Speaker 1: 0:07

Good morning. My name is Jacob Phillips. I am the youth director here at Westtown and I am elated to get to worship the one true God with you this morning. As a church we have been going through the love chapter 1, corinthians, chapter 13, discussing what it looks like to love, and as a youth group, as Cooper already addressed, we've been going through a series called Christ's Upside-Down Kingdom, and if you're unfamiliar with this term, it's I didn't coin it, it's a term that I heard a lot growing up but, as I've asked a few people here, not as many people are familiar with it. So it's just a term that acknowledges that when Christ came, when Jesus was born to Mary and he grew up, in some gospels, actually the first thing that he says is he says repent, for the kingdom of heaven is here, and so Christ comes to bring a kingdom. But certainly from the world's perspective, that kingdom looked a little different than what they thought it would look like. It looked upside down, if you will, and so Cooper also already addressed a way in which we see that, and we've been discussing different parts of the gospel that show us, that reveal that to us. But probably the most obvious way is people were expecting this king to come and overthrow the oppressive government that was oppressing them, but rather this was a king who came to be killed by that oppressive government. And so today the hope is to kind of marry these two, that we will look at love and we will look at the love that we share in Christ and how it's certainly different than the world would expect and maybe, if we're honest, it's even a little bit different than what we thought coming into today. My greatest hope this morning is that this message would be encouraging to you. I don't know about you, but, without going into details, the last couple of weeks have been just crazy for me and my family and, I'm sure, for you and yours in different ways. It's been a hectic last couple of weeks, but I want to start. The words aren't even going to be on the screen, I'm not even telling you where we're going yet, but I just want to start with Paul's words as he opens up this letter that we're going to be reading from today to this people.

Speaker 1: 2:19

I think he does such a good job of introducing his letters as well as greeting those he's writing to. So he says this Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace to you and peace from God, our Father in the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm going to read that again and kind of swap out a few words Jacob, a disciple of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to the saints who are in Westchase and are faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace to you and peace from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1: 3:00

Before we talk about the grace and peace part, just for clarification, raise your hand if you're a saint. Before we talk about the grace and peace part. Just for clarification, raise your hand if you're a saint. Okay, for clarification. Now raise your hand if you're a Christian, okay. If you're a Christian, raise your hand. Keep it now. Keep it raised, don't put it down. If you're a Christian, raise your hand, keep it raised. Raise your hand. If you're a saint, leave it up. Leave it up. Okay, you can put your hands down. The students are used to me doing this.

Speaker 1: 3:24

When Paul says to the saints who are in Ephesus, he's not saying to this special class of Christian who is in Ephesus, he is saying to you, faithful follower of Jesus Christ, christian, this is to you If you were here today and you were a Christian, be encouraged. The Bible calls you a saint. You are a saint by the Bible's definition and so Saint of Westchase. I don't know about you, but this is insanely encouraging to me because the last two weeks have been crazy and I could really use some peace this morning. And I have not been perfect the last two weeks. I haven't always gone to God when I should have or dealt with the craziness in the way that I should have, so I also really need some grace. So I hope that this message does just that. It gives us a peace beyond all understanding and shows us that we have immense grace in the Son Jesus.

Speaker 1: 4:22

Our title of the sermon today is God's Perfect Love, in which the Church Partakes is a Familial Love. God's Perfect Love in which the Church Partakes is a Familial Love. If that's too long, you don't feel like you can remember that, you could say that the title of today's sermon is one word Trinity. Every truth communicated in that title could be summed up in the one word Trinity. See, trinity is not a word that we find in the Bible, but it's, of course, a theme that we see all over the Bible. It is God literally revealing who he is, his very nature, to us. Herman Boving puts it this way. I love this quote the world finds its idea, its principle and its final goal in the triune being of God. It's all about God and who God is.

Speaker 1: 5:17

Now, today, I want to again encourage you that when we talk about the Trinity, it can feel difficult. It can feel difficult to wrap our minds around, and I wanna one level with you and say that's normal. Again, we're talking about the very nature of God himself, a God who is incomprehensible. But even though God does not make himself fully known to us, he does meaningfully make himself known to us and we should pursue knowing him as much as we can. In our limitedness. We can meaningfully know who God is and how he operates, and so Paul is going to do a great work. The Holy Spirit, through Paul, is going to do a great work in helping us understand the Trinity.

Speaker 1: 5:59

In Ephesians, chapter one, if you have your Bibles and you want to go ahead and turn there, we'll read in a moment. But even before we jump in, I'd love to just lay a solid foundation on what this church means when we say Trinity, so that we are all on the same page as we jump into scripture. And by I lay a foundation, I mean we're going to go to the Westminster Confession of Faith, specifically the larger catechism, the questions that come out of that confession of faith. I'm going to read question eight and the answer, and then as well, question nine and the answer. The question eight is are there more gods than one? There is but one, only the living and true God Christian.

Speaker 1: 6:39

Here today, you are a monotheist. That's very important. God makes it insanely clear when he is revealing himself to us that he is one God. Deuteronomy 6.4 puts it this way hear, o Israel, the Lord, our God. The Lord is one. So we're going to be talking about three today, a lot. But as we talk about that, remember one God, one God.

Speaker 1: 7:03

Next question, question nine, is how many persons are there in the Godhead? There'll be three persons in the Godhead the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. And these three are one true, eternal God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory, although distinguished by their personal properties. So a bit of a mouthful there, but we serve one God with three distinct persons, and yet they're all one God. Some of you are visual learners. This is an image that's always helped me. Many of you have seen it. We'll throw an image up.

Speaker 1: 7:37

We see here that there is one God and the three persons are all God. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. No individual one of them is more God than the other. Again, as we look back, it says that they are all one true eternal God. They've all perfectly existed in love for all eternity. There's no point in which one of them was created. No one of them is under the other. But God is one and the three persons are equal within that Godhead. But at the same time, we know that it is true that they have distinct persons. The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, and so on and so forth. We know this to be true. God the Father did not die for you on the cross to pay the penalty of your sins. God the Son did that. So there's one God, distinct in the persons.

Speaker 1: 8:29

Again, I know that we cannot fully wrap our mind around this, but I hope that that's a really solid place for us to launch off of as we go into God's word. I'm gonna pray before we read God's word and then we'll stand for the reading of God's word, as we have been doing, and I'm gonna end it a little different than Corey does. I didn't come up with this, this is just a different way that Christians throughout history have kind of faithfully done a call and response after the reading of scripture. But I'm going to say this is the word of the Lord, and then we are all collectively going to respond with thanks be to God, thanks, going to respond with thanks, be to God, thanks be to God. But before we do that, let's pray.

Speaker 1: 9:14

Heavenly Father, you are beautiful and wonderful and you give us so many good gifts, primarily the gift of your Son, who unites us to yourself and then, through the power of the Holy Spirit living in us, we can live as unto you. Lord. Lord, this is a beautiful mystery, one that you've began to reveal to us, and today I pray that you would give us minds to understand it as much as we can, that you would give us a heart to feel it and implement it into our lives by the power of your Holy Spirit. Lord, be with us now. Holy Spirit, be with us now. We love you. We thank you for first loving us and for showing us that love on the cross In Jesus' name. Amen, all right, so you can stand for the reading of God's word.

Speaker 1: 9:54

This is Ephesians, chapter one, one through 14. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus, grace to you and peace from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him In love. He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him, who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God you may be seated.

Speaker 1: 11:43

So as we look at this text, the Trinity very clearly shines through. And as we look at the love that we have in Christ, the love, god's perfect love, in which the church partakes, we are going to look at it in three parts. We're going to look at the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and how they show us their love and how we can hopefully emulate that love. And so the first point is that in love, we are adopted by the Father. In love, we are adopted by the Father, and we're going to look back at verses three through six. I know we just read it, but we're going to look back at them. So it starts blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Speaker 1: 12:31

I want to pause here for a moment because, if you're anything like me, at some point in your faith walk you believed in this gospel that you are saved from hell to get to go to heaven. You're saved from hell to heaven, and that is certainly not wrong. But as I have stayed in God's word and he has revealed himself to me, I have realized that while that is good news, it is certainly not the greatest news, at least not in my opinion. And while that is the beginning of it, it is certainly not all of it. It is wonderful news that we're saved from hell to heaven, but so much more importantly in my mind that we see here. It is wonderful news that we're saved from hell to heaven, but so much more importantly in my mind that we see here in this text is that we are saved into a relationship. We are saved into the very being of God, we are saved to be a part of a family. And so if you were to read this in the context of just, I'm saved so I don't have to go to hell and I get to go to heaven.

Speaker 1: 13:27

You might read that heavenly blessings and spiritual blessings in the heavenly places and think to yourself oh yeah, I've heard of heaven, right, streets of gold, I get a mansion, I think, and there's no pain and no tears Sounds pretty great to me. That's the blessings it's talking about and, again, those are good things, but they're not the main thing. We read this in the context of that. We have been blessed in Christ and our spiritual blessings are primarily Christ himself, that he calls us brother and that we exist in the family of God. I'm going to do the same thing. We're going to skip forward a little bit and come back.

Speaker 1: 14:07

But Paul doubles down on this thought in Ephesians, the next chapter, ephesians 2, 19. He says so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. Paul could have stopped. God could have stopped at that before the end. Right, it would have been really good news that God said I'm great and I'm going to have this great kingdom and I'm going to invite people to be citizens in this wonderful kingdom. That would be good news. It would be great just to be in heaven, in the kingdom of God, and be citizens of that kingdom. But it's so much more than that. He does not stop there. There is a beautiful and in this verse, and that is that we would be members of the household of God. We are not just invited to be citizens, but we are invited to be co-heirs, rulers alongside our God in this new heaven and new earth. And to me that's the greatest spiritual blessing that we will inherit in the heavenly places.

Speaker 1: 15:10

And then, going back to verses three through six, skipping down to verse five, you see he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ. So we are predestined to adoption. Again, not just salvation, it's more than that. Every time we see something wonderful and good about Jesus, right, there's always more, he's always doing more than we can even fathom. But there's more than that. We are not just saved, we're not just justified, but we are adopted as sons to sonship. But we're not just predestined to sonship, but we see in verse four, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him, we see that we're not only adopted to sonship, but we're also adopted to son-likeness. This adoption is not just one in name, it's not just that God is gonna call you son or daughter, but that it is he's going to give you his family traits, if you will, you are going to look like a son or you're going to look like a daughter of God. So that's where that we have our justification, our salvation, but then there's also sanctification, being made more like God and ultimately our glorification, where we are fully made perfect.

Speaker 1: 16:27

And so you see, here already that is, we're discussing the one person, the father of the Trinity. It's very difficult to talk about one person in the Trinity without also talking about the others, and that's because they're one God. But Jesus Christ, the son, is in and throughout all of this text, which is focused on the father, and you see it ends with he has blessed us in the beloved. And you'll see that beloved is capitalized, and that's because that is referring to Jesus. So, as we go to our next point, we see that in love, we are united in the Son. In love, we are united in the Son. And so in just a second, as we start, verse seven, and it says in him that's referring to the beloved at the end of verse six, which is, of course, referring to Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1: 17:14

But real quick, before we read seven through 12, there are two types of unity that we are going to see Jesus accomplish in this text. The first is the unity between God's elect, his saints, and God himself, because I've talked so much already about this wonderful family that we get adopted into and how this is wonderful news and it is, but there's a problem. There's a problem with this. So far, see, god is perfect, his family is perfect and God, the Father, is a good father, which means that he is not going to let evil, sinful beings into his perfectly loving family. He's just not going to do it. But this problem, of course, is no match for God. It is not something that he struggled at all to figure out, but it was always a part of his plan to send his son to unify us, to solve that problem for us. So we see that, in seven through nine, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ. It was God's purpose to redeem us through his blood, that our sins might be forgiven.

Speaker 1: 18:38

We started this with me asking you to raise your hand and truly my goal in that was to encourage you. Saint, that you would know that that is a title given to you, but I might've made some of you feel awkward because maybe you're not a saint, maybe you're not a Christian, maybe you have not put your hope and faith and trust in Jesus Christ, and maybe you didn't raise your hand because you know that to be true, or maybe you did because everybody else was. But I just want to pause here for a moment and say that I would love nothing more than to welcome you to this wonderful family, than to call you brother or call you sister for the first time today. Jesus loved you so much that he came to die on the cross for your sins, to solve the problem that you have, so that you can be adopted into his beautiful family. I don't know what your earthly family is like. Maybe it's wonderful, maybe it sucks, but I can tell you this God's family is better. It is, and we would love to welcome you into this wonderful family.

Speaker 1: 19:37

So we see here that Christ shed his blood and it's always more. It's not just about our salvation shed his blood and it's always more. It's not just about our salvation, but it's about our adoption to God the Father, as sons and as daughters, but to Jesus Christ, as our older brother. Paul puts it a slightly different way in Romans 8, 29. He says for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among.

Speaker 1: 20:06

Jesus is our older brother, he goes before us and Jesus himself used these words in Mark 3, 31 through 35. It says, and he answered them who are my mother and my brothers? And looking about at those who sat around him, he said here are my mother and my brothers, for whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother. We see, even before Christ did his redemptive work on the cross, he is revealing to us the plan throughout all of history has been to adopt us into a family that the son of God might call us brother and sister. And again, it's difficult to talk about one part of the Trinity without talking about the other. So we see here this for whoever does the will of God, and certainly after Jesus has died on the cross. We know this to be true, that we can only do the will of God by the blood of Jesus Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit living in us. But by those two things we can do the will of God and be called sons or called or sorry, called brothers and sisters to Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1: 21:26

But there's more. He did not just come to unite his people to himself, to God, but he came to unite all things, as we see in Ephesians 1, as it continues with verse 10, as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him, who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. He came to unite all things in him. Again, it's also connected.

Speaker 1: 22:06

Paul goes on in Ephesians, chapter five, to kind of give us a bit of a prophetic sense of this. He's talking about something insanely practical, but in the practical we see the beautiful image that that comes from. In Ephesians 5, 22 through 23,. It says this wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior. So, again, we're going to pause here for a moment, because some of you are tracking and you're like hold up a moment. We switched analogies here. You were saying Jesus is my brother, and now Paul is saying that Jesus is our groom, so we're going to marry our brother. Yes, yes, you are.

Speaker 1: 22:48

And this only sounds weird when we look at God from a human lens, which let's just pause again for a second and think about how stupid that sounds. We so often do it, though. We so often try to understand God through our human lens, as if we have the correct understanding, but we so don't. So let's flip that. Let's do our best to look at it from God's perspective. To us, see, god is who he is, and he has given us beautiful and wonderful reflections of who he is and mirrors and metaphors that we can understand him, but those metaphors eventually break down. They don't help us fully understand God.

Speaker 1: 23:25

We know this again in that God has given us this metaphor of father and son. If you are here and you have a father, you have a son. You get a glimpse into what God is like, but it doesn't fully communicate what God is like. Again, we know this. I have a son and I existed before my son did, and I was a part of bringing him into existence. That is not true of God. That's where that metaphor breaks down. Yes, the son was born to a Virgin Mary, but that was not the beginning of his existence. He forever existed in a perfect relationship alongside the father. And this is the same. Paul is shifting the metaphor and he's helping us again to understand a part of who God is and how God relates to the church, by switching from father-son, brother-sister metaphor to a marriage relationship, because we see in this marriage right, what is a marriage? It is a union between two people, and so Paul is helping us to see that one day, christ will unite all things in him in what will look a little bit like a wedding ceremony the church, the bride being married forever to its groom, jesus Christ.

Speaker 1: 24:41

We were talking about this similarly in youth group and I said I am married to my sister. Clip that soundbite and send it to a friend and say come to youth group. But I am. I am married to my sister and in fact the latter half of that is the more important half. My wife will only be my wife for an insanely short period of our existence, but she will be my sister for forever. And the same goes for my sons, that my greatest hope for my sons is not that they would be great sons, it's that they would be great brothers. And so, with this in mind, we see again Paul kind of alludes to it, but John shows us the consummation of this in Revelation 21,. Two through three.

Speaker 1: 25:27

And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, adorned for her husband, and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. We await this beautiful wedding ceremony where God will unite everything to himself. He will make everything good and everything perfect. So what do we do until then? Well, jesus tells us when Jesus came to earth, right, he was born of the Virgin Mary. He grew up, he died on a cross for our sins. He rose three days later from the grave and before he ascended into heaven, he told his disciples do not worry, because I am sending the helper. Yes, I am leaving, but I am leaving behind me. I'm leaving behind God, with you, the helper, the Holy Spirit who gives us hope. So we see, finally, by the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 1: 26:29

Our third point is that in love, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit. We are sealed with the Holy Spirit and we see that in verses 13 and 14 of Ephesians 1. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit who guarantees us that beautiful future hope of our wedding day. So we, looking at the Trinity and looking at how Paul helps us to understand that the gospel is a gospel of love, a familial love. Now I want to ask us what we ask at the end of kind of every youth group this semester how is God's kingdom upside down right? What did we learn today? How is it maybe different, certainly, than what the world thinks, but how is it maybe even different than what we originally thought? Well, first we see that adoption is the only way into an eternal family. Adoption is the only way into an eternal family.

Speaker 1: 27:36

Earthly biological families are great and we tend to put a lot of emphasis on them and, again, that's not a bad thing. The Bible is very clear that biological families are a blessing. A wife is a blessing. Children are a blessing. God doesn't promise that money will be a blessing. It can be. Money can be a tremendous blessing, but it can also be the root of all evil. But he does promise us that children are a blessing. So have biological families. They're wonderful, they're great, they're a blessing from God. But, as we've already discussed, they're insanely temporary. They are insanely temporary.

Speaker 1: 28:13

I hope that my sons do not only remain my sons. I want them more than anything to become my brothers through adoption, so that we might exist together in an eternal family. And in the son we see that family is defined by blood, just not maybe the blood you were thinking. It is defined by blood, the blood of our older brother. Again, on this earth we can put a lot of emphasis on sharing the same blood in our veins as somebody else, but in the heavenly family we put a lot of emphasis on the blood shed from the veins of our older brother, jesus Christ, so that we might be adopted into that family. And then in the spirit, we see that love is forever guaranteed. Love is forever guaranteed and this is such good news because we see in these earthly settings, in the loves that the world promises, they so often fall short.

Speaker 1: 29:12

Let's look at the nuclear family. In America Divorce is rampant. I'm a child of divorce. I hope this isn't true of you, but I know you've heard from somebody. Yeah, I have a sister. They live over there but I haven't seen them in 10 years. Or you know my son. We didn't really get along when he was growing up and he went to college and he married this girl, and him and his family live out there and they never come see us. I haven't seen him in a long time.

Speaker 1: 29:39

The loves that this world promises so often fall short and that's why we have to put our hope and our trust not in these relationships but in our relationship with the perfect family, the love that is forever guaranteed. And just as a side note, when you do that, all those other worldly relationships all of a sudden become way easier. But we want to put our hope and our faith and our trust in a love that is forever guaranteed and will never fail. So we asked ourselves how is God's kingdom upside down Now? Let's look at. How can we live and love for Christ's upside down kingdom now? Right, we're awaiting that wedding day. What can we do until then?

Speaker 1: 30:20

Well, first we see in the father that to show the love of God is to adopt someone, adopt someone legally or not legally, and I'll explain what I mean by that. Some of you know me and my wife are in the adoption process we are working through to legally take someone who is not a part of our family and make them a part of our family, and that's beautiful. If God is calling you to do that, please do that. Please come talk to me. I'm still in the early phases, so haven't got that far, but Morgan has adopted three kids, morgan and Jennifer. So please go talk to them. That is a beautiful way to show the love of the father, but it is certainly not the only way to show the adoptive love of God, the father.

Speaker 1: 31:00

I want to read a verse that inspires me greatly as a father. It says this Psalm 127, three through five. Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord. The fruit of the womb, a reward like arrows in the hand of a warrior, are the children of one's youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them. He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. I love this verse, and this verse is clearly talking about biological children. It uses the term womb. So again, god is for biological families. Have children. If you are blessed with a spouse, then have children. This verse specifically says have kids young. Me and my wife have two and I cannot communicate enough how much of a blessing that they are. But in the context of the New Testament, in the mystery that has been revealed to us by the Son, Jesus Christ, we know that biological children are not the only way to fill your quiver. It is not the only way to have arrows and fill your quiver.

Speaker 1: 32:02

I want to read a section of autobiography that I had to write as a part of our adoption process, and in that autobiography we had to answer the question, discuss your views on adoption and how you and your spouse came to the decision to pursue adoption. So one of the ways I answered that was with this, in a season when I was questioning God's intentions of good for me. He showed me his love through adoption, not legally, but when the fighting was the worst at my house. I was always welcomed at the Derricks. My relationship with the family started when I was in kindergarten and my best friend, alex, was in preschool, but it so quickly grew to so much more. Their family became my second family. I would stay over at their house for days. They began referring to me as their honorary son. I gained unconditional love from an additional mother, father, two brothers, a sister, two grandparents, multiple aunts and uncles and many more cousins.

Speaker 1: 32:57

William Adam Derrick Jr, who many called Buck because his wife Liz said he is just such a deer, and who I called Papa, which is his grandfather's name, died when I was in high school. He was a truly remarkable man who made so many smile and showed so many more of the love of Christ, including his two adopted children, who are beautiful stories of Christ's love. At his funeral I remember showing up at my old church and going to the fellowship hall where there were about 50 other people and thinking to myself this is a small funeral. I thought there would be more people. I guess they just wanted to keep it small. And then, about half an hour later, I guess they just wanted to keep it small. And then, about half an hour later, that group all went into the sanctuary where there were hundreds, if not thousands, of people gathered to remember this great man, and I sat in the front row, recognized as one of his grandchildren. This family had accepted me to the point that, without question from anyone but me, this was normal. God showed me his adoptive love through the Derrick family and there was never any paper that said I was theirs, but in their hearts I knew that I was.

Speaker 1: 34:12

We see this example of this love in so many places. We see it in scripture. Paul refers to timothy as his spiritual son and if you're looking around, you see it in this church. Just one example of this many of you know rick sandman. He was up here earlier doing announcements. He is an unmarried man and has no biological children. Yet I promise you that his quiver is full of arrows. If you want to see what I mean, show up on on a Friday night or a Monday night when he is with these kids and just hear, like his name can just be mentioned, and hear the roar of kids that clap and applaud and come to the gate to defend and support their spiritual father, rick Sandman.

Speaker 1: 34:52

There's so many students in our world and in this church who are in need of spiritual fathers and spiritual mothers. There doesn't have to be any legal adoption, but this adoptive love is so needed. We have students who have lost parents. We have students whose parents aren't Christians. We have so many children in need of a spiritual father and spiritual mother. We have so many children in need of a spiritual father and spiritual mother. In the son we see that we should sacrificially seek community and I have to do a little bit of work here because it didn't translate, which is fine but originally community was all lowercase, except for unity, was all capitalized. So we're going to talk about both, but we have to sacrificially seek community. So when we say like, hey, we're doing this thing at church and we want you to be there, we want you to be in a small group or a journey group or a life group or whatever it is, we are saying that not because it's good for you, or certainly not the only reason. That's not the only reason we're doing it. We do this as a church because it's what you were made for Again, let's go back to the triune being of God, which we find our idea and our purpose and our final goal.

Speaker 1: 36:06

God is Trinity, which means he's perfect love, a perfect community, if you will. And when it says we are made in the image of God, god is spirit. He doesn't look like anything. So it doesn't mean God looks like this. It means that we are relational beings. It means that, because God is a relational being, it means more than this, but it at least means this Because God is a relational being, us being made in his image means that we are relational beings. We were made for community, and so if you're struggling to find community at your church or find yourself in community at your church with other brothers and sisters in Christ, I would argue that you're not sacrificing enough.

Speaker 1: 36:50

Christ uses strong language when he says follow me Until the day when he comes and unifies all things and makes all things right. There will be hardship, there will be trials and there will be busy schedules, but if you're struggling to find community because of your job or because of a sports schedule, or because of the vacations you take, or because of the hobbies that you have, you're not sacrificing enough. We are called to sacrifice in this life. Jesus said to follow me means you might not have a place to lay your head at night. And then he says take up your torture death device and follow me. Take up your cross and follow me. We are called to sacrifice much in this life so that we can be a part of the family as God to the nth degree, as much as we can in this life. So we have to sacrificially seek community. We have to give up things to even find that community and then, once in that community, we have to sacrificially seek unity.

Speaker 1: 37:57

I didn't say this, I meant to this one's the hardest one. Let's just be clear. This is not me up here saying like I'm great at this. This is by far, I think, the hardest one, at least for me, and that's someone who's again going through the adoption process, which there's a ton of hoops to jump through. And it's a one right, because we want to be in community and we're super happy to be unified. When you like the things that I like, when you want to worship God, the way that I want to worship God, when you interpret this text, the way that I interpret this text, then of course we can have unity, but what about when we disagree?

Speaker 1: 38:32

Again, let's go back to our older brother, jesus Christ, and look at what he did. He sought unity to the point of his own death, not while we were his brothers and sisters, but while we were his enemies. If that is what Jesus Christ did for us, how much more can we try to love our brothers and sisters in Christ and to seek unity in and over and above our personal preferences? And thank God that our older brother not only shows us how to do it, but again he died on the cross to cover up when we don't do it well.

Speaker 1: 39:07

And then, lastly, we have a contagious hope. You literally have God in you. If you are a Christian, god is within you, and there we have the fruits of the spirit right Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. That well up in us because of God in us, and all of that gives us a contagious hope. My hope and prayer is that Westtown would be marked by the giddiness of a bride awaiting her wedding day, that, by the power of the Holy Spirit in us, we would expectantly hope for the perfect familial love that we will have in the new heavens and new earth, and I pray that again. It would well up in us and overflow, so much so that we would encourage others that we are not just saved from hell to heaven, but we are saved from eternal separation from God to a beautiful and wonderful, eternally loving family.