First Corinthians, chapter 16. We are finishing First Corinthians today. There we go. Chase that feedback out of the system. First Corinthians, chapter 16, verses 12 to 24. This is the word of God. Now concerning our brother Apollos, I strongly urged him to visit you with the other brothers, but it was not at all his will to come now. He will come when he has opportunity. Be watchful. Stand firm in the faith. Act like men. Be strong. Let all that you do be done in love. Now I urge you, brothers, you know that the household of Stephanas were the first converts in Achaia, and that they have devoted themselves to the service of the saints. Be subject to such as these and to every fellow worker and laborer. I rejoice at the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaus, because they have made up for your absence, for they refresh my spirit as well as yours. Give recognition to such people. The churches of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Prisca, together with the church in their house, send you hearty greetings in the Lord. All the brothers send you greetings. Greet one another with a holy kiss. I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord, come. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the powerful truth of your word, for the encouragement, for the comfort, for the correction that it brings to us. Write this word upon our hearts this morning, Father, by the power of your Holy Spirit at work within us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Well, we come this morning to the end of First Corinthians, a series we began a year and a half ago. And it's fitting that since we began the series in this room, set up like this, that we get to end the series in this room, set up like this. And so I'm thankful for that. Just to remind you, our plan is we will be in the Psalms this summer. We'll be in the Psalms of the sons of Korah. If you want to get a start reading on those, 42 through 49 is the first set that I'll be preaching through, including Psalm 46 that we used for our worship service this morning and Psalm 42 and 43 we used last week. It's a wonderful set of psalms. On Thursday, I had lunch with Bruce Feil. And Bruce has preached here a few times, although it's been a few years. He's going to be preaching in my absence in two weeks. So next week I'll start the summer series on the Psalms and then my family and I are going on vacation. So Bruce will be here. And it's fitting because as I was having lunch with Bruce on Thursday, I was reminded that he was the one who gave me the guidance for how I'm doing summers in the Psalms. Bruce is a wonderful man of God. He's probably about 80 now. Um... I wanna say he's 73, but I can't say that, because I've known him for years, and he was 73 years ago, so he doesn't stay the same age. But anyway, so Bruce is a wonderful, godly man, very experienced pastor, and when I told him, I said, I really wanna preach summers in the Psalms. I think that would be a great way to do the Psalms, just have them in the summers, and summer's a time when people miss here and there, and you can do a series on the Psalms. You don't feel like you've got a big gap if you happen to miss one. And plus, I can spread it out over like 15 summers or so and preach all the Psalms. And he said, that's great. I think that's a great idea. I recommend that you put together a series for each summer rather than just starting at one and going all the way to 150. He said, make a series that's topical or thematic or whatever. And so that's kind of how I've done it. And that was under Bruce's advice. So he'll be here in two weeks time to preach for you. And then I'll be back Lord willing, on Father's Day, June 20th, which is also our 23rd wedding anniversary, to pick up with Psalm 44. So, but today we're finishing 1 Corinthians. And we come to the end. And endings are really important in anything written or in any movie or anything. If you really want to know what's important to an author, I teach this when I teach students, I say, look at what they say at the beginning. Look at what they spend the most amount of time on, and then look at what they say at the end. Because that'll tell you what is first and foremost in the author's mind. And for Paul, in Corinth, he's dealing with a church that, frankly, as we've seen over the past year and a half, is a bit of a mess, right? This church has got people who are showing up early to the Lord's Supper feasts and getting drunk. and eating all the food before anybody comes. And so people who have to come a little bit late, they come and there's no more wine and there's no more food because the other people who got there early ate all the food and drank all the wine and are sort of passed out drunk. Like that's not a healthy church. They're taking one another to court and they're suing each other. They were tolerating a man who was sleeping with his stepmother. This is a really mixed up church and they had a whole group of people who were going around the church teaching that there was no resurrection of the dead. So Paul had a lot of things that he had to deal with with this Corinthian church. But what's interesting is what he deals with first and spends the longest amount of time on is the issue of divisions and factions within the church, the lack of unity. And then that relates to probably the most famous chapter in 1 Corinthians, which is 1 Corinthians 13, where he's addressing the lack of love in the church by giving them this compelling positive portrayal of love. And then at the end, we see him again returning to these same themes in the final instructions that he gives to the church. And so we can see that for the Apostle Paul, yes, there are many problems in the church in Corinth, but the root is that they are not united in love. And he longs to see them united and strong and acting in love. And so that's where the emphasis falls on these final words for the church. Paul talks about Apollos in verse 12. And that's significant because Apollos was the guy that was heralded by some people within the Corinthian church as kind of a rival to the Apostle Paul. Just to remind you of the story that we told a year and a half ago, Paul was the one who started the church at Corinth. He came and he brought the gospel to them for the first time. And the household of Stephanas were the first converts in all of Achaia, that is all of Greece. They were the first ones to come to the Lord. And Crispus and Gaius and some other key influential leaders came to know the Lord under Paul's ministry. Paul was there for about a year and a half. But Paul intentionally, coming to Corinth, which he knew to be a very Greek, influenced city was very intentional in that he was not going to use any of his rhetorical training Earlier in Acts 17, he had been in Athens, and he used some of his rhetorical training there. But when he gets to Corinth, he resolves. He says, I was resolved to know nothing among you except for Christ and Him crucified, so that your faith would not rest on human wisdom and eloquence, but on the power of God through the cross of Jesus Christ. So he was very deliberate. I'm going to preach Jesus, I'm going to preach Jesus crucified, I'm going to preach the gospel, and I'm not going to wander from that. I'm not going to get into rhetorical displays of wisdom. Well, he leaves after a year and a half, and about a year or so after he leaves, Apollos comes. And Apollos is a man who is also very committed to Christ, very committed to the same gospel, but he's also a very well-trained, powerful speaker in the wisdom and eloquence of the Greeks. And so he comes as a very dynamic, eloquent, wise, and powerful speaker. And there were many people who were rather unimpressed by the Apostle Paul who were really impressed by Apollos. And they started to say, we follow Apollos. And those who had been the original converts in the first part of the church, they said, no, no, no, we follow Paul. And then, as you know, later on, some people came in who probably came from the Jerusalem area and were Jewish from background. And they said, well, we follow Cephas, Peter, the rock, the original. And then the super spiritual people in the church decided to counter all of these factions and say, we follow Christ. We're the really spiritual ones. So it's not by accident that in his closing, he comes back to Apollos. And then we'll see what's very interesting is he also speaks to them in a way that's very much like Peter would speak to them in verses 13 and 14, particularly in 13. So he talks about Apollos. And he says, now concerning our brother Apollos, I strongly urged him to visit you with the other brothers, but it was not his will to come now. He will come when he has the opportunity. Now, what's interesting to me is that Paul is not trying to control or order Apollos around, but he's allowing Apollos to make up his own mind about where the Lord is leading him in ministry. This is a bit of an answer to those who believe that there should be some hierarchical structure to the church. Because if there's a hierarchical structure to the church with bishops and archbishops and cardinals and a pope, well then Paul as an apostle had all the authority to say, Apollos, go to Corinth. And Apollos would have had to go. But that's not how it works. These are equals, they're brothers, they're fellow elders within the church. And so Paul urges him, hey Apollos, I think it would be a good idea for you to go to Corinth. Now think, Apollos is Paul's main rival in Corinth. No, he's not. Paul's making that very clear. He said earlier in chapter three, verses five to nine, what then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom we believed, literally slaves. We're just slaves of Christ through whom you believed as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God's fellow workers, you are God's field, God's building." The fact that Paul was urging Apollos to go shows that Paul had no envy of Apollos, no fear of Apollos, no concern that if Apollos goes back to Corinth he's gonna wow everyone with his rhetorical gifts again and people won't think very much of Paul. Paul doesn't care about any of that stuff. He wants unity in the church. And he knows that Apollos is a man of God who loves the Lord and who's faithful to the gospel and he'll go to Corinth and he'll bring the same message of unity in the gospel and love for one another that Paul himself would bring. But he's also content to trust Apollos to follow the Lord's leading. And just as Paul himself wrote earlier that he's not going to come to them, he's gonna stay at Ephesus because he has a wide door for effective ministry. Apparently wherever Apollos is, he has a wide door for effective ministry, so he's not willing to go at this time. So we can see the humility. of giving people space to make their own decisions and follow the Lord as the Lord leads, but we also see this absolute refusal to get caught up in some sort of cult of personality and to try to compete with one another for the following of the church. The church belongs to Jesus, it doesn't belong to any man. And there should absolutely be no rivalry for trying to compete for followers. That should have nothing to do with the church of Jesus Christ. Then Paul gives the Corinthians his final set of commands. And they're urgent, and they're clear, and they're direct. And he gives them four in one verse, and then a fifth that really ties them all together. This is verses 13 and 14. Be watchful. Stand firm in the faith. Act like men. Be strong. Let all that you do be done in love. So verse 13 is very direct and very clear. It's very urgent. The tone in the Greek is even more so, because for the most part, these commands are just one word in the Greek. So watchful, firm in the faith, manly, strengthened. It's that sense of urgency. And what's interesting about this verse is that it sounds very much like something Peter would say, like something Peter did say, which I don't think is a coincidence. Peter is the other one who was kind of a rival in the factions in Corinth. And this is what Peter wrote in 1 Peter chapter five. Be sober-minded. Be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him. Firm in the faith. Sound familiar? knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen." We see the exact same four commands. Be watchful, Stand firm in your faith, right? Be courageous, really is what be manly means, is to be courageous together, and then God himself will strengthen you. So first be watchful, or be on the alert. It's a call to be actively alert and watching for danger. It's easy for us to get into a pattern in our daily lives where we think We're just living our own lives. We're just following our own ideas. We're just watching our own choice of television shows. We're just reading our own choice of books. We're just sort of doing our own thing, right? And not be aware of the fact that there is an enemy who never stops working. Peter says he roams about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Our adversary, the devil, is a restless enemy who never stops prowling around and working. And what does a lion do when he wants to attack a flock, a herd, a group of animals that are prey? What does he do? He sneaks in, and he does, he will divide Right? And then he will pursue the isolated ones. That's what he does. He divides the herd, and then he will go after the slower and the weaker, the ones that are all by themselves. Because the lion knows that if the herd stays together, he can't really get at the ones that are suitable prey for him. But if he can get them to divide and to scatter, and he can get some alone, He can pick off the ones that are young or weak or sick or otherwise slow. And this helps us understand why in a church that has so many problems, Paul spends so much of his time focused on unity, that the church has to stand together in love for one another. We have to have each other's back because there's a lion. So the only way for us to be safe is to be united under Christ, our good shepherd, staying together, following him, so that we can resist the prowling lion who's seeking to divide and devour. Leaving the flock and going out on your own or gathering up rival factions within the flock is a sure recipe for inviting Satan into our midst to devour. We must be watchful. We must maintain our unity and our diligence against the enemy, and that requires humility. The quickest way that we get divided is when we're all convinced that we're right, and they're wrong, and we need to go this way, and who cares what they think? And I can be guilty of that. and it's wrong. Paul tells us in Ephesians 4, he says, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. How do we keep that unity? with humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love. God has called different types of people together in his church. We don't all think the same. We don't all like the same things. Yesterday at a graduation party for some of the graduates, We were sitting around a table with the Rossi family, and Beth was sitting next to me, and Rob was sitting next to Lynn. And Rob and I were talking sports, right? And Lynn says, Rob, can you and Beth switch seats, because I want to talk to Beth, and neither one of us want to talk about sports. So they switched, and we could talk about sports, and they could talk about the things they wanted to talk about. And so that's, you know, we're not all the same, right? But we're all called to be together. We're all called to be together. And we need to do so in a spirit of watchfulness, a unity and watchfulness, keeping our eyes together fixed on the good shepherd, King Jesus. Jesus told us in Matthew 26, 41, watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. We need to be praying on our own. And we need to be gathering together to pray, which is why our prayer gathering next Sunday morning during the Sunday school hour is really important. We're not just going to jump right into Sunday school. We need to gather the church to pray. And so I want to encourage you to please be here at 930 if you can, so that we can gather together the church to pray. We need to watch and pray because we need the Lord's blessing and protection as we return to normal. Yes, kids, in the 1900s, we got married. We got married and someone gave us a Family Life Marriage Conference gift certificate. as a wedding present. And I actually worked for what's now Shine FM, WRBS at the time. And I knew Family Life, and I knew Dennis Rainey, and I thought it was great ministry. And I listened to the program regularly. And I thought, oh, that's so nice. They gave us a Family Life marriage conference. We don't really need this. But maybe we'll go sometime. By August, I was like, where's that Family Life Marriage Conference certificate? And it was first weekend of November, and we went. Six months into our marriage, we were there. And one of the things that we were taught, and it seemed kind of silly at the time, but after we did it three or four times, I realized, yes, this is actually very helpful. And that is, the guy who was the speaker, I can't remember his name, but he said, all of you, We're gonna say it out loud together. My mate is not my enemy. My mate is not my enemy, right? And 23 years of marriage later, sometimes I still have to remind myself, my mate is not my enemy. We have an enemy, but it's not the person who's next to you in bed at night, right? In the church, we have an enemy, but it's not the person sitting in the chairs next to you. We are the flock of God, we're the people of God, we're the children of God, the family of God, the household of faith. We have an enemy. We need to know who our enemy is so that we can take our stand against him. Second, we need to realize that no soldier ever stands firm alone. If you understand Roman warfare and the Roman armor, you understand that it is designed for people to be together. One of the things that many people have noted is there's no armor for your backside in the Roman system. You have a breastplate, but you have nothing to cover your back. And of course, one of the things that people will say is, that's because you're never supposed to turn your back on the enemy. Well, yes, but it's also because you're never supposed to go into battle alone. You have each other's back. The shields that the Romans carried in a battle were designed to interlock so that they could form an impenetrable barrier to the enemy. And then you could fight with the sword as you extended your shield out to cover your fellow soldier to your left and you could swing with your right knowing that your soldier to your right was covering you with their shield. So the shields were actually designed to protect the person next to you so that you could swing and they could swing. And that's the third thing is that the way we fight, is by taking up the Word of God in prayer. Those are the offensive weapons that God has given to us. The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, praying, he says right in the context of that, take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, praying at all times with all supplication for all the saints. So we take up the Word of God and we pray, and that's how we fight. There's a lot more we could talk about, but the armor of Christ, the armor of God itself, is really a way of talking about putting on Christ daily. Because who is our salvation? Helmet of our salvation, who is our salvation? Jesus. The belt of truth, who is the truth? Jesus. Breastplate of righteousness, who is our righteousness? Jesus. The shield of faith, who is our faith to be in? Jesus. The sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, who is the word of God incarnate? Jesus, right? So it really is a way of saying we need Jesus every day. We need Jesus and we need each other if we're gonna stand firm. That really is what that passage is driving home. Now third, we're gonna get sexist here. Paul commands the Corinthians to act like men. Some other modern translations have tried to soften this up a little bit and say be courageous or have courage. And that is the gist of what Paul means, but the word he uses is actually just the word for male or man, and he turns it into a command form. So maybe the best way to translate this is man up. It's literally probably the best way to translate it. So be watchful, stand firm in the faith, man up. What does that mean? Well, it does mean that we need courage. That is really what Paul is getting at. Life is warfare, and warfare requires not only being watchful and standing firm, but also having courage in the battle. It is so easy to lose heart. I love what Tim pointed out earlier from A Mighty Fortress is our God. One little word shall fell him. That will give us courage, right? It's so easy to lose heart. Courage, the idea of courage comes from the French word for cour which is heart, right? It's to take heart. It's to have heart in the battle. And it's so easy to lose heart, right? We see the way some of our fellow Christians act. We're confronted by the way we continue to act. We look at the culture around us and it just seems like we're losing the battle for any sense of righteousness or decency. It's just really understandable that we would lose heart. But God's word never fails. Christ's kingdom is unshakable. Hebrews tells us we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken. It's not shaken by the election cycle. It's not shaken by cultural trends. It's not shaken by the filth that's put out there for entertainment. It's not shaken by our own sinful disobedience to the Lord. The kingdom we are receiving is unshakable. Our king is enthroned in the heavens and he is never going to be dethroned. When he gets up from that throne, it will be to come again and to take us to be with him forever. Fourth command is to be strong. And of all four of these commands, this is the only one that's put in the passive voice, which means be strengthened. And it's a reminder to us that we don't produce our own strength. We don't have any strength of our own. It parallels with what Paul says in Ephesians 6.10, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. We need to be strengthened by the Lord if we're going to stand firm and have courage. And then finally, all this watching and standing and courage and strength and warfare language can maybe lead us to misunderstand the nature of our warfare, and we can forget that we are not called to a life of anger or hatred, even though we're in a battle. The way we fight in the battle is with love. And so verse 14 says, let all that you do be done in love. And here Jesus is of course our great example. Christ won the warfare of his life when he laid down his life in love for his own. He won by losing all in humble obedience to his father and in love for his own. The whole life of Christ was a successful, brave, strong battle, and the whole life of Christ was a life of love. That's what we're called to be doing. How can we be watchful? How can we stand firm? How can we man up? How can we be strengthened? By doing everything we do in love. For the Father, for how much he's loved us, and love for one another because of how much Christ has called us and given us to one another as well. Well, if you're gonna live like this, we're gonna need good role models to follow. Examples of brothers and sisters who themselves are being watchful, who are standing firm in the faith, who are acting like men, who are being strong in the Lord, and who are letting all that they do be done in love. Of course, nobody does this perfectly except Jesus, and that's why Jesus is our ultimate example. But Paul takes time here to commend to the Corinthians, their local church leaders, for their obedience and for their recognition. There was no camp in the church in Corinth that said, I follow Stephanus, or I follow Fortunatus. And those were the leaders that God had given them in their local church. Instead, believe it or not, they were caught up in a celebrity culture, you know, celebrity pastor mindset that detracted them from actually following the leaders of their local church. So Paul says, now I urge you, brothers, you know that the household of Stephanus were the first converts in Achaia, and they've devoted themselves to the service of the saints. Be subject to such as these, and to every fellow worker and laborer. I rejoice at the coming of Stephanus and Fortunatus and Achaicus, because they have made up for your absence, for they refreshed my spirit as well as yours. Give recognition to such people. It's two main attributes that make these men, these kinds of leaders within the church, particularly worthy of our obedience, that we would follow them, and of our honor, that we would recognize them. The first is that they devote themselves to the service of the saints. This is what Paul says particularly about the household of Stephanas. They've devoted themselves to the service of the saints. The word devoted is such a strong word. It reflects a fixed and unwavering commitment that your flag is planted and you're not going to cede that ground. In fact, the King James translates this as they have addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints. They will not stop serving the saints. Some people are firmly and zealously committed to work hard for the church, to serve their fellow saints in the household of faith, and these kinds of leaders are priceless to a church, and they should receive the full support and encouragement from the congregation. We should cooperate with them, and we should make their devoted service more enjoyable and easier by having our full cooperation. And Paul says, give recognition to such people. And so I would like to do that. The household of Ryber has been devoted, addicted to ministry to the saints. the household of Troutman, the household of Wilson. You guys have people here who are dedicated servants to the church. They show up every week and they do what's asked of them. Every Saturday night, Sean sits down and spends the better part of an hour putting together the live stream so that it works when it goes out. And then Jason Wood, who's sick today, sits there every week and runs it. Joel comes every week and supervises the setup. And Gabe is here every week, and that's a sacrifice to their families. And what the work that Lori has done with the nursery and the childcare and the help that she's had, we can't function as a church without people like this who just step up and do. And they do it tirelessly, and they do it thanklessly. And we should give recognition to such as these. And of course, one of the dangers of giving recognition is that you'll forget people. But you know who they are, right? Larry's always here. They're just faithful. And they show up, and they do. And they do with a committed attitude that allows the rest of us to be blessed. And what Paul says we should give them is support, cooperation, help, And then the second attribute is that these leaders in the local church refresh the spirit. He says this of Stephanus and Fortunatus and Achaicus. They come to Paul in Ephesus and they refresh his spirit as well as yours. You know there are those people that when you spend time with them, you just walk away smiling and you feel 10 pounds lighter. You just realize they are an encouragement, they are a blessing. And we have people like that in this church, and I am so thankful to them. To have a card arrive in the mail, so a few people will send me cards from time to time and let me know that they're praying for me, or they'll speak a word of encouragement when they see one another on Sunday morning, or they'll invite me over to their house and we'll just have an encouraging time of meeting together. This is where the lifeblood of the church happens with those of us who are here pouring into one another and loving one another and encouraging one another and serving one another. It's how the church thrives. It's how the church grows. And so we should honor those. We should honor those. Verses 19 and 20 remind us that the church's unity and vitality extends far beyond the local church, and that we're actually connected to one another in love throughout the world. The churches of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Prisca, together with the church in their house, they were leading the house church in Ephesus, send you hearty greetings in the Lord. All the brothers send you greetings. Greet one another with a holy kiss. So just a little background helps us understand the context of this. When he says the churches of Asia, he's talking about the churches of modern day Turkey. And he's writing to Corinth, which is in modern day Greece. Now, one thing you should know, if you don't know, there is more than 3,000 years of bad blood between Greeks and Turks. It goes all the way back to the Trojan Wars, and the Trojan horse, and the Iliad, if you remember that in school, all the way back to 1200, 1300 BC, and it's still there today. There's kind of this animosity across the Aegean Sea between these two countries, and it was there in this day. But here's the point, that doesn't apply to the church. We're not, we're the Greek Christians, or we're the Asian Christians, and we have a better culture than you. No, our culture is better than you. It's no, it's we are brothers and sisters in Christ, we love one another in the Lord, we greet one another in the Lord. It's any dividing line that the world wants to draw, should be torn down in Christ, and we should love one another with a Christ-exalting, God-honoring love. And that's true of all Christians around the world. And then the final words from Paul, verses 21 to 24, he gives a very strong warning, and then a final blessing, a double blessing. Verse 21, by the way, in case you're curious about these kind of little things. Verse 21, I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. It's probably the only part of this letter that was actually written by the Apostle Paul. And the reason for that is that Paul probably had failing eyesight. And they didn't have what we have today with these wonderful exact prescription eyeglasses. And so as his eyesight failed, he was able to write less and less himself. He had to write with very large letters. And so at the end of his letters, though, to make sure that people knew it really was from him, he would kind of sign it himself with a few words. In one case, he says, see with what large letters I write. And so it's his letter. But he has someone working with him to actually write down the words. And he tells us at the beginning, it's Sosthenes is the one who actually wrote out First Corinthians. But Paul puts this in here. I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hands so that the church would know it really is coming from him. And it's a setup for the very last thing he says to them. He wants them to know this is really coming from him, from his heart. And then he goes to a very strong warning. If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord, come. There is a very strong warning here that is really aimed at people in the church who profess to believe in Christ and who attend church and call themselves Christians, but in the end do not have love for the Lord Jesus. Those are the kind of people who do cause divisions within the church. Why would someone take their Christian brother to court just to publicly humiliate them? Why would someone show up early to a fellowship meal just to stuff themselves and get drunk, not caring if anybody else who comes later has anything? Why? The root of the issue is that they don't love Jesus. Because if they knew Jesus and they loved Jesus, their heart, we're all sinners, of course, but their hearts would not be so hardened against their brothers and sisters in Christ. And so this is a very strong warning. You can be in the church, you can profess faith in Christ, you can be numbered among the saints, but the real question, the very simple and profound question, this is what I want to ask you, do you love Jesus? Do you love Jesus? Has His love so captured your heart that you say, yes, He is my Lord and Savior. I love Him. I am so thankful for Him. I am so blessed to know Him. You can attend church, you can give money, you can know the Bible, but do you love Jesus? Paul says if you don't love Jesus, you're accursed, and those who love Jesus are blessed. And those who love Jesus have the same heart cry that Paul gives at the very end of verse 22, our Lord come. It's Maranatha in the original Greek, our Lord come. That's the heart cry of one who loves Jesus, right? I, I spent my last summer before we got married in China. We were engaged already. And I was gone for eight weeks. And it was hard. And we were on the other side of the world. And kids, this is long before the internet. This was the summer of 1997. Yes, we did have telephones back then. But to place an international call from the United States to China was very expensive. And Beth was a college student, and I was freshly out of college, and we didn't have very much money. So we had a weekly phone call where she would call, and we would talk for like 15 minutes, maybe 20 minutes, and that was it. And it was hard, right? And what we were longing for, because we loved each other, was to be together again. And our heart was, toward the end of it, our hearts were just aching to be back together again. And of course, she was there at the airport. Can you imagine if I got off the plane and I walked into the terminal? Where's Beth? Oh, she's not here. She, you know, she had to get her hair done. She decided she wanted to go shopping with her sisters. No, she was there, right? And I couldn't wait to see her. That's the heart cry of someone who loves Jesus. Our Lord, come. I can't wait to see you face to face. So do you love Jesus? And then the benediction. As Paul so often does, he ends his letter with a word of blessing. In this case, it's a double blessing. By the way, that's one of the reasons why we end our worship service every Sunday morning with a blessing, a benediction, because Paul ends just about all of his letters that way, and the reason why he does it is because that's the way the worship of God's people has been ended for thousands of years, by the blessing of God to rest on the people of God as they depart. from worship. He says, the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you is Paul's most standard blessing. It's one that's at the end of just about every one of his letters. And it's powerful because what more do we need? Right, if we have the grace of Jesus with us, what more do we need? That's it, right, that gives us everything. His favor, his kindness with us, then we are well supplied and that is all we need. But here Paul adds, my love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Paul's had some hard things to say to this church. He's had some serious situations to address. He's had to say some things that were uncomfortable for him to say, uncomfortable for them to hear. And so he wants the last thing that they hear from him to say, I love you, and may my love be with you in Christ always. That's what we come back to as brothers and sisters. We might not always agree. Sometimes we have to confront one another and say hard things to each other. I hope that if you see me out of line or I say something inappropriate toward you, which I can do, that you will confront me and say, you know, Jason, I don't know what you were thinking, but when you said that, that was pretty inappropriate. That hurt my feelings. I don't know why you would do that. And hopefully, I will say, you're right. I'm so sorry. I'm still learning, still growing. Please pray for me. Please forgive me. but then we're good, like we love one another, because we're together in the Lord, and that love has to be the final thing, the love that comes from the grace of the Lord Jesus. You see, the grace of the Lord Jesus is the source and the strength of our love for one another, and that's why our love is in Christ Jesus. His love never fails. And we're called to persevere in that love and continue to extend that love to one another always. And so, amen. So be it. Let's pray. Father, what love you have given to us that we should be called children of God. What love you have given to us that we should be called brothers and sisters in Christ. rooted in the gospel, grounded in your word, saved by your grace, destined for your glory. You call us to stand firm and be watchful, to have courage and to show love in all that we do. We can only do this as your Holy Spirit fills us and unites us and strengthens us and leads us. And so lead us, we pray, King Jesus. Amen.