Episode Transcript
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If you'RE A if you're able to
remain standing, please do and let's give
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our attention to Romans chapter twelve.
Romans Chapter Twelve, I'm going to be
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preaching on just the first phrase of
verse nine this morning and at this point
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I'm anticipating moving a little bit slowly
through nine through twenty one, but I
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want to read nine through thirteen.
We might have a few things put before
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our minds, a little bit of
context and Instruction. So Romans Twelve,
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Romans chapter twelve, verse nine,
here God's word. He says. Let
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love be genuine, abhor what is
evil, hold fast to what is good.
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Love one another out of what love
one another with brotherly affection, out
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do one another in showing honor.
Do not be slothful in zeal, be
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fervent in spirit, serve the Lord, rejoice in hope, be patient and
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tribulation, be constant in prayer,
contribute to the needs of the saints and
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seek to show hospitality. You may
be seated. So, as we've considered
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in the last few weeks, Paul
is beginning to give us lots and lots
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of specifics about how we ought to
live the Christian life, and this is
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a great thing because you remember,
back in verse two, he told us
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that by testing we are called to
discern what is the will of God.
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This is an important thing and in
in our lives to know what God's will
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is. What is what is it
that God who made you, who has
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saved you and is called you to
live a particular kind of life? What
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does it he want you to do? That's an important thing to know.
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Paul says it himself that we are
called to know it and learn it.
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Well, God doesn't leave us in
the dark, he doesn't leave us guessing
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what his will is, but he
gives us a lot of particular instructions,
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specific things that we can take home
with us, that we can think about
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in consider in all these various aspects
of our lives. How ought we to
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live? And here he begins this
killer section by saying of a genuine let
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love be genuine. This, of
course, assumes that we ought to love
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in the first place. Love is, of course, the great commandment which
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holds in it all the commandments of
God. And when Jesus was asked what
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does the greatest commandment, what did
he say? Well, to love God
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with all your heart, soul,
mind and strength and to love your neighbor
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as yourself. If someone says I
don't think God commands us to do anything,
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he just wants us to love,
well then they obviously don't understand the
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very nature of love itself or the
nature of God's Commandments. To love is
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to obey him, to love is
to follow the things and do the things
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he has called us to do.
And in these few verses and several following
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God gives us some specific instructions about
how we ought to love. So he
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says, let love be genuine.
He says, specifically in verse ten,
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Love One another with brotherly affection,
outdo one another and showing honor, the
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sort of funny competitive race to be
the greatest blessing to someone else, not
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out of a desire to prove yourself, but to help and serve someone else,
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contribute to this needs of the state, seek to show hospitality. All
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of these wonderful loving commands. But
he begins with this first cult there,
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this first phrase, this first command, let love be genuine. Think about
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how important that is. One way
you can consider it as by thinking how
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what it is. When it's not
that way, what disingenuous love is.
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Well, when love is not genuine. You often find yourself if it's being
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if it's happening to you. You
find yourself in a position of being tricked,
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of being deceived. You, when
someone loves you, you're often depending
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on them, you're trusting them for
certain things, you're expecting things from them.
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How would you feel if one day
you found your spouse had acted in
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a way, in one way,
even though they were saying and thinking another?
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It would hurt if you were told
that you were loved and then found
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out you were not, that it
was disingenuous. It would be terrible for
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love not to be genuine. It
might also be very dangerous and costly.
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Imagine a soldier who only pretended to
love his country, or a judge who
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only pretended to love justice. Disingenuous
love is a terrible thing. It's a
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terrible thing, and it's because love
is so great. Love is so valuable.
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When we are truly loved by another, what happens inside? Well,
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we find that our hearts swell with
gratitude. We have confidence and courage and
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things that we might not otherwise when
we know that we're loved, especially by
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people that really matter to us,
that we really do depend on and lean
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on. We feel safe, we
feel protected, we feel provided for,
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and the greater the love is,
the greater these things are true. That's
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what makes disingenuous love so terrible and
genuine love so important and wonderful. Think
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of a couple examples. Maybe you're
already thinking of someone your own life.
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Take a few biblical ones. Maybe
Ruth's love for Naomi. Genuine love.
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You have this non Israelite and Mo
abide US Ruth, who clings to her
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motherin law and says, I will
go with wherever you go. Your God
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will be Your my God, your
people will be my people. And that's
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exactly what she does. She clings
to Naomi all the way back to Israel,
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where they she lives in our house, works under bow as, follows
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instructions. You know the story of
Ruth. She does all these amazing things,
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ends up providing not only for Naomi's
physical hair and welfare and all the
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rest, but even for her own
salvation, as Jesus would be born through
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her and through Bo as. Imagine, as great as that love story is
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between Ruth and Naomi, this daughter
in law for her mother in law.
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Imagine what would have happened. If
the opposite had been true, what if
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Ruth's great speeches and crying had all
been just a show for some terrible reason?
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You can guess and imagine various other
ones that might have been true.
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Can you imagine Naomi, who had
already lost her her sons and her husband,
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who had who's coming back into our
land and said call me Mara for
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bitterness as mine, and then to
have her daughter in law, who had
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professed this great love for her,
deceive her? The book of Ruth would
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be an entirely different story, with
all entirely different, entirely different meaning.
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Everything, the whole Bible Bull Story
of redemption would be different. But of
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course that isn't what happened. Ruth's
Love was genuine, it was sincere as
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beautiful. There's another example. Consider
Jonathan's love for David. You remember John
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Anathan, this prince, this son
of Saul, who had power and unlikely
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would have ascended to the throne or
had some great responsibilit Olidy and Israel if
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it had not been for David.
But David was the Lord's anointed and Jonathan
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saw that, even though his own
father, his own king, didn't see
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it. Now or if he saw
it, he fought and he just tried
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to destroy and deceive David and again
and again and again. But Jonathan,
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because of his love for the Lord, loved David even more than his own
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father, even more than his own
possibilities serving as King and we reaven for
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Samuel Eighteen. One that he loved
David is with his own soul. And
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how did that express itself? How
did Jonathan's Love Express itself? That genuine
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love expressed it himself in protecting David
and saving his life and covenanting with him,
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even in bowing to him. In
a sense, he gives him his
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clothes, his robe, his armor, he takes his authority and his position
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in his status and he gives it
to this shepherd boy because he loved him,
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because he saw that God had put
his anointing on David, that this
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is the was to be the true
king. Can you imagine what would have
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happened if Jonathan had done what many
political leaders do, if he had clung
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to power, if he had clung
to his rights, if these privileges,
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he would have ended up, like
his father, like many other insuls household
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dead on the battlefield. Judged by
the Lord. Of course, the greatest
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example of true love, of genuine
love, is the love that God had
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for us when he sent his son
into the world to die for our sins
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so that we might live and love
forever. Now, if Naomi's love and
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Jonathan's love and other examples that you
might think of, maybe in your own
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life, of people that have loved
you, if those are outstanding, this
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one, what adjective could we put
to it? It's worthy of contemplation for
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your whole life. The love of
God in Jesus Christ. Paul says in
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Ephesians three, eighteen and nineteen that
the love of Christ surpasses knowledge. That's
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an amazing thing to think about.
You could study every day, reflect every
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hour, meditate on the theme of
God's Love Your entire life and you will
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never know how great it is,
how deep it goes, how far it
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goes, how high it goes.
Christ's love for us is so great that
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he didn't just give up an earthly
kingship like Jonathan dived, but he left
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heaven itself to come into the world, to take on flesh, to live
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and to die as one of the
ones. He was going to save everything.
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Jesus did was motivated by love and
it was always perfectly genuine. Wrap
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your minds around that that there wasn't
a single moment in Jesus is entire life
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where a nonloving motivation overtook him.
There wasn't a single moment where Jesus found
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himself thinking a nonloving thought. I
think it's easiest to understand that. We
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begin to understand it when we think
about our own love. Even at our
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best, we find our love to
always have some degree of impurity in it,
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a bit of selfishness, a spot
of bitterness, a tinge of pride.
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I've often thought that if I was
ever in one of these situations,
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can't think of the word all of
a sudden, but these kind of these
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stereotypical things that we imagine. Your
sort of jumping in front of a bus
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to save somebody's life. That's the
one I think of that even as I
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was sort of looping from the sidewalk
to genuinely save someone else, I'd be
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thinking, boy, I hope somebody
notices this. If I survive this,
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I hope I might make the newspaper. You probably don't have much time to
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think about that, but I have. Somebody notices right. Don't you think
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that's true? Don't you think that
when even at our best, even when
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we really are laying down our lives
for someone else, whether it's our actual
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physical lives or whether it's a moment
of service or hospitality or opening a door,
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whatever it is, that there's always
those stains of sin? And sometimes
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they're not that subtle. Sometimes that's
exactly why we do these socalled loving things.
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They're not genuine at all. When
we think about that, when we
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think about how sin creeps into our
lives, and we study our own hearts,
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if not also the hearts of others, and see however present sin is.
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And then we go back and we
think about Jesus. Never once an
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unloving thought, never once a prideful
motivation, a selfishness in him. You
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know what, forget them. This
one's about me. That's an amazing thing.
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It's hard to comprehend, it's really
hard to imagine, but that's what
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we know and that's what we see
in his life. The word of God
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is unflinchingly honest. It never sort
of sugar coats the details. We see
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that in Jesus's own followers. We
see it as it expresses us, or
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Adam sin, or Noah's sin or
David Sin all over the great heroes of
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the faith. There's never a sugar
coating on it. And when it comes
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to Jesus, the same. The
same is true, but it's sweet,
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not because it's coated with sugar,
but because it's sweet from top to bottom,
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in and out. Jesus's love is
true and one day, when we
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pass into heaven, these things will
be different. The stains of sin,
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the infiltration of it that we feel
in our hearts, it will be different.
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Will know love imperfection, but for
Jesus it's always been different. Jesus
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didn't have to wait to go to
heaven to find out that or to learn
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what true and perfect love is.
He was born from heaven, he was
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born from God. His human nature
was fully human, but, unlike ours,
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he didn't have this UNCRU or this
corrupted humanity. All that to say,
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Jesus is love for you was genuine
and it was sincere, and not
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in approximate way or in a mostly
way, but in an all the way
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kind of way. That's why,
when Jesus loves US and when those loved
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ones start loving him, the angels
of Heaven Rejoice and give praise to God
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when the sin starts being put down, when the hatefulness and the pride and
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the anger starts being put away by
God's own spirit and people start turning instead
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and love, oh it's wonderful.
The angels rejoice and we rejoice when we
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experience it, when someone has us
into their home and welcomes us into their
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lives, when someone cares for us
when we're sick or forgives us when we've
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sinned against them, and we know
the love of Jesus and these things.
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Isn't it sweet? Isn't it wonderful? Jesus is Love was genuine, it
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was sincere, it was never false, it was never stained, and because
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of that, because of that love, he works in our hearts in a
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way that we can begin to love. He is our faithful husband who provides
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us in his love, safety and
protection and provision. That's genuine love.
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We can't comprehend in a complete and
final sense how far it goes, but
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you can't and understand what it is
and you can experience it and know its
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benefits in your life. God is
telling us, though, in Romans twelve
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nine, that's it's not enough to
own to merely experience his love, or
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to hear of it, I might
say, and then fail to love others
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in the same way. That's like
in one ear and out the other.
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You remember that Jesus parable about forgiveness, about the servant that owed the king
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a great, vast amount of money
and he goes before the king and the
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king says, you owe me money, and he says, I know,
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please have mercy on me, and
instead of throwing him in jail, he
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forgives him. And then that servant
goes out and on his way he meets
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another servant, a fellow servant,
who owes him money, and instead of
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forgiving him, he shakes him down
and he puts him in prison. Jesus
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tells the story to say, as
you are forgiven, so you must forgive.
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You can't experience these things truly and
then walk away from them unchanged and
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to live in another kind of way
because of what Jesus has done. Paul
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says to each and every one of
us, let love be genuine. It
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only is fair, it only makes
sense, it's only right. As John
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says in First John, if God
had so loved us, we ought to
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love one another. Isn't that true? Doesn't that make sense? If God
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the soul loved us that he would
give us his only begotten son, whosoever
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would believe in him should not die
but have everlasting life. If God loved
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us that much, should we not
love one another? Of course we should.
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We might also add that those who
have been truly born of God,
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it becomes a natural thing to love. It's it doesn't just make sense logically,
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but it makes sense spiritually. We
have been born of the spirit.
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We have a nature in us that
is born of love. To love the
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nature of love is that it breeds
more love. Maybe you've had this happen
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in your household, where everyone's just
having a bad day, ruin's cranky,
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being obnoxious and sort of unruly,
and then one person decides I'm going to
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love. You're not necessarily sure why
they decided it or how they decided it,
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but they start being really nice and
really sweet. It's kind of hard
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to resist, isn't it? You
feel kind of like a jerk if you
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resist it, if you start to
cling to your bitterness and your anger and
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your crankiness. It's kind of infectious. And if that's true, and just
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sort of a general human sense,
in the workplace, in the FAM in
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family life. How much more true
is that when the very spirit of love,
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when God himself comes into our lives, causes us to be reborn in
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his image and then fills us with
his love and says go out and love
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one another? We see it,
it's infectious. Love breathes more love.
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God changes US and calls us to
it. It makes sense also from a
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sort of familial way, a family
way. Some of you have met my
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father and usually when people do,
they comment how similar we are. We
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look similar, we walk in similar
ways, we think similarly, use the
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same kinds of expressions, probably the
same for you. You Look and act
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and talk like your parents. And
again, if we have been born of
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God, will not his children also
love? The same is true for us,
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God says in John Thirteen fifty five. Jesus says you will know them,
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speaking of his disciples, you will
know them, those who are my
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disciples, those who are my followers, those who have been born of God.
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You will know them by their love. Love for Jesus. If God
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were your father, you would love
me. Jesus says in Johnny Forty two
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and love for other people. If
we love each other, God lives in
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us. First John for twelve.
The good news, as I've said,
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is that God sends his spirit of
love into our hearts to bring this about
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in us. We don't have to
wander off and find some source of love
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after we've sort of explored the empty
well in our own hearts. We don't
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have to dig another one, because
God just fills it on up with the
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living water of life. God gives
us his own spirit that we might draw
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from his strength and his life.
Unites us to himself like a vine to
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a branch, so that we can
feed off of his source of life,
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off of his power, off of
his love. The fruit of love,
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in other words, is born in
our lives because of who we are in
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Christ. This is why God can
say these sorts of things that I've been
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reading to you with great boldness.
You will know them by their love.
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It's a pretty outstanding claim to make
about human beings, isn't it? But
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God is the one who's making the
claim. He is saying to the world
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you will know them, they will
be recognizable by their love. How can
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God say that? Because he's the
one who's doing the work. He has
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confidence in himself, because he is, after all, God and the God
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of love. This should give you
great confidence, when you see your weakness
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and you see your sins, to
know that it is God himself, the
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God of Love, who is working
within you. That being said, we
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are then called by God to stir
up the love in our own hearts and
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in others. When we fail at
this, we repent and God forgives us,
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and when we succeed, we know
that it is being done in his
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strength. This is the call to
love and to let it be genuine.
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God doesn't want us to fake it. God doesn't want us to put on
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a show. God wants to us
to love one another's one another e's been
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as Jesus have has loved us.
He wants us to bear the fruit of
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the spirit even as the spirit has
been, has been worked in us.
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So, practically, how do we
do that? How do we let love
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be genuine? Well, starts by
believing God's word, by believing what he's
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done in Jesus, by trusting in
him and trusting in his spirits work in
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us. It follows from that by
being not just trusting that, but being
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committed to it. And being committed
to him. If you hear the command
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to let love be genuine and you
say maybe tomorrow, it's not going to
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happen, God calls us to be
committed to his word and committed to him
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in faith, and to be committed
to him in that way means to be
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committed on one another, to decide
in our hearts, in our lives,
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my love will be genuine, my
love will be sincere. I'm not going
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to be about putting on false fronts. I'm not going to be about doing
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loving looking things in order to get
nonloving things. I'm going to be about
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love pure and simple. As an
expression of that commitment, maybe you can
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even think of a particular person,
maybe someone that you need to love better
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or love more, and decide that
with this person I will be genuine.
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Of course we should do it with
all people and not just choose one,
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but you've got to start somewhere.
Be Specific. If your love is genuine,
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it will be applied in specific ways, make decisions, be committed.
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Another thing we might add is letting
love be genuine is greatly helped by learning
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the ways of love, and that's
why I read some of these other verses
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do not be slothful and zeal,
be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.
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These are the ways of love.
Contribute to the needs of sayings,
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seek to show hospitality. These are
the ways of love. Or, if
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we read on in verse fourteen,
bless those who persecute you. Bless and
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do not curse them. Rejoy,
pace with those who rejoice, weep with
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those who weep, live in harmony
with one another. It just goes on
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and on and on. These are
the ways of love. Be a student
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of them, love them, be
committed to them. Another thing you can
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do is look around you at the
examples that are around you. If the
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love of Christ is evident in those
who belong to him, surely you will
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find examples in other people where you
say that is genuine love and that is
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genuine love and we can learn from
them. All end by saying that,
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of course, the greatest example,
in the greatest model is Jesus himself.
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We study his life, we learn
his life, first so that we might
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have life in him, so that
we might know salvation in him, but
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also so that we might follow after
him, so that we might pick up
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his pick up our cross and follow
him. It's not an accident. That,
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Jeez, that God says here in
Verse Fourteen. Bless those who persecute
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you. That's what Jesus did.
He blessed us, he saved us while
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we were at enemies. He came
into the world out of love. So
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look to him, look to Jesus, and you will find both love and
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how we ought to love. Let's
pray.
