Please turn in your Bibles to John 15. John 15. And I'd like to read down through verse 13 today. So let's all stand together as we hear God's word. It's nice to have notes. John 15, now hear the word of God. I am the true vine and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that bears fruit he prunes that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered, and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in me, in my words, abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, so you will be my disciples. As the Father loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may remain in you and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this. than to lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do whatever I command you. Everybody said? Amen. Please be seated. Brothers and sisters, this morning we speak of the most central point of Jesus's ministry with his disciples. I believe that the teaching we find in chapters 14 through 17 is Jesus's inside story to his inside group. This is the core of Jesus's teachings for his people. He waited until Judas was gone, and then he proceeded to give his disciples the teaching he wanted us to live by, the teaching he wanted to understand, the core elements of his heart, as he communicated to us the relationship that we will have with him. As Jesus is the head and we are the body. As Jesus is the shepherd and we are the sheep. As Jesus is the bridegroom and we are the bride. This is the sort of relationship that Jesus is describing and defining for us, for his disciples, for the inner circle. So, brothers and sisters, as you love Jesus, as your heart has been renewed by the Holy Spirit of God, these words, I pray, will be inspiring and strengthening and feeding for your souls this morning. We come to the greatest subject of them all. The greatest of these is love. It's agape love. Again, we're back to Paul's point. in 1 Corinthians 13, though I have the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am nothing. Though I be the greatest rhetorician ever, though I be the greatest motivational preacher, though I have all knowledge and all doctrine that I might be established the most orthodoxic, the best doctrinal church in all of America, or whatever it is, and have not love, I am nothing. If I have all of faith so that I can remove mountains, I do these extraordinary things in faith, and yet have not the greatest of these, and that is love, I am nothing. So we come back to this. This is so fundamental, brothers and sisters, to us as believers. We need to come back to this in our prayer life. We need to come back to this in our meditation. We need to come back to this in our self-examination. This is the very core. This is the greatest. This is the greatest manifestation of the Christian life and the life of God in the human soul. There's nothing better than this. And so these are times at which we should be praying for and crying out for God to open us up to us. And I hope he will this morning. I hope we understand this even more as God's people. The greatest blessing in the world is sacrificial love, agape love. They say agape love is Jesus love. It's the best way to think about it. It's different than phileo love. It's different than phileo xenia, the love of strangers, kinds of things that, you know, Muslims and, you know, people in foreign countries are good at entertaining strangers and such. They do a good job with that. They invite them into their little huts and they give them the best of their food. That kind of thing happens all over the place. So just phileoxenia is not what we're talking about. That's the kind of love that everybody realizes, recognize, many people recognize, realize there's a natural kind of love that happens between all human beings. But this is the miraculous love of agape love. It's the greatest blessing in the world. There's nothing better than sacrificial love. And the greatest tragedy in the world is the lack of love. The greatest tragedy in our relationships and the breaking down. of our marriages, or the breaking down of our families, or the breaking down of our church relationships. The greatest tragedy is the lack of love. And whenever we examine ourselves and find that there is a lack of love in me, We cry out to God, we say, oh, Lord, there's something missing. I have something the size of the broadside of a barn door in my life that's just completely missing. Oh, Father, I pray that you would reveal your love to me again, but the greatest tragedy of all of life is a lack of love. It's a lack of loving God with heart, soul, mind, and strength. The first consideration in any kind of human connection that we have with others is love. The first consideration as we come and meet person to person afterwards, we're going to run into somebody. Now, you might be able to get out of here as fast as you possibly can, but on the way out, you're probably going to run into somebody. The greatest factor, the thing that matters more than anything else in your connection with another person, in your family, in the church, anywhere else, is love? That's the big question. That's a big consideration. Is there love? As we encounter God himself, is there love? Do we see his love? Do we reflect his love back to him? As we encounter the other, the question for all of us, Is love, is there love? That's the biggest question. It's not whether you like my sermon or not. It's not whether you like me. It's not whether I like you. It's not whether I like to be with you. That's not the question. It's agape love, that's the bigger question. Is there love? The greatest of these is love. Now, there are three things that mark us out as Christians. The love we experience from God, the love we have for God, and the love we have for one another. Those three things mark us out. By these things, others will know that we are disciples of Jesus. And they are like three rungs on a ladder. In order to get to the third rung of the ladder, you have to climb the first, you have to climb the second, up to the third rung. The first rung is to encounter and to receive the love of God. The love of God ministered vertically to me is the first rung. The second rung is my love that I reflect towards God. the first commandment of loving God with heart, soul, mind, and strength. And then, now that I have the love of God, now that I love God with my heart and my soul and my mind, now I can love each other. But if you haven't made it to the first rung, and you haven't made it to the second rung, you can't make it to the third rung of the ladder. So the one rests upon the other. God loves us, we love God, and we love one another. So if you're ever wondering, why is it that I have such a hard time loving the others in the body? Why is that hard for me? There are moments at which it will be hard, I'll just guarantee you. Same thing will happen in your family, and you'll say, why do I have such a hard time loving Billy Bob? I hope there's never a Billy Bob in this church. The reason you have a hard time loving Billy Bob is because you need to love God first. And you have to experience the love of God as well in you. Take a look at verse nine. This may be the most amazing verse in the Bible. It is, I think without exaggeration, this is the most amazing truth of scripture. the most mind-blowing truth in Scripture, experientially. I don't think we're ever going to fully understand this verse, but I want you to look at it. This is a gold mine here as we take a look at these words. Read each word carefully. Read it again, verse nine. Everybody look at it. Everybody look at it. I don't want you to miss a diamond. Here we go. Here it is. As the Father loved me, I also have loved you. There it is. Is there anything more amazing than that? Let your mind dwell on it for a moment. Just absorb it, soak it in. What is he saying here? We glance over these things too quickly. Jesus is giving us something most amazing. Your mind is gonna be blown for eternity on this one anyway, so you might as well smoke a little in your brain right now. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. This is the basis for all of the Christian life, for all of the love that we have for God and the love we have for others. It is the love of God. Herein is love, not that we love God. Here is the Webster's dictionary definition of love. No, it's God's definition of love, it's not Webster's. Herein is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and gave his Son a propitiation for our sins. It is the love of God. That is the very definition of love, the ultimate demonstration of love, such a demonstration. God's love, especially in manifestation in the life of Christ, the death of Christ, for us is the greatest definition, the clearest definition, much clearer than Webster. We're going to have a clear definition. We're going to start here. This is the very source. This is the foundation. This is where we all begin. We're not on this foundation. You haven't hit this rung, brothers and sisters. No sense in us going forward with anything else. God initiates. God sent His Son. And a Christian forgetting this is like a husband forgetting that he's married to his wife. Imagine that for a moment. Imagine a husband forgetting that he's married to his wife. That's serious amnesia. That's about as serious an amnesia as you can get. A husband forgets he's married to his wife, forgets his wife's name, forgets where she lives. Brothers and sisters, this is the beginning of it all. We begin with this truth in verse 9, as the Father loved me, I also have loved you. It is truly a heart-stopping realization. Your heart should probably stop or skip a beat or two at this moment. You see these words again, as the Father loved me, I also have loved you. So what is this love? This love is the love of the Father to the Son. Let's take that piece first. The Father loves the Son. I didn't realize this, Scott Brown opened this up to me this last weekend. He pointed out the first mention of the word love in the Bible is when God turned to Abraham and said, I want you to take your son, your only son, your beloved son, and sacrifice him on Mount Moriah. The son that you love. You see, God knows about love. Did love exist before the world? Yes, it did. It existed in eternity. The love of the Father to the Son. So, love is a concept that goes way back. And the Father knows about love, as the Son knows about love, because they've had an eternity of experience with love. When you know about something, you've had experience with it, and you can talk to it, especially to people who don't know anything about it. The Father knows about love. So the first time He speaks to Abraham, He says, I want you to take the Son, your only Son, the Son whom you love, because the Father knows what it's like to love a son. And the Father can feel the pain of a father who might take a son to sacrifice on a mountain. The father can feel it to the very core of his being. And so when he says to Abraham, I want you to take the son that you love, the father knows what he's talking about. Take your son, the son that you love, and sacrifice him. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. Don't just gloss over that. Seems to me, you know, it's the most common, somebody said second most common, the first most common verse recited is judge not. The second is God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. But we glance over these things, we don't think about them, we don't realize the kind of love it took for a father to give up his only begotten Son, the Son he so loved. But this is the Father's love. The father loved his son from all eternity. It is divine love. It is a perfect love. All human loves are disappointing. I realize that there are points at which my wife is disappointed in my love. There are points at which there are people in this congregation that are disappointed by the love of this body. Say, yes, there's a little love here. I can see a little love here, but it's just, ah. There's some disappointing aspects about human love. But divine love is a perfect love, all human love's transcending. That is, there's something about divine love that is far, far better, far above anything we could ever conceive. I like Anselm's argument for the existence of God, but apply it here. If we can conceive of something like love, which we can, do we hope that there is a perfect, Manifestation of this love somewhere in the universe or outside of the universe. There is. And that is the love of God. Man has a love. God does it better. Should be obvious. But I want you to think about the love the Father had for the Son. The Son is never disappointed by the love of the Father. Check out John 17. Flip a few pages forward in your Bibles, and I want you to see verses 24 through 26, because here Jesus comes back to the love of the Father again. He's not disappointed by the love of the Father. We're disappointed. Points at which we're disappointed with the love that we share with each other in the marriage, in the family, in the home. My children, I'm sure, are at times disappointed with my love. I'm disappointed with my love for my kids. Points at which I go, what kind of a father am I? Any of the other guys? I mean, any of you guys say, wow, where's the love here? I'm disappointed with me, but the Son He's not disappointed with the Father. Look at verse 24 of John 17. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am. Why? Why does he want them to be with him? He says, Father, I want them to be there. I want them to come to heaven with me. I want them to see something here. What does the Son want the disciples, that is us, to see? He says, Father, I want them to see it, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. The son is not disappointed by the father. I know there may be some sons here that are disappointed with their fathers. This son isn't. Found one. Got one. A son who's been with a father from eternity past. He loves his father. His father loves him. Perfect record. And the son wants to be there with the father so that we also might be there with him and see this. And then verse 25-26 as well. Righteous father, even though the world does not know you, I know you and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name. And I will continue to make it known that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them." He says, I just want to make known your name. I want them to know about your love. This is the thing I want them to know. I want them to experience it. It's the greatest thing. Now, if somebody loves, the Son loves us, if Jesus loves us as he does, he wants something really special for us. What is it? It is a love. that the Father has shown the Son and that the Son shows to us and the Father shows to us. This is the thing that Jesus wants us to see. It's the greatest thing on earth. It's the most spectacular message that could ever be preached. It is the amazing love of God for us. It is the love of God for us. And the one thing we know about the Father is the thing that he speaks of twice. The Father only speaks twice. I mentioned this before, but the thing the Father wants us to know at the transfiguration and at the baptism of Christ was what? He wanted us to know that this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. It's like at that graduation ceremony where the Father says, I am so thankful, I am so pleased, I'm so thankful for what God has done in this boy. My heart just erupts and there's tears. Have you ever seen tears as a father speaks of his son or his daughter? The father says, eternity with this son. This is my son, my beloved son, the son whom I love and whom I want pleased. Twice, and that's pretty much all we get from the father. He wants us to know that He loves His Son from eternity. Now again, it's important for us to understand this. Why? Because we're gonna go to the love of God as it's shown to us through Christ. But first, you need to see the love the Father has for us and the love the Father has for His Son. As the Fathers loved me, so have I loved you. It's that same love, the same divine love, the same eternal love, the same infinite love that the Father has shown the Son, the Son has experienced it, the Son knows exactly what He's talking about, and now He's sharing this with His disciples as well. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. So what is this love of God? How do we compare it with human love? How do we understand it? How do we even get our hands around this, amen? Well, the only thing I can think of is to contrast the power of God to the power of man. I mean, you look around you and you say, wow, man has done some things. Man builds these gigantic bulldozers. The tires are as high as the roof of this chapel. And these gigantic earth movers can move 18 tons at a time. It's impressive. But put that thing on Pike's Peak. See how long it takes. Little boys, you have your trucks. You know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about big trucks, much bigger than yours. You take the biggest truck that man has ever made, and you move Pike's Peak. I don't know how long it would take. Does anybody calculate that? Thousands of years to move one mountain Man is so proud of his nuclear bombs man is so proud of his nuclear reactors. Well, what about God's nuclear reactor? Come on set man's power next to God's power. And what do you get no comparison? Here it is the Sun is 100 billion Nuclear bombs every second And the Sun's got enough power to burn for 4.5 billion years how many seconds is that? Amen no comparison no comparison The power of God versus the power of man. And yesterday afternoon I was contemplating the wisdom of God compared to the wisdom of man. Man makes these little mechanical puppies that move along and occasionally go, woop woop. Then they move over here and they go, woop woop woop. Real puppies. We had eight little husky puppies running around in the driveway. yesterday and all the midwife trainees and a couple of visiting ladies were at there and there were like 15 ladies. Oh, look at these puppies, you know. Elvis Presley could have showed up and they would have, forget him, look at these puppies over here. You put a live puppy next to one of these mechanical puppies you get from Japan, which one is the child gonna go for? The real puppy. No comparison. Amen? No comparison? Okay, if there's no comparison between the power of God and the power of man, the wisdom of God and the wisdom of man, there's no comparison between the love of God and the love of man. Children, let me make this very easy for you. God is really big. God is bigger than us. God's power is way bigger than us. God's wisdom is way bigger than us. God's goodness, way bigger than your mommy and daddy. And they are good. They have given you many presents. Add them all up. I'm sure you have them on a spreadsheet somewhere. How many presents have your mommy and daddy given you over the last 12 years? A thousand? Maybe. God is gooder than your parents. God is way gooder. God is way gooder. It's a new word. We're going to put it in our new Websters. God is gooder. God is bigger. You know how some people say, those people do everything big. God does everything big. Real big. Real big. As the Father has loved me, does Jesus have any experience with this love? Does He know anything about this love? Does He and the Father go way back? Does He know something about the love of the Father? As the Father has loved me with a divine love, an amazing love, an eternal love, an infinite love, so I have loved you. I sometimes wonder what Jesus has thought about some of the meager examples of love that he found when he came here. Pitiful. Pitiful. Compared to what he's experienced within the love of the Father to the Son from all eternity past. Amazing, I must move on, but I'd like to stay here. As the Father loved me, I also have loved you. And then he says, abide in this love. Abide in my love. Abide in my love. What does this mean? This means to pitch your tent, this means to hang out, this means to live there, to continue dwelling there, don't resist His love, don't stand off from His love. Husbands and wives, sometimes their relationships are closer, sometimes their relationships are more distant. I find as I'm away for a while, for my wife and from fellowship with my wife. It takes a while for us to come back into fellowship with each other, sometimes a few days. We all understand what relationships are like. There's give and take, there's sometimes we're up, sometimes we're down, sometimes we're close, sometimes we're further away. We all know what relationships are like, so this is not difficult for us to understand. What Jesus is saying here is stay in fellowship. Stay in my love. Stay close to me. Realize my love, accept my love. Don't stand off from my love. Maybe a husband has a little bitterness in his heart towards his wife, and it just doesn't melt in her presence. He doesn't come towards her. Maybe she's warm, maybe he's not. So she's all warmed up, and he's like stiff-arming her. Is that right? Something wrong with that, huh? There's something wrong with that? Her heart's just all ready and she's ready to embrace him and he's going, no, not tonight. Stiff arm. What's wrong with this? What's wrong with this picture, guys? You're supposed to receive her love. You're supposed to walk into her love. And so Jesus is saying the same thing. He's saying, accept my love. Don't turn away from my love. Live with my love. Run towards my love. Tell Jesus, I need your love. Tell your wife that, don't you? You say, I need you, I need your love. I so appreciate your love, I so accept your love. So receive the love of Christ. Tell him you need his love, and thank him for his love for you. And then receive his loving words. My wife wrote me a very nice letter about, I'm gonna say, two, three weeks ago. It's the kind of thing where I have to dwell on it. I took it to the Father-Son retreat with me. I just kept reading it and letting the words sink in a little more. It was a good thing, you know? I mean, sometimes we glance over it too much. Maybe you husbands are used to your wife just giving you that little Post-it note in your lunch. You don't really think about what she said, you know? You don't internalize those words. You don't receive those words. And I think as husbands, we need to, you know, we can't be taking these things for grant. We need to be absorbing ourselves in the loving words that our wives give to us. That's what Jesus is saying here. Jesus is saying, receive my loving words. Here in his love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation or the covering for our sins. Accept those words. Meditate on those words. You don't just look at the 478th post-it note, I love you XXOO. Oh, it's another I love you XXOO. I've seen this 376 times. Whatever it was last time, I guess it's the same thing this time. Does anybody see a problem with that? Does anybody see a problem with that? Okay, that's the thing here, is receive the love of Jesus, stay close to the love of Jesus, receive his loving words, and receive the gift of his life. Commune with his love at the communion table. At the communion table is, I think, the most beautiful time. It really should be the greatest time in which we think about how Jesus is sharing his very life with us. In a supernatural way, we don't know how it happens, We don't have to explain it. That's how people get in trouble. But it's the communion table that, you know, we receive his life. He gives us his body and his blood. That's a huge gift. It's a beautiful thing. Abide at Gethsemane. Study what's going on there in Gethsemane. One more time, walk into the garden. and just take a moment, spend a little bit more time. Watch the great drops of blood fall to the ground as Jesus is wrestling with the enemy. The enemy is tempting him to give up, but he's looking to his Father. It's not my will, but thine be done. I've gotta go through on this act of love, Father, that you have deemed to be the critical act of love, the greatest act of love, the best definition, demonstration of all of love. Father, I'm gonna go through with this. Abide at Gethsemane and look into his eyes again as he's pushing through in order to take the burden of sin upon himself. Develop in your mind the theological meaning of it. Take a little bit more of 1 John and Ephesians and Romans into your mind as you sit there in Luke 23 and you look at Jesus there in Gethsemane pressed to the ground and the drops of blood falling around him and then off to the cross. and the beatings and the scourgings and that nails his hands and his feet. Again, don't be tired of this. He's looking into your eyes and saying, I'm doing this because I love you. I'm going the distance because I will love you to the end. This was my promise. I'm coming through with this thing because I want the very best for you. I want to set you free from your sin. I'm here to set you free from the guilt of your sin. I'm here so you can run and dance for joy in spiritual recognition of what I've done here on the cross. I'm here because I want to overcome death for you because there is no other way. You would be facing death. You would be facing the specter of eternal damnation, but I'm here in your place. And listen to the words of Jesus. Write it out as poetry. I don't care. That's kind of what I do, is I have to transcribe it into poetry. I don't care what you do, but abide at the cross again. Receive the love of Jesus one more time. Amen? This is the abiding in the love of Christ. Also, abiding means to continue in this love. to live the Christian life is to live a life of continuation and maturation of the relationship. Young couples just married, oftentimes a few fights on the front end. It's the way it works, there's ups and downs. As you know, the relationship isn't as stable, sometimes on the front end, and that's true in the Christian life at times as well. Sometimes we're a little hot, sometimes we're a little cold, you know. But as the relationship continues, there should be an abiding in the receiving of the love of Jesus and the acceptance of Christ. Okay, then let's skip down to verse 10 now. Abiding in his love also includes keeping his commandments. He says, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I've kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. Now, what does this mean? We have to define the kind of relationship that we are in. Brothers and sisters have a kind of relationship. Fathers and mothers to children, kind of relationship. Friends are another sort of relationship. All these kinds of relationships. With Jesus, we have a relationship of one in authority to those under authority. So just be aware of that. This is the sort of relationship it is. Don't be awed. We're not just buddies. We're not just friends. Our relationship with Jesus is as a Lord to a servant, a husband to a wife, God to man. and an older friend to a younger friend. We're gonna get there in just a little bit. In an upcoming Sunday, we're gonna talk about friendship with Jesus. But you just, you gotta keep this in mind. There is an authority structure, and we love Jesus in authority, in a position of authority. And children in a home, they must have a loving relationship with a parent that must include some measure of respect and obedience, some level of cooperation. Suppose you had a child who was constantly rebelling and fighting and pushing back and not cooperating and they refused to be hugged and trying to counter the will of the parents all day long. Now, is that going to work? Is that going to be an abiding in love? See, things just don't work out in a situation like that. If you're going to abide at home and enjoy the parent's love, you simply can't be fighting, hitting, and opposing your parent at every point. That's just not abiding in love. So abiding in love in a child-parent relationship must include some degree of obedience and cooperation with the program in the home. So that's why Jesus says, You will abide in my love if you keep my commandments. And there is one major rule that Jesus applies, and we'll skip down to verse 12, because immediately he goes back to his commandment. He says, this is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. So that's the commandment. That's the commandment that Jesus has given to us. Now, just heard this story recently. The Apostle John, was very old. He was upwards of his 80s or 90s. And they would still carry him up to the pulpit. Two men would grab one arm and they would hold him up at the pulpit in front of everybody. And he had something to say. And he would say it every time. Brothers, sisters, love one another as Jesus has loved us. And then they would carry him back to his seat. And somebody asked him, Brother John, why is that the only thing you say? And he said, if you do this, it is enough. And as a pastor, I think I understand this now. I used to think that going over 150 applications and commandments and things important in the congregation, But there is a commandment that's about 97% of the message. It's not the whole message, there's more in scripture. But there's a commandment, it's about 97% of the message, and it is this one from Jesus, he's repeated it again and again, and he says, it is my commandment. That you love one another as I have loved you. That's, I preached on it, I know, I preached the whole message upon it, but brothers and sisters, This is it. This is such a necessary thing. And the Christian church in America has this kind of wrong in that evangelizing your neighbors is not mentioned very much in Scripture. And yet that's the thrust of the evangelical church. The thrust of Jesus' ministry, however, listen carefully, the thrust of Jesus' ministry Not how you evangelize your neighbors As much as it is how you treat brothers and sisters in the body with love This is the basis I Believe that as we begin to love one another in this church. We're gonna start having a testimony that would draw the unbelievers in here But not until First things first. Always first things first. We must love one another, brothers and sisters. It's the commandment the brother John left us with. It's the commandment Jesus left us with. And listen to Paul's language in Philippians 4. I want you to listen to this. We just don't speak this way very much. It comes across as odd when we speak this way. Wait a minute. forget that he just used the word beloved seven words before but he sees my beloved my longed-after my beloved oh my beloved oh my beloved this is the language that Paul is using because he looks at his brothers and sisters and he can hardly wait to come up and give them hugs he just just he's drawn to Dalton you know I just I gotta hug Dalton I haven't hugged him in a week or two weeks, they've been gone. And Bill, you know, Bill has gone for six weeks. Everybody needs to be hugging Bill right now. Come on, lean forward here a little bit and give Bill a hug. We haven't had a chance to hug Bill as much. You guys think this is weird. Is this odd? Is this strange? Or is this the way that the body needs to act? Amen? My beloved Bill. My beloved Josh, it's good to have you back in California. My beloved Todd, how's your foot, my beloved? Is that odd? Is this odd? Beloved Jim, God bless you. What a great conversation and prayer we had on Tuesday. Amen, hallelujah. Amen. This is what Jesus wants in the body. This is what He desires. More than anything else, it's a sacrificial love. It's a love that endures all things. It's a survivor love. Here's what I mean by survivor love. When it comes to loving each other, I've noticed there are always obstacles and conflicts and moments of embitterment in my life and your life. And we gotta push through that. Survivor love. Love that hangs on for dear life despite the embitterment. Despite the conflict. Love that pushes through. There will always be times of embitterment in the body, always. But agape love is survivor love. It hangs in there for dear life, even through those times of embitterment when it's so difficult. It's a love that sheds blood. It's a love that goes to the cross for people that are in the process of denying you and rejecting you. And rejection is hard, but Jesus was rejected. but he kept going to the cross for people rejecting him, and he died anyway, that's the love we're talking about. You wait until there's somebody in this congregation that denies you or rejects you, and then you go to that cross, and you get some nails, and you put them in your hands and your feet, and you start to suffer for that brother or for that sister. Now, I'm not talking metaphorically, but there's thousands and thousands of thousands of ways in which we do this. You say, this is a miracle. that this kind of love would ever exist? Yes. Oh, brothers and sisters, it's a total miracle. The world knows how to love people who love them back. The world knows how to love a little bit, but they can't forgive, they can't work through conflicts. They are absorbed in evil surmisings and strife and envy and malice. Not so the church. The church is a place where miracles happen. And I want you to be as Pollyannish as you can possibly be on this one. That I know you've been disappointed at times. By the body, I know. We've all been disappointed. But here, let me say one thing that struck me this morning. When we are disappointed by the lack of love, don't let that overshadow all of the instances of true agape love. Are you with me here? What the world can do in its lack of love, what the devil can do in destroying relationships, not as impressive as what Jesus has done to reconcile us together in this congregation and to forgive each other and to sacrifice for each other, that is the miracle of God. Don't you dare give the lack of love more attention than you give the true manifestations of love. in the church of Jesus. I think we've made that mistake before. We've been embittered by the lack of love. But Jesus has shown us His love before. Amen? We've seen instances of it. There's so much to say. But I want to close on verse 11 because verse 11 is the jewel in the middle of this diamond It outshines everything else we've already said, so let me end with this. Jesus tells us here, these things I've spoken to you that my joy may remain in you and that your joy may be full. This is the thing we've been digging for. There's nothing like it, there's nothing like the love of God. It's not like the peace of God, pastor's all understanding. There's nothing like the joy. of God. Is the power of God more impressive than the power of man? Children, Pikes Peak more impressive than the big bulldozer? Is the peace of God more impressive than the peace of man? Is the joy of God more impressive than the joy of man? Is the love of God more impressive than the love of man? This is the amazing Joy that Jesus promises to us, human joy, human peace is a mechanical dog. Jesus' joy is a real dog. Is there a difference, children? Mechanical dog versus real dog, is there a difference? Yes. The joy that Jesus brings us is so much higher, so much more wonderful. And Jesus knew everything about this heavenly joy. Listen to Hebrews 12 in verse two. Looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith. And we go through this spiritual life, all the trial and tribulations that face us. Okay, we go through this. And we do it by faith, but we look to Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith. who suffered the big suffering, who took upon himself the bigger cross, and any cross you're ever gonna bear, Jesus took upon himself the big cross, and he despised the shame, and he endured that cross for the joy that was set before him. And what is that joy? That joy is an eternal relationship in communion with God. including us, his people. Now at this point, I know that some of you are incredulous. And some of you may have checked out. Because that's normally what happens when you talk like this. Because you can't relate to it. You can relate to mechanical dogs, but start talking about real dog, you're like, I don't know what that is. I know what it's like. You're incredulous. Like it can't be this good. That's where you are this morning. It can't be this good. It cannot be this good. There can't be anything better than whatever the world is doing. Can there be a joy greater than human joys? Can there be a love greater than human loves and a power greater than human powers? What do you think? Say yes with conviction if you think there can be a greater joy than whatever the world gives us. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Hallelujah. God exists. God is good. God has a standard of goodness that's higher than anything man has ever done. And the end goal of what Jesus wants for us, the reason I'm giving you any of this is because I want your joy to be full. And I want you to abide in joy. that you would abide in joy. You've had abiding joy, not ups and downs, but you'd be in a constant state of joy and your joy would be full, as full as your heart can take it. And then when you get to heaven, you'll get a bigger heart so you can take even more joy there. But this is the vision Jesus has for you and me. This is what he wants for his people. He wants our joy to be full. He wants our joy to be complete. He wants our joy to be an abiding joy. But how does this happen, you say? How do I live a life of abiding joy? He says, it's because of the words that I'm giving to you right now. How does this happen in the midst of suffering, persecution, and trial? In the words of Nathaniel Bringey, the great prophet of God in this congregation. When his father turned to him in a restaurant one time and said, son, what do you think our church needs? And he said one word, love. Love. How can we live a life of abiding joy? Love. We'll live the life of light and joy by love, by receiving the love of God and shining it forth to others, experiencing the love of God, knowing the love of God, believing the love of God, realizing how much God loves you, how much Jesus loves you, that he would go to the cross for you with an eternal love, an eternal purpose. I will love Kevin, I will love Jim, I'll love Bob from all eternity. I will love him, I will love him, I will love him. I will love him to the end. that you know the love of God for you first, and you share the love of God with others, you will experience the greatest happiness that humans could ever experience in all time and space. The happiest person in the world knows that he is loved by the greatest love in the world, and he loves others in the body with that same love. That's the major point from John 15. That's Jesus's big point. The happiest person, you wanna be happy? Does anybody here wanna be happy? The happiest person in the world will know he is loved by the greatest love in the world and share that love with others. That's it. This should be obvious, newlyweds are happy. Amen? Have you ever seen a depressed newlywed? I haven't, not yet. I've conducted 35 weddings, whatever it is. Why are they so happy? Because on a human level, and sometimes it's a divine level of love as well, but at least on a human level, they've experienced the love of somebody who loves them very much, and they're loving somebody else very much, and they're happy. Now, what if you were loved by the greatest love in the universe? Amen? Would you be happy? Absolutely. And the suffering saints testify this. The martyrs, almost every single account of the martyrs that I read, that's their testimony. They come back, if they come back alive to testify what happened to them, they come back and say, you would not believe what I experienced. You would not believe it. Here's Richard Wurmbrand. Let me read Richard Wurmbrand. I'm gonna close with Richard Wurmbrand. This is what he says about his experience in the Romanian prisons for how many years was it? 16 years in Romanian prisons. Beaten, burned, tortured, hair pulled out, stuffed under fingernails, ripped out, all the rest. He says, the suffering saints testify of this. Jesus spoke to him. I will show you how I love you. And he says, at once I felt a flame in my heart which burned like the steamers of the sun. In our darkest hours of torture, the Son of Man came to us, making the prison walls shine like diamonds and filling the cells with light. The Spirit rejoiced in the Lord, and we would not have given this joy for all of the kingly palaces in the world. That's very typical of the martyrs. He says, I have seen Christians in communist prisons with 50 pounds of chains on their feet, tortured with red-hot iron pokers, in whose throats spoonfuls of salt had been forced, being kept afterward without water, starving, whipped, suffering from cold, and praying with fervor for their torturers. This is humanly inexplicable. It is the love of Christ which is shed abroad in our hearts. This is a miracle that transcends all other miracles. If we in this body will love one another, if we will love one another in this body, With the love of Christ, the world will look at us and say, that's supernatural. Something supernatural has happened in this congregation. Again, the happiest person in the world knows that he is loved by the greatest love in the world. And he loves others with the same love, particularly his brothers and sisters in the body. And you say, if that happens, that's a miracle. Yes. Yes. Yes. Let's pray. Our Father, oh God, you have a perfect love, all human loves transcending. Your love is infinite. Your love is eternal. Your love is shocking, stunning, mind-blowing, nothing comparable on earth, nothing. That you would love sinners like us, that you would send your son to die on the cross for us out of sheer love for us, it's agape love. It's extraordinary love. Father, shine that love abroad in our hearts. We're not in prisons. We're just some people in this building in Elbert County, Colorado, but Father, we pray that we would know the love of God in us, that we would show it to each other and then to others. Father, something miraculous. Bring about your supernatural love, the life of God from all eternity, rooting itself in the life of man. Father, we pray for this tonight. In Jesus' name, amen. Now we come to the Lord's Supper, and let me encourage those of you visiting to take a look at the back of the bulletin. We have a short summary on how we practice the Lord's Table at our church. So please look at that first. If you have questions about it, just ask one of the elders. We'd be happy to help you with it. I'd like to I'd like to just close the service on John 15, 13. We didn't get to that verse in the sermon, but John 15, 13 says, And I think that's how we get the idea of sacrificial love. as the definition of agape love. Jesus laid down his life for us. Do we lay down our lives for our friends? Do we do that very often? What have we sacrificed? What specifically? Can you think of something you've sacrificed for a friend? I think we tend to be engaged in self-preservation. Right? We are instinctively preserving ourselves. We want to preserve our reputation. We want to preserve our stuff. We want to preserve our power. We want to preserve our money. We want to preserve our lives. We instinctively want to preserve ourselves. And so when there is a need for a brother or sister, for us to lean in and give up $4,000 for a brother or sister, We tend to shy back from that kind of thing. We tend not to want to sacrifice. It's not a ready thing about us to sacrifice of ourselves, of our own reputation, to see that we become the scum of the earth and we become impoverished in order that other people might be benefited by it. We tend not to do that, but that's what Jesus did. That's what Jesus did for us. He throws his body over us as this propitiation. Again, don't be confused by the word propitiation. It's his covering. He's leaping over us in the war that the fragments or shrapnel from the hand grenade does not enter into our bodies and hurt us, but rather that the shrapnel would enter into himself. And He is the propitiation that He covers us with His blood. He covers us with His body. He is our propitiation to shield us from the wrath of God, from the condemnation of God for our sins. Also realize it wasn't the President of the United States who died for you. I think you should remember that. The President of the United States didn't die for you. The maker of the universe died for you. You see, so keep that in mind as well. And it wasn't an ordinary man. It wasn't a sinful man. It wasn't a fallible man. It was the holy undefiled Lamb of God who came to die on the cross for a sinner like me and a sinner like you. you know, deserving hell, you know, really bad sinners. Sinners that were opposed to Him, that were pushing back and rejecting Him. Jesus said, I'm gonna die in their place even though they're not asking me to do this. This love was undeserved. This love was surprising. Amen? Are you surprised? Anybody like, whoa! Where did that come from? You know, if a fellow soldier throws his body over a hand grenade, you're going to go, where did he come from? Probably a Christian. Probably came from God. That's where that came from. Came from Jesus, right? So a soldier throws himself over a hand grenade, that's Jesus kind of love. Because that's the kind of love Jesus had for us. You should be shocked. You should be stunned. We should all be going, I am surprised. I am awestruck by this love for us. So be awestruck as we take this again. Be awestruck, brothers and sisters. Let's be taken back by the infinite sacrifice and the eternal reward that comes by the love of Jesus. Truly, what wondrous love is this that caused the Lord a bliss? to bear the dreadful curse for my sin, for my sin. And when from death I'm free, I'll sing and joyful be, and through eternity I'll sing on and I'll sing on, and I'll sing on and I'll sing on through all eternity. What wondrous love is this, what wondrous love is this, that the Lord of bliss should bear the dreadful curse for my sin, for my sin, for my sin. Let's think on this wondrous love as we come to the table one more time. I trust that your hearts will be warmed by the love of Jesus. and your hearts will be warm to share that love. It's beautifully pictured here at the table as Jesus shares with us his body and his blood from heaven. I want you to picture Jesus saying, here I am, here's my body and my blood that I shed for you so that you could live. I want you to imagine Jesus saying that right now at this table. That's what you're to think of as we remember the sacrifice of Jesus at the cross. Let's pray. Father in heaven, Once again, we come to you and we're taken back, we're awestruck by the love of Christ, that it was the Son of God, that it was your only beloved, begotten Son of God from all eternity, that He should love us from all eternity, that we as sinners should be loved at all. God, we know the desperately evil condition of the human heart. We've run into it in our own lives. We've seen it in our own hearts. So, Father, that you should love us this way, that the Lord of bliss, the maker of heaven and earth, should give us his own life. What wondrous love is this? What wondrous love is this? We praise you, Jesus. We praise you, Jesus. To God be the glory. Great things you have done. Amen.