Speaker 1: 0:01

Good morning, west Town Church. I invite you to open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians, chapter 13. 1 Corinthians, chapter 13. This is the last sermon on 1 Corinthians, chapter 13. We should know it well.

Speaker 1: 0:19

The Corinthians were having a love issue. They believed in Christ but they weren't loving each other as they should, and so they were weak in love. It's possible to be Christians and be weak in love. And they were taking their spiritual gifts God had granted to them and they were using it as a basis to put themselves over other Christians. They were exalting their social status at the Lord's Supper and so forth.

Speaker 1: 0:43

And so Paul writes this famous love chapter, and he shows them in chapters 12 and 13 that we are to use our gifts to love one another. They're theological virtues, three theological virtues in the Christian faith faith, hope and love. They're theological because they come by God's grace. They're virtues because when God grants them to us by his grace, they transform our thoughts, our hearts, our habits, our character. And so we come here to verse 13,. And Paul has been emphasizing, obviously in the love chapter, the importance of love. But he didn't want to leave faith and hope out, and I think there's good reason for it. I hope to show that to you today. They always go together, they always work together in a wonderful dynamic. And you see this in various places in the scripture Hebrews chapter 11 in the New Testament, sometimes called the heroes of the faith chapter. There you see, the author of Hebrews is highlighting the great faith that these Old Testament saints had. But he speaks, for example, of our spiritual forefathers and foremothers as, by faith, looking for a better country, by faith they were looking for a heavenly one. So their faith was strongly fed and nourished by this hope. So there's a dynamic between faith and hope and we saw earlier in this chapter, quite a while ago in the first few verses of chapter 13, that even if you have a faith that can move mountains, without love, god says that means nothing to him. So faith and love cannot be distinguished. Hope cannot be separated. They can be distinguished but never separated, and it's the same with all of these. They always work together.

Speaker 1: 2:27

Kelly Capick says faith without love turns abusive, belittling the struggling saint. So where do we see that? Well, job's friends would be exhibit A for that. They believed in God, but they used truth like a machete, and that's not what we want. You also see it when we're prayerless towards our brothers and sisters in Christ. That's faith not linked with love. You see it where sometimes Christians don't enter into the suffering of other believers, and we can be like that person in the story of the Good Samaritan that passes by the person on the other side yeah, we believe in God, but we're not going to take the time to love this person who's right before us. So we don't want that.

Speaker 1: 3:11

But hope can be without love as well. And what does that mean? Well, we can be hopeful because of God's confidence that God's kingdom agenda is going to win out, that Christ has won the victory and that God is going to establish his kingdom on earth just like it is in heaven. But in our boldness and courage and strength of faith, we can focus on the agenda and just roll over people. We can be insensitive to people in our courage and our boldness for the agenda itself, and so we don't want that. And so Capix says faith and hope are only properly applied with love. And of course we know that that love comes through Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1: 3:54

So with that brief introduction, if you're able to stand, I'd like to invite you. I want to read God's infallible, holy, inerrant word. I'm only going to read just a couple of verses here at the end of this chapter. For us it says this for now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now, faith, hope and love abide these three, but the greatest of these is love. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of the Lord endures forever. God's people said amen, you may be seated, heavenly Father, your word is more to be desired than gold, even much fine gold. So, lord, put that desire in our hearts this morning. Help us understand that. And your word is sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb. So let us taste and see that you are good. Let Christ be honey to our souls this morning, in Jesus' name, amen. Well, I'm going to look at this with four H's. I think that'll help you get a structure in your mind of where we're going.

Speaker 1: 5:08

I want us to see the nature of the Christian virtue of love this morning. I want us to see that it's humble, heavenly, holy and hopeful. Humble, heavenly, holy and hopeful. So let's look at the first idea here that the Christian virtue of love is humble. Idea here that the Christian virtue of love is humble. Now, why is it humble? It's humble because it's rooted in God himself. God is love. The Bible says 1 John 4.8. He doesn't just have love, he's not just loving, he is love, it's part of his very essence, it's his being. That is love God, the Father, son and Holy Spirit. And that means that when we have love for God and others within us, it comes from and it's rooted in. He's the source of all of that love and it flows from his being.

Speaker 1: 5:59

It's sometimes asked you know, what was God doing before he created the world? Well, father, son and Holy Spirit, what they were doing was relationally loving each other. They were in community within the Godhead. God wasn't lonely, he was perfect love, perfect delighting in one another and overflowing in joy and peace within the Godhead, within the person of the Godhead or within the being of the Godhead. And so that's why we are made to love. We're made in God's image. We were made to live like that, loving one another in peace and joy and so forth.

Speaker 1: 6:36

And so there's something else, I think, that's incredible, about what God was doing before the foundation of the world. He wasn't just loving himself within his own being, Father, son and Holy Spirit, but Ephesians 1, 4 and 5 says it like this "'He', that is God the Father, "'chose us in him' speaking of Christ". So he, god the Father, chose us who believe in Christ. "'in Christ 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. So what God had before the foundation of the world is this special love for those multitudes he had determined to save. So he has loved you from all eternity, dear Christian. That's a marvelous thing to think about.

Speaker 1: 7:35

Now. Why does this matter? Well, gerhardus Voss says the reason God will never stop loving you, dear Christian, is that he never began. There was a point in time where he saved you, that you weren't right with him, and he saved you. But he has loved you from before the foundation of the world. Is that not a marvel? There's security in that, and that ought to humble us to realize we have been loved by God that way.

Speaker 1: 8:04

In love, god the Father predestined you for adoption, he says in Ephesians 1. And so when we love, we love, john says, because he first loved us, and that's very important to keep us humble. Otherwise, when we're doing loving service or loving good works for other people, we can become self-righteous, we can steal the glory from God when in fact it's just a privilege that he has put his love in us and we get to express his love that he has granted to us, to other people, for his honor. And so God, the Father, loved us and predestined us for adoption. The Bible says Christ died for us in love at the cross so that for our died for our sins and to secure our salvation. And then the Holy Spirit has poured the love of God into our hearts when we came to know Christ. So the Trinity is all working together in love for us and for our salvation, and so any love that we have in our life is rooted in God's eternal love for his people. It's a remarkable thing All good things come from the Father through Jesus Christ, the Son, by the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 1: 9:19

Here's how Paul puts it back in this same letter, chapter 4, verse 7. What do we have that we've not received? And so if we have this love from God in us and we're being loving to others in return. It should humble us greatly. But there's a second thing I want us to see.

Speaker 1: 9:40

The Christian virtue of love is heavenly. It's heavenly because it's bonded in union with Christ and therefore with one another. It's heavenly in the sense that Christ himself is in heaven, sitting at the right hand of God, the Father. But more than that, it's heavenly in the sense that we're all in this together. Heaven is that place where that union with Christ comes to full fruition will be there not only with God, but with all of God's people throughout the ages, because we're all bonded together in Christ.

Speaker 1: 10:16

This is something we don't often think of as Christians, this doctrine called union with Christ. It's very, very, very important because number one, it reminds us that there's this unbreakable bond of God's love that he's given us. We get weak, he doesn't. Our grip may get very loose with him, but he's got a hold of us. His love is the kind that doesn't let us go. And you see, the Corinthians had forgotten about this love. It's clear in their letter. It was clear they forgot about this love of God that it was heavenly because of how they were treating one another. No one treats. They weren't treating one another like God's saints treat one another in heaven is another way to put it. They had forgotten that this love was to be expressed in a heavenly way.

Speaker 1: 11:10

Paul tries to remind us in his letters of this all the time. When you read your New Testament, some things are so common that you almost don't see it right. Some things are so common you can almost just not see it because it is so common. And that's what's true of this thing called union with Christ, this bond that we have. But Paul in his letters, over and over and over again, is saying what In him, in him, in Christ Jesus, in Jesus Christ, in him, in him, in him, 200 times Kevin DeYoung says, and 200 times Kevin DeYoung says, in those 13 letters Paul refers to our union with Christ.

Speaker 1: 11:55

He's basically saying please do not miss this, don't ever forget it that you live out the Christian life bonded to Christ. You're not on your own, you're united with Christ, you're secure in him and he will help you and he will forgive you. You're with him. And so he speaks about the church knowing that if we're, as individual believers, bonded to Christ, that means we're all bonded together as God's people. And so the Christian life isn't thought of in individual terms. It's thought of in terms of a body, the body of Christ.

Speaker 1: 12:23

The New Testament speaks of the church as a family, the family of God. It speaks of it as a temple, the temple of the Holy Spirit. We're all living stones linked in with the temple. Here's how Jesus says it in John 15, 5, I am the vine, you are the branches. So picture in your mind all these branches going into the vine, getting their nourishment and life from Jesus the vine. Twenty-five times in 1 Corinthians, paul reminds the Corinthian church you're in Him, you're in Christ, act like it, live it out. You're united to Christ, but you're not showing your unity in Christ. Live out the reality that's already there.

Speaker 1: 13:09

And so why is this important that we never forget this? Because we need to remember that love in our hearts and in our life and in the life of the church. It flows not naturally from ourselves, but it flows out into the branches nourished by the grace and love of the church. It flows not naturally from ourselves, but it flows out into the branches nourished by the grace and love of the vine Jesus Christ. And this now we begin to see the importance of prayer. If we're not being loving, it could be. We're not communing with God, we're not spending time with our loving Savior, or perhaps it could be, we're not in His Word like we should be to let it transform our hearts, like he says and promises that he will. Perhaps we're not participating in the life of the sacraments, where we are assured of God's love and reminded of His commitment to us. Maybe we're not committed to corporate worship like we should be or to the fellowship of the saints. All these things affect our ability to stay strong in love as well as in faith and hope.

Speaker 1: 14:14

There's one body of Christ. I love how Kelly Capick says it. He talks about. There's this—the reason that we're sympathetic to one another in the body of Christ is because of this union we all have. And so Paul refers in chapter 12,. He says there's no division in the body, but the members have the same care for one another. We're all in it together, he says. In that same chapter 12, he says there's a tender side to it. If one member suffers, all suffer together. If one member is honored, all rejoice together. Why? Because we're all bonded into the divine Jesus Christ. We're one body, one family, one temple of God.

Speaker 1: 14:58

He says similarly the faith of all strengthens the faith of each. Our faith strengthens one another's faith. Yes, it comes from God, but God works through other people to strengthen us, and the weakened hope of one receives hope from the ministry of others. How often have we been discouraged in the Christian life and another Christian comes and just gives us an encouraging word or a little bit of ministry or something. It could be something as simple as a bowl of soup with a word of love and encouragement, and don't you just feel within yourself a strengthening? God uses us to keep our faith, hope and love strong. When faith hope, when they grow out of love, they're like food for the hungry and medicine for the sick.

Speaker 1: 15:45

Capric says but we need faith, hope and love, but without love we lose all three. Love is essential. It's essential. Jesus puts it more simply love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this, by this loving of one another. This is how all people will know that you are my disciples. If you have love for one another. That's how they'll know that we're a heavenly people is another way to put it Because we show. We're not going to be perfect on this side of glory, but we can show people we can show when they come into our midst. There's something here, there's an aroma of heaven, there's something, there's a love amongst the people of God that you don't get in the world. And so the Christian virtue of love, it's humble because it all is rooted in God. It's heavenly because we're bonded to Christ, our Savior, who's in heaven, and we're all part of the body of Christ.

Speaker 1: 16:52

But third, I want you to see that the Christian virtue of love is holy. It's holy because it's codified in God's commandments. Because it's codified in God's commandments, our culture teaches us that love is, however I define it, love. If I have certain feelings, then that must be love. Well, that can often be the case, but it's not always the case. I'll give you two extreme examples Murderers have feelings, pedophiles have feelings, but that's not love. That's not love.

Speaker 1: 17:40

The world wants a love that's not bound by the holiness of God. And you see, the world does not define what love is. God does, because he is love and he has to reveal himself to us. And in understanding who God is, that's how we come to understand what love is. It's through his being, his holy being. It's through his being, his holy being.

Speaker 1: 18:01

And the apostle John says in his first letter that in 1 John 4, verse 8, god is love. But then he also says back in chapter 1, verse 5, god is light, he's holy. There's no darkness in God. He's pure, he's holy. He's not like anything else we've ever met or seen. And so God's love is a holy love. That's the point. And so, yes, god is love. But it is God who reveals to us His loving character. He reveals to us what love is through His commandments and, most supremely through the sending of His Son, jesus Christ, who's love incarnate, and most supremely through the sending of his son, jesus Christ, who's love incarnate. Love is ultimately a person. It's not just a concept, it's a person.

Speaker 1: 18:50

And it was Jesus himself who went on to say you know the first and greatest commandments love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. And the second is, like it, love your neighbor as yourself. And then he says if you love me, obey my commandments. So our obedience to christ is an expression of our love for christ. Our obedience is an expression of love to christ. A call to obedience is not legalism. It it's a call to love according to Christ, but it's obedience to his word, not the commandments of men. And so our obedience to Christ is the way that we love Christ. But we have to remember it's our response to his love of us. We love because he first loved us.

Speaker 1: 19:43

God had to remind the Israelites of this so they didn't misunderstand the law. You remember when he brought them out of Egypt, out of slavery? He says to them in the preface of the Ten Commandments if I was king for a day, king of the world, just for one day, everywhere the Ten Commandments are listed, I would add the preface. The preface is this I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make a carved image for yourself, you shall. And so on. Do you see what God's saying? I've already shown you my love and care for you, now obey me. And that order is very important. He didn't say obey me and then I'll love you. He said do you see my love and care for you? Now obey me in response to that love and care.

Speaker 1: 20:34

And so what does it mean to love God directly? Well, he tells us in his commandments, because it's very important that we see that God is not just our first priority in life, but he is preeminent. As Paul puts it, christ is to be preeminent. What does that mean? It means he's the point of everything in our life. He's the point of everything. He's not just a priority like the first on the list and then we have these other things. Yeah, he is first on the list. He's the point of every single thing on the list. He also happens to be first, and so he's both our priority and he's to be preeminent in our worship, in our marriage and friendships and parenting and work and leisure. It's all about God. It's all about loving him.

Speaker 1: 21:15

In response to his love for us, god says this here's the 10 commandments. He says you want to love me. You shall not make for yourselves a carved image from anything in creation, or bow down to them or serve them. Well, let me back up, because I skipped one. You shall have no other gods before me. Let's start with that one first. What is he saying? It's not you can have me as a God and then serve something higher than me. No, I am the ultimate and only God.

Speaker 1: 21:48

And then he goes and says don't make for yourself a carved image, don't bow down to it. What does that mean? It means to love me is to worship me according to my word. It's to worship me according to my word, not according to your imaginations. That's what he's getting at.

Speaker 1: 22:05

You remember this in the golden calf incident? Right, aaron and the boys were down there at the bottom of Mount Sinai having a party and throwing a feast, but it was with a golden calf. They were worshiping, in other words, the Lord, like the Egyptians would worship. God says oh no, we're not going there, we're not doing that. And so they called it a feast to the Lord, but it was not pleasing to God. God says that's not loving me. To love me, you honor me as the creator and the king and I tell you how to worship me. You don't tell me how you're going to worship me. And so one of the ways that we love God is we worship him according to how he has revealed himself and wants to be worshiped in his word.

Speaker 1: 22:50

And then, thirdly, you shall not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain. What's God's name? It's not just his title, it's everything about God and how he operates and what he's done in redemption. It's a huge everything about him. Not take him in vain, don't take him lightly. Don't take him lightly in what it means. Don't not just in what we say. Yes, it involves don't cuss, but it's way bigger than that. It means that everything in our life we take God seriously. Everything in our life we feel the weight of God, we feel his greatness.

Speaker 1: 23:23

Here's how Paul puts it to the Corinthians in chapter 10, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it, what Do it? All to the glory of God. Even when you just eat or drink. Even when you just eat or drink common, ordinary things, it's about God. Don't take them lightly. Even in the ordinary things, remember his greatness and goodness and grace. God says you want to love me. Here's, in the ordinary things, remember his greatness and goodness and grace. God says you want to love me.

Speaker 1: 23:45

Here's the fourth commandment Remember the Sabbath day. To keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord, your God. We don't honor the Lord's day when we're not committed to worship God, when we don't come in and worship with full hearts in love and praise to God, when we don't come in and worship with full hearts in love and praise to God, we're not loving God. And so he expects us to love him, just like if I said to my wife you know, Friday nights are for me and you, sweetheart, that's our time.

Speaker 1: 24:18

Well, god says the Lord's day, it's mine, christ and his bride, if I can put it this way, have a date every Sunday. And he wants his bride to show up and to love him and to see his love for us so that we can respond and love and grow in love. But he doesn't just say love me with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. He says love other people. And so he gives us the fifth commandment honor your father and your mother. Right, so honor all the authorities in your life. It goes way beyond just our father and our mother. It begins there, the reason it begins there. If you don't have that established in the home, it's very difficult to get it established outside the home.

Speaker 1: 25:00

One of the ways that we love other people is we honor them. We give honor to whom honor is due. You shall not murder, he says. What does that mean? Well, to love other people means that we protect and value their life from conception to the grave. The Bible says in James 1, the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. And Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, speaks about this unrighteous anger that we can have for a brother. Being angry with our brother will be liable to the judgment. He says why? Because we have that's the seeds of murder in our heart, even if we don't commit it outwardly. And so to love one another is to have loving motives and thoughts in our hearts and also loving actions and loving speech toward our brother. You shall not commit adultery. That's another way to love other people.

Speaker 1: 25:53

Seventh commandment what does that mean? It doesn't just mean don't commit physical adultery, although it certainly includes that. But it means promoting and defending and honoring the biblical view of marriage between one biological man and one biological woman. The world will tell you that you're being a bigot and hateful when you do that. But God says no, that's not right. When you defend God's understanding of biblical marriage, you're actually loving your neighbor, whether they understand it or not. And so we're called in this commandment to promote the purity of our neighbor. And so we're called in this commandment to promote the purity of our neighbor, the purity of their eyes and ears, not only with ourselves, but what's good for them too. And then, eighth, you shall not steal. That's how we love our neighbor, theirs that don't belong to us, but also lovingly looking out for what is theirs and proactively being proactive in helping them care for their goods, and also being generous toward our neighbor with the way God has blessed us to help them.

Speaker 1: 27:06

Ninth, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. What does that mean? Well, to love our neighbor means that we have to not just simply yes, we don't tell lies about them in court. So there's a formal aspect, but it also goes way beyond that. It means that in love, we protect their good name to the best of our ability. We don't gossip about them, even if it's true. Love shelters and protects others, including with our lips. That's how we love other people.

Speaker 1: 27:33

And then, lastly, jesus says you shall not covet anything that is your neighbor's. And then that commandment lists off don't covet the house, wife, servants, ox, donkey, anything, whatever it is that our neighbor has. Coveting in the heart looks upon the good thing our neighbor has. It goes beyond appreciating it and it causes dissatisfaction in your own soul, because they have it and you don't, and you have this desire to want to have it too much, it's a desire of a good thing too much, and so this lack of rejoicing in the blessings of other people that's not— People that we love. We rejoice when they're blessed by God, and so these are ways that we love our neighbor. And as we begin to think about the law of God, we begin to realize oof there's a lot there to do and to be. It involves my heart, it involves my thinking, it involves my speech, it involves my behavior heart, it involves my thinking, it involves my speech, it involves my behavior.

Speaker 1: 28:38

The good news from the Bible is that Christ has fulfilled the law for us on our behalf. Aren't you glad for that? He not only died for your sins, he lived the perfect life for you as well, so that not only did he take our sins upon Himself, but he lived the perfect life, so that when he got our sins, he could give us his perfect record to go on the legal books of heaven. And that's why we can live in peace. And then we can know being secure in the love of God and what Christ has done for us. We know that we'll stand at the judgment, that he's done all of that in love. The Father planned it, Christ carried it out, the Holy Spirit applied it. Now we can get on to the business of trying to grow in love, knowing that even in our failures we're not condemned, but we're at peace with God, and that he's at peace with us and that he loves us even in our failures. But we should get on with the business of growing more holy and more loving.

Speaker 1: 29:39

So Romans 8.1 says there's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. No condemnation, the idea there's no possibility of being condemned. If you're in Christ Jesus, do you hear spiritual union? In Christ Jesus, you're bonded with Christ. Everything that's Christ is yours. Everything that's yours is Christ. He dealt with your sin. You get his righteousness. Romans 5.1,. Therefore, since we've been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. That's looking at it from the other side. Justification, condemnation those are opposites. If you're justified, you're not condemned. If you're not condemned, you're justified.

Speaker 1: 30:21

And so what does all this mean? As far as looking at it in this way, this Christian virtue of love being heavenly, part of what it means is we look at the holy code of God, the commandments of God. We see this as coming from a Father who loves us and he wants the best for us. It's a safe pathway in life. It's the way to fuller joy in Christ. It's the way to honor our God. It's a way to love Him and to love other people. Way to honor our God. It's a way to love him and to love other people. It's something that's good for us. It's something that he rewards, even though we don't earn his love. He rewards our obedience. So it's heavenly.

Speaker 1: 31:08

But the fourth and last thing not only is the Christian virtue of love humble, not only is it whatever the second one was, and holy, it's hopeful. It's hopeful. What is it? Heaven? Yes, thank you. Hopeful. That's a lot of H's to remember. Why is it hopeful? It's hopeful because it's going to be perfected. It's going to be perfected in a world of glory.

Speaker 1: 31:41

You may have come into God's house today. Some of you may have been Christians for decades and you're a little discouraged, to say the least, and maybe you've wanted more progress, right? Well, you love God, but you don't love him like you want to love him. You love other people, but you're not loving them like you want to love them. Be encouraged this morning One day you're going to be perfectly loving. God's going to finish what he started in you and he's going to bring you to a world of love that's perfect in every way. We need to remember that sometimes. Let our hope strengthen our faith and strengthen us to go on loving other people. Paul says so now. Faith, hope and love abide these three, but the greatest of these is love. The greatest of these is love. One day our faith will become sight. So our faith? Yes, it'll become sight one day.

Speaker 1: 32:50

But there's a sense in which our faith will actually be transformed in glory. There's a kind of faith we'll have in glory that's different than the kind of faith that we have now. In glory, our faith will see God directly. We'll see his smiling, loving face directly, and Anthony Thistleton says that will continue for all eternity. And what is the effect? It will invite our full trust and confidence in a way then that we don't have now. How do we live now by faith? I believe Lord. I believe. Help my unbelief. Our faith now is wobbly, but then we'll have full confidence. We'll have full confidence and trust in God because we'll be in his direct presence. It's true that hope that is seen is not hope as the Bible puts it. But there's another sense in which the hope that we'll have in glory is going to be of a different nature. It too is going to be transformed so that in God's wonderful heavenly presence think about this in his direct presence and glory, we'll be fully satisfied and yet, at the same time, always have more to look forward to in the perfection of heaven. What a state that will be Fully satisfied and yet always more to look forward to, because we're going to be serving an infinitely great and loving God for all eternity. And so heaven is a world of perfect love and glory, as Edwards says.

Speaker 1: 34:28

Dear Christian, you may not be as loving as you want to be this morning, but I'm going to tell you again he who began a good work in you will bring it under completion at the day of Christ. Jesus. Christ has dealt with your past, present and future sins. He has secured your place in glory in a world of love, and so we can go forward. This is what gives us strength. There's coming a day we'll no longer battle our sin, we'll no longer be plagued by regrets. You know God is going to heal every regret you've ever had. You remember that. Stand up and press onward. God's going to take care of the failures and sins. He's going to heal it all. We just need to get on to the business of growing to love Him more and more and to love one another, as God has called us to love.

Speaker 1: 35:27

I don't know what's brought you into God's house this morning. I know this no matter who you are, your deepest need in life and in death and for all eternity, is to know God, who is love. Every person needs to know the love of God, because if you have the love of God, you have it all In Christ. You don't have to worry about your past. Your future is secure and you're bonded and united to the one who can give you life and help you grow now, in the present and make a difference for him with things that matter eternally. So put your trust in Christ. If you don't know him, trust him, receive him. The Holy Spirit will then pour the love of God into your hearts. He'll fill you with peace and give you joy, and it won't be perfect on this side of glory, but it'll be sweet and it will bring you home, because God doesn't leave the construction site. He always finishes what he begins.

Speaker 1: 36:51

Aren't you glad you may be limping right now, but one day you're going to run. One day you're going to run. Look forward to that great day. Let's pray and ask God's help. Father, we thank you for the love that you planned to save us with Before the foundation of the world, before the first star was hung. Your love was upon us. That is a marvel, Lord Jesus. We thank you that you put on human flesh and suffered and died in our place for our sins and live the perfect life that we can have a perfect record on the record books of heaven and Holy Spirit. We thank you that you have come now and poured the love of God into our hearts and given us peace in Christ. Fill us now with joy and grow us in love more and more. That you would be honored, the God of love, the God who is love. In Jesus' name, god's people said