What Is Love?

I appreciate the opportunity to come over. We always do. It's always a blast to come over.

We had a nice drive, actually, today. We had just dusted enough snow to make it beautiful, but not make it treacherous. Driving through that section of the pass right as you're coming up before Hoodoo was just white and against the black. So just beautiful, just beautiful.

So that was a nice thank you, Lord, for the view today on the way over. It was very, very pretty.

Well, brethren, when I was a kid, my grandmother had a large collection of drinking glasses with the little characters from that single-panel comic, What Is... or not... sorry, single-panel comic, Love Is. You guys remember that comic, Love Is? Okay. I'm not sure if it's still in syndication or not, but it had two characters. It had a male and a female, and then had these little cutesy sayings about what love was. I remember whenever I got something to drink at her house when I was over there as a kid, it was in one of those glasses. And by the time, you know, after a few trips to Grandma's house during the summer, I think I'd read them all by the time things were said and done. They had phrases on them like, Love Is not nagging him when he burns the toast again. Love Is having the same values. Love Is everyone sitting down for the same dinner. Love Is sharing the housework. And it just went on and on and on. There's hundreds of these things. There's actually a website out there that you can see them all that have ever been produced on this particular comic strip. And this guy has been prolific in his comic... in his comics. And sure, the sayings are cute, but I remember wondering as a young person if they were truly representative of what love truly was. You know, love is one of those topics within the church that we seem to subconsciously try to distance ourselves from. And I think it's because some in some ways we it puts our hackles up a little bit. And it's because of, I think, the negative connotation with love comes from the way that love is taught in the modern Christian churches today. In modern Christian churches, love equals tolerance. In modern Christian churches, love equals tolerance. And love is used to justify all sorts of aberrations in society around us.

It's invoked as a reason to ignore sin. You know, we see it creeping into the arguments right now as legalization of gay marriage has been pushed, you know, across the country. We see love creeping into this, saying that we have no right to judge the individual, that it's our job just to love them for who they are. And they're partially right. We have no right to condemn the individual.

That's not our job. That's between them and God. But we do have a duty to call sin, sin. However, it's where we go from there that tests our mettle as a Christian. And that's where love comes into the picture. Trying to understand how love operates isn't new. These kind of questions have been around for a long time. And I think one of the reasons they've been around for so long is that mankind hasn't learned the lesson. They haven't learned the lesson. They haven't learned what it takes to love their fellow man. We're terrible at this as humanity. You know, our entire existence as humans has been pockmarked by war since the very beginning. The love of God is the antithesis to human nature. It's complete opposites. It's as far as they could possibly be apart. Love and human nature. And as such as humans, we don't do it well. It seems like we're always trying to find loopholes. We're always trying to find ways out of this and kind of find a loophole in that particular law of love. And it's been going on for a long time. You know, we see this in somewhat of an entertaining discussion between a lawyer and Christ in Luke 10. Let's go ahead and start there today. He asks the question of Christ, hoping to trip him up. And of course, as he always did, Christ dealt handily with the situation. But Luke 10, we'll start in verse 25 today. Luke 10 verse 25. Luke 10 verse 25 says, "...and behold a certain lawyer stood up and tested him, saying..." Notice it says, specifically testing him. Okay, this was the purpose for this question.

This wasn't, he didn't really want to know the answer. He wanted to see what Christ was going to say. "...saying, teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" He turns the question back on him and says, what's written in the law? What's your reading of it? "...So he answered, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself. And he said to him, you have answered rightly, do this and you will live. But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, and who is my neighbor? Then Jesus answered and said, a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead." Actually, I want to end it there at 29. I'm sorry, I don't want to jump into 30. Christ turns his question back on this lawyer, who himself was an expert in the law, and he asks him, what does the scripture tell you? What do you think? The man responds with the perfect textbook answer, love the Lord to follow your heart and your neighbor as yourself. Christ says, yeah, bingo, you got it. Now go and do it. To which the man responds, right, but who's my neighbor?

Like he's somewhat hoping to hear that there are certain people that he doesn't have to love, that Christ would tell him, look, only this guy and this guy, but that guy over there, that gentile, or that Samaritan, or that guy over there, nobody likes that guy. You don't have to love that guy.

We're not going to try to force you to love him, which clearly wasn't Christ's point when he made this answer. As we look through scripture, we see that love is a common theme throughout, and what many feel is a purely New Testament principle, has strong roots in the Old Testament, and its understanding of what love is and how it works is imperative to our spiritual growth today.

So in the time that we have remaining today, let's examine what love is and why it is so important that we learn this lesson and apply it in our lives. The title for today's message is, What is Love? We'll be focusing on three primary points today, what love really is.

The first of those points is love is faithfulness. The first of those points is love is faithfulness.

The second is love is a verb, and the third is love is a sign. So love is a faithfulness, love is a verb, and love is a sign. We'll start today where the Bible itself actually starts, and we'll kind of take a look at what God's expectations of his people were throughout time.

From the very beginning, God expected his people to be faithful. From Adam and Eve and their instructions in the garden, to Noah and his family being the only real righteous and faithful people on the planet at his point in time, to Abraham and the promises that came through his faithfulness.

The Bible, particularly the Old Testament, reads as a treatise on the importance of being faithful.

God repeatedly says throughout the Old Testament, Here are my expectations.

This is what I need you to do. And even before the formal giving of the law at Sinai, his laws and his expectations were in place. We see the Sabbath was present, clear back into Genesis. We see it was wrong for Cain to kill Abel. We see that idolatry wasn't okay. The list goes on. It seems as though there were these—it doesn't seem, in other words, that there weren't these hundreds of years or thousands of years where the law wasn't present.

We recognize God's expectations have been in force from the beginning.

Sinai was simply a kind of a codification of what already existed. The people that God chose to work through, the descendants of Jacob, had reached a point where they'd been within Egypt for so long that they'd forgotten. With enough time passing and enough generations, as is often the case, many things are lost. I have, for example, in my classes at school, languages work this way.

Where you have an initial immigrant that comes into the country, and then you have generations of those of that family as time goes on. Things like language are lost. The grandparents that come into the country speak single language, and it's their home native language. Their children speak kind of a hybrid of two. They tend to be a little bit somewhat bilingual in both. But three, four generations out, there's no native tongue left. And I have situations at my school, in particular, the school that I teach at, where I have students that can barely converse with their grandparents.

The students speak almost complete English, where the parents are still fluent in Spanish, and they just can't communicate. They can't go back and forth with one another. Language will do that.

Culture will do that. And there are a lot of other things that wane as time goes on. Sadly, religious belief tends to be lost as time goes on and generations progress as well. And so it was with the Israelites. When you're a sojourner in a foreign land, for as long as they were, things change. Things change. You forget things, especially if they're not a priority in your life.

But despite all of that, God had chosen the people of Israel as his own. He protected them. He brought them to Egypt in times of famine. He brought them out of their homelands and brought them to this place so that they could survive, saw them through their time in captivity, delivered them from Pharaoh's clutches, redeemed them, and brought them safely to the base of Mount Sinai. Let's go over to Exodus 19. We'll see this next scene unfold at the base of Mount Sinai. Exodus 19. We'll go ahead and pick it up in verse 3 today. Verses 1 and 2 kind of give us the context and the locations of where everything's at. But in verse 3, we see what actually happens. So Exodus 19 and verse 3.

Exodus 19 verse 3. Exodus 19 verse 3 says, And Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the children of Israel, you have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to me above all people, for all the earth is mine. And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.

You know, God tells Moses directly, Here's what I need you to tell the Israelites.

Tell them I was faithful in my promises. I did what I said I would do. Here you are. I delivered you from Egypt. I brought you to me. Now it's your turn. Now it's your turn. If you'll do the things that I've asked of you, if you'll keep my covenant, then you'll be my people. Go and tell them this.

Pick it up in verse 7, Exodus 19 and verse 7. So Moses came and called for the elders of the people and laid before them all these words which the Lord commanded him. Then all the people answered together and said, All that the Lord has said, or all that the Lord has spoken, we will do.

So Moses brought back the words of the people to the Lord. Moses called the elders at that point in time. Notice just them, not the entire congregation at this point, but the elders themselves. Moses told him exactly what the Lord said and note their response.

All the Lord has spoken, we will do. Moses goes back and tells God what they said. God then tells Moses to bring the entire congregation to the foot of the mountain. Make sure that they're purified, make sure that they're clean, and not only that, to set boundaries around the mountain so that they don't touch any part of it. Verses 16 through 25 of Exodus 19, we see the reaction of the congregation to the Lord's presence. We won't read it today for the sake of time, but they were frightened. They were scared to death to be down there at the base of this thing with the trembling noises and all the stuff that went along. So much so, it states in verse 16, the entire camp trembled. They were so afraid, they were involuntarily shaking. I don't know if you've ever been that afraid. I don't know that I've ever been that afraid to be involuntarily shaking, but they were frightened. The account continues with Moses giving the people of Israel God's testimony, giving them his statutes, giving them his ordinances, laying out the covenant for Israel.

And laying out what they were expected to be faithful in. The book of Deuteronomy discusses this concept a little bit further, following the account of giving the commandments in Deuteronomy 6. Let's go ahead and head over there. Deuteronomy 6. Deuteronomy 6, we'll pick it up in verse 1.

Deuteronomy 6 and verse 1 says, now this is the commandment, and these are the statutes and the judgments which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you, that you may observe them in the land that you are crossing over to possess, that you may fear the Lord your God to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, you and your son and your grandson, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged. Therefore here, O Israel, and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you, and that you may multiply greatly as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you, a land flowing with milk and honey. Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Notice verses 5 and 6. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. Those are the same words that the lawyer quoted back to Jesus as to what needed to be done. In other words, God told ancient Israel, here are the things that I expect you to do. These are the things that illustrate you holding up. In other words, this is how you show me you're holding up your end of the bargain. I'll hold up my end of the bargain, but you need to hold up your end.

You'll have to love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, and your mind.

Love is faithfulness to the expectations of God. Let's look at verse 7. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall teach your children, not casually, but diligently to ensure that these teachings are not lost as time progresses. Just like language, just like culture, and just like those other things today that go as time goes on. To ensure that they understand God, that they understand the expectations, and more importantly, they understand how to show their love to God. So if we gauge Israel's performance here, if we were to give them a grade, how did they fare overall in the faithfulness category?

Did they love God by being faithful to Him? Is an F-minus a real grade? I mean, you know, I joke with my kids sometime that they're going to get an F-minus. Let's be real, overall, they didn't do well. And you know, it's so easy for us, and we always say, look, it's easy for us to sit back and kind of armchair quarterback Israel. It really is. And it's easy for us to set Israel up as a bit of a punching bag here and say, oh, wow, look at these guys, you know, what haven't they done?

But if we were to grade ourselves, how do we stack up? If we were to grade ourselves, how do we stack up? Have we been faithful? Do we love the Lord with all of our heart, our soul, and our mind? You know, I would imagine if we're honest with ourselves, we're not going to be valedictorian.

You know, there are numerous examples of leaders in the Old Testament who were faithful to God. You know, they're listed, tons of them listed in Hebrews 11. You know, one that's not listed in Hebrews 11 that comes to mind is Joshua. Now, some of the events that go around with what happened with Joshua, the fall of Jericho and some of those things, those are in Hebrews 11. But Joshua, specifically by name, is not mentioned in Hebrews 11. Joshua was born in Egypt about 40 years before the Exodus. He would have served as a slave in those years prior. And after leaving Egypt, he became Moses's assistant, kind of accompanied him throughout much of their time in the wilderness.

He served as a military commander against the Amalekites. He was sent into the land of Canaan to spy it out, likely chosen because Moses knew him personally and knew that he was trustworthy and knew that whatever he said was going to be an accurate report. He rose to become the leader of the Israelites after Moses's death, serving as their leader as they entered the Promised Land.

And the book of Joshua mentions that when Joshua boldly spoke to God for the sun and the moon to stand still, and God delivered, that there was no time before it and no time after it that God harkened to the voice of a man. You know, we see throughout the entire book of Joshua the theme of be bold and of good courage. You know, when you look at that moment where he was bold and he was of good courage, you know, and it kind of makes you wonder if God goes, okay, okay, dial her back, dial her back, you know, nice work, you're bold, you're courageous, dial her back just a little bit.

But Joshua was an incredible example of faithfulness. Before his death, he spent the majority of the final chapter of the book of Joshua imploring the Israelites to remember God's faithfulness and to be faithful themselves. Let's go ahead and turn there. Joshua 24, we're going to pick it up in verse 1. Joshua 24 verse 1. Joshua 24 and verse 1, and this is really kind of, you know, there's several of these early books that record some of the last words of these, you know, fathers, the faithful fathers of Israel, you know.

This is kind of his last kind of will and testament, so to speak, you know. This is what he said to them on the, just before he passed. Starting out in Joshua 24 verse 1, we're going to go ahead and go through this section. Joshua 24 verse 1 says, Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem and called for the elders of Israel for their heads, for their judges, and for their officers, and they presented themselves before God.

So he's calling the leadership to him at this point. Joshua said to all the people, thus says the Lord God of Israel, your fathers, including Torah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, dwelt on the other side of the river in old times, and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from the other side of the river, led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his descendants and gave him Isaac.

To Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. To Esau I gave the mountains of Sihr to possess, but Jacob and his children went down to Egypt. Also I sent Moses and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt, but according to what I did among them, afterward I brought you out. Then I brought your fathers out of Egypt, and you came to the sea, and the Egyptians pursued your fathers with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea. So they cried out to the Lord, and he put darkness between you and the Egyptians, brought the sea upon them, and covered them. And your eyes saw what I did in Egypt.

Then you dwelt in the wilderness a long time, and I brought you into the land of the Amorites, who dwelt on the other side of the Jordan. And they fought with you, but I gave them into your hand, that you might possess their land, and I destroyed them from before you. Then Baloch, the son of Zippor, king of Moab, arose to make war against Israel, sent and called Balaam the son of Beor to curse you. But I would not listen to Balaam. Therefore, he continued to bless you. So I delivered you out of his hand. Then you went over the Jordan and came to Jericho, and the men of Jericho fought against you.

Also the Amorites, the Parazites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Gergashites, the Hivites, the Jebusites. It's a lot of ites. But I delivered them into your hands. I sent the Hornet before you, which drove them out from before you, also the two kings of the Amorites, but not with your sword or with your bow. I have given you a land for which you did not labor, and cities which you did not build, and you dwell in them. You eat of the vineyards and the olive groves which you did not plant. In other words, I did everything that I promised to Abraham. I've multiplied you, I've protected you, I've caused you to come into this Promised Land.

I have kept my word anywhere along the line. Things could have gone the other way, but I brought you here, and I've protected you, and I've kept my word. And so because of that, we see verse 14, Now therefore fear the Lord, serve him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the river, and in Egypt, serve the Lord. And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourself this day whom you will serve. Whether the gods which were your fathers served that, or were on the other side of the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.

But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Joshua practically throws down the gauntlet here. I mean, really, that's kind of what he's doing at this point. Saying, look, you need to make the call. You need to make your choice.

He informs him that he's made his choice, and then now it's their turn. Verse 16, we see the response. So the people answered and said, far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods. You know, for the Lord our God is he who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt. From the house of bondage, who did these great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way that we went and among all the people through whom we passed. Verse 18, And the Lord drove out from before us all the people, including the Amorites, who dwelt in the land. We will also serve the Lord, for he is our God. They basically said, hey, we'll do it. We've seen the amazing faithfulness that he's provided for us. We've seen that he's protected, that he's preserved us and brought us into this land. We will serve the Lord, for he is God. Joshua says to the people, verse 19, but Joshua said to the people, you cannot serve the Lord, for he is a holy God, he is a jealous God, he will not forget or forgive, sorry, your transgressions nor your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, and he will turn and do you harm and consume you after he is done, you good. Joshua tells him, look, your intentions are good, but you won't be able to do it. Your intentions... he's not saying this to be discouraging, he's not trying to discourage him saying they're unable, but wanted them to recognize the fact that they're going to sin and that God's grace was necessary. And he reminds him too that if they forsake him, if they serve other gods, then he would consume them as a nation. It was imperative for the Israelites, after Joshua's death, to be faithful to God, to repent of that sin and to stay close to God. Verse 21, and the people said to Joshua, no, no, no, but we'll serve the Lord. So Joshua said to the people, you are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord for yourselves to serve him. And they said, we are witnesses. We agree. Now therefore he said, put away the foreign gods which are among you, and incline your heart to the Lord God of Israel. Joshua instructs the people to rid themselves of their foreign gods, to put them out, and to incline their heart unto God, to love him, to walk in his ways, in his statutes, and keep his commandments. This same phrase, incline your heart to God, we won't turn there. It's in 1 Kings 8.58, right after Solomon goes through to dedicate the temple in this piece. He's got this whole prayer right there, and he mentions this very set of words.

Incline your heart to God, walk in his ways, in his statutes, and to keep his commandments.

Now sadly, it didn't last long. A couple of generations, they did a good job. But for a time, as Israel entered the Promised Land and God worked through Joshua, things were good. Things were good.

They were conquering the inhabitants, they were prospering. God was abundantly blessing his people and delivering on his promises. And as you see the rest of the Old Testament, we're reading through this right now in the chronologies, going from one good king to one bad king to one good king to one bad king to a bad king to a bad king to a good king, and just back and forth as it seemed to go.

When they did what they needed to do, they were blessed for it. When they didn't, bad things happened. Very bad things happened. And we see this again and again, and throughout Kings and Chronicles, when the nation of Israel did what God expected of them, when they went ahead and they dusted off a copy of the law, went ahead and dusted it off, hasn't been out in the last 20-30 years, they found it buried in a library somewhere, realized all the things they were supposed to have been doing and weren't. When they repented of that, when they turned the country around, things went well. They were exceedingly blessed for it. But when the kings and the nation slipped back into Israel's old habits, restored the high places, reinstated idolatry, and a variety of other sins, they were not blessed for those efforts. Deuteronomy gives us this basic concept that God puts before us two paths. One of those paths leads to life, the other leads to death.

The same choice that Joshua put before the elders is put before us.

We have to actively pursue that path that is going to lead to life. We have to actively be faithful to God because love is a verb. Loving God is an active thing. It's not a passive thing, it's active. It's a verb. Let's turn over to Matthew 22. Second point today, love is a verb.

Turn over to Matthew 22. Head into the New Testament. We'll be in here for just a little bit.

Matthew 22. We'll break into the account here with the...we'll come into a situation where some of the various factions of the Jews were playing a rousing game of Stump the Messiah, asking Christus all sorts of loaded questions in hopes of tripping him up, in hopes of discrediting him in some way, just getting him to say one little wrong thing so that they could come out and just completely expose him for the quote-unquote fraud that he was. Okay? We know he wasn't a fraud. We know that he knew exactly what was going on here. But Matthew 22, we'll pick it up in verse 34. Matthew 22, verse 34. But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, dealt handily with the Sadducees in this case, they gathered together and then one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him, saying, teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? Verse 37.

Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. What we saw earlier, the same response that we got back from the lawyer.

This is the first in great commandment, and the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Christ's response was that what it all comes down to, that road to eternal life as he instructed the lawyer, the question in Luke 10, the great commandment in the law is twofold. It's love God and it's love your neighbor. It doesn't mean there's only two commandments. There's still 10, but they're grouped into two groupings. They help us to love God, they help us to love our neighbor.

Then he goes a little bit further and he makes the statement that on these two commandments, the entire law and the prophets hang. He's stating here that the law itself, the prophets, the scripture itself, is designed to push us to the point where we're able to actively exhibit love for God and love for our fellow man in our lives. That in actively doing this, we're satisfying the law because we're living it. We saw how we show our love for God by being faithful to him, but how do we love our neighbor? How do we love our neighbor? Believe it or not, it's outlined in the Old Testament. Go ahead and put a, if you have a bookmark or something, put a bookmark in Matthew.

We're going to be back to Matthew a little bit later. But back to Leviticus. Jump back into Leviticus. And you know, Leviticus is not the first place that comes to mind sometimes when you're trying to deal with how to love your neighbor. I mean, you know, a lot of people seem to think that, you know, the Old Testament is just vengeful and wrathful and there's nothing about loving it at all. Leviticus 19 is an incredible, incredible chapter. So Leviticus 19, we'll go ahead and pick it up in verse 9, looking at some of the instructions that God gave the Israelites into how to deal with their neighbors. Leviticus 19. Now, some of this stuff isn't something, I mean, I don't know how many of us actually actively have fields that we harvest at this point in time. So some of this isn't exactly applicable in its literal form, but the spiritual background behind it and the figurative form behind it is solid today. Leviticus 19, again, we'll pick it up in verse 9, says, When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field, nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest, and you shall not glean your vineyard.

You shall leave them for the poor and the stranger. I am the Lord your God. So God's saying, look, you need to help provide food for people that need it. And to do that, leave the corners of your field. Allow them to come and glean in your field and in your vineyards. You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another. There's three commandments right there. You shall not swear by my name falsely, nor shall you profane the name of your God. I am the Lord. You shall not cheat your neighbor, nor rob him. The wages of him who is hired shall not remain with you all night until morning. You shall not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but shall fear the Lord your God. Or, I'm fear God. I am the Lord. You shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty. In righteousness, you shall judge your neighbor. You shall not go about as a tale-bearer among your people, nor shall you take a stand against the life of your neighbor. I am the Lord. You shall not hate your brother and your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor and not bear sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. You should care for one another, is what God is telling them here. Not be oppressive. Pay them what is due. Judge them righteously. Not play favorites. Not run up and down as a tale-bearer. Put aside gossip and slander. Not hate. Not be spiteful. Not take vengeance or bear grudges. In other words, we have a saying for this. We call it the Golden Rule.

Treat others as you wish to be treated. That's how we love our neighbor. That's how we love our neighbor. Our everyday actions should show love for our fellow man. And how much more should our actions also show love for our brethren? You know, love is a verb. The truth is, it's not just what you say. It's more importantly what you do. It's more important what we do. We can talk about love all day long in the churches of God. You know, we can claim that we love one another. We can say that we care about the larger body of Christ. You know, that we love our brethren, even those that may be found in other fellowships that are part of the body. But when the rubber meets the road, what do our actions show? We can say we love them all day long, but what do our actions show?

Do our actions show love for one another? You know, I think if we're honest with ourselves, we as a body of believers don't have the greatest track record when it comes to that aspect of our faith. The churches of God, at least those that have descended from the Worldwide Church of God, according to one list that I found online, contain approximately 350 churches that descended from the Worldwide Church of God. 350 times, at least, where we have separated from one another for various reasons. Now, some extremely valid, others over very petty issues. God desires that we put our money where our mouth is, so to speak. No more talk. We either love one another or we don't.

And that comes down to how we treat one another. Are we spiteful toward our brethren? You know, do we talk about them behind their back? Do we gossip and spread rumors and slander? Do we tear them down in order to elevate ourselves? Do we throw stumbling blocks in their path? James had a bit to say about this. Let's go over to James. James 4. James 4, verse 1. James 4, verse 1.

Book of James is an incredible read on human nature and human behavior. James 1.

And my book does not want to give me James today. There it is. It's somehow stuck. James 4, verse 1.

James 4, verse 1 says, Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war, yet you do not have because you do not ask. In other words, when we as brethren are not in a place where we should be, when we're closer to the world, then we might be closer to God, we quarrel with one another. We fight with one another. He goes on in verse 4 to discuss how this friendship with the world causes us to become enemies with God. And we know that.

We understand the carnal mind is enmity towards God, that carnality and holiness are complete polar opposites. And we also recognize that we as humans are carnal despite our conversion, which is why reconciliation is so unbelievably important in our lives, both with God and as well with others when we do have quarrels. Matthew 18 gives us very specific steps in this process, and it's built into a larger discussion on kind of how to deal with one another justly. Let's go over to Matthew 18, and we're going to start in verse 15. So we're going to jump kind of into the middle of the passage here. Matthew 18, and we'll start in verse 15. We're going to go 15 through 17.

Matthew 18, verse 15, under the heading, dealing with the sinning brothers, says, Moreover, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.

If he hears you, you have gained your brother. But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector. So what we get out of this then is when someone's rude to us or sins against us, we should run around and tell everybody about it. Stir up contentions against them, build our factions, make sure we got enough people versus their people, stoke the fires of conflict so that when we win the fight, we elevate ourselves in the process, no holds barred. That's not at all what it says.

We have a duty to our brother before this process even begins. We have a duty to our brother before this process even begins. We have a duty to go to God first in prayer and reconcile with God before we reconcile with our brother. We're carnal. We're apart from God. We're enemies of God when we're carnal and we're apart from God. We can't be in the right place spiritually to even have that conversation with our brother if we don't begin first with reconciliation to God.

Then we go to our brother. Then we go to our brother, just the two of us, one-on-one.

Peacefully, we explain the situation. Rationally, in the hopes of gaining our brother back. This isn't to drive a wedge between us. The hope is that when this is done, we're reconciled.

That's the goal of this discussion. It's not a chance to unload on the person. It's not a three-minute diatribe of all their faults. Every single thing they've ever done wrong.

You know, these 90 things I have against you. It's a chance for them to discuss this specific situation in hopes of resolving it. It doesn't bring up past wrongs. It doesn't bring up other indiscretions. It's this situation and this situation only. Ideally, after this step, it's over. Ideally, after this situation, it's over. You and your brother have reconciled. All is repaired. But in case it continues, or the person carries on in their sin, you go back to God in prayer yet again, reconciling with him once again, asking what lesson may be your to learn from the situation. Then go back to your brother with two or three other witnesses. Now, personally, I'm of the belief that these should be individuals that were witnesses to the actual situation.

There are some people that differ in that, but I think there should be people that are aware of the situation versus somebody that you told, here's what this person did, because then they're not a witness. They just know what you said. You know, you're not establishing it by the mouth of two or three witnesses. If the person still doesn't hear, then we go back to God in prayer about the situation again. Good place to fast. Then it goes to the church. The case is laid out. The decision is made after much prayer and much fasting. You know, it doesn't go to the church first. We don't air out people's issues and struggles in the court of public opinion. You know, we see this in celebrity trials all the time. You know, somebody's faces. Or in the case of we had a situation over here in Salem recently, we had a teacher falsely accused of misconduct at school. Slap the guy's face on the on the front page of the newspaper. This guy did this, this, this, this, this, this big old thing, and it comes out. Turns out the kid who accused him was lying. He will never work as a teacher again. It's over. Even after that exoneration, it's done. And so we don't air things out in the court of public opinion. God gave us the steps to proper conflict resolution right here in Matthew 18. Three little passages. And it's proper conflict management right there. We start with the steps that God gives us. This is how we fix our conflict with one another. And this is the method that God gave us to fix our conflict. God expects us to deal with one another in a godly manner. And in doing so, we can both show our love for our brother, as well as our love for God for being faithful in those instructions. The last point today is that love is a sign. Love is a sign.

Let's turn to John 13. Love is a sign. John 13. Christ told his disciples that one of the ways that they would be recognized by the world was by the love that they had for one another.

John 13 and verse 34. John 13 and verse 34. A new commandment I give to you that you love one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. Love is a sign of God's people. Love is a sign of God's people. That's how you identify a disciple of God, is by the love that they have for one another. It's a testament to whom we follow. And you know if we don't have that love, it's also a testament to whom we follow. You know, Pharisees were causing Christ all sort of trouble as his ministry went on. I mean, not really trouble. They were just a minor nuisance. But he dealt with him effortlessly. You know, but it seems kind of seems actually as you read through the gospel account, they're just lurking at every turn. It's like, you know, he'll turn the corner somewhere and then boom! There's a Pharisee! And here he asks this question and Christ turns it back on him and takes care of it. And they kind of gather up and mumble to themselves as they wander away to go plan the next ambush. But they pop up and just ask these random rhetorical questions again in an effort to trip him up, to test him. Christ took every opportunity that he had to correct them. And in one passage actually in Matthew 16, he warned the disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. We just recently read this one, you know, within the last couple weeks with Days of Unleavened Bread. Let's go to Matthew 16. I'm sorry, let's not go to Matthew 16.

Oh, fine, let's go to Matthew. Let's go.

Matthew 16. Beware the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. I already started sending you, they might as well go there now. No sense turning it back.

Matthew 16. We can see that that particular leaven of the of the Pharisee and the Sadducees, it has a tendency to puff up. It has a tendency to make one arrogant, so to speak. It has a tendency to puff one up. It says, How is it you do not understand, verse 11, that I did not speak to you concerning bread? Instead, I spoke to you, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He's like, Come on, guys! The analogy! Stay with me here! The analogy is not anything to do with bread. You have to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

But to beware of the arrogance that comes from the position that they had reached. Now, the Pharisees were experts in the law. They had 248 separate commandments that were in addition to the ones that God had given. And in one passage, or in one source that I found, claimed that they had 365 prohibitions for a total of 613 things that allowed them to build a giant barbed wire fence around the Torah to create this barrier that prevented them from even nearing breaking the law of God, which is admirable. It is. Don't get me wrong. I'm not bashing that by any means. But they went about it wrong and for the wrong reasons. You know, I just heard a deal, actually. There was a thing in the paper. A couple of months ago, there's a town down in Irvine, California, somewhere that they're stringing monofilament line in a giant circle around the outside of the city, because they have a very large Orthodox Jewish population in that particular town.

And if the area is enclosed, they can go farther than a Sabbath day's journey. But if the area is not enclosed, then they have to stay to its... so they can't walk to church because the synagogue's far enough away that they'd be outside of their Sabbath. So they're enclosing a fishing line around the end. And as soon as that encloses, it is now an enclosure and can therefore, they can maneuver around. That's the kind of stuff we're talking about here. They're building this giant barbed wire fence around the Torah without understanding the intent behind what God told them to do. Missing the intent to an extent. You know, Christ rebukes them repeatedly through the Gospel of Town very notably in Matthew 23. Let's go to Matthew 23. Matthew 23. Here in this particular passage, he identifies what the leaven of the scribes and Pharisees were. And he identifies it really as their own hypocrisy. Okay, identifies it as their own hypocrisy. So Matthew 23 23.

Matthew 23 23 says, Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you pay tithe on mint and anise and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, faith.

These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone. In other words, you focus on the minutia of the law. These 613 things is where your focus is. But you're missing the point entirely. These aspects of the law of these things are far more important than the minutia.

Matthew 23 24. Blind guides who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. You look great on the outside. You take very good care to ensure that everything that you do is done when people can see it happen. But the inside of the cup is filthy. The outside is clean. He mentions at one point he talks about the tombs. It's down here. We'll get into it. Matthew 23 26. Blind Pharisee first cleans the inside of the cup and the dish, that the outside of them may be clean also. If we start with the inside of the cup, then we can't possibly make the inside of the cup dirty when we wash the outside. Verse 27. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanliness. Even so, you shall outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Wow. Wow! He really did not leave much unsaid at the end of this rebuke. And you can imagine, you know, if you're the group of Pharisees listening to this, it's like you're reeling from every jab and, you know, stepping back like, whoa, completely on the heels. Just what do we do with this? You know, this did not go as we planned, basically, is what the Pharisees are saying at this point. This, we expected this to go differently, but they were so focused on how they looked to those around them, how holy they appeared, that they had the right place at services, that they were in the expensive seats, so to speak, that the phylacteries were broad, that the robes were perfect, and befitting their standing. It was a fascinating video on the internet, which I cannot in good conscience recommend, and I won't. I'm not going to tell you who it is or what it is. I'm going to reference it very vaguely in the hopes that you don't go hunting for it, because there is some extreme language that is used in it.

But the video is recorded by a fairly famous political commentator who is a very smug atheist, I mean, an overly smug atheist. However, with all of that said, it's a very frank observation on the state of Christianity today. It was recorded following the death of Osama bin Laden, and it was the impetus to it was all of the Christians in the United States who were celebrating in the streets after Osama bin Laden's death. And he was expressing with satirical shock how Christians in the U.S. could call themselves Christian and completely ignore the teachings of the Bible.

Now, we've just recently gone through this fan or follower series. That was the essence of the whole thing. But the idea was that peace and love was kind of Christ's bread and butter.

I mean, he it really was. That was kind of the core of his teachings. He went on to say that Martin Luther King could call himself Christian. Gandhi could call himself a Christian. But if you call yourself a Christian and then completely ignore most or all of his teachings, his claim was that you don't get to call yourself a follower of the person who instructed and taught these things. The remainder of the video goes on in an absolutely scathing indictment of Christianity today, and frankly, an indictment that is spot on. You know, Christ preached a gospel of love for God and for our fellow man, for our brethren and our enemies. He preached a gospel of peace, and the sign of those who follow him are these things in their life. On the contrary, if we have contentions, if we have wars, if we have difficulties and we have corals among us as brethren or among, you know, the people that we work with are outside of work. As we read before in James, these things come from the desires which war in our members, wanting more, not being content, maybe not being satisfied. We're not placing others' needs above our own. We're not burying the self. Instead, we're feeding the self and giving place to a spirit that is not of God.

Love is a sign of God's people. If we are living and we are doing what we've been commanded by God, the fruits of it will be apparent in our lives. It will serve as a sign to those around us of whom we follow. 1 John 4 says it even more strongly. 1 John 4. 1 John 4 will pick it up in verse 19.

1 John 4 verse 19 says, we love him because he first loved us. If a man says, or if someone says in the New King James, if someone says, I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar. For he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from him, that he who also loves God must love his brother. Also, John goes as far as saying, if we don't love our brother, then we cannot love God. Period. We have to be so careful as Christians that we live the part. God said his people would be recognized by the love that they showed to one another.

Would God recognize us? Would God know us? Would people in the world recognize us? Would they look at us and say, you know, there's something about that guy or that girl, something different.

There's something different about that person. Or do we blend right in? Brethren, we're charged by God to be different. And that is a struggle. That is tough. This world is pulling us in all kinds of directions. You know, we're to be in it, but not of it. You know, and it's a tough, tough thing to be. But we should stand out in the world around us. The world should see the love that we have for one another and for our fellow man and reflect it in that love. They should see the love that we have for our Father as we faithfully follow his law. Not when it's convenient, not when it suits us, but in every situation unwavering in our faithfulness to his instructions.

We've all been charged to work together in spiritual unity and love to grow spiritually.

And we're all working at this together. We are all on the same road. We're all moving in the same direction. We have to be provoking one another to love and to good works, like it says in Hebrews 10, 24. That's the kind of unity that we need to have with one another. Everybody working together, everybody growing together towards the full measure of Christ, that gold standard that we all work towards. But we've got to help each other along that road. We've got to pick each other up when it's necessary. We've got to push each other sometimes. Push along from the back. You know, we just recently ran a race this last go of it. Jokingly, at one point, the person I ran with was a little bit gassed at one point. So it's like, all right, come on! Come on! I mean, that's the kind of thing we need to be doing, encouraging one another just to reach a little bit further, to push a little bit harder as we all kind of strive towards that finish line. Let's conclude today with one final scripture. Turn over to 1 Corinthians 13. 1 Corinthians 13.

1 Corinthians 13 and verse 1 says, It profits me nothing. Love suffers long in its kind. Love does not envy. Love does not parade itself.

It's not puffed up. It doesn't behave rudely. It doesn't seek its own. It's not provoked. It thinks no evil. It does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Verse 8, Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail. Or where there are prophecies, they will fail. Whether there are tongues, they will fail. Or cease. I have a hard time seeing today. Whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then the way, then that way which is in part, will be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child. I understood as a child. I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I am also known. And now abide faith, hope, love. These three, but the greatest of these, is love.