SPEAKER_00: In our mind as we start this journey, because we're going to talk about human marriages.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk about our relationships a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: And I understand there's landmines everywhere in that conversation.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to frame what we're trying to do here today.
SPEAKER_00: We're not trying to solve every problem in every marriage or even address a whole bunch about human marriages.
SPEAKER_00: We're trying to ask the question: what kind of theological statement is God making when he sends Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: And what kind of statement is he making with this metaphor of that the church is the bride of Christ?
SPEAKER_00: We're looking for theology here today, first and foremost.
SPEAKER_00: What does this tell us about the covenant love between God and humanity?
SPEAKER_00: But as we have that conversation, it will spill over into our lives.
SPEAKER_00: And I think one of the things I want to address, it's a bit of a sidebar here, but I think still critical.
SPEAKER_00: And I feel like as lead pastor of a group of people who I'm called the shepherd, sometimes these conversations just need to be had.
SPEAKER_00: What I want to say to you this morning is whenever the church enters the conversation about marriage, whether that's amongst ourselves or in a cultural context, we have to enter it understanding what God intended by it, not specifically just for the individuals, but as a theological statement.
SPEAKER_00: And what God intended by the covenant of marriage, the metaphor of marriage is to say that there's a husband and a wife, and a husband and wife are to be committed to each other for all of their lifetime, and that's the place where all of the intimacy of marriage happens.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: First of all, that's healthy for us, but it's also a declaration of what God intends.
SPEAKER_00: It's a statement about what God wants for his people.
SPEAKER_00: So we really don't have the option to just kind of make that conversation fit any particular cultural norm of the time or of history.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: So we if we're gonna be theologically correct, we have to understand what this thing of marriage means and what was God intending by it, and then from that we can learn how we should approach that.
SPEAKER_00: So again, that's not the main point.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna get into all the debates or whatever about marriage, but I just think as we think about marriage, we need to start there.
SPEAKER_00: Let's start with this journey through scripture.
SPEAKER_00: We've already touched on Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go back to Deuteronomy.
SPEAKER_00: In Deuteronomy, we get the sense of what God is wanting in this relationship.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of scripture today.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna read some pretty long passages.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to just many of them are sort of poetic, and I just want you to let these words flow over you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna dig into a bunch of these, but to get the sense.
SPEAKER_00: Let's start in Deuteronomy chapter 7.
SPEAKER_00: For you are a holy people who belong to the Lord your God.
SPEAKER_00: Of all the people on earth, the Lord your God has chosen you to be his special treasure.
SPEAKER_00: This is God speaking about the children of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord did not set his heart on you and choose you because you were more numerous than all the other nations, for you were the smallest of the nations.
SPEAKER_00: Rather, it was simply that the Lord loves you.
SPEAKER_00: And he was keeping the oath he had sworn to your ancestors.
SPEAKER_00: That is why the Lord rescued you with such a strong hand from your slavery and from the oppressive hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: Understand, therefore, that the Lord your God is indeed God.
SPEAKER_00: He is the faithful God who keeps his covenant for a thousand generations and lavishes his unfailing love on those who obey him, on those who love him and obey his commands.
SPEAKER_00: So God is telling us something here about how he views humanity.
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to think about this in the context of dating.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you will have to go back a little while in your memory bank to remember that.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are like, that's where you're at right now.
SPEAKER_00: But when you're dating, especially the first date, what's going on?
SPEAKER_00: Well, what's going on is performance.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: You want your bust foot forward on that first date.
SPEAKER_00: And you are also not only interested in saying the right things and going to the right place and doing the right things, but you're also very interested in the other person there as well.
SPEAKER_00: You're checking each other out.
SPEAKER_00: You're you're you're not gonna, well, if you do, you're not really wise.
SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna jump to really deep questions on the first date.
SPEAKER_00: But you're what you're doing is you're you're putting up a front to say, I want you to see the best of me in this moment.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing wrong with that.
SPEAKER_00: But as you go along in that relationship, that that first moment, you start to have to also have to see, well, over time they're gonna start seeing the real me a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: And so after that sort of performance-driven thing at the beginning, you start moving into this, can I trust the other person face, right?
SPEAKER_00: Can I be faithful to them and will they be faithful to me?
SPEAKER_00: And we begin to test that by uh opening up a little bit more of our lives, sharing a little bit more of our story, and and letting the other person see us a little bit more of us until we move along and realize I can trust this person, they can trust me until they can't.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And many times our dating relationships end with that horrible but honest phrase, it's not you, it's me.
SPEAKER_00: And when we say that most of the time, what we really want to say is, it's not me, it's you.
SPEAKER_00: Because dating is this process of figuring out, is this gonna be a thing?
SPEAKER_00: And there's an exit ramp.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: There's a way out of that.
SPEAKER_00: But God shows us something different here.
SPEAKER_00: God did not date Israel, He already knew them.
SPEAKER_00: They put up a front for God, they had the religious things going on.
SPEAKER_00: God knew them.
SPEAKER_00: God didn't move towards him and say, I wonder if I could love these people.
SPEAKER_00: Did you catch the passage?
SPEAKER_00: God chose you simply because he loved you.
SPEAKER_00: Plain and simple.
SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of love God has for us.
SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of love that marriage is to illustrate to a broken world.
SPEAKER_00: And even when we do it wrong, the idea of that covenant love never goes away.
SPEAKER_00: I have been using the phrase lately, and I always feel obligated to explain it because I think it's a powerful understanding of this kind of love.
SPEAKER_00: I've been calling it, not original with me, but I've been calling it disinterested love.
SPEAKER_00: Disinterested love.
SPEAKER_00: Not that you're not interested in the person that you're loving, but you're not interested in their response.
SPEAKER_00: I will love you because I love you.
SPEAKER_00: Even if your performance isn't correct, even if you mess up on the first day, I will love you because I love you.
SPEAKER_00: So God has that kind of love.
SPEAKER_00: So when he sets this up in the Old Testament, he says, I love you because I love you.
SPEAKER_00: And then God says, I'm gonna be faithful to you.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't have to test us, he already knows we're gonna fall short.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to test him.
SPEAKER_00: We he said, I will be faithful to you.
SPEAKER_00: So as you get to know me, as I get to know you, I will be faithful.
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, I will lavish love upon you.
SPEAKER_00: You know, when we're dating, we lavish love upon each other, but it's conditional.
SPEAKER_00: God says, I will lavish my love upon you.
SPEAKER_00: And he even says at the end of that passage that that works best in a relationship when you walk in obedience with me, that as I lavish my love upon you, you respond to that in ways that you understand the depth of that love even more and more and more.
SPEAKER_00: As you respond in obedience, you understand what I mean when I say don't go there or do go there.
SPEAKER_00: So that love becomes a growing thing.
SPEAKER_00: So the covenant of marriage, again, the idea of the covenant of marriage, even as humans have fallen short, the covenant of marriage in the Bible is a metaphor reminding us that God chooses us because he loves us.
SPEAKER_00: God is faithful to us even when we aren't, and God lavishes his love on us abundantly.
SPEAKER_00: And the and the commitment of marriage, human, Christian marriage, is designed to say that regardless of your performance or my preference, I'm going to continue to lavish my love on you.
SPEAKER_00: That's why the intimate expression of sex is best reserved for marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Because when you get to that moment of intimacy, there is no other physical intimacy more intimate than that.
SPEAKER_00: Without those boundaries of covenant and disinterested love, that sexual intimacy becomes something that can be used against each other and all that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And God says this is what sex should be.
SPEAKER_00: Apart from marriage, sex is often based on performance, preference, and lustful pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: And I know, as I mentioned earlier, that for some, even describing what marriage should be stirs pain in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Your spouse has failed to live up to this, you have failed up to live up to this, you have not found the person that you want to live up to this with.
SPEAKER_00: It's just full of landmines.
SPEAKER_00: I get that.
SPEAKER_00: And even in marriages that are still intact and working towards this goal of disinterested, committed, lavish love, have their good days and their bad days.
SPEAKER_00: There I say they're good weeks and their bad weeks.
SPEAKER_00: There I say they're good months and they're bad months.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage is hard.
SPEAKER_00: And this is not a sermon about how to make your marriage better.
SPEAKER_00: This is a sermon about what God intended marriage to be, more so theologically, but also in our own individual lives.
SPEAKER_00: This is about covenant loyalty of God.
SPEAKER_00: And our failure to live up to the covenantal obligations in our own marriages has been mirrored in Israel's failure to live up to God's covenantal intent in his relationship with them.
SPEAKER_00: So, as God intended, this idea of choosing them in Deuteronomy, it's a beginning of the, it's a giving of the law, it's a beginning of this journey as a nation.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I choose you because I choose you, I'm faithful to you when you're not.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to lavish my gifts upon you, and as you walk with me, you'll learn to understand that more.
SPEAKER_00: But as they go along, they fail, and they fail, and they fail, and they fell again.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a description of this in Ezekiel 16.
SPEAKER_00: It's pretty long.
SPEAKER_00: Just let these words get a sense of what the prophet is saying to Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And when I passed by again, I saw that you were old enough for love, so I wrapped my cloak around you.
SPEAKER_00: This is God speaking to Israel.
SPEAKER_00: So I roped my I wrapped my cloak around you to cover your nakedness and declare my marriage vows.
SPEAKER_00: I made a covenant with you, says the sovereign Lord, and you became mine, and I bathed you and washed off your blood, and I rubbed fragrant oils into your skin.
SPEAKER_00: I gave you expensive clothing of fine linen and silk, beautifully embroidered, and sandals made of f of goat skin, leather.
SPEAKER_00: I gave you lovely jewelry, bracelets, beautiful necklace, a ring for your nose, earrings for your ears, and a lovely crown for your head.
SPEAKER_00: And so you were adorned with gold and silver, your clothes were made of fine linen and costly fabric, and were beautifully embroidered.
SPEAKER_00: You ate the finest foods, choice flour, honey, and olive oil, and became more beautiful than ever.
SPEAKER_00: You looked like a queen, and so you were, God speaking to Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Your fame soon spread throughout the world because of your beauty.
SPEAKER_00: I dressed you in my splendor and perfected your beauty, says the sovereign Lord.
SPEAKER_00: See, God was preparing his bride.
SPEAKER_00: But you thought your fame and beauty were your own, so you gave yourself to a prostitute, to every man who came along.
SPEAKER_00: Your beauty was theirs for the asking.
SPEAKER_00: You used the lovely things I gave you to make shrines for your idols, where you played the prostitute.
SPEAKER_00: Unbelievable.
SPEAKER_00: How could such a thing happen?
SPEAKER_00: You took the very jewels and gold and silver ornaments I had given you and made statues of men and worshiped them.
SPEAKER_00: This is adultery against me.
SPEAKER_00: You used the beautifully embroidered clothes I gave you to dress your idols.
SPEAKER_00: Then you used my special oil and my incense to worship them.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine it.
SPEAKER_00: You set before them as a sacrifice the choice flower, olive oil, and honey I had given you, says the sovereign Lord.
SPEAKER_00: See, God bathed, he prepared, and he lavished gifts on the bride with the intent of union and intimacy, but instead Israel squandered those gifts on the idols that they created.
SPEAKER_00: Israel committed adultery.
SPEAKER_00: This is a common metaphor in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, there are sections of scripture in the Old Testament that are all rated around this topic where God describes what Israel did in prostituting themselves to other gods and other nations' gods.
SPEAKER_00: They broke the covenant.
SPEAKER_00: But remember, God's love is disinterested.
SPEAKER_00: It's faithful and it's lavish.
SPEAKER_00: And I can't think of a more disinterested, faithful, lavish thing to do than send his only son to die, to cleanse, to forgive, to heal, to restore, to redeem those who would surrender to that idea.
SPEAKER_00: As we come to the New Testament, the beautiful story of God sending Jesus in Bethlehem, Calvary, the resurrection, the whole gospel story, which is unbelievable.
SPEAKER_00: There is no greater gift than to give your only sin.
SPEAKER_00: What again?
SPEAKER_00: What a love.
SPEAKER_00: What a faithful guy.
SPEAKER_00: But he didn't come just for you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus loves you.
SPEAKER_00: He does.
SPEAKER_00: You know, second service bonus here.
SPEAKER_00: One of the phrases that really bothers me theologically, and I understand what is meant by it.
SPEAKER_00: But when people say if you had been the only person that Jesus would have died for you, that's true, of course.
SPEAKER_00: But that so undersells what the gospel is all about.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel is not about you getting to heaven and being fulfilled.
SPEAKER_00: Does that happen when you embrace the gospel?
SPEAKER_00: Let's just yes.
SPEAKER_00: But is that what the gospel is all about?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel is about God preparing his bride, the church, the called-out ones, us.
SPEAKER_00: All of y'all.
SPEAKER_00: And all the all y'all throughout all of all history.
SPEAKER_00: Every tribe and every nation, all the people that we agree with, all the people that we don't who claim Jesus, who say, I was the one who walked away, I was the one who prostituted myself, as it were, to idols.
SPEAKER_00: And I am my only hope is this disinterested, faithful, lavishly loving God who sent his son Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And I trust that not so that I could be happy, but so that I could be a part of this beautiful thing called the church.
SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 5 picks this up.
SPEAKER_00: It picks up this theme of God being a bride, but in this case it's not God being the bride of Israel, but Christ being the it's not God, uh the people of God being a bride.
SPEAKER_00: It's not Israel being a bride, but it's the church being the bride of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 5 is a beautiful passage, and I'll make a comment on it in a second, but I'm just gonna pull out a couple verses where God is speaking, Paul is speaking to husbands.
SPEAKER_00: He says, For husbands, this means love your wives just as Christ loved the church.
SPEAKER_00: He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God's word.
SPEAKER_00: He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, she will be holy and without faults.
SPEAKER_00: You see, our tendency is to go to Ephesians 5 and say, what does this say about human marriage?
SPEAKER_00: And what do I need to learn about human marriage from Ephesians chapter 5?
SPEAKER_00: We've turned it into a practical tool to how to have a good marriage.
SPEAKER_00: When really this Ephesians 5 is a deep theological statement that serves as a wonderful example to us.
SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 5 is about Paul helping us understand how God views the church.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the husband who loves his bride, who washes his bride, who prepares his bride.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, husbands, you ought to do this too because it's really good.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul is, Paul even says later in that passage, he says, but I'm talking about the church.
SPEAKER_00: These verses amplify the preparation that the bride goes through.
SPEAKER_00: But I want you to notice something about these verses.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible, the verses don't say, church, clean yourself up.
SPEAKER_00: Make yourself ready.
SPEAKER_00: The work done to prepare the bride is done by Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He prepares, he cleanses.
SPEAKER_00: It's his word.
SPEAKER_00: Our confession of his word, yes.
SPEAKER_00: Our receiving of his word, yes.
SPEAKER_00: But it is his work that prepares the bride.
SPEAKER_00: It's all on the side of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Christ loved the church with a disinterested love, like God loved Israel with a disinterested love.
SPEAKER_00: Christ remains faithful to the church by washing and cleansing by God's word and by the blood of Jesus, just like God remained faithful to Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And God lavishes his gift on the church so that we will be holy and without fault.
SPEAKER_00: He lavishes his gift on the church so it will be holy and without fault, just like God lavishes his gifts on Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And the difference is, God also gave us the Holy Spirit who empowers us to live in this newness of life as we walk, at this gift of the Holy Spirit being lavished on us.
SPEAKER_00: And it tells us about walking in obedience with him.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not to, if you don't obey, I don't love you.
SPEAKER_00: It's to say, as we walk with him, as the bride, as my bride church, if you'll do these things, if you'll walk this way, if we'll walk together, as these gifts I give you, if you'll not squander them, but if you'll receive them and let them cleanse and purify you collectively and individually, you will receive more and more of those gifts.
SPEAKER_00: It will make more sense to you.
SPEAKER_00: My love will begin to transform you until we get the revelation at the end of time.
SPEAKER_00: Where John writes, then I heard again what sounded like the shout of a vast crowd on the or the roar of a mighty ocean waves or the crash of a loud thunder.
SPEAKER_00: Praise the Lord, for the Lord our God, the Almighty rains.
SPEAKER_00: Let us be glad and rejoice.
SPEAKER_00: Let us give honor to him, for the time has come for the wedding feast of the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: And his bride has prepared herself.
SPEAKER_00: She has been given the finest of pure white linen to wear.
SPEAKER_00: For the white, for the fine linen represents the good deeds of God's holy people.
SPEAKER_00: In the book of Revelation, praise and worship is almost always reserved for God to display the attributes of God, to talk about the attributes of God.
SPEAKER_00: But in this passage, it seems like John is saying the praise is for what God has prepared.
SPEAKER_00: The praise is for the work of the church, the work of God, the preparation of this body, this bride that He has created.
SPEAKER_00: Note again the preparation of the bride was accomplished by the work of the groom.
SPEAKER_00: It says the bride was prepared.
SPEAKER_00: The bride put on the linen cloths, the wedding gown.
SPEAKER_00: That wedding gown was provided by Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The bride did not clean themselves up and sew something together.
SPEAKER_00: The bride put on that which was provided by Jesus, the white linens.
SPEAKER_00: He again, Jesus, did the work to purify his bride.
SPEAKER_00: And then in Revelation 21, pretty long passage.
SPEAKER_00: But we're coming to that moment of this great wedding feast.
SPEAKER_00: And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for a husband.
SPEAKER_00: I heard a loud shout from the throne saying, Look, God's home is now among his people.
SPEAKER_00: He will live with them, and they will be his people.
SPEAKER_00: God himself will be with them, he will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death, or sorrow, or crying, or pain.
SPEAKER_00: All these things are gone forever.
SPEAKER_00: And the one sitting on the throne said, Look, I'm making everything new.
SPEAKER_00: And then he said to me, Write this down, for what I tell you is trustworthy and true.
SPEAKER_00: And he also said, It is finished.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
SPEAKER_00: The preparation is over.
SPEAKER_00: To all who are thirsty, I will give you freely from the what springs of the water of life.
SPEAKER_00: All who are victorious will inherit all these blessings, and I will be their God, and they will be my children.
SPEAKER_00: But cowards, unbelievers, the corrupt murderers, immoral, those who practice witchcraft, idol worshippers, and all the liars, their fate is in the fiery lake of burning sulfur.
SPEAKER_00: This is a second death.
SPEAKER_00: Then one of the seven angels who held the seven bowls containing the seven last plagues came and said to me, Come with me.
SPEAKER_00: I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: You know what I think happened in that moment?
SPEAKER_00: I think in this culmination of the marriage covenant between God and his people, Jesus is standing there, as it were, gazing across the echoes of eternity, the sanctuary for this beautiful wedding.
SPEAKER_00: Knowing all the preparations that had gone on before, God in the Old Testament with Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus dying so that he could create the called out ones.
SPEAKER_00: I think Jesus stands there that day, like I did on my wedding day, and said, Would you look at her?
SPEAKER_00: Would you look at her?
SPEAKER_00: My bride.
SPEAKER_00: Washed, purified, cleansed.
SPEAKER_00: Certainly they didn't accomplish that.
SPEAKER_00: But they responded.
SPEAKER_00: They participated.
SPEAKER_00: They trusted.
SPEAKER_00: They allowed me to work in their lives to make something beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: You see, God loves us simply because he does.
SPEAKER_00: He faithfully prepares us for the final wedding feast and he lavishes us with grace so that we can walk with him until that day.
SPEAKER_00: So what is our job now?
SPEAKER_00: To just sit around and wait for that day?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: To live into it.
SPEAKER_00: To believe that he's working.
SPEAKER_00: To trust that he's working in ways we cannot see, to respond in obedience, to show our response to his faithfulness by trusting his word, by allowing his cleansing, to deal with the stuff in our lives, to draw us together, to teach us to forgive.
SPEAKER_00: So why?
SPEAKER_00: So we can be fulfilled, you will be, yes, no, so that we can be a witness to the world, so that we can be the bride that is changed and transformed by the God who has a covenantal, disinterested love in us.
SPEAKER_00: So, church, loved by Christ, cleansed by this word, and lovingly being lavished on by Christ, let's embrace our role as the bride of Christ by growing together, displaying his glory, grace, and transformative power to a world that only knows of love based on performance, preference, and response.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not asking the church to do better.
SPEAKER_00: I'm asking the church to remember who we are and to trust more.
SPEAKER_00: So I have a little devotional pattern in my life.
SPEAKER_00: It's just sort of separate from the other things that I do.
SPEAKER_00: And well, I read God's Word.
SPEAKER_00: Is that that's what I do, right?
SPEAKER_00: Not for sermon illustrations or anything else.
SPEAKER_00: But every once in a while I'm reading in God's Word just for my own personal edification, and God shows me something that I just want to share.
SPEAKER_00: And so that happened to me.
SPEAKER_00: And uh I really have been wanting to share this for a while, and I didn't know where to put it, so I just thought I'd try to paste it into this sermon from the book of Jude.
SPEAKER_00: I have to admit to you that I often get to the book of Jude, it's only one chapter, and say, I can get through this and move on, because it's kind of a weird book.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever read it?
SPEAKER_00: And it's got a lot of stuff in it.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't quite make sense with some of other Paul's letters.
SPEAKER_00: But I read this and it just struck me at such a deep level.
SPEAKER_00: It's God's word, it always speaks, even when we don't always understand it.
SPEAKER_00: Jude chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: Excuse me.
SPEAKER_00: Jude verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: Dear friends, I had been eagerly planning to write to you about the salvation we all share.
SPEAKER_00: But now I find that I must write about something else, urging you to defend the faith that God has entrusted once and all, once for all, time to his people.
SPEAKER_00: If you read the book of Jude, the tone of it is like that.
SPEAKER_00: He speaks harshly to heretics.
SPEAKER_00: It's a defend the faith kind of book.
SPEAKER_00: It reminds us that there's truth, that is unwavering, that you can't get around, and there's consequences when the truth isn't followed.
SPEAKER_00: It sounds like a book someone would love to beat the head over the head of somebody who's struggling with their faith.
SPEAKER_00: Just believe, man.
SPEAKER_00: But then there's this gem in verse 22.
SPEAKER_00: And you must show mercy to those whose faith is wavering.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that fun?
SPEAKER_00: Another version says, be patient with those who doubt.
SPEAKER_00: In the same letter, Jude reminds us that there's a balance between truth and compassion.
SPEAKER_00: I just wonder if one of the clarion calls of the church is in this simple dichotomy in the book of Jude.
SPEAKER_00: There's an undeniable truth that you though that will either break you or shape your life.
SPEAKER_00: But more than that, there is a God who is love and deeply loves us.
SPEAKER_00: And I just wonder if those who are doubting about all this Christianity thing, whether they've never experienced it, where they grew up in the church, and they're reconstructing, deconstructing whatever they're going through.
SPEAKER_00: I just wonder if instead of just reminding them of Jude 3, we also acted like Jude 22.
SPEAKER_00: And I think the way we do that, friends, is to remember who we are.
SPEAKER_00: We're the church.
SPEAKER_00: We're loved by a God who's disinterested in our response, but so deeply interested in us that he gave us the ultimate gift of Jesus to show his covenant loyalty to us.
SPEAKER_00: And so today, I can't think of a better way to wrap up this whole series than to take communion.
SPEAKER_00: You have the elements there with you if you will find those.
SPEAKER_00: And as we take communion today, I just want to remind you, church, that we are loved by Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And when we wonder about that or doubt that, we just need to remember what this act of taking the bread and eating it and the juice and drinking it reminds us of.
SPEAKER_00: It reminds us that Christ loved us, that God knew that there's no way for us to move away from the idols in our lives on our own strength, that given our own proclivities, we would always return to the idols.
SPEAKER_00: We would prostitute ourselves in the altars of the world.
SPEAKER_00: And so he sent Jesus because he loves us.
SPEAKER_00: And he wants that love to transform us and to purify us.
SPEAKER_00: He wants that love to be worked out in our relationships with one another.
SPEAKER_00: And he wants that love, friends, to proclaim to the world that God is faithful in his marriage vows.
SPEAKER_00: And he wants us to take that love that he lavishes on us in this context of covenant.
SPEAKER_00: And he wants us to share it with the world that only knows about performance-based, preference-based, lust-driven love.
SPEAKER_00: So as we take the body, we're reminded of his incredible, deep love for us.
SPEAKER_00: You may take the breath.
SPEAKER_00: And as we take the juice this morning, it's a symbol.
SPEAKER_00: More than just a symbol.
SPEAKER_00: It's a participation in this beautiful understanding of the blood that was poured out for us to cleanse us individually and collectively, to prepare us for that great wedding day that awaits all of us.
SPEAKER_00: We may partake.
SPEAKER_00: So thank you, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: For your disinterested, faithful, lavish love.
SPEAKER_00: May it draw us together as your body.
SPEAKER_00: It may be a proclamation to the world of your goodness.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you stand with the worship team?