When We Disagree

I want to start with these very specific words.

Just love each other.

Just love each other.

Those are words that I find myself saying a lot in my home.

I find myself saying those words a lot in the car.

And by car, I mean the minivan.

We have four kids, if you don't know, and so gone are the days of me even dreaming about having a cool car.

Actually, I do have a cool car.

I think minivans are awesome.

I think they're amazing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

My car, uh my car has doors that open by themselves, you know, and can't even be hit by other vehicles.

My kids can't dent things.

It's great.

It's great.

When you have four kids and you drive, I want you to understand like you you learn the real purpose of rear view mirrors.

Many of you probably use your rear view mirror to look at the cars behind you.

I haven't used my rear view mirror for that in who knows how long.

Um, I use my rear view mirrors just to keep track of what's going on in the car.

And so sometimes it's really sweet.

Sometimes I'll hear one of my kids singing, or I'll just see them doing something, and I'll kind of like at a, you know, at a stoplight or something, just sort of adjust the mirror to watch them for a moment and just sort of be filled with appreciation and love for my kids and be like, wow, that's amazing.

I want to remember this.

One time I watched my daughter Lily uh asleep but simultaneously eating Cheetos.

Um and I was watching number one, like, do I need to like get involved here?

You know what I mean, take the Cheetos away.

But it was just, she was asleep, she had been eating Cheetos, and in her sleep, she's just like puts them to her mouth, and then they would fall.

And she was doing it, it was great.

That was a rearview mirror moment.

It was awesome.

Very often I am I'm looking through the rearview mirror and I'm providing correction to my children as well.

And those of you who've had kids, you know this where the rearview mirror is kind of like your ability just to like fixate on one of your kids, and as a child, I remember those moments where I'm like locked eyes with my dad, I'm in the backseat, he's in the front, and I'm just seeing his eyes in the rearview mirror, and I'm like, oh, okay, this is happening.

I do that a lot.

Like I'll turn and be like, hey, what are you doing?

You gotta stop that.

You gotta stop that.

And very often I'm I'm settling disputes because with four kids in a car, there is never agreement about anything.

Not the drive-thru that we're gonna go through.

There's there's never a hundred percent agreement about that, unless it's maybe ice cream.

But even then, it's like, which ice cream place do we want to go to?

Everyone's got an opinion, and four of them never line up.

It might be the music that we're gonna listen to, it might be whether or not we want the air blowing from the top or from the floor.

One of my kids hates it to feel air blowing in their face, and they're just like, no, and the other kids are like, no, it's horrible when it's from the.

It's like no matter what what choices we could make in the car, there's always disagreement.

And so I'm frequently looking through the rearview mirror at my kids and just saying, guys, just love each other.

Just love each other.

And when they're saying, well, well, he's doing this or she said that, or he won't do this, or he won't stop this.

I'm like, guys, I'll just kind of fixate on them.

Just love each other.

It's hard for them to love each other, though, because there's a lot of disagreement.

And this morning, I want us to talk about what we do as Jesus followers when we disagree.

Now, first of all, I want to acknowledge that I know not everyone in the room and not everyone watching online right now may consider yourself to be a Jesus follower.

We have people here that are checking it out, that are sort of just interested and curious.

That's great.

This conversation today, it really is a conversation specifically targeted to people who have said yes to Jesus.

And so if you haven't done that yet, just listen and understand maybe better than you have before what it actually means to say yes to Jesus.

But this morning I want us to talk.

All of us who have said yes to Jesus Christ in our lives, what do we do when we don't agree?

Because I don't know if you've noticed this or not in 2020.

People are having a really hard time agreeing.

Anyone notice that?

Anyone picked up on that?

Things are pretty divided.

There's a little bit of tension.

And you know that because there's probably never been a time in your life, or at least in most of our lifetimes, where you've maybe been as nervous or uncertain about saying something, about sharing an opinion around people, like I don't know where they stand on this, and I don't know what they're gonna respond to with that.

It's it's it's like in the air, it's palpable.

There's so much tension, there is so much division.

If you look at almost every poll on every major issue in America, it's just it's divided.

And that division, it's impacting our society in a lot of major ways, in a lot of negative ways.

But I've also seen it impact the church.

I've seen that division find its way into the church and in our nation.

And it's something that we absolutely have to guard against.

Like we have to guard against this with an intentionality that we we utilize for very few things.

We have to be that focused to make sure that we don't become divided.

We can't become divided.

What do we do when we disagree?

One of the things I love about our church, specifically this church, is that we're a very diverse church.

And we're diverse in the ways that our culture values.

We're diverse in terms of race and age and gender and all those things on our staff, on our team, all of our people.

That's great.

But we're also diverse in some ways that our culture doesn't really value that much.

We are very diverse in thought.

We're very diverse in opinion.

This may come as a shock to many of you, but sitting around you are people who are gonna vote for the person that you're not gonna vote for.

And some of you are like, no, there's just no way.

But that's that's true.

There's a lot of diversity of opinion and thought, as there should be.

That's not a bad thing.

But that's gonna lead to disagreement.

What do we do when those disagreements that we see happening in our culture happen in here?

How do we approach that?

How do we handle that?

That's what I want us to talk about this morning because this is vital, this is crucial, this is core.

What do we do?

And the answer, I'm gonna spoil it like early on, and then we're gonna we're gonna figure out how to walk this out.

Just love each other.

Jesus in John 15, verses 9 through 17 says, I have loved you even as the Father has loved me.

John 15:9–17

Remain in my love.

That's an interesting statement, right?

Remain in my love.

It's almost as if we can choose in certain moments to like sidestep it.

He says, No, no, remain in my love, cling to it, hold on to it.

When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my father's commandments and I remain in his love.

I've told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy.

Yes, your joy will overflow.

If any of us watching, listening in the room online are needing more joy in our lives, here's the answer.

Apparently, if we do what Jesus says to do here, we will overflow with joy.

And he says, This is my commandment.

Love each other in the same way that I have loved you.

There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends.

You're my friends if you do what I command.

I no longer call you slaves because a master doesn't confide in his slaves.

Now you're my friends.

Since I've told you everything the Father told me, you didn't choose me, I chose you.

I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for using my name, and this is my command.

Love one another.

Just love each other.

Jesus said this to his disciples.

And one of the things that's very easy to glance over or to just forget about is the fact that the disciples were a very diverse group of people.

They were not all like-minded people, and you see that when you read the story of Jesus and you see how many arguments the disciples get in.

Amen.

Right?

You see that.

They're prone to jealousy, they're prone to infighting and arguments because they weren't like-minded people much of the time.

They didn't all have the same opinions, they didn't all have the same viewpoints.

In fact, some of them were about as opposite as opposite could be.

Let me give you an example.

I want to read the list of the disciples in Matthew chapter 10, verses 2 through 4.

Matthew 10:2–4

It says, Here are the names of the twelve apostles, those twelve being the core disciples of Jesus.

First Simon, also called Peter, then Andrew, Peter's brother, James, the son of Zebedee, John, James's brother, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, the tax collector, James, the son of Alphae, Thaddeus, Simon the zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who later betrayed him.

Now, some of these guys we know a lot about because we have lots of stories where we see them talking, like Peter, for example, he's always talking.

We have a really good read on who Peter is.

In fact, we have whole books of the New Testament, letters that Peter himself wrote.

Others, like we don't know much about at all.

Bartholomew, for example, total no-show.

Doesn't, he's just he's there, he's on the list, but there's never one story where Bartholomew's doing anything at all.

So we just we have no idea what that guy's like.

Others we don't really have any stories of, but just their title, their name tells us a lot.

For example, one of the last ones mentioned was Simon the Zealot.

And that doesn't mean that he was just a really zealous person, that he was passionate.

In Israel at that time, there were there were four major political and religious groups.

You had the Pharisees, they were like the religious fundamentalists.

You had the Sadducees, they were people who believed in God, but they had a lot of political power.

They didn't really believe in the miraculous.

Their whole purpose was holding on to the power that they had.

And so Jesus threatened the Pharisees because he challenged some of their fundamentalist ideas.

They couldn't picture being wrong.

I know none of us can relate to that.

I can't.

I mean, I can't, you know, right?

They couldn't picture being wrong.

And so when Jesus challenged them, they're like, no, no, no, we're not wrong, you're wrong.

The Sadducees, they were challenged by Jesus because Jesus threatened their power.

Then you had this group called the Essenes, and they just completely withdrew from society.

They they went and they hid and they stayed together, they wrote out scripture, they transcribed the Old Testament, they did stuff like that, but they were completely and totally disconnected from culture.

And then you have this fourth group called the Zealots, and they were revolutionaries.

They were the resistance.

They were a group that really got started right about the exact same time Jesus was born.

Their founder was a man named Judas of Galilee from the exact same area that Jesus was from.

And he had led this insurrection against Rome, and it didn't go well.

Those things tended to not go well.

When you went against Rome, you usually lost.

And it created a ton of conflict in their area, in their region.

But even though Rome defeated Judas and the zealots, the zealot movement continued.

And it really grew in popularity.

The zealots were all about the violent overthrow of the Roman government.

Whatever it took to overthrow Rome, they were willing to do it.

In fact, there was this branch of zealots that were called the Sakari, and that word meant dagger men.

And they were called that because they would carry daggers with them, and if they had an opportunity to assassinate a Roman officer in public, they would do it.

The most famous story of the zealots actually has to do with the whole fall of Jerusalem.

In about AD 66, the zealots had another uprising.

They actually defeated a Roman garrison.

And so they thought they had won, and there was great popularity among the people with them because the general people wanted Rome gone, and so they're like, okay, maybe this is happening, but then Rome responded in force.

And Rome sent a massive, massive army, defeated about a hundred thousand Israelites.

Everyone flees to Jerusalem.

And the good thing about Jerusalem is that it was a well-fortified city.

It would take a long time for even Rome to besiege that city, and they had years worth of supplies of food stored in Jerusalem.

Many people were arguing amongst themselves about how they were going to approach this whole situation.

Many wanted to negotiate peace with Rome.

But if any leaders spoke up and said that that's what they wanted to do, the zealots had them assassinated, had them killed.

Because the zealots wanted a war.

And so things really hit their tipping point when the zealots decided to intentionally burn all the food supplies.

Their thought was that that's a crutch.

And as long as the people have that, they're not going to fight Rome, because we need to fight Rome.

And so if we take that away, then people won't have an excuse and they'll actually fight.

And they did that, and it was disastrous.

People starved.

By the time Rome actually came in and conquered, the people were so weak they couldn't really put up much of a fight.

And over one million Jewish people died in that time period.

All of that because of the zealots.

They didn't care who died as long as they advanced their cause.

And Simon used to be one of those guys.

Now, all that took place after Jesus, but but Simon was one of the earlier members of that movement.

And then you have Matthew.

Matthew is described as the tax collector.

Matthew would have been his Greek name.

Levi was his Jewish name.

He was a tax collector.

And he was someone that everyone would have hated.

In fact, Simon the Zealot, the only person that Simon would have been conditioned to hate more than a Roman officer would be someone like Matthew.

Because Matthew was a traitor.

Tax collectors did what their name suggests, they collected taxes.

Many of you might know this, but it's interesting to think about.

But what they would do is they would go collect taxes in their area and they had Roman soldiers under their authority.

And they might go up to you and say, hey, you owe this much to the Roman government.

You'd be like, I don't know that much.

I owe way less than that.

I know how much I owe.

And they're like, yeah, but you're going to pay that.

And then they would keep the extra.

And if you resisted, they had Roman soldiers.

They would have you arrested.

They would have you thrown in jail.

So they profited off the oppression of Rome, and they were almost always native to the area that they collected taxes in.

So Matthew would have been a Jewish man who had betrayed his people, aligned himself with Rome to line his own pockets.

We see the disdain for tax collectors in Mark chapter 2, verses 13 through 16.

Mark 2:13–16

It says, Jesus went out to the lake shore again and taught the crowds that were coming to him.

As he walked along, he saw Levi, this same person, son of Alphaus, sitting at his tax collector's booth.

Follow me and be my disciple, Jesus said to him.

So Levi got up and followed him.

Later Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners.

There were many people of this kind among Jesus' followers.

Real quick side note.

If you ever for a moment think that you are somehow disqualified from being part of the family of God because of your past, because of a mistake that you have made, you are not.

You all belong.

We all belong, because there were many people like that among Jesus' followers.

They were disreputable sinners.

Some of us, we're disreputable sinners, right?

We're better than that.

No, we all belong.

We all belong.

But I love the fact in this moment, well, I'll keep reading real quick.

But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, why does he eat with such scum?

I love that in both instances the tax collectors, whoa, there we go.

Someone's turning lights on.

They don't know that.

They're gonna come out of that storage room and be real surprised.

Um I love the fact that in both of those instances, the tax collectors are listed in their own category.

Right?

It's not like a bunch of sinners that included tax collectors.

It was tax collectors and then other sinners.

They are they are special, they're their own category of bad because they were traitors, because their greed led them to betray their own people.

And so Matthew's someone that everyone would have hated, but Simon the Zealot, he would have been conditioned to actually desire to murder someone like Matthew.

And Jesus intentionally calls both of these guys to be his disciples, people who couldn't be more different, more unlikely to agree, to get along, to love each other, and then he looks at them and he says, Love each other.

When Jesus commanded his disciples to love each other, he understood that that would not be easy.

He knew what he was doing, he understood that that would mean they would have to set differences aside, and yet he commanded them to anyway.

We see this multiple times in the Gospels.

In John chapter 13, verses 34 and 35, Jesus says, Now I'm giving you a new commandment.

John 13:34

Love each other.

Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.

Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.

This is so important.

It's so vital for us to understand that the proof to the world that we belong to Jesus is our love for each other.

It's our love for each other.

I'm not saying, yeah, it's look, we should love the world.

We should love everyone in the world, absolutely.

We should love all people.

But what Jesus is saying is that it's actually our love for one another, not the purity of our lives, that's important.

Absolutely, that honors God.

But Jesus doesn't say that's what's going to prove to the world that you belong to me, the things that you abstain from.

He says, no, it's the way you love each other.

The way you treat one another, that's the proof to the world that you're my disciples.

In John chapter 17, which by the way, if you've never read, I would challenge you, just read John 17 today.

John 17 · chapter mention

It's one of the most powerful chapters of scripture that we have.

It's Jesus praying for us.

Jesus praying for you.

And just laying out to the Father his desire for his people who come after him.

In John chapter 17, verse 23, he says, May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me.

John 17:23

Do we see the stakes?

Our love for one another is proof to the world not only that we belong to Jesus, but it's proof to the world that Jesus is from God.

And so if the world looks and sees a church just as divided as it is, what's it supposed to do?

We cannot be divided.

And yet I'm seeing more division happening within the church than I've seen in my lifetime.

I'm seeing more arguments on social media about things that frankly at the end of the day don't matter.

It don't matter nearly as much as our love for one another, at least.

All the tension and all the division in our world, it has a tendency to find its way in.

And we have to be very careful about this.

We have to be very much on guard about this because the stakes are high.

Our love for each other, our ability to love each other, even though we don't agree on everything.

It's the proof to the world that we belong to God.

It's the proof to the world that Jesus is from God.

The stakes are high.

We have to love each other.

So how do we actually do that?

Because it's not easy, right?

How do we love each other?

I want us to focus on two very simple, but simple, but not easy things that we've got to remember.

Two things we have to remember at all times if we're gonna live out this command of Jesus.

Because remember, guys, it's it's a command.

I mean, Jesus says it, it's a command.

Love each other.

Number one, we have to remember what unites us.

We have to remember what unites us.

Sometimes we we settle for unity that's much, much less intense, less important than what actually unites us.

You know, I've got friends who I'm I'm somewhat close to because we root for the same sports team.

But look, there's people in the room right now that are North Carolina fans.

Like Scott, I saw you here earlier today, and you know, God bless you, man.

Um, I love you.

And you're wrong, but I love you, you know?

But you know what it's like?

You have friends and you're united because you have a similar interest, you have a similar passion, you root for the same team, you know, you share the same opinions about major issues in the world.

It's nice to have people like that around you.

And sometimes when you're around people who are like-minded, you can feel very unified because you all you all have agreement.

But those are not the things that are actually meant to unite us ultimately as followers of Jesus.

We have to remember what actually unites us.

Matthew chapter 16, verses 13 through 16.

Matthew 16:13–16

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, Who do people say that the Son of Man is?

Well, they replied, some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, others say Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

And then he asked them, but who do you say I am?

Simon Peter answered, You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

The confession that Peter makes right there, Jesus looks at Peter and he says, That is the rock that I will build my church upon.

The confession that Jesus Christ is Lord and He's a Messiah.

Now, now a little bit of context.

Very interesting where Jesus chose to ask this question to his followers.

It says they arrived at Caesarea Philippi.

That was a city that was named after two people.

One Caesar, that's the Caesarea part.

Caesar, the ruler of Rome, who had conquered pretty much all that part of the world.

I mean, really, his his the empire of Rome stretched all the way from like Europe, England, that part, all the way down into Africa.

I mean, it was massive.

So Caesar and then Philip.

Philip was one of the sons of a man named Herod the Great.

If you're familiar with the story of Jesus' birth, that's the same Herod, who was who was a king by lineage, but under the Roman Empire, he was allowed to still have a rule as long as he made sure that his area was still subservient to Rome.

That Herod that tried to have Jesus killed as a child, he passed away, and that's when Jesus and his family came back, and they lived back in the area where he grew up in Nazareth.

But before that, they were they were living in Egypt.

They were hiding out because Jesus was really a wanted criminal from birth.

That Herod, when he passed away, he had several sons and he divided up his rule to them.

One of those was Philip.

And so you have this city, and it's named after Caesar, and it's named after Philip.

It's all about the politics of the day.

It was a city that really symbolized the political realities of that world.

And notice that Jesus doesn't look at his disciples and in that place say, Hey, what do you guys think about Caesar?

What's your opinion on Rome?

The whole Roman Empire and the state of it.

That would have been a relevant question to ask in that place.

There was a temple to Caesar in that city.

But Jesus didn't ask that.

He could have looked at his disciples and said, Hey, what do you guys think of Philip?

What do you think of Herod the Great and his family and how they represent Israel and its people?

That would have been a relevant question for Jesus to ask at that place.

Because Caesarea Philippi was symbolic of the politics of the day.

But Jesus didn't ask that question.

He says, What do you guys think about me?

Who do you say that I am?

Let me just say this with clarity.

When we stand before God one day, and all of us will.

I don't know.

Maybe he could ask that.

He has that prerogative.

I just, I don't think so.

I don't get any indication from scripture that that's going to be on the top of his mind.

He's not going to ask what your opinion is on whatever the hot button issue of the day is, but he is going to ask, who do you say I am?

And the confession that Jesus Christ is Lord, that he is king, that he is God.

That unites us.

That's what makes us brothers and sisters.

If you believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, is the Savior, is the King of Kings, He's the Lord of Lords, He's the Alpha, the Omega, the one who created everything, He's the one that everything exists for.

If you believe that, you're my brother, you're my sister, period.

End of story.

Doesn't matter who you're gonna vote for, doesn't matter what you believe about anything else going on in our culture, in our country, politically, you're my brother, you're my sister, because we share the same confession.

That's what unites us.

And we cannot allow anything less than that to rise to the level of importance that it could divide us.

But I've just I've had conversations in the last few months that I just haven't been prepared for, to be honest.

And I'm seeing these divisions creep their way in and they have to go.

I had a gentleman that I had a phone call with a few months ago, someone I love very much, great guy, and I really look forward to hanging out with him again.

And the reason I called him was because I had heard he was really frustrated with the church.

And by the way, I'm frustrated with the church sometimes, like our church.

There's things I want to change.

Like if any of us on staff will tell you that we are aware that there's opportunities all the time.

That's why we work so hard.

But I heard he was frustrated, and I wanted to call him and talk to him because I love him.

And I asked him, Man, I hear you're frustrated, talk to me.

And and he went on this long spiel, about 15 minutes, and it was all about the politics of our day.

And he touched on about everything you can imagine, and his opinions on the state of America and where we're at politically and what's going on in our country and all this stuff.

And when he was done, I said, Man, that's really interesting.

And I actually agreed with much of what he said, not all of it, but a lot of it.

And I just said, What does that have to do with our church?

And he paused for a second because it was like he hadn't processed, it was so intertwined in his mind.

And he was like, Well, I I guess I just wish you would talk more about politics from the stage.

And and just please hear my heart when I say this.

No, no.

Um, just no.

And here's why.

It is not because I'm afraid of offending people, I'm actually pretty good at offending people.

Um, like my foot has been in my mouth so many times, metaphorically, right?

And I'm not afraid to offend people, but but the church, his hands.

When we offend people, which we will, it's gonna be because we boldly stand for the truth of scripture.

It's because we boldly stand for the truth of who Jesus is and what Jesus says is right and good and pure.

When we take a stand for those things, we can and very much will offend people from time to time, and that's okay.

But but why would I, or why would any of us decide to let something much smaller than the reality of Jesus be a point of offense to our world around us?

That's foolish.

A great example of that would be if you read the book of Acts, when when Paul lands in Athens, he's like offended.

Athens is the hub of the Greek world, and there's temples to all these false gods.

You know, you think of all the Greek gods that you're aware of, and Zeus and Aphrodite name it, and and there's like a temple to all of them in Athens.

And it tells us in scripture when Paul lands there, he's just like incensed in his spirit.

He's offended.

And then we actually have him talk to the Athenians.

We actually have recorded the message that he gave to them, and even though he was so upset and so offended, he just didn't he did this thing that very few people do anymore.

It's like a lost art.

He kept opinions to himself.

It was a it was amazing.

And he took his offense and he set it aside and he spoke to them with grace and dignity and love, and he commended them on whatever he could find to commend them on.

And that was spirit-led.

I'm not afraid of offending anyone.

And look, guys, I'm not saying there's not going to be times where we might talk about something that is a hot button issue politically.

Sometimes there's overlap.

In fact, not that long ago, I talked about abortion.

And by the way, if you're someone who's ever had an abortion or been involved in that in any way, there is grace for you, there is love for you, there's forgiveness and mercy and all of those things.

And we have we actually have a group here called Healing Hearts that is specifically to help people who have gone through that have the healing that they need because they very often need that.

They don't think they can turn to anyone for that.

But abortion's a major hot button topic, and I don't view it as a political topic.

I'm I'm I'm a Jesus follower.

And so, how in the world could I support something that very much goes against the entire way that my Savior came into this world?

I mean, my faith is all about the promise of an unborn child, the promise of Jesus in Mary's womb, that he had a destiny, that he was going to save the world, and he hadn't been born yet.

So my faith teaches me that children have a destiny before they ever exit the womb.

And we see that in scripture time and time again.

And so when it comes to things like that, sure, we'll say, and that might make some people upset, and that's okay.

But we're not going to be a political church because it's just not that important.

It's not, it's not that important, it's not as important as we we very often feel that it is.

I'm not saying it is unimportant.

And if you believe right now that our nation is at a pivotal moment, yeah, probably.

I imagine we're at pivotal moments far often than we realize.

But it's not as important as we make it out to be.

It's not because I'm afraid of offending someone, it's also not because I don't have strong political opinions.

I do.

And those of you who know me well probably know what some of those opinions are because we talk.

And what's interesting is I actually personally feel like my faith very much informs my political opinions, sometimes to the point where it's really hard for me to imagine how someone who shares my faith could arrive at different political opinions.

Anyone relate to that?

Where you're like, I just don't understand how someone who's a Christian could ever vote for this person.

And we have all these reasons, and yet at the same time, I know many other people who have just as passion of faith as I have, who love the Lord just as much as I do, who know scripture just as well as I do, and they have come to different conclusions.

And I also remember the fact that I've been wrong a good bit in my life.

And so maybe, maybe, just maybe, I've got to have the humility to say, hey, you know what?

I have strong opinions.

But there's a difference between strong opinions and vision.

Sometimes we have to lay our strong opinions aside in order to see what God wants us to see.

The main reason that we're just not going to be a church that gets super political, no matter how much people might want us to or how much we're we're challenged to, it's because of Jesus.

In his own words, John chapter 18, he said, My kingdom is not an earthly kingdom.

John 18 · chapter mention

If it were, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish leaders, but my kingdom is not of this world.

Could he be more clear?

Like Jesus' followers, could he be more clear?

His kingdom is not of this world.

People tried really hard to make the movement of Jesus a political movement.

They tried to make him a king, they tried to offer him the kingdom of that area, and he refused it.

Because it would have been a downgrade for him.

I mean, he's the king of the universe.

When they said, You want to be king of Galilee, he's like, I already am, you know?

Like, his kingdom is not of this world.

And we have to remember that.

His kingdom is greater, it's higher, it's bigger.

And one day, every single nation in this world will cease to exist.

Every political system in this world will cease to exist, but the kingdom of heaven will never cease to exist.

We have to believe that.

So much so that we're not willing to be divided to let this kingdom, the kingdom of God, be divided, because of a lesser kingdom.

What unites us is not our political affiliation, it's not our opinions.

Strong as they may be about anything else, what unites us is the confession that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Raise your hand if you believe that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Look around, those are your brothers and your sisters.

Period, end of story.

Number two, we have to remember what love looks like.

What real love looks like.

Whenever I do weddings, and I don't do that many anymore, so if you're getting married, you can ask, but I may not do them, and that's mainly because I've messed a few up, okay?

One time I called the bride by the wrong name, and that was bad.

Just recently, the last one I did, two of my favorite people in the world, in fact, Matt Whitlow, who was singing on stage, got married to Eliza, who's also on our worship team.

And I did their wedding just a few weeks ago, and it was awesome and wonderful.

It's so great.

Except whenever I said, ladies and gentlemen, Mr.

and Mrs.

Matthew, I just blanked and forgot Matt's last name for a second.

And so I just said Mr.

and Mrs.

Matthew.

And uh, you know, and everyone was gracious enough to clap.

Um, so I've I've messed a few weddings up.

The biggest one I messed up was the one I forgot to go to, but that was a different story.

Um just calendars, right, Fred?

Calendars?

I didn't write it down.

I'm like, yeah, I'll be there.

And then I got a call from a lady who seemed very concerned, and she's like, Justin, are you here?

I was like, Who is this?

Oh, you're getting married right now, and I'm not there.

And I'm not gonna be, because I'm an hour and a half away.

I was horrible.

I was really bad.

They went to church here.

I don't know if they do anymore.

Um, and I understand.

I understand.

I would probably leave too.

Um, I get it.

So, no, I don't do many weddings anymore.

But when I do weddings, it's amazing how often people want they want me to read 1 Corinthians 13.

You know, the classic love scripture.

And I'm always like, Are you sure?

Like, because you you do know that that's not talking about romance, right?

That's not talking about like you're the most beautiful, amazing person in the world.

Like, it's not, it's it's a different kind of love.

And what we can read it, I would love to read it at every wedding.

Just know that this is not warm, fuzzy love.

This is a whole different kind of love that you cannot practice apart from the Holy Spirit.

But we wanna we wanna remember what love looks like.

If we're gonna be united, we have to remember what unites us and remember what love looks like.

So I'm gonna read this.

1 Corinthians 13, 3 through 7.

I'm actually gonna read it in the message version, and the reason why is because uh sometimes we hear scriptures that we've heard so many times that it's just sort of, we go automatic in our brains, and seeing just different wording can kind of make it new again.

And I think the message version of this is really good.

If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere.

So no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.

And this love, it's talking about uh in the Greek, it's agape, it's the love of God, really.

Love never gives up.

Love cares more for others than for self.

Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.

Love doesn't strut, doesn't have a swelled head, doesn't force itself on others.

It's not always me first.

Love doesn't fly off the handle, it doesn't keep score of the sins of others, it doesn't revel when others groble, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts God always, always looks for the best, never looks back, but keeps going to the end.

That's what love looks like.

And I love if you if you think about these words, I love how many of these statements assume that there will be conflict.

They assume that there will be disagreement.

Like it says, love never gives up, and the the actual translation we we usually say is love is patient.

But baked into the cake with that is that we'll be tempted to give up.

We'll be tempted to give up on one another sometimes.

We'll be tempted to get upset and to allow division to come in, but it says, no, no, love never gives up.

Love never gives up.

It says that love doesn't strut.

Ooh.

I love that one.

You know what that means?

If in a week or so, whenever the election happens, or who whenever we know what the results of that election will be, who knows?

Um if your candidate wins, don't get on social media and strut.

Don't get on social media and rag and gloat.

Don't do that.

Because it's not loving.

Baked into the cake in so many of those statements is that there will be division, there will be challenges, there will be struggles.

Like love doesn't look backwards.

Love keeps no record of wrongs.

That's what that's talking about.

It doesn't look backwards, and that means there's gonna be the temptation for us to look backwards and remember the times that people have upset us and hurt us and frustrated us and disagreed with us.

But in all those circumstances, we're supposed to say, No, I love you.

I love you, you're my brother, you're my sister.

Love is hard.

One of my favorite things about this church is our commitment to the love of God.

And I'll never forget, years ago, I was much, much younger, and and Steve Craig was the pastor at the time, and he talked about the fact that very often he would have people challenge him and say, When are you gonna stop talking about the love of God?

We get it.

Like, can we move on to the harder stuff?

And the falsehood in that is that we believe that love is the basic thing and the other things are advanced.

No, love is the most advanced thing.

That's clearly what Paul's talking about here in 1 Corinthians 13.

He's like, look, if I if I spoke in tongues, if I had every gift of prophecy you could imagine, but I didn't have love, it would be worthless.

Love is the most advanced thing.

It's the hardest, it's the hardest to master.

I've been married for 15 years.

I love my wife, and I have a set of vows that I committed to.

And it would be possible for me to follow all of those vows and not love her.

It's actually easier to follow a list of rules than it is to actually love someone.

But I'm told that my job is to love her the same way that Jesus loves the church.

We gotta remember what love looks like.

Because Jesus has commanded us to love each other.

So important for us to remember right now, church, because, well, number one, we're kind of at a new season as a church.

It's like we're restarting again and it's fun.

It's like we're back to the foundations.

And our foundation is love.

But we're also in a time when no matter what happens in the weeks to come, our culture will be divided.

No matter what happens, no matter who wins, there's gonna be a massive, a massive percentage of people who are upset and distraught.

That's that's guaranteed.

What are we gonna do as the church to bridge the gaps?

We have to remember what unites us.

Confession that Jesus Christ is Lord, and we've got to love each other.

Even when it's inconvenient, even when it's hard.

Think back to that driving analogy with the rearview mirrors.

Jesus is still in the driver's seat.

Amen.

He's in control.

He still has the power, and he's looking at us in the rearview mirror, and he loves us, and he looks at us with passion and joy in his eyes.

And he's looking at us behind him, going, guys, just love each other.

Just love each other.

So here's what I ask you to do, and we're gonna pray and be done.

I want you to be open this week, today, to God bringing to your mind someone else who shares your confession that Jesus Christ is Lord, and you know you do not agree with them on a variety of other things.

Reach out to them and tell them that you love them.

You don't have to make it a big long spiel.

Don't get sucked into an argument.

But someone comes to your mind, like, I know they I know they believe in Jesus, and I know that I disagree with them on many other things.

This week, just reach out to him and say, I love you.

Hey, I was thinking about you, and I love you.

And they might text you back, that's really weird, man.

Like, oh, sorry, it's all good.

My pastor told me to.

You can just do that.

It's a church thing, and pastors all like doing it.

Um just tell them you love them.

Because love conquers all.

It does.

Love covers a multitude of sins.

That's what scripture says.

Remember what unites us.

Remember what love looks like.

Just love each other.

Let's pray.

Father God, thank you so much for the love that you have given us.

God, it's a gift.

It's an amazing gift that we don't deserve, that we can never earn, but you've given it to us, Lord.

Father, I pray that you would renew our passion and our commitment to love each other.

We know that it's only by your spirit that we can do that.

We pray all this in your name.

Amen.