New Command: Love Perfected In Us

Good morning. We're coming to the end of this series. We've been looking at the love of one another commands. There's five. This is our fourth one. The second that we've looked at in 1 John, we looked at two in the Gospel of John from Jesus. I wanted to meditate on this mainly. During the summer, we take a psalm series or a shorter series like this. We'll be getting Matthew in two weeks. And to that end, in the book stall, we have these devotional journals for Matthew. So you can follow along. I encourage you to get one if that would be helpful for you. I also want to think about love. It's one of the most important words we use, one of the most powerful words we use. And we use it in all kinds of strange ways. Culturally, it's everywhere. And so it's important as we think through what love is, we wanna hear what God says about love. We wanna hear especially a passage that talks about God is love, and God is the source of love. In this series, we've started each message by looking at some song lyrics from some of our poets, our songs, and our culture. We've seen such things as I will love you if you love me, or I will love you but I have lots of unstated boundaries upon how far that love will go, or I don't need to love you or you to love me. I can love me better than you can. Well, since we've given three bad ideas of love, I thought we should give three good love songs. The first one, My love is deeper than the holler, stronger than the river, higher than the pine tree growing tall upon the hill. My love is purer than the snowflakes that fall in late December, and honest as a robin on the springtime windowsill, and longer than the song of the whippoorwill. I've memorized those lyrics. I just can't not sing them when saying them. The second song. Oh baby, I'm gonna love you forever, forever and ever, amen. For as long as old men sit and talk about the weather, and as long as old women sit and talk about old men, if you wonder how long I'll be faithful, I'll be happy to tell you again, I'm gonna love you forever and ever, forever and ever, amen. The third one. I just want to tell you how I'm feeling, got to make you understand, never going to give you up, never going to let you down, never going to run around and desert you, never going to make you cry, never going to say goodbye, never tell you a lie and hurt you. For to think about those positives and even those negations are so important, never going to do this. These are promises. They're promises that we want to be able to give and trust somebody with. We want to know that when we're giving our love over somebody, we can trust them with it. And we want to know somebody is trustworthy to love us. Love is a commitment we make. It's a promise we make. And it's oftentimes a promise that's too hard to keep. Well, this morning we are thinking of love and we're thinking of perfect love. We're thinking about the kind of love that God gives and the truth about God is he makes the greatest promises in love and he is able to keep them. One of the key things that we think about loving one another, that parallel next to us love, horizontal, well, it's all based upon who God is and how he has loved us. This morning we're looking at our last love one another passage. I want to just take us back where we've been just to kind of make sure that this is building up into a, hopefully, a theology of love one another. We began in John 13, where Jesus first introduced this new commandment. It was not unlike the old commandment, love your neighbor as yourself, but it is new. Love one another, that's a smaller group of neighbors, those who have also been loved by Christ. and as a new measure, as Christ has loved you. And the significant in there was something we just sang, and the world will know you're my disciples by your love. Then John 15, he restates this command in the context that abide in me. I am the vine, I am the source, you're the branch, and if you abide in me and you abide in my love, you'll bear fruit. And what it means to abide in Christ is to keep his commandments. And the main commandment he focused in on was love one another. And the blessing he promises is that your joy will be full. And then 1 John 3, which was the last sermon we looked at with this text, with this theme, It was contrasting love with hating like Cain. It emphasized love not just in word, as in fickle promises, but in word and deed and truth. It was promise-making and promise-keeping, and it led to a confidence. Well, this week we're looking at a lot of those themes repeated. We see confidence repeated. We see abiding repeated. We see John bringing together many of these ideas. This first letter to John, it's more of a circular rotation of an outline. It's not 1, 2, 3, 4. It's 1A, 2A, 3A, 1B, 2B, 3B. He keeps coming back to the same themes. This will be the third time he's come back to love one another. And even in this regular passage, the way he He picks up love one another and looks at it from different angles. It's very helpful for us. So first, we'll just define again what love one another is. But then we're gonna see the four ways we look at love one another. Verses seven to 10, because God is love. 11 to 16a, we love one another to abide in his love. 16b to 18, we love one another to have confidence. And finally, 19 to 21, we love one another because God first loved us. Love one another. Verse seven, simple first declaration, beloved, let us love one another. It's the besides you're gonna love, so you can just look next to you, around. Sorry, you can look around. The one another's, those, who also have shared in, received the same love of Christ, those who have professed a faith in Christ, those who profess they are seeking to love Christ because he has loved them. Love your neighbor as yourself was the old command that still continues for us. We love our neighbor as ourself with the same kind of dignity and honor we expect. There's a mutual, all are made in the image of God. There's a mutual idea that we're all created equally by God. And so there's a mutual love for other human beings made in the image of God. Now our loves easily get disordered where we either love people more than we should or less than we should. The love one another They're neighbors, but they're more specific. They're, they're neighbors that Christ also died for and rose again to give life. The one and others are neighbors, but they're, they're a smaller subset of those neighbors and that they're, they're other neighbors who believe in Jesus Christ. It's important. We realize their neighbors who are forgiven. And so we forgive them as God forgave us. They're, they're, they're beloved by God. So we love them as Christ has loved us. The concern is when we come up with some other loophole or some other reason not to love someone, it could be a cultural difference, skin color difference, a political party difference, a religious difference in terms of the neighbor, a class difference, a wealth difference. We have all different reasons that we come up with as to how we will not treat others as image bearers and even sometimes as brothers and sisters in Christ. If you believe somebody is beneath your love, then you have a a lie to repent of. If you just said, I will not love this person, especially if it's a brother in Christ, there's a lie to repent of. And one of the helpful ideas that Augustine taught when he went through a love your neighbors, nearness is a helpful principle. Those who are most near are those who you should focus on first. Don't look way out there for who you should love. No, those who are most near should have the priority. God put them near you. Love one another. The focus is those who are in Christ with you, beloved by Christ. Now, love one another because God is love. Here he begins with the command, Beloved, let us love one another. And he gives a reason. For love is from God. And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. His beginning of the argument here, if we want to be convinced, There's a reason why we love one another and it has nothing to do with the other person in and of themselves, it's because of God. We love one another because love is from God. We were designed for love, we were designed to be loved and to love specifically in a relationship with God. The whole world is longing for love and again, we confuse this. John continues his argument. For love is from God, whoever loves, he's been born of God and knows God. So if you've been born of God who is love, and you know God, then that means you would love one another. If you've received something from God, you're going to seek to love as he has loved. It makes sense. He's changed you, he's given you a new life, and you want to live that life according to his ways. Notice verse eight, he makes the argument even stronger by giving a denial. And this is how John is going to argue throughout this section and many of his, much of his letter. If you love, you are born again of God, but if you do not love, verse eight. If you love, you know God. If you do not love, you don't know God. Why? Because God is love. Now, if you underline in your Bible, we already see two grand declarations you should underline. Love is from God, God is love. Love is from God, and God is love. See how important God is in what he has done and what he has committed himself to for what we then do. The whole grounding of loving one another is God, who he defines as love. God is love. It means he's the author of love. It means he has authority over love. It means he gets to define it. This is a top-down theology. We believe in a God who is great and holy and mighty, and he speaks with all authority, and when he tells us what a word means like love, we get to repent of all the wrong ideas of love that we carry with us. John's argument assumes there must be an important order for our love. And it begins with a love of God who is greater than us. Now, nine and 10 tell us more. Notice, in this, the love of God was made manifest among us. God has shown us what love is. That God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. Verse 10 goes even further, and this is love. Notice the negation and the affirmation. Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Verse love is telling us what it means that God is love and love is from God and what it means to love one another. First, love gives life. The father, sent his son to come into this world full of death and destruction so that he might be raised from the dead, so that he would be the resurrection and give us new life. God has defined love as life-giving. God has defined love as giving himself over for the benefit of others. The resurrection is tied into this command, love one another. But notice even more, and this is love in verse 10, it's not that we love God that God loved us. God didn't respond to our love. God did not fall in love with us. We are unlovely. He is the God of love. He is a source of love. He loved us and he sent his son to be the propitiation for our sin. Now that's a significant, big theological word. That word is tied to the atonement of Christ, to the death of Christ. We see here the death and the resurrection of Christ define the love of God and should define the way we think about loving one another. Propitiation means God is just. We all should want a just God. One who sees evil and will treat evil as it deserves and punishes evil perfectly with absolute perfect justice. Propitiation assumes God is just and he will and must punish every sin. but also means he's the justifier. Because Christ being the propitiation means God's wrath, justice, is satisfied in Christ's perfect death. Jesus, the son of God, came to be like us in every way so that he would die for our sins, he would die as a substitute in our place so that the wrath of God that we deserve is removed from us as far as the east is from the west, by being placed upon him. The good news of God's love for us is that it was sacrificial and costly. Christ came to provide all we need in love. He died for us, he rose again to give us new life. If we just think about what it means to be a Christian, it's nine and 10 on the most basic level. God loved us, sent his son to die for us, sent his son to rise again. If you're not a Christian, that's the most basic belief of Christianity. That is the core foundation of Christianity. And this is the grounding for which he's telling us, love one another. See how important it is as we think about our fickle and empty love in contrast to God's sacrificial and life-giving love and how we need to start thinking about what love means based upon how God has manifested his love and called us into his love. There, let's go to the second section. Love one another to abide in his love. Notice verse 11, he addresses us again, beloved. Now, remember, he's gonna keep saying the same thing by looking at it in just a slight different angle. He's gonna help us walk through and really develop, if we haven't already been through the three previous passages, a very thick theology of love, just with the four different declarations we have here. Beloved, let us love one another. Love is from God, God is love, and that love is defined by the death and resurrection of Jesus, but now 11 through 16. We love one another. in order to abide in God's love. Verse 11, beloved if God so loved us, then we also ought to love one another. If you're underlining, another passage you're gonna underline is God so loved us. That does make it more personal. Love is from God, God is love, but now God loved us. Us. We see this as much more personal. We're looking at it from another angle, and here, I believe the father is in view as God, because he's the one who sent his son, he's the one who raised us from the dead. We'll see it's the father here, specifically, who is loving us. And then 12 leads us into somewhat of a funny direction. No one has ever seen God. I believe this is taking us back to Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve were removed from the garden because of sin. From that point on, we've had a distance of not being able to see God as he designed us to see him. We can go up to Mount Sinai, when Moses, after having such an experience with God and receiving the law, says, let me see your glory. God says no one can see my face but my hind parts. You can see my, a distant partial vision of me you can see. If we go later, this author of 1 John also wrote the Gospel of John and chapter one verses one to 18 is what we call the prologue. It's quite the grand declaration. And it is by saying no one has ever seen God. but his only begotten son has made him known. Not seeing God is a problem. The first most robust solution to that problem is God sending his son so that when Jesus is asked, show us the father, he says, if you see me, you've seen the father. The son is the father manifested as almighty God and creator. The son has come to show us who God is. Here in the letter of John after Christ has ascended, he actually gives another solution. No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God abides in us and love is perfected in us. The problem is no one's ever seen God, We know of God, he's manifested his love. Here the solution for not seeing God is that we actually love one another and as we love one another who are all in Christ, we experience that intimate personal relationship with God in and through one another that God created us for, that God saved us for, that we're longing to have with him personally face to face at the marriage supper of the Lamb. If you love one another as God has loved you, you'll know more of his love. If we're not walking into that love and we're not practicing that love as God has prescribed, we're not growing in perfection in that love. Now just in case that's daunting, you're thinking how could I possibly do that? Oh 13 is your good news this morning. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us because he's given us of his spirit. God's love indwells you and seals you and secures you and empowers you if you're a believer in Jesus Christ. The love of Christ has entered inside of you to change you, to make you more loving and even more lovely, to transform your desires and your priorities, your direction from going into destruction and death to life and love. God himself, who gives us his love and commands love, gives it to us in every way. He's manifested it, he's defined it, and then he's given us his spirit that gives us the very source we need, the strength to love. He's given us his spirit. That is how and why we are able to obey these commands. Verse 14, and we have seen and testify. Now again, remember, no one's seen God, but notice what John, Apostle is saying, and we have seen and testified that the father has sent his son to be the savior of the world. John was one of the disciples that walked with Jesus. Was there when he died, worshiped him at the resurrection. He's testifying that the promises of God have been a yes and amen in Jesus Christ. He can testify as one who walked with Jesus and saw him resurrected in a sin. The Father has shown his love by sending his Son. Secondly, we could also go so far as to say the Son has shown his love by laying down his life for us. Thirdly, the Holy Spirit testifies internally, we are the beloved children of God. There's a great assurance God gives us in all different ways to assure us we are his beloved so that we then have the confidence to love him. John can testify, Christ came to die for us. Christ is risen for us. Christ has come to be the savior of the world. If you're not a Christian, again, this is the most essential basic truths you need to hear and believe. Believer, if you see those commands, love one another, verse 11, verse seven, if you see the command, love God with all your heart, with all your strength, I wanna encourage you that the way to lean in and understand more of God's love is pursuing how to love Him, knowing how He's loved you first, with one another. We do often want to isolate those two things. We want to figure out God's loved us by ourselves. We just try to focus in on how we do this with one another. Those two things go hand in hand, learning how God has loved us from his word by his spirit in prayer with one another. That's all the ingredients. We too often want to take one of those out. The word is his authoritative declaration of how he's loved us. Prayer is how we seek to understand. The Holy Spirit gives us illumination, and we need one another to help us know what that means. Again, if we're meditating upon what's happening in the passage and how he's walking us through, love is from God, God is love, God so loved us. Verse 15, whoever confesses Jesus is son of God, God abides in him and he in God, so that we have come to know and to believe the love of God has for us. The way we come to know more of that love is looking at Christ with one another, seeking to love as he is loved. A third point, third way in which he lifts up love in another way. Notice he repeats himself. 16b, the next first full sentence in 16. God is love. Underline that. Here, instead of saying love one another because love is from God, or beloved, if God loved us, we should love one another, he just begins with the principle God is love. And whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. We continue with the abiding theme, but he's gonna apply it differently. So here it's love one another to have confidence. To have confidence. As we seek to know God who has loved us, as we seek to know God and we abide in that love, that means we're united with Christ in that love, that means we're seeking to know Christ in obedience because of that love. We seek to move towards God and towards one another. Now, abiding in Christ's love, that assumes we love one another. As Jesus taught in John 15, as we saw two weeks ago in 1 John 3, as we've already seen before. Verse 17 leads us into a particular application. By this is love perfected with us. We've seen the word perfect before in verse 12, but I want to just stop and pause on this word. This word is an important word. That word perfect in Greek, it means perfect. But it's in a very particular case. It's actually called the perfect case. And it means absolute, complete, full. So we could actually see there's an emphasis in the way he's declaring the love of God in us and the way we abide in that it should be perfectly perfect, completely complete, fully full. Whenever we look at this passage, by this love is perfected with us so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment. The way God's love is perfected, we can be full, complete from God's love. Here's an important lie to repent of, the lie that God's stingy. God is love, love is from God. he has not withheld his own son, what good thing would he ever withhold from us? There's a fullness and a perfection that can take place with us, in us, as we seek to abide in God's love, believing his promising, trusting his promises, receiving his love, and seeking to live out in obedience, as Christ said. This is not that different from John 15. If you love me, you'll keep my law and your joy will be full. Why? Because it's the joy of Christ that's inside of you. The Christian life is meant to be one of fullness, filled with joy, filled with love. Perfectly perfect. God gives us all we need so that his love is perfected in us. He loves us while we're still sinners, he loves us before we love him, and at the same time, our participating in that love or that abiding in his love is how it is perfected in us. Verse 17, by this is love perfected with us. He gives a purpose so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment. Because as he is, so also we are in this world. For there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has been perfected in love. That's so that. God is giving us another blessing here. He is a source of love, he calls us into his love, to abide in his love, to love one another, and in perfected, we have confidence in the day of judgment. Remember, God is just. And if we really understand anything of our sin, we should be terrified to go into his holy and perfect presence. That there should be fear and dread and terror that we would go into the presence of God with sin because he is a just and true God. But confidence before this just and holy true God on the day of judgment, Now, mind you, if you weren't here the last time, 1 John 5, 13 is the purpose statement for the letter of John. He says, I write these things so that you may know you have eternal life. Right here we could say the same idea, so that you may know you have confidence in the day of judgment, so that you may know you will not be judged by God himself on the day of judgment. Where does that confidence come from? Well, God's love produces a confidence. as we participate in his love. We sing a song, we didn't sing it this morning, It Is Well With My Soul. And that song is especially helpful for Christians as we go through trials. It was written, the author, I believe his family was lost at sea and yet he still declared, it is well with my soul. But one of the significant verses, the trumpet shall sound and the Lord shall descend. Now the trumpet he's referring to is that trumpet of the last day. Everyone hears that trumpet and it should be terrifying. The Lord descending means he's coming in perfect justice, revealing himself as he is, not incognito as he came before in the womb and as a lowly man. When sinners hear that trumpet and see the glorious Christ, we should be terrified, but this hymn writer, even so, even so it is well, my soul. The confidence and the love God gives us gives us confidence before judgment. We have nothing to boast of. We can't say we've loved enough that God would not judge us. No, we know Christ's love for us is perfect. We know Christ's sacrifice for us is perfect. We know the propitiation for sin that he has provided for us is perfect. Christian, if you wrestle with confidence, if you have doubt, if you lack confidence, isolating yourself and turning inward is going to be your inclination, and that's the most counterproductive thing you can do. Come out of yourself. Come towards others so that they can help you walk closer to Christ. Other believers will help you with answers to questions, and maybe even better, they'll help you ask better questions. I was telling the membership class last week, I wish if I had a subtitle for our church, Doubters Welcome. Come and walk with us in the love of Christ toward the glory of Christ. Abiding in his love provides joy, perfect love, and confidence. Notice verse 18. Again, makes these contrasts, these dichotomies. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. Now, there is a fear that is the beginning of wisdom. There's a right reverence and all for God. Here is fear of terror, fear of terror that destroys you, that makes you so incapacitated you can't do what you're supposed to do. That is a fear that's cast out by love. The perfect love of God, when at work within us, removes the fear of judgment. And let me be very clear, that perfect love, that confidence begins at the work of Jesus and the cross. As we meditate back on verse 10, Jesus came to be the propitiation of our sin. He came to satisfy the wrath of God in our place so that we can be forgiven. Jesus has seven different things he says on the cross. The last one is, it is finished. The Greek is tetelestai. That's a word you should memorize. If you want to know how to really say it or how it's spelled, you can ask Andrew Hodge later. He's a resident linguist. Tetelestai, it is finished. At that moment, he is declaring all the temple sacrifices are done. All the promises are complete. All that I have come to do as a sacrificial lamb, it is finished. God's wrath is satisfied. What we need for forgiveness has been accomplished. It's the same root. It's the same perfect tense. It's important, as we understand, we're seeking for love to be perfected in us. We might have a hard time trusting God can perfect love in us. Friends, it starts with believing Christ perfectly died for your sin. He has done all you need to be forgiven and walk toward him in love. The perfect love of God gives you confidence the perfect love of God that receives the promises you can be forgiven, receives the promises that even though you were lovely, you have been loved by God, receives the promises you can have new life. Our last point, our last section. Notice that the first one was a reason we love one another because love is from God, because God is love. He gave us two applications. Love is perfected in our confession of faith, and that's how we know God and grow to abide in him, and perfected love casts out fear, gives us confidence in the day of judgment. Verse 19 takes us back to a reason. We love because he first loved us. So if we're keeping inventory here, if we're underlining, Love is from God. God loved us. God is love. And now God first loved us. Verse 19, we love because he first loved us. He is the initiator in the relationship. He is the one who gave promises of love first. He committed himself in love first. He provided his son in love first. He gave us love before there was anything lovely about us. He is sovereign in his love towards us. We love him and one another because he first loved us. Verse 20 gives us another strong either or. If anyone says I love God and hates his brother, then he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. In the previous chapter, we saw love one another not like Cain who murdered his brother in hatred. Here he's making it very clear. If you say you love God, if you love God, the angle is different. He's speaking to us who are now loving God because he loved us. If you are one who seeks to pursue the love of God, you cannot hate your brother. If you have a hatred for someone else Christ has loved, you're a liar, in verse 20. And again, there's a lie to repent of, to grow closer into the abiding love of God. If then, if anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar. Why? How is it you could say you love God who you've not seen whenever God has put your brothers and sisters right in front of you who you do see? How can you pretend you're loving God when you're not loving those you see in need and not loving them in deed and truth? Now again, this one is a different angle. John 13. said love one another as Christ loved you. When you look back up, love one another because God the Father has loved you. Here it's we love because he first loved us, but notice in verse 21, another angle. This is the command we've heard from him. Whoever loves God must also love one another. Over and over again, we have seen how the basic truths of what it means to be a Christian, Christ came, he died, he rose again, are tied to this very command of love. To know anything of the love of God means we're knowing something more of loving one another. It's the foundation for it and it's the practice of it. But here, verse 21, this is the command we've heard from him. Whoever loves God, whoever would love God as the greatest command to love God with all your heart, with all your strength, all your mind, he must. This is a must follow argument. If you confess you love God, you must love your brothers and sisters. There's no way to love God that does not include loving one another. It's a logical argument. Right? It's as if you can't make a square circle, right? You can't draw a square circle. You can't be a married bachelor. Those are logically incoherent and impossible. And so it is with someone who says, I love God and hates his brother. It's logically impossible. It's a must. It must be both and rather than what we normally want to do is either or. Listen to the language, God loved you, you ought to love one another, that's verse 11. Jesus loved you, love one another as he loved you, that's John 13. Whoever loves God must, not a might or a maybe, must love his brother. We see how important this command is and every other command hangs upon it for who we are as a church. As we conclude, Think how. How do we love one another? First church, I just want to encourage you with how you already have been doing it. We love one another by coming together, singing of God's love together, greeting and welcoming another in the name of Christ, singing and praying together, coming together to prioritize the rhythms of praise that God has set before us in his word. During the week, you love one another with different Bible studies and prayer groups. You form together the fellowship gatherings, you organize to know one another and spend time with one another. The way members have cared for one another, visiting homebound and the sick. How you've watched children in the nursery, taught children on Sunday morning, Wednesday night. The way you've provided rides to one another, cooked meals for one another, welcomed others into your home, given others care when needed. Help people move this past week. You might not even know them beforehand. The amount of preparation many have put into having the heilers come back from Sweden in love. Those are all ways we love one another. Love is the ultimate command for the church and all of those are ways we love one another by serving and praying and teaching and providing care and showing hospitality to one another. It is the ultimate command tied to the most basic truths of the gospel. I'm very encouraged by how this body is regularly loving one another. Ladies, today, you can love one another by joining in the bridal shower. I understand some folks might think, well, I don't know the bride-to-be. I don't know if I should go. No, the whole idea is this is a church-wide way of encouraging all the women to think right about God's sacred covenant of marriage. See how you're encouraging one another, and if you don't know her, guess where you can get to know her? The bridal shower. You can love her by coming and getting to know her. It's a way we want to promote the goodness of God's love in the covenant of marriage. Guys, you can love one another by making sure the children and you do not walk through the fellowship hall afterwards. Guys, if you're feeling left out, September 1st, there's a matkam, or we can call it a hatkam, a hoon about to get married. This is where we're gonna come and speak truth into his life and love to, again, encourage one another. If you don't know who, you should, and you can come sooner or first and get to know him and love one another as we do something similar as men, as the ladies will be doing afterwards. Other ways. It really comes from the priorities you make. To borrow from C.W.' 's sermon last week, setting priorities that establish the right rhythms that develop what we love and demonstrate a love and enjoy a love with one another? Are we committed to regularly being with the brothers and sisters? Are we regularly isolated and separated and unrelated? Therefore, we're not really being perfected in love. We're not really growing in love. Set up the kind of rhythms where you're meditating on God's love with one another. Reading scripture together, sharing testimonies with one another, seeking to help get folks, seeking to know someone you do not know. Another practice here, not to say about how to do it, but what are some regular obstacles to the command to love one another? Which is also obstacles for loving God. I've identified three basic areas of obstacles. There's many more. The first area that has different parts is busyness. Where's ever committed? Students, as you're about to have numerous commitments, extracurriculars, consider not over committing yourself. Busyness often is just working too much. We're trying to find too much wealth in our job, too much value in our job, too much prestige in our job. Having a right order of work that does not take us away from loving one another and loving God. Second would just be focusing on lesser loves. Too often, a pet requires too much love that takes you away from other loves. Now I'm going to first admit, I was raised on a farm, so I have a right relationship with animals. But the amount of time folks have to leave other Christians to love animals needs to be reconsidered. There's a right way to love an animal, but it should not be loved more than other humans. Whenever we elevate animals to humans, we're going to, by definition, devalue humans. That's G.K. Chesterton. Third, youth sports is always competing with the right rhythms of love. what an opportunity to teach children to discipline loves. I am all for the disciplines that come from sport, but they must be secondary in ordering the right loves of the heart. I point out these three things because there's a right love for work, a right love for hobbies and interest in Pat Sinha, a right love for youth sports. These are things that are so easily confused to disorder loves. They're not sinful. None of those things are sinful. All these things are good and can have a right relationship. If you're offended by one of them, we can talk afterwards. If you're not offended yet, we can talk and we'll find whatever idol you have regularly found to put in place of God's love. We all do this. I really just chose these three because it's just three that are good things that we just disorder in our own hearts. Love God with all your heart. Love one another as Christ loved you. Love your neighbor as yourself. These other loves flow after everything else I just said. The second large group of obstacles is, oh, I'm gonna put the heading of comfort. We have an unhealthy commitment to comfort. It's hard to set a time to side. Oftentimes, because we're being dragged by a schedule, we don't discipline. Again, that's somewhat like over-committing ourselves. We're not prioritizing intentionally a schedule. We're instead having comfort waiting to commit ourselves. Or just fear of the awkward. Not wanting to be with people because, well, people can be difficult, or you can be difficult, and it can be awkward. Oh, you have to learn how to embrace the awkward to properly love one another. Or just desire too much me time. isolating ourselves for our own self-indulgence and entertainment. The last one for comfort, I think, is one of the most significant problems, and that is avoiding telling people how we need help. That's keeping yourself from being loved by others, and it's keeping others from knowing how to love you. It's a natural self-protection. It's a natural defense. But as we grow closer to Christ and we grow in that confidence in God, we should grow in confidence and be able to ask for help because we all need help. We all should make sure others know how to love us. The third big category as an obstacle for loving one another and loving God, just sin and rebellion. Just choosing to entertain sin. Choosing to live in the shame of sin. Choosing to not set aside the old practices of fleshly desires and pride of life and lust of the eyes and lust of the flesh. It's just a pure love for things God has set her out of bounds. It's too often what keeps us from the love of one another and the love of God. As we conclude the series, I just want to list out some of the blessings that have been highlighted from the passages we've read for loving one another and loving God. One, confidence before God and judgment. Knowing that when you stand before God, the Father, Christ will come and say, Father, I have satisfied your wrath for his sin or her sin. I have died for them. They are with me. They're coming in. to the table, confidence before judgment. Second, love perfected in us, fully enjoying the love of God, truly enjoying and experiencing the love of God. They're abiding in God and bearing fruit, as Christ promised in John 15, abiding in Christ so that we are bearing fruit for the glory of God. Fourth, we get to delight in his law with happy obedience. It's a step towards delighting in God's law with happy obedience. And then what Jesus promised in John 15, filled with the joy of Jesus is one of the blessings from loving one another. If we love one another, we will be filled with the joy of Jesus. Something 1 John 3 said and John 15 said, Our prayers are heard. God hears us as we pray in the name of Christ, as we abide in Christ, as we participate in the love of Christ. Our prayers are heard together. And there's some practical things. We have security that we're not on our own. We have others who care for us and show us kindness. We have support in times of trials and difficulties. What Jesus said when he first introduced the commandment, we're a witness to the world. But above all, we get to know the God who is love all the more near. We get to know the love that is from God all the more true. We get to grow to love God more because he first loved us. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you for your kindness. that you do not leave us as people who hated you and one another and even hated ourselves. You saved us from the disorder of sin, the destructive patterns that lead to death. You, as a God of life and light and love, have shown us what love is, have shown us that you love us, and have invited us to abide in you and to abide in your love by knowing Christ, by walking by your spirit, by loving one another. Lord, may we know how to pursue and delight in your love according to your word together. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.