The Aroma of Good Fruit

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If you would, take out your Bibles with me and turn to the book of 1 Corinthians.
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It's good to see everybody this morning.
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We're going to be in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, as we have been, and we're going to look at verses 4 through 8a.
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Now I made that distinction because we're not going to look at all of verse 8.
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In fact, I don't even think we're going to make it to verse 8 today, but in this section, I think the first part of verse 8 connects to what came before it.
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So we're going to read through the middle of that verse.
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1 Corinthians chapter 4, or chapter 13, verse 4.
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Love is patient and kind.
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Love does not envy or boast.
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It is not arrogant or rude.
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It does not insist on its own way.
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It is not irritable or resentful.
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It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
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Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
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Love never ends.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you to get to talk today on this New Year's Sunday, to talk about the subject of love, to look forward to a new year where my prayer, oh God, is that we would be ever more known as a church that loves you and that loves one another.
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Your word tells us by this will all men know that you are my disciples if you love one another.
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And so, Father, I pray that we would and I pray that we would bear the sweet aroma of the fruit of the spirit, which is love.
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And Father, I thank you for this opportunity to study with your people.
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May you bless it.
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May you keep me from error.
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May you open the hearts of your people to the truth, even to the truths that are hard to hear.
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For, Lord, this passage is often looked at with sentimentality.
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But as Lord is so obvious, it is a rebuke in many senses.
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Father, may we heed the rebuke and see it as a desire or may it cause a desire for repentance in us all.
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In Jesus name, Amen.
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You may be seated.
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When you look at the world around you, it's amazing at the wonder of the designs that we see.
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It really is mind boggling when we think about the order that God created the world in, how everything seems to fit together.
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And one of the ways that God establishes order.
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And I know this is going to sound funny, so I need you to hang with me for just a second.
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One of the ways that God establishes order is through scent.
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If something smells good, usually is good.
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If something smells bad, it's usually bad.
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That's true in the case of fruit.
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Most of us love the aroma of fresh fruit.
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And we even synthesize the odors of fruit to make other things.
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We take cherry and banana and we synthesize their scents and we make air fresheners for our vehicles.
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We take lemons and oranges and we synthesize that smell and we make cleansers for our homes.
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We use strawberry and apples to make perfumes and lotions.
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Fruit has a very pleasant odor.
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Likewise, and conversely, when fruit is bad, it also has a pretty bad odor.
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It's almost like God put a natural expiration date detector in our face.
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If an apple smells like vinegar, we shouldn't eat it.
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It's probably bad if watermelon smells like it's gone sour or tangy, it's probably not fit for consumption.
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And many of us who have children who sent them to school or to some kind of camp with a bag that had a banana in the bottom, when you get it back and you realize that you didn't eat the banana and you open up the bag and it's three days old, you realize that smell hits you right in the face.
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That green or that black, slimy banana and that odor, that horrible odor.
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Fruit should have a good smell, and if it doesn't, it indicates there's something wrong.
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And it's interesting when we consider what the Bible says about how we are to identify people.
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The Bible says in the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus is talking, he says, you will know them by their what? By their fruit.
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You will know them.
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Now, in the context of that, and if you want to, if you're taking notes, that passage is Matthew 7, 15 to 20, Jesus is actually talking about false teachers.
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And when he talks about false teachers, he says, beware of those who come to you in wolf's clothes or rather in sheep's clothes, but a ravenous wolves, he says, you'll recognize them by their fruits.
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So the immediate context is false teachers, but we can we can extrapolate that idea and we can draw that out to other things.
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Good fruit bears the characteristics of goodness, it has pleasant aroma, it has good taste, it has healthy nutritional value, bad fruit is rotten, it smells bad, it has an awful taste.
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And so Jesus says, you know someone by the fruit they bear, you know someone by the fruit that they bear.
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And I don't think that that's meant to mean that we go around and become fruit inspectors all the time.
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That we're nitpicky and we're looking for people who might have a brown spot here or there, but I do think that what Jesus is saying to us is that we have a we have a litmus test or a way to identify the body of Christ.
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How do you know? Those who are the ravenous wolves, you know them by their fruit, how do you know who's your brother or sister in Christ? You know them by their fruit.
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The Christian should bear the aroma of the fruit of the spirit.
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Now, obviously, I'm using this as an analogy, a sort of a word picture, kind of a little bit of a John Bunyan slash with C.S.
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Lewis, a little bit of word picture here.
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But you understand what I'm getting at, because last week we discussed this.
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If you were here last week, we talked about the fact that in Chapter 12 of First Corinthians, Paul talks about the gifts of the spirit.
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But then in Chapter 13, he shifts from the gifts of the spirit to the fruit of the spirit.
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Because in Galatians Chapter 5, what do we learn? The fruit of the spirit.
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There's nine characteristics of the fruit of the spirit, but what's the first one? Love.
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And I would argue, based on First Corinthians 13, that love is not only the first of the nine characteristics, but love is the preeminent of the nine characteristics because all of the other characteristics can be found in First Corinthians 13, which describe what love is.
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Love is patient and kind.
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Love doesn't envy, doesn't boast.
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All of those things are found in the nine characteristics of the fruit of the spirit.
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The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, self-control.
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Right.
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All of those things that are in the in the fruit of the spirit, Paul describes those same characteristics to be the outflowing of love.
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And so in that sense, the fruit of the spirit, yes, it's those nine things.
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I'm not saying it's not, but it's bound up in the first one.
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The fruit of the spirit is found most prominently and most obviously in the first one, which is love, and so I think it's not beyond reason to say that love is the ultimate spiritual fruit, because if you don't have it.
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Nothing else matters, but that's what we talked about last week, Paul says, if I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, if I have all the gifts of knowledge and I can discern all mysteries and I have faith to move mountains and if I if I am generous with all that I have and give everything away and even if I give my body to be burned, but I have not love, I gain nothing.
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So the ultimate fruit, the ultimate aroma that the Christians should bear.
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Is the aroma of love.
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So the question then becomes this, what does love smell like, what does love what are the characteristics of love, what's the aroma if we're supposed to bear the fruit of the spirit? You know, years ago, I heard a I heard something stuck with me.
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I think I've mentioned this to our elders.
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I said I heard a man who was a pastor, who's an older pastor, and he said this to me.
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He said he said his his ministry model or motto for his ministry was that a shepherd should smell like sheep.
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Right, and you've heard me talk about that before, and I've tried to model that, meaning that I'm invested in your lives and I'm ministering among you and I'm not I'm not hidden away in my office where I can't be found, you know, those shepherds should smell like sheep.
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Well, that's sort of been on my mind this week because I've been thinking a Christian should smell like love.
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A Christian should bear the aroma of the fruit of the spirit, which is love.
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So it's that so that same idea, right, where I take this as a motto for my own ministry in life, I should smell like sheep.
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I should be among the church members working and ministering together.
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The church itself should have the aroma of the fruit of the spirit.
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But what does it smell like? So we're going to look at that today.
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That, I think, is really what we find.
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And by the way, I wrote a long sermon and I broke it in half because I felt like I would be fair to you all and not keep you here for two hours, but we'll try to keep it under an hour.
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But as I was writing this, I was thinking there's no way because each one of these characteristics could easily be a sermon all by itself.
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Love is patient.
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You don't think I could preach a month of Sunday's worth of sermons on patience and aim them all at myself? I mean, honestly, right, so each one of these getting through all of these in one Sunday would be a fool's errand.
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So we're going to go slowly.
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We're going to work our way through until the point that I feel like we've just done enough and then we'll pray and then we'll come back.
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Does that sound fair? Not to rush, but to deal with the text.
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But before we get to the patience, kindness and the definitions of those things, I want to first this morning really look at the the word love itself, because we talked about it last week.
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We said, if you have not love, you're nothing.
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And that's what the text says.
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But we didn't define what love is.
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And if there's anything I have really come to realize in America today and in the world, but America particularly, is that we really do not have our minds wrapped around what love is.
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The word love can go all over the map.
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And I think part of the problem is English.
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Because in English, we have a thousand different words for the color green.
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You ever notice that? I mean, you're a painter, you go in and you can't just go get green paint, right? You got to get mint or you got to get whatever.
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You know, all kinds of seafoam, right? There's all these different because you got all these different names, all these different colors.
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But we got one word for love.
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And I use that same word when I say I love a good steak.
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I love football, which I don't, but I figured that would relate to some of you.
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But I watch the Super Bowl for the commercials, that's all.
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I love steak, I love football, and I love my wife, isn't it a shame that the same word, all the thousands of words in the thesaurus, and we got that one word that covers so vast an area, is it any reason, any wonder why we don't understand it? Even if I say you, if I go up to you and I say, Chris, I love you, brother, I love you, no, that's not the same as when I say it to my wife or your steak or steak.
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What I mean, it's been contorted and misunderstood.
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Oftentimes, young people mislabel love and lust.
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They call it lust or love, but it's lust.
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And and so we only have this one word and it sort of becomes this catch all.
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I love the beach and I love God, right, it's just so wide and vast.
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Well, the Greek language is much more precise in some ways than the English language.
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The Greek language is is a little more pinpointed, especially in the area of love.
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And most of you know that there are there are there are three words that are in the Greek that are can be translated love in English.
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There's actually four.
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Most people are not familiar.
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There's actually a fourth one.
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Most of you have heard of Eros, right? Eros is where we get the word erotic and it refers to the love of the physical relationship, romantic love.
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Right.
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And husbands and wives have the blessing of getting to share in Eros with one another.
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They get to enjoy the physical intimacy of of touch.
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And that's a beautiful thing when kept within the bond of marriage.
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Right.
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That's that's what it's for.
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And it's it's wonderful.
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So Eros isn't necessarily bad, but it isn't used in Scripture.
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There is no place in Scripture where the word Eros in that sense is used for love.
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But it is a Greek word that comes out of that time period.
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A word that is used in Scripture that is often overlooked for love is the word storge.
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Storge means natural affection, and it's the type of affection that a parent has for a child.
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I remember when my children were born.
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I didn't have to figure out how to love them.
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Right.
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Soon as soon as I remember when Hope was born and and Jennifer's there and they took the baby away and I'm looking at her and I'm looking at the baby and I'm looking at her and I'm and and Jennifer goes, go.
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OK.
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And I was gone.
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Right.
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Because I wanted to go and hold the baby and see the baby and watch them clean the baby.
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I didn't have to think about it.
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It was a natural love.
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And in the Bible, normally storge is used in the adversive astorgos or astorge, meaning without natural affections.
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If you read in the Bible, it talks about those who are without natural affection.
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Romans one talks about those who leave the natural affections and go off into perversity.
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That's the word storge and that's how it's used.
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So we have a there's a natural affection that's that's within us.
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It's for our children.
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It's for our parents.
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Right.
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Every one of you just celebrated Christmas and you got together with likely physical relatives.
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Right.
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There's a natural affection there.
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The third word is the word phileo or philos, depending on the ending, how it's used.
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And phileo means love in the in the in the sense of.
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An affection between two people, a warmth, a love, sometimes it's called brotherly love, but that's not exactly correct because brotherly love is when you put phileo and phileo in front of adelphos and you've seen the word Philadelphia.
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What's it called? The city of what? City of brotherly love.
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Right.
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But that's putting adelphos with phileo and it becomes brotherly love.
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But the idea of phileo is still that it's an affection.
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I have phileo for people and it's a warmth.
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It's an affection.
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It's a natural thing.
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If I like you and you like me, we love each other naturally.
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Right.
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And there's a there's a mutual relationship there.
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The last one, and this is the one I'm sure you've all heard and what's interesting about this last one, not used outside the Bible very much.
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Paul picks up this word.
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He uses it a lot.
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It's used throughout the New Testament, but not used in a lot of Greek literature.
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The word agape or you've heard me pronounce it agape, but we just call it agape.
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The word agape was really adopted by the Bible writers and used a lot more than anywhere else in extant Greek literature because it was the oddity.
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Think of it like this, eros is natural because eros is physical, natural affection.
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We have that.
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Sturgos or Storge, rather, is natural affection for relatives.
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We have that.
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And even phileo is natural.
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It's natural for me to love those who love me.
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And we have that reciprocal relationship.
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Jesus said that.
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He says, you know, what benefit is it to love those who love you? You know, it's it's a that's natural.
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Agape is, in its purest sense, a love which requires nothing from the other person.
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It's a self-sacrificing type of love.
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Now, there are times when agape and phileos are used interchangeably, so I don't think the distinction is so huge, but I do think a distinction can be made in this.
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Phileos is it would be difficult with an enemy because there's no reciprocation.
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But agape can be given to an enemy because it's not dependent on the recipient.
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Think about how God loved you.
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While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us before you were ever born, before you had committed one sin, God's loving kindness was already on you and it wasn't dependent upon you.
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Think about the book of Romans when it talks about Jacob and Esau.
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Jacob, I have loved Esau, I have hated.
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Right.
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What does he say right before that? God made a choice within the womb.
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He made a choice of the one and the other to demonstrate his election and that his election might be made known as it is written.
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Jacob, I love Esau, I've hated.
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We've got this picture of God choosing to set affection on someone from before they were created, not based on anything they had done.
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God loves you in spite of you.
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Amen.
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God doesn't love you because you're a good person because I got news for you.
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God doesn't love you because you come to church.
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In fact, I would argue the other way around.
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You come to church because God loves you and he saved you and he gave a desire to come.
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It's not the opposite.
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It's not that you come to church to earn God's love.
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You cannot earn agape.
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You understand that you can't earn because it's not dependent on you.
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Agape is given willfully by the giver, not earned by the receiver.
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That's the love of God for us.
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We were God's enemy.
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By nature.
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You're clicking.
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We were God's enemy by nature and God agape us.
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He reached down into our sinful heart.
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He changed it.
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You realize God changed your heart, right? If God left you where you were and I'm talking to believers this morning, if you're not a believer and you're still on the opposite side of a conversion experience with Christ, having been born again by the Holy Spirit, I will say this, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved and you will experience the love of God beyond what you could ever understand.
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So when I'm talking this, when I'm directing it towards believers, but don't think you unbelievers are left out.
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The Bible says God loved the world in this way, that He sent His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him will not perish but will have everlasting life.
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If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved.
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So there's great wonder and power in that.
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But when we are saved, when we're on this side of the cross and we look back at our conversion experience, we see a man, me, I was at war with God and He loved me.
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I hated Him and He loved me in spite of it.
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That's agape, self-sacrificing love.
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And God gives me the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of love comes to live within me and God now calls me to live in His love and to serve Him in His love by showing His love to others.
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But what does it look like? What does it look like to show that kind of love to others? I think verse four begins to try to answer that.
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It says love or agape, that is the word used here.
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Agape is patient and kind.
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It doesn't envy or boast, not arrogant or rude.
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I mean, we could just stop there, but it goes on, doesn't insist on its own way, not irritable, resentful, not rejoicing in wrong, but rejoicing with the truth.
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What you need to understand immediately, and this is sometimes tough when we read English, what you need to understand immediately is that this list is all verbs.
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Because when you read it in English, love is patient, that's an adjective.
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Patience is describing something, that's an adjective, but that's not the word in Greek.
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It is not an adjective, it is a verb.
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In fact, how many of you have a King James? Nobody.
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Okay, brother's got a King James.
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Well, but you got one.
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I own one.
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Absolutely.
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Well, King James Version says this.
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Love actually says charity, because that's the word used in the old English for love.
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Charity suffers long.
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Charity suffers long and that becomes the verbal form of patience, right? It suffers long.
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The same with the word kindness.
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So if you say love is suffering long, love is showing kindness.
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It's not that it is just kind, it shows kindness.
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And so what are you trying to get at, Pastor? I'm trying to get at this.
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This is not what love is as much as this is what love does.
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This is what love behaves like.
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This is what love looks like.
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And I think there's balances here.
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I don't think there's a magical structure here, but obviously this Holy Spirit is a spirit of order.
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And so as he's inspiring Paul to write these words down, I believe that there's an order and a sense in which these words sort of flow together.
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Because patience and kindness, love is patient and kind, you realize those sort of fit together.
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Because patience is what? Patience is holding back whatever wrath or punishment or anger that is due the person that you're having to be patient with.
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I'm going to talk about this more next week, but actually this word patience here is actually patience with people more than circumstances.
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Because like if you were, you know, I'm talking a lot about painting today, Mike.
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Sorry, not for you.
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Have you ever painted yourself into a corner and had to wait for the paint to dry before you could go anywhere? Alright, well that does happen.
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And it takes a certain amount of patience with that circumstance to stand there and let the paint dry before you can get out of where you're trapped.
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That's not really the patience that's being talked about here.
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The patience that's being talked about here is patience with people.
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If there's one thing to be cornered by paint, it's another thing to be cornered by a person and not come out swinging.
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And that's the idea, right? This is patience.
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It's suffering along with people, right? And the opposite of that is what? Kindness.
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Not opposite, but they go together.
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Patience is holding back the anger or the frustration or the desire to lash out of them.
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And then kindness is doing good to them.
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As opposed to throwing anger, you do good.
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So patience and kindness is a balance.
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And I think so too is envy and boasting.
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What is envy? We're going to talk again.
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We're going to go over these words more in the weeks ahead.
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But envy is simply this.
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Envy is when you get upset that someone has something, whether it's a gift or whether it's something they own or something.
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Envy is a desire that you feel you're upset that they have it.
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Not necessarily that you want it, but you don't want them to have it.
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Right? And what's boasting? Boasting is the, I got something you don't.
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You ever been in a conversation with somebody and in the middle of the conversation, somebody says, I'll do you one better.
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You ever heard somebody say that? Oh, you think that's a good story? I got a better story.
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Or you think that's a good car? I got a better car.
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Yeah, it's a good boat.
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I got boats twice as big as yours.
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Right? So that's the, there's envy and boasting.
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Or either I don't want you to have it or I want you to know that mine's better than yours.
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And what's the heart of that? Selfishness.
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The heart of envy and boasting both sit in the heart of the same problem is I'm more important than you.
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So I think there's a structure here.
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And as we go in the weeks ahead, we're going to break down some of this and we're going to see how these fit together.
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But ultimately, this is the picture.
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And it's this it's this simple.
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If you want the if you want the real simple for today, it's love does this love does not do this.
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Love does be patient.
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Love does be kind.
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Love does not envy.
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Love does not boast.
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And it goes on to talk about other things.
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One of the most precious love keeps no record of wrong.
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Boy, I can't wait to talk about that because those things so precious.
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God doesn't keep a record of your wrongs.
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When you have been forgiven, you have been forgiven.
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And it's not that God forgets, right? Because God is all-knowing.
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God doesn't have the capacity to learn.
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Neither does he have the capacity forget.
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But he does have the capacity to choose not to remember.
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That's the difference.
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Because I always have people say, well, I just can't forget what they did to me, pastor.
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Yeah, but you can choose not to bring it up every time they're around.
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You can choose not to make somebody live under the boot heel of your supposed slight.
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But you can choose not to keep a record of wrong.
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So we see a picture here of what love does and what love doesn't.
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And the thing that I want to, the thing I wanted to point out today is there's only one, there's only one being who expresses this love perfectly.
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And it's God.
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In fact, I would say Jesus Christ.
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If you took the word, I wish I had my board.
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I love to teach with a board.
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I would write this out.
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Love is patient, love is kind, love does not envy, doesn't boast.
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I'd write it out, but then I would take out the word love and I'd put the word Jesus.
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Because that's the truth, right? Jesus is patient.
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Praise God.
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Jesus is kind.
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He doesn't envy or boast.
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And he keeps no record of wrongs.
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Praise God.
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So that's the model, right? Jesus is the model.
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But now I would say this.
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Is there anyone here so arrogant that you could take Jesus' name out and put your own? Could I say Keith is patient? Keith is kind? Keith never envies or boasts? Keith never insists on his own way? He's never irritable or resentful? Keith never rejoices at wrongdoing and always rejoices in the truth? No.
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I can't.
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Because I don't love perfectly.
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And the very best love I have, honestly, the very best love I have is still imperfect.
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That's right.
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So really to understand this passage first and foremost and best is to understand that this is first a description of how God loves you.
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Jesus is patient.
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Jesus is kind.
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Jesus is all these things.
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And the triune God is the source of love.
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And we possess God in us if we're believers.
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As a result, we should express that love to others.
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Albeit imperfectly.
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I stated earlier, Christians should bear the sweet aroma of the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
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You say, but you just said we're imperfect.
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Yes.
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But let me ask you this.
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Do you have habits in your life? Are any of those habits wrong? Might I add, do you have sins in your life that are habitual that you keep having to repent over? Right? Okay.
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Getting real now.
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For a minute.
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We are really good at excusing our habitual sins.
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We really are.
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We're really good at the things that we constantly have to battle.
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We're good at excusing ourselves.
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That's just my battle, Pastor.
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That's just my flesh.
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Can I challenge you today? This is New Year, right? Opportunity to look ahead.
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Opportunity to look forward.
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Can I challenge you in the New Year that instead of spending your time excusing your sinful habits, wouldn't it be better served to pursue the habitual lifestyle of love instead? Amen.
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Because love can become a habit.
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What would your life look like if you became habitually patient? How would your marriage change if you are married? How would it change if you were habitually kind? How would your relationship with the people you work with change if you were actually really happy when someone else was promoted and you weren't habitually envious of people? Or when somebody else's child is successful? Or when somebody else's husband gets a promotion or something? Anything.
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How would your children see the love of God in you differently if you legitimately and habitually did not keep a record of their wrongs? And I want to say this.
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I want to add this in just so I don't get anyone mistaking my heart here.
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This is not a self-help message.
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I didn't go home this week and become a motivational speaker.
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This isn't 10 ways to a better life.
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This is the biblical mandate for the believer.
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We are to be a people of love.
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And love, it actually is something that requires us to make decisions.
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Love is a choice.
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And it's a choice to act.
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And I was asked recently, I was asked by somebody, What do you think you want SGFC, our church, what do you think you want SGFC to be known for? Now, the context of the conversation is a little out of the realm of the...
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I don't want to get into why somebody would ask me a question like that.
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But the question was simply, you know, most churches have some kind of identity in the community.
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What do you want to be identified? And at the time, I said, you know, I really believe that we're a place where the Bible's taught.
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I really believe where theology matters.
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We're a place where people are taught the Word of God and they're sent out, equipped to know the Word of God.
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That's who we are.
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But the more that rolled around in my head, the more I thought this week, the most important thing in the world that we could be known for, even though all that's important, the most important thing that we could be known for is that we love one another.
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Think of it like this.
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I want you to hear this in my mind this week.
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Imagine if this was how we define this church.
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SGFC is patient and kind.
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SGFC does not envy or boast.
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The body here is not arrogant or rude, insistent on its own way, irritable and resentful.
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SGFC does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
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Beloved, every year at this time, I try to give some kind of a charge for the new year.
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Let's look ahead.
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Let's look forward.
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And here is the charge.
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It's simple.
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The fruit of the Spirit is love.
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And if that's not who we are, nothing else matters.
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If we don't love each other, if we don't love God, then, beloved, we have absolutely eliminated the Ten Commandments and the two great commandments, which are based on the Ten Commandments.
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Because the greatest commandment is this, that you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and you love your neighbor as yourself.
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And you say, but pastor, I'm imperfect.
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I know you are, and I am too.
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But love God and love your neighbor.
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Pastor, I can't do it perfectly.
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Neither can I.
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But love God and love your neighbor.
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Pastor, I don't always know what love looks like.
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The Word of God tells us what it looks like.
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It tells us what it smells like.
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It tells us what it feels like.
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It's not that we don't know.
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It's that we don't want to do.
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As the man rightly said, it is not the parts of the Bible that I don't understand that bother me the most.
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It's the parts of the Bible that I do understand and I do not want to do.
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Beloved, this year, if I could admonish us to anything, be patient with one another.
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Be kind to one another.
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Do not envy one another.
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Don't boast to one another.
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Hold back our arrogance.
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Hold back our rudeness, our irritability, and our resentfulness.
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And rejoice in the truth.
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If you're a believer today, it's a simple message.
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They will know who we are by our fruit.
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May our fruit be ever sweet.
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Let us pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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Father, I thank you for this passage.
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Lord, it convicts all of us in some way.
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In weeks ahead, Lord, when we look back at these words, patience, kindness, what they mean, and dig deeper into them, Lord, my heart is already thinking about ways in which I need to repent, ways in which I need to turn away from the flesh and turn toward you.
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Submit to the Spirit.
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Stop grieving the Spirit.
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Stop squelching the Spirit in my heart.
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And Lord, do what you've called me to do, and that's love my neighbors, love my brothers and sisters in Christ, love my wife as Christ loves the church, and even though I know I'm imperfect, I pray, God, that your Spirit would work through me.
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I pray that he would work through all of us, for every believer here, that he be drawn ever more closely to conformity to Christ.
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And Lord, if there are unbelievers here, Lord, that they would be convicted of sin, that they would be filled with the Spirit, that they would be regenerated, and Lord, that they would have the love of God in their heart today.
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In Jesus' name.
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Amen.