Affection • God & Neighbor

Other than that, I'm going to try and dive in quick because I've been going long on these sermons.

I apologize for some of you who didn't eat a snack or bring one with you.

But uh, we're gonna go ahead and dive in and we're gonna try and close out this sermon series on anatomy of a healthy church.

And so we've really been talking about like what's the vision of Mystio?

We got a year under our belt, and God has blessed us in this first year as a church.

We are so excited and enthralled about what all God has done here.

But we have to really slow down and make sure that where we're going is healthy, where we're going is in line with the scriptures and submitted to the God to God's word.

And so we've been trying to navigate that these first four weeks of the new year.

And this week we're closing out the Sermon Series Anatomy of a Healthy Church.

And what we kind of been talking about this whole thing is what is the vision of Mystique, the 10-year vision.

If we're looking out ahead of what we're trying to accomplish here in this city, what is our hope?

And it's really to reach 1% of the Mason Westchester area.

We've been talking about that.

We want to be uh we want to be loud about that, we want to be unashamed about that, we want people, look, at the end of the day, you know what we want?

Not a big building, not a big budget.

We want people to know Jesus.

That's what we want.

And if in and I want you to share in that desire.

I want you to share in that burden and passion.

That people are in your workplace, in your neighborhood.

There are people who live 20 feet from you for the last 10 years, and they're dying and going to hell.

That's the vision.

Not to make a name for ourselves, not to make and build the kingdom of Mystio Day or the kingdom of Pastor Justin.

The goal is to see as many people as we can knowing and loving and serving Jesus.

Because again, we're not here to make converts, we're here to make disciples.

And there's a strong difference between those two.

So we want to reach 1% of the Mason Westchester area.

That's about a thousand people in the next 10 years, but we're unwilling to do it if we're not healthy.

And so we've been talking about what are those metrics of health that we need to hold as primary factors as we're navigating, are we accomplishing what God set us out to do?

And so in the hearts of the individuals, we're wanting to really cultivate these four metrics of health.

The first one we went through was Jesus first and foremost.

And we talked about making Jesus the focus in every aspect of our lives.

This was week one.

Week two, we talked about transformation, obedience and righteousness, working with the Holy Spirit to restore God's image in us.

Last week we talked about devotion, word, and doctrine, knowing God authoritatively through his word and in honor to the ancient church.

And then this week we're closing out with affection, God and neighbor, demonstrating a life that seeks the glory of God and the good of others first.

And so this is a huge qualifying mark of the life of a Christian.

And that we're gonna dive into how really the summary of the Christian life is known in this very metric of health that we're gonna establish this morning.

So I don't want to take a lot of time because there's a ton to work through, but as you saw, we read in Luke 10 the parable of the Good Samaritan.

You probably heard this a lot, but I'm hoping this morning that this doesn't just remain some kind of ancient, distant text where you can't relate to the people that it's talking about or the people who it's talking to, but you can actually place yourself inside the narrative and see the Word of God as living and relevant for you and I today.

And so let's dive in quickly.

When we look at Luke 10, in the very first part 25 through 28, the way that I would kind of summarize this passage is that the totality of God's law can be summed up in love God and love your neighbor.

So, so all of the law of God.

Now, what does that even mean, right?

First off, we have to understand that in the Old Testament, there's 613 laws discovered in the Old Testament.

So now, take that, 613 laws, and you say, if I could simplify this, if I could distill this down and understand it in its most basic form, what would it say?

How would I summarize these 613 laws?

Well, love God, love your neighbor.

They were actually able to distill down all 613 into just two.

Now, we see at the very beginning this man stands up to actually test Jesus, says that the man's a lawyer.

So obviously, this man is a lawyer for the Jewish people.

He would be a master at understanding all 613 laws.

Because one of his primary responsibility would be to make sure that there was justice executed if those laws were not upheld.

And so he had to be a master at these 613 commands.

And so he stands up to test Jesus.

And what we see is that this challenge occurs, and quickly, Jesus, in beautiful fashion, like he always does, flips it on its head.

So the man stands up, he's a lawyer, and he says, Look, I wanted to ask you a question.

You're supposed to be a wise teacher.

How do I inherit eternal life?

Now, he knew the answer.

He didn't challenge, he didn't ask the question in authentic nature.

He asked the question to try and expose Jesus as a fake.

And so Jesus, like he normally would, would just flip it on his head.

But see, what we look at in the very inherent, like essence of the question, is that the lawyer is asking something that has complete benefit of himself.

How do I inherit eternal life?

What must I do to ensure that the culmination of all my life effort and work ends up in the best possible situation?

How many of you have asked that question even internally within your own heart?

Am I doing enough?

Am I working hard enough?

Am I accomplishing all that is required of me so that at the end of this, all of my effort actually culminates in the best possible outcome for me?

So he's self-seeking in the very nature of his question.

If the best of life that we could obtain was accomplished through a completion of tasks, these do's and don'ts, wouldn't that give us some kind of a fighting chance of obtaining it?

Right?

If just simply, hey, if you do these things and you don't do these things, and all of our work was able to be understood in tasks of do's and don'ts, wouldn't that give us some type of actual hope of obtaining it?

Hope of accomplishing it?

I mean, this was actually in the very mind and heart of the lawyer that he had hope that he could fulfill these 613 laws because they were clear, they were concise, he knew them well, he knew when he was obeying and when he was breaking.

So he labored under this.

But see, we have to understand that it's only possible if the do's and don'ts were actually obtainable for us at all.

And what Jesus is going to show this lawyer is that the do's and don'ts, the laws, the 1613 laws that you know and memorize and work and labor and toil to follow, you can't do it.

So Jesus, like I said, in normal fashion, he just kind of turns the question on to the ask.

Making them answer actually exposes the reality of the attempt and motive to try and catch Jesus in this theological trap.

And so the lawyer, he's not gonna make himself look foolish, right?

He's the pro.

He's the one that knows these 613 laws by heart.

He is the one who's trying to actually catch Jesus in the trap.

And so Jesus, when he answers the question, the lawyer says, Hey, look, I'm not gonna be foolish.

I'll give you the answer.

I know the answer.

And he answers them extremely intellectually.

You see, he doesn't work to just exhaust all 613 laws.

When Jesus says, What must you do to establish and inherit eternal life?

He flips the question on himself.

He doesn't try to exhaust the entire list, but he distills them down, all of the whole law, into the two most basic ones.

Love God, love your neighbor.

Now, how is he able to do this, right?

How is he able to distill all 613 laws down to just these two?

Well, we have to understand that there's these two parts of the Old Testament where he's drawing this from.

The first one is called the Shema.

Now, what this is, is a prayer, excuse me.

It's a prayer that Jews would recite every morning and every night.

And it's something that they would live their life by.

It was a little bit more than a prayer, though.

It was actually more of like a reciting of truth, of who God was and who they were in relationship to God.

It wasn't as much of a petition as it was a declaration.

And this Shema that they would declare would actually be worn on their own body.

So not only would they pray it in the morning, where they prayed in the evening, but this lawyer himself, when he stood up to challenge Jesus and asked him this question, would have had a black box made out of calfskin on his forehead.

And would it inside of it contained the words of the Shema?

So that it was before his eyes all the time.

And we find the first part of the Shema, the first part of this declaration or this reciting of who God is and who we are in relationship to him in Deuteronomy 6, 4 through 9.

So it's multiparts, but the first part was this: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might.

And these words that I command to you today shall be on your heart.

You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise, you shall bind them on a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

You see, that's where that box comes into play.

You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Now, Katie and I, we actually were looking for a house about nine years ago, down more toward our central campus, and we uh actually looked at a home in um a Jewish neighborhood of Cincinnati.

Now, we didn't know that that was the case, but we really quickly discovered when we went to look at the house, like they all look really different than us, right?

And uh it was kind of cool to see like the community that they lived in and so forth.

But when we toured the home, we saw on the doorposts written this text.

We saw it actually in their home, we saw it actually as a part of their everyday life, that they were constantly reminding themselves that they were to love the Lord their God with all of their heart, with all of their soul, mind, and strength.

And then how do we understand this second summation?

Well, it simply comes from Leviticus 19, 18.

It says, You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

I am the Lord.

And so the wild thing about this whole thing is that when this lawyer, this master of the law, stands up and summarizes, distills all 613 laws into these simple two, there is nothing in the command of God about the benefit of self.

Love God, love your neighbor.

Now it's fascinating that the very intrinsic nature of his question to challenge Jesus was for the benefit of self.

How do I inherit eternal life?

And Jesus is making him, forcing him to answer that.

Don't you realize that everything about who I am and what I'm about has nothing to do with your gain?

That's why you can't fulfill it.

That's why you can't accomplish it.

Because you're trying to understand it for your own benefit.

You see, that's actually the anthem of our culture.

Do everything you can for your own dreams, for your own vision, for your own success, for your own future.

And the problem with the modern day church is that they have forfeited their prophetic voice.

They have forfeited what the Bible declares to be true, and they have become nothing but a mockingbird.

Simply just mirroring the anthem and the message of our culture.

You can look at any major church in America and you'll find things like, hey, get rid of toxic relationships in your life because you're better than that.

Hey, look, whoever's gonna support you in your dreams and your visions to get you to your destiny, get them in your life.

Cut out everyone else who's not gonna do it.

You're made for more.

You're creative for greatness.

You gotta go.

And the problem is, what they're not understanding is that not only are they painting the portrait of people as expendable to our progress, but they're painting a portrait as God is nothing but a person who helps us along the way to our own greatness.

And so not only have we forfeited the reality that all of the scripture commands us to seek first the benefit and love and good of others, but it also has displaced the where God should be in our lives.

You see, all of the law of God has everything to do with us being selfless.

You see, Jesus in beautiful form tells him to go do the very thing he knows the lawyer can't accomplish.

And the lawyer feels the weight of his simplified summary of the law.

Isn't that wild?

He distills 613 complex laws down to two.

And what we're getting ready to see, real quick, is when Jesus says, go and do so, go and live this out, the weight of that simplicity almost crushes him.

Because quickly on the second half of this passage, it says that he attempting to justify himself, knowing that he can't do it, knowing that he can't accomplish it, he attempting to justify himself, then asks this great question Well, okay, but who is my neighbor?

And so if we look at the summary of verses 29 through 37, what I would say is that the love of others might cost us what we're unwilling to pay.

To love others might cost us what we're unwilling to pay.

You see, the lawyer knows he has himself in a bind.

He knows.

You ever been in that place where you just you talked yourself into the corner and you don't know how you're getting out of this?

Right?

This is what the lawyer has done.

And so he attempts to lighten the weight of his obligation.

Well, who's my neighbor?

You need he needed to find the loophole, the very thing that would make his work easier.

Because he ultimately he knew that the broader understanding of neighbor, the broader the understanding of that word neighbor was, the more his life couldn't stack up.

The more that he would fail to accomplish what he was setting out to attain.

Eternal life.

So I've got to narrow down what this means to be a neighbor.

I've got to summarize it more clearly, more succinctly, because it can't cost me this much.

I can't survive under the weight of if this neighbor definition broadens, my chances lower.

And Jesus gives the lawyer an answer that would be devastating to his attempts.

Ultimately, Jesus would tell him that his neighbor, who he is under utmost obligation to love, is the one that Jesus himself knew this man hated.

You see, too often we functionally interpret this command to love those who most agree with us.

We functionally interpret this love your neighbor as the people who are easier to love, the people who we agree with politically, theologically, the people that we get along with, the people that are a little easier to love.

That's how we functionally interpret.

Many of us are just like the lawyer.

When pressed on who should we actually love as our neighbor, our first thought is not to broaden that net, but to narrow the tunnel to fit as little people in it as we possibly can.

You see, the law of love your neighbor, Jesus himself would see it more clearly in the command to love your enemy.

Because often your neighbor and your enemy are the same person.

I love the way Jonathan Edwards puts it.

When talking about fake communal love, fake familial love.

It says there's not true benevolence any more than the union and friendship that may be seen among a company of pirates who are at war with the rest of the world.

Basically, those men love each other.

They're on the same mission, they've got the same vision, they've got the same values, they love each other, but yet they are at war with the rest of the world.

He says, It's not true love.

When you simply love people who are like-minded with you.

So he goes through this whole parable of teaching this principle.

And let's break down the story a bit.

So there's this guy who's traveling, he gets mugged, and he's laying there half dead.

And Jesus presents these three people who pass by the man trying to make the question be answered, well, then who is my neighbor?

And the first man is a priest.

So he's a Jewish man, a priest, who would have been one of the most authoritative and holy men of all of Israel.

And he comes by this man, it says that he actually walked around him.

You see, the reality was that if this priest to obey the commands of God that they assumed and interpreted him as, if he would, if that man who was laying in the road was dead, and that priest went over to help him and touched him, he would have been made unclean.

And so to preserve his own holy standing and to make sure that he remained clean before the Lord, he didn't even attempt to discover if this man was still alive.

He just simply walked around him on his way.

Now you would have thought this would have been a Jewish hero, a priest.

If anybody was going to live out the law of God beautifully and masterfully, and as an example to all of Israel, it would have been the priest.

But he walks around him.

The second character Jesus brings in is this Levite, not as high as a priest, but still one who held the standard of holy living and obeying God's law and command very rigidly.

And the language that's used in the parable that Jesus is telling is that this Levite at least came close.

At least came close enough to discover if this man was still alive or not.

However, he just simply left him, passed by on the other side.

And so you have these two Goliaths, these two heroes of the Jewish faith, a priest and a Levite, see a man wounded and battered in the middle of the road, and both of them just passed by.

And Jesus is about to actually bring forth a third character.

Now, at this point in time, you could imagine what the lawyer was thinking.

Well, who's the third guy?

Maybe it's just a normal Jewish person.

Maybe it's just a normal Jewish person who rises up because there was this kind of tension happening between the religious leaders and the normal Jewish people of the day where there was all these added commands and statutes that was being placed upon them.

There was a little bit of oppression that was happening in this day and time.

And so maybe it's the normal Joe, normal Jew, that comes and he actually helps this man.

When the priest and the Levite walked around on the other side, here comes this simple guy who rescues him.

That's not the third character that Jesus brings in the story.

Jesus brings in this Samaritan.

He brings in this Samaritan, and the Samaritan shows compassion toward the man who was robbed.

It says that he actually gets him on his donkey, he takes him, he puts him in an inn, and he pays the innkeeper these two pieces of silver.

Now, this is actually 24 days' worth estimate allotment of food.

So up front, he's paying, here's a month's worth of food and supplies, and when I come back to check on him, whatever the rest of his bill is, I'll take care of it.

And so the Samaritan is the one who actually demonstrates the completion, the working out, the understanding of the law of God better than the priest and the Levite.

But why is this so contrary?

Why is this so uh um scandalous?

Well, you see, the Jews and the Samaritans, they had over 400 years of contempt between them.

So, see, here's what happened: that Israel went under the Babylonian captivity.

And under Babylon, the Jewish people, they remained pure.

They did not intermarry.

Their bloodline remained pure, and they sustained that Jewish bloodline throughout this Babylonian exile and captivity.

But the Samaritan people, they married, they intermarried, and they produced children with the Assyrian army.

And so fundamentally, what the Jews viewed the Samaritans as was a compromising mongrel.

You who would give up your blood to these people who put us in captivity, who caused us to be exiles.

See, also the Samaritans built this competing temple to worship God in.

And so the Jews had their temple and the Samaritans built their own.

And we see this kind of in the gospel where Jesus meets this woman at the well.

And the conversation between them is that Jesus exposes some things about her life, and she says, Well, you must be a prophet.

If you're a prophet, let me ask you a question.

My fathers, because she's a Samaritan, say we should worship on this mountain.

You say you should worship here.

Which one is it?

So there were these competing temples of where did the presence of God truly dwell?

Who were truly the people of God?

And let me tell you just how bad the Jewish people hated the Samaritans.

And I'm talking about hate.

Every day they prayed this prayer of the Shema, right?

Morning and evening.

They had another prayer that they recited very routinely.

You know how it ended?

Lord, do not remember the Samaritan in the resurrection.

That was the hate in their hearts for these Samaritan people.

God, don't even remember them in the resurrection.

Imagine finishing grace at suppertime with that statement.

And so this lawyer, he's standing up and he's trying to trick Jesus.

He's trying to catch him in a trap, and Jesus knows exactly what's happening.

And so he's teaching them by telling him this parable.

And it wasn't the heroes of his faith, it wasn't the heroes of his culture, it wasn't the people that he would have looked up to as fulfilling God's law and fulfilling God's command.

No, Jesus flips the whole thing and he puts someone who this man hates and reviles and says, this is the one.

Actually, what's beautiful about Jesus is he makes him answer.

So who was it?

Who was it that actually loved their neighbor?

The one who showed him mercy, Jesus, or the lawyer replies.

You see, loving your neighbor is gonna mean a couple things.

This is what we're discovering through this teaching of Jesus.

Loving your neighbor is actually gonna cost you.

It's deeds over words.

These men intellectually could recite the full law of God.

They had the theology down, they could speak it very eloquently and articulate it very concisely.

But they had no deeds around their theology, they had no works around their faith.

So loving our neighbor will actually cost us something, church.

It's deeds over words, and more than that, it's non-reciprocating.

This man, as far as we know, never did anything for the Samaritan who helped him.

In fact, in the condition of which the Samaritan found him, he couldn't do anything for him.

There was nothing that he could do to help him, to pay him back.

And so many times we look for these relationships that are beneficial both ways.

Well, I give and I pour and I into you and I do all these things, and I'm expecting those things back from you.

We look for reciprocating relationships where what we give out, we get back in return.

The problem is the gospel is so contrary to that.

The gospel fundamentally is heaven would be poured out to people who could never give anything back.

Praise God, he didn't dictate the terms of our relationship upon our ability to reciprocate his goodness.

Loving your neighbor is selfless.

So, number one, loving your neighbor will actually cost you.

Number two, loving your neighbor will include people you can't imagine loving.

We too often work to define our neighbors, the lawyer did.

Those who would simply be easy to love back.

And just look at our friend circles, right?

They're all, to some measure, homogenous.

To some measure, they're people who look like us, think like us, act like us.

Think about the anticipation the lawyer had while listening to the parable.

Who was going to be the hero of the story?

Who was going to be the one that actually exemplified what it meant to be a true neighbor?

Never would he had imagined it was going to be a filthy Samaritan?

Who's the person in your life that you would have never have imagined would have been the hero?

If you were put yourself in this story and Jesus trying to tell you this is the one who is really embodying the command to love your neighbor, who's the person?

Who is the filthy atheist?

The filthy Democrat, the filthy beggar.

It's true.

There's a laundry list of people in our minds that we'd have never expected to be the hero of this story.

That's the person Jesus is telling you to recklessly love.

That's the person Jesus is telling you it's going to cost you to love.

That's the person Jesus is telling you.

If you want to fulfill all of my law and simply loving me and loving your neighbor, go to them.

The fulfillment of God's law is in loving him and loving neighbor.

Notice the lawyer's disconnect in this ultimate understanding of the law.

There's a giant disconnect here.

He's trying to distill all 613 laws down into two.

And then when he's stuck, he doesn't actually try and refute and rebuttal both laws that he distilled them down into love God and love your neighbor.

He only actually rebuttals one.

He only actually rebuttals the one that is loving his neighbor.

He never tried to justify himself in the command to love God.

And this fundamentally actually shows his inability to truly understand the law of God.

He thought he was able to fulfill the first part of the law, but he failed to understand that by not loving his neighbor, he ultimately failed to love God.

These two are necessary and independent for one another, or dependent for one another.

So these two laws, love God, love neighbor, are necessary and dependent on one another because our relationships with our neighbor actually validate or invalidate our claim for a love of God.

No man can say they love God and hate their neighbor.

Here's the fundamental issue you and I face.

We, like the lawyer, have a strong intellectual concept of what it means to love God and love our neighbor.

The problem lies in that it's vastly easier to love the idea of loving people than it is to actually love them.

I've heard this a hundred times.

I've said it myself.

After some slur of just judgment and degrading and dehumanizing people in my city, my neighbors, my culture, you know what I followed up with?

But you gotta love them.

All I'm doing and saying that I don't love them.

I understand it here.

I love the idea of loving people, but I don't love the action of loving people.

And this is our story.

I see this in two fundamental ways.

First one is our heads fail to stir our hearts.

And this just isn't just in loving our neighbor.

This is a lot of our theological issue.

We've got head knowledge that doesn't impact the heart.

If we look at the story of the parable, it says that the Samaritan was moved with compassion.

He saw the state of the man falling in the road, and he felt that burden.

He felt that uh infliction that was upon that man, and it stirred his heart to do something.

We stay up in our heads way too much, and it doesn't stir our hearts with affection and love for one another, for God.

Think about it.

Think about your life.

You know, intellectually, God's word is life to you.

Does it stir your heart to read it every day?

Does it burden your heart when you don't?

You know that prayer is vital in the intimate relationship that you have with God.

You know that.

But is your heart stirred to pray when you're worried?

When you're sick?

When you wake up at three in the morning and you can't fall back to sleep.

You know these things intellectually.

And you and I know that God calls us to love our enemy.

And you and I fail to have our hearts stirred to do anything about it.

Because this is easier.

Loving the people in this room is easier than loving the people out there.

Loving the people who are gonna vote the way we do, have the same moral values the way that we have them, who uh take care of their money the way that we do, who don't make dumb decisions like we don't make, are easier to love than the ones who don't.

Second part is this our hearts fail to move our hands.

Our hearts fail to move our hands.

Look, the Samaritan met the physical needs of the man.

He didn't just pray for him and say, go in peace while he's laying there twitching.

He didn't just say, be blessed, brother, praying for you, and not actually pray for the guy.

Like, how many times have I done that?

Hey, I'm praying for you, brother.

Look, you you can start if I say through a text or through some, I'm praying for you, you can stop me and say, pray for me right now.

Because too often I've said that and I've never prayed for you, and I'm sorry.

I've let that be some little token statement that gets me off the hook and makes me look more spiritual.

Too often I've not allowed my heart to be stirred and I've not allowed my hands to be moved to meet the needs of the people hurting around me.

Because I'm more concerned about myself.

He gave up his money, he gave up his time, he gave up his energy, he gave up, he gave up.

And Jesus is the one who's saying, This is the one who fulfills the law.

He showed mercy.

He met the needs of the Samaritan.

Or he the Samaritan met the needs of the man.

You see, we have to have an intellectual understanding of theology.

We have to have an intellectual understanding of what the scriptures actually call us to.

But if it stops there, we fail.

That has to funnel down and stir our heart.

And then our heart has to push our hands out to meet the needs of the people around us.

I mean, think about the love that the church had, that we read in Acts, that there was nothing, nothing that anybody needed or had lack of.

They wouldn't whitenuckle any aspect of their belongings to see their brother taken care of.

And we white knuckle our Netflix binge because we can't be interrupted.

Because we can't be bothered.

Because we can't get off the couch.

But the beauty of the gospel is that God shows his love for us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5.8.

We have to understand the weight of this passage.

That still sinners.

How is Jesus able to actually command this of us?

Because he embodies this perfectly.

When we were still sinners, when we were still at war with God, when we were his enemies, when we were the ones who were seeking to rob him of his glory, when we were the ones who were self-serving, when we were the ones that could reciprocate nothing, when we were the ones who spit in his face, when you and I would have been the ones who would have shouted, give us Barabbas, crucify him, ripped out his beard, punched him in the face, spat upon him, when we would have held the nails that held him to the cross, Jesus died for us.

That's what it means to love your neighbor as yourself, where it is a selfless act where there's no reciprocation that's ever going to be brought about you, that you give everything for the good of those who can do nothing for you.

That's what it means when God showed his love for us, that while we were still sinners, not when we have something we were bringing to the kingdom of God.

Look, God did not look at you and say, I need that guy to be in my kingdom, because without his gifts and without his talents, I couldn't accomplish my will here on earth.

That's not what God did.

God looked at you and said, You're dead and helpless.

You're my enemy, and I find you vile, but I will put my spirit inside of you.

I will gift you.

I will make you uh effective in my kingdom.

I'll raise you up to where you're not this dead lump of flesh any longer, and have you be in my kingdom for my glory, for the accomplishment of my will.

We didn't bring anything, anything to God choosing us and loving us and sending his son to die for us.

Nothing.

But God fully shows the fullness of his law, that he perfectly obeys, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

And so, how should we live as people who are trusting in Christ, who are trusting in Jesus, how should we live now filled with his spirit in light of this?

It's this we should demonstrate a life that seeks the glory of God and the good of others first.

Demonstrate a life that seeks the glory of God and the good of others first.

It should be a life that relentlessly loves God.

Every part of our life is worship.

We were talking about this in our class yesterday.

There's literally nothing about your life that is not a worship issue.

And we should look to glorify God in every single thing we do.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.

In everything we do, we should seek to relentlessly love Him.

The way that I spend my money, the way that I budget, the way that I choose which house I'm gonna live in, what school district I'll put my kids in, what we're gonna stock our fridge with, what we're gonna fill our time in our week on our calendar with, what we're gonna do in the evenings with one another, we're gonna have devices in our home that our kids aren't on, or we're not gonna have devices.

I'm not trying to put out practice, I'm just trying to put out principle that in everything we do, it should be tempered with the question: how is this communicating a relentless love for God?

In everything we do.

And then the second question we should be asking is how does this communicate a reckless love for our neighbor?

Some of our homes are more like fortresses than they are open pathways for hospitality.

We hide behind our towering walls, closed garage doors, and deadbolts.

We haven't known our neighbor's name, and we've lived there for 15 years.

I mean, think about the way that the Bible calls us to recklessly love one another.

All your burdens are mine.

All your joys are mine.

All of my possessions are yours.

Everything that I have, I don't hold on to it, but I give it to you.

I'm here to build you up, to strengthen you, to encourage you, to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs so that your faith may be increased.

I'm here to use my gifts and talents to see your maturity, to see you grow in your love and devotion to Christ Jesus.

I'm here to participate, not for my own good, but for the good of you sitting in these seats.

I'm here for you.

That's what the Bible calls us to in everything that we do.

We don't come to consume, we don't come to take, we don't leave this church because we're not being fed anymore.

We should leave here empty because we have poured ourselves out for one another for the good and flourishing of each other, and we should leave here drained.

We should leave here empty and fatigued.

And you know what happens?

We go because our heart is stirred with the affection of the devotion of God's word, and we feast upon the words of life, and then we come back into these situations and we pour ourselves out again.

That should be the model and method of the church.

And for our neighbor, I mean, look around you.

The culture is not the same, it's not what it used to be.

And I think that the Lord would declare, Praise be me.

It's becoming more and more diverse.

The nations are coming to us.

People don't think the way that we all used to think.

Political values, moral values, religious values, all these things are flooding in.

And our temptation, our propensity will be to retreat from it.

Because we're scared.

Our propensity will not be to love our neighbor recklessly.

Our propensity will be to retreat and hide.

And stay hunkered down here where it's easy.

Where people think like us and they live like us and they look like us and they act like us.

It might be easy, but it's weak.

You see, a life that recklessly loves our neighbor is one where our door is open and our table is set.

For the Islamic person that's our neighbor, the Hindu person that's our neighbor, the liberal that's our neighbor, the man who crossed the street from us is having an affair on his wife and everyone knows it.

Our door is open and the table is set for the people who we would really count as our enemy.

And when they need us, we're there.

When they're beaten down and cast out, we lift them up.

We demonstrate, not intellectually articulate, but demonstrate the command to love our neighbor.

You see, Missio, the only way we're gonna be healthy, really, is if our culture around us says we can't imagine them not in our city.

Because we've experienced the extravagant, reckless love that they have for us.

When I hear that from a stranger on the street, we've made it.

We've done some great things.

I'll close our series and this message with this quote from Jonathan Edwards, who a lot of this work was based off of, but he says this divine love above all others renounces in a basis what we term self.

Divine love for both God and our neighbor, above all others, renounces in a basis what we term self.

Let's pray.