Vincent Latteri - Love Actually

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Almighty God, you welcome you. [00:00:06] Speaker B: Hey there. If you're new to Restored Church, we want to welcome you and thank you for tuning in. You're listening to a portion of our Sunday worship gathering. We believe the church is not an event but a family you belong to. So we would love the opportunity to connect with you. If you want to learn more about our church or if we can help you in any way, please Visit our website, www.restoredtemecula.church and click on Contact. With all that said, we, we hope you enjoy the message. [00:00:34] Speaker C: All right, ladies and gentlemen, I just want to draw your attention really quickly. [00:00:40] Speaker A: I'm going to invite Vinnie up here. [00:00:41] Speaker C: In just a second. But for those of you that don't know Vincent, I want you to know some things about him. So he is a leader in our community. He's a deacon along with his wife and some others. They lead one of the gospel communities. And I think one of the things that I really appreciate about Vinny is he has this desire to please God. I think we all do. I think he wouldn't be in this room if you didn't desire to please God. I think that's a trait of any spirit filled follower of Jesus. But one of the things that I've witnessed in Vinny, really since I've gotten to know him for several years now, is that whenever he finds himself kind of at like a fork in the road in life, when he has decisions he needs to make, whether big or whether small, I've seen this pattern in him to go to the Lord in prayer seeking to please his heavenly father. And the reason I share that with you is because ever so often, I don't know, a couple times a year we'll invite Vinny to preach. I think he has a teaching gift, an emerging developing teaching gift, preaching gift. But he's going to share this morning on arguably the most important topic in the Bible, there's your cliffhanger. And I know that him forming this message over the last several weeks and months, really, I'm excited for you to hear it. But I know that it's been done in the place of prayer. I know that it's been done not in a way to just like he wants to do a good job, although he does. I think he wants to serve you with God's word, but I think he wants to please his heavenly father. And I think whenever a person can take on that posture, they're filled with a certain amount of power to bless the world around them and the people around them. And so that's my hope for all of us this morning. I'm confident that's what's gonna happen. And so what I'm gonna do is I wanna invite you to make some serious noise for your boy Vincent Leteri. Come on up. And while he gets his stu settled in this music stand that we call a pulpit, we have a very special thing that just kind of happened spontaneously. His daughter Nyla's gonna come pray for him. So come on up, girl. All right, so I'm gonna hand you the microphone. I'm gonna step behind you, pray for your pops, and then you can hand it back to me, and then we'll get started, okay? Okay. [00:03:26] Speaker D: Hi, guys. It's, like, my first time ever doing this. This is terrifying. Okay. Dear Jesus, I just lift up my dad. That you would speak through him, Lord, that his message would reach everybody who needs to hear it, Lord, that you help us and help him and Amen. [00:03:55] Speaker A: Give me a second. Test, test, test. Can you hear me, man? How cool is that? Gosh, Man. That, like, literally happened a minute and a half ago. Thanks, Tom. Hey, guys. Excited to be with you this morning. If you don't know me, my name's Vinny. My wife, my two kids. We called Restored Temecula our church home. I'm really pleased and honored to be up here with the microphone. And this is really cool to see different faces in this front row here. The splash zone. Forgive me if I spit the mustache. Sometimes there's, like, moisture, and there are things that happen, but let's just get past it, if that's all right. So we just came off as a church, our seasonal slowdown, and we just started, like, meeting together and going to the prayer room again on the Tuesdays and on the Thursdays. Tuesday morning is my favorite and preferred time to go to the prayer room. If you've never been to the prayer room, am I. How am I doing? I'm good. If you've never been to the prayer room, this is typically how it goes. So there's a facilitator who will root our time in the word of God. Then we take 20 minutes to offer praise to the King. 20 minutes to listen to what he's on about and pray that back to him, and then 20 minutes to pray our requests. Jesus, It's a really beautiful time. I really enjoy that, like, regular routine, that regular rhythm in my life. So we get back this Tuesday. It's the first one. Tuesday morning, 7am they're bright and early. Am I still feedback in here? A little bit. Is that Me moving. Am I good? Okay, sorry, guys. So we get there, and the facilitator's running just a little bit behind. Not a big deal. So one of the other facilitators that also leads is there that morning. She says, hey, listen, why don't I just get us started? So she goes over. We have, like, a computer screen set up. She goes over, and she literally goes, well, let me grab a verse and let's root our time in the word. And she just chooses one at random, has it prepared, literally, eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Picks one, goes up on the screen. I'm sitting back, and she starts reading the passage. Guess what passage it is. The passage we're going to go through this morning. What are the odds, guys? What are the chances? I felt so loved. I felt so seen. I. I laughed. I, like, laughed out loud. Like, awkward laugh. Like, what are you laughing about? It's the word of God. I was laughing because I felt so seeing you guys. He's with me. He's near. He sees me. He's intentional. He knows what's going on. I bring that up because it just happened. It was really exciting for me. It was a really beautiful moment to start a Tuesday morning. I felt. I just felt so loved. It was so cool, you guys. It really was. I'm here to tell you that Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so. We're going to be in first John, chapter four. We're going to start and pick it up at verse seven. And I want to read our passage. I know we've been praying a lot. We're a praying church. I'm also going to pray for our time. Okay, so I'll let you get there for the next 12 seconds, and then I'm going to pray for our time this morning. Guys, let's pray together. King Jesus, we love you. We want to know more about you. We want to experience you. Would you be with us this morning? Would you speak through me? Would you help me to get out of the way? Would you open our ears, God? Would you open our eyes to your glory and to your goodness? Would you transform us? Would you mold us? I really do love you, Jesus. Be with us this morning. Can we all say together? Amen? Okay, here we go. First John. I'm going to read the whole passage here for us. It'll be up on the screen. I'm reading from the csb. Jump in, guys. Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. God's love was revealed among us in this way. God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. Love consists in this. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we must also love one another. If you didn't catch what we're going to be going through this morning, it's love. This idea of love. Just that passage alone. It's mentioned 11 times throughout the entire Bible. Depending upon the translation, it can be 200 up to like 600 times. It's all throughout the scriptures. We have, as like a human race, have pondered this idea forever. We think about it all the time. We seek after it. We make songs about it. We write love letters. There's movies about it. There's novellas about it. My wife and I have been watching Korean novellas. We love it. We have a list of ones that we can recommend. If you need, you can see me after. They're super fun. There's songs about it, there's poems about it. There's been plays about it. This is a topic that is, like, part of our human experience, funny enough. I don't know if you know this. This right here, this book. Yes. It's a history book. It is a present book. It is a future book. Yes. You know what else it is? It's a love letter written to you, penned in blood from our king Jesus. This whole thing is really just a love letter. Fascinating. Okay, so we're going to be looking at three things this morning. We're going to answer three questions. I'm going to give you the questions, and then we'll break them down. Sound good? Easy. Too easy. Too easy. What is love? How do we get it and how do we give it? What is love? How do we get it and how do we give it? Okay, I am going to read what I would describe as, like, the world's definition of love, as per Wikipedia. I think it's lacking. Personally, I think it's lacking a ton. We're then going to go through what does the Bible say about love? So let me tell you what Wikipedia says. Love is an emotion or feeling involving strong attraction, affection, emotional attachment, or concern for a person, animal or thing. Okay. All right. Stick with me. I want to go through a thought exercise. Stay with me. Do you guys remember Return of the Jedi? Great movie, right? Okay. Do you remember Ewoks? Okay, fun side note, totally true story. When I was like five or six, I was asked like, hey, what do you want to be when you grow up? I totally said an Ewok. Turns out you cannot be an Ewok. Next year it was a Taxicab driver. I watched a lot of shows, so it was like Return of the Jedi. And then I watched Taxi. And those were the things that I wanted to be when I grew up. So imagine you're in your kitchen, you're having a nice day, maybe you're enjoying some coffee, some tea, whatever. And you get a phone call out of the blue. And it is some three letter agency, CIA, FBI, whatever. Some agency calls you up and they say, hey, so listen, we really need your help. We're going to take you to an undisclosed location. Ewoks are real, turns out, and they've landed and we've taught them English and they're really cute and they're mischievous and they're fun and they're little guys and they look like bears. We need you to come and explain and describe and define love to them. So this is a very strange phone call. We can all agree on that. So you say, fine, I'm going to get in the car and I'm going to go do this. Now you're driving to the undisclosed location. What are you thinking right now? How are you going to define love? How are you going to describe it to really an extraterrestrial? I know they're cute. I know they're little and they're nice and they're furry and they know English now because they've taught them that. But like, how do you describe what love is? Like, I can tell them what a car is. That's really easy. Yeah. You know, it gets you from point A to point V. Point B or V, if you want to do that too, has four wheels and there's a steering column. And this is. I can explain to them what a book is. I can even explain like, hey, this is happiness. This is what happiness is. This is what it looks like. But how do you define love? If you do not come up with an immediate answer, it means maybe you have to think about it for a while. It's probably far more complex than we understand. Anybody have an answer that they want to shout out? Tough one, right? It would have been really like a fail if everyone raised their hands right now because I couldn't come up with anything, man. Okay, so the English language is not nearly as precise as the Greek. The Greek has multiple words for what we have just said. Love is. Okay, I'm going to go through some of these words really quickly, but we're going to land on the most important one, which is the one that is mentioned 11 times in our passage. Before I jump into the Greek, just to help illustrate this, I do need some of your hands to be raised here in a few moments. Who loves Italian food? Come on. That's what I'm talking about. That's good. Who loves Mexican food? [00:15:22] Speaker B: Yes. [00:15:24] Speaker A: Slightly more. Slightly more. I didn't anticipate that. Both are great. I love Italian food. I love Toyota Land Cruisers. It is, is it not? The. It's the best. Yeah, my man. I know, I know, I know. Yeah, I see that Sequoia. I know about that. I love Toyota Land Cruisers. I love Italian food. I'm a dog person who loves dogs over cats. Okay, cool. Who loves cats over dogs? We're gonna pray for you guys. I love dogs. I love Italian food. I love Toyota Land Cruisers. You know what else I love? I love my wife. I love Jesus, man. I really love my kids. I've said one word. Now, the context, you guys understand what's taking place? The cultural context, you guys. Oh, yeah. Well, obviously you don't love your wife the same way that you love Toyota Land Cruisers. It's different, right? Okay, let me explain. I see what Mark's doing over there. [00:16:26] Speaker C: He's all. [00:16:29] Speaker A: Let me go through this real quick, guys. Okay, so one of the Greek words for love is phileo, which describes affection between friends or relatives. It's like friendship love. It's like Philadelphia, right? City of brotherly love. Another word, eros. This is where. This is like intimate love, like intimate love between a husband and a wife. Then there's storge, which it denotes like family love, natural affection. Think of your, like close knit family. Then. Then there's philanthropia, which, and I don't know if I'm saying that right, but it sounded right to me. It expresses social kindness and humanity. But the one that we're going to spend most of our time in, and you've probably heard this term before, is agape. Agape love. Agape love is what we see 11 times in our passage. And it's a very unique love. This is a little bit long, so stick with me as best you can, okay? Agape love represents sacrificial love. And its defining characteristic is not what one can receive, but what one can give. It's a term that signifies voluntary active affection that carries a Very spiritual depth, a very profound depth of love, linking God and humanity, uniting souls in divine communion. In the New Testament, agape means to prefer someone else by actively giving on their behalf. Some scholars would define it as a principle by which we deliberately live rather than an emotion. A principle that we deliberately live rather than an emotion. Agape love involves faithfulness and commitment as deliberate choices of the will. I want to highlight that choices of the will. Keep that term choice somewhere off in your mind. Okay, we're going to come back to that. This term almost always describes love originating from God, whose very nature is love itself. God loves because it flows from his nature and his being. It's intrinsic to who he is. In fact, in our passage that we just read in verse 8, it says God is love. Let me make a real simple point here. God is love. Love is not God, okay? God is love. Just like I am flesh and blood. Like I can't have my flesh without the blood and I can't have the blood without the flesh. It's part of who I am. Love is intrinsic to the very nature of who God is. This is not just an attribute of God, it is who he is. Okay? So agape love reveals itself through action. Agape love reveals itself through. Through action. Don't forget choices. We're going to keep that up here, okay? And don't forget reveals itself through action. We're almost. We're doing good, guys. I feel like you're with me. This is great. When we practice agape, it functions not as a feeling, but as a determined act of will. A resolute commitment to prioritize others welfare above their own. This love doesn't emerge naturally from our fallen human nature. It can only originate from God himself, who is love. Okay, so we got some definitions, we got some like, ideas cooking around this idea of agape love. I'm going to give you a little bit more directly from. If you've ever been to a wedding, you've heard this verse before. This is First Corinthians 13:1:7. Let me read it. If I speak human or angelic tongues, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. Just pause real quick. How cool is it that there's human and angelic tongues? Just side note, super fun, food for thought. You can take that. We're not talking about that this morning. Anyway, just super fun. If I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can move mountains, but do not have Love, I am nothing. And if I give away all my possessions, and if I give over my body in order to boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, Love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, is not rude, is not self seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs. Love finds no joy in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, it believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. That's the very first part of verse eight. That's probably not on the screen. There you hear all those attributes of love of this idea of agape love. Fascinating. Guys. So we asked a question, what is it? What is love? Here's our answer. Love is choosing selfless, compassionate action towards another. Remember I told you to like table that word choice, right? Love is choosing selfless, compassionate action towards another. Love is not just some arbitrary emotion that you fall into and fall out of depending upon the circumstances or how you're feeling that day. Love is a choice. And agape love is choosing selfless, not selfish, compassion filled action towards another. Side note, husbands, I know you've heard this verse before. We're called to love our wives in this way. You guys choosing compassionate, selfless action toward another. Just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her, he chose selfless, compassionate action. So what is love? Love is choosing selfless, compassionate action towards another. This love, it engages not just the mind, it engages the whole person. It's the mind, the heart, the body, the soul. It's holistic in this way. So now that we've defined it, let's think about the last couple of days of your life or the last week, maybe the last month. How are you doing in this department? How are your choices? Are you choosing selfless, compassionate action towards another? When you're faced with opposition, when you're faced with the day to day stuff that life brings. Look, I'll be the first to say, guys, I'm not making great decisions all the time. Dude cuts me off on the road. Yeah, I'm getting a little upset. It's getting to me. In fact, Kylo's not here today, but we polo all the time. You guys know what polo is? Not like water polo? No. Okay, it's an app. Polo is an app and it's like a video chat app, but it's recorded and you send the recording to the other person. And so this is the way that you talk to one another. So it's not live talking. It's like recording yourself talking, and then they listen to it and respond. I'm surprised no one knows. It's a great app. I think it's cool. So we polo each other all the time, my man. So he'll see me, like, driving, and I'm talking about something, and then something happens, and I'm, like, fired up, you guys. I'll be the first to tell you, man. It gets me. I get upset. But I have an opportunity in that moment. Do I choose to let that get the better of me, or do I choose selfless, compassionate action towards another? Maybe. Maybe for you, it's like this moment between you and your spouse, maybe between you and your kids, maybe between you and a coworker. How are your choices, guys? No condemnation here. I just want to get a pulse. I think it's really important that we know where we're at, because we like to fool each other. Not each other. Fool ourselves a lot, don't we? Okay, what is love? Love is choosing selfless, compassionate action towards another. Okay, how do we get it? Let's go back to our passage here. Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Our passage says it right there. Love is from God. How do we get it? It's a gift, guys. It's a gift. There's a little bit of nuance in addressing this, though, okay? A little bit of nuance. So stay with me. There's typically three variables. There is the giver of the gift, There is the gift itself, and then there is the one accepting the gift. Right? The giver the gift, and then the one accepting the gift. So Christmas was only, like, three weeks ago. Is time moving really fast for everyone else, or is it just me? Oh, my gosh. Really frustrating because it feels as though Christmas was a long time ago. It wasn't. It was, like, three weeks ago. Usually Christmas time, there's gifts being exchanged. That means there's gifts that are given from a gift giver and those accepting the gifts. I received some gifts, and I accepted those gifts. Two of those gifts, one each from my kids, right? So, like, my daughter Nyla gave me a gift, and my son Liam gave me a gift. So my boy goes, hey, you know, what do you want for Christmas? I want a flashlight. That may sound like a weird gift, but I've had flashlights. I want a flashlight. Okay, okay. So my boy, he has some options here. He works, okay? He makes money. He can go, and he can get me whatever flashlight he wants to get me. He has an option to, like, go to the Dollar tree and get me a flashlight. It's still a flashlight. I'm not throwing shade on Dollar tree flashlights. That's cool. It would have fulfilled the request, but what he did is he went and he got me a man flashlight. You know what I'm saying? Like, if I had this flashlight here, I. And I, like, I turned it on, there'd probably be some lawsuits because it is so bright. I'm talking, like, it's like they took a portion of the sun and put it inside the flashlight. This thing is also, like, big and heavy. So I could literally. I could like, blind you and beat you. Not that I would blind you or beat you, but I could get you. Man, this thing is intense, okay? Intense. I tried taking a picture of the brightness, and it was messing up my phone. I'm not kidding. That's a true story. Can you throw up this? Okay, so check this out. This. This is a picture off the Internet of a supernova. The flashlight's brighter. I'm telling you guys. It's a real thing. It is so bright. Now, my boy, he took time out of his day to go shopping to look at each of the flashlights. If you've ever been to Lowe's or Home Depot, there's not just one flashlight. There's multiple. And they range from lowest price to highest price, from this lumens to this lumen. Like, there's all sorts of them. And he sat there, and he's looking at each single one, and he's saying, which one do I want to get my dad? I want to bless my dad. I want to get him a good flashlight. I want to get him, like, just any flashlight. I want it to blind him and blind people. I want to get him a good one. So he gives me this flashlight. I open it up. It's exactly what I wanted. I wanted a flashlight. I want a man flashlight. But you know what was even more special? The fact that he took time to go and inspect each single one and then get me an extravagant one that meant more to me than. The flashlight's cool. I love it. I'm going to use it. But I'll always remember, like, oh, you spent your money that you made by working at your job. Like, that was your money, but you sacrificed that because you wanted to give me something. It was beautiful. My daughter. My daughter is 16. She was up here. You guys saw her. She does not work. She does not have a source of Income. You know what she did? She used her talents. We went to Japan last October. It's been a while now. It was such a great trip. I just told you guys I love Toyota Land Cruisers. Well, my favorite Toyota Land Cruiser is an HZJ 77, diesel, right hand side drive, manual transmission. The best. You don't get to see those here because they don't bring them to America. You can't buy them here, but you can get them in Japan. We were on the freeway, we took a snapshot of the first one. It was like I was an excited school girl or whatever. I was very excited. I was super pumped. It was weird. I think I weirded the kids out a little bit because I was like. [00:31:44] Speaker C: Dude, do you see that? [00:31:45] Speaker D: Oh, my gosh. [00:31:46] Speaker A: So says, check this out, guys, I can't afford one of those Land Cruisers. You gotta import them. It's a big deal. So I open up a gift. Will you throw up this? She painted me with watercolors, guys. Watercolors. It's a little blurry because the picture on the screen's big. It's this beautiful Toyota Land Cruiser, my favorite one that she painted. And she says, I know you can't buy a Land Cruiser, but you got this one. You guys, what's so special about this? She did it. Took her time. Figured out, what am I gonna paint here? What would my dad really like? See, there was sacrifice involved in her time and her efforts and trying to figure out it was a gift. Now. Now both of my kids did these beautiful gifts. They're really good gift givers. They get that from their mom. Their mom's a fantastic gift giver. Now I have an opportunity when I get that gift to do a couple of different things. I can either take the gift and just receive it, but not yet accept it, or I can receive it and accept it. What do I mean by that? They pass me the gift. I've received it, now it's in my hands. But I don't accept it until I realize what really took place in order to give the gift. What they did, the sacrifice, the cost. When I understood and then accepted the gift because of what it cost them, it meant so much more. There are two stages in accepting gifts. There's receiving and then there's accepting. And just like I said, it's totally possible for me to, like, receive it and then determine if I want to accept it. Like, maybe I don't have need for this flashlight right now, or maybe it's not useful to me. Or you know what? I really actually didn't even want that. I wanted something else. I'm just going to have it. It'll be on the shelf. And all of a sudden I'm looking at the gift and I haven't really understood or accepted the gift giver. See, I can know about the gift and delay my acceptance of it. I can know about it and then I can delay my acceptance. In our passage, what we read, there's these three variables that I just mentioned, right? The gift giver, the gift, and then the one accepting Jesus is the gift giver, and he's also the gift. You are the third variable. You get to choose. Do you accept the gift and the giver, or do you delay and just receive and know about the gift but not yet accept it? This can get a little bit complex, you guys, because believe it or not, there's like certain areas of your life where you can know about and receive the gift but not yet accept it. In that area, yeah, I accept Jesus. I know about the gift giver. But you know what? In this area of my life, I don't think I want you touching that. Like, I'm gonna delay my acceptance. I don't really have need of you in this area of my life, Jesus. I'm gonna think about it a little bit longer. It's totally possible for us to delay the acceptance. I'm here to tell you guys, man, there's freedom in accepting Jesus in his entirety. There's freedom. Do you simply receive the gift or have you accepted the gift again? I find it really important for us to, like, pause and look inward because we really can fool ourselves into thinking that we are something that we are not. It's important for us to, like, get a pulse on these things. I would encourage you this week. Think about it. Are there areas in my life where I've just simply received and I haven't accepted the gift giver and the gift? Ponder on that this week, guys. Meditate on it. He wants to do stuff with that. He wants to free you. The question, like, why do we do that? Why do we not accept the whole gift and the giver of the gift? I believe possibly this is possible because we've forgotten the true value of the gift. I think it's possible that we haven't accepted the gift in certain areas of our life because we've forgotten the true value. You guys, we never move on from the gospel ever. We just start to understand it more. It becomes more profound. We start to see more of the gift giver and the gift. And to the degree that you can understand, that is to the degree that you will be transformed and moved and changed. This world is full of distractions. And I don't know about you, but I'm very forgetful. I'm very forgetful. I oftentimes allow the cares of this world to cause me to forget. Value of the gift. When circumstances are really bad, when the water's smashing up against the boat, man, I forget that the gift and the giver's in the boat with me. It's tough, man. It's really tough. I don't want to forget those things. I don't want to be distracted. But I take my eyes off the gift and the giver, and then I find myself flailing in the water, slowly sinking. And he's always there. He's always there to grab me and pull me up. He's beautiful, man. The most meaningful and the most valuable gifts are the most costly. The most meaningful and most valuable gifts are the most costly. What possibly costs more than the blood of Jesus? Nothing. Do you guys understand? The moment on the cross was universe altering. It changed the universe. There is nothing more valuable, more costly than the blood of Jesus. So how do we get agape love? Here's the answer to our question, guys. How do we get it? Agape love is a gift you choose to accept or reject. Simple. Agape love is a gift and you get to choose whether you accept it or whether you reject it. So I said, we're going to answer three questions, guys, right? What is love? Love is choosing selfless, compassionate action towards another. How do we get it? Agape love is a gift you choose to accept or reject. How do we give it? Did I just say that twice? I said get it right. Okay, how do we give it? Let's go back to our passage, guys. You know what I really like about passage is how John uses the term dear friends in the beginning and then dear friends again in verse 11. If you look at verse 11, which is the last verse in our passage, he says, dear friends, if God loves us in this way, we also must love one another. Just for the record, like this is the beloved disciple John, part of the twelve Sons of Thunder, brother James. And this was written as a letter to some of the churches in asia Minor around 90 AD. And he uses this like language of love. Dear friends, that is a term of endearment. He says, if God has loved us in this way, we must also love one another. How can you love. Sorry, rather, let me rephrase that. How can you give what you have not yet accepted. How can you give what you have not yet accepted? In other words, like, how can you give what you don't have? I'll tell the answer. You can't. You can try by sheer will. You can do your best, but you gotta be real careful. Cause you might start to fall into this idea of religion earning your way. King Jesus is the giver and the gift. And the beautiful thing about that reality is when you understand what that is, you will not be able to help but love one another. It's a byproduct. When you truly start to see how loved you are, it just happens. You don't have to muster it up out of sheer will. You guys remember a couple of months ago or weeks ago, you were on Matthew 18 with the parable of like the wicked servant. Do you remember that was like a month ago, two months ago. Not really sure, doesn't really matter. That's okay. It was Matthew 18. It was this parable about this king and this servant and this king forgiving the servant of this like immense debt. You guys remember that? Yeah. Okay, cool, cool, cool. So check this out. The king's taking account and the servant owns, owes like 10,000 talents, like some immense crazy number that he can never pay back. The servant pleads, please, please king, like, I'm going to do it, I'm going to pay you back. And the king ends up forgiving the loan, right? Check this out. The very next verse, it literally says the servant goes to the fellow servant that owed 100 denarii and starts choking him, demanding his money. The very next verse, dude gets this gift from the king. He then leaves and goes and chokes someone that owed him money. I think it's safe to say that he maybe didn't accept the gift. He didn't realize that like it still cost the king. It still cost the king. The debt didn't just disappear, it was costly to the king. When we get distracted, when we look inward, when we don't realize areas of our life where we haven't accepted the gift, we make choices that don't reflect the kingdom of heaven. You guys, the servant did not fully see, he did not fully accept the gift that cost the king. See to the degree that we see what love is and accept that God has loved us in this, like I said, universe altering way, sending Jesus to enter his creation and becoming the atoning sacrifice for our betrayal and our rejection is to the degree that you will love others. It's a long sentence. What am I trying to say? To the degree that you start to know the gift giver and accept the gift is to the degree that you can give it. You're commanded to give this gift of love. In fact, they are going to know King Jesus by the love that we have for one another. Love is part of who we are. It's intrinsic in our very nature. You guys, like I said in the beginning, we ponder about it, we write poems about it. And the most beautiful love is agape love. And the only way to give it, it originates from the king. The only way to get it is to know that love from the king. When you understand that the byproduct is giving this same agape love. Oh good, I'm doing good on time. What is love? Love is choosing selfless, compassionate action towards another. How do we get it? Agape love is a gift. You choose accept or reject. How do we give it? This love is a byproduct of choosing to accept the gift. Answer to number three. I point you back to number two. Guys, real simple. I'm gonna call the band up. Guys, it's already 11:30. Wow. Would you guys mind coming up? So stay with me guys. I'm going to read our passage just a little bit more here. I'll read it on this page. Dear friends, let us love one another. Because love is from God. And everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God because God is love. God's love was revealed among us in this way. God sent his one and only son into the world so that we might live through him. Love consists in this. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice. Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we must also love one another. You know, it's like fun to see. Maybe I should use the word crazy to see you guys catch that. Like God chose, he made a choice to do universe altering action for you. Do you guys realize that it's the most beautiful gift that has ever been given. It is the critical hinge point to our existence as human beings. It is the most monumental event that ever took place in history and ever will. And it was out of love for you. I really struggled this week guys, trying to figure out how to communicate this in a way that would make sense. And I'll be honest with you, I still am. Because it's until you, until you allow and accept that breaking in of love to transform you, you. You just don't fully know it. But when it does, you're broken. It'll jack you up, guys. It's the most beautiful thing in the world. And he desires and pursues you, and he's near to you. The prayer room this Tuesday. You guys, I'm struggling. I'm putting this sermon together. And you know what he does? He goes, hey, look, I see you, buddy. I'm with you. What are the chances that passage is going to pop up? It's. I'm. I'm not a mathematician, but I'm sure it's. It's crazy. In Romans 5, Paul talks about how we were enemies to God. Do you know that he chose you while you were an enemy? I get upset at the dude who cuts me off. He's not my enemy. He just cut me off. But God, the Father, the creator of the universe, full of mercy and grace and agape love, chose you while you were still enemies because of his love for you. He desires you. Do you see that? Do you understand that like all of Project Planet Earth was because he loved you and desires you and wants you to be with him and experience him? I was an enemy to the king, and yet he chose me. You are an enemy to the king, and yet he chose you. Who am I, man? Who am I that he would do such a thing? You guys, who are you that the king of the universe would come, step out of his creation, out of perfection for the sole purpose of reuniting you with himself? There's no more beautiful gift than the gift of Jesus. Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Let me pray for us, guys. Father in heaven, We're learning. Thank you for your patience with us. Thank you for your. Your grace and your mercy and your kindness. Thank you that you pursue us. Thank you that you desire us even when we didn't desire you. Jesus, I don't know how you do the things you do, but I'm so happy that you do. I ask that you'd be with us and you'd be honored this morning. Would you continue, spirit of God, would you continue to transform hearts and would you mold hearts? Would you help us to set our gaze upon you, King Jesus? Would you highlight areas in our life, Lord, where, like, we just haven't quite accepted you'd areas in our life where we say, you know, I'm just going to think about this a little bit longer, you know, maybe I don't have need for your here, Jesus. God, would you help us to see those, to be honest with ourselves? Would you help us to repent? Would you forgive us Would you help us to accept you and your intention entirety? I really do love you. I love these people. Jesus, would you bless them? Would you bless them with your presence? It's in your name we pray. Amen. [00:52:42] Speaker C: All right, we got about 15 minutes left, and I want to make sure that everybody has the opportunity and the chance to respond to God's word being preached, to truth being presented to you, and, dare I say, even the gospel gift being extended to you and the opportunity to accept it or not. Will you stand with me? If you're able. If you're on the prayer team, would you mind making your way to the front? We're gonna. We're gonna respond in one of two ways, actually. Multiple ways, but a couple primary ways of filling this room of praise. Many of you, you have accepted the gospel of Jesus, the good news about Jesus, this incredible gift that God has intervened with a grace and his agape love in your life, and you want to respond to that with thanksgiving and praise. That's why we sing. If you notice, the band does a really good job of the vast majority of the songs that we sing are directed vertically. That is, you are so good. Because we want to give our congregation the opportunity to respond directly to him with thanksgiving. That's what we're going to do now. But I also want to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to receive prayer and ministry. There's trusted men and women up here that would love to pray over you. A question kept going through my mind as Vin was preaching, and it's this. I think we all do a pretty crummy job of accepting the gift of agape love from God. When I say crummy, I mean, like, imperfect. Like, sometimes we don't actually accept it for ourselves. It's easy to accept for other people. Right? Like, I can feel it for Jared and Chad and Melissa, but not so much for me sometimes. Maybe you're in that space. How do you know if you haven't received it, or I should say, in Vinny's language, accepted it? How do you know you haven't accepted it? You know you haven't accepted it if you're not a offering it, because you can't give that with what you have not accepted, right? And so maybe you're here this morning and there's, like. There's stuff that's keeping you from actually accepting it. And you know you haven't accepted it. If you're not offering it to God, to others, sometimes even to yourself. [00:55:10] Speaker A: What. [00:55:11] Speaker C: Is it for you, friend? I think it would be a tragedy if any of us left this room without at least identifying the hindrances in our lives from accepting that incredible gift. Maybe you just think you're too bad. You've blown it too many times. You're too dirty, you're too unlovable, too unlovely to be loved. If that's you, I just want to tell you that's a total lie. It doesn't agree with the gospel. It doesn't agree with the grace of God. Or maybe you're here and there's just a spirit of religion on you right now. What do I mean by that? You don't need the gift. There are things that are more valuable that you'd like to receive and accept in your life. And so that's where your attention goes. Wherever you are on this spectrum. What a tragedy it would be to be offered the most incredible gift ever. To receive it, to acknowledge it, and to just set it on the shelf. Let's not be people who set it on the shelf. I'm gonna pray for us quickly. Then we're gonna open up the time. Holy Spirit, we invite you to move and speak. And I just wanna simply ask that you'd help every single one of us in this space this morning, every single person, not just receive the gift of your love and your grace and your forgiveness and your mercy and your pleasure, but to accept it and may it transform us. I pray in the name of Jesus. [00:56:47] Speaker A: Amen. [00:56:48] Speaker C: You can come forward at any time. We're gonna go for about 15 ish more minutes and we'll close. Come forward for prayer. Fill this room with praise and thanksgiving because he's worthy. Enjoy him.