Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] My wife Danae, and I grew up in two different worlds when it comes to the way in which we were raised.
[00:00:09] Her mother's Cuban heritage was very much a part of her life. She has grandparents from Cuba.
[00:00:17] And so the coffee, the food, the celebrations, the traditions was very much a part of her life growing up.
[00:00:26] And as many of you know, I grew up in rural Tennessee, and that was very much and still is, as you know, a part of my life, sort of small town Southern culture.
[00:00:39] And our wedding was a mixture of Latin and redneck Tennesseean and Floridian.
[00:00:51] And it was very interesting, but I wasn't ready for the way in which the Latins welcome you into the family.
[00:01:00] And after the ceremony, we were gathered into a private room where all of Danae's Cuban family lined up. Say probably 20 and 30, young and old.
[00:01:15] They lined up to come through and greet us.
[00:01:20] And greeting us meant kissing us.
[00:01:25] This is how they greet one another.
[00:01:28] And when I say kiss, I mean kiss.
[00:01:33] Young and old, still remember it very vividly, mostly on the cheeks.
[00:01:41] And there were some direct shots.
[00:01:45] And I turn my head to the side and I notice I'm trying to figure out what's going on.
[00:01:53] And Danae is loving it.
[00:01:56] She thinks it's awesome. She thinks it's normal. She thinks it's great grandmothers, aunts, uncles, cousins kissing her.
[00:02:07] And I'm scared to death.
[00:02:10] Now, in many cultures, this isn't a big deal. Some of you know that.
[00:02:14] But in mine, it was a big deal.
[00:02:18] And I didn't even like to be touched that much at that time. I've grown accustomed to that, mostly because of this church. Have to kind of get over it.
[00:02:28] But in general, I didn't want to be touched, let alone kissed by people I'd never met before.
[00:02:34] And I'm thinking, what have I done?
[00:02:38] And how do I get out of this?
[00:02:40] Not the marriage, necessarily, but the room at the time.
[00:02:46] And some of you feel that way about church.
[00:02:50] And to be honest with you, it's not bad.
[00:02:53] God sets us apart from the world and puts us in the church, a new family, and he puts us in this family so that we would be loved. Like it or not, you're going to be loved in the context of the church, at least in the context of a healthy church, a biblical church. You're going to be loved in ways that are going to make you uncomfortable.
[00:03:23] This is also to teach us how to love.
[00:03:28] God puts us in the church to be loved and to learn how to love like Jesus. And it's uncomfortable and it's awkward and at times we're thinking, how can I get out of here?
[00:03:41] And yet this is our family, like it or not.
[00:03:45] In the context of this book, we remember Paul on a three week mission trip, preaches the Gospel in synagogues in Thessalonica, and. And many Jews and Gentiles come to faith in Christ. And there is a church that is formed, and yet Paul is ran out of the city due to persecution, and yet there's a church there to endure the persecution after he leaves. And so he's concerned about the church. He eventually sends Timothy back to check on the church. And what he finds is the church is doing well.
[00:04:20] And one of the things they're doing well is they're loving one another in the face of persecution and suffering, they are loving one another well. And it brings Paul joy.
[00:04:35] He even says, I don't even have to tell you how to do this. You already know how to love one another. But I do pray that it would increase more and more and more. And as we see as the book ends, this idea of love and sanctification go together.
[00:04:51] We see at the end of this letter, as we talked about last week, Paul just kind of inserts these indicatives, instructions, commands, this is what you're supposed to do together as a church.
[00:05:02] And here he inserts a prayer into these things. I'm calling you to live together in community, fellowship in the world, in the Word, be at peace with one another. And then he prays that God would do all of these things in the context of their church. Notice. First of all we see sanctification is peace.
[00:05:25] Sanctification is peace. Notice verse 23.
[00:05:29] As Paul is calling them to live out the Gospel as a church, all of these instructions, he stops and he writes this prayer. Now, may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely. Notice this title. Paul gives God. He is the God of peace, the God of shalom, which can also mean rest.
[00:05:51] This is the God who gives rest. He is the source of rest, the. The absence of conflict, the absence of tension. God is the one who provides that peace is a part of his character. And notice what it leads him to do. If peace is a part of his character, sanctification is something he will do for you. Notice.
[00:06:15] May the God of Peace himself sanctify you completely.
[00:06:20] Now, the word sanctify, it comes from the word where we get the word holy. It means to be set apart. It means to be distinct from the world that is full of sin and death and corruption. God sets us apart from Those things, He makes us holy. He consecrates us. He takes us specifically from our sin, sets us apart to Himself so that we live under his authority. And he says, I pray the God of peace would do this notice completely that he would finish and fulfill this work of sanctification, this process of making you holy, that God would do all of these things.
[00:07:04] And so we learn here in just this small part of this verse, that the process of sanctification means peace for us.
[00:07:14] If God is going to sanctify us, we will learn his peace.
[00:07:20] Sanctification means peace for us. And why is that? Your sin is a declaration of war against God.
[00:07:31] God created you for his glory. You live in his world. And so when you sin, what you are doing is declaring war against God.
[00:07:38] You're saying, no, I'm going to live as your enemy. I'm going to be king, and I'm going to fight with you.
[00:07:46] And so what it means for God to sanctify us is to set us apart from that sin to Himself, so that there is no longer any fight, there is no longer war and tension going on between us and God. For you to have peace with God, you must be set apart from sin, moved away from sin, purged of sin, and you will not have peace with God until you are completely sanctified of your sin. God's goal, God's will for your life is to purge any residue of that fire fight against him so that you would be fully and finally at peace with him, that the war on every level with him, mind, heart and soul, would be over and you would live at peace. And so this prayer of the Apostle Paul here is a prayer for peace. When he's praying that they would be sanctified by the God of peace, he is praying that they would know and experience peace.
[00:08:49] And the reality is it is impossible for you to be happy and at odds with God.
[00:08:56] Sometimes we think doing what I want, fighting against God, that's going to make me happy. God just doesn't understand this is going to make me happier. And the very thing that you want, that you're fighting with God with is what's making you miserable. And God's goal is to purge you of that. And Paul prays for that here. And we should pray for one another, that we would be sanctified so that we would have peace.
[00:09:21] For about four weeks now, I've been kind of going through a significant back injury.
[00:09:27] And Jason Story, who is ministering the gospel at Clearwater beach this summer, he found out about it, and he Called me. He wanted to encourage me, kind of give me some advice. He's gone through a similar thing.
[00:09:42] And he was about to. We were about to hang up, and he said, I want to pray for you.
[00:09:46] And he said, I want to pray that God would teach you.
[00:09:51] And I'm thinking, well, I want you to pray that my back gets better.
[00:09:58] And he said, God taught me a lot through this same thing.
[00:10:03] And I'm going to pray that God would teach you. In essence, I want to pray that God would sanctify you.
[00:10:09] And reality is, my family leaves for New Orleans. They go on this mission trip that I can't go on. And for a whole week, I'm laying on my stomach, laying on my face, can't do anything. Kind of hear the College World Series going on in the background, know who's winning, get to do work on my stomach, on my computer, and for a whole week.
[00:10:34] And I realized in that week that when I'm not in control of things, I am absolutely miserable.
[00:10:41] And I am very impatient.
[00:10:44] And over the course of that first week, I realized just how much of a control freak I am. How in the world is my wife going to get to New Orleans without me? How in the world is that mission trip going to go okay without me? How in the world are all these things going to happen without me doing them?
[00:11:02] And then how impatient I am. Every day I would wake up, I'm ready for this to be over. Why is this still going? Oh, it's still there. Oh, my goodness.
[00:11:11] So impatient and there. That's the way God teaches us. He puts us in those situations to sanctify us, to set us apart from our sin. And often we should look at one another in those situations and go, okay, I am going to pray for your needs, but I'm also going to pray that God would sanctify you because that would mean peace for you.
[00:11:34] God can provide all your needs and take care of all your circumstances, and you still be miserable because you're at war with God.
[00:11:41] I'm going to pray that God would sanctify you and give you peace. Next we see sanctification is love. Notice the way he continues to talk about the end result, the being completely sanctified. He says, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ here. I think when Paul says whole spirit, soul and body, he's. He's just saying your whole person.
[00:12:09] He's not trying to teach the makeup of our existence as humans.
[00:12:15] In some sense, he's saying, you're all of you, body and soul, all of you physical and spiritual. I pray that it would be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. This word kept means to be guarded and protected.
[00:12:32] I'm praying that you would be guarded and protected until the coming of Jesus and then you would be blameless. The word means above reproach, meaning when you stand before Jesus, there would be no accusation against you. You deserve hell for your sin. And yet Paul is saying, when you stand before Jesus, I'm praying that you would be blameless without sin and not deserving condemnation when you stand before him, no guilt that would send you to hell.
[00:13:02] Here he refers to the coming of Jesus that we've talked about, this moment when we are raptured and soul and body are joined in a resurrection. He's saying, I pray that you would be blameless and then you would stand before him in that moment blameless, that you would be kept blameless until and even in the moment that you see Jesus.
[00:13:24] And in some sense, Scripture teaches two different senses in which we are kept blameless.
[00:13:31] The first, if you want to know how am I going to be kept blameless until I meet Jesus and when I meet Jesus, first of all, you can only be kept blameless in Christ.
[00:13:41] When you believe the gospel, when you look to Christ's death in your place, meaning he died for your sin, the punishment that you deserve for your sin, you are forgiven of your sin. His payment becomes your payment before God, and your sin in some sense is washed away and you are blameless. When you look to Christ's life, he lived a perfect life you couldn't live. And you are covered in his righteousness when you believe in him. Jesus, death and resurrection is given to you. It is as though you have never sinned and you've always obeyed before God by faith. And only by faith can you be blameless.
[00:14:22] And Paul says, I'm praying that you would be kept in Christ until you stand before Christ.
[00:14:30] And when we see Christ, the glorious thing is what God has declared us to be blameless. God makes us when we see him, we will be like him. The apostle John says, when you see Jesus, you will be transformed and be blameless. And so he's saying, I'm praying that you will be kept in Christ until you see Christ and you become what Jesus has declared you to be.
[00:14:56] There's another sense, very specific to 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, of what it means to be kept blameless. And it's this. We're kept Blameless in Christ. But we're also kept blameless in the process of being sanctified and growing in love until we see Jesus. That's also what it means in these two letters. To be kept means I'm kept in the process of. Of growing in love.
[00:15:22] And on our website, Ashland Church Blog, if you go there, there's a list of verses on the Sermon Outline and Notes for today that prove this point. They kind of undergird this idea that being kept is being sanctified and growing in love.
[00:15:41] First Thessalonians, chapter three, that you would see there, verses 12 and 13.
[00:15:47] Paul says this, and may the Lord increase and abound you in love for one another and for all as we do you. What does it mean to be sanctified, to grow in Christ, to abound in love? Why? So that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father.
[00:16:07] So to be kept by God means by the Spirit. He continues to grow you in love.
[00:16:14] You don't go backwards in love.
[00:16:16] Do you have the Spirit of God? You grow in love and you increase in love. In chapter four, verse ten, he says, you know what to do in loving. I pray that you abound more and more and increase in loving. In Second Thessalonians, chapter one, verse three, he talks about their faith growing. What does it mean? That their faith is growing abundantly, that they love every one of you, that the love of every one of you is increasing.
[00:16:44] In First Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 13, Paul says, so now faith, hope, and love abide these three, but the greatest is love. And so the culmination of your faith and hope is love.
[00:16:58] If you're not loving, you're not growing in your faith, which means you're not being kept and preserved and sanctified by God.
[00:17:08] To be sanctified means you grow in love. We learned this from Jesus, who taught us the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all of ourselves, which is very similar to this verse, Spirit, body and soul, that we would love God with everything, and that we would love our neighbors as ourselves. In Colossians, chapter 3, verses 12 through 14, we are to put on the character of Christ. And above all of these character qualities, we are to put on love.
[00:17:38] So to become more like Christ, you must learn how to love like Christ.
[00:17:44] In First Peter, chapter one, verse 22, we are to love one another earnestly from a pure heart. What does it mean to be blameless with a pure heart? You're going to love if God is purifying your heart, you're going to love. In first Timothy, chapter one, verse five, love, Paul says he's issuing this command from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith, this command to love. So if you have a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith, you will love. If you're growing in those things, you will grow in love. In Galatians 5, 22 and 24, Paul talks about the fruit of the Spirit. And the first aspect of the fruit is love. It is priority.
[00:18:29] In John, chapter 13, verse 35, by this, all people will know that you're my disciples if you have love for one another. And in John, chapter 15, when Jesus talks about us bearing fruit, what is the fruit that we bear? We obey his command to love one another.
[00:18:50] So the point being made here is sanctification culminates in love.
[00:18:55] And if you are in Christ and growing in Christ and being sanctified in Christ, you're being kept.
[00:19:03] You will be loving more and more and more.
[00:19:08] Sanctification is love.
[00:19:11] It culminates in Christ, like love. We define love around here as a commitment to another person's good no matter what it costs you. And it's displayed at the cross cultural cost Jesus his life because he loved you. And so ask the question today, very poignant question.
[00:19:27] Is God persevering you?
[00:19:30] Is he keeping you?
[00:19:33] Are you being sanctified?
[00:19:35] Is God working in your life?
[00:19:38] Are you growing in love?
[00:19:42] Now you look at today and you go, oh, pretty rough. Getting to church today.
[00:19:49] I don't know if I was very loving to the people in my house, and getting here was very stressful.
[00:19:56] But maybe not in this moment.
[00:19:59] But can you tell over the last months, years since you came to faith in Christ, that your desire to serve and sacrifice for others has grown?
[00:20:11] You're not becoming more better, you're not becoming more frustrated. It's hard and it's difficult. You're not perfect in it, but you are growing in love. What God is doing in our life is he's purging selfish desires, lust and anger, and even discontentment that sees ourself at the center of the world. God is taking those things from your life and he is replacing them with love for others. I don't think about myself and do what I want to do, but think about others first.
[00:20:41] This is what it means to be Christlike. And so in your marriage and your friendships, even as you think about your enemies, people, you just, oh, I can't love them.
[00:20:53] Is there still a tenderness in which you are moving in that direction.
[00:20:58] That's what Paul means when he says to be kept blameless is that you would grow in love. And you stand before Jesus.
[00:21:06] You're in him, you're kept in Him. But your life is also marked by love, genuine Christlike love.
[00:21:14] But what's most important is what we see in verse 24, that this is a work of God. Sanctification means peace, sanctification means love.
[00:21:24] And sanctification is a work of God. Notice verse 24.
[00:21:28] He who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it. So as you think, I got to work up some love.
[00:21:35] I got to prove to myself and others that I'm really a Christian.
[00:21:38] Whoa, whoa, put on the brakes there.
[00:21:42] God does this. We look to God to do this. We believe in Christ and we trust in Christ, and we accept his love for us. And when we do, he naturally cultivates that in our life. But it is a work of God. And how do we know he does it? Notice He. He who calls you is faithful. He refers here to the call on our life as Christians. And Paul talks about this effectual call, that when God calls you by the Spirit and the Gospel, you come and you believe in Christ and you follow Christ. He talks about that in chapter one, that the preaching of the Gospel came with power and conviction of the Holy Spirit. And that's what changed your life.
[00:22:25] God called you, so he will do it. And here is the point. God initiated your salvation. He initiated your sanctification, so he will finish it.
[00:22:37] In short, God started this whole thing.
[00:22:41] He started the work in your heart, and he's not going to stop.
[00:22:46] If you don't like being transformed in love, then you got to take that up with God because He came to change your heart, to grow you in love.
[00:22:57] And he started that relationship by the power of His Spirit and the Gospel. And he will finish it. He will do it. He knew you would be hard to deal with, and he still came to initiate that process, to call you to Himself, to transform you to love and notice. He is faithful.
[00:23:20] How do we know God is faithful? He does everything he says he would do when Moses is headed to Egypt. And he says, who in the world should I tell them you are? Tell them I am who I am. What does that mean? I do everything I say I will do. And I have made promises to Abraham that I am going to flee finish by rescuing you from Egypt. He's faithful. He does everything he always says he would do. And we know that because of the cross.
[00:23:53] And we know that because of the empty tomb.
[00:23:56] Paul says, because of the resurrection, all of God's promises are yes and amen. They're all fulfilled in Christ.
[00:24:05] He does everything he says.
[00:24:07] And so how do you know God is going to continue to work love in your life? Look to the cross.
[00:24:14] At the cross, God purchased peace for you, and he will consummate that peace for you at his coming. He's not going to lose you.
[00:24:25] He's not going to get tired of you. He's not going to forget where you are.
[00:24:30] He's going to continue this work, take you to Himself in Christ forever. He will finish it. You will be without sin and in complete peace when you are completely sanctified. Notice he just emphasizes this. He will surely do it. Why would I pray for something so hard that you would be sanctified in love? Why would I? Because God will do it.
[00:24:56] And we look to God to do it.
[00:24:59] In Romans 8, chapter, Romans 8, 29 and 30, we read, and those he predestined to be like Christ, meaning to love like Christ, he also called.
[00:25:11] And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified.
[00:25:17] Paul skipped sanctification because God began the process. It's guaranteed he's going to get to the end with you.
[00:25:27] God will sanctify you, which means ultimately God will cause you to love others.
[00:25:34] We talk about the definition of prayer, and it is asking God to do what he said he would do.
[00:25:40] And so when you pray for sanctification, when you pray God, I need to love these people. I need to love this person.
[00:25:49] You are asking God to do what he said he would do in making you like Jesus.
[00:25:55] That is it. He's going to make me like Jesus so I can pray to love anybody. Sometimes we don't pray that because we just don't want. We don't want to go there.
[00:26:05] But we can love anyone by the power of the Spirit and according to the Gospel, because God has promised to do that in our life.
[00:26:13] And God places us with others to love.
[00:26:17] And it is this miraculous thing, even in the context of the church. You look around the room and you see such differences, differences of opinions and difference of background. Different ways we came to faith in Christ, different ways we think about church, differences all around the room, politics and other things, even theological issues. And God says, here you go.
[00:26:41] Learn to love each other. Oh, I can't.
[00:26:44] They don't think the way that I do. They don't act the way that I want them to act.
[00:26:51] And then you get to experience this miracle of love.
[00:26:55] Being drawn to one another in sacrificial acts of love.
[00:27:00] So often we say, I don't love them.
[00:27:03] You realize that's about your feelings, right? I don't love them.
[00:27:08] Or we say, I can't love them.
[00:27:11] That's all about your power.
[00:27:13] You shouldn't talk about love in light of your feelings. I don't love them and I can't love them.
[00:27:19] What you should say is, by God's grace and power, I will love them.
[00:27:24] I'm growing to love them. God help me love them. So often we look at other people and we say, they're not the way that I want them to be. God, change them.
[00:27:34] Make them act and think and do what I want them to do.
[00:27:39] When what you should be praying is, God, change me.
[00:27:42] That's the point of this passage.
[00:27:44] Sanctify me.
[00:27:46] Calls me to learn how to love. Mortify my sin so that I would be drawn to them in love and so that I would even act and choose in ways of love that even at times I don't want to. But because of the power of God and this supernatural miracle of sanctification, I do.
[00:28:04] So our prayer should be that God would do it. Why? Sanctification is a work of God.
[00:28:10] Next we see sanctification is in everyday church stuff. Best way I could think about headlining these points here means peace, it's love, it's a work of God. And then it just happens in everyday church stuff. First of all, in our prayers for one another, Paul gets the end of this prayer and he says, pray for us, which I think is very powerful, and it's very generic. He doesn't say, pray for us. Now let me give you some prayer requests.
[00:28:39] Just pray for us.
[00:28:40] Why? We just need you to pray for us.
[00:28:44] Could have been mission work, boldness for opportunity to preach the gospel. I think in some sense it probably meant, I'm praying for your sanctification. Pray for my sanctification too. And so Paul is saying, I need the prayers of the church for my sanctification, for my ministry. We learn how to love and we're sanctified by. By relying on one another in prayer. I need you to pray for me.
[00:29:09] Pray for me. Not just I need something from you. What do you need most? I need your prayers.
[00:29:16] So, prayers for one another and greeting one another. Verse 26. Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss.
[00:29:23] So we're going to apply that in this moment. Everybody stand. I'm just kidding, but this is a cultural greeting. But I do want you to notice it's for the whole church.
[00:29:37] And holy means again set apart sanctified.
[00:29:41] So greet one another with a sanctified kiss.
[00:29:47] And this would be cultural, it would be accepted.
[00:29:52] But I don't think we should minimize it, which I'd really like to do right now.
[00:29:58] It is a display of affection.
[00:30:01] It is a display of warmth in the church.
[00:30:06] Keep being affectionate to one another, welcoming one another with this sign of hospitality that communicates your family.
[00:30:17] You only kiss family. You only greet family in a certain way.
[00:30:23] And so Wes Ruiz is going to start our holy kiss ministry.
[00:30:28] Just kidding.
[00:30:29] That was a joke.
[00:30:33] I know, I know.
[00:30:36] I knew that was coming.
[00:30:40] But we greet. That's why I said it was a joke.
[00:30:45] Continue to greet one another like family, displays of love, whatever that looks like. But there's a reason we do that and there's a reason why we practice the greeting time. You look in church, growth or new, cutting edge. How do you do church? Now, they would say the first thing y' all need to do is get rid of that greeting time. People don't like it. Y' all must like it a lot because you keep coming back. You bring other people with you.
[00:31:11] But we practice it because it is a spiritual discipline.
[00:31:15] It's not just one more thing in the service.
[00:31:19] It is a spiritual discipline where we show genuine affection. We have to acknowledge there are other people in the room.
[00:31:27] And we are displaying what God is doing in the world.
[00:31:31] He's giving us one another and he's gathering a family. And we experience that when we have to think about the people around us that he has put us together with. And we embrace the presence of God in our life.
[00:31:44] Now, not everyone here has to be as excited about that as some people.
[00:31:50] Maybe you just stand there and wait for other people to greet you. Somebody will do it. And that's the best you can do. That's okay.
[00:31:58] But you're acknowledging that you are a part of something bigger than yourself. And you practice that week after week. I am not alone. And we intentionally engage in a one anotherness.
[00:32:10] What goes on here on Sunday isn't just what happens on this big stage of wood.
[00:32:18] This is what is happening on Sunday.
[00:32:21] The church is gathering and we practice that by acknowledging one another that other people are here.
[00:32:31] And so we greet, we pray, we greet, and then we're in the Word together. Notice verse 27. I put you under oath before the Lord to act. Have this letter read to all the brothers. We see. Paul's authority as an apostle planted the church. Y' all gotta do this before The Lord, you gotta do this. We also see that this letter is scripture. It's one of the reasons it's a part of the canon.
[00:32:58] But it would have been this command would have been given to all the leaders. And then we see kind of how the church is forming, just like the synagogues where leaders would stand up and read the scroll. Same thing is being done with the scripture here. But notice the point here is it's to all the brothers in all of these commands, brothers, pray for us. Brothers greet one another.
[00:33:21] Read this letter to all the brothers. This is about the church. And here it is about the church being in the Word together.
[00:33:29] So every member, the unruly, the discouraged, the weak, the impatient, the unforgiving, they need the Word of God.
[00:33:37] What goes on in here on Sundays? This isn't private devotions in a room full of people.
[00:33:44] Sometimes we think about going to church that way. I'm just going to this event, give me some kind of pep talk, and then I'm going to get over here with my Bible. And we don't acknowledge the other people in the room. You feed me, you give me something today. And we don't think about the people around you. The word of God in the New Testament comes to a church because what you are hearing affects your relationship with others.
[00:34:06] When you hear a sermon here, there should be immediate application. Not in some mystical, I don't know where way, but people around you.
[00:34:16] You hear that you are to forgive. There's somebody in the room I need to forgive. There's somebody I need to love. There's somebody I need to be kind to. It's immediate application. So he says here, bring the whole church together, let them hear the word, because there's things y' all gotta do together.
[00:34:34] It's not private.
[00:34:36] You need the Word together. And this is where sanctification happens. The word of God comes in and it teaches us how to love.
[00:34:44] And then finally he says, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you, or y' all be with you all.
[00:34:54] Now, this is more than just a sincerely thanks.
[00:35:00] Paul's greeting, if you remember, was full of grace. His greetings are full of grace and peace.
[00:35:07] And here he says, if you're going to do anything I've called you to do, you're going to need the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:35:13] Grace is unmerited favor. Despite what you deserve, you deserve hell.
[00:35:18] God gives you the cross, he gives you Jesus righteousness, He gives you the gospel.
[00:35:23] And he says, I need you to live with that. With you, it can't leave you.
[00:35:29] Grace doesn't come in our life. We believe the gospel. I get saved and goes away. No, grace must be with you.
[00:35:37] You deserve to be left in your guilt. But God has been gracious and forgiven you at the cross. You deserve to be condemned. But God accepts you because of the righteousness of Christ. That is grace. You deserve death for sin, but. But he gives you life in Christ. And that grace can't leave you.
[00:35:57] You wake up every day as an object of grace. He needs it to dwell with you. He needs it to transform you.
[00:36:05] Every day you can wake up and say, this day, no matter what's going on, conflict, difficulty at work, finances, ailments.
[00:36:20] This day is better than what I deserve. Why I deserve to be in hell right now. But I'm here breathing and I know the gospel and I know Jesus. I have grace now. How does that free you to love?
[00:36:36] Because people who are entitled and think they deserve more don't think about other people. They only think about themselves.
[00:36:46] Life's just not the way that I want. I deserve better. God hasn't given me this. I deserve more.
[00:36:52] You're self focused, but if you live by grace, you're no longer entitled and you're free to think about other I have everything I need in Christ, so I can give and I can serve others.
[00:37:08] Grace. He's given us grace.
[00:37:11] And all of this could be summed up as the grace that is with us in this context is the church.
[00:37:20] May the grace of God. May you experience grace in the context of the church, meaning may you experience what it means to grow in love together.
[00:37:29] You need the love of one another, which is grace in your life. The reality is you walk in here every Sunday or you're a part of what is going on in this community and you say, I don't deserve to be loved.
[00:37:42] I don't deserve to have this.
[00:37:45] I'm not entitled to it. I don't deserve to have people forgive me, forget about the fact that I need to forgive and be merciful and love others. There are people all around me all the time where I'm acting like an idiot and a jerk and just a fool. And they forgive and they're patient and they I don't deserve that. I deserve to be written off, to be nitpicked.
[00:38:08] And yet I get the grace of others who are growing and learning how to love others by learning how to love me.
[00:38:15] And I don't deserve the grace of being purged of my sin, learning to love others.
[00:38:22] This is why you don't run from difficult relationships. You just don't run from it.
[00:38:28] Why?
[00:38:29] It's God's grace in your life teaching you to love. Do you understand that?
[00:38:34] Jesus loved you, A wretch and a rebel and an enemy, by dying for your sin. And God is teaching you the joy of learning how to do that. So when you run up against a difficult situation and there's conflict and there's tension, you don't run from that. You lean into it and you pray. God will do it. Teach me how to love.
[00:38:54] Sanctify me. No matter what goes on with this other person. Teach me how to love. And you dive into the mess because you want to be like Jesus.
[00:39:05] The reality is you deserve to be alone, isolated, at war with God, miserable, headed to hell.
[00:39:13] But God has said, this is your family, this is grace, and there's no getting out of here.
