If you'll remain standing for the reading of scripture found at John chapter 13 verses 31 to 38. John 13, 31 through 38. When he had gone out, Jesus said, now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and glorify him at once. Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me and just as I said to the Jews, so now I say also to you, where I am going, you cannot come. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another." Simon Peter said to him, Lord, where are you going? Jesus answered him, where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward. Peter said to him, Lord, why can't I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you. Jesus answered, will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, how much we long to hear the sound of the trumpet blast and the sound of our Lord's voice calling us home to the one who loves us. So we pray that as we read Your Word and hear Your Word, that we with great faith would meet Your Word and wait for the last call. We pray that just as the feet on the mountain are beautiful if they bring good news, and that the feet of your spirit would be quick to run, to preach to every heart and soul the good news of the gospel of peace, so that the words of my mouth and meditations of our hearts are acceptable in your sight, our Lord, our strength, and our Redeemer. Amen. You may be seated. How do you show people that you love them, your friends and family? How do you show love? I was reading this week about strange rituals around the world, different ways that different cultures express love, and I saw one I've never seen before. I don't know that much about Finland, but now I want to go there because I heard about this ritual that they have that's supposed to be a way that husbands show affection for their wives and every year they have this ritual contest that dates back apparently to the 8th century and the time of the Vikings where the Vikings had an altogether different sort of intent behind it but nevertheless the Finns have adopted it and it's become such a big deal that now you can go to these contests in countries as far away as Japan and Australia who are trying to mimic what the Finns do. They call it wife carrying and once a year men bring their wives to this certain town in Finland and they have a contest. It's kind of a race really and the men are required to put their wives over their shoulders in sort of a fireman carry and they have to run through an obstacle course where there are bogs of mud and other obstacles they have to overcome And this is the best part you'll like, is that they have at the end, whenever the winners are announced, the reward is given. And the reward for winning the wife carrying contest is how much ever your wife weighs is how much you're given in weight of beer. So I'd like to take this opportunity to announce the couple's retreat and PT training will be held in Helsinki next summer. How do you, and more importantly, how does Jesus show his people that he loves them? God's love is revealed in Jesus' cross, in Jesus' commandment, and in Jesus' calling. Cross, commandment, calling, not necessarily carrying over his shoulder. Love is revealed in Jesus' cross. Look at verse 31 and 32. Jesus said, now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. And if God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and glorify him at once. It might go right past you if you can't recall last week and maybe the last two weeks, but this passage starts off with sort of a transitional statement. When He left, or when He departed, or when He went out, that He is Judas. As soon as Judas went out, Jesus starts His farewell address. And it goes on from this passage all the way into chapter 17. And everything Jesus says is directed at His band of 11. It's very particular, and he waits until Judas is dismissed from the room, until he dismisses Judas from the room. After last week's sermon, Aidan said to me, you know, I was thinking while you were preaching today about Judas and Jesus telling him to go out and do what he was going to do quickly, that this is really the first excommunication of the church, and Jesus himself did it. He made Judas leave, and then something happened. And this is what happens as Jesus begins to talk to the people that he loves with a particular kind of love to the inner eleven disciples. And betrayal is really the context for which this farewell address starts. And it's counterintuitive. This is not what we expect. This is not a human reaction. This is God incarnate's reaction to His betrayal. He frames betrayal, or frames this whole thing, with glory. He uses Judah's betrayal as a jumping off point to talk about glory and what is Jesus really talking about, but about His death, on the cross due to that betrayal, and that that cross reveals the glory of God in Christ, but how? Glory is inseparably close to the cross of Christ. Now when we talk about the cross, I know we immediately download Jesus into the cross. But what you need to understand is that if you lived when Jesus lived 2,000 years ago, and somebody began to talk to you about the cross, and somebody that they knew that died on a cross, you need to understand that glory is not what would have been associated with that conversation. A person who was crucified had forfeiture put on their entire life. If it was the head of the household that was being crucified by the Roman government, they foreclosed on his business, on his house, they kicked his children out, his wife out, all social programs in, social status of zero. They were on the streets. It was shameful, it was devastating, but it was everything but glorious. And now Jesus begins to describe his glory. by betrayal to the cross. Why does He do that? He explains it theologically by saying, if God is glorified in Him, meaning Jesus, God will also glorify Him in Himself and glorify Him at once. This is sort of one of those quickenings. At once. All at once. There's something glorious that's about to happen. A glory is about to be revealed in this moment that has not yet heretofore been revealed. And it will happen suddenly. Jesus used the word glory or glorified doxa in the Greek. Sometimes we talk about doxology coming from this. Glory. He uses it five times in two verses. Do you think Jesus was being obsessive a little bit about what this is about in case you miss the fifth grade and having to pick out what the big idea is from a passage on one of those standardized tests? Here it is. Big idea, right? Can't miss it, disciple, fisherman. Glory, glory, glory, glory, glory. This is about glory. What does it mean? I had somebody say it back to me in Sunday school a few weeks ago. Toby, you always say that glory is God's gravitas. Good, good. It's that thing which makes us look at Him. It's the thing that sometimes is imputed to politicians. It's that certain X factor that I don't know what it is that I don't know thing that the French talk about, right? It's that thing that makes you look at them when they enter the room. It's how they draw people to themselves and however much of it they've got sometimes gives you an indication of if people are going to vote for them, if they're going to be able to attract people to themselves. Well, God has gravitas. He has quite a lot of gravitas. He has this certain something that draws people to Himself. And how is that gravitas manifested but through His Son? And in what place does it come out through His Son? Well, in just about everything He does, but in particularly, He's revealing it to the elect, to His disciples, not to Judas. He says, and now the Son of Man will be glorified. He saved this speech for them, for His intimate friends, not the betrayer, but He hasn't yet shown them the full measure of that. You know, the Judases of the world and the unbelieving can't really and don't really see the cross. They look at the cross, they see crosses, We talk to them about the cross, but you know and I know that because they don't believe when they perceive the cross of Christ, they don't perceive the same thing that you and I do. This is why the Apostle Paul strained so hard and Peter strained so hard and John strained so hard to say to them, we're preaching the cross. Foolishness to the wise of the world. But to those that believe, it's the power and the wisdom of God. It's that which makes us turn and look at Him. The cross of Christ is what makes the believers. It's what makes the elect turn and look at Him. It's His glory revealed. Jesus spoke with certainty and immediacy about God's gravitas in the cross. He will glorify Him at once. Doesn't take a long time. It doesn't take much. It doesn't take systematic theology. But when a person hears the message of the cross and really hears it, and faith meets the message, they turn immediately toward the cross. They can't not look. It's this beautiful, tragic, bloody, and victoriously glorious thing that we have as the centerpiece of our preaching and as of our church, the cross of Christ. So let me give you a bottom line here. There'll be two of these coming in this sermon. This is the first one. And let me say it with all the oomph that I can. There is nothing, there is no other thing on planet Earth, not a thing that more perfectly reveals the glory of God than the cross of Christ. Nothing. Put that into your church growth programs. There's nothing that reveals the glory of God more perfectly than the cross of Christ. There's nothing else that we can preach that will up the ante higher. There's nothing that will change the world more. There's nothing that will fix society better than preaching the cross of Christ. It is the place in time and space when God revealed His glory most perfectly. You gotta believe that. But why do you? To put it in Psalm 85 terms, chesed or covenant love and faithfulness meet righteousness and peace kiss. Or to put it in a very theological way, God is vindicated on the cross. Don't you love vindication? You've been stomped and put down and mocked and mistreated and undervalued and not promoted and finally, Somebody sees you for what you are and says, yes, I value you. But what about all the injustices of the world and all the ways in which God's law is profaned and His name is profaned every single day. And in one moment, God's wrath against sinners is vindicated on the cross. Through the cross, Jesus makes things as they should be, as they ought to be, the way God made them to be. Peace and righteousness kiss. You know why you wear the uniform? Because peace and righteousness don't kiss. They don't embrace. That's why we have the sword, and guns, and bombs, and planes, and army, and navy, and air force, and marine, and coast guards, and cops. It's because peace and righteousness almost never embrace. You have to make it happen. You have to enforce it. God is vindicated. And Jesus brings together two things that work. unimaginably distracted from each other. He brings together holy God, inseparably united to holy people, and all is right in the world. And God is vindicated because Jesus died on the cross. There's nothing, there's nothing, there's nothing in the world that reveals the glory of God more than the cross of Jesus Christ. Jesus continues gently, little children, yet a little while I'm with you, where I'm going you cannot come. Jesus is still sitting in a Passover setting and he's acting as a covenant father, wood with his children, hearkening back to Exodus and saying and doing some things that provokes them to ask, Father, what do you mean by this service? But to kind of try to put it in a different frame of reference for you, Jesus says to them, you will seek me, believers, disciples of mine, followers of mine. I'm going away. You're going to seek after me. You're going to be looking for me everywhere you can think to look, but you will not find me. In my absence, believers will seek me and they'll be comforted by the Holy Spirit, but unbelievers will be separated. They won't seek. They won't find. They won't be comforted. They'll be discomforted. Jesus is sort of, to put it in military terms, lovingly prepping his children for a very long and dangerous TDY he's about to go on, where he's going they cannot follow. Why not? Because he's going to the cross. You ever experience something you consider to be sort of tragic, only later in life, maybe a few years later, you come back to visit that place, that memory, and you laugh about it? I heard a comedian one time say the difference between comedy and tragedy is time. You ever experience that phenomenon in your life? Oh boy, I have. So I have a principle I want to give you. Tragedy is transformed into glory by love. Tragedy is transformed into glory by love. I remember our honeymoon, one of the places we went to really the top of the heap of our honeymoon trip was to go to Paris. And we had built up all these expectations in our minds of what it was going to be like. And I spent more money than I'd ever spent to stay in a hotel room in my entire life. And it was supposed to be this charming bed and breakfast not far from the Eiffel Tower. And we got there and it was like a mile and a half from the Eiffel Tower. And we lugged our luggage up the Eiffel Tower. these very narrow stairs and thought we were going to break a bone or pull a muscle trying to drag these heavy early 1990s suitcases that weren't ergonomic at all. Up this flight, four stories up to the top, we get up to the top and open the door and I think we both almost refused to go in the door because I thought In 1991 dollars, I think I paid $175 a night to stay in this place and I thought $175 a night would be a mansion and we opened the door and it was not a mansion. It was barely passable and we go in there, tiny little uncomfortable bed with no bed pillows on it at all. being outside July hot summer day in Paris lugging suitcases all around from airports to train station all that all I wanted to do was take a shower and lay down on the bed for a little while so I went into the bathroom and the bathroom had a sort of a bathtub with a shower head sticking out of the wall and I tried to climb up in the bathtub and stand in it but it was about as big as a baby's bassinet and my size 12 feet were all curled up around the edges of it and I couldn't actually put my feet flat on it so I was looking for something to hold on to because you know the shower head was about three feet high beating me right in the chest And I thought, man, when the soap hits this bassinet-sized thing underneath me and the porcelain gets soapy, I'm going to fall out and crack my head on the floor. But I didn't have to worry about water getting in the tub because when it came out of the wall, it just sort of deflected off of me and sprayed all over the room. Which wouldn't have been a problem in sort of a normal bathroom with a shower curtain, but there was no shower curtain. And the floor began to get soaking wet with water. And I looked and there was no drain in the floor. So I did the only thing we knew to do, which was open up the very nice windows out to this open market. below the hotel and thought well the air will come in and eventually maybe you know the lake will dry up from out of the bathroom and we went out to dinner came back no floor still wet so we eventually went to bed and sometime during the night that beautiful outdoor market of fruit and vegetables and all kinds of beautiful bread items that the Parisians had. They all left and went home, but instead of taking the rotten ones with them, they just deposited them on the sidewalk down below in the gutter along with some very smelly fish. And the smell was so bad it woke us out of a dead sleep. And I looked out the window and smelled that smell and thought, now I've got to close the windows and the floor is still wet. How in the world am I paying this much money for this? And I know you can laugh about it now, but at the time we were not laughing about it. It was supposed to be our honeymoon. Everything was supposed to be right in the world. And it wasn't. But sometimes the difference between tragedy and comedy is time. But Jesus didn't go to Golgotha on his honeymoon. He went there to transform our tragedy into his glory by his sacrificial love. Jesus shows His sacrificial love to the bride, and her laughter fills eternity as she contemplates the love revealed in His cross. Secondly, His love is revealed in Jesus' commandment. Look at verses 35, 34 and 35. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another." There is a change. What is new about the new commandment? Well, it's no mystery to those of you who raise your children on Deuteronomy 6, that it's not new that we're supposed to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and might, or strength, or mind and strength. That part's not new, but there is something new about this. Jesus isn't giving a piece of advice. He's not offering counseling to his disciples about how they can improve their relationships with each other. He's giving them a commandment People who give commandments have authority. And so there's something new that's here. This isn't Moses as a prophet. Jesus isn't exercising his prophetic office here exactly. He's giving a divine command. He's ordering them from God on high to love one another. The highest authority in heaven, the new master, is giving a new commandment. to new men. He doesn't say phileo each other. He says agape one another. In fact, agape is used throughout this passage and is used exclusively. There is no phileo love envisioned here. It's love one another with God's love. Agape one another. Again, this is after Judas has been dismissed, and he's really the contrast. Jesus is changing something. He's changing from neighbor to brother. not love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. And we can all debate what neighbor might mean, but here it's not debatable. He doesn't say neighbor, he says brother. He's talking about each other amongst the band of disciples, and he's talking about those who would be the disciples of Jesus himself, those who would be in the church of Jesus Christ, those who consider themselves born again, elect of God, will love each other, but how? How do we love each other with this agape love? To a new measure, a new master, a new man, and a new measure. Love one another as I have loved you. And everybody should gasp and say, wow, Jesus, standard, too high, dude, take it down a notch. As you have loved us, well, how have you loved us? Well, up to now, you've been our provider and you've been our teacher and you've corrected us and wrapped our knuckles from time to time. And you got all over Peter a couple weeks ago because he said, Lord, don't wash my feet. And you scolded him pretty hard when we were up there at Caesarea Philippi and said, no, no, get behind me, Satan. You've corrected us. You've given us insights. You've let us see your miracles. You've taught us what the true nature of the kingdom is. But now, love each other as we have loved you. I'm not sure I'm ready to do that yet, Jesus. But He hasn't even gotten warmed up yet. Love to the full measure, or as Jesus had said earlier in this passage, those that you gave me, I love them. Love to the end. Love to the full measure. Love them with the love of God. What Jesus is saying is, the love that exists between Father and Son from eternity past is the love with which I've loved you here and now in flesh and blood. Embodied to the full in me is the love of God loving you. Now, love each other like I've loved you. Not behavior, but with the love of God, love each other as the Son of God has loved each of you. Man, what are you talking about? That is really unfathomable. This is what pilots talk about flying beyond the edge of the envelope. You can't get there. This is blow your hair back and then some to the point you pass out and your nose bleeds. How do you do this? How do you even understand it? How do you even comprehend, by this all people will know that you are my disciples? We are sort of hung up with what people know. Jesus said, you want them to really know you belong to me? It's not to be found in Bavinck or Ritterboss or Luther or Calvin. You want them to know that you're my disciples? Love each other. Do we love each other? This command is not us-focused as much as it's Christ-focused. Don't miss this. If you miss this, you're not going to obey the command. It's Christ-focused, not really us-focused. It's the love of Christ, the love of God in Christ, loving us, agape love, that becomes the focus. That we are His disciples. not made men, not self-made people, not pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, by our strenuous work, not our religion, but Christ-focused. And it's therefore evangelistic. All people, even your enemies, will come to believe that you belong to this Jesus. They might not believe, but they will come to understand that you belong to this Jesus because you love each other. Put that in your church growth movement ideas and smoke on it for a while. It's Christ focused. Jesus is physically departing, but the glory of God remains embodied in a people, a specific called out from the world people, the church. Jesus' love is made visible by a shared agape. The glory of God in Christ is made visible because the body of Christ loves each other. It's Christ-focused. The church is distinguished from man-centered organization that spread time and space all the live long day because people are brought together who should hate each other, but they love each other with the love of God. Here's another bottom line for you to add to the, there's nothing, no more perfect expression of the glory of God on earth than the cross of Jesus Christ. Here's another bottom line. No one on earth more perfectly reveals God's glory than the cross preaching brother loving church. No one on earth, no evangelist, no organization, no televangelist, no TV station, no contemporary Christian musician, no song, no drama, no movie, no nothing else more perfectly reveals the glory of God than the cross-preaching, brother-loving Church of Jesus Christ. Want to find a place to invest your life? Where it will matter for eternity? I hope you believe that. I hope you can say amen to that. How do you look at your church family? I was going to an early morning meeting, got in the car, and I was going through some hills, and there was no radio on, and I was bleary. It was dark, and it was wintertime, and it was raining, and there was one radio station that would play, and it was a German radio station, and this song got played, and I thought, I've never heard that song before. it sounds like Lady Gaga singing with somebody else. I wonder who that is. They come on after and they say Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper from the movie A Star is Born. I thought I'm gonna go get that song. That is so good. And so I went and looked it up and they had shot a video for it and I thought man The look on their faces when they're singing to each other is remarkable. I wonder how this movie is doing. I haven't seen this movie. I don't know that much about it. Bradley Cooper's directorial debut won an Oscar for American Sniper and all that and now he's singing and directing this movie and he asked Lady Gaga to be in this. So I started watching interviews and they interviewed Lady Gaga and they said You know, I've got to ask you kind of an awkward question, but everybody wants to know, like, is there something going on between you and Bradley Cooper? Because the way you look at each other when you're singing in this movie, it looks like it's not just acting. And she said, no, you know, we're just actors. But yeah, we wanted it to look like we were really in love with each other. So people wonder, how do you look at your church? How do you look at each other? The way you look at each other, does it make the world wonder? You want to know one of the compliments that I get from you and from other people on a regular basis? Is they come up to me and they say, have you ever looked at your wife when you're preaching? The look on her face. She really loves you. I wish if I had to stand up and talk to a big group of people that might not like me much, that I had a wife sitting there beaming at me like that. They're right. But do you have any idea how the Father looks at you through the Son? Do you know how much He loves you? Is it reflected in the way you look at each other? And does it make the world around TRC wonder what on earth is going on in there? His love is revealed in Jesus' cross and Jesus' commandment. Thirdly, and finally, His love is revealed in Jesus' calling. Look at verse 36. Simon Peter said to Him, Lord, where are you going? Jesus answered, where I'm going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow me afterward. Cannot. You cannot, where I'm going, you cannot follow me now, but will afterward." Where was Jesus going? He was going to the cross. He was going to the place where divine wrath, hellish wrath, would be poured out on Him. And to the full, where He was going, they could not follow. Peter could not follow. Sometimes that's the breakdown of the WWJD thing. What would Jesus do? Well, what Jesus did is not what we have to do, thank God. We don't have to be nailed to a cross and have hell poured out on us for the sake of our sins. He did that, hallelujah. We don't have to do that. But why can't we follow? The where is why Peter can't go. And we'll get into this in John chapter 14. I go to prepare a place for you so that where I am there you may be also. He's not talking about going to heaven and swinging a hammer. He's not talking about construction. He's talking about the cross. The way was not prepared for Peter to follow. The way was not prepared for us to follow. Jesus had to go to the cross to prepare the way. He had to die for the sake of our sins and for the broken way that existed between us and God to make the way for us to boldly approach the throne of grace, to make the way for us to spend eternity with Him in heaven, to make the way for us to celebrate at the wedding feast of the Lamb. where I'm going, you cannot come. You cannot follow me now, but you will follow me after. After what? After what word, Jesus? In one respect, in a great respect, when Peter dies, the promises of Jesus, the promises of God will come to fruition. After he dies, in the resurrection, he will experience the way. After that, word after Peter's death, Jesus' way would be open to him into eternity. But Peter, the great protestant, the great protester, complains, why can't I follow you now? He stomped his sandal when he said that. Why can't I follow you now? Does that sound like a petulant child or what? Why can't I follow you now? It would have been enough for Jesus to say, because I just said so. He just called me Lord because I said so. Isn't that good enough for you, Peter? But no. Jesus bears with his childlike faith. By the way, I know, childlike faith, right? We all need to have it. I get that. Trust without question. I've never met a child that could trust without questioning, but there you go. Childlike faith, but not childish faith. Peter wants to know why he can't follow now. I will lay down my life for you. And you can just about hear Jesus like a balloon being bled of air. Really? You will lay down your life for me? Hold on just a minute. Why not now? I'll tell you why not now. Because God's glory is not something we enter by our will or our work or walking. The glory of God is something we enter by faith. It's something we enter by faith when we die, but more specifically, by our resurrection. I want you to think about the resurrection for a minute. Why not now? Because it's not time. The resurrection will come. The resurrection as we learned a couple of chapters ago, the resurrection Jesus preached at the tombside. He heard about from Martha. I know my brother will rise at the resurrection of the last day. It's not time for the resurrection of the last day yet. It's not time for Him or us to enter that kind of resurrected glory, what Romans 8 calls glorified. The story ends when the dust is glorified. And we're not there yet. But I love all of the passages of Scripture that describe what resurrection is because it gives you a picture of what salvation, in a nutshell, really is all about. It's dead people who have been dissolved away by time and decay and entropy into the dust of the earth or into the depths of the sea. And out of nothing, God calls the dead to life. And not just to organic life, but to glorified life as it should be. On the last day, through resurrection, which we receive. It's something that's done to us. Passive is not a good enough word for what the dead are when they receive resurrection. But whatever the word would be, that's what it is. Dead, dust, decay, Why not now? Because Peter's got the wrong idea in his mind. You know what Peter was saying when he said to Jesus, why not now? I'm ready to die for you. He didn't have in his mind, go to the cross, die as a martyr for the sake of a people, shed my blood for remission of sins. That is not what Peter had in his mind. What Peter had in his mind was, take sword from scabbard and cut off some heads and bring the Romanis to their knees under King Jesus. That I'm ready to die for. And Jesus said, no, no, you don't understand, Peter. To put it in top gun terminology, your ego is writing checks your heart can't cash. You're not nearly that brave, Peter. You think you are, I know you do. You've got a good heart, but your ego's in the way. Have you ever heard of that principle called the Peter Principle? It was developed, I think, in the 60s. A book was written about it. It's about management. In a hierarchical organization, people tend to become promoted to the point of their incompetency. You ever heard that? It was written as a satire for the business world, but everybody adopted it, and now it's just a funny way of doing management, right? Is to not promote somebody to the point of their incompetence. I think the guy that wrote it, his name was Peter, but sometimes I can't help but think about the Apostle Peter who wants to self-promote to the point of incompetence. I wonder sometimes if we could have a Christian Peter principle, so I decided to invent one. And here you go. Jesus tends to call his people from spiritual incompetence into glory. Jesus tends to call his people from spiritual incompetence Do you know for certain God loves you? Because Jesus loves us, He calls us from spiritual incompetency. Here is what Peter said in 1 Peter 2, verses 9 and 10 about that spiritual incompetency and our call. He has called you out of darkness and into His marvelous light. And then looking back to the gospel of Hosea in the Old Testament, you who were once not a people, and had not received mercy are now the people of God and have obtained mercy. Let me put it to you in Toby language. What God was saying to the people of Israel through the wife of Hosea and her children, He was saying, you were once called, I don't love you. You were once no son of mine and now you are my beloved children. called out of that darkness and into my marvelous light and glory. That's the calling. From spiritual incompetence to Jesus' glory. Why? Because He loves us. Sometimes what I'm afraid of is that what gets washed away by all our Reformed theology is that we think there's some higher theology than God loves His people. It ought to be the most reformed thing I could ever preach on to a crowd of people who believe in a God who deals with His people through covenants, that God loves those people with a particular kind of love, that a group of people who self-identify as sola gratia, by grace alone, irresistible grace alone, the goodness of God, undeserved, merited to us, not because of anything we had done or would do for the good or the bad, that God sets that grace on us and that that grace is so winsome and so affectionate and so irresistible, like gravity, it draws us into the glorious body of Christ and glorifies us in the end in resurrection. There is nothing more reformed that I could ever preach to you or articulate to you than the chesed of God for you. And if you've come to church your whole life and all you've gotten is theology and words from the Bible, but not an experience of the love of God for you, shame on me and us. There is nothing more Reformed. There is nothing more Luther. There is nothing more Calvin. There is nothing more John Knox than to say to the people of God, He loves you. Don't you know it? Do you wake up in the middle of the night and say, everybody in the world hates me, but God loves me, and He couldn't love me less, and He couldn't love me more? And how do you know that? I come from Florida and several years ago I heard the story of a little boy who in the summertime ran out behind his house, kicked off his flip flops, pulled off his shirt, and jumped into the lake to swim. And his mother was watching through the kitchen window at her little boy swim in the lake as he'd done hundreds of times before. And as she was watching him, she saw coming from the opposite side of the lake an alligator swimming right at her son. And she went outside and began to run down the dock and yell at her son in the water, come back, come back, come back. And he did a U-turn out in the middle of the water and began to swim back to his mother who was on the edge of the dock. and began to scream because as the child swam very slowly, the alligator swam very quickly. And just as the boy's hand touched the dog, safe at his mother's heels, the alligator arrived at his feet. and the alligator opened its jaws and grabbed both of the little boy's feet in its mouth and mom grabbed his hands and a great tug of war began and screaming and pleading and back and forth it went and the alligator was much stronger than the mom but the mom loved the child beyond measure and dug her nails into the child's arms and into his hands and began to scream so loudly that a passerby in a truck, heard it, stopped his truck, took out his gun, came down to the lakeside and shot and killed the alligator. Little boy spent several weeks in the hospital. The local news media knew all about it and went down there as soon as it was safe to interview the child and said, we heard about your struggle. Can you tell us what happened? And he told them the whole story. And they said, would you mind if we took some pictures of your feet and your legs where the alligator bit you and clawed at you and nearly tore you apart. And he said, sure. And he pulled away the bed sheets and showed them the scars on his feet. And he said, but don't miss these. And he pulled up his sleeves and said, look at my arms. Look at my scars. My mother wouldn't let me go. How do you know that God loves you? You don't need to look at your hands and your feet, but look at the scars of Jesus and remind yourself, the Father wouldn't let me go. Do you believe it? Amen. Let's pray. Father, we pray that you would help us to remember the struggle of the cross and the glory which is given to us. Thank you that we are not required to go to that cross as victims, but that we're invited as children and as heirs, and that because of the scars on Jesus' hands and feet, we bear the marks of children. that we who were once enemies of God are now the beloved. Father, we pray that you would tear down whatever wall separates men and women and parents and children and brothers and sisters in this congregation and that we would love each other as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for us. If there's any of us that doubt it, We pray that Your love would conquer all those doubts and pull us to safety in the arms of the Father. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.