You can turn to 1 Peter 3, verse 8. We'll look at one verse this evening. There was a lot in this section of Scripture, so I wanted to zoom in on one verse that I trust will be helpful to each of us about the sweet smell of God's people. What kind of smell should we have? Peter writes in 1 Peter 3, verse 8, finally, all of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. He speaks, I say, of a sweet smell that he wants God's people to have, and maybe at this time in the year, you long to go out into the garden and start to smell the flowers that are blooming, and maybe you go to the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington and smell the sweet smell of flowers, Or I thought of another situation. Maybe you remember a particular person that had a smell. I remember there was a man that my dad worked with, and he was from Newfoundland, and he always had this distinct cologne smell that whenever I could smell him in the area, I knew who he was. And maybe some people have a distinct smell that way. Well, every church has a smell And as God's people, we want to have a growing sweet smell. We know we're all sinners saved by grace, so there is at times the odor of the fall and the odor of the flesh that may come up in church life, but Peter here, And like every apostle wants to see Christ and the sweet aroma of Christ formed and fashioned into God's people. And we have hope as God's people here this evening because if we are in Christ, God by His Spirit has put the sweet smell of Christ in us, even if we look at our own life and I say that my life is just a little flicker or a little scent of Christ's sweetness, and I want it to be this overwhelming aroma. Well, if you have a little flicker of Christ's sweetness by the Spirit, God, by His Spirit, can flame or fan into flame that sweet smell in your life and in my life and in our church life. Now, Peter here, He's really doing a summary statement in our text, 1 Peter 3, verse 8. He uses that phrase, finally. So he's worked through chapter one and all in the way to chapter two, verse seven. And now he's saying, I'm basically gonna summarize everything I've been getting at. If you've missed one point, here's everything in a nutshell. And what he's doing here is summarizing from chapter two, verse, 13 all the way to chapter 3 verse 7. He's looked at how the Christian lives within the civil sphere, and then how a Christian lives within the workplace, and then finally how a husband and a wife can live within the family all to the glory of Christ. And now he's saying in verse 8 of chapter 3, I'm going to apply all these realities to the church at large. Finally, verse 8, he says, all of you, and that's in the plural, the whole church in Asia Minor, And in our context, every Christian, every local assembly, Peter's saying that this is a word from the Lord, through the apostles, written down in the Holy Spirit, and it's for all of God's people, you could say, to have this sweet kind of smell. And there's four items here, if you look in verse eight, there's this smell of the unity of mind in the church, this smell of sympathy, a smell of brotherly love, a tender heart, verse 5, a humble mind here. And if you were to look at the structure of this passage, the first smell is unity of mind, and then the last smell is a humble mind. And whenever you see that in Scripture, there's this word called a chiasm that shows us the structure here. So the text begins with unity of mind and it finishes with a humble mind. And God's really showing us here that this is the base level of the smell that I want to see in my church. It's a mind. that the people of God have together, a unified mind and a humble mind, and then the next layer in the building of the church, you could say, or this sweet smell, is in those two middle words, one of sympathy, But then there's this tender heart a few words later. So you have a unified mind and a humble mind, and built on that is a sympathetic spirit and a heart that is tender. And then what's the pinnacle of this great chiasm or this structure or smell that leaves a lasting taste in the church? It's in the middle there, brotherly love. So this text is really showing us that what Peter wants to get at in the smell is one of brotherly love. And everything that he mentions in this verse is simply a little, you could say, symptom of brotherly love. What does brotherly love look like in the church? It's a unified mind in the church. It's a humble mind in the church. It's a sympathetic spirit in the church. It's a tender heart in the church. But overall, Peter is showing us that this smell is one of brotherly love. Now, before we smell this love in the text, we ought to see that this theme of love is seen throughout Peter's letter. If you look back in chapter 1, verse 22 to 23, Peter's already given this command for the church to have love for one another. Chapter 1, verse 22, Peter writes, having purified your souls, by your obedience to the truth, and then he says, for a sincere brotherly love, this genuine brotherly love. Here's the command, love one another earnestly from a pure heart. Why? since you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and abiding Word of God." We've already seen that. Peter's saying, if you've been born again, this is the smell that should be growing in your life and growing in the church life. It is this earnest, this sincere, this brotherly love where we're loving one another from a pure heart, wanting to see each other grow spiritually and grow up into Christ-likeness together. That's what Peter gave us in chapter one, and now he's circling back and saying, I haven't forgot about this smell that I wanna see among you. I've talked about how you live in the civil sphere and how you live in the workplace and in your own home, but don't forget the smell of love has to permeate everything you do in the church as well. It's easy to love the lovable in the church, and I suggest that's probably why Peter's writing this letter, because it's easy to love those with the same traditions, or the same opinions in the church, but it's a lot harder to love those with different traditions or different opinions. It's easy to love the lovable, but it's hard to love the difficult or even, as Jesus says, the least of these in the church. But Peter, he doesn't want us to have a separated or segmented category of love in the church where I pour out this quality of love for some and then I just kind of give a cold shoulder to the others who really don't share the same interests as me or the same traditions as me. No, Peter says this pure heart is this channel of Christ's love for you that overwhelms your soul and it channels to everyone in the local church. It's all of you, chapter three, verse eight, that are to have this unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, tender heart, and a humble mind. So what is this smell like? Let's have three smells this evening. And what I want to do is, rather than saying, you know what, that person in this church could smell a little better in this way, I want us each to ask the Lord in our own hearts, Lord, do I have this growing smell in my life? And if that's our posture, and we all go away from here tonight, we can say before the Lord that if I take this smell of Christ in my life seriously, and everyone else does, well, that's gonna be a well-smelling church. That's how God works in his people. Search my heart. Do I have these three smells? Verse eight, do I have the smell of a loving mind? That's where he begins. Look at the words again. unity of mind, and then he concludes with this humble mind. Now, I want to look at those two phrases, a unified mind first, and then how do we actually have a unified mind? It's only going to happen with a humble mind. We won't have beautiful unity in the church if we're not growing in humility in the church. They go hand in hand, and that's why Peter begins with two smells, really the same smell working in our hearts. So let's think of this unified mind first and ask our own heart, Lord, do I have a smell in my own heart that longs for unity in this local church? Is that my heart's desire to have unity of mind? It does not mean uniformity of mind. It's not a prayer saying that I want everyone in this church to have a uniformed mind with all my opinions and all my pet peeves and all my traditions. It doesn't mean for us to be a church that has unity, that we have to have uniformity in all things. By God's grace, we've been able to enjoy much unity, but that's by His grace, not by trying to foster uniformity in all things, on tradition or preference. But this unity of mind that Scripture speaks about, it's always tied to the gospel. The way we can come with different traditions, and different preferences, and different interests, and pet peeves, and all these things, and enjoy fellowship together in the gospel, is because of the gospel. That this unity is never disattached with the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's always there. So if you look with me in Philippians 1, The Apostle Paul writes to the Philippian church much about unity, and he uses the same phrase that Peter does of a unified mind, and here we get the recipe for what it looks like to have a church that walks in a unified mind together. Not uniformity, but the idea behind this is striving together for one goal. Look at Philippians 1 verse 27. Here's where we see this phrase of a unified mind opening up in verse 27 of chapter 1. Paul writes, be worthy of the gospel, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit. This is language of unity here, that you have one spirit as a church, and then that you have one mind, and here's what this unity of spirit and mind looks like. He says it's striving side by side for the faith of the gospel. D. A. Carson puts it this way, he says, that this unity of mind, the heart of true unified fellowship, is self-sacrificing conformity to a shared vision. And then he says this shared vision is a unified vision that is self-sacrificing conformity to the gospel. That's essentially what the Apostle Paul is saying. If you want to know what unity looks like in the church, it is all of us coming in self-sacrificing service and sacrificing for the sake of our conformity to the gospel. And so we sacrifice time and talents together on a unified front so that Jesus Christ may be praised. Not that my agenda may be pushed forward in the church, but that Jesus Christ and His glory and His gospel would be so formed in my life through the means of grace and in the lives of God's people, that there would be this unified front of progress, as Paul says, in the advancement of the gospel. It's like this team that's coming together with all different positions and different members, and they're all on the same field together, and they're all trying to get the football to the touchdown zone, and they're standing side by side, or you can think of a rugby match where those men are all linking arms together and pressing in together and lifting up one another. That's the smell that the Apostle Peter and the Apostle Paul wants to see in the church, that if I came to to Trinity Baptist Church. You can imagine the Apostle Peter or Paul saying, what would be the smell? Maybe it wouldn't be a perfect smell if you only got one glimpse of it, but by God's grace I see evidences of this unity and the smell of the gospel over 50 plus years. But we don't take that for granted, because if this unity is rooted in striving side-by-side for the faith of the gospel, then Satan hates that unity. And Satan can use different events and different things to, well, not have us strive side-by-side for the faith of the gospel, but instead to not grow in humility, but as Paul will say, if you look in chapter 2 of Philippians, to have our interests before the interests of others. Look at chapter 2 verse 1 to chapter 4. Again, there's the unity of mind here, but then a humble mind all together. And that's what Peter's putting together as well. Philippians 2 verse 1, Paul says, if there's any encouragement in Christ or any comfort from love or any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, he says, complete my joy by being of the same mind having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind, and then he says, this is what a unified mind looks like. It's a humble mind. That's what Peter's saying. Verse three, it's this mind in the church of self-sacrificing for the conformity of the gospel in the lives of God's people that we're among. Verse three, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others." What is this humble, unified mind? Verse 5, it's given to you in Christ. Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus. So do we, do I in my life have this growing, Is it this growing smell for the desire and the welfare of God's people among me? That's a good spiritual thermometer of if we have this smell or not, am I? Whenever I leave the church and whenever I'm spending time with Christ's sheep, Am I looking to my interests above others? Well, that's not a humble mind. And if that's not a humble mind, what can slowly happen in small thoughts is a lack of humility in our smell will lead to disunity in the life of the church. It begins in, as Jerry Bridges said, respectable sins. It begins in small thoughts where we begin to say, well, look at all the sacrifices I've made in the church, and look at that all I'm doing, and look at what others are not doing, and look at their lack of commitments, and all. I think that could be a temptation in our church, and what can happen then if we begin to look at the lack of commitment of others, and we begin to say, well, look at me, and look at all these I'm doing. Paul and Peter say, that's not a humble mind. That's not a mind of Christ. What that does is, if we don't put it to death, leads to bitterness against the church, and it leads to hardness of heart between our spiritual family members. if we experience that, and I confess there's times where I felt that in my heart, and you say, Lord, this is what I'm feeling. I have this coldness or this bitterness, and I want you to crucify it by your Spirit. Help me be a channel of love and mercy to be poured out as a sacrificial offering, not considering myself, but Jesus Christ formed in Others? That's what Peter and Paul want. If you have that humble mind, that goes hand in hand with a unified mind in the church. So if we all say before the Lord, is this the mind of Christ in me rather? Not looking at others and what they're doing in their church, but saying before the Lord, Lord, I know my heart was so cold before. I know my lack of commitment. I used to think of the Toronto Maple Leafs every time I sat in the pew and hated listening to sermons, and now the Lord in His mercy saved me and has me preaching. And I see His kindness and His patience to me. And what I have to do is preach to my soul and say, oh soul, Christ has been so patient with you and so kind to you. And if I see another believer that needs to grow in grace, or you see another believer that needs to grow in commitment, what do you say? He's been patient with me. He didn't overthrow me when I lacked coldness or commitment. I pray He does that which He did in my soul or is doing in my soul. That's this smell. It's a smell of humility. Humility is not thinking less of yourself. But it's thinking of yourself less, as one man said. I'm so consumed with Christ and what he's doing in the lives of his people that I don't care what happens to me. I care what happens for them and Christ's sake in the lives of his people. So there's this smell, and we get an example of this smell if you look in Philippians 2 again. Verse 19, you get Timothy here. Paul will give an example of Timothy in Epaphroditus. A man here that he uses as an example of a humble mind to encourage the Philippians in a unified mind. And look, what's Timothy looking to? Is he looking to the interest of his self over others in the church? No, he's looking to the interests of the Philippians, even before his own interests. And that will produce this unity in the Philippian church. Verse 19 of Philippians 2, Paul says, I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you, so that you too may be cheered by news of you. For I have none like him, no one like Timothy, who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. Why? Verse 24, for they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But you know Timothy's proven worth, how as a son with a father, he has served with me in the gospel. That's this unified mind of Christ that Paul wants formed in the Philippian church, and he's saying it comes from Timothy's humble mind. He's concerned about the welfare of others when everyone else is concerned about their own welfare. That's the first example. And then if you go to Philippians 2, verse 25, you get a greater example of this man, Epaphroditus, who's on his deathbed, and he's not concerned about, well, are people gonna minister to me? And are people gonna pat me on the back for almost dying for the gospel? He's actually concerned on his deathbed for the welfare of others, because they heard that he was sick, and he doesn't want them to worry. Look at Epaphroditus, Philippians 2, verse 25. Paul says, I've thought it necessary to send to you, Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier, your messenger and minister to my need. For he has often been longing for you all and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill. Indeed, he was ill near to death, but God had mercy on him. And not only on him, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. I'm the more eager to send him. Therefore, that you may rejoice at seeing him again, and that I may be less anxious." There's two examples, Paul says. And the heart example is in chapter 2, verse 5, the mind of Christ. Consider your Savior, Paul says in chapter 5 verse 11. We won't go into that, but God the Son took upon humanity, and He humbled Himself to the point of death, even death on a cross. Paul is saying that if this is your Savior, and if you have His mind in you, that will produce this humble, sacrificial giving Not for your own interest, but for the interest of others in the church. That's the smell that Peter wants. If you go back to 1 Peter 3, the base level has those two things hand-in-hand. Have, chapter 3, verse 8, have a unified mind. Striving side by side for one purpose, progressing the gospel. How? A humble mind, Peter says, this sacrificial giving for the praise of Christ and His people. That's how that's formed. And once we have that base layer, what's the second smell? If you look in 1 Peter 3 verse 8, it's this smell. of a loving heart, and really they're all hand-in-hand together. How can I have a humble heart and how can I have a unified mind? Well, it's by having, as Peter says in verse 8, a sympathetic posture or a tender heart. that smell like in the church, two attributes on how you interact with one another. So he's basically spiraling all together. If you haven't got what unity and humility looks like in serving others in the church rather than serving self in the church, let's look at the heart motives, Peter says. Let's look at this sympathy in your heart or this tenderness And if you feel your heart's not getting more sympathetic or tender to other people, well, we need to pray and ask God to cause this in our own hearts. So the word sympathy, it literally means to come to the aid of an individual or to share mutual empathy with each other. And again, we can praise God for tenderness. evidences of grace. We've seen this in the life of our church, that there is a sympathetic, sweet smell of deep concern for one another's needs. That is supernatural and Christ-exalting and extraordinary. The world cannot produce that. You look at all the different DEI programs and all the different things that they try to put in place to have some sympathy for one another in the workplace, and they cannot do that. That's the mind of Christ in God's people where We see this deep concern for the needs of others, or as one put it, sharing in the joys and sorrows of others as well. That is a supernatural smell. But again, we don't want to take that for granted. We don't want to presume that this will continue. like a flame that is burning. We want to keep putting oxygen in prayers and pleading with God to know that we are dependent on Him to have this mind, but also to have this heart posture, and if we don't call upon Him moment by moment, The flesh is waging war and as one man put it, there's always another man preaching another sermon to our souls and it's the father of lies, the enemy, the one who prowls like a roaring lion and watches us and how we interact with one another. And he says, well, I saw that lack of sympathy there. I know I'm going to set a little more darts there and just harden that heart a little more until, well, no longer there's humility and no longer is there unity. So we don't want to take this for granted, but we ask the Lord to search our hearts, What's my mind like? But what's my heart like? Because Jesus says, out of the heart the mouth speaks. And what we meditate on is what our heart is set upon. So what is my heart? What's your heart set upon? What is it smelling like? Is it this sympathetic spirit concerned for the welfare of others? longing to take their joys and sorrows upon your own shoulders. Where do we see evidence of that expressed? You could think of the prayer meeting. That's a wonderful time that we have to exercise this sympathetic spirit for one another. We purposefully bring the needs of God's people and ask if there's prayer requests or different items. And what we're doing there is as we come together on Wednesday, we know that that is an important meeting because there, as one people, all of you that Peter says, we can come in a unified mind with unified needs of sympathy and bring them to God and say, Lord, can you help your people in this area? Can you, by the throne of grace, give them help for their need? We can do that, and that's a sympathetic spirit, a praying spirit for God's people, but then you can also, I know our brother Harry puts a lot of work into this, and as I think Deb mentioned, or someone mentioned this morning, this has prayer items in this, so you can take a bulletin home, and this is not something to throw out, but this is the prayers that we need to be praying for every week, and if we all go home tonight and say, I'm gonna take There's six little dots here of prayer items. I'm going to pray for the next six days, just one item a day for the church, and we all do that. What kind of smell would that give in this church? What sweet aroma if God's people took prayer, both corporately and privately, seriously. That's what's going to foster a spirit of sympathy more and more in our church. But then this word tender hearts, it's something similar of a sympathetic spirit, but it means mutual affection for one another or compassion towards one another, that we understand that what we have in Christ is greater, it's a greater bond than flesh and blood, but it's this eternal bond. So the people Christ has put us among are people we'll spend eternity with. So we have a tender heart and a compassionate heart because Christ, our Savior, purchased each of us with his own blood. What does this tender heart look like? I want you to look back at Philippians for a moment. It's another book that speaks about both unity but also a tender heart that God's Spirit can work in God's people. And if you look at Paul's life, chapter one, we often put Paul on an elevated pedestal, you could say. Paul was a sinner saved by grace who had God the Holy Spirit as his down payment until he receives his future inheritance and glory. So the apostle Paul and his life as we see that is the life of Jesus Christ and the soul of a man redeemed by grace. So as we see these qualities in Paul's heart of a sympathetic spirit and a tender heart, this is what Christ can do in us that we want to pray would be a smell that oozes more and more in our life. Look at Philippians 1 verse 3. We'll read down to verse 8 because it is giving this aroma of Christ in the soul of a man that we want. Verse 3, Paul says, I thank my God, and look at his phrase here, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you." Now, this was a church, we don't have time to go through this whole letter, but chapter four, there's two women, Iodia and Syntyche, who don't have the same mind, who are in disagreement in the Lord, yet Paul says, whenever I think of you, Philippians, I thank God that my heart in prayer for you, whenever you pop in my mind, is one of thanksgiving. Why? For you're all making my prayer, verse four, you're always in every prayer of mine, for you all are making my prayer with joy. For what reason? Verse 5, because of your partnership, your fellowship, your unity in the gospel from the first day until now. And he says, I'm sure of this, that he who began a good work in you, he'll bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. And then look at Paul's, you could say, passions or his heart for the Philippians. Verse seven, he says, it's right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart. For you're all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. that everyone he has in mind here is simply a partaker of grace, not worthy of such grace, and he says that I feel a certain way for you. What does he feel for the Philippians? Look at verse eight, he says, God is my witness. Here's my oath of allegiance. God's my witness, how I yearn. Literally, the verb there is my bowels, the inner being of my man is turning within me. I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of Jesus Christ." You see, Paul's, his heart here is one of sympathy, one of tenderness. And what is that heart in this man, Paul? He says it's the affection of Christ. You can look through Paul's letters and he says it's the love of Christ for me that controls me and compels me and motivates me and strengthens me for service in the local church. If it's not Christ's affections for you as a redeemed sinner, and his love and marvelous grace for you, and if you forget and I forget that we are simply partakers of grace, We won't have the affection of Christ in our yearning for one another, but instead of a sympathetic and a tender heart, what could the devil want to turn into that kind of posture? Well, not a sympathetic heart, but a hardened heart, a bitter heart. But the smell, even for the least of these, as Jesus says in Matthew 25, verse 40, as you did to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did to me. We see the Apostle Paul at times was tender like a nursing mother, or he exhorted others like a father, but he had this tenderness and he cared for the least of his brothers. Well, what does that look like in our church and in our life? Do I find in my own heart being repelled by the least of these? Or those that need to be reminded or encouraged again and again? Or those who need to be lifted up and exhorted again and again? And do I tend to just say, let me just invest and pour out my soul for the stable and the mature and the healthy in the church? Or do I have the heart of Christ in this church that wants to see the young in the faith and the spiritually immature in the church strengthened in the grace of God so that we can see that we're partakers in this gospel that has saved us? That's the smell that Paul and Peter want, one of a mind, one of a heart. And then finally, and very quickly, we'll look back in 1 Peter 3, the pinnacle of this all And really, the funnel of it all, where it all flows out, is brotherly love. What does brotherly love look like in the church? A unified mind, a humble mind, a tender heart, a sympathetic heart. He says the pinnacle of all of this smell is the third smell of a growing brotherly love. You have a sweet smell of your mind, a sweet smell of your heart, Where does that all come from? This growing smell of brotherly love. Now, you could say that just sounds like a cliche. We just all gotta love one another and everything will be well and right in the Christian life and in the church, and that's just an easy answer. Let me bring you to one text to show you that though it may be an easy answer, it is the only answer. And if you look in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, the Apostle Paul, again, like Peter, these men have the mind of Christ, and they know that if we don't have brotherly love in the church, it doesn't matter what gifts we have in the church, doesn't matter what we've put our hand to the last year, But Peter and Paul give a striking reality check. 1 Corinthians 13, we often think that this love text is just about marriage. But just glimpse at chapter 12, verse 1. The context here is about spiritual gifts. Verse 1 of 1 Corinthians 12. Paul says, concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I don't want you to be uninformed. And then in chapter 14, he picks up again in verse 1, pursue and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy. So chapter 13 is in the whole context of spiritual gifts. What does it look like when we all use our spiritual gifts in the local church for the glory of Christ? And Paul here is saying something that is striking. Like Peter, if you don't have brotherly love, it does not matter what spiritual gifts you have in the church. Doesn't matter anything you're sacrificing for the church. If you don't have love, you have nothing and it's all vanity and goes up in smoke. And so if you look in chapter 13 verse 1, here's all these gifts that you could theoretically have But if you don't have love, you have nothing. You've achieved nothing, Peter says, and Paul adds here. He says in verse 1, if I speak in the tongues of men, And if I have angels but have not love, I'm a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all that I have and I even deliver up my body to be burned but have not love, I gain nothing. Nothing. That is striking, that is convicting. You could give up your life for this church, and give up all your resources, and give up all your time, and if it's not flowing out of a love for Jesus Christ, and a welfare for his people, Paul says it is nothing. It is vanity if you have not loved. You've gained nothing. This striking reminder. Why is that? If you look in verse 13, there's three things that abide. But one thing that remains forever, Paul will say, here's why it doesn't matter what you do if you have not love, because love, it remains forever. Look at verse 13, so now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, but the greatest, Paul says, of these is love. We see that verse eight back there, we skipped over it, but Paul will say that love never ends. You think of faith. We have faith now. We live by faith and not by sight now, but one day we will not need faith. One day our faith will be made sight. We also live, as Peter said in 1 Peter 1, that we have a living hope to which we've been called, this glorious inheritance that we set our hope in. But one day that hope will be fully realized and will be given what we've been hoped for in this world. So you won't need faith one day, you won't have hope one day because you'll be fully given everything you've been promised in Christ, but you'll have love still, love for all eternity for God and for your closest neighbor, your brothers and sisters in Christ, that will abide forever. So that's why the apostles speak about love as the pinnacle. That's why Peter has brotherly love at the top of that verse, and he says, if you have all these smells, or even in the Corinthian church, if you have Paul as a preacher, or Apollos as a preacher, or if you have all these gifts in knowledge and faith, but no love, It doesn't matter one whit, he says. Why? Because love for God and for neighbor abides forever. One day, your faith will be turned to sight. One day, your hope, your living hope will be fully given. But one day, you will have perfect love, perfect love for God, to love him with your whole mind, soul, and strength for all eternity and his presence, and perfect love to love your neighbor as yourself. Jonathan Edwards, he called heaven a world of love, that God, the fountain of love, is eternally and fully and infinitely pouring out His fountain of love to His people. And we, as God's people, as we taste of this love, and we experience this love, both in Christ and also in the church, it's a foretaste of the love that is to come for God's people. So as we, we ask the Lord this evening to to examine our smell. Lord, take my heart and sniff it out like a hound dog. And take your word and show me where I need to grow in my heart smell and in my mind smell so that I have the smell of brotherly love in everything that I do. And guaranteed, if we go from here this evening, each before God as a sinner redeemed by grace, and have that promise that, Lord, you have been so good with the smells and kindnesses in this church. But we don't take it for granted. We know that we're partakers of grace, and we need grace today, and we need grace for this week to come, and we need grace for the year to come. And guaranteed, when God, the God of love, hears The prayers of His people praying, as Paul did for the Philippians, that our love would abound more and more, that we would not be content with the wonderful love we've experienced here, but want greater love. That's a prayer in alignment with God the Holy Spirit. So we can pray these prayers of love for the smell of love with confidence because God delights to pour out that love and that smell in his people. So let's pray and let's ask that. Father in heaven, we come before you this evening and we confess, Lord, in our foolish hearts at times, our cold hearts. We think of that hymn, for our love is often cold. We thank you that Christ will hold us fast, that you have indeed, as we gather here in the name of Christ, as your redeemed people, given us the mind of Christ, but we're aware of the folly of indwelling sin in our heart, Lord. We pray that this evening you'd examine each of our hearts each of our minds so that we would have this brotherly love before us. And we do thank you, Lord, for your kindness and your grace and your mercy and evidences of this love and the history of this church and up until the present. And Lord, we don't want to ride on past prayers of this smell and past mercies given by this smell, but we pray in the present and pray for the next 50 years. that the aroma of Christ would ooze about us, and even as this world has such a stink of sin and death, we pray that in our generation and in our time, the light and the smell of Jesus Christ would go forth in great power, that men and women would see that God is among us, and that by our love and brotherly love for one another, that they would know that we are your disciples. And we pray this in Jesus Christ's name. Amen.