hearts. You see, unless we believe in Jesus and he has taken up residency in our heart and has possession of our heart and his power is working in our hearts to change our ways and our desires to his and our ability to love to His. Unless He's doing that, unless we've loved God enough to believe Him and place our faith in Christ, there is no possible way we can be obedient to the command to love one another as Christ has loved us. So in this, we come full circle in seeing that it is really a summation of everything that Jesus has taught. It raises the bar on the commandment to love our neighbor as ourself. It fulfills the commandment to love God and fulfills the commandment to believe in the one that he has sent because it's impossible to do it without believing in Jesus. And in that way, it's a summation of everything that Jesus ever taught. Simply go and love. Andy Stanley says it this way. He's a pastor in Atlanta. He says, when you don't know what to say or do, just love others as God through Christ loves you. That's what we do. We love other people sacrificially. We love them restoratively. We love them recklessly. And then Jesus says, this is how the world will know that you are my disciples. This is how I want the world to look at you and know that you belong to me. This is what I want to be your defining and distinguishing characteristic. This should be the way the world identifies you to look at the way you love one another and you love others. That's what I want to define you. And this is something that I think the church gets messed up sometimes. He does not say that the world will know that you are my disciples by what you stand against, by how you define sin, by who you choose to condemn, by what you stand up and rally against in Washington. That's not how we are going to be defined. We're not going to be defined and identified by the world by our good doctrine or dogma or theology. We aren't made known to the world by winning a Bible knowledge trivia contest. We're not made known. The world will not know that we are his disciples by how well we know this book. Now, all of that flows out of our love for him, but it is not our definitive thing. It is not our distinguishing characteristic. Our distinguishing characteristic is who and how well we love. That's what Jesus wants to define us. All the other things are important, but if we fail to love others first, nobody cares what we believe. If we fail to love others first, nobody cares what we're against. If we fail to love others first, then nobody cares how well we serve. We are first to love others sacrificially, distortively, and recklessly. And this is how we will be defined. This is how the world will know that we are his disciples. What would it look like for you to be known in that way? What would it look like for the people around you to say whatever it is they want to say about you, but at the end of the day, that person loves people well? What would it look like to love people so different and in a way that was so other that when people saw you doing it, they were drawn to your God because there must be something else going on here. Nobody could possibly love others that well. Nobody could possibly sacrifice that much. Nobody could possibly mean it. You know how when you meet somebody who's super nice and super gracious and they're very kind to everyone, you think to yourself, they're faking it. You think to yourself, what do they look like when they're down? What if you never were? What if you weren't faking it? Because that love was fueled by Jesus and you loved everybody just as hard as he did. What if this was the distinguishing and defining characteristics of our homes? What if when someone entered into your home and spent some time with you and your family, when they left and they got in the car and whatever else they said about your home, I really like her napkins or those curtains or that's what cozy farmhouse looks like and that's what I want to do. Like whatever else they said about your home, the one thing that they took away was, man, those people love each other well. Man, I felt loved in that house. What if your kids growing up in your house, the one thing they'll say about mom and dad is, listen, they did some crazy stuff and there's some crazy, I got to knock off of me here in adulthood, but man, they love me well. And when I brought friends over, they loved them too. What if that's what was said about your house? That they showed the love of Christ there? What if that's what's said about the church? That when people come to Grace Raleigh, they walk away, and whatever else they experienced here, sermon was okay, music was great, announcements were outstanding. Whatever else they experienced here, they walk away and they go, those people love well. Those people loved me. And I'll brag on you a little bit because I don't think we're too terribly bad at this. Last week we had a guy here, we're getting our website redone. He's our web developer, a guy named Hugh. And Hugh is here. I invited him to just see the church and kind of learn more about us. And so he came in, and he came in after the first service, stayed in the lobby, came to the second service, and then I talked to him afterwards. And I just said, hey, you know, thanks for coming, whatever. And he said, dude, I love this place. I said, really? He says, yeah, these are the friendliest people I've ever met in my life. And he wasn't kidding. He said, they were so nice. He lives on the other side of Cary, like 40 minutes away. He said, if I lived closer, my family would start coming here next week. This place is incredible. So good on you if you were a part of that. I think this is one of the things we do well, but I think we can do it better. What if we were a church where no matter what other people experienced, they walked away and they said, those are some of the friendliest people I've ever met. What if that were everyone's experience? What if when you brought a visitor here, you brought friends or family here, they walked away and they said, that place loves well. It starts in the individual, it goes into the home, and then it comes here. And if we could be a church that loves other people well, that's what we become known for, that's the kind of church I want to be a part of. And you're here, I know, because that's the kind of church you want to be a part of too. But it begins with us. It begins with us pursuing Jesus and asking him and praying, help me to love other people as you have loved me. And what I love about this teaching is Jesus knows he's about to leave the disciples on earth. He's been a physical presence there. He has been the representative of the Godhead there. But he is about to leave and they're going to be the ones who carry the torch. And what better way as the torchbearers of Christ to represent him to the rest of the world than to go and be the embodiment of love to them as Jesus was. Let's pray. Father, we do love you. We love you imperfectly. We love you inconsistently. We love you often half-heartedly. Often, God, we love you forgetfully. God, please continue to work in our hearts to draw us near you that we may love you more. And that out of that love, we might love other people more. Give us the grace and the patience to love sacrificially, God. Give us the sympathy and empathy and insight to love restoratively and give us the strength and the faith to love recklessly. God, may we, may our homes, may this place be known and identified for how well we offer your love to others. It's in your son's name I pray. Amen.