out to Junior Church at this time. And there's our youngsters out there in the back. You all good? DT, are you cool enough? Are you freezing, Tommy? It feels cold in here to me, actually. You guys fine over here in the cold section? Are you guys all okay over here? Turn it down, make it colder, you mean? I don't think you're winning that one. You know, but you guys all, this is okay. This is the cold section. This is the hot section. And this is the spewed out of the mouth section. That's what this is. All right. So it's good to see you all this morning. Well, we're going to continue on in our series we began several weeks ago now that I entitled Let's Be Reasonable. And we've been going through Romans chapter 12, verse by verse, looking at this wonderful section of scripture. It's the third main part of the letter to the book of Romans. Remember the first part was about faith over the law and that no one's going to get to heaven by working their way there. It's only by faith that we're justified. And then he sent a section talking about what happens to the Jewish people which how appropriate is that for today's world, and we'll talk about that here in a minute, but talks about how the promises made to Israel, what happens to them now that the church has come after the unpardonable sin. And then he gets into chapter 12 to the end of the book, and he pretty much begins to tell the church and give us as Christians how we ought to live in light of the truth we've been given. Now, last week, we looked at the elements of reasonable service, and we saw that those elements are, in verse number three, he talks about humility, and then in verses four and five, that responsibility, that every believer is part of the body of Christ, and if you're a Christian, if you're a child of God, that you are in the body, and you have a responsibility. And then lastly, we saw last week, we have an ability. If you're a Christian, you've been given a gift, and that gift is to be used to edify the body, to work together, to accomplish what God has called us to do. Now today we're gonna begin in this chapter, the third paragraph in the Greek, that we've looked at the first two paragraphs, we're into the third, that's gonna put some practical things on how to put these principles in place. So we left off in verse eight, so today, Romans chapter number 12 and verse number nine, and by the way, let me preface saying that you know Allie's been this week our granddaughter had some surgery and she's still recovering so Allie only had certain amount of time and so today you gotta old school it you know there's no verses on the board for you you know you have to have your phone Bible out or a real Bible which is I guess that's not really fair to say it's still a real Bible on the phone but I mean you know one you know one like this remember what they look like you know You know what I don't like about the online ones is you know give them what we learned about Facebook and Google and all those you know I don't want to give it an opportunity to be able to delete them with the press of a push of a button You know so you know don't ever lose your you're just it's not part of the sermon. It's just free information You know I so like them any rate Right Karen Karen Karen's back here right Karen books books are the best so any rate all right Romans chapter 12, verse number nine is where we're gonna pick things up this morning. Let's read verse nine and 10, then we'll pray and get into God's word. Verse nine, the Bible says, let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil, cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affection one to another with brotherly love in honor, preferring one another. Let me pray and then we're gonna jump into God's word. Lord, thank you for the time today. enjoyed the music, the singing, the fellowship, and now we take a few moments and look into your word, into the Bible, what it has for us. Help us to leave this place encouraged and challenged to be better servants of you and offer reasonable service. In Jesus' name, amen. Now we saw early on in our series that reasonable service is being a living sacrifice, dying to yourself and doing what God asks you to do out of recognition of his great mercies in which we were saved. And we are told here in verse number nine, we move on to a section where he's now gonna give us some practical application about what is reasonable service. And first this morning, I wanna just kinda put the encapsulation of what we're gonna look at today. When he starts this section of practicality, I don't believe there's any accident that the first thing he talks about is love. Love. And I wrote in my notes, reasonable service ultimately is love. Reasonable service is love. One of the big differences theologically between even inside evangelicalism, as many of you know, I am not a reformed or a lordship guy or a Calvinist guy. And one of my beefs with that theology system is that most of the time they admonish you to do what you're supposed to do primarily motivated by obedience. Because God's determined everything, so it really doesn't matter what you do. So then the question comes up, why should I do anything if God has sovereignly chosen every action that's gonna occur? Whatever I do, God's chosen to do it, so what does it really matter? And their answer usually is, well, God says we're to do it, and we are to be obedient. And obedience is fine. I always use the illustration, when you have little children, you need to teach them to be obedient, right? Do what I do because I'm telling you to do it. Right, parents, that's a good line. Because I said so, that's why. But if they're 25 years old and the only reason they do what you tell them is because you said so, not good. At some point, you desire that they grow into maturity and then when their relationship with you as a parent, I would hope that, for example, if I needed one of my kids to come over and help me with something, they wouldn't do it because I said so, they would do it because they love me. And love is a far better motivator than strictly just obedience. And when you believe that salvation is a free gift that you and I choose in recognition because he loved us first, then we love him, our walk with him is one that is motivated by love. And when we don't do what we ought to do, we can be honest about it and recognize the problem is we have a love problem. in our personal relationship with God. And so it's fitting that he begins with love, and even the whole foundation, the mercies of God in verse number one, and we talked about the love of God, and we're gonna talk in a moment about the holiness of God, which is certainly true, but I'm thankful that the Bible says, for God so loved. God so loved the world that he gave. You know, so many religions around the world, their view of God is this angry, wrathful God that's looking for any excuse he can to do something to people. But our God loves so much that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. most religions matter of fact I would argue every other quote-unquote religion tells you you have to do something you have to you have to be good enough you have to keep all these rules and on if you're just good enough God will let you in the Bible's boldness is none of us are going to be good enough and he says God says in the Bible not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy he saved us Same thing God says in the book, the letter to the church at Ephesus in Ephesians 2, but God who is rich in mercy for his great love, wherewith he loved us when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together, for by grace are you saved, for by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It's the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. No one's gonna be in heaven because they said, well, look what I did. I kept all these rules, I made God happy. No, we're only there by the mercy of God and motivated by the love of God. And because we are saved from a separation of God for all eternity because of his love, then we, in response, should serve God out of love and out of joy. And this service, as we've been studying in Romans chapter 12, as we saw last week, the first group he mentions, he says, all right, you should offer reasonable service based on the mercy of God, and it is done in the body of Christ, the church, that every Christian ought to have gifts that he's utilizing in the local church. So it should be no surprise that God begins this practical section also with this idea of love. Remember what Jesus said when he was asked what was the greatest gifts in Matthew 22? Remember the religious guy comes and says, what's the greatest commandment of the law? And he was trying to trick Jesus is really what it was. It was a gotcha question. Never worked, never pulled that off on Jesus. Jesus said, here it is, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Jesus said, you wanna sum up everything that is required? You gotta love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and you gotta love your neighbor as yourself. And we all know that every single one of us in here this morning has not done that perfectly. Matter of fact, a little side note, we'll get there in Life of Messiah, but little cliff notes on it when we get to the famous Good Samaritan parable. where people don't understand the context of why that parable was given. And can I tell you, the reason the Good Samaritan parable was given, where all the priests and everybody, there's this guy that's been beaten, laying on the side of the road, half dead, and nobody helps him except this Samaritan, who is the lowest of the low. And the whole point of the story at the end is, is Jesus trying to tell this self-righteous guy that you're not a Good Samaritan. You don't do that. So there's no way you can earn or work your way to heaven. It's only because of what God did for us, what Jesus did for us and came and took my sin and your sin and the sin of the world upon himself and died on a cross, satisfied the wrath of a holy God and then rose again and we serve a living, risen Savior and he offers you the free gift of eternal life if you'll simply receive it. But it must be personally received. And so it's right that he should talk about love. Now in this section, we're gonna look at three things this morning, a really simple outline on reasonable service is love, then what kind of love is this? Well, number one this morning, it is a sincere love. It is a sincere love. Notice in our text, the Bible says, let love be without dissimulation. Now that word dissimulation is a big word that literally means it's pure, it's not hypocritical, it's genuine, it's honest. Can you ever be in a deep love relationship with someone without honesty? Have you ever thought somebody loved you and they really didn't? Some of you going back to your high school days, yeah. Heartbreak, you know? I think we've all had one relationship or another. Some of you, unfortunately, have had it inside your own families. Maybe you've even had a parent or, you know, it can be very, very hurtful, but the bottom line is reasonable service love, it's a sincere love, it's an honest love. Sometimes people in relationships won't be honest with someone. I have found in my years of counseling relationship issues that many of the initial times we get together is trying to find out what the facts really are and how both people really feel. And sometimes one person won't say how they really feel to the other because whenever they have, they've been stomped on, they're fearful, there's all kinds of reasons they'll keep how they really feel inside. But there's never gonna be any solid, intimate relationship unless both people honestly share where they're at. Now, I want to be clear this morning. I'm not trying to say, don't leave me saying, hey, Pastor said I've got to be honest, you know. Just because I don't like D.T.' 's shirt, you know, just because Alabama played one half of football yesterday doesn't mean they win the national championship. Played one half of football, we're happy for them. It doesn't mean I have to say that, but I just did. See how that works? That's not the best thing. Please, if you say everything that's on your mind, you're gonna have a bunch of destructed relationships in your life. Part of managing relationships is keeping your big mouth shut in some things. Matter of fact, generally, most things are better left unsaid. But like in everything else, there's gotta be balance in your life with the people that you're closest to, If you're in a marriage relationship or different intimate, your level of your relationship is really governed by how honest can I really be with this person and still be safe? And marriages that are thriving and are intimate are when two people can be honest with each other freely. Now they choose their times, but you know, if you're, again, don't be wilful in saying, I think you're just a big, why are you such a mess? Why are you such a slob? You know, maybe you need to say that. I know Whitney has to say that all the time to Gabe, but you know, most of you don't have that, right, Gabe? Gabe was telling me the joys of marriage and family this morning before church, but I'm not even going to quote you on that. Not at all. I was right there with you. I told him, I said, don't worry about it. It gets better. They grow up and they leave. Not the wife. Not the wife. I was gonna say the little people, but when you're a man, if you're tall, but anyway, I'm dug my hole deep enough. Bottom line is there's gotta be sincerity in love. There's gotta be some honesty, it can't be fake. And even inside the church, at our church we have in our DNA genuine family, and part of that is a genuineness. You know, sometimes in church, you know, oh, I love you, brother, I love you, brother, but do you really? Now, I understand there are different, you know, different levels of that, but I can tell you, and I know some of you have shared this with me personally, people, some of you folks in here this morning, you are family to me. And you say, oh, I'd like to be that. Well, hang around here for a long time and let's go through some battles and let me be really honest with you. and you may have to be really honest with me, and let's love each other through that, and then you can get there. You gotta go through some really tough times in life together. That's what brings the genuineness out. When you say, I love you, brother, Jenny and I, Many of you know, I wasn't in ministry after I got out of college. I taught school for a while, and I managed senior housing for a while, and I was a sale in this full-time sales for a while. You know, I did some different things, and because of my job, Jen and I, more than once, two or three times, we moved to a city where we didn't know anybody. Nobody. But the first place we went is the local church. And now, to this very day, we have family in Richmond, Indiana, we have family in Nashville, Tennessee, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, we have family in Winter Haven, Florida, and we have family in Prattville, Alabama. You see, it has to be a sincere love. And unless and until you're willing to really be honest about where you are, it's difficult to get the type of relationship that every human being says they really want. All right, I'm going to move on because I need to. Number two, not only is it sincere, but it is reactive. It is reactive. Now, you sure on this side, you guys are still okay? I normally don't feel cold up here because I'm preaching, but I feel a little chipper this morning and I'm like, no, Bobby's back there looking, this is great, right? You fine, Bobby? You look fine. Okay, if Bobby's, Bobby's good, all right? I'm giving you guys one more chance to rebel and I'll turn this thing up or down or whatever. No, I'm not turning it down, DT. It's cold enough. All right, you guys are good. Number two, not only is it sincere, but number two, it's reactive. Notice what our text goes on and says. It says in verse nine, let love be without dissimulation. Let it be sincere without hypocrisy. Abhor that which is evil. That's a strong word, abhor. In the Greek, very strong. It even brings kind of the idea of hatred. You know, real love, agape love, which is the word for love here in verse nine, It's an honest love and it's a love that is motivated to do something. In other words, if I saw a person doing anything to my wife that was negative, my love for her would be reactive. Right? All you moms with your kids, you know how it is, that you love, and when something happens that might touch that something you love, it means, no, I can't stand for that. And you know, God, we know the Bible says God hates sin, he abhors sin, because he knows sin always destroys. People say, why is God so angry at sin? Because God knows that he created us in innocence, he created us for a purpose, and every time you and I get involved in sin, it moves us away from the purposes of God in our life. And God says, that which I love, which is you, I don't like to see what sin does. And so he does judge and deal with sin. Now, one of the things that's interesting in this phrase right here in verse nine, to abhor that which is evil, abhor that which is evil, that being a pronoun there, and it's in the Greek, it's in the neuter, which means it's not male or female. In other words, what the author's trying to say here is the old cliche you've heard it said, hate the sin, not the sinner. You and I sometimes have a hard time separating that, and we're all guilty of it, I'm thankful that God loved us so much that he reacted, he was reactive in the sense he left heaven and took upon himself flesh and lived among us, endured pain and suffering and took upon himself the sin of the whole world. Why? Because God knew the sin problem and he had to do something about it. He abhorred that which is evil and he said, okay, love said I gotta do something. You know, the problem in our culture today is we have a hard time even defining what evil is. Now, if I were to say what is evil and you think that is an easy answer, let me just submit to you that some of the greatest thinkers, secular and Christian alike, have wrestled for their volumes of book discussing what is it really to be evil. Does evil even really exist? Because if there's evil, what makes something evil? What makes it good? And in our country today, since we have unmoored ourselves from the Judeo-Christian definition of biblical morality, we now as a country have no idea what evil is. Do we? I mean, wasn't it Isaiah that wrote and said, well, one of them to call evil good and good evil? Are we not there as a country? When the bad people, if you go stand outside an abortion clinic and pray, you get prosecuted to the full extent of the law because you are within some 25-foot loss of First Amendment speech area. But you can burn down courthouses and do whatever else you want and no big problem there. And the people that are bad, bad people. How dare you pray peacefully to oppose the slaughter of babies in the womb? Bad people. I could use all kinds of illustrations, but as I thought about it this week, there's none that can underwrite or demonstrate the level of depravity we've come better than that. A lot of us are pretty angry this week when we saw the slaughter of babies in Israel. Why doesn't it bother us that sometimes it's happening right down the street? Oh, I can't donate any money to the Walk for Life, too busy. Love does something. And most philosophy today is all truth is relative. It's only right or wrong if you think it's right or wrong. That is such sinking sand philosophy. If you adopt that, let's just be honest and say there is no evil, there is no good. And the irony I find, as a guy who likes a little bit of apologetics, not like Pastor Danny, I'm not nearly as gifted as he is, But I've had discussions with people who are non-believers that will say something to me like this. Well, you Christians say there's this God, this all-powerful God, and if he's really all-powerful God, then why is there suffering in this country? Why are all these bad things happening? If he's so good, why is this all happening? Same people that a minute ago told me there is no such thing as evil. They want to define and say, well this way, but then they get all offended and say they won't even believe in God because they look around and see all these bad things. I want to say, no, which is it? Which ledger do you want to do the addition with? I'm always reminded of one of my favorite quotes by Ravi Zacharias. when he was at a university and somebody challenged him and said, there cannot be a God because there's too much evil in the world. And Ravi had that classic answer where he said, when you say there's too much evil in this world, you assume there's good. If you say something's evil, by definition, then there's gotta be an equal opposite of that as something that's good. When you say there's evil in this world, you assume there's good. And when you assume there's good, you assume there's such a thing as a moral law on the basis which to differentiate between good and evil. If you're gonna say that is bad and then there's gotta be a good, somewhere there's gotta be something that's helping us to understand what is right and what is wrong. And then he goes on and says this, if you assume there's a moral law, you must posit a moral law giver. But that's who you're trying to disprove and not prove. Because if there's no moral law giver, there's no moral law. If there's no moral law, there's no good. And if there's no good, there's no evil. And my friend, what is your question? I remember that university student going, I don't know. Robbie's exactly right. And I gotta tell you, one of the problems in the church sometimes inside the church we like law a lot better than grace and sometimes we want to decide what is evil too. I don't mean to be unkind apparently last week and 4.0 I'm not gonna say, I'm not gonna do anything you can get me this week. Probably. Maybe. Probably not. But at any rate, I grew up in a time, and it had some seasons in my life, where people would get in front of people like you that I hope are thinking people this morning, and I remember being told, if somebody gets on a platform and holds a microphone when they sing, that's evil. I find that funny myself, okay. Maybe I'm one. I remember I remember being told, women not doing anything other than being on the platform. Evil. It's usurping the authority of a man. A woman comes in the church and she's wearing pants. Evil. Why? Because the Bible says, by the way, under law, you shouldn't wear that which pertains to a man. And I always want to go, okay, that's fair, that's fair, let's go with your scripture verse there, one of those ones that everybody seems, that group seems to always know. And I say, understand that when it was written that men wore robes. Where is your robe? A woman wearing pants very much differentiates by the context of when that verse was given, so if you're gonna quote that, what I'm getting at this morning is understanding this truth. I'm not saying that what we concrete do cannot be evil. If you go out and hit someone without any provocation or whatever, that's a bad act to do. There's certainly that, but remember when Jesus was asked this very question, when his disciples broke a law, And they were washing their hands where they didn't wash their hands ceremonially. They didn't do what the Pharisees said before they, I don't know, walked down a hallway, they had to pour water on their hands before they opened the door, they had to pour water. They had all these rules. And Jesus' disciples were not obeying them, and the Pharisees were all offended by it. And remember, they basically asked Jesus, well, doesn't it bother you that you're, basically, that your disciples are doing evil? And Jesus gave them the answer. He said, it's not these things on the external, but it's what's in here. Because what's out in the heart, that's where murder and lust and all the actions we eventually do, they all begin in the heart. You see, real love, it's reactive. When it sees wrong, it does what it can to make it right. And thirdly, this morning, It's not only reactive, but it's proactive. Notice in verse number nine, the end of that verse, we abhor that which is evil, but then cleave to that which is good. You ever know anybody that all they ever are is against everything? Again, life is too short, and if you come to our church, maybe it'll offend you that we laugh too much, but you know what? Laughter doeth good like a medicine, the Bible teaches, and the joy of the Lord is our strength, and most Christians, most people could use to laugh a little bit more. We have got to learn to hold fast, to cleave, to not let go of good. to hold on to love and peace and kindness and hope and joy. Every single day, it seems like things go on in my life that are prying the joy and the peace out of my mind and out of my spirit and out of my walk with God. I wrote in my notes, I don't often say profound things, and I'm sure there's nothing new under the sun, so probably if I Googled it, somebody else, but I didn't Google it. but I was meditating on this because I think it's true. What we hold on to is what we become. Ooh. What we hold on to is what we become. So choose good. Don't just wait for it, go get it. Choose it, hold on to it. Reasonable service requires the discipline to hold on to that which is good. You see, when you and I don't do that and we hold on to bitterness, guess what you become? A bitter person. And all throughout your week, there are things that are coming to try to take your joy and steal your joy. You know, Jesus said, I gave you joy and I leave it with you so no one can take it away from you, is what Jesus said. So the only way you get rid of your peace is if you give it away. So hold on to it. You know, sometimes there's bad things that happen in every relationship you have, in every part of your day there's bad things that go on, but I'll tell you, at some point, you gotta let go of some bad things and hold on to the good things. You know, even inside a church family. I can promise you, if you come to this church, I was gonna say a whole year, but it won't take a whole year because DT comes every week, so you could have a bad experience in this church any single week, because he shows up. Tommy tries to keep him away from people, but sometimes she's not successful. Now, if you're watching online, I love this guy. I've had people say, man, he's really mean to that guy in the front row. I ain't sitting down there with the second row. Love you, DT, you're the best. But if you go to a church any length of time, you're gonna have a bad experience or two along the way. And sometimes you gotta let go of some bad things and hold on to the good things. And it's been amazing to me over the years, where some people will get their feelings hurt on this, that, and the other, and it might be a legitimate issue. But you gotta hold on to the good things. It amazes me. Sometimes as a church and in the ministry, I see our church meet needs of people, whether it's financial needs or material needs or encouragement needs, and I see the church family, both corporately and individually, do this for someone over and over and over again, and then one problem comes up, one thing, they got their feelings hurt on that, and boy, I'll tell you, that's all they talk about forever until finally they leave. It amazes me. how the fallen human nature always wants to be the negative, unforgiving, and hold on to that. It'll destroy you. You won't be able to do reasonable service for your Savior with that kind of response. Now, I want to stop this morning in verse number 10 because in verse 9 we see this idea of love and then he gets to verse 10 and he talks about love some more. And so I want to put verse 10 and its encouragement in view of verse number 9. So notice verse number 10 goes on and says, Now, in verse 10, he uses a different word for love than he did in verse nine. In verse nine, he talks about the agape love, the selfless love, the God love, the highest level of love. And I really struggle always demonstrating agape love. And all of us, I would think, if you're honest this morning, would say the same. And I'm really glad that in verse number 10, he does not say, be kindly affection unto another in agape love. God knows you and I, that we have our struggles. That sometimes, bless God, we struggle with letting go of some things and we say the wrong thing, he knows. And I'm glad that in verse number 10, he says, be kindly affection one another in brotherly love. The Greek word here is the root word from phileo. It means, you know, we get the word Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, right? It's that friendship kind of love. And God knows in reality for most of us and most of our relationships, we do pretty well if we can just get the phileo love. In other words, can you just be nice to somebody? That's what he's saying. Be nice. I remember at the end of Jesus' earthly ministry, after he'd been crucified, risen again, and he comes and gets Peter, and he restores Peter, who had denied him, and he comes to Peter. Remember what he asked Peter? Peter, do you love me? Now, you don't see it in the English as you do in the Greek, but Jesus is asking him, Peter, do you agape love me? Now, Peter, before his failures, would have said, Lord, I love you, agape love, like nobody else in the world's ever loved you. Nobody ever will love you like I love you. No one is ever gonna follow in my footsteps in their demonstration of love. Though all the world goes against you, I'm still gonna love you. That's what Peter probably would have said. But after he'd messed up a few times, denied the Lord, When Jesus comes to him and says, Peter, do you agape me? Peter says, Lord, you know I don't agape you, I phileo you. I wanna have an agape relationship, but I'm gonna be honest and say I don't have it all figured out. And you remember Jesus asked him this three times. You and I have to be honest about where we are in our love relationship. And I'm so thankful in verse number 10 that he says, be kindly affection one to another with phileo love, with brotherly love. And I can tell you as a pastor, if I could just get church members, just be nice to one another. You wouldn't think it'd be that hard, but it is because we get our feelings hurt, you know? And by the way, you know how Satan does it one of the most effective ways, especially in a church like ours, whenever, if you're watching online, whenever the young people leave, our junior church age kids, there's this wave of children that leave. It's a beautiful sight, isn't it? I never get tired of seeing all those kids go back there, the junior church workers are going, oh no, what are we gonna do? But there are all these kids go out there. I will tell you that Satan will use your children to divide you, your spouse, and your church family more than any other tool he has. because some other kid inside this church is gonna do your child wrong. I promise you that. Now there needs to be some honesty in that. When that occurs, we need to be honest about it. But if you don't commit to that which is good and brotherly love, I can promise you the more subjective you are to that technique, the more Satan's gonna do it. So if you want your kid to get mistreated over and over again, keep being so reactionary to the negative every single time, you just keep doing that, it'll keep happening. And usually when that was happening, oh, I used to go to church, but you know, all those people at church, they were just a bunch of hypocrites. You know, well, you are too. And now that you're a Christian who's not attending church, you're even a bigger hypocrite. Ooh, that was good. You can do that one, 4.0, that'll work. Wasn't in my notes, just comes out of me, I don't know. God just says, begin with kindness, just be nice. Just be nice. I'm so glad, and if you live and have a healthy family, you know, none of our families here are perfect, but, well. Is there a perfect family in here? No, I don't think so. I don't think we got any perfect families. Andrew, even you and Martha probably, you know. No, you're close. You're right, you're right. But you know when you have a healthy family, Some of the people you can be the most honest with, and sometimes, dare I say, the most abusive to, is your own family, because you're secure in their love and you know no matter how much you're a jerk to them, now they're gonna be honest with you and say, hey, you're being a real jerk. But they hold on. They don't let go. I'm just saying in our spiritual life and as a pastor, you get a church that does that and God can do something. with that. Put others before yourself. The Bible's real clear on that, Philippians 2. Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. In other words, don't focus on what's best for you, but think about what is best for someone else. That's why in the end of this, and we'll stop here for today, it says, in honor preferring one another. Just put someone else in front of you. That's what it means to prefer. Say, no, you go first. No, you go first. No, you go first. I love it. We have a couple people here at church that whenever we have any kind of food in the back, they're intent on being the last person to go through the line. I was kind of watching saying, oh, who's going to win the battle to be last in line? It's never the teenagers. They don't struggle with that, okay? Not the teenagers. And if you have small children, when we have food, please keep your children with you. The rest of us really don't like your children's hands grabbing out the macaroni and cheese. We're going to have to get real honest with you if that happens. But reasonable service love puts others before yourself. In our church, when the Lord brought us here many, a couple decades ago or so, I said a lot of things that probably Matt and some Karen can tell you. I probably, they would say, what? What are you talking about? We're only gonna take one offering a week. I remember when I told them that. We're only gonna take one. What? That's never gonna work. But one of the things I said was, I grew up in a lot of churches where, well, let's be honest, Has there ever been a church anybody's ever been to that you like everything about the church, everything? Probably not. And you say, well, you're the pastor. I don't like everything about our church either. I mean, I can't get rid of DT. I've been trying to run him off for years. He keeps coming back. So nobody likes everything about it. And you know, we'll say, well, you know, I don't like that. I'd really prefer this. I'd really prefer fill in the blank. I'll fill in a couple for you this morning. I don't really prefer that style of music. You know, to be honest with you, me and Pastor Danny and Pastor Cody would probably, we'd probably have a little more percussion up here if it was up to the three of us. Okay, I'm moving right along. I can see the, what, what? That's not the style of music I prefer. I'd really prefer we did it this, I don't understand why the church does this this way. I'd really prefer we did it this way. I can promise you for every way that you prefer it ought to be, there's somebody else that prefers it would be the exact opposite. That's the truth of it all. And I remember telling the public committee, I said, if you bring me here, one of my goals is to make sure that you're always a little bit unhappy. They're looking at me like, you're supposed to be a pastor, make everybody happy. No, no, no, no. I hope there's something about it that you don't like. Oh, you know, if I had my way, like I said, sometimes we use it for different avenues. There's different ways you can bring it in. But, you know, if we do, for example, a couple of weeks ago, we did an Operation Christmas Child video, and I think it had a Matthew West song in there. You know, I don't know, it had some contemporary music in there. And I know something, oh, they showed a video, and it had that music in there. It's just not what I prefer. Exactly, I'm glad you don't prefer it, because it's gonna give you an opportunity to demonstrate a biblical principle, which is in honor, preferring one another. You know, there are some people when they pray, or maybe when they're singing, they might wanna say, glory to God. They might take their hands and put them above their head. Now I know someone here might faint if that happens. A medical emergency in row five, you know. You say, well, that's not the way I prefer. That's okay. I have to tell you, the whole psalmist says lift in holy hands and clap your hands. Well, I prefer we don't clap. Well, I'm happy for you. That's good. That means you can have an opportunity to prefer and put somebody else who likes clapping ahead of you. And you've heard me say, if you go to a church that everybody thinks the same way, everybody dresses the same way, everybody views every issue of life the same way, find a different church. It's okay. Hold on to the good, be nice, and prefer one another. I want to stop today with gonna jump out of our smaller world that I've really talked a lot about today and I want to go bigger picture. Because when I was writing this and I was studying especially verse 9, abhorring that which is evil, what unfolded in Israel, you know, with these terrorists, vile, wicked, be nice. We saw evil. You know, you got people saying, well, that didn't happen. They, Hamas, they were the ones posting these things to social media. It wasn't the Mossad or the CIA or, it was them. They're proud of it. Beheading babies? raping women, killing seniors. And you say, yeah, that's evil. We all know that's evil. No, we don't all know that's evil. There's a lot of people around the world right now, even inside the United States Congress, who don't understand that that's evil. Personally, the squad, that had any ounce of integrity and honesty, they'd resign from the U.S. Congress and move back to Syria or wherever, you know, into Gaza Strip where, you know, they apparently love the way those people live. It's evil. And as we are in these days, and you know me, I'm not gonna, as I said last week, I'm not gonna newspaper exegete. I'm not I don't know, I just know that what's happening over there right now is certainly a symptom, at the very least, of the times in which we live. And unfortunately, just as when the church started in its early years, it didn't take long for Satan to separate the church and the Jewish people, so again, I never thought I'd live to see a day in America where The events we saw in Israel happen and we've got protests in this country and the universities. And by the way, if your kids go to a secular state university, I'm not saying you're a sinner. I'm not saying you're out of the will of God. I'm just saying you better know where your kids are at. Because there's not a single one of them that isn't infiltrated with Marxist ideology. That's trying to destroy their faith. That's the fact. But we've got people in our own country that are Flat-out anti-semitic, and I gotta tell you, it's really sad when we're seeing that even inside the church. As Christians, we believe that Israel is God's people, and that our Savior, Jesus Christ, is Jewish. This week as I was studying this, Ariel Ministries, you all know we do a lot with Ariel. Been hugely impactful on my ministry and our ministry here. But in Facebook, Ariel Ministries put this post. And I know I'm going a little long. Y'all gonna, it's got, it's coming, all right? It's gonna be a good ending. They said this, too often, this is a Jewish ministry, too often we experience the ambivalent position taken by the church regarding Israel. But right now is the time to stand in full support. No ifs, whens, and buts. In one of the books that Dr. Frutenbaum wrote entitled The Inheritance of God, he talks about two Hebrew words in the Old Testament that describe Israel as a beautiful portrait of God's earthly inheritance and a treasured possession. And one of the points the author says I will repeatedly make throughout this book is that this is the way in which God looks at Israel, then every believer is required to show Israel the same kind of appreciation. In other words, if God values Israel and treasures them, should not we as well? God will yet judge, purge, and refine his chosen people before they are fully and finally reconciled to him. However, as far as the church is concerned, Israel ought to be cherished, not chided, treasured, not trampled upon, defended, not demonized, comforted, not condemned, provoked to jealousy, not outrage, and driven to Jesus, not to despair. Tragically, this is not happening in many parts of the church. And this is surely an offense to our God and our Savior. And to that I say a hearty amen. And so, in closing today, this week, I called a couple of the men on the men's leadership team and said, I got an idea. And Matt always knows when I call him and I start out by saying, I've got an idea. He usually goes, let me sit down. Let me sit down. Let me sit down. He knows something coming. I got an idea. And I like it so much, it's one of those, we're gonna do it. All right, we're gonna do it. We're gonna go out on the edge. I talked to a couple of the guys, said I'm gonna go out on the edge. I don't know why this is on the edge, but apparently it is. I'm gonna show you a picture. This is a American Jewish friendship flag. And we have ordered one that is six foot by 10 foot. And we are gonna put that joker on the front wall in front of the church. I want everyone to know there may be some churches that are ambivalent in this situation, and I'm not saying everything the Jewish government's ever done is perfect. I'm not saying that, but we stand with Israel. Amen? We abhor that which is evil, cleave to that which is good. Let's pray. Oh, it's gonna be on the wall. It's gonna be on the building. DT wants to put a pole on top of the building. Are you going to climb up there and put it on? I'm not even touching that one. Let me pray. Lord, thank you so much for teaching your word this morning. Lord, help us to be kind to one another. Help us to offer a reasonable service that's rooted in love. Help us to love one another. God, for every marriage that's represented in here this morning, I pray that as husband and wives, we'd love each other, families, and church family as well. Lord, I pray that if there's one here today who doesn't know they're on their way to heaven, if they were to die right now, they'd say, Pastor Ken, I do not know if I were to die right now that I'd go to heaven. My dear friend, the Bible is so simple and so clear that we simply need to believe on Jesus Christ for everlasting life. It's very simple. He died for your sin, the mistakes that you made, paid for your price, and now he offers you that forgiveness and the gift of eternal life with God. If you simply be fully persuaded that what he's offering you, he's able to deliver. Would you believe him? Would you receive that gift by faith this morning? Holy Spirit of God, help us as a church family to love one another. Lord, I pray if there's one listening on, the sound of my voice around wherever this broadcast is being sent that doesn't know, heaven is their home. Lord, I pray you'd bring conviction on them, help them to recognize they need to make that decision. They need to make peace with you through your Son, Jesus Christ. Lord, we live in very dangerous days. The time is short. Help us to be busy serving you, in Jesus' name, amen. Would you please stand? We're gonna sing a verse invitation this morning, and Joe leads us.