Wirksworth | 16/08/26 | Love One Another | Sheldon Kryger

Yeah, Lord, we're so excited to have Sheldon here and thank you for what he's brought so far and thank you for the new people to this church.

But Lord, just be with him now, take away any anxiety, worry, fear.

We just pray for the words that come out of his mouth are from you and you alone, Lord.

So just be with him, give us attentive ears, attentive hearts.

We can't wait to hear more about your word.

Amen.

Thank you.

So I've never used this before.

Anyways.

Um, hello everybody.

So I got this strange mixture of nervousness and excitement.

So mentally, emotionally, I'm kind of maxed out, so we'll see if we can get through this or not.

And I gotta apologize in advance for however long I'm talking.

Because we've got food, ribs.

So Helen was poking Steve to kind of keep things going.

I've got Don who can say, come on, keep moving.

Um technology, it's okay.

Um we may or may not need it.

Maybe we shouldn't use that.

Uh so we've been talking a lot in this last while about as a church what we believe.

And of course that's important, isn't it?

As we're all new.

I'm new.

Most of you are new.

I'm new to this whole this whole thing here.

Um and so what I want to do just a little bit here is switch gears a little bit and talk about not necessarily what we believe, but how maybe we do church.

So that's just a little a little switch, and maybe this comes along, maybe not.

But uh we can get started.

The the verse that I have is kind of the key verse.

There we go.

I saw it.

Uh 1 Peter 4.8.

So it says in this translation, above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins.

Right?

So we different translations.

Most importantly, right?

This is St.

Peter, he's a pretty important, pretty important guy.

He says, hey everybody, this is this is really important.

Most important, love each other deeply, fervently, is another one of those words, or intensely.

Uh so let's take a quick look at just it's almost a given, isn't it?

We've talked, I don't know how many times are this morning, there's something about love or loving one another, uh, all these things, but I think it's worth talking about a little bit more, going into a little bit more detail.

Um so I I thought this is something that I've been working on for kind of for months.

And one of the things I thought is, well, you if you're doing this, you need to properly define what love is.

Okay?

Because you know, there actually even in the Bible, there's multiple different words for love, right?

In our English, we'll have we'll have love, but it'll mean that there's several different, is there at least three, four, right?

I mean, was it uh C.S.

Lewis for the book on the four loves, is the five languages of like languages of love, all these things.

So I started working on this big complicated definition of love and trying to make it all-encompassing, and specifically this love here.

Uh, and then I thought a little bit more, I thought, you know what?

If we're being honest, we probably know exactly what love this verse is referring to, aren't we?

You have, for example, the love of a mother.

If you've heard that kind of a thing, a motherly love.

That that's kind of, we know what that is.

What is that?

What's the love of a mother?

Anyone have an example of a mother, father, child, love?

That's just like you know that's love.

Nurture.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Food on the table three times a day.

Nice.

Yeah, I like food, so that's a good one.

Unconditional?

Unconditional.

Unconditional.

Always being there.

Always being there.

Sacrificial.

Yeah.

Right.

We know.

We know exactly what this love is, don't we?

You see what a what a mom will do for their child, and you know exactly what love is.

So that was easy.

We've already got past that one.

Um, so done.

Next bit.

So we're gonna because we're talking about what is love, and then why loving each other is really important, and then how, practically, how do we love each other?

Okay?

So if you go, yeah, there's the what's his love.

Look how small that is.

I used AI.

I had some I had some bullet point notes, and I asked Gemini, hey, can you give me a slide presentation?

Which is why it got done this morning.

And then I butchered it because I then I was sort of like, no, no, change this, and it changed like everything.

And so it's really small.

Okay, anyways.

Uh so the next slide.

Uh and I should go to the next slide as well.

And this is the one then that uh Steve had mentioned, wasn't it?

This is one I think that comes right right along with that, and why we should love.

We already passed the definition of love.

Why we should love.

Jesus says here, a new command I give you, love one another, as I've loved you, so you must love one another.

And everyone will know you are my disciples if you love one another.

Um It's interesting, isn't it?

Because Jesus had, Jesus had, when somebody asked him what's the greatest commandments, he said it was love the Lord your God for all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, something like that, and love your neighbors yourself.

And then he says here, there's a new command I give you that you love one another.

Wait a minute, wait a minute.

What are you talking about?

This is an old, this is a this is a commandment that was given way back, you know, the Moses laying down the law for the Israelites thing, and now you're saying it's a new command.

What's that all about?

Why would that be?

I think part of it then is this uh as I have loved you, so you must love one another.

This is pretty serious.

We have this whole love God, and you know, I think the love your neighbors yourself is a bit a little bit like the let's be nice to each other and care about the people around us.

And I think what Jesus is doing here then is saying, we're gonna dial that up a notch.

Right?

We're gonna, I need you to love each other like I love you.

That's that's a pretty high bar.

So it's good then to take a quick look.

Before we go to the next slide, uh apparently we're doing this whole like book promoting thing when we talk.

And and I thought, well, I don't have a book.

Even this morning, I know there's no book.

Um, but I'm gonna give you a quick little plug.

This is volumes one and two of ten.

No, there's actually 63 volumes of um Spurgeon's sermons.

Okay?

So if you've heard of Spurgeon, he was he was um preaching to a church in the 1850s, something like that.

And they didn't have YouTube, uh, Instagram, Snapchat, all those things.

But he was basically a viral superstar Christian preacher.

Um so one of the things that happened was they stenographed and recorded all his messages.

So there's you can buy a book or you can borrow a book.

I've got a bunch of them if you want it, paper.

Um, but they've recorded 3,563 of his sermons.

And then apparently they and those are all online, just PDF and whatnot.

Uh, and then there's another, anyways, really incredible guy, really incredible guy.

He spoke to, he spoke to um, started off with 200 people and he was 19 years old, not formerly trained, speaking in a in a building that had a 1200-person capacity to 200 people, and that just kept growing and growing, growing.

They were in a temporary location for a while, it seated 12,000 people.

There's no microphones, no PA systems.

Uh, eventually they built a purpose-built building that seated about six, seven thousand people, and then they would just turn them through with multiple services.

Incredible.

I figured he spoke to about 10 million people uh that heard his voice uh over the over his lifetime.

Uh Crystal Palace, they had a special event.

23,000, over 23,000 people were there.

Incredible, huh?

And then they distributed his his sermons because they went viral, right?

Basically, and and then there's millions, 56 million copies distributed of his sermons, that kind of a thing.

Unbelievable.

Unbelievable.

Very cool.

There's some cool the qu one of the things he loved was Jesus.

He loved talking about Jesus, he loved talking about the good news.

He and when you're talking to 10,000 people, he could say, listen, some of you aren't gonna be here next week.

You're not gonna make it through the week.

So you need to figure out what you're doing with your life.

And fair enough.

Here, I hope we're all we're all still we're all still here next week.

But uh, so he had actually, they figure about 14,000 plus people came to the faith through his messages, and that's not just uh not just a raise of a hand.

They actually would interview people and check like, do you understand what you're getting yourself into here?

Do you understand this gospel message?

Unbelievable, huh?

Uh the core gospel, really exciting.

He's really excited about it.

Most of those sermons are gonna have some kind of good news in them.

Um some secondary stuff in the Christian faith where things get a little bit more.

There's a few things that we disagree and agree about, so I can't wholeheartedly say I don't know if I'm even allowed to recommend them.

Anyways, some really great stuff.

Really great stuff, worth looking at.

Absolutely.

Neil says absolutely.

We need to know that.

I kind of checked earlier, huh?

Nah.

Really good stuff.

Really good stuff.

Actually, sorry, back um yeah, back one slide for a second.

Because I think this is really.

I wanted to throw in a little bit of like these little good news blips for us.

Really good news.

Our faith isn't complicated.

Some of the stuff gets complicated.

You think about like what's gonna happen at the end of the end of the days, and how's this gonna look and what's that gonna look like, it gets a little complicated, but this whole bit where Jesus loves us and we need to love each other, is dead simple.

So if you ever get caught up in you're like, oh, we're doing the school theology thing, and it's like two years of theology, and I'm looking forward to learning more and more and more.

But if all you know is Jesus loves you like crazy and you should love other people, you're good to go.

Okay?

So let's look at the Spurgeon quote.

I love this quote.

Uh, this is the reason I did the presentation, is because it's a bit, it's 170 years old.

It's a the words are the words are we a little bit antiquated.

Uh it's a bit to digest.

So I will try to read it, unless somebody else wants to.

I'll try to read it, and you can read along.

Okay?

So this was something he delivered February 18th, 1855.

And he says, Do you understand?

Sorry, I'm already getting a bit overwhelmed because I love this one.

I love this quote.

Do you understand how it is that the very guilt of a sinner is taken away?

Here I stand today, a guilty and condemned traitor.

Christ comes for my salvation.

He bids me to leave my cell, I'll stand where you are, I will be your substitute, I will be the sinner.

All your guilt is imputed to me.

It's apparently imputed, I didn't know that word.

Uh it's like a legal term for a transfer.

Your junk, your guilt, I'm actually I want that.

Okay?

Is imputed to me.

I will die for it.

I will suffer for it.

I will have your sins.

I'll take them, Jesus says.

Then stripping himself of his robes, he says, There, put them on.

You shall be considered as if you were Christ.

You shall be the righteous one, and I will take your place, you take mine.

Okay, next slide.

Uh oh.

Gives me a chance to recover here.

Okay, there's there's two more.

Yeah.

Then he casts around me a glorious robe of perfect righteousness.

And when I behold it, I exclaim, Strangely, my soul, art thou arrayed with my elder brother's garments on?

Jesus Christ's crown is on my head, his spotless robes are round my loins, his golden sandals are the shoes of my feet.

And now, where's my sin?

The sin is on Christ.

The righteousness is on me.

Next slide.

Ask for the sinner justice.

This is like you can picture a courtroom or something, right?

You're gonna pull the sinner out of the prison.

Ask for the sinner justice.

Let the voice of justice cry, bring forth the sinner.

The sinner is brought.

Who doth the executioner lead forth?

It's the incarnate Son of God.

True, he did not commit the sin.

He was without fault, but it's been imputed to him.

He stands in the sinner's place.

Now justice cries, bring forth the righteous, the perfectly righteous.

And whom do I see?

Lo, the church is brought.

Every believer is brought.

Justice says, Are these perfectly righteous?

Yes, they are.

What Christ did is theirs, and what they did is laid on Christ.

His righteousness is theirs, and their sins are his.

That's a good one, isn't it?

Neil says really similar to what you were saying last week about the exchange, right?

I mean, I I don't know if you were necessarily had this in mind, but um, it's an amazing, amazing thing.

That's love.

That's love.

We've got God becoming flesh, taking on our sin.

All of our junk.

He's perfect, takes it all on and says, you know what?

It's on me.

This deserves death.

Unfortunately, due to the justice, something goes wrong, somebody has to pay.

And Jesus says, Um I'll take that one.

That's a lot of love, isn't it?

So when Jesus says, actually, if you guys could just love each other like I love you, then let's go with that.

Unbelievable.

I'm behind a few slides.

So let's take a look then at the next the next slide.

So then Jesus says, uh, by this you'll know, everyone will know that you're my disciples if you love one another.

So I don't know if you guys have heard this story of uh John Wesley and the Moravians.

So John Wesley, hopefully I get the act the facts mostly right.

John Wesley was an Anglican priest and was doing missions from England to America.

So he was, I mean, he was not exactly his faith was very, very serious.

He was willing to do anything for the advancing of the gospel.

He was on a trip across the Atlantic, you know, this is back in the day, 1700 something, give or take.

And uh, so the big sailboat kind of thing, big ship, and they had a really bad storm to the point where everybody was convinced that they would not make it through this through this journey, would not be successful.

The Moravians is a a group of believers, uh from Germany, and men, women, children, realizing they were going to die, were at peace.

They were just basically they just said, God, our lives are in your hands.

Whatever you want to do, do.

And that completely very much impacted John Wesley then.

He said, wait a minute.

Apparently we have the same faith, but what is going on here?

What is going on that there's something, and it's the actions, isn't it?

Then there's something about our actions.

Actions speak louder than words.

There's something about our actions that we can be arguing about, I believe this, about the Bible says this, I can believe this, the Bible says that, I don't care what the Bible says, whatever it happens to be, but it's our actions that say something.

So we have to be so, so careful then.

One of the reasons we want to love one another is to be a witness.

To be a witness to our friends, to our family, to our neighbors, to be a witness to somebody that walks in here and goes, What's this all about?

I'm not even sure.

Uh yeah.

Anyways, a witness.

Uh next one.

So I'm gonna propose then that uh our love is one of the foundations, the foundation of how we do church.

I know we are a spirit-filled church, an evangelical church.

Um, but that love for one another, I think, but needs to be the foundation of what we're doing.

So you guys know that um if you're Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 12, 13, so chapter 12 is the one actually where where Paul is talking about the by the body, and we're each different parts, and we each do our thing and we work together.

That's all great.

The beginning of 1 Corinthians 13 is really interesting, where he does this thing where he says, like, if I speak with the tongue, I don't have it on here.

If I speak with the tongues of men and angels, so I think I might understand it would be something, if I'm saying amazing, amazing things, I'm talking on behalf of angels or like an angel would, and there's no love, then it doesn't matter.

If I it's like a sand a gong or a clanging symbol.

Why didn't I put that on here?

Anyways, um it just doesn't matter.

And then he goes on to talk about if I surrender my my body to the flames without love, nothing.

What's the other one?

There's another example he gives.

Yeah.

I just remember faith that moves a mountain.

Jesus talked about how if you have enough faith, if you have some faith, you can just say to a mountain, I need you over there, and it happens.

I've not seen that before.

I do believe it's possible.

And Paul obviously is is running with it.

He's saying, you know what?

If you have the faith that can tell a mountain to move from there to there, but there is no love.

What was the point?

What did you accomplish?

You're just making noise.

Incredible, isn't it?

Um so I would propose then, as we as we come into this church and we all kind of find our grooves and find our places, you know.

I'm doing a little bit of worshiping.

I may or may not speak again.

I don't know.

Um just read his sermon.

Um but I'm gonna propose as you as you come here and kind of feel like what's my spot?

What it is that what is what do I do?

Every one of us, our primary role is loving one another.

Right?

Again, you go back to like the mother, father, husband, wife, all that kind of stuff.

Whatever it is that you do, I'm I cook, I earn a living, I take care of the kids.

It has to be love, is the foundation that we're that we're working from, isn't it?

So, more good news.

Really good news.

Your role, your involvement is dead simple, and it's now that it can be implemented.

Every one of us can be doing something in this exciting, wonderful church, and we can be doing it right now by just loving the people around us.

Okay?

We're okay?

You're doing okay?

Yeah, we're good.

Okay, here we go.

Let's go to the next one.

Again, really, really small.

One Peter two Peter, one, five to eight.

So let me just read this really quickly.

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness and to goodness knowledge.

And to knowledge, self-control, and to self-control, perseverance, and to perseverance, godliness.

And to godliness, mutual affection, and to mutual affection, love.

For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So it builds up here, and eventually the the climax of this is affection for one another and then love, and then we can be effective because of that.

So I am proposing that we take the gospel truth and the truth of what Jesus has done in the power of the Holy Spirit, and we do that with love, and boom.

That's big.

That's big.

So the good news here is I believe, with God's help, we're not doing this on our own, right?

We we love people, and we all this and and big things happen.

I I firmly, firmly believe, I'm gonna go out on a limb here, so to speak, and I'm gonna say, if we can have loving one another deeply, again, back to the first verse that we started with above all, love each other intensely.

If we can have that the foundation that we're that we're building on, I'm telling you, the Biggest problem we'll have is managing managing the explosive growth.

I'm sure of it.

I'm sure of it.

I'm sure of it.

God help us.

God help us.

Right?

We can make an impact.

Each one of us.

Okay, next slide.

How we I don't even know when I started.

Doesn't matter.

Okay.

So this is interesting.

I have to say, that Spurgeon quote I think was amazing.

I love it.

I love it.

And I read it every once in a while just to remind myself.

I have to say, there's actually, I'm gonna propose a second half to the gospel presentation that wasn't quite, it was actually hinted at in that.

And that was one of two of the gospel is hey, your sins are on Jesus, his righteousness is on you.

That sounds like really good news.

Good, good, good.

But in the quote, it actually, it did actually want to flip back to that?

I don't even know what slide it was.

Some of my stuff.

Let me see if it was part one, two, three.

So I think it's I think it's important, and it just slipped right in there.

Uh where is it?

Elderly brothers' robes.

There we go.

That number two, part two of two.

Oh, I caught that.

Look at that.

That's a big deal.

That's the second half, I think, of the good news, and it's just slipped in in just one little bit in one sentence.

My elder brother's garments are on me.

That's amazing.

It's not just like a, you know, you're forgiven, great, let's all be what to what end?

What are where are we headed with this though?

We're headed with.

Oh, I'm gonna skip, sorry.

I'm pretty sure.

Pretty sure there was.

Yeah, okay.

Let's go to adopt into one family.

Let's go all the way back down again.

We, the whole point of this is that we are adopted as God's children.

You mentioned at least it once, if not a couple times, this morning, right?

This is not just a let's be forgiven and move on.

We are designed, we have been created to be not only loving one another, but accessing God, God as our Father.

We can approach the creator of the heavens and the earth, and he's designed us and intended for us to do that.

That he has intended for us to be adopted as his children.

That's a pretty big deal.

I would propose, that's a pretty big deal.

Okay, the next slide then.

So here, actually, Jesus does talk about this.

Matthew 12.

I think I'm almost done, actually, by the way.

Um, Matthew 12, verse 46 through to 50.

Matthew 12:46

While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, uh, his mother and his brothers stood outside wanting to speak to him.

Someone told them, Your mother and your brothers are standing outside wanting to speak to you.

He replied to them, Who's my mother and who are my brothers?

Almost seems a little playful or cheeky or something, I'm not too sure.

Um, but pointing to his disciples, he said, Here are my mother and my brothers.

For whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and my sister and my mother.

Absolutely amazing.

Absolutely amazing.

So, there's one little note here.

Sometimes we like to think, uh, I don't know if you've been in any of these churches where people will say, brother so-and-so, brother Steve, brother Alan.

I actually, as much as I've never been in a church like that, and I think that's a little bit unusual, the the reminder, right?

You're almost forcing yourself, you're reminding yourself.

It's not as if, we're not like we're brothers and sisters.

Well, this is Jesus talking here.

No, no, no, no, we actually are.

That's it.

We're pretty much done.

Let's go to the last one.

Nice.

Nice.

I like that, Brother Sheldon.

Good.

Okay, so we can wrap things up.

So, what does that actually mean?

Uh so firstly, I gotta say, I would propose that it's not that we need to know what love is.

And most of us, I'm gonna be optimistic and say all of us don't need to be convinced to be loving.

We already are loving.

Uh we watched um Lost in Space on Netflix, not necessarily saying you should watch it, but there was one bit in there where there's two people, and one of the one of the ladies, she's always just out for herself.

And she says to, and there's a Robinson family, is a very tight-knit, there they love each other.

They've always got each other's back.

You know, that one of them's not okay if the other's not okay, right?

If there's some peril, they'll drop everything to rescue the one that's that's that needs help.

And so there's another lady on there, and she's only looking up for herself, and she said to the other, she said, We're the same.

We both take care of the ones we love.

I love myself, and you love your family.

And it's true then, isn't it?

We we don't need to be convinced to be loving.

We know what love is, we are loving, all of us.

Of course we are.

What we need is to be looking at our at who is in that circle of people that we love.

And then how can we, as we continue to grow, we're already, we blew right past the spot of us all being able to know each other really closely and really genuinely be able to have some of those interactions.

But that doesn't mean we've missed that opportunity, right?

So, what can we do moving forward?

Um, get to know somebody.

Get to know their story.

I was talking the other day to someone, they're talking about how isn't it interesting, even in a church, even in the smallest church, uh, you can go to somebody's funeral and their eulogy, be like, oh, that's an interesting person.

I didn't know anything about that.

Isn't that incredible?

We all have, that's part of the whole body thing, the members.

We all have these interesting stories.

We have a lot in common, and we have so many things that nobody else has ever been through, or at least a combination of those things.

We need, there should be a handful of people that know your story.

So, how do you do that?

I don't know, that's a little tricky.

Um, but so that kind of leads into the last, I'm gonna skip around here.

So, what do we call in the I I'm new here?

Community group?

House group?

Small group?

Any of those.

Any of those?

So a little plug then for community groups, house groups, small groups, whatever it happens to be.

Like there's another one just started on Thursday.

Amazing.

That is one of the spots then, isn't it?

Where you can get to know somebody's story.

Get to know who they are, get to know what they've been through, uh, what they're going through right now.

So I wanted to speak right now.

We're not quite in that spot.

We've shown up a couple Tuesday nights, but that's about it.

Shame.

Anyways.

Um hypocrites.

Insert word here.

But this is important.

We're ready way past the spot where we can all know each other.

So that's one of the things I think that's key.

This is then the skipping back to the second point, hospitality.

We're having a meal afterwards.

I'm not saying we can love each other deeply by having a meal together, but at least get to know somebody's name and just a little bit of their story, and we'll keep at it.

I've been in church circles where you know we have this the gift of hospitality.

I'm not sure that's biblical.

I think it ends with a mic drop.

Walk away.

I think that hospitality is something we're all meant to do.

Some of us are more comfortable with it.

Some of us are more happy to bake a cake or make some ribs or something like that.

But if you could put on a kettle or meet somebody at a pub or something, then let's do that.

Right?

A bit at a time, let's just keep at it.

What do you think?

So last slide.

You had me at ribs.

The first slide.

So, most importantly, above all, love each other deeply.

Okay?

I think I'll leave it at that, if that's okay.

Jesus, we help us, help us to remember, to remind ourselves, to remind each other of how much you love us.

A selfless love.

A deep, deep love.

Looking out for our best interest.

Thank you for what you've done.

Thank you for that love.

We see as commands to love like you've loved us, and the bar is just too high.

We can't actually do that, but would you help us?

Would you help us to make that a priority above all?

To love each other deeply.

Would you help us as we move forward to have that as a priority and as a foundation in the way we do life?

In the way we do church.

Help us to be involved.

Help us to be a part of that.

Amen.

So good.

Very good.

Thank you so much for absolutely brilliant.

It's a really weird church when no one knows whether to crack or not.

So