Community (Week 3) - Covenantal Love

I remember the moments leading up to the birth of our first

born. Jane Susan's water broke, we

frantically grabbed all of our items and hurried off to the

hospital. There was all the excitement of

meeting my first child, followed by waiting and then more waiting

and then more waiting after that and after the process at the

hospital was was sort of jump started for us.

The waiting turned into labour pains but I was ready for this

because after all, I'd been through the birthing class.

So yeah, I knew all the moves and was fully prepared to give

my wife the much needed relief that she required.

OK, the moves didn't work, moments turned into hours and

the pain lasted through the night.

But eventually morning came and I began to get glimpses of my

little girl for the first time. I won't get into all the details

of exactly what I saw in all those moments, but I was excited

to meet her. OK, it's OK to laugh at that.

I'm talking about birthing pains, right?

It's kind of crazy, OK. When she came into this world

though, like, we wrapped her up and all of a sudden we were

parents and I was a father. And I'll never forget it.

And last week, I actually just watched the video of Jane

getting her first bath, and my eyes just started welling up

with tears. I should remember, like the love

I felt for this little girl in this moment, but it was a new

kind of love. I had never experienced this

type of love before. You see, when you become a

parent, the dynamic of your family changes.

And because of this, the dynamic of your love changes.

Parents, nod your head. If you're with me out there.

OK, you know what I'm talking about.

Most parents probably experience something like this.

And I think with dads in particular, there's this new

sense of care in protection and obligation and responsibility,

right? The the loyalty that that my

wife and I had for each other and towards each other now

included another person. The new family dynamic meant I

had to learn to live into a new kind of love.

Almost eight years later, I'm still learning how to fully live

into this new kind of committed love to my kids.

How many of us parents out there know it is not always easy

living into the type of love kids require?

No, this is the participation moment where you raise your hand

and you're honest. OK, Thank you.

I see you're out there. OK.

I know it's foggy, but you guys are you guys are responding.

OK, here we go. It's easy when it's when at

first, right? It's easy when they're cute.

It's easy when they're tiny. It's easy when they're little.

But then they grow up and they start saying things like why

should I or at the minor at a minor inconvenience.

They see that say things like, bruh, you know, and you're like,

what is going on here? You're 8 years old.

Parenting is not easy and and the kind of like loyal,

committed love that kids require so many parents and especially

dads. Often times we see don't live up

to the call and the role of fatherhood.

A recent literature review titled Father Wound and Its

Impact on Children's Psychological well-being is set

out to examine how a child's relationship with their father

shapes their emotional and psychological health.

They wanted to understand the deeper relational impact of

father absence, rejection, neglect, emotional

unavailability, etcetera. In other words, they were asking

what happens inside of a child when their father isn't present

and loyal. Their review found that father

wounds are consistently associated with higher risks of

depression and emotional struggles and behavioural

problems and reduced psychological well-being from

childhood into early adulthood. This is probably

self-explanatory for most of us, but the study also found a

hopeful counterpoint that warm, responsive, and emotionally

engaged fathers serve as a key protective factor in a child's

life. In plain terms, the presence of

a loving father helps shape a child's sense of self, their

ability to trust, their emotional stability, and their

capacity to flourish. In other words, when a father's

love is loyal and it's committed, faithful, and

present, the child often thrives.

All of us need this type of committed love in our lives.

Would you agree? All of us need this love and

maybe some of you in the room, you, you were meant to

experience that And, and that was not the type of love you

receive. And we have such compassion on

that. But all of us are designed to

have this type of love in our life.

And so today we're continuing on in our community series and

we're talking all about what Christian community actually is.

We use that word a lot community, but what is it

exactly? We've defined it this way.

That community is a spirit formed, diverse family gathered

around the presence of God. It's formed in the way of Jesus

and it's sent to live out the gospel of the Kingdom.

So Christian community then it's, it's a result of God

making a way for us to be adopted back to himself through

Jesus. That's good news.

We have a family in God and God is our father.

And a couple of weeks ago we mentioned that healthy Christian

community has three different dynamics.

Healthy Christian community has an an upward dynamic, an inward

dynamic, and an outward dynamic. When a church is healthy, we

move upward in worship, we move inward in love with one another,

and then we move outward in witness to the world.

So today we're going to be looking at an inward dynamic as

we look at the model in words of Jesus Himself.

So if you have your Bibles, turn to John 13.

We're going to be hanging out there today.

Always encourage physical Bibles if you have them, they're on the

back table as well. If you want to go grab one,

always just try and get this in front of you if you can.

John chapter 13. We're going to begin in verse 33

John 13 · chapter mention

here, verse 33. This is these are Jesus's words

here, verse 33. My children love that language.

My children, I will be with you only a little longer.

You will look for me and just as I told the Jews, so now I tell

you where I am going. You cannot come.

A new command I give you love one another.

A new command I give you. Jesus says love one another.

The context of this passage is that Jesus is about to be

arrested and crucified. But first he gathers around his

disciples. These are his closest friends.

He calls them children, and he gives them some of his final

commands on how to actually love one another.

This idea of love and loving one another is not new in the Bible.

In fact, it's the great commandment that Jesus gives us

in the Bible. Love is the first fruit of the

Spirit, and it's said to sort of inform all the rest.

And yet Jesus says a new command I give you.

So how is it new? After all, even in the Old

Testament, the Israelites, God's people long before Jesus, were

commanded to love one another. And even in Leviticus, right,

which we know as maybe being kind of dry and like lots of law

and all of that, even in Leviticus 1918, this was the

command. Do not seek vengeance or bear a

grudge against anyone among your people, but read it with me.

Love your neighbor as yourself. Again, same chapter, when a

foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them.

The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native

born. Again, read it with me.

Love them as yourself. Now clearly Jesus and the

disciples would have been familiar with Leviticus.

They would have known this command.

In fact, in Matthew 22, Jesus reiterates it.

Jesus replied, Love the Lord your God with all your heart,

and with all your soul, with all your mind.

This is the first and greatest commandment 39 and the second is

like it one more time. Church together, love your

neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets

hang on these two commands. So Jesus is saying all of the

Old Testament, so all of this chunk in your Bibles right here,

all of it boils down to love God and to love people.

It's that simple. You want to know what

Christianity is all about? Love God, love people.

Some people say Christians are bigoted, they're hateful,

they're blah, blah, blah. No, no, no, those are the

Christians who aren't doing it quite right, right?

The the ones that are actually Christians and Christ followers,

they love God, they love people. There's no clearer message in

the scriptures than loving God and loving people earlier than

this. Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount

takes it even further and he says that we should even love

our enemies of all people. How we doing at that church?

We good at loving our enemies. We doing all right there?

Yeah. OK.

Ouch. Love has always been the command

of God. And yet Jesus, in his final

moments with his his disciples, he's saying a new command.

I give you love one another. So why does he say it's new?

Let's continue on John 13, verse 34.

John 13:34

A new command I give you love one another as I have loved you,

so you must love one another. By this everyone will know you

are my my disciples if you love one another.

So here Jesus doesn't just say, all right, love one another as

yourself. Jesus doesn't just say love your

enemies. No, Jesus takes it a step

further. He says do all of that, but do

all of it as I have already done for you.

Isn't that remarkable? Jesus goes deeper and broader

and he expands what it truly means to love one another.

He says this is a new commandment.

Do it like I did it. Do it like I did.

Love others like God himself loves you.

That's a powerful commandment. Pretty easy to do, right?

Right. Love people just like God loved

us. OK, A theologian, Joseph Dongle,

writes her this way. He says the command to love one

another's had been known for centuries, being deeply rooted

in the Mosaic law as well as in the preaching of the prophets.

So what was new about it? It was new because Jesus himself

now modeled the full nature of love as it never had been

modeled before. Wow, so then it begs the

question, what kind of love is this?

What kind of love did Jesus show?

And more than that, because Jesus was himself God, the very

nature of God, he was God. What kind of love does God have

towards us? Just a small question today for

us to answer. OK, you know this.

If you've ever tried to learn a new skill, you know how

important it is to have that skill modelled for you before

you try it. Would you agree?

If you're ever trying to learn something new, it's good to have

a teacher who can show you how to do it.

So maybe this, for instance, is like the nurse teaching you how

to swaddle up your baby for the first time.

Anyone remember that? Or watching mom comb and braid

your hair so you can learn how to do it yourself.

This is the moment many of you you guys maybe know this.

It's it's holding the flashlight for dad when he's like knee deep

in the engine Bay, right? And you're like trying to hold

it at just the right spot, watching him work, like holding

it with all your might, trying not to get distracted, right?

He's like sweating and grunting and like maybe cursing,

depending on your dad. OK?

Not mine, of course, but right. And you're like don't want to

get yelled at. So you got to hold it and write

the spot. You know, anyone out there?

OK, thank you. I'm not alone, OK?

But in those moments, you're learning how to do the thing we

all need, a model. And for the disciples, Jesus

served as the perfect master teacher that they could all

apprentice under to learn this new way of love.

He modelled it perfectly. He was a perfect example.

The type of love he demonstrated was a committed, loyal, faithful

kind of love. It was a kind of love that was

covenantal. Covenantal One of the most

important themes all throughout Scripture is that of God's loyal

love, his covenant to his people.

There's a word for this. This type of covenant love that

he shows all throughout Scripture is described by the

Hebrew word has said, OK, so everyone say that with me, say,

has said you got to get a little Hut in there.

OK. I don't know if that's actually

how you pronounce it, but we're going to go with it because it's

Hebrew, OK? This word reflects God's

steadfast, loyal, and enduring love for his people.

Let me put it this way, it's actually impossible to grasp for

the relationship God has with humanity without understanding

has said type of love. If you want to know what God's

love is like, you have to learn the meaning of has said OK in

the Old Testament, His covenant love is primarily associated

with God's promises, and it's his promises to the patriarchs

and the nation of Israel. So God makes promises to

Abraham, he makes promises to Isaac, promises to Jacob and the

entire Israelite people and has said is a love that's not merely

emotional, kind of like how we think about it in our culture.

We think of love, we think of like little, little pink heart

bubbles floating around people's heads that we swoon and say

that's so nice, It's sentiment, it's feeling right.

But this type of love is not just emotional, it's actually

deeply rooted in commitment and faithfulness.

Does that make sense? So it's not just feeling, it's

commitment and faithfulness. Has said has been translated

into English a number of different ways trying to capture

the meaning of this includes words like mercy, loving

kindness, unfailing love. And I love this one steadfast

love. So ultimately has said describes

an act of promise, keeping loyalty, but it's also motivated

by a deep personal care. God's love is not just

obligation, it's also deeply personal.

When he revealed himself to Moses and the covenant on Sinai,

we see illustrated God's covenant love as it reveals his

character in Exodus 34 verses 6 through 7.

Exodus 34:6–7

And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming the Lord, the Lord,

the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in

love and faithfulness, maintaining said to thousands

and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin.

This is the type of Father's love for us.

This is God's character, abounding in love, patient with

us, compassionate. This is the type of love that

all fathers should model. So here covenant love is linked

with His mercy and His forgiveness, highlighting his

desire. Check this out God's desire for

lasting relationship with the Israelites and with us, even

despite their shortcomings, which were many by the way, the

Israelites were constantly tripping up.

They they could not figure it out and over and over and over

they would mess up and over and over and over.

God still loved them. He was committed to them.

OK, so has said love is a covenantal type of love.

It was 2009 or 10, I can't remember exactly, but I met my

wife and I was in a relationship at the time, but I kind of

noticed her in that moment. That night I met her, I noticed

she was kind of a cutie, but it was kind of weird because I like

she was still in high school, so I was already in a relationship.

So I was like, I want nothing to do with that.

OK? I'm a man of principle.

OK, But eventually what happened?

It was my senior year, it was my senior year and she came to

college. She was, she was a beautiful

little freshman, OK? But I was a senior religion

major. It was forbidden love, OK?

It couldn't be done. I was too, you know, dignified

and principled to, you know, quickly date someone right after

breaking up with another. And she didn't care.

She pursued me hard. OK, Let the record state she

came after me, OK? We fell in love very quickly.

All of the feelings. It was amazing, right?

And then came the time for an engagement and eventually

marriage. Now, when I married my wife, I

wasn't just entering into a contract on paper.

Much more importantly, by making vows to my my wife, we were

entering into a covenantal relationship with God and with

one another. It's a covenant.

OK, so what's the difference then between a contract and a

covenant? Here's the simple way to

remember it. A contract is strictly

transactional. So think of like a business

contract. So a business contract, it

outlines I'm going to hold up my end of the deal.

You hold up your end of the deal.

If one of us doesn't hold up their end of the deal, contract

is null and void. We cancel it out, We're in

breach of contract. Makes sense.

It's transactional. A covenant relationship is

different. There's still the bond, there's

still the agreements, but it's highly relational in nature.

So contract is transactional, but a covenant is relational.

When we were entering into a covenant with one another and

with God, we were saying, I'm going to stick it out

relationally and make promises to you.

So has said is this type of covenantal love makes sense,

kind of makes sense. What has said is all right.

To illustrate this has said is like a it's like the elderly

husband caring for his sick wife after decades of marriage.

Now if this husband only says I love you but does nothing to

care for her, that's not his said.

That's not loyal love if he only cares for how her out of cold

duty. However, that also misses the

point of his said. In this way, God's covenantal

has said love towards us. It's not just like an unfeeling

obligation to a group of people he doesn't really care for.

Rather, it's a it's a love that is relationally bonding to us,

faithful committed even when it's undeserved.

You catch that even when it's undeserved, God still pours out

his love for his people and for us.

We see this in Deuteronomy 79. Know therefore, that the Lord

your God is God. He is the faithful God keeping

his covenant of has said love to 1000 generations of those who

love him and keep his commandments.

I, I love this line from one of my children's books.

They have what's called the Jesus Storybook Bible.

Anyone so good you got to pick one up for your kids or

grandkids or whatever Jesus storybook Bible and over and

over they, they perfectly weave it out throughout the whole

Bible. There's this one line that talks

about God's love, and it says it this way, that God's love is a

never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever

love. Isn't that good?

Oh, it's just perfectly captures has said love church.

This is the kind of love that God has for you.

It's the type of love he has for me.

Never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever

love that's has said. And God fulfilled this covenant

promise, this covenant love, by sending his own Son Jesus to

rescue us all back to himself first.

John 49 says this is how God showed his love among us.

What did he do? He sent his one and only Son

into the world that we might live through him.

Is that good news for anyone here today?

Ephesians 2 says it this way. Like the rest, we were by nature

deserving of wrath that that's us.

We're we're deserving of wrath. We are not the ones to keep our

promises. We are filled with sin and our

thoughts and our actions. But verse 4 says, but because of

whose great love, his great love for us, God who is rich in

mercy. That's the that's the closest

word in the Greek we have to have said made us alive with

Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.

It is by grace that you have been saved.

In other words, God perfectly kept His loving promise to us by

sending the One He loved most in order to go all the way to death

so we might be able to live with Him.

You catch that? That's a never ending,

unbreaking, always and forever kind of love.

That is the love God has for you, and it's the love He has

for all of us who are in Him. Jesus himself modeled this

perfect kind of love. He committed his love to his

followers and to the lost. So going back then to our

passage in John 13, in John 13, where Jesus is with his

disciples, He's about to be crucified.

And in this very passage of Scripture, as he's telling them

to love one another, He's sitting next to both Judas and

Peter in the same room. They're chilling together, Peter

and Judas. Judas who would eventually sell

him out and betray him for self advancement, and Peter who would

deny him for self preservation. And Jesus is eating with them

both, knowing what they're about to do to him.

He still sits with them and he washes their feet and he loves

them anyway. He still sits with them and he

he, he has his presence with him and he goes to the cross anyway.

He's willing to love them to the very end.

John 13 one says, having loved his own who are in the world, He

loved them to the end. Listen to that.

He loved them to the end. That's a said type of love.

Never giving up love, even when it hurts.

And this, all of this is the context.

All of God's Old Testament has said love, all of Jesus's love

to the cross, all of this is the context.

And this is the moment where he looks at each of his followers

and he looks at each of us. And he says this in 34 A new

command I give you a new command.

I give you love one another. As I have loved you, so you must

love one another. By this everyone will know you

are my disciples if you love one another.

Wow, Joseph Dongle continues. He says Jesus himself now

modelled the full nature of love as it had never been modelled

before, A humble love which gave itself for others even unto

death. Now the command to love would

stand as the comprehensive principle governing all entering

God's family through faith in Jesus.

What's Joseph saying here? He's saying that if we're in the

family of God, which most of us may be in the room or not, or or

are, and if you're not, please let us know.

We'd love to introduce you to to Jesus.

But if we're in the family of God, we now have a comprehensive

principle governing our relationships.

In other words, followers of Jesus are to love one another

with a loyal, committed, and covenant love.

That's the principle. It governs over all of us.

Christian community, then, is covenantal by nature.

Does that make sense? Bonded to each other

relationally, obligated to one another continually.

Jesus tells us to love one another as he has loved us, as

God himself has loved us. So this new command then is what

this new command is to live into an ancient love.

Think about how many generations have passed of God just

continually pour out his love on and on and on.

No matter how how difficult the Israelites are, no matter how

difficult we are, God just continues to shower us with his

love. It's never ending.

So the new command that Jesus gives is a is a command to live

into this kind of ancient love, a said type of love.

You with me. You guys good so far.

Stretch it out a little bit. You guys seem a little stiff out

there. OK, you good.

All right, let me put it this way, Church.

This is the type of love that stays even when leaving would be

easier. This is the type of love that

honors promises when other people break theirs.

This is the type of love that welcomes people back when others

run away. This is the type of has said

love that God has for us. This is the type of love where

they have for each other. Is this the type of love we see

in our culture here today? Do you guys see this out in the

culture very much this type of has said type of love?

I would say probably not, right? This is radically

countercultural to the way that our culture views relationships.

If it's not benefiting me in some way or it inconveniences me

in some way, like dropped, see you later, right?

We're very quick to drop relationships when things get

sticky. We'd much prefer to cancel

people, to ghost them, to block, to unfollow them, right?

There's this thing called shadow banning where you ban someone,

but they don't even really know that you banned them, right?

I feel like so often we shadow ban people in our hearts, they

don't even know that we don't like them anymore.

They don't even know that there's conflict.

But yet we've just sort of written them off and said, good

luck to you, buddy, right? We do this all the time.

Very common in our culture today.

I once made a Facebook post that was condemning like a string of

violent acts, which should be pretty universally like agreed

upon. It wasn't necessarily political

by nature or anything like that. But afterwards I had two

different friends have beef with me, right?

11, friend immediately from college unfriended me and the

other one stopped sharing his online movies with me.

Joke's on him, I got to read a lot more and I'm improving

myself, thank you very much. So I'm good, you know, right now

we're, we're good now and we, we're still friends and all of

that. But the point still stands.

We're prone to walk away when there's conflict, not stick it

out. Pastor John Tyson, one of my

favourites, he's the GOAT. He puts it this way.

Our culture knows nothing about loyalty.

We break up with our friends, we move whenever we want, we get

married. We just tap out of the marriage

if it gets too hard. We are not a people trained to

keep our commandments with stubborn loyalty.

But thank goodness our call is the call to Jesus.

Look at Jesus's stubborn loyalty towards us.

He goes on elsewhere to write about the word duty and how duty

is not a word that our culture and our world loves today.

Would you agree? We love words like success.

Take, take me some success. Love that.

We love words like rewards. Love getting some rewards back.

ROI, return on investment. Yes, please.

I'll take some of that. Duty, not so much.

Duty is a four letter word in many ways.

And he argues that we need to recapture a healthy sense of

duty in our world to counteract the prevalent sense of despair

that so many men are facing. Detachment, estrangement and

families or even entitlement, That's something's owed to me.

We need to recapture that. And he goes on to speak to men

directly and he says men that we need to recapture our sense of

duty first to God, who gives them breath and life and

everything else. Duty to our wives who they vowed

to love as Christ loves the church.

Duty to our kids who need a model of dependability and

devotion. Duty to the church where they

contribute and don't just consume, and duty to the

community where they work for the common good.

We need to recapture the idea of being dutiful to one another.

Christians are to be a people who are stubbornly loyal to each

other. Stubbornly loyal.

I love that language. There ought to be a sense of

obligation that we have to one another's well-being because we

see this all throughout Scripture.

But one of my favorite pictures of this type of loyal love is

found in the book of Romans. Paul is emphasizing giving honor

where it's due, and he writes this in Romans 13.

He says let no debt remain outstanding except the

continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves

others has fulfilled the law. Do you hear the commitment

language here from the apostle Paul?

He's saying that you and I would do well to make sure that

everything we owe to others is paid back.

But there's one debt that will never fully pay back.

There's one debt we can't fully pay back.

And it's the ongoing debt to love one another.

Is that how you view each other? Like, do you walk into church

and you're just like, all right, who needs my love today?

You know, like, do you walk in and be like, I owe people love?

Whoever needs it, you've got it right?

Like I, there's a debt of love that I owe to one another.

So many of us, we're so wrapped up in our own worlds.

We're so wrapped up in raising our own kids, doing our own

jobs, pursuing our own futures, all of that, that we don't think

about the fact that we owe an obligation of love to our

brothers and sisters in Christ. Like perpetually, anytime we

interact, there's a debt that's owed and we get the privilege of

repaying it to continually to one another.

I love that vision. We're a stubbornly loyal group

of people to one another. I think we need to re engage

with the practice of willing indebtedness to one another.

Ah, willing indebtedness. Like every time we interact,

it's just like, whatever you need, you got it, I'm in debt to

you. What if we adopted that kind of

mentality? What if instead of dropping one

another when there's a disagreement, we practice

willing indebtedness to our brothers and sisters?

God showed his said love all throughout Scripture.

He kept his promise to Abraham and his promise to the

Israelites by sending Jesus the Messiah.

Jesus showed his disciples a said type of love by loving them

all the way to the end, pouring out his life so that they might

live. And he looks at us church and he

says you do it too. You all do it too.

Love one another in the same way that God himself has loved you.

Christian community is covenantal.

It's covenantal, bonded, committed together.

It's not circumstantial like most relationships.

Things get bad, I leave, it's not convenient, things get hard.

No thanks. Christian community is

covenantal. We're committed to one another.

So why is it so important to grasp the idea of Christian

community as a covenantal relationship?

There's many, many reasons out there, but here are a few that

help us understand the weight of living into this type of

community #1 real quick. Living in covenantal

relationships now is how we both survive today and prepare for

eternity. Survive today.

For the early church, unity wasn't optional.

It was necessary for survival under constant threat of

persecution. They needed to be able to fully

trust and lean on each other during hard times.

In the same way, if we're to be faithful to the teachings of

Jesus Church, we need each other.

This means we commit to one another relationally, we

continually relationally invest in one another, we pray for one

another, we strengthen one another.

Someone has a need, we seek to fill it.

We serve one another and we tell the truth to one another.

This remains church that we remain loyal even through the

trials. One of the biggest

misconceptions of love in our time is that it should always

feel pleasant. Love should always feel good,

should make me feel happy. Look, love is great, love is

beautiful. There's times of emotion, but

love is not always going to feel pleasant, right?

What we learn from Jesus is that sometime love bears pain for the

sake of another person. John 15 says my command is this,

love each other as I have loved you greater love has no one, no

one this to lay down one's life for his friend.

Is it pleasant to lay down your life for someone else?

No, Jesus was willing to bear that pain though for us, love

goes deeper #2 Christian community then is a, is a

commitment to reconciliation, which again is kind of like a

four letter word in our society today.

Reconciliation. Sometimes when we're in conflict

with our brothers and sisters, it's easy to forget that we're

going to be hanging out in heaven forever.

You thought about that. Like when we're in conflict,

like we just want to like butt heads and we want to just walk

away, but we need to remember we're literally going to be

spending forever together, right?

We'd be wise to remember that we'll be living on the same

cul-de-sac in our mansions in heaven.

Now, personally, I'm not prone to be stubbornly loyal or

willingly indebted by nature. When things get tense with

somebody else, OK? That's not in my nature, OK?

My flesh, I don't know about you guys.

Maybe you guys are better than me.

My flesh would rather blow things up.

You know what I'm saying? When things get tense, OK, I

hear like, is that nervous laughter?

I can't tell. My flesh would rather assert my

dominance. I'd rather burn bridges than

build them. OK.

I think sometimes even as men, right, we'd rather prove how

tough we are by being unfazed at losing a relationship rather

than being vulnerable, humble and trying to mend it.

It's always harder to press in and forgive.

It's always harder. So point blank church, this

might be the question of the morning.

Is there anyone in your life that you need to reconcile with?

God was deeply committed to reconciliation.

He sent his son to do it and then he commanded us to do the

same. He he essentially is like, hey,

don't even don't even bring your worship.

If you know that your brother has something against you, leave

your gift at the altar. Leave your worship over there

and go make it right with your brother first.

Then come back and worship. I just have a sense in the room.

There might be some people you need to reconcile with out

there. And look, I know it's hard and I

know sometimes it's not even possible and all of that.

But as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.

As far as it depends on you, OK, I just feel like that's a word

for someone here today. Is there a brother or sister

that you'll be spending eternity with that God is calling you to

make amends with? If a name is popping up, I

consider you to to text them soon.

Now continuing on living in covenant relationships enables

us to do justice. Michael Micah 68, he has shown

you, our mortal, what is good and what does the Lord require

of you to act justly in the love mercy, to walk humbly with your

God has said love is actionable and it's sacrificial, not

sentimental. This means we do right by each

other and we do right by others. The strength we gain from having

this sort of unbreakable support system in the church allows us

then to turn outward and be a blessing and refresh others.

Proverbs reminds us that whoever refreshes others will be

refreshed. Christians, then, are to be some

of the most refreshing people in the world to be around.

Why? Because we're totally secure in

God's love for us. We're totally secure and safe in

God's love for us. We need a deeply interconnected

web of relationships that are living out sacrificially for

others. Finally, living in covenant

relationships is how we show the world God's love.

John 1335. By this everyone will know you

are my disciples if you love one another.

Church, This stubbornly loyal love isn't about us feeling

good, it's not about ourselves. It's not just about us taking

care of our own like the world is.

Tired of seeing people just look after themselves.

If Christians choose self preservation like Peter or

selfish gain like Judas, we'll blend right into the world's

value systems and faulty ideologies.

You agree? A person just trying to protect

themselves? The world says, been there, done

that. A greedy person just trying to

get money for themselves. The world says, yeah, that's

common. I've seen that show us something

new. People cutting off relationships

when it gets tough. What else is new?

The world says, but a people who choose self sacrifice, who

choose to give even when it hurts.

A people who lay down their life for their friends, their

brothers and even their enemies. They stand out in the world.

The world says, now that's something new.

That's something I've never seen before.

That might even be a people that I'd want to hang around, that

I'd want to spend time with. That might be something I want

to be a part of church. Sometimes I think the world

around us is more pained by the disunity in the church than we

are. They're aching for it.

They're the ones saying you're the supposed to be the ones who

have this figured out church. They want it.

They know there should be something better and they're

waiting for us to live into it. They're hungry and searching for

the kind of loyal love that God has given to us and we are

called to give to one another. This is a fatherly love that

doesn't give up. And maybe there's some of you in

today who like you haven't experienced that type of

fatherly love. And I just felt a prompting, I

wasn't planning on saying this, but like we first need to

understand something that God loves you like a perfect father,

not a broken one. God loves you with a never

ending love. No matter what you've done, no

matter if you didn't hold up your end of the bargain, no

matter if you feel like you did things that were unworthy of his

love or his attention or whatever.

I just need to say to you today, God loves you like a perfect

Father. He loves you so deeply and He

always will, and we just need to reach out to Him and receive

that love first and foremost. So I just want to encourage us

as a church, as the band comes up, my encouragement to you as

the people of God is to start making new commitments to one

another. Maybe you won't live into these

commitments and these promises perfectly at first, but

eventually you will grow into them.

It's like a marriage, you make the promise upfront to protect,

to serve, and to stick by not fully knowing what life is going

to throw your way. But when you are finally

married, it's the new family dynamic that pushes you to learn

the new kind of love. None of us are ready to be

parents before our kids are born, but in the same way,

you're never fully trained. But the new family dynamic of

having a new kid pushes you to learn a new kind of love.

And now that you're a part of the family of God, it pushes you

to learn Jesus's new command of love, to love one another as God

Himself has loved you. So start making commitments to

each other. I will sacrifice for my

community. I will choose to be stubbornly

loyal. I will choose willing and

deadness of love. And I will choose to reconcile

when things get hard. You may not live them out

perfectly all the time, but with God's grace, He will form us

more and more to become persons of love like Jesus for the sake

of others. And I just want to take a moment

to just express my gratitude to the people in my life who have

been stubbornly loyal in love. Any of you out there have people

in your life who have just been stubbornly loyal to you?

There's so many, even just dads in our church being Father's Day

stubbornly loyal dads out there, that I see you out there working

hard for your families. We see you holding down the Fort

while your wife is in the hospital.

We see you supporting children through difficult financial

crisis. We see you opening up your home

to Foster and adopt children. We see you working hard day in

and day out to provide well for your family.

We see you serving those in the next generation through kids

ministry and clubs and sports and beyond.

And I just want to say we see you to my own dad who's in the

room. Thank you for being stubbornly

loyal to me even when I was a pain in the butt and didn't hold

up my end of the deal. I honor you in that way.

To all of you fathers out there and parents out there and men

and women who are stubbornly loyal in their relationships,

way to go, way to go. You're living it out.

All of these people are are modeling.

The Father's never giving up love for us, this type of has

said love that never stopped looking for the wayward son and

embracing him when he finally comes home.

Way to go, be strong and courageous.

Men, women, families, keep going, we see you.

And to all of us as a church, may we continually learn to live

into this type of covenantal love so that the watching world

will see Jesus through us so that they'll see Jesus.

So in closing, because of God's loyal has said he promised

himself to a family and he fulfilled this promise in Jesus

the Messiah paid the price for you and for me by dying on a

cross for our sins that anyone who believes in him and

confesses with their mouth that he is indeed Lord.

Anyone who places their faith in the death and resurrection of

Jesus can also be saved, set free, forgiven and adopted back

into the family of God. And if that's you today, it

starts with just making a decision in your heart and

praying to God and asking for that and receiving that free

gift of salvation. It was Jesus who loved us to the

very end, and He told us to do the same.

May we now live into it.