The Shape of Our Life in Christ

Heaven is abiding in Christ. So if it is not what we love now, why do you think you're gonna love it then? Heaven is Christ. So we don't believe in Christ to get somewhere. He is our life.

He is not the one who fixes us so that we can live the life we want to live. He is our life.

The following message was recorded at King's Tree Church. May the spirit use it to help you see, savor, and sing the beauty of God in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.

We are going to be looking at the or final few verses of chapter three. So this is my last sermon before we have the end of the month sermon that pastor Sean preaches, and we're wrapping up the third chapter, and then Lord willing we'll be moving into the fourth chapter at the October. But just by way of review, what we've looked at the last few weeks is this idea of a childlike confidence before God. How how we are to have confidence before him. Not a not a brazen self assured confidence, but a childlike confidence that is assured in his love for us in Christ.

And then we saw last week specifically that this confidence is to lead us to an assurance of prayer. That we should be able to have assurance as we come to him, come to our God that we are heard and that we will be answered according to his will. So that's what we looked at the last few weeks. And here let me just interject and say this confidence before God is for those who are in Christ. That's that's the way this confidence works.

There there is standing before God only for those united to Christ, trusting in him, bound to him, or as John says, abiding in him. Abiding in him. Now that doesn't mean, as I I wanna be clear every week, that doesn't mean we become sinlessly perfect. That doesn't mean we never sin. But it does mean that we are tethered to Christ, Such that as he goes, so we go.

We are we're we're where he is. We're following after him. Our lives are beginning to look like him because we're bound to him. An image to help you with that is think about a big boat and then a and a raft. And the raft is tethered to the boat.

And the boat is going and it's pulling the raft along. And if the boat turns to go here, the raft is gonna turn. Now the raft might drift a little bit and then be righted again, but because it's tethered to that boat, it's going to go where it is, where the boat goes even if there's some drift. So too with us, we are united to Christ by faith, by his mercy. We're bound to him.

We're going where he goes, and we do drift. We continue to sin. He turns and we we turn a little wide. We turn a little narrow. But because we're bound to him, where he goes, that's where we're going.

That's where we end up. Our lives are being conformed to him. We have we're bound to him. We're abiding in him. And the verse we're the verses we're gonna look at today are explaining what that life tethered to Christ looks like.

What what does it look like to live tethered to Christ? What's the shape of a life that is tethered to him? How how does that life look? How how does it look to we talk about abiding in Christ, but what does that look like lived out? That's what we're gonna look at this morning.

So look with me down first John chapter three. We're gonna I'll read a few verses 22 to 24. So this is the last bit of last week's verse. He says, whatever we ask we receive from him because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment.

And this is a singular commandment because all the commandments are brought together in this one. This is his commandment that we believe in the name of his son Jesus Christ and love one another just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments, which means whoever keeps what I just said, whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God abides in him. And by this we know that he abides in us by the spirit whom he has given us. So we're gonna focus today on this idea of this is the command.

This is the command. Believe in the name of Jesus Christ and love one another as he loved us and whoever's keeping this is abiding in him. Because what I want us to see, and we touched on this last week, is that obedience, and specifically here obedience to this command that we have right in verse 23. Obedience to this command is not what we have to do to keep God happy. And I know you you you probably would affirm that, but I want us to feel it too.

Obedience to this is not what we're doing because we have to keep God happy. This obedience is not what we do so we can get into heaven. This obedience is not the tax we have to pay on the blessing we have in Christ. Well, got a lot of blessing, now I gotta, you know, pay my obedience tax. No.

The obedience that we see laid out here, the obedience to this command, believe in the name of Jesus Christ and love as he has loved us, that is itself the form of our life in Christ. That that is the essential form of what it looks like to be tethered to Christ, to be abiding in Christ. This commandment is not something we we just do to earn things from God. This commandment is the breath, the respiration of our life in Christ. It's it's the blood as it were flowing through the veins of our abiding in Christ.

This is the shape that living in Christ takes on. Believing in his name, loving one another. It's the shape of our life. So let me pray for us and hope that we can ask that we can get a clearer sense of what this command means and how we live it out, not as a burden, but as just the the shape of our lives in Jesus. Let me pray for us.

So father, we thank you that you are present. You're here by the presence of the Holy Spirit, and that whenever your word is opened, we trust that you are speaking. You are ready to declare. And your words, father, are not powerless. Your words achieve.

Your words work. Your words change. The very same word that said let there be light and brought about light. The very same word by which the heavens and the earth are this very second sustained in being is the word that we find speaking to us through these words, these English words that we can read and understand. So father, we pray that your spirit would make this not the word of man, but the word of God, and would make my efforts to unfold it effective in the lives of those that you've brought here.

Lord, place your spirit upon me for the sake of Christ, for the sake of Christ, for his name, for his glory. Grant me to be anointed now to be clear, to be faithful, and Lord, take my words and do with them more than I could ever intend by them in the lives of your people for the glory of your name. And we pray all of this in and through and because of Jesus Christ. Amen. So what we find here at the center of today's text in verse 23 is what we might call John's version of the great commandment.

This where he says, this is his commandment that we believe in the name of the son of his son Jesus Christ and love one another as he has loved us. That is John's version of the great commandment. And you say, well, what's the great commandment? The great commandment is a title that people have given to something Jesus says in Matthew's gospel. So in Matthew's gospel, one of the experts in the law comes up to him and says, teacher, what's the greatest commandment in the whole law?

Because in the Old Testament law, there's many many many commandments, 600 and something commandments. And the the lawyer comes up and says, what's the most important of all of these? And Jesus responds famously. I'll read it for you. It's in Matthew chapter 22 verses 36 through 40.

Matthew 22:36–40

Jesus says this. So the person comes up to him and says teacher what's the greatest commandment in the law? And Jesus says to him, you shall love the Lord your God. Now we pause there. Lord, when Jesus uses it here, is the is the Greek version of the Old Testament name Yahweh, the name of God.

So he's not just saying Lord as in master or king. When he says Lord here, he means Yahweh, the God of Israel. That's who he's referring to. Okay. So here's the great commandment Jesus says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. These two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. And so those two commandments have traditionally been held together as what's called the single great commandment.

Love Yahweh your God with everything you are, and love your neighbor as you love yourself. Those two are what Jesus says, all of the law hangs upon the cross beam of this commandment. Love God with all, love neighbor as self. Everything God has ever commanded is built upon these two commandments and expressed in these two commandments. Which you you have to hold yourself back from just doing the whole sermon there because what this means is that at every moment, in every instance of our life, in every situation we face, in the midst of every hardship, in the face of every enemy, every moment, the thing God demands of us, God calls for from us is to love.

In every moment. To love. Love as it's defined on Calvary. Love as it is defined in the flesh and blood of Christ. Every moment, the the single thing we're called to do, love God with everything I am, love my neighbor as myself.

That's that's amazing. That that's what we're that's everything there. And of course Jesus fulfills that perfectly. Jesus fulfills that perfectly when he hangs on the cross because he is God on the cross, loving God with everything he is, pouring his whole life out to God his father. So on the cross, God Jesus loves God with all he is, and he incarnate in the flesh has made humanity his neighbors, and he's loving us as he loves himself.

So on the cross, Jesus is loving God with all, loving neighbor as himself, fulfilling this great commandment. So that's the great commandment. Love God with all, love neighbor as self. Now what we find in today's text is John's version of that. John's version of that.

I'm gonna take a minute to show you how we get to that. But just remember we said this early on. For John, this is true of all the apostles, but John does it in a unique way. Everything for him is filtered through the crucified and risen Jesus Christ. Everything for John comes through the lens of who God has declared himself to be in Jesus, and that includes the great commandment.

So what we find today is the great commandment, love Yahweh with all, love your neighbor as yourself. What we find today is that commandment as John now views it through the lens of who God has declared himself to be in Christ. How does that commandment look when we look at it through the lens of God proclaimed at the cross and by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That's what we're looking at this morning. So let me show you how this works because you might say, love the Lord your God with all, love your neighbor as yourself.

What we have here is believe in the name of Jesus and love as he's commanded us. Maybe there's similarity, but like are they really is it the same thing? Let me show you how what we find here is John's version of the commandment that Jesus gives in Matthew's gospel. First, remember the first part of the great commandment is love Yahweh your God with all that you are. All your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

And critical to that is Yahweh your God. This isn't just love some generic God. Love love whoever's in front of you. Love whichever God you want. It's love this very specific God, the God of Israel.

And what John shows us here is we are to believe in the name of his son Jesus Christ. So we have love Yahweh and believe in the name of Jesus. And and I'm saying to you, and I hope to show you now, these are the same thing. Love Yahweh, Believe in the name. Let's start with So I mentioned this last week.

When we talk about Jesus's name, we're not talking about the title he goes by. We're talking specifically about his character. Who he is, his identity, his essential self, the core of who he is. And so when John says we are to believe in his name, he's saying believe believe in who Christ is, this essential character. And who he is is proclaimed most completely at the cross.

You hear me say this a lot, but that's where we see him most clearly is at his death when he pours himself out in love. And what is the name? What is Jesus's name as far as character, essence, identity? What is it? Well, let me read something for you from John chapter 17 where Jesus is praying to God the father, and he says this, John 17 verse 11 through 12.

John 17 · chapter mention John 17:11–12

He says, I'm no longer in the world praying to the father, but they are in the world and I am coming to you. Holy father, keep them in your name which you have given me that they may be one even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name which you have given me. And I've guarded them and not one of them has been lost. So pause there.

All I want you to see is what Jesus is saying is that the father's name is his name. They have the same name. The son and the father have the same name. Now what this doesn't mean is like me, my name is Christopher Powers junior because my dad's name is also Christopher Powers. I have his name.

But that's not the idea here. What Jesus says, father, you've given me your name. What he means is your full character, your your essential identity, the fullness of who you are, that's what I bear. That's that's what I carry. That's that is my name as well.

Jesus is saying what he says earlier on in John fourteen nine, if you've seen me, you've seen the father. So Jesus says, my name is the father's name. My name is God's name. We could put it into this context. My name, my character is the name and the character of Yahweh God, The God of the Old Testament.

So in the Old Testament, Yahweh's character is shown, his name is shown most clearly in the work of the Exodus when he brings his people out and he redeems them for himself and he shows himself to be faithful to his promises. His name is the fullness of his of his glory, of his character. Moses on top of the mountain, on top of Sinai, when there's remember that fire comes down, and there's lightning, and the earth is shaking and Moses goes up into the storm and he says, show me your glory. And Yahweh says, I'll declare to you my name. I'll tell you who I am.

I'll show you the essence of my character. And Jesus is saying that name is mine. That name has been given to me. I bear that name. So with the coming of Jesus that same name, that same identity is fully expressed in Jesus Christ.

And specifically through his death and resurrection, which is which is the wonder that I don't think I'll ever get over. That the name see the thunder? See the fire? See the shaking earth on Sinai? That's the whispering of God's name.

See Calvary, see the cross, see Christ stripped and beaten, dying on the cross for our sin, that's the roaring of God's name. So what is whispered on Sinai, that same name in the fullness of all that it is is roared from Sinai or from from Calvary. And Jesus is saying, my name is the name of God. That's who you see. That's who you meet when you meet me.

Now pause here. I'm gonna pause here and mention this. What this means is that Jesus does have a very specific character. He he it's the character of God that we meet throughout the Old Testament that comes to a point of clarity in the man Jesus Christ. So Jesus is not a generic, nameless religious figure that we can co opt for ourself and paint with the colors of whatever rebellion or agenda or passion that we might have.

Jesus is himself. We can't make him for ourselves. He is who he is. He has a name. He has a character.

And that name, that character is the revelation of who God is, and it is proclaimed most supremely when this Jesus Christ as we as we sang together, as the church has been confessing for millennia, this Jesus Christ declares his name, is the name of God, when he takes our sins, when he takes your sins into himself on the cross. That's that's that's God saying, let me show you who I am. Let me take your sin into myself on the cross. When he endures our hell in himself on the cross, bearing away the full fire of the wrath of God, the wrath of God swallowed up in the love of God on the cross. He declares who he is when he descends into the grave of our grief and meets us there in the midst of all that this mortal world can do, and it can do a lot.

He descends into the midst of it and meets us there, and that is him declaring his name. And he declares his name as he ascends from that place, raising us up, reconciling us to God, turning our grief, as shocking as it is, into gladness, and redeeming the whole fallen wreck of the cosmos. That is him declaring his name. That is the name of Jesus Christ. That is the name of Yahweh God.

That is the character of who God is. So when Matthew's gospel says the greatest commandment is love Yahweh your God, and John says believe in the name of Jesus, these two are the same. Yahweh your God is revealed in the name of Jesus, and the name of Jesus declares to us Yahweh our God. That's the first parallel I want you to see. But then you might say, well, wait a second.

The commandment in Matthew says, love the Lord. John says, believe in the name of Jesus. But let me show you why these are also parallel. What you have to see here is how John understands belief. What is belief?

You know, we're about believe in Jesus. Believe do you believe in Jesus? Do I believe in believe believe believe. What does that mean? What does that mean?

Is it just an intellectual agreement? Like, I believe that the sun is out today? I do. I do believe the sun's out today. I believe there's a tree in the backyard.

Is is that what we're talking about? I mean, you could trim it down to something that shallow, but we see what John means by belief most clearly in John chapter six. Let me read to you just a string of verses as as I do. Listen for the way John shapes belief and makes it more and more intimate, more and more personal. Okay.

Listen to the to the change of belief language as I go here. John chapter six. We'll start in verse 35. Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

But I said to you that you have seen me and you do not believe. All that the father gives me will come to me and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. Then down a little bit further into verse 47. Truly, truly, I say to you whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life.

Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. And then down in 5456, whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides, that's our language for today, abides in me, and I in him. So look at what John's doing. He goes from believe in. Okay?

You can keep something you believe in arm's length. Okay? I believe in that. Sure. But stay out there.

To come to an approaching of Christ, to drawing near to Christ, and then to feasting upon, taking him in, receiving him into ourselves. So simple intellectual belief is not what John has in mind here. Belief for him means ultimately feasting upon Christ. Receiving him as the all satisfying food of our soul. Receiving him as the thirst quenching drink for our heart.

What John has in mind here, it's echoing in the background of everything John just said, is an invitation in Isaiah chapter 55. Let me read that for you and you can hear some of the echoes. This is Isaiah chapter 55 verses one through three. Come, this is an invitation to believe, and it's given again right now to all of us here. Come everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, And he who has no money, come buy and eat.

Isaiah 55 · chapter mention Isaiah 55 · chapter mention

Come buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which does not satisfy. Listen diligently to me and eat what is good. Delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear and come to me.

Hear that your soul may live. So John is drawing from this. And in Isaiah, God is saying, come. Come and feast. Why are you spending your efforts on on the wax food and the sawdust of this world When I am the food and I am the drink for which your soul was made, come to me and feast.

Delight. You see that? That's a command. Delight yourself in good food. What's the good food?

Come to me that your soul may live. And in John chapter six, John says Jesus is that. Jesus' call to believe is Yahweh's call to feast upon himself. So imagine yourself without food for three days, and you come, you smell the food cooking from afar, you come into the hall, and there's a banquet table spread. Or imagine you haven't had water and your your mouth is dry, bone dry, and you come to a fresh spring.

The way that our bodies would respond in those moments is the way that our soul is to be responding to Christ at every moment. He faith is feasting upon him as those starved, drinking from him as those parched. It means coming to him and delighting in him as what our soul is starving for. Jesus does not say believe in me and I'll give you the thing you want so desperately. Jesus says, see that I am the thing you want so desperately.

And that's belief. That's that's your belief in me. So Johannine belief, John's understanding of belief is delighting in the good food that God himself is for us in Christ who dies and rises again. It's delighting in him. In other words, it's loving him.

What we mean by that? Treasuring, enjoying, desiring. That's what's at the center of John's understanding of belief. So when he says when the original commandment says love Yahweh with all, and John says believe in the name of Jesus, it's the same thing. Because this belief receives Christ who is Yahweh incarnate as our life, as our treasure, as our food, and our drink.

So believe in the name of Jesus. That is the first commandment, and that's given to all of us as the shape of our life. Now the second one flows from it, and we're going to do this one much more quickly because we've looked at it in the in the past weeks. The second part of the great commandment is love your neighbor as you love yourself. And John's version of that here in verse 23 is love one another just as he has commanded us.

Now these are let me show you. You'll see why. These are the saying essentially the same thing. The great commandment says love your neighbor as you love yourself. But once God has become our neighbor through the incarnation and has loved us perfectly through the cross, love your neighbor as you love yourself becomes love as he has loved us.

Because he is the supreme neighbor who loves his neighbor perfectly. And so now we say we love, we are to love one another just as he has loved us. And you might say, well, wait wait wait wait wait wait wait. But this says, love just as he has commanded us. So how how are you importing love as he has loved us into this text?

I'm doing that because when John says love just as he has commanded us, he's thinking of John fifteen twelve which says this. Well, of it, he wrote it. So it says this, John fifteen twelve. This is my commandment says Jesus. There's the commandment John's thinking of.

This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. So the the the great commandment that's that summarizes all of the God has ever said and is the foundation upon which everything God has ever commanded is love Yahweh with all and love your neighbor as yourself. And in light of the supreme revelation of God in Christ, in light of the supreme salvation God has worked in Christ, that commandment may now be expressed this way. Believe. Believe in the name of Jesus Christ, and love one another as he has commanded us, which is to say, as he has loved us.

So that's what we're called to do. That's our whole life. Believe in this Christ. Love as he has loved. And what I want to do with the last bit of time that we have here is look at how obedience to this.

When you hear this commandment, obedience to this commandment. Again, it's not the tax you have to pay. Okay. I've gotta do that, you know, to get into heaven. It's not the tax you have to pay.

It's not the tough crust you have to chew through uncomfortably to get to the good soft bread of blessing. This command, believe in Christ and love one another, that is the shape of our life in Christ. That's what it looks like to abide in him. Like I said at the beginning, that's the respiration of living in Christ. So let me just take a moment and consider that with you as we're wrapping things up.

The simplest way to see this is you can't see it as you you could argue this from all of scripture. We're just not gonna take the time to do that. In Greek, the verbs here are present tense. So in verse 24, when it says whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, What it says is whoever is one way to put it, whoever is keeping his commandments is abiding in God. So the abiding the abiding is an active abiding.

Our life in Christ, our our our abiding in Christ is an active abiding in here. Believing in the name of Jesus and loving as he has loved us is the way we abide in him. It's the way we continue in him. Now that could sound a little abstract. Let me give you an example that has helped me at least to think about how this works.

Think about nighttime. You look up in the sky and you see the moon. And the moon is just abiding there in the sky peacefully. Just setting sitting there in peace, shining down upon us. It's silent and peaceful.

But how is the moon abiding so peacefully in the sky above us? It's because at this very moment, it is actively moving with the earth. The reason the moon abides peacefully is because it is moving at the same pace as the earth. Going through space at something like 67,000 miles per second. So it's that active abiding, active moving with the earth that allows the moon to peacefully abide with the earth.

And you might say, well, that's a lot of hard work for the moon. The moon does it because it's bound in the gravity of the earth. It's bound to us. So it's moving with us, and its movement is its abiding with the earth. As the moon said, I'm just gonna rest here and and, you know, be here and do my own thing, the earth goes on without it.

But it's bound to the earth, and it moves with the earth, so it abides with the earth, and the earth abides with it. In a similar way in a similar way, the abiding that John is calling for here is an active abiding. It happens not as we just sit around and wait for abiding to hit us. It happens as we are believing in Jesus. As we are loving one another, we are abiding in him.

So as as we are satisfying our need filled soul with the food and drink of Christ, as we're laboring to learn how to be satisfied with Christ, to feast upon him, as we are allowing his promises to be our hope, his beauty to be our strength, his word to be our law, his cross to be our victory, his resurrection to be our light, his life to be our purity, His heart to be our way. As we are believing in him, we're abiding in him. And as we are loving as he has loved us. As we are driving to do the thing that's interrupting our schedule so he can lay down our lives for our brother or sister. As we are giving up our preferences.

As we are saying, could have been doing something else. I'm saying this to me. But I'm giving that up to do this for the sake of the brother or sister. As we're loving, we're abiding in him. So the the the abiding in Christ is an act of abiding of believing and loving.

And this is not burdensome because just as the moon is bound to the earth to move with the earth by the gravity of the earth, so too we are bound to Christ beneath and enabling our belief and our love is the gravity of God's love for us in Christ binding us to him. So I'll say it one more time. Obedience to this commandment, believing in Christ, feasting upon him, going to him as my food, and loving one another, that's not the hard thing we have to do to make God happy. It is the shape of our life in Christ. It's the form of our life in Christ.

It's not what we do to earn eternal life. It is the shape of eternal life. And we begin to enjoy it now. We're beginning to enjoy it now. Just as when a little child is ankle deep in the ocean, they're in the ocean, and that very same ocean could drown Everest out in the center, so too as we are believing in Jesus and loving one another, we are in him.

We are in already the shallows of eternal life. The very eternal life that ten thousand odd eons down the road, we will be plunged into beyond all imagination and still plunging deeper and deeper and deeper into seeing new and new beauties each moment. But we begin it now. We begin it now. And let me say here too, this idea of abiding that John talks about all the time, this is not peripheral.

This is not something on the side. This is not where you say, well, yeah, see if you're a serious Christian, you'll abide and care about abiding, but I just wanna get into heaven. Heaven is abiding in Christ. So if it is not what we love now, why do you think you're gonna love it then? Heaven is Christ.

So we don't believe in Christ to get somewhere. He is our life. He is not the one who fixes us so that we can live the life we want to live. He is our life. He's not the one who gets us to what we needed so that we can have eternal life.

He is our eternal life, and we begin to know him now. This is the center for everyone, For all of us. The center of the Christian life is abiding in Christ. So as a human being, we are made for God. We're made for him.

We're designed for him. Again, he's not the one who fixes things to give us a good life. He is the life for whom we're made. So let's press that though into something more personal. I can say with the authority of scripture, you you were made for God in Christ.

You were made to abide in him. Your desires, specific ones, specific ones. Think of them. Your longings, your hopes, your passions, your needs, your particular emptiness, your particular pain, your specific brokenness, your soul is for him. We we are like this impenetrable lock with all these complexities of need and brokenness and want and hope and longing, and and the key that opens it is Christ.

And you say, that's that's very basic. It's everything. Take that seriously. It's everything. We are made for Christ.

We're made for him. He is the song that our souls were made to sing. He's the banquet that our souls, that your soul was made to feast upon. He's the ocean into whom you were made to be plunged. He's the adventure, the wonder, the beauty, the joy that you were seeking in everything you've ever sought.

It's him. At every point, it's him. It's always been him, and it will always be him. We are made for him. We're made to abide in him.

This idea of abiding is at the center of what you care about most. I can promise you that. It's at the center of it. So when the swelling of an orchestra moves us to tears, or when the beauty of the night sky just puts everything in perspective and our fears melt away, Or when you're on a summer evening and the sun shines out on the fields and they turn to gold and your heart is set at peace. Or when you laugh out loud just for awe and joy and wonder.

When any of these kind of moments break into our life, moments that seem to offer an answer, that's what it's about. That's what it's for. That's what I'm after. Whenever those moments break in, at that moment, we're touching the fringe of Christ's garments. Our fingers are brushing the fringes.

In that moment, we're hearing the merest whispering of his name carried along on the winds. And we were made to hear that name roared to us at the top of God's lungs. And we were made to sing that name with all that we are for all of eternity. And that name is proclaimed to all the cosmos. The name echoing in the music, in the beauty, in the wonder, in the longing, in the hoping, the name echoing in all the complexity of the human pursuit of happiness is the name proclaimed from the cross.

The name proclaimed in the flesh and blood of the risen Christ, and we are made for him. You are made for him. So plunge into him. Plunge into him. Don't be indifferent to it.

We plunge into him and we do that as we believe in Jesus Christ as our food and our drink, and as we love one another as he has loved us. That's abiding in him. That's abiding in him. And the shape that that is the shape that that abiding takes. And just see if it's true.

Just see if it's true. This isn't just a pastor standing up here. I pray. Because you're like, oh, pastors have to talk that way. See if it's true.

If this Christ is not the unfathomable limitless well who will answer your need, who will fulfill your longing. Put the bottle down, put the pills down, put the computer down, put the social media down, put the dream down, put whatever it is down and say, will you give me what I'm after? Maybe I should just say, will you actually be my God? And see if he will. Because he will.

Because you're made for him. And he is glorified. As you say, everything I ever wanted is in you. So may it be so. May he give us the grace to do it.

And we do it, last point, together. We do it together. We can't do it on our own. We're not made to do this on our own. The belief that abides in Christ is belief in community.

We don't go off and pick our designer faith that works best for me. You know, a little bit of sternness, a little bit of traditional morality, a lot of mercy and grace, and maybe just a sprinkle of fire and brimstone on the edge. No. We we believe in Jesus as he has been believed for two thousand years. We believe in Jesus together with a confessing community of God's people, like that song we sang earlier.

Not just all throughout the world right now wherever there's a faithful church, but all throughout time. Believe in community. Don't believe by yourself in front of a YouTube screen. Believe in community. That's how we believe.

And then we love in community. We can talk about love by ourselves. We can sing about love by ourselves. We can write about love or read about love by ourselves. But if we remain by ourselves, our love is a well preserved corpse.

Love lives in relationships. Period. Love lives in relationships with your roommate, with your husband, with your wife, with your siblings, with your neighbors, with those right now, right now in these pews around us. Real people who will make real demands that will mean real Christ like sacrifices in our lives. Those are the relationships in which love is proven true.

Those relationships in which love is proven true. And as we believe together, as we love together, we will also by God's grace abide together in God and he in us. And this little congregation of broken believers here in Sabina, Ohio will become a context for fellowship with the living God. And it will become by God's grace the foothills of our eternal life. And it will become an image of the crucified and risen Lord to the watching world.

May it be so as he works in us. Let me pray. Father, thank you for good commands. Good commands to come and satisfy ourselves at the feasting table of Jesus Christ. Come and satisfy ourselves with him given for us from the cross, raised up for us from the grave, reigning over us from the throne, and coming for us for all a time.

Lord, may Jesus Christ be the food and the drink of your people's souls. And as we feast upon him, believe in him. May we love like him. May our lives, my life, actually be altered to love like him. Love our spouses, love our children, love our neighbors, love our friends, love our the people in this congregation.

Love our enemies as Christ has loved us. And as we do, father, may we abide in you to our everlasting joy and your eternal glory. We pray all these things and we know it's according to your will so that we know you will do it in your time. In Jesus name. Amen.

Thank you for listening to this message from King's Tree Church in Sabina, Ohio. To see more of the beauty of God in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, come worship with us on Sundays at 10AM or visit our website at kingstreechurch.org.