Please open your Bibles to Romans, Chapter 13. We're going to read just three verses from there. And I'm going to read from New American Standard, updated versions. So that's very similar to the Pew Bible. As you know, we're going to be beginning a series this morning on loving one another. It's a series that I've been really humbled by. I've just gathered the material to help me prepare for it. As I've looked out in the congregation, it's one of those where you just think, OK, Lord, you want me to preach to them about this? I feel like I'm in a room full of people who are far better than I am, far more advanced than I am in so many of these areas. Here we are. So I believe you'll be blessed by this material. I know you will be blessed by it. You hear the word of the Lord speaking to you through it. But just understand that as I'm preaching, you know, it's not me. Descending from on high to help you with your life, I'm definitely growing. and understand that I have a lot to grow. So let's just hear the Lord speak to us. This is such important stuff because, you know, it's the first and the second of the greatest commandment, right? To love God and to love one another. This is really where it's at. This is the main thing, right? I've chosen Romans 13, 8 through 10 because of the very unusual way, I think, that Paul brings it out. Here we have a chapter where essentially he's instructing the Christians how to be subject to their rulers. And, you know, you can hear sort of in the background Jesus speaking to his disciples and those who came and asked him that day about whether they should pay taxes to Caesar. You know, and Jesus says, render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. And Paul, I think, has that in his mind as he's talking about rendering unto the rulers the certain honor that is due them. And then, you know, owe no one anything, he says, verse 8. He says, owe nothing to anyone. except to love one another. For he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet. And if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law. This is the word of the Lord, and it's our word for instruction. Let's let's ask him to bless us, please. Father, thank you for your word and thank you that you are surrounding us now with your love here in this place. This is the word that will be here when everything else is gone. And it's our word. So we pray that you would bless it to us. We pray that your Holy Spirit would sow in our lives and our hearts the truth that is contained here in the sermon. And may it represent you faithfully. May I represent you faithfully today. In Jesus' name, amen. At some point this week, I had an interesting conversation talking about love and what it is. I think I told you about Crystal a few weeks ago. Crystal's not really her name, but you get the idea. She's Crystal. And she was talking to that businessman that I think I mentioned to you. I told you about him. successful businessman who's now reeling from a really nasty divorce. And, you know, it's interesting because he and his wife were married the same number of years as my parents were married before they divorced, 27 years they were married. Only in this particular case, it's through no-fault divorce, in this no-fault divorce environment. Basically, she is just cleaning him out. I mean, it's a really sad situation. This is one of the things we can do with no-fault divorce. He made all the money, and it's not like I'm on his side or her side, but in this particular case, it's interesting because he made all the money, and he loves her, would love to be back with her, But all she does, whenever she comes around, is she just continues to rearrange the settlement such that she's making more money every time she comes around. And so, it just rips his heart out, and he's not able to get past it. So, in the process here, let's call him Stephen Seelman, was talking with Crystal about love. has taken up with a younger person and that's a romantic interest. And Crystal knows about this. And so she says to him, Oh, isn't love grand? You know, that's in the background here, this divorce that he's dealing with. And so he says to her, he says, he says, Oh, yeah, it's really and then he begins to And though he would have agreed with her, he begins to think about the pain that he's in and how really this person that he's with, he doesn't really love her the way he loves his wife. And it's just not the fulfilling situation that he would like. And so what he says is, I don't know what love is, really. And I think we can understand that, right? But maybe there was a time in our lives when we were younger, we thought we knew what love was, but then we get older. You know, it's funny how the older we get, the more we know, the more we know we don't know. And in his particular situation, he doesn't know what love is. And so then all of a sudden the spotlight's on me because I'm the pastor guy and they want to know, well, what does the Bible say what love is? What does the Bible say that love is? And so I thought of 1 Corinthians 13 and began to speak on that a little bit. Which was, I think, a fulfilling answer, such as it was. I believe the Lord blessed it, because his word never returns to him void. But it's just got me thinking about what love is, and how it's so central to our lives, and it's what people need to know, what love is. And so, as I introduce this series, then, my hope for this series is we're going to really grow in our knowledge of what love is. and begin to love one another better through it and to love the Lord Jesus Christ better through it. So with all of that said, let me let me ask you, let me let me just hear from you a little bit if you feel like speaking up. Can I just hear synonyms for love? How would you define love in one word? What would you say love is? What would you say? Would you say it's It's what? It's grace, okay? Kindness, good word. Others? Trust, a good word. Mercy? Okay. Suffering? Long suffering. Sacrifice? Fulfillment. Commitment. Comfort. These are good words. Deference. Ethical. First of all, ethical. Primarily ethical. Okay? All right. Good thoughts. I think I heard Something approximating closeness. When you love someone, you're close to them. Another one could be encouragement. Maybe that goes along with deference some. Encouraging someone. Shared attraction. When you're in love with someone, when you love someone, there's a shared attraction there, isn't there? Whether it be romantic love or the love that friends have as a shared attraction. Helping others. These are good words for what love is. And yet they're not necessarily all there is to it. I think you'd know that too. We could say that love is closeness, and yet sometimes closeness has to be sacrificed. If the person you love is into stuff that they ought not to be into, then love would dictate that you would speak the truth to them, and run the risk of sacrificing that closeness for a while. They don't want to hear the truth from you, and they're going to walk away from you. for a while, perhaps, and you may have to sacrifice closeness if you really love someone, right? Shared attraction, to a certain extent, and yet, remember what Jesus said about love. In the Sermon on the Mount, when he said, if you love only those who love you, what did he say? love is that, right? What kind of lover are you? You who love only those who love you. You're not even the tax collectors, you're the same. And so what he's calling us to is to love those whether they love you back or not. And in fact, If you really hear Jesus here, isn't he saying that if you require that someone be lovable in order for you to love them, the more you require someone to be lovable for you to love them, the less loving you are? Isn't that fair to say? If you love only those who love you, what kind of love is that? So one definition that I've come across this week that I think is helpful to me in various manifestations of love, whether it be husband-wife, whether it be in the family, whether it be in the neighborhood, whatever, love is this. and doing what's best for others. Love is seeking and doing what is best for others. And I think that lines up with what Paul is saying here. There's a kind of owing that we have to do Romans 8, 13, 8. Owe no one anything, owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another, for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. So this is one of those occasions when I hope to really prove to you that God is not only right, but He is good. And His commands are good for us. That when we really live according to the law that he sets before us, that law is good for us. And the command to love one another is not only right, because it comes from God, because it is primarily ethical, but also it's good. Love is good for business, if you're a businessman. And I was just looking again at Jim Collins' book, Good to Great. And, you know, a level five leader, this is a level five leader, is marked by this. He says, level five leaders, and let me just say what a level five leader is first. A level five leader is someone who essentially It's a characteristic of a CEO who leads companies that are far and away better than others in their given industry. And so I'm just going to make the point now that CEOs who operate with this characteristic are very, very successful. So again, those who love at work, are good workers. That's what he says. Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves into the larger goal of building a great company. It's not that level 5 leaders have no ego or no self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious, but their ambition is first and foremost the institution and not themselves. So, CEOs who run very successful companies love their companies. They love the people in their companies. They're providing for the people in their companies and not for themselves. And, you know, the byword now among, in the business community is, you know, don't be a CEO like Lee Iacocca who's this rock star CEO, you know, He once was very, very successful, but now nobody will have him because he's too self-absorbed, he's too self-interested. So we see this all across the board. We see it in business, we see it in families, obviously. We want to be better lovers at home, better lovers of our wives and of our husbands, better lovers of our children, better lovers of our parents. better lovers of our neighbors. And as we live according to the law that God has given us, it's not only right, but the thing that I want us to get jazzed about is that it's good for us too. This is the kind of life that we want. God is setting for us the kind of life that we, deep down, we desire to have. And that's what Paul's getting at here when we look again at the commandments. Live this way, you will live the life that you want to live. You see this often in the New Testament. You see the law and the prophets hang together on these two commandments, loving God and loving neighbor. You see very often in the New Testament, you see this command to love with living the law. So let me ask you this, before we get too far ahead. Do you think that anger is a... Do you think that anger and love are incompatible? If you're a person who tends to get angry easily. Is that something that stops you from loving? What do you think? It says, be angry and do not sin. Right? Be angry and do not sin. If you have, if you're someone who's given to anger, That doesn't necessarily mean that you're not highly able to love, but anger comes in like an alarm, right? An alarm that goes off and you don't know why it's going off. And let me just share with you this. It's getting hot here. I've got to take my jacket off. There are times when... I thought about this. I thought this was one of the more difficult parts about being a pastor, I've discovered, is dealing with anger, my own anger. This is my own personal thing, and maybe you'll relate to this too. One of the things that I was not prepared for in this job was dealing with being falsely accused of positions or statements that I never had, you know. I've sent people angry with me occasionally because of something that I said or something that I didn't say, but what's behind that is an assumption that was completely out of left field. So, this anger comes up, and anger is sort of like an alarm on your computer, right? An alarm pops up there, and it's either good or bad, right? Could be bad, but it may not necessarily be bad. It may be something that's easily dismissed. But what we do about it, that's the issue. Well, when I'm accused of having a certain thing that I don't have, and I sense that you're angry about something, The thing that we need to come to terms with is the fact that you may be dealing with something and projecting that on me. If you find me condemning or judgmental, it's at least possible, isn't it, that what's really going on is you're processing self-condemning thoughts And you're getting angry about those self-condemning thoughts, and you're projecting them onto me. We do this. I do it, and I believe you do it, too. That if I say something or I don't say something, that's a confirmation that your little alarm is correct. when in fact it's really not. So, all I'm saying is that when that alarm comes up, process it, acknowledge it, but do not sin. Don't assume that that alarm is correct. We've got to talk about it. Okay? So, be angry and yet do not sin. Because it may be that I'm judging you. But it may also be that you're judging yourself, and you're putting that on to me. And as long as that's there, if we don't talk about it, then it's going to be that annoying alarm that just keeps coming up on your computer. And you've got to deal with it. You've got to get to the bottom of it, because it's going to keep coming up. But don't assume that it's what you think it is. Let's talk. Our hatred and love incompatible. Anger and love are not incompatible, but our hatred and love incompatible. Is hate the opposite of love? Last week we sang a few songs that had to do with God hating things. And God's people hating things. Oh God, I hate da da da da da da. And if you're like me, because this is a highly contemporary, you know, kind of with a church, you're always thinking about the. You're always thinking about the guests and how they're processing the songs. And here we are singing about hating things. And it sounds a little hard in the mouth because we don't like to think that hate and love are compatible. We tend to think they're opposites. But the truth is, hate and love, as you know, are not incompatible, but they're very much necessary. They very much belong together. God definitely hates things that come between him and his beloved. 181 times the word hate appears in the New King James New Testament, and it's good for us to grow in our hatred of things that are standing between ourselves and the object of our love. the Lord hates. Yea, seven. And those are all things that come between us and our love for God and for one another. So, love is good for us. It's not only right, but it's good. It's what we want, as well as what we ought to do. Love is not incompatible with anger. Love is not incompatible with hatred. And we ought to be spending the next few weeks thinking about how we can pay down our love debt, okay? So let's do that together. Pay down our love debt. Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another. And this morning what we did was we thought about the first part of loving another, and that is connecting with another, right? We've got to connect with one before we can really begin to love them. And so that's what we focused on, was connecting with them. And reading this very interesting book called Loving People by John Townes, And he's a psychologist, Christian psychologist. And let me just share with you something from his case study here, which was very helpful to me in coming to terms with the need for connecting well with others. There's this case study here. We have Kyle and Nancy. They had come in for marriage counseling, Kyle and Nancy. And Nancy is complaining of being lonely in her marriage. She's lonely there. But Kyle, and see Kyle and Nancy are both really well devoted to their church and they love the Lord and they've got the right Christian values together. But they're in for counseling because Nancy just keeps complaining about this sense of loneliness in her marriage. And the fact that Nancy is hurt in her marriage breaks Kyle's heart because he's doing everything that he possibly can. And again, both of them share the same values. Nancy is a lovely woman, very respectful toward Kyle. But they've got this very, very distant sort of cohabitation thing going on. And she knows that this marriage could be so much more. Nancy does. Kyle believes that he's doing all he can, but just isn't able to meet her sense of So what they do in this counseling situation is the counselor asks Kyle to tell them, Nancy and the counselor, something from Kyle's past, a loss that he sustained. That's where I got that from this morning. Tell us about a loss that you sustained when you were younger. And the loss was, he was this really successful athlete, was on the track to superstardom in baseball, but then he got an injury and he was flushed out his freshman year or whatever. But he was in this Christian home where they really valued the right things. And it was very important for them to instill in Kyle the right perspective. So Kyle learned that all of this was in God's sovereign plan, and it was something that he could accept and should accept. And so when the counselor asked Kyle how you dealt with this devastating loss, that you were going to be a great baseball player and probably make millions of dollars a year, how did you deal with that? And how did your parents help you deal with that? What he said was, well, they helped me see the right perspective, that this was God's sovereign plan. And that was it. And so the counselor said, well, what if somebody were to say to you back then, man, what a blow. I'm so sorry. It must be devastating for you to deal with this loss. What would that have felt like to you to deal with that then? And Kyle at this point in the counseling session begins to feel all of those familiar, actually not familiar, the pain of having to process that comes back, and then suddenly he's back in high school having to deal with all of this. And his face changes, and he gets to the place where he can begin to share emotionally what's going on. And at this point, Nancy begins to move closer and closer to Kyle. Nancy had never heard this. Well, what's happening here? You know what's happening here. Kyle is sharing from his heart what happened. And this is not just touchy-feely, get-in-touch-with-your-feminine-side stuff. Let me show you 2 Corinthians chapter 6. This is what Paul is crying out for the Corinthians to do. The problem in Corinth. Corinth was heavy on Paul's heart like Galatia was heavy on Paul's heart. Folks in Corinth are on their way out the door. And Paul is begging for this connection to be reestablished. So, he says over here in 2 Corinthians 6, 11 to 13, he says, open wide. He says, our mouth has spoken freely to you, O Corinthians. Our heart is opened wide. You are not restrained by us, but you are restrained in your own affections. Now, in a like way, I speak to you as my children. That's the gloss. I think it's good. I'm talking to you like my children. Open wide also to us. So here's Paul with the spiritual father that he is loving his spiritual children. Begging for that emotional connection again. And this is what we need with one another. We need to have this emotional connection with one another. We need to exist at this emotional level with one another because we are lonely in ourselves. It isn't good for man to be alone. You hear that in the background of this. The opening lines of Genesis say it so perfectly. Day one, day two, day three. It's good, it's good, it's good. He makes man very good. And here we have Adam with this wonderful fellowship with God. Couldn't be sweeter, perhaps, from Adam's perspective. But what does God say? God says it's not good that Adam has only relationship with me. It's not good for Adam. It's not good. Adam has to have Eve. And by extension, we have to have one another. But if you're like me, you can too easily blow that off and say, no, it can just be me and God. If you're like that, if you're like me, if you can just say, I don't need others. I can just have God. I want you to hear God say, It isn't good for you to do that. You have to open wide your heart to one another. I have much more to say, and the sermon is about half done, but we are out of time. This must be all the Lord has to have for you today. So let's pray and then we'll just be dismissed. Father, thank you for your word and thank you for this great experience of needing one another and being the God of grace who meets us. We do pray that you would help those of us who have a hard time opening up to one another to do that. We we we we do need you and we do need one another. Please help us to do that in Jesus name. Amen.