Fellowship
Transcript
It's good to see you all this morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We are in the last week of our Abide series where we are talking through ancient practices for enjoying God. Grab your Bible. Go to John chapter 15.
If you have one of the Bibles in the row, one of these blue ones, it'll be on page 526. If you don't own a Bible, take this one home with you. That's our gift to you. We want you to own a Bible. We want you to read it. That's actually how we started this series, talking about reading the Bible, how important it is for us to enjoy God that way through His Word.
I remember the first time somebody asked me, how have you been enjoying Jesus, or are you enjoying Jesus? And it struck me, it was a little odd. I wasn't prepared for that question. I'd grown up in the church, but the idea of enjoying Jesus and enjoying my relationship with Him was not something I had ever considered. Like, if they had looked at me and said, have you been obeying Jesus? Like, I was ready for that question.
When was the last time you repented of sin? Tell me what's wrong with you. Like, I'm ready for those. But then when it was, have you been enjoying Jesus, or how are you enjoying Jesus? I wasn't ready. Every week on Sundays, we come in here, we set things up, we do a walkthrough.
It makes our sounds work, and we walk through the order of kind of how we're going to do things, make sure people know who's going to read Scripture, all that kind of stuff. And last week, I had to bring my son with me, my four-year-old. So we went up there to do the walkthrough. I sat him in a chair. I said, sit here, be quiet. And he did that moderately well.
But one of the songs we did last week was Psalm 34, and it's called Taste and See That the Lord is Good. So as we were reading through it, they said, okay, and then we'll do Psalm 34, Taste and See That the Lord is Good. And my four-year-old went, gross. And for a lot of us, that's kind of our natural reaction to the idea of enjoying God. Is this like, uh, is that okay? Like, am I allowed to do that?
Like, obey, serve, follow, submit. Like, I'm ready for those terms. But the idea of enjoying God makes me catch a little bit and go, is this all right? Are we okay to do this? So, uh, in the, the book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, it's written by C.S. Lewis.
They're on a boat and they are out, um, uh, adventuring and discovering new lands. And they go to this island and they come up on the island and they walk up, uh, and there's this table, beautiful, ornate table that is massive. And it is covered with every type of delicacy you could find. The most beautiful display of food you have ever seen at a buffet or your grandmother's house looked childish in, in front of this. It looked like something a kid made out of Play-Doh. Like, this was beautiful and delicious.
And it's sitting there out in the middle of nowhere on this pavilion and there's nobody around. And so the story is they, they walk up on it and some of the sailors, they've been to sea for a while, they really want to eat this. And other ones are like, don't touch that. Like, we don't know whose it is, but this feels weird. Like, this is odd. There should be some people here.
And if they're not here right now, they're going to come back and we can't just be piled around their table eating or it's enchanted. It's magic. It'll kill us. I don't know, but this is sketchy. And I was reading that and I thought that would be me. That would be my, I'd be going, huh, huh, huh, huh.
I know it looks good. Let's hold off a second. This may not be the best thing. I don't usually just walk up. If you found a dinner table in the middle of the woods, I probably wouldn't just be like, oh, cool. Let me eat.
Like, you know, you would just hold off. And I think that some of us, as we're talking about enjoying God, there's this, ah, should we? Is that okay? Is that how I ought to think about this? And Jesus takes the head of the table and says, pull up a chair. That we are meant to delight in God.
That we're meant to enjoy him. That the invitation to abide in Christ is an invitation to joy and delight. This is throughout the scriptures. This idea of delighting in the Lord, delighting in his law, delighting in his goodness, tasting and seeing that he is good. That we would see his glory, but that we would enjoy how good he is. Spencer, as we were talking last week about creeds and confessions, he quoted the Westminster Shorter Catechism.
And the beginning of it says that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Jonathan Edwards, who was a U.S. pastor and a missionary to Native Americans, says God is glorified not only by his glories being seen, but by its being rejoiced in, meaning enjoyed. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. God designed the world to display his glory that it might impact our hearts and our minds that it might be delighted in and enjoyed. And that makes sense if you think about it, that if God is supremely glorious, when we saw his supreme glory, we wouldn't go neat.
I will just submit to that. No, we would, we'd be swept up in it. We would delight in him that if he is really good, when you grew to know him, it would be really good. We have the phrase, people say the proof is in the pudding. The original phrase is the proof of the pudding is in the eating, meaning your pudding might look nice. I'm going to need to taste it first.
Then I'll tell you. That's like if you see banana pudding and it's yellow, it might not be good. They may have not done this right. Maybe it is. Taste it. And that's what it's saying.
This idea that we would not only just see God, but that in seeing and knowing him, we would draw close to him and we would enjoy him. And that's our hope through this series. As we've talked about Bible reading, as we've talked about prayer, as we've talked about Sabbathing and serving, as we've talked about feasting and fasting, as we've talked about confessing, that we would verbally sing and confess with our mouths. These are all ancient practices that church has done forever. And the point is to draw close to the Lord and to delight in him, because to know him is to love him and to be loved by him and to be swept up in how good he is.
And this is our last week. And so we're kind of summarizing the series and we're going to talk through our last ancient practice. We're going to talk through fellowship, that we would love one another and that by loving one another, we are designed to enjoy God in that way. So let's pray. And then we're going to jump into John chapter 15. God, we thank you that in giving yourself for us, that you also give us to one another and that you empower us to have genuine relationships and walk in your love together.
We pray that as we study this today, that we would not just hear it, but that we would do it, that we would become those who practice what your people have practiced for centuries. We ask for all the help you will offer us by your grace and your spirit in Jesus name. Amen. John chapter 15, verse nine, Jesus is talking with his disciples. This is the night before he is going to be betrayed. Actually, Judas is off betraying him currently, and he's talking to his disciples and he is talking to them, praying with them, and then he'll go to the cross the next day.
And he says this, this is the same passage we started this series. And this is right after he says, abide in me. I'm the vine. You're the branches. Unless you abide in me, you cannot bear any fruit. You will do nothing.
This is right after that. He says, as the father has loved me, so have I loved you. But the same love that the father has for the son, he has for us. And he says, abide in my love. Abide means dwell in, live in, rest in. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.
Just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. That's again the same idea that to know the Lord and to rest in him and delight in him is to have joy. That that is the invitation. That is not begrudging submission, but that there is joy. And then he says, this is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.
So I want to show you this verse 10. He said, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. Just as I've kept the father's commandments and abide in his love. And then you skip a verse. And the only reason we did that was so that it could all fit on the screen. This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.
So he says, keep my commandments. And then he says, this is my commandment. Now he has other ones, but he's highlighting this one in the middle of this conversation. He's saying, if you will keep my commandments, you'll live in my love. And he says, and this is my commandment. This is it.
This is the primary one. Love one another. And so by loving one another, we practice abiding in the love of Jesus. By loving one another as he has loved us, we practice, we walk in, we participate in the love of Jesus. And for anybody who's been a part of the church for some time, you probably have seen that and felt that. That one of the ways that Jesus loves you is that his church loves you.
And one of the ways you feel loved by Christ is how his church loves you. When you're having a hard time, when you're hurting, when you're sad and people call and care and show up, you feel loved. You also maybe have noticed that when you go out of your way to love others, you feel the love of Christ. He empowers it in you. And so there's this idea that we receive the love of Jesus as we are loved by one another. And that we are a conduit for the love of Jesus as we love others.
But this idea of loving one another helps us abide, helps us live in the love of Jesus. That we were meant to belong to one another. That Jesus was rescuing and redeeming for himself a people. That the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever together. That every time you get a picture of heaven, it's people piled around the throne. It's not individuals lined up getting to see him one at a time.
It's that we belong together as a family redeemed by Jesus. That we get to belong to Jesus. That we get to interact with him and that we get to love one another and abide in his love together. I saw a tweet recently. This is such a normal practice for Christians. This idea that we would belong to one another, that we'd have real deep meaningful relationships, is one of the most normal things for Christians and one of the weirdest things for our culture.
That's why we love TV shows that display it. Love TV shows that display people who have real deep genuine friendships. Because we long for it and we are incapable of doing it well. Y'all notice that? How the shows keep the same characters for long periods of time. And how that never happens in your life.
Your life has so many spin-off shows where new characters have come in and ones have gone out. Because we have this extremely difficult time of relating to one another. I saw a tweet recently that said, Nobody ever talks about Jesus' miracle of having 12 close friends in his 30s. But it's the truth. That we're so bad at having relationships and sustaining them. We desire this.
But if you are in a community group, you are bizarre to our culture. You are. The only thing that brought y'all together is Jesus. So maybe people will kind of go, Okay, I understand. Maybe y'all are supposed to do this. But you're having deep, meaningful relationships where you're sharing life with others.
Where you're confessing sin with others. Where you are intentionally overcoming the fact that the people in your group are exceedingly annoying. And you're sticking with it. Nobody does that. It's extremely difficult. Whenever I get to preach weddings, People sometimes get to ask me to preach weddings.
And I enjoy preaching weddings. It's stressful. Because people remember the stuff you say in weddings. Not the people getting married. They don't usually remember. Because they're just freaking out.
But other people listen. They kind of remember. So I always, you know, I just get up here with some notes and talk. You know. Not at weddings. I stand with a little book.
I stand still. I read my words. Even then, sometimes I accidentally say weird things. But if I get to preach your wedding, I'm going to tell everyone you're a sinner. It's one of the things I do at weddings. I say, in this corner, we have a sinner.
And in this corner, we have a sinner. These people are terrible. I don't go that hard after it too much. I did at my brother's wedding. I was like, I can vouch. This guy's the worst.
And then I'll say, but that's okay. Sin is what destroys relationships. You won't have a destroyed relationship. You won't have a breakdown of relationship without sin. Now, you may have people move or something and they're just not close to each other. But sin is what destroys relationships.
Lack of forgiveness, pride, fear, anger, bitterness. Okay. Jesus died for sin. He reconciled us to God. Your marriage can make it. Because the one thing that can destroy your marriage has been covered by Christ.
Now, sin still gets in and causes problems, but we do have hope because Jesus paid for sin. And so Jesus invites the church into that same situation. And we can actually have long-term real relationships where we forgive, where we repent, where we confess, where we work things out, where we try to fix. We get frustrated. We hurt each other's feelings. So then we're going to have a conversation about it to straighten it out.
And we make it five times worse. And guess what? You get to have another conversation. Sometimes you have to bring a third person there to help mediate the conversation because of how difficult it is for you two to talk to each other. And somebody else there. But we get to keep doing this because we know that sin has been forgiven.
And so we can have what Jesus invited us into. And when we do, we get to abide in his love as we live in love with one another. That we're designed, the church is supposed to love one another more than we love others. You know that? We're supposed to love those in the church above the rest of the world. We're meant to put on display the love of Christ as we love one another.
My wife and I, I was an intern at a Southern Baptist church in Lawrence County, South Carolina. It was kind of a rural church. And the pastor wasn't going to be there. And he'd ask somebody else to come preach. And so I was supposed to be like that guy's handler, you know, show up, make sure he knew where to go, get him his microphone, get him his water, whatever he needed. And so my wife and I were sitting on the front row.
And my wife, when she takes sermon notes, she always takes sermon notes. And if sermon's going well, she, you know, she stays focused. Otherwise, she'll start flipping around and like planning her week and stuff. So every once in a while, I look at her and I think, I'm like, you better turn back over and start paying attention again. She looks like she's real diligent. She's not in here.
I can talk. I can say whatever I want to about her right now. But she looks like she's really diligently taking notes. When she takes sermon notes, what she always does, she'll set them up and she'll write just kind of a heading over the thing. Well, this guy was real country. He was talking about Jesus and he kept saying Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane.
And he was going back and forth like this. And he finally said, and on the night when Jesus died, he told us who we supposed to love everybody. But he told us who we supposed to love special. And so my wife next to me wrote out who we supposed to love special in quotations as the title of the sermon. So I looked up and I saw it and I saw who we supposed to love special on the top.
And y'all, if I can just laugh at something and get it out of the way, it's fine. But if I can't laugh at it and I'm supposed to keep it together, it is terrible. And so I'm sitting on the front row like sweating and trying to like, because I just thought it was moderately funny. But you can't, there was no time, he wasn't laughing in the sermon. So I had to try to keep it together.
But that's the reality. The church are who we supposed to love special. Who we're supposed to be intentional about having real, deep, good relationships with. That we are designed to fellowship, meaning to be around in life together. To care about one another. To know one another.
And that's why Jesus says, abide in my love. And if you obey my commandments, you will abide in my love. And this is my commandment. Don't love one another. That we're supposed to. This is why.
One of the primary reasons why. We fight so extremely hard for community groups. Because we do not have to be around each other. You don't have to. You can go to work. You can go home.
Some of you work from home. You don't even have to go to a work. You just walk over to your desk. You just pick up the phone. You can order food to your house. We say this all the time.
That you can watch friends instead of having them. Like, you don't have to be around people. Culturally, it doesn't have to happen. Used to be in agrarian societies. You had to walk places. You had to work together with the rest of the community.
Or you would starve. But you don't have to do that now. The only working together with the rest of the community is you got to pay McDonald's after you drive through the thing. Like, there's no... And so, if we aren't intentional about being around each other, it won't happen. And if we don't intentionally say, yes, after they have hurt your feelings.
Yes, after they have sinned against you. Keep at it. Keep forgiving. This won't happen. But if we are intentional about it, we get to love one another.
And in loving one another, we get to abide in the love of Jesus. We get to rest in his love. We get to know his love. Some of you know this so extremely beautifully firsthand. Because you sinned grievously against your group. You fell headlong into sin.
And then you had your group chase you down and bring you back and love you in the midst of it. And it gave you such a clear picture of what it was like to be loved by Jesus. Some of you were in pain and in need. And your group rallied around you. Some of you were the person who was chasing after someone. And you were pleading with the Lord on their behalf.
And it dawned on you that this is how he loves you. This is why we tell people who don't know Jesus to join a group. Some of you, many of you, that's your story. You joined a group before becoming a Christian. And you saw what it looked like for people to actually love each other. You joined a group and you were like, this is the weirdest group of people I've ever met.
These are the most awkward conversations. These people have nothing in common. And then there was just something about it that kept bringing you back in. And you kept seeing it. And finally it dawned on you that these people loved you. And then it made sense that Jesus could love you.
Because in the atmosphere of the church loving one another, we put on display that we belong to Jesus. And we help each other know the love of God. And we get to participate in and enjoy the love of God. This happens through big things. Matt Freeman, their community group, the Kitty Wake group. There's a lady who lives across the street from them, from Matt and Katie, where their group meets.
And her house had just gotten kind of overrun. Her yard had gotten overrun. Her husband had passed recently and had just gotten out of hand. And so their group just went across the street and had a work day and cleaned her house. The outside of it pulled down leaves, cleaned out the backyard. Before and after pictures were amazing.
Let me tell you something that happened. That lady felt loved. That group felt love for each other. That group felt the love of Jesus for someone else. And they all grew in taking one step more in walking in the love of Jesus. Jordan Surratt tried to ride a motorcycle and messed his leg up.
I mean he rode it for a little while and then it removed him. And when he was hurt, there was another couple in our church family who just said, Hey, come live with us. You can't walk? Come be at our house. I wasn't involved in that at all. All I have really ever done with that situation is make some jokes at Jordan's expense.
And seeing how the church loved one another, I was encouraged. To see that our people care about each other and love one another and welcome each other in. There have been times where groups have paid for people's bills and done all these different things when there are situations. And there are small things, phone calls and text messages and late night. We're meant to exist in relationships. One of the ways we show we love one another is we just eat meals together.
We just get around each other in all the normal, mundane, boring parts of life. We watch friends together. We watch friends together. My wife and I are not the type of people who feel, like, experience the need for other people. We don't feel it. I've met some people who, like, they have to be around other people or they, like, hurt inside.
That is not characteristic of my wife and I. We're fine, you guys. We don't, we're good. We can hang out at the house by ourselves with each other and we're fine. We can hang out at the house not with each other and we're fine. We'll be okay.
We have a low quota for it. We need a little bit of relationship stuff. We need a little bit of it and then we're, like, I'm good. Like, I was, like, I hung out with a person, like, a month ago. I'm fine. I'll do it again.
I'll do it again around Christmas or whatever and it'll be good. That's kind of how we are. Like, I've only ever really been friends with the people who had to be around me. So if I was in class with you or we played on a team, if you lived near me. One of my best friends in college was my best friend in my freshman year of college because he lived next door to me. The next year he moved to another dorm on the campus and it was not a large campus and we stopped being friends.
Because I would have been his friend but he was just so far away. That's just kind of how we are. My wife is worse than I am. And that's saying something. But she is.
She just doesn't feel this need for community. And I remember when we first started feeling like we were going to plant church and I was watching these guys who were preaching. There were these guys that I was looking up to that taught the Bible well. And I remember multiple of these pastors saying, now, they all had community groups in their church. But they would say, now, I can't be a part of a community group.
I can't be a part of one. And they had really weird, unbiblical reasons. Because there aren't good biblical reasons. They were bad reasons. But I liked the idea.
Like, I was like, wait a second. Could I just show up on Sunday and, like, yell at people and go home? If that's what a pastor does, that sounded delightful. And then I kept reading my Bible and we got really convinced that we actually are supposed to be in life with one another. Convinced. And I have been so blessed and my wife has been so blessed by the fact that we have to be in a community group and can't not be in a community group.
And that because we've led a community group for five years, we don't even get to decide when our group's about to meet whether or not we want to go. I'm glad we don't even have to have that discussion. I don't get to ask, am I feeling it tonight? Because I know the answer to that question on some nights. I just got to, like, especially when it was meeting at our house. That was the best.
It was just like, and you go and lock the door. And then it was good. And we've grown and genuinely love other people and they love us and they know us and we've confessed in and we've walked in life and we have, we are better for it. We would not have chosen this on our own. And the reason I'm confessing this, and hopefully I'm not offending everybody in my group. We realize we're wrong.
But the reason I'm confessing this is that it might be temptation for you to say yes for those people who feel that, but I'm fine without it. And no, you're not because it's a commandment. Let's obey it. We're commanded, love one another. And that takes time and that takes knowing someone and that takes service and that takes sacrifice. And if we do that, we get to abide in the love of Jesus and we get to know more fully and more tangibly and more really what the love of Jesus is.
So I want to briefly talk through three enemies of fellowship, three enemies of loving one another. They're culturally just handed to us. You just received because you live here. First one. The elevation of self. How often have we heard things like find yourself, express yourself, get in touch with yourself.
Man, I really just need a vacation because I just got to get back to. It's been a long time since I've just spent some time with me. This idea of like I have an inner child. It was the first time I'd heard my inner child speak in such a long time. It's, you know, like you had this good, beautiful little self and the world ruined it. I got, I appreciate what they're going for.
Whenever you see those things that say nobody was born a racist, they just act like you were taught how to be racist. But that's not really true. Your sin nature teaches you that kind of mess. It does. They've done studies with toddlers where they just separate themselves out from each other based off of the way they look. This, but we have this idea that if you can just find yourself, if you just know yourself, you'd just be set free from self.
I mean, from, from the rest of the world. The problem with the elevation of self is that it kills fellowship. If I walk into my community group and I am the most important person in the community group, I am going to hate my community group. Because it's filled with needy, sinner people who did not realize I was the most important person in the room. That when we elevate self, when we walk around only focused on how we're doing and how we're feeling, we, we will kill fellowship. It is an enemy of it.
The second one is the elevation of freedom. Freedom. And some of you Americans just reach for your gun. But we've elevated this idea of personal freedom. That the true good life is me with no restraints. That's why all that people talk about adulting is hard.
The idea of having, everything was better and then I had children. And they needed stuff from me. And someone else would go, yeah, they're the worst. But this idea that obligation. Anything that infringes upon my freedom is the enemy. Anything that's difficult.
Anything that's harmful to my ability to just express myself and to be free and to do whatever I want. And that you, if you really love me, will just co-sign my freedom. I watched the most recent Wreck-It Ralph movie. That was the point. I can do any weird destructive thing I want to. And if you don't just co-sign that, you're the bad guy.
You'll turn into a giant monster. So I watched little movies with my son and then I have to go, that was garbage. Wreck-It Ralph was right. He should have kept her stuck in that video game and not let her go live on the internet. Sorry, I got way too into that movie. I was mad at it.
But that's the idea. That's what we're taught. Anything that infringes upon my freedom, I should just get to do whatever I want. And let me tell you something. If that is true, you cannot have relationships. Not any good ones.
Not any ones where you aren't just some sort of a parasite. That if you're going to have actual love relationships with people, they are going to infringe on your freedom. They're going to be obligations to you. And guess what? That's really good for you. You were meant to have obligations.
I was not meant to have all the freedom in the world. I was meant to be obligated to others. That's why Paul says, owe no one anything. Freedom. Except that you love one another. Bondage.
This idea that you are to owe love to those around you. To those in your group. That's why when you choose to just not come hang out with your group because you just need some me time. When you choose when everybody's doing stuff and you don't. At times what you're actually doing is you're elevating your personal freedom over the fact that you ought to show up in love and care and sacrifice for those around you. So if you are sold out on the idea of the best, most true, real version of you is the completely free version of you.
You will not have what Jesus has invited us into here. Also, for the record, the best, true, most real version of you is a complete sinner who makes foolish decisions. So I wouldn't just trust what you found on the inside when you find it. I got in touch with myself and now I'm going to listen to my inner child. Your inner child is going to tell you some weird stuff. That is going to lead you to hell.
So you might want to repent and listen to Jesus who knows better for you. Sorry, that's why children have parents. Just throwing that out there. Your inner child needs an adult. His name is Jesus and he is great. Elevation of the pursuit of pleasure.
So along with this, the elevation itself, these are all connected. The personal freedom, the pursuit of pleasure. The idea that anything that is difficult or hard or that I don't like is the enemy. Because the goal is the pursuit of pleasure. There's a book called The Hacking of the American Mind. It was written by a doctor.
He's not a Christian as far as I know. He wrote it from the standpoint of a doctor. He was doing research on sugar and then he decided to write this book. And what he said was, there are two primary chemicals in your brain, serotonin and dopamine. Serotonin is a contentment chemical. It tells you, I'm at peace.
I've had enough. Dopamine is a reward chemical meant to overpower serotonin. And it tells you, let me have some more of that. That was amazing. That's how he studied this when he found out about, like when he was studying sugar. So here, let me give you an example.
Water. It's like serotonin. You drink it. It quenches your thirst. And you think, I have had enough of that. At some point, you're just like, I'm fine.
I don't need more water. Mountain Dew. Every time I drink Mountain Dew, I think, I would like some more Mountain Dew, please. This is why. This isn't why, but this is why. A water cup is this big and your Mountain Dew cup is this big.
You drink this much water and you're like, I'm good. You drink this much Mountain Dew and you're like, free refills are only 79 cents or whatever. But here's what happened. And this is the point he was making was that our culture, our American society is designed to run off of consumerism, meaning serotonin is bad for the economy, you guys. If you're content, we're not doing so good. GDP isn't looking so hot.
We need you running off of dopamine. We need to convince you that true happiness is dopamine happiness, meaning next thing. Fill my cup back up. Give me another one of those. Let me have the next trip. Let me have the next experience.
Let me enjoy the next thing. I got to have, I got to enjoy. This is where the addiction centers is. If they can weaponize the addiction center of your brain through pornography and the internet and advertisement and sugar or high fructose corn syrup, which is delicious, by the way. They can keep us running on this hamster wheel of pursuit of pleasure. And we have bought into the idea that that is the goal of life.
Now, he says happiness is serotonin. Pleasure is over here. We would, as Christians, we've talked through this a good bit. Sometimes what we talk about is temporary happiness and joy. A contented enjoyment of Jesus. Now, we're meant to have both.
He got, Jesus invented both serotonin and dopamine. And when he says there's pleasures at his right hand every more, forevermore, that includes things like cake. But we're not meant to just operate here where everything that is personal pleasure is the goal of life. But some of us have bought into that. And let me explain something to you. Your group, over time, becomes serotonin.
It's not dopamine. Your group helps with the normal function, the rhythm of life, that you might walk in healthiness. But it is not something that you show up and go, community group meeting time! Unless you're one of these people that really loves people, and then maybe you get some dopamine stuff out of, like, having all these conversations and stuff. But it's not.
It's one of those things that we walk in as a practice for loving one another, and it grows us. And we abide in love with one another, and love for Jesus, and we feel Jesus' love. And it is not always in this pleasure realm. If your goal is this, you will not be in a community group for very long. You will not be able to have fellowship with the body of believers as you were meant to if we bought into this. Because those are enemies of fellowship.
Because here's how fellowship works. He says, this I've commanded you. This is my commandment, verse 12. That you love one another as I have loved you. That's the key. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
There's a danger in talking about this type of love that we would immediately start saying, well, my group doesn't love me like that. I got hurt. Nobody said, come live at my house. I did this. I was sad. Nobody called me.
I said, huh, huh. And we don't realize that we flipped it around and took the command to love one another and turned it into be loved by others. We're called to love one another the way Jesus loved us. See, sometimes we walk in and we go, well, I'll love them if they love me the way they're supposed to. And we've automatically destroyed what Jesus just called us to. Because Jesus did not love you because you loved him first.
Jesus did not go to the cross to rescue all of those who were acting well. He died that he might save his enemies. And he says, love one another as I have loved you. And here's the beautiful part of this. You can't do that unless Jesus is at work in you through his spirit. That's why the church has a corner on the market of genuine fellowship.
Because you have to have Jesus at work in you for this to work. That's why the culture loves it and can't replicate it. That it always falls apart. Because sin eventually will destroy it. But it will not destroy this.
The church will exist as an eternal family forever. Because it is a group of people that have been purchased by the blood of Jesus. And made into an eternal family where love is the house they live in. Forever. And that we were meant to. When you love this way, Jesus empowers this type of love.
A sacrificial love. A self-sacrificing friendship. A self-sacrificing love is an invitation to abide in the love of Jesus. Because that is the type of love we receive from Jesus. There is no entry exam. There is no bar that we have to jump to meet Jesus.
All we have to do is come to him and admit that we can't jump any bar. That if there was any hurdle in our way, we would fall flat on our face. That we need the unearned grace from Christ. And if that's the type of love we receive from Jesus, it's the type of love we get to give to your group. So here's the question.
Are you giving them unearned grace love? Because that's what we're called into. And that's how we get to walk in the love of Christ. If you were the only person, if you were sitting here right now and pharisaically telling yourself, yeah, I'm the only person in my group who does that. Good. You're the one who's getting to walk first.
And what it looks like to abide in the love of Jesus. And you get to help others who need it, need his love dreadfully. You get to invite him into it as well. And I would argue that if you're bitterly saying that to yourself, you might be incorrect. That you may not be the person in your group who's doing that super well. But that we're invited to love one another with a self-sacrificing love.
And in so doing, the love of Jesus is alive and well in our hearts. And that there's joy that way. We know this in small ways. This idea that self-sacrificing love is genuine love and that it works on us. The best example, I think, is children. My brother and his wife go on vacation a lot.
And this past week, we watched their daughter for four days. His daughter, my niece, Oakley. And I love her more now than I did prior to this. And that is not because she was delightful. She honestly brought very little to the table. She just caused problems for four days at my house.
She made everything more difficult. Remember the story I told you earlier about how I had my son with me here last week? That was because my niece was at my house and we only have a certain number of car seats. And we had to rearrange her entire schedule. But I love her more now.
And here's why. All I did for four days was serve her. She's one, by the way. She showed up at the house. She doesn't talk. She does cry.
She doubled the amount of diapers and all that good stuff at the house. And I love her more. Because all I did was sacrifice. That's why you love your children so much. That's why in my relationship with my wife, there are times where I'm very frustrated with her. And that's because she has forgotten that I'm the most important person in the house.
And you guys, when I explain it to her, she doesn't even listen. But when I'm serving her and when I'm sacrificing for her and when I remember that true love is a self-sacrificial love and Jesus goes to work in my heart so that I can actually do that because I have to actively repent consistently the whole time. I do that because as soon as you do one self-sacrificing thing, you go, look at how amazing I am. Jesus, aren't you proud of me? And then you bring it up to your wife. Did you see how much I sacrificed for you?
Then suddenly becomes some sort of thing to get something back and it's just this weird stuff. But we, when I'm actually doing that, when I'm actually walking in that for the short period of time that we can keep it together, love grows in our home. That's the way it works. So do that. Walk in the self-sacrificial love of Christ. I want to close with this quote from Jeremiah 6.
Thus says the Lord, stand by the roads and look. Ask for the ancient paths where the good way is and walk in it and find rest for your souls. Jesus says, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, I will give you rest. He invites us to abide and we have talked through ways to do this. To read, to pray, to feast, to fast, to be in life together. Doing those things together.
To confess and sing together. And the very last line in that verse is kind of funny to me and it's super sad. But they said, we will not walk in it. There is a way for us to walk in enjoying Jesus that has been practiced by the church for thousands of years. That we might enjoy God, that we might know God, that we might love one another, that we might foster what it looks like to belong to each other and belong to Jesus. And there is a temptation for us to just go, no, I'm not going to do that.
To keep saying, I'm just too busy to read. I really just don't have time to pray. I would love to be a part of a community group, but it just doesn't work with my schedule right now. Okay, okay, you convinced me. I'll give feasting a try. But the other stuff doesn't really work.
Don't do that. Let's be a people who delight in the Lord because he is good. And let's do that together. Let's commit to one another, to love one another, and to walk it out together, what it means to enjoy Jesus. Because he is good. Matt's going to come back up.
We're going to sing as we close our time together today. And we're going to take communion, which is where we celebrate that Jesus Christ died for you. He gave, he laid down his life for you. That you might receive grace, that you might receive love, that you might be welcomed, that you might be adopted, that you might be brought in. And there is nothing that stands in the way between you and Jesus, except for your own pride. That you get to run to him, and be forgiven, and be welcomed, and be made new, and get to belong to a group of people who are actively trying to walk that out together.
So as we take communion, that is for the church, those who have repented of their sin and placed their faith in Jesus. So as we take communion in a moment, we're going to remember that we all have access to the Father through the broken body and the shed blood of Christ. In a moment, as we line up, one of the reasons we put communion in the front is so that as we're together, we would remember that we belong to each other. We want the church, your church family, to get in your way as you are trying to sing and as you are trying to finish out the rest. We want you to see them. We want you to know that we belong to each other because Jesus died, because his body was broken, because his blood was shed, because we placed faith in him.
We belong to one another. We get each other, not just him, but we get each other and that we get to walk this out together in life. So I would encourage you to, if there's something that is keeping you, maybe it's one of those three things, maybe it's some bitterness you have against somebody, maybe it's some frustrating you have that you would take a moment to repent, that you might grab someone you need to talk with and say, I'm sorry. You can go over to someone and say, I'm sorry, I'm genuinely frustrated with you and we can't work that out right now, but I just want you to know I don't want to keep being frustrated with you.
I want us to work it out. We're going to have to really talk about it. We're not going to fix it this moment, but I'm going to tell you, I'm committed to us fixing it. You can have that conversation. Someone comes and grabs you and says, I'm frustrated with you. Don't be surprised you're a sinner.
Just listen. Also, don't be surprised if the thing they're frustrated about is super weird and you didn't even realize it happened. They're a sinner too, but y'all can work it out and it can be good. So in a moment, before you take communion, if you've got some issue with somebody, if you've got some frustration with somebody, go grab them, pray together, say, Lord, we need your help so that we might love one another self-sacrificially. If some of you realize that you have just been kind of treating your group as if it existed for you and you are therefore very frustrated with your group, repent.
And then come take communion as someone whose sins have been forgiven and who gets to walk in a redeemed life. And may we walk this ancient way that we might find rest for our souls. If you are not a Christian, please do not take communion. We want you to have Jesus. We want you to know him. Repent of your sin prior to doing this.
This is for the church. Let's pray. God, we thank you for your grace. And Lord, we need it. Thank you for your love that you sacrificed yourself for us. That you lay down your life that we might belong to you.
We pray, Lord, that you would empower us as we seek to lay down our life. Not elevate our life, but lay down our life for those in our group and those in our city that we might love your church the way you love your church. That we might love one another the way you love us. We ask for your grace to do that well. In Jesus' name. Amen.