Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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Please remain standing if you're able,
and let's again turn to first John,
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Chapter Four. That's page ten twenty
three, if you grabbed a Black Bible
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off the cart. First John,
for I'm already read versus nine and ten.
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Now I'm going to pick up at
verse nineteen and then read into the
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next chapter a little bit. So
first John, nineteen through five three.
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The grass withers, flowers fade,
but the word of our Lord stands forever.
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Let's let's give our attention to it. We love because he first loved
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us. If anyone says I love
God and hates his brother, he is
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a liar, for he who does
not love his brother, whom he cannot
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whom he hasn't seen, cannot love
God, whom he has not seen.
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And this commandment we have from him. Whoever loves God must also love his
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brother. Everyone who believes that Jesus
is the Christ has been born of God,
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and everyone who loves the father loves
whoever has been born of him.
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By this we know that we love
the children of God when we love God,
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God and obey his commandments, for
this is the love of God that
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we keep his commandments, and he
is commandments are not burdensome. A God
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bless his word to us. Please
be seated. As is very typical of
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John, we have these incredibly simple
truths here, with lots and lots and
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lots underneath them, tons, tons
of depth. I don't know if ton
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is the right unit of measurement.
There miles of depth, fathoms of depth.
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Anyway, it's very deep. For
example, in the simple way in
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which John says, which everyone here, even if you're very young, should
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understand. He says, if you
say you love God but you hate your
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brother, you're a liar. It's
pretty a pretty simple thing, and he
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doesn't mean in the way in which
we don't always act according to how we
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believe. That's true of all of
us and in a way we are all
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liars. In that sense, John, though, is talking about something not
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just when we fail to act in
accordance with our beliefs and our principles,
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but he's talking about the person who
acts different friently than what they say they
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believe, somebody who is just a
liar, not somebody who believes and actually
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does believe God but then fails in
various ways to live up to that belief.
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But he's talking about people that simply
say these things but but don't actually
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do it. He's saying that the
love of others needs to be manifested in
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our lives, and he gives various
reasons for that. He has been giving
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various reasons for that. This liar
word is a very strong word. Have
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you ever been called a liar?
I guess is you weren't very happy about
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it, even if it were true. It hurts. Strong language John Uses,
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and if a word like liar doesn't
wake you up, I'm not really
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sure what will. God is speaking
very strongly here and we all ought to
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pay attention. Then they are very, very deep things here as well.
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Of course that's deep, but I
guess what I mean is things under the
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surface, things that are touched on
and assumed, but but go quite far,
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quite far down, like this,
for example, at the beginning of
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Chapter Five, everyone who believes that
Jesus is the Christ has been born of
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God, and everyone who loves the
father loves whoever has been born of him.
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What does he mean by whoever has
been born of him? Well,
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he must mean Jesus, The only
begotten Son of God, the very unique
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son of God, the one of
a kind son of God, and that
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makes sense with what he's saying.
Right. Everyone who believes that Jesus is
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the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves
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Jesus. Right. It doesn't make
much sense to say I believe in Jesus
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Christ, I'm trusting him, in
him to take away my sins, to
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turn away the wrath of God.
I'm trusting in him and the love that
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he is poured out on me,
but I don't love him. Right.
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Simply not true. Of anyone who
is believing that Jesus is the Christ.
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Anyone who believes that Jesus is their
savory savior also loves them, loves him,
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and naturally so, because God's work
has been done in in Jesus and
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in them, in these ones that
he is saved. Love is all wrapped
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up in this. Remember verse nine. In this the love of God was
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made manifest among us, that God
sent his only son into the world so
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that we might live through him.
The love of God was made manifest,
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and because he loved us, so
we love you. See The connections there?
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And who is it that we love? Jesus is one who has been
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born of God, but yet,
as we connect all of these doughts,
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we begin to see that it can't
be just Jesus, because there are more
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than there are more than just one
who has been born of God, although
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in different ways. We also have
been born of God, and this is
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something that he has emphasized over and
over throughout throughout this throughout this letter.
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So, in other words, we
who are saved in Jesus are not just
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saved individually, but we are slaved
collectively. Brothers is a word that he
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uses to describe this group of people. We who have been born of God
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through the son of God, who
have been brought into this relationship as adopted
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children of God, come to love
not only the one and only son,
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but all the sons and daughters of
God because they have been born of him.
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As I say, these are the
are great mysteries right, deep things
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to understand, all tied up in
this four letter word love. In this
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passage, John is underlining the importance
of these things with a big red pen
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is clearly as we need. Have
you ever been in a situation where you've
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been told something was important, but
then you didn't quite realize how important it
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was until later? Maybe you were
in job training or something like that,
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and your new employer says, when
you submit these reports, make sure that
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they're in this format, and you
go okay, doesn't seem like that big
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of a deal, only a week
later to find out, after you submitted
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to report, that it was a
very big deal and now your job is
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at risk. Right or I think
of this scene at the beginning of C
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S Lewis this book, the Silver
Chair, one of these. One of
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the children in the story, one
of the main characters, meets as land,
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another main character in the story,
and as land gives her instructions,
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a set of signs, and he
says follow these signs and this is this
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is what you are to do,
and she goes okay, I got it.
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He's like, I don't think you
have it as well as you think
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you have it. She says,
Oh, I really I think I've got
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it. He says, all right, tell me the signs, and she
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like kind of tells him the signs
sort of one half of another, not
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in order, and he says no, and he makes her repeat it again
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and again and again, and she'll
shoot until she can say from memory all
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the signs in order, and then
he sends her off and she misses the
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first sign and because of that we
have the rest of the silver chair right,
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because this conflict is created and then
they have to figure out what to
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do from there. So wonderful book. The importance of things are sometimes told
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to us, but we don't always
get it, and so, like as
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land did, he underlines the point
and he impresses it on this girl over
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and over again, and John's doing
that here. We've been talking about love
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for a while now. I hope
you're not tired of it. It is
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love, after all. We must
love because God has loved us. And
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if we don't, if we truly
don't, if we're merely mouthing these words,
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I love God, but we're hating
our brothers. If there's a real
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disconnect there, then we are,
as he says, liars, Liars which
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are worthy of Hell for that sin, for the sin of disobeying God's Commands,
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for the sin of not heeding his
warnings, for the sin of rejecting
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his love, for all kinds of
things. It is what we deserve.
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But these strong words are given to
you to be a wake up call.
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In other words, if you realize
that you are a person who fits this
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description and that hurts. If you
know they describe you. That's not the
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signal to start ignoring the pain.
Right when you, let's say, get
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a big pain on your side and
it won't go away and it won't go
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away. That isn't the cue.
Ah, I should ignore this more right.
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The Que is get yourself to a
doctor. Go find out what's wrong,
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find out what the problem is.
It's like this when it comes to
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our consciences as well. If,
if they are pricked, if it hurts,
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if we recognize there's something true,
even in a smallest way, about
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God's description of those who don't love
and yet say they love him, then
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that's not the signal, obviously,
to start ignoring that or suppressing that feeling.
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It's a signal to go to the
doctor, the good doctor, the
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great doctor, the great physician,
our Lord and Savior, Jesus, who
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promises to heal all those who come
to him. God is the one,
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we learn in this text and throughout
the Bible, who makes things right.
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He is the one who can change
us. He loved us even before we
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loved him. He made us healthy
while we were still sick. That's what
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God does, that's who he is, as we read earlier in the service,
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one of the first passages we read, his steadfast love endures forever.
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That's the kind of God he is. This is the kind of God who
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is revealing himself to you. So
even as he speaks these strong words like
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liar and pricks our hearts, in
the same breath he's also saying, but
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I'm here to save you from that, to love you in your lying and
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to bring you into the truth.
What does it mean that we love because
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he first loved us? We've talked
about this a lot already. I've talked
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about the fact that God sent his
son into the world to do something when
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even before we were able to do
it, to love, before we were
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able to love or wanted to love. But as we continue to meditate on
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these things, to reflect on who
God is and what he's done, I
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want to continue opening this up to
you, and perhaps in yet another way,
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and I want to do so by
turning to the gospel of John and
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looking at two passages there, so
that we might even more fully understand what
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it means to be wrapped up in
the love of God, what it means
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that God has sent his son into
the world to do these things. Let's
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turn to John Chapter Fifteen. John
Five, Chapter Fifteen, or mind you
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that the context here is immediately before
the Lord goes to his death, to
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die on a cross for our sins. He is giving a lot of teaching
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which the disciples would remember and understand, even as we have after his death
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and resurrection. John Fifteen, verse
nine, Jesus is teaching right before his
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death. I'm going to read from
mine to Verse Fifteen. Pay Attention.
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As the father has loved me,
so I have loved you. Abide in
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my love. was just pause there
for a moment. Do you hear what
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Jesus is saying? As the as
God, the father, loved God the
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Son. How perfect is that?
How wonderful is that? Can we even
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begin to imagine what that kind of
love is like? We can, a
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little bit actually, because he tells
us. So, I have loved you.
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Now abide in my love. I'll
read on. If You keep my
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commandments, you will abide in my
love, just as I have kept my
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father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you
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that my joy may be in you
and that your joy may be full.
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This is my commandment. That you
love one another as I have loved you.
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Great our love has no one than
this, that someone laid down his
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life for his friends. You are
my friends if you do what I command
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you. No longer do I call
you servants, for the servant does not
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know what his master is doing,
but I have called you friends, for
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all that I have heard from my
father. I have made known to you
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one more verse. You did not
choose me, but I chose you and
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appointed you that you should go and
bear fruit and that your fruit should abide,
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so that whatever you ask the father
in my name, he may give
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it to you. These things I
command to you so that you will love
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one another. You're a similar the
languages here to the language in First John.
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Right Command love, abiding the relationship
between the father and the son,
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which is what I want to particularly
draw your attention to. Jesus here is
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teaching us that there is a relationship
between him and his father, which is
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then connected to us by his work
for us, and the fact that we
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know this, just the fact that
we know this, raises our status up.
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Servants don't get to know why?
Do this? Yes, sir,
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do that, yes, sir,
and that's all there is. To it?
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Why? What business is it yours
to ask? Why? You're a
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servant, do what I told you
to do. But Jesus has done something
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different here. He tells us what
the master is doing and he calls us
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a friend. What is the master
doing? The master is loving us.
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The master is dying for us.
The master is bringing us into the very
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love that the father has for the
son and the son has for the father.
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No wonder he commands us to love
one another because we are in him,
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and he himself, as the son, has been commanded to love and
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has loved and has fulfilled that command
and continues to fulfill it, how by
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laying down his life for us.
Greater love has no one than this,
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that someone should lay down his life
for his friends. Jesus is looking as
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disciples in the eye, about to
go to his death. Talk about saying
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I love you with your actions and
not just your words. This is our
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Lord and Savior. This is the
love of God and this is the love
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that he is bringing us into by
his love. Much more could be said
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about this. You can see why
he says remain in my love or abide
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in my love. But let's continue
on and look at another passage, John
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Seventeen. John Seventeen versus twenty through
twenty four. Now we could go all
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the way back to chapter thirteen and
and consider many, many things here along
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these lines, including, we might
I add, just to bring to your
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mind, the image of the vine
in the branches right abide in me and
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you will bear fruit. This is
language we just read. But let's continue
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on. John Seventeen, verses twenty
through twenty four. Now here the son
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is speaking to the father, you
are hearing God, The Sun, requesting
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things of God. The father says
highly significant. Here's what he prays.
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He says. I do not ask
for these only, namely his disciples,
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but also for those who will believe
in me through their word. That it's
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you. Do you believe in Jesus
through the word of the disciples? Then
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he's talking about you. Here is
Jesus praying for you, and the words
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recorded right here for you to hear
in scripture. I do not ask for
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these, only these disciples, but
also for those who will believe in me
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through their word, that they may
all be one, just as you,
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father, are in me and I
in you, that they also may be
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in us, so that the world
may believe that you have sent me the
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glory that you have given me.
I have given to them that they may
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be one, even as we are
one, I in them and you in
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me, that they may become perfectly
one, so that the world may know
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that you have sent me and loved
them even as you loved me. Father,
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I desire that they, also,
whom you have given me, may
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be with me where I am to
see my glory that you have given me
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because you loved me before the foundation
of the world. I think I understand
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about five percent of this, honestly. Going back to the water analogy,
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I do remember being in the deep
end for the first time as a kid
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in my parents swimming pool. You
get lessons at the public pool and then
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you try it out at home and
it's a little scary. Feel a little
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bit like that talking about a passage
like this. It's very deep. But
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let's just take the easy stuff,
so to speak, the things that are
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abundantly clear. What does he say? He says that he is praying that
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we would have the same unity with
one another and in him that he has
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with the father, that we would
be in some sense in God, even
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as the father is in the son
and the son is in the father.
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As Christians, we make very important
distinctions between the persons of the father,
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the son and the Holy Spirit,
distinct properties involved, a connected to each
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one, attributed to each one.
And yet, at the same time,
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while we recognize that the father did
not die on the cross, the spirit
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did not send the father, the
son didn't give birth to the father and
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other things like this, there is
a unity there. Now, there are
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two kinds of unity in God,
at least that will talk about now.
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One is a unity of substance,
and this is what the persons of the
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trinity have with one another. They
are the same being, not three beings,
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not three gods, one God in
three persons. This unity we do
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not share in. We do not
become God in our union with him.
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Why? Well, because God is
God and we are creatures. We can
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never become him. He is always
separate from us. In this way,
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he is always different from us.
He is always separate from us. We
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are not just little gods getting closer
and closer to him on a kind of
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platonic chain of being. There is
a chasm that forever separates the creature from
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the Creator, and we know this
because the Bible testifies everywhere that there is
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and always will be and forever has
been one God. So then, what
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does Jesus mean when he says that
we will be one with God? Well,
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if he's not say saying that we
are united to him in his substance,
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in his essence, in his being, he's saying something else, right.
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What is it? It's unity in
the fellowship that the father has with
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the son. And isn't that what
he's saying? It's all about that relationship,
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the relationship that the father has with
the son, the love that is
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between them. That is the love
that has been manifested to us. As
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Jesus came into the world. He
didn't come to divinize everything, to turn
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everything into a god. He came
into the world to bring us into the
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love and into the fellowship with God
and in God. Again, these are
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big things, but they're important distinctions, not just so that we might check
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all the right boxes, but because
there's danger. Right, there's danger in
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saying that we become God, because
we certainly do not. I hope I
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don't have to argue that any further. There's danger in moving that direction because
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I'll tell you this ultimately it ends
up becoming nothing about God. All you
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have to go is look at Eastern
mysticism or new age ideas. It says
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nothing about the divine and it's all
about me. That's about me self actualizing
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into more meanness, and I don't
want that. I don't know about you,
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I want more of him and less
of me. Right. So we
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have to maintain this creature, creator, creates, creature creator, distinction essential.
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It's all over in the Bible.
But we also can't deny, and
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we must not deny what John is
saying here, the teaching that he has
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received from the son of God himself, the very prayers of the son,
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which will of course be answered,
because he is, after all, God
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who makes these things happen, who
brings them about. If Jesus praised that
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we will be one with one another
and one in him, even as he
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is in the father and the father
is in the him, you can bet
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that that is what's going to happen. This is a promise to us.
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Jesus says these things in our hearing
so that we would know what his will
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is. And it's all in the
context of this relationship, this relationship and
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fellowship of love. So this is
who God is, father and son,
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the spirit, bringing us into fellowship
with the son and the father, and
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that is why we must love.
If all of that is true, and
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it most certainly is, how can
you affirm that and then say, well,
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I don't want to be kind today, I don't care about patience and
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I hate those people. They're about
your hypocrites and I don't like them and
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they're mean, and on and on
and on. Does that make any sense?
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How can we be brought into union
with the Tryune God, who is
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love, as we read an earlier
passage in First John. How can we
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brought into be brought into union with
God, even as the father is in
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the son and the son is in
the father, and then not love?
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That's like trying to be in a
swimming pool and not be wet. It
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just doesn't work. It can't happen. And so, going back to our
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passage, we love because he first
loved us. God has done something magnificent
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in the world by giving the life
of his son for us, by bringing
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us into fellowship with him, by
not just doing loving things for us,
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but by giving us himself as one
who is love. So now John Underlines
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the point. If anyone says I
love God and hates his brother, he
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is a liar. Do you understand
why? Now he is a liar,
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for he who does not love his
brother, whom he cannot or I mess
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that up before it I'll try again, for he who does not love his
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brother, whom he has seen,
cannot love God, whom he has not
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seen. It's an argue, and
from the lesser to the greater. Right,
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you can't. If you're not doing
it at even this level, what
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makes you think you're going to do
it at this level? This is the
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commandment we have from him. We
were just read it right from Jesus's own
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words. And John, whoever loves
God must also love his dub brother.
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Continuing our reading, everyone who believes
that Jesus is the Christ has been born
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of God. Right, we can't
have faith apart from God working in us,
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but he continues the idea. And
everyone who loves the father through faith
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in Christ, loves whoever has been
born of him. And this we know,
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or by this we know that we
love the children of God. This
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brings me to my last point,
verse two. So if we make all
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the connections and we have this understood
correctly in our minds and it's deep within
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our hearts and it's a part of
the spiritual reality in which we are swimming
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in. Then there is this question. Let's get very, very practical,
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John says. How will we know
that we love the children of God?
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What does it look like? You
want to know? Here's how you know
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when we love God and obey his
commandments. You See, love is not,
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as I've been saying many times,
it's sort of floaty feeling that we
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sort of conceptualize and talk about and
just leave there. It has teeth,
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boots on the ground. It's concrete, however you want to put it.
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And what does it look like?
Action, real action, when we do,
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when we keep the commandments of God, for this is the love of
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God that we keep his commandments and
then he adds and his commandments are not
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burdensome. As I said earlier,
when we hear the word commandment, sometimes
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we think, oh no, I
gotta do this other thing, but is
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that true love? It's not as
all, it's not at all. God
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commands me, as a husband to
love my wife. Now, of course
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that can be a big chore and
a Hassle and all those sorts of things
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if I don't actually love her,
but if I do love her, it's
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like falling off a log, isn't
it? It's not a burden something,
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it's a wonderful thing. It's a
joyous thing. When we, my wife
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Dyll and I, were first getting
married, we had some premarital counseling and
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I remember the pastor we were meeting
with suggested this exercise. He said he
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did this occasionally and I recommend it
to you. He said every now and
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then when I'm driving home or riding
my bike home, I'll I'll just go
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through my mind and try to come
up with and he'll pick a number five,
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hundred and ten five reasons I love
my wife right and this just as
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a sort of mental exercise. And
and what he says, what he said
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would happen is as he would go
home, he'd think of number one,
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the number two, number three,
in a smile would start to come to
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his lips, and number four,
and he pedal a little faster, he
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would live close to the church and
number five by the time he got home.
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It is how I was just bursting
right, bursting with love, and
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it was no problem, no chore, No Burden, some duty to open
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the door and give her a hug
and say hey, great to see you.
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He's not checking a box at this
point, is he? Because his
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heart is filled with love. I
found the same sort of thing to be
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true, not just in my love
for my wife, but also our love
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for the Lord. Why do you
think he reminds us all the time of
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all the ways in which he is
so loving for us? Why do you
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think he's so specific? He who
gives his life and lays his life down
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for his friends? That's love.
Because we forget and he reminds us.
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And when we hear his word and
we bring these things to mind and we
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think about all the wonderful things that
God has done for us and we're just
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choking in them, we're remembering them, we're rejoicing in them, then is
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it a problem to then go and
share that same love with others? Is
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it burdens not really. Where it's
burdensome is where we, unsurprisingly, aren't
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very much in love with God.
When that disconnect is there, then it's
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a big problem and it does feel
like checking a list and it feels like
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a bunch of legalism and on.
However, you might want to put it.
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Love is, of course, a
command, it is a duty,
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it is an obligation. Husband's ought
to love their wives, parents ought to
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love their children. We ought to
love one another, ought to love God.
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These are duties, these are commandments. But when our faith is in
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the God who has loved us,
the burdensome nature of the Commands of God
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is taken away. They're only burdensome
because our hearts are so perverted. They're
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only burdensome because we're sick. If
you've got a big pain in your side
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and you're expected to run, it's
a part, but if you're full of
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life and energy, it's fun,
it's easy, it's a joy. Where
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do we get that from? Where
do we get healing from? Where do
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we get energy from? Where can
we run so that we aren't weary?
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How can we soar like eagles and
not grow fat? The Bible says from
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God. That's how we get it. That's where we get it when we
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are born of God. How can
you be born of God? How can
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you become a son or daughter of
God? How can you become no longer
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a liar but a lover? By
putting your faith in the one who has
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done all these things for you.
Trust him, go to the doctor and
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he will save you. Praise be
to God. Let's pray.
