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[0:00] 1 Corinthians chapter 13, and we'll read the chapter in its entirety.! And now I will show you the most excellent way.

[0:12] ! But have not love, I am nothing.

[0:34] If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient. Love is kind.

[0:46] It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It is not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs.

[0:58] Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

[1:10] Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease. Where there are tongues, they will be stilled. Where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

[1:22] For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child.

[1:33] I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection, as in a mirror.

[1:46] Then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part. Then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain.

[1:58] Faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. It's not easy for a Christian to keep the main thing the main thing.

[2:14] To stay on course. And what's true of an individual Christian is true of the church as well. It's all too easy to run down rabbit trails that take us off the main trail.

[2:27] To let lesser things become more important than the main thing. And therefore to eat up our time, our attention, our money, our focus, our zeal.

[2:40] Now the devil is active in this business as well. He loves diversions and rabbit trails. It's not beneath him to use even good things to draw us away from the best things.

[2:51] He would get us straining at gnats even while we're swallowing camels. So it behooves us to pause from time to time as individuals, as a church, and to remember the main thing.

[3:07] And to realign our minds and hearts, our goals and our calendars and our pocketbooks with the main thing. So what is the main thing?

[3:19] The Lord Jesus had that same basic question asked of him by an unnamed Pharisee who was an expert in the law. Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?

[3:33] Matthew 22, 36. The greatest commandment. Now there's a lot of commandments in the Old Testament law, which is what he was referring to. Someone has counted 613 of them.

[3:44] And these law experts spent a lot of time debating which one was more important than the other. And so he wants to know from Jesus the greatest one. What is the most important commandment of all?

[4:00] And Jesus replies by quoting from Deuteronomy 6 and verse 5. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

[4:10] And this is the first and greatest commandment. Then he gives the man something he didn't ask for, and that's the second greatest.

[4:22] For Jesus says the second is like it. And now he quotes Leviticus 19, 18. Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.

[4:35] So according to Jesus, all the duty of man can be summed up in one word, love. Love. If you boil down 50 gallons of sap from a sugar maple tree, you will get one gallon of maple syrup.

[4:56] And if you could put all the Old Testament commands into a huge cauldron and boil them down, you would get one command. Love.

[5:09] Jesus says that's what the scriptures are all about. Love is the main thing. And that love is to flow in two directions. Upward and outward.

[5:21] Upwards in love for God. The first and greatest command. And then outward to our neighbor. Which is the second command.

[5:32] Only exceeded by the first. And it's not love in small doses that's commanded. You're to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind.

[5:43] That means all your faculties. All that you are. Nothing held back. Unrivaled affections for him. And as for man, you're to love him as much as you love yourself.

[6:00] Doing to him what you would want done to yourself. And so Jesus says on these two commands. Loving toward love God and love man.

[6:10] Hang all the Old Testament. Now children, down the hallway a little ways. You have a place to hang up your coats, don't you? On those pegs along the wall.

[6:21] Now think of this. What if everybody's coats could be hung up on just two pegs? Those would be some strong pegs, wouldn't they? Anyway, that's what Jesus is saying.

[6:33] You can take all the commandments in the Old Testament. And you can hang them on one of these two pegs. They're either teaching us what it means to love God with all of our heart.

[6:43] Or teaching us what it means to love our neighbor as ourselves. The entire storyline of the Bible is about God's love. And that demands our wholehearted love in response, both upward to God and outward to our neighbor.

[7:02] So this morning I want us to focus again on the main thing. We'll see the primacy of love stated and then the primacy of love applied.

[7:14] First of all, the priority or the primacy of love stated. Notice in Romans 13 and verses 8 through 10, we have an ongoing debt of love.

[7:28] Now we like to stay out of debt as much as we can. Indeed, that is a biblical principle. But there is one debt you will never be out from under. It's an ongoing obligation.

[7:39] And we have it here in Romans 13 and verse 8 and following. Let no debt remain outstanding. Pay your debts. Accept the continuing debt to love one another.

[7:51] For he who loves his fellow man has fulfilled the law. The commandments, do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet.

[8:02] And whatever other commandment there may be are summed up in this one rule. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to its neighbor.

[8:14] Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law. Can you see? This passage is teaching us the primacy of love. In one word, it sums up all that you owe to man.

[8:30] Love. Love. And that's why the last of the six of the ten commandments, the last table of the law from five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten, those last of the ten commandments are driving at loving your neighbor.

[8:47] They're spelling out for us what it means to love your neighbor. If you love your neighbor, you won't do him any harm.

[8:59] You won't murder him. You won't commit adultery with his wife. You won't steal from him. You won't lie to him or about him. You won't even covet what is his.

[9:12] Now, Paul could have said the same thing with the first table of the law of the ten commandments. If you love God, you will have no other gods besides him.

[9:24] You will not worship him in the form of an idol. You will not misuse his name or his day. You see, love is the summary of the law. It sums up in one word the main thing being driven at.

[9:41] And then notice it says it fulfills all that you owe to your neighbor, to man. Love does not replace the law or do away with the need for commandments.

[9:53] It rather enables you to fulfill those commandments. For when love is present, it creates an affection, a desire to do good to your neighbor, and then moves you to do the same.

[10:08] If love is the fulfillment of the law, John Murray says this means that no law is fulfilled without it. It's love that fills up the law.

[10:19] If you don't have love, you haven't fulfilled the law. So you may be speaking the truth well enough, but if you're not speaking in love, you've not fulfilled the law.

[10:32] You may obey your parents well enough and not break their rules, but if you don't obey with love in your hearts toward them, then you have not fulfilled what God is requiring in the fifth commandment.

[10:45] You can do good things to your enemies, but if done without love in your heart for them, you've not obeyed this command to love your enemies.

[10:58] You can give money to people in need, but if you do it without love in your heart for those people, you have not fulfilled your duty. You've not obeyed God's commandment.

[11:08] Indeed, Paul says, as we read, if I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

[11:20] Love fulfills the law. So that's the debt, the ongoing debt we have all of our lives, the debt of love. It's showing us the priority of love.

[11:31] Secondly, the indispensable thing. We find love is indispensable in 1 Corinthians 13. The last verse shows us its priority.

[11:45] And now these three remain. Faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.

[11:56] It's the main thing, he's telling us. But he's also telling us in 1 Corinthians 13 that love is the indispensable thing.

[12:07] It's the thing that we cannot do without. Remember how he begins the chapter in verses 1 to 3. Without love, you gain nothing. Without love, you are nothing at all.

[12:18] Without it, your spiritual gifts are worthless. I don't care how fluent you are in speaking, Paul says. Without love, you are as irritating as a clanging cymbal or a gonging gong.

[12:32] That's all you are. Without it, your knowledge of the Bible is nothing. Even your great faith that could move mountains is nothing. Without it, all your giving and self-sacrifice is not worth anything in God's eyes.

[12:47] So love is the main thing in Christianity. So much so that without it, you do not have true Christianity.

[13:00] Now you can lose a hubcap and still have a car. But if you lose the engine, you no longer have a car. You've just got a shell.

[13:12] You've lost the main thing. And the main thing for you and for us as a church is love. All of our labor is to be labors of love.

[13:24] Labor prompted by love. For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

[13:42] So, love is the ongoing debt we have. It is the indispensable thing. And thirdly, it is the goal of Bible truth.

[13:52] It's the goal. 1 Timothy 1.5. Paul did a lot of teaching in his epistles. But he always had a goal in mind for what he was teaching.

[14:06] And here he tells us what this goal is. The goal of this command or the goal of our instruction is love. Which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

[14:21] The goal. That's the telos. The end. The thing aimed at. The end result. The reason I am instructing you is for this end.

[14:32] What is it, Paul? Love. Love. That means if you're reading your Bible aright, you should be growing in your love to God and to man.

[14:46] It means if you're listening to your Sunday school lessons and to sermons properly. If you're memorizing verses of the Bible. Here is the great end that it is leading you to.

[15:00] To make you a better lover of God and of neighbor. James tells us it's possible to be a hearer of the word without being a doer of it and so to deceive ourselves.

[15:12] So here's a way to discern whether you're really profiting from the word or not. Is your wife more aware of your love for her? Is your husband more aware of your love for her?

[15:24] Your children, your parents, your schoolmates, your workmates, the guy that lives next door to you. Are they better off because of you and your love for them?

[15:36] That's the end goal of Bible instruction. It is given to us to teach us to love. So, there's the main thing.

[15:52] Is that the main thing about your life? Is that the thing that characterizes you? Are we collectively giving priority status here at Grace Fellowship Church to love?

[16:11] That's what our Bibles have told us. What would that look like? We turn now from the primacy of love stated to the primacy of love applied. And we start with love for God.

[16:23] We are to love God with all of our heart, soul, and mind. And what will that look like? I've read of a church that was hardworking. People were involved in all sorts of ministries and service to people.

[16:39] Persevering through many troubles and hardships, even persecution. They were sticklers for the truth of God's word and obedient to it. Even so much so that when some of those in their midst claimed to be Christians and the truth came to service that they were nothing more than immoral men, well, they did not tolerate them, but exercised biblical church discipline according to the mind of Christ.

[17:05] And yet, for all these commendable things, one thing was lacking, but it was the main thing. And so, Jesus writes to this church in Ephesus and says, Yet I hold this against you.

[17:17] You have forsaken your first love. You've forsaken your first love. Many outward actions were in place, but where love for God is lacking, no amount of works of service, no amount of faithfulness to the truth will make up for its absence.

[17:36] The kernel is missing. And the Lord Jesus notices it and will not go on without it. He's a jealous lover.

[17:48] And so he calls on them to repent or to have him come and remove their lampstand from its place. Let's learn from this, that the love that God wants from us is more than outward actions.

[18:03] It includes the affections of our hearts. It includes the affections, the desires of our heart. He wants to mean more to us than anyone or anything.

[18:16] He wants us to have first love for him. He wants to have that unrivaled place in our affections. Tell me, man, when your affections toward your wife are cooling, you may still go to work and bring home the bacon and maybe even bring home gifts for Valentine's Day.

[18:41] But she notices when it's gone, doesn't she? The warmth of affection. And she's not satisfied, is she? And neither is Jesus Christ, the lover of our souls.

[18:54] He wants our supreme affection. He wants first love intensity. He wants you to treasure time spent with him.

[19:06] Do you know Jesus knows the difference between us putting in our time with him and enjoying him? He knows that. He knows when we come to listen to him and we're hungry to hear what he says.

[19:19] He knows when we're coming to talk to him and we're glad to have him and to have his ear. And he knows the difference between that and just putting in our time.

[19:32] And that's why he's complaining in Revelation 2.4. You're not giving me what I'm after. Your heart. I want your heart. So let Jesus Christ be loved and all of our labors be labors of love for Christ.

[19:52] So it includes our affections, but secondly, includes our obedience to his word. Do you remember how Jesus put it to his disciples? In John 14.5, he said, If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

[20:08] If you love me. We're talking about the main thing, loving God. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. So what do we say to the multitudes of people who refuse to bring their lives into line with God's commandments and yet would profess to us that they love Jesus?

[20:28] What do you say to them? You say the same thing that Jesus says to them. If you really love me, you will keep my commandments. I love God.

[20:43] I just don't love his commands. That is impossible. Do you know why? Because God's laws are a reflection. It's a mirror of his own moral character as it comes to impinge upon our behavior.

[20:58] So when we read God's law, we're seeing a reflection of God's own morality and holiness. We can't love him and not love his reflection as seen in his laws.

[21:16] Folks may love an imaginary God that they've made up in their mind, but the living and true God who gives commandments to people, him they do not love. And they show it by not submitting to his law.

[21:28] Romans 8 and verse 7. It shows that their heart is hatred toward God, whatever they say through their mouths. The bare fact is this. If you do not love his laws, you do not love him.

[21:41] Listen to 1 John 5.3. This is love for God to obey his commands and his commands are not burdensome.

[21:54] This is love for God to obey his commands. I wonder if you've ever considered, Christian, obeying God's commands are ways that you say, I love you to God.

[22:13] He considers it that way. How do I love you, God? Let me count the ways. I will have no other gods beside you.

[22:26] I will worship you in the way that you want to be worshipped and only that way. I will not misuse your name and let your name be profaned by my life. I will keep your day holy.

[22:36] I will honor my father and mother. I will care for life and not murder. I will not commit adultery or lust. I will not steal.

[22:47] I'll not lie. I'll not covet. These are ways that we say, I love you to God. This is love for God to keep his commandments.

[22:59] obedience and his commandments are not burdensome. Not to a renewed heart. Not to a heart that has received the spirit of God and had the heart change. There are commands.

[23:11] These commands are not burdensome. Rather, love makes obedience sweet. Remember how Jacob served under harsh conditions as a shepherd for seven years to get Rachel as his wife.

[23:27] And he says that they seem like only a few days to him because of his love for her. That's what love does. It gives us joy in serving the object of our love.

[23:40] It gives us joy in obeying God's commands. Love for God makes us lovers of his law. David, love the Lord and therefore he can say, Oh, how I love your law.

[23:55] He loves it because it is his law. I love your law because I love you. I love whatever comes from you. I love your law, your truth, your will.

[24:08] So here's the key to our upward love. To see how much this love for him means to our Savior. How much it means to him to love him with first love intensity.

[24:21] He's not satisfied with anything else besides. He wants our hearts, all of it, nothing withheld. Give me your heart. Now, can you not taste his love for you in that?

[24:36] Is it not his love that wants your love in response? What a privilege to be his loved bride and to have him care that much about our love for him and so we love him because he first loved us.

[24:56] and his love begets love in our hearts. Well, that brings us to the second aspect of the main thing, love. And love flows in two directions, love for God, but now it also flows outward to our neighbor.

[25:14] Love your neighbor as yourself. I think it's interesting that the Bible knows that some people will claim to love God even while they don't love their brother.

[25:26] Isn't that something? God knew that people would claim that. I love God even while they're hating their brother. Listen to John, the apostle of love in 1 John 4, 20 and 21.

[25:40] If anyone says, I love God, yet hates his brother, he's a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

[25:51] And he has given us this command, whoever loves God must also love his brother. So all claims of loving God while not loving brother are bogus claims, John says.

[26:06] All who truly love God will love their fellow man. It's part of what it means to love God. God says, if you love me, love them. You can't do the one without the other.

[26:18] Now this love for our brethren is the identifying badge of discipleship to Jesus. You remember in John 13, 34 to 35, Jesus says, a new command I give you, love one another.

[26:36] And we might ask, what's so new about that? That came from Leviticus chapter 19 in many places in the Old Testament. Well, he goes on to say, a new command I give you, love one another as I have loved you, so you must love one another.

[26:52] Oh, there's the new element in this command. As I have loved you. You have had the exhibition now of my love. I came from heaven, became a man, and showed you what it means to love.

[27:06] Now, this is the new command I give you, love one another as I have loved you. New measurement of our love like Jesus loved us.

[27:24] And by this, all men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another because this is the identifying badge of all who are truly the Lord's people.

[27:35] They have this about them. They love one another as Christ loved them. It's a genuine, visible love. It's such that the world can look in and say, those people love each other.

[27:48] And they love each other in a way that reminds me of Jesus' love. It's by their love that they witness, that they see, that they will connect Jesus and the disciple together.

[28:01] Men will see in you what they saw in me, Jesus says. A supernatural love. Love that goes far beyond natural love and abilities. And they'll say, this is Christ-like love.

[28:14] There's nothing like it. And because of it, they will know you belong to me. She must be a Christian. She loves like Jesus did. And how this brings glory to Jesus Christ for the Master's love to be seen in His disciples.

[28:33] They love like Jesus. That's the identifying badge of discipleship. It's also, secondly, what it means to be imitators of God.

[28:45] From Ephesians 5, 1 and 2, we read, Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

[29:04] Ephesians 5, 1 and 2. And here again, we see the priority of love. We're told to live a life of love. That's a wonderful, brief command, isn't it?

[29:17] Live a life of love. Isn't there simplicity to that? Live a life of love.

[29:28] Let love so permeate every aspect of your life that your life can be called a life of love. Let love so fill your heart that to live is to love.

[29:39] Wherever we observe you, whether in the home, the church, the neighborhood, what people see is love in action. Love on two feet to be there for others.

[29:51] Love with two hands to willingly help the one in need. Love with two ears to sympathetically listen.

[30:03] Love with eyes to weep. Love with a mouth to speak truth and encouragement. Love with a mouth so that if men were looking for six words to put on your tombstone, they might rightly choose, he lived a life of love.

[30:21] She lived a life of love. That's the command. Live a life of love. A life where love is the main thing. Now in doing so, we're called to imitate God.

[30:35] You see that in Ephesians 5, 1? Be imitators of God as dearly loved children and live a life of love.

[30:47] So, we're to imitate God as dearly loved children. You've seen children imitating their fathers, maybe putting the shaving cream on as they're looking up at dad, maybe pushing their little lawnmower while dad's mowing the yard, maybe even getting a haircut to look like dads.

[31:07] We see children imitating fathers, sons imitating fathers. That's what we're told to do. As dearly loved children, imitate your father in heaven.

[31:23] Notice he's not asking you to do anything that you've not had done to you, child of God. It's as dearly loved children that you're to live a life of love. You've been on the receiving end of much divine love.

[31:36] You've known what it is to be loved by your heavenly father. Now, that is to be impacting the way you live. That is to be turning your life into a life of love, both motivating you to it and directing you how to do it.

[31:54] Imitate God in his love. You dearly loved children. For this is how God showed his love among us. He sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him.

[32:06] This is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we ought to love one another.

[32:20] So dearly loved children of God, how has God shown his love to you? Well, when you were a hell-deserving sinner, heading to the judgment, heading to an eternity where you would have suffered forever his wrath in hell, he sent you his one and only son to propitiate his wrath, to turn his wrath away by pouring it out on him instead of you.

[32:46] That's how he showed you his love. Now imitate him in living a life of love and giving of yourself as he gave his son for you.

[33:00] When your need was a savior, he sent his son to die in your place. Something of your father's love is to be imitated now. Go and be like father.

[33:14] But you have another mentor in this matter of loving, not only God the Father, but you see it there in verse 2 of Ephesians 5. Live a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

[33:34] So yes, we can learn to imitate our Father in heaven, but we're also to imitate our Savior. Let the mind of Christ be in you as you live a life of love.

[33:46] Sit in his classroom. Put your neck under the yoke with him and learn from him what it means to love. And when we ask, how did he love me?

[34:00] Oh, he gave himself up for me, didn't he? That's what the verse says. He gave himself up for us. You know, that's not just a verse for husbands to imitate toward their wives.

[34:12] It is that. But it's for all of us to imitate. Not only to our family, but to those outside of our families. We are to love as Jesus loved.

[34:22] He gave himself up for us. So when we were under God's wrath, Jesus came and laid down his own life. Voluntarily laid his own life down and took the wrath and bore the very punishment that we would have suffered for all eternity.

[34:42] He made the sacrifice of himself that pleased God the Father and turned his favor toward us and his wrath away from us.

[34:55] We've been loved that much, children of God. And that is to change the way we live. That's to make us to live a life of love like his.

[35:08] So let's think for a moment, what is the hallmark of Christ's love? Think about the love of Jesus. What sets it apart? I'm sure there's many things that we could say.

[35:19] But it seems that in this passage and indeed many of the passages in the Bible, the thing that sets apart Christ's love is the word sacrifice. Self-sacrifice.

[35:31] He gave himself up. There is a death in his love. It is a death to self, a life laid down.

[35:43] This is the love that we are to imitate. That means there will be a death for us to die in loving others like Jesus loved us. It is a death to self, no less in us.

[35:57] We cannot die for others in order to take their sins away like Jesus did. But we can and must die to self in order to take away their hunger, their sadness, their loneliness, their ignorance of the gospel or whatever their needs are.

[36:13] It will call for a death. And where do we learn that? We learn it at the cross. It's here at the cross that we learn to die in loving others.

[36:26] We learn to die to what we want and we sacrifice our time. If somebody else is to receive our time then that means I must sacrifice my time. If somebody else is to receive that money I must sacrifice what I wanted to do with that money.

[36:40] If someone else is to receive the energy that it takes to serve them then I must sacrifice that energy that I would have spent on myself and so to put the needs of others above my own.

[36:55] For this is how we even know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.

[37:08] If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him how can the love of God be in him? Dear children let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

[37:22] So I must ask you where are you dying in order to love others? Where is the hallmark of Jesus love being seen in your life?

[37:37] Where you are loving no matter the cost no matter what you're getting back or not getting back in return you're refusing to shut down to bail out rejecting all escapes you're staying the course because his love never fails and you're loving like Jesus loves you're not you're not letting your feelings dictate to you your response to that person you're rather saying let Jesus love be the way I respond how does Jesus respond when nothing's coming back?

[38:15] What people am I giving of myself for sacrificing for can I name any? who will I seek to enrich this week by becoming poor in time and money and energy to enrich them and not only for our brothers and our nearest neighbors our family but as we follow the example of our heavenly father and our Lord Jesus we find our love being stretched way beyond natural bounds don't we?

[38:46] For when we come to the love of our Lord Jesus we see isn't the love of Jesus something wonderful it's not just for those who love him it's for those who are enemies of his we hear him praying for forgiveness for those who are killing him father forgive them they don't know what they're doing it was while we were yet sinners that Christ died for us it was when we were his enemies we were reconciled to him through his death and having tasted God's love for us his enemies whom he's now made his friends Jesus now tells us you love your enemies you pray for those who despitefully use you that you may be sons of your father in heaven radical love more than we can conjure up on our own but it's not too much to ask from those that he loved when we were enemies and it's not too much to ask of those in whom his own love flows that same love that loved us when enemies is now living in us and is to flow through us and if we love one another God lives in us and his love is made complete in us you see and so we love with his love within us

[40:08] Richard Wurmbrand was in prison for Christ under communistic rule in Romania there he was tortured and drugged for 14 years even surviving two years in what was called a dying room and he was released but before leaving Romania he writes I went to the grave of the colonel who had given the order for my arrest and ordered my years of torture I placed a flower on his grave and by doing this I dedicated myself to bringing the joys of Christ that I have to the communists who are so empty spiritually communists can kill Christians but they cannot kill their love toward even those who killed them I have not the slightest bitterness or resentment against the communists or my torturers he goes on to write in his book tortured for Christ when one Christian was sentenced to death he was allowed to see his wife before he was executed his last words to his wife were you must know that

[41:15] I die loving those who kill me they don't know what they do and my last request of you is to love them too don't have bitterness in your heart because they killed your beloved one we will meet in heaven and it is to the glory of God when his saving love makes his people love like he loves as his image is more and more renewed in us so there is Saul of Tarsus he's a violent murder some persecuting man but when the kindness and love of God came to him what a change it made in the apostle what a difference in the way that he went from being murderer persecutor to one who became a lover of men and did the most loving thing he could do for them and told them how that in Jesus Christ their eternal destinies could be changed!

[42:14] forever! Or there's Zacchaeus a grasping cheating thieving selfish tax collector generous man towards others there's you and there's me who were self centered turned in on ourselves full of self love by birth and then God's grace saved us and filled with the love of God and like your Lord Jesus you live a life of love and you go about doing good to others and you are patient and kind like he has been to you even at the cost of death to self oh what an honor to the Lord who loved you to have the world see this is one of my disciples can you see the identifying mark in her life she loves as I have loved her so let's beware of anything that would move us from this main thing in our lives lots of things aren't there to do lots of duties lots of commands but let's not be moved from this main thing this greatest command and every one of you at

[43:35] Grace Fellowship can help the rest of us on this matter even as we're starting to go off on our tangents your majoring on the main thing can attractively remind the rest of us to do the same your refusal to be sidetracked from living a life of love will sweetly draw us back to do the same as something of the beauty of Christ is seen in you and it awakens in us that's what we're here for we're here to live a life of love I saw it in my brother I saw it in my sister it reminded me something of Jesus and it will encourage the rest of us and in this way as we gather together we spur each other on to what to love and to love's expression in good works this main concern for the churches can be seen in the apostle

[44:37] Paul's desires and prayers for them now about brotherly love he writes to the Thessalonians we don't need to write to you for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other in fact you do love all the brothers throughout Macedonia yet we urge you brothers to do so more and more let your love abound more and more so may the Lord help us to pray that in this year that we've already covered more than a month of that this year we would refocus and ask what is this life of love to look like more and more to bear the likeness of him who loved me by dying for me put a dash on a piece of paper and spend some time this afternoon or tonight and ask the question who this week will be on the receiving end of

[45:45] God's love through me pray seek God's face let's pray together our father we thank you for the simplicity of your word when we read words that just say point blank the greatest of these is love the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself we we can't dodge them we can't try to argue that there's something else that's to be the focus of our duty towards you and to man so come and write it afresh upon our minds and help us then to spur each other on to this main thing by our words but even may it be that even new people would taste that unusual supernatural love of

[46:50]  Jesus from us this week and that others who we have loved before would would taste more and more of it and this to the end that you might be praised as a God who is loving a God who is ready to receive sinners God who proves it by sending his own son to pay the price that we could never pay be glorified then in our lives help us as we would seek to imitate you in living this life of love as dearly loved children we thank you for your love in Jesus name Amen