Church Gone Wild, Week 7

Tim Rivers | August 25, 2024

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What's up everybody? Can you make some noise and give Jesus some praise on this place? Oh my goodness. Hey, are y'all excited about our ninth anniversary? Can you believe there are some in here that you've been here the entire time? When we started in the school under leadership of Tim and Juliet Ross, they had a vision from the Lord to plant a church in the city of Irving. Went and started a church in the school, and here we are nine years later. Look at God. Hundreds of people came to know the Lord. Thousands of people really came to know the Lord. Hundreds of people being baptized. God has continuing to do great things. So I want to personally invite you to be here September the eighth, and you may want to get here early because there is a surprise in the service. I'm not going to tell you what it is because I need you to be here on time so you don't miss it.

So if you normally leave, right, just to make it for preaching, leave a little earlier, plan for it. Get your coffee program, your coffee machine program, your coffee machine, but you don't want to miss it from the get go of the service, there's going to be a special element that you don't want to miss. And then as mentioned in the video, Michael, Bethany, how many of you ever heard Michael Bethany lead worship? What a phenomenal worship leader. He is going to be leading worship that evening. And then like we said, there's going to be an after party. There's going to be food. There's going to be drinks. And lemme just clarify, non-alcoholic, some of you like we're going to, it's not that type of after party, we're talking sodas, you know what I mean? But you definitely want to be there and it's a great time to just get with people that you go to church with and get in fellowship and enjoy the presence of the Lord and everybody say amen.

Well, welcome to Embassy City. If this is your first time here, we want to say welcome to Embassy City Church. If you're watching online, if you're in the overflow, thank you so much for being here, for letting us be a part of your spiritual journey. Another thing that I'd like to make a plug for is starting next week, we're doing group signups. We are launching our groups for the fall and we don't want you to miss it because we're launching a new series next week and our groups is going to correlate with the series, so I'll be preaching on the weekends, the groups will go through the material, the kids are going through the exact same thing. This is a time where we're going to go all in as a church family to do the same thing. It's going to be a phenomenal time. So make sure you get ready for that. Alright, grab your Bibles. We're going to one Corinthians chapter 13. I'm wrapping up our series, church Gone Wild. Can you believe that? This is the seventh Sunday

And we hadn't even got out of one Corinthians. Oh, that was a dramatic little key change, but I do feel like it's time for us to kind of put a bow on it today. But before I read this passage, let me just catch you up. We're talking about church going wild, and we've been really looking at the Church of Corinth as a case study looking at all the wild crazy things that were happening in Corinth and how Paul was writing to the church. Remember one and two Corinthians is Paul writing to the church? He's not writing to people who are not in the household of faith. He's writing to the church. One thing that we don't often realize when we read scripture is we assume that everyone had access to the scriptures. That everybody and Ephesus and Jerusalem were reading this letter going, Ooh, the church of Corinth is getting handled and that's not the case at all. Remember at the time when Paul wrote the letter to Corinth, he did not know that his letter would be in the canon of scripture that we have today. He was simply writing a letter to the church directly to engage the problems that they were facing.

And it's not until a couple centuries later that the letters that he wrote were canonize until the entire Bible that we have today. Another thing that you may not realize about Corinth is Corinth wasn't this mega church. In fact, most theologians believe that Corinth was a congregation of about 40 to 80 people. You I didn't know that, right? It wasn't some huge church. It was a congregation of people. And yet Paul, the Apostle Paul was so concerned

About the church that he took the time to write these letters. So I've been having a good time teaching it and I hope that you've grown by it as well. Has this blessed anybody? Good. Alright, first Corinthians chapter 13, we're going to read the whole passage because this is a beautiful chapter. Many of you have probably heard it at a wedding before. It's the love chapter, but it's Paul's most, in my opinion, most poetic writing. It's kind of written as a poem, almost like a hymn. So let's read it. If I speak in tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries in all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all that I have, if I deliver up my body to be burned but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It is not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away and as for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, but when I became a man, I gave up childish things.

I could just preach on that passage right there, stop being childish. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part then shall know fully even as I have been fully known. So now, faith, hope and love abide these three but the greatest, somebody say the greatest, but the greatest of these is love. Alright, my title for today is The Irreducible Minimum of Christianity, the Irreducible Minimum of Christianity. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your word. We thank you Lord for the last seven weeks that we've been studying the church of Corinth and we've been looking at the wild things that are happening in the church and we have realized that as we read your scripture that not many things have changed. It's the same devil fighting today as back 2000 years ago, I pray God that we would be moved by your word, that we would be convicted by your word. I pray that give us ears to hear a heart, to receive in a mind, to understand what you would say to us. Help us to walk out of here different than the way we walked in. Give us revelation. Let your word fall on the good of our hearts. I pray that you would till up the ground of our hearts, help us to be soft, malleable. Help us to be tender, to receive your word. In Jesus name, amen. Everybody say amen.

Are there any mathematicians or even people that love math in the building? You love math. God bless y'all, the few and far between. When I was growing up in school, I loved math. In fact, math was my favorite subject. I loved addition, subtraction, even a little bit of multiplication sub division. But when they started adding letters into the equation, I took issue with that. I did not understand how my math and English was now mixing. Let English be English and math be math. Math should only be numbers. One of the particular branches of mathematics that I didn't like for sure was algebra. Anybody know what I'm talking about? I didn't understand algebra. I didn't think it was pertinent to my life, and I could see how adding and subtracting and division and multiplication was important in my life because if I made $10, I want a 10 exit. You know what I'm saying?

I wanted to add, I want to subtract, I want to multiply, I want to divide. But when they started adding these equations with letters, I didn't understand how I was going to use this in my real life. But one of the principles or one of the mathematical equations that I learned about in algebra is called a polynomial. And I know some of y'all right now are shuttering at the thought of going back to math class, but a polynomial is a math expression comprised of variables, coefficients, and or constant separated by the operation of addition and subtraction. In basic terms, when you see a polynomial, a polynomial is a complex expression of math that must be solved. And when you look at a polynomial, it's very overwhelming to try to think about what the value is in the equation. When you look at a polynomial, you kind of just want to run out of the place, at least I did.

I'm like, you know what? Who needs math? A polynomial is overwhelming. It's extensive, but one of the principles that I learned within mathematics and especially algebra, is that if you want to solve a polynomial, you have to use a skill called factoring and factoring or factorization is when you take the polynomial and you reduce it down all the way until you find the root of the equation. Once you find the root of the equation, you can plug it back into the polynomial and then you can find the value of the expression when you reduce down the polynomial to its root. The reason why that was important is because once you get to the stage where you can't reduce it any further, that's called a reducible minimum. And the irreducible minimum, let's look at the definition is it is not reducible.

Some of y'all are like, man, this is going to be deep. It is incapable of being reduced or of being diminished or simplified. Further, the goal of finding the irreducible minimum of an expression is to find the root or the foundation upon which the complex expression is built. In other words, if you changed the value of the root, you change the expression. If you mess with the irreducible minimum, the value changes of the entire complex expression. And here's the kicker, the irreducible minimum is the thing that defines the entire expression. In Latin, they call this the cynic, which means without which not. In other words, if you don't have the root, you'll never be able to solve the expression. Now we look at this in terms of a math function, but you know can apply the same function to the word of God because if you, especially for those of us who are new in the faith, when you come into Christianity, when you come into the body of Christ, you can look at the entirety of the Christian experience and everything that is involved and it feel overwhelming to know out of all the stuff that I've read, what is God's rudimentary intention for my life?

When I look at the Old Testament and I read the New Testament and I see the prophecies and I see all of the different and varying opinions about theology and different churches and different preachers and different YouTube channels and my friend's definition and my family's definition and how I grew up and what I feel like God's doing. When you see all of that, it boils down to this question, what is the irreducible minimum of Christianity? At the end of the day, all of us have to get to the place where we reduce and factor down everything that we're reading to this understanding of what does God actually want from me? What is my life as a Christian really built on? What is the foundation of everything that I do for God? At the heart of every Christian should be this question, why am I a Christian? If you've never asked that question, you need to ask yourself this question, why do you live for God?

We can find the answer in Matthew 22 because the Sadducees and Pharisees, they always loved the trip Jesus up and the Sadducees came to Jesus and they asked him this question about marriage in heaven, and it's a really funny story. They basically said, Hey, there's a woman, she's married to a man and he has six brothers, and the man dies and then she marries the next brother and then he dies, and then she marries the next brother and all the way down, and she married all seven brothers. Now she dies, she goes to heaven. Whose wife is she? Good question, right? And then Jesus, instead of being real theological about it, he is like, don't even worry about it because in heaven there will be no marriage or given in marriage. Talk about messing with some of y'all's theology. You mean you're not going to recognize me? I'll let y'all sort that out over lunch.

But he shut the Sadducees up and it just so happened that the Pharisees were there as well. Now, the Sadducees and the Pharisees were religious groups of people. So the Pharisees said, well, you know what? He got the Sadducees, but he ain't going to get this one. So the scripture says, let's look at it, Matthew 22, verse 34. But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together and one of them, there's always one, a lawyer asked him a question to test him, teacher, which is the great commandment in the law, and he said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And at this point they were like, I got that on lock. Then Jesus continues, and a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Now, a lot of times when we read this, we think that Jesus is saying love your neighbor the way you love yourself. That's not what Jesus is saying. What Jesus is saying is the second is like it, meaning what? You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your mind, with all of your soul, and with all of your mind. In other words, the way that God loves you is how you ought to love your neighbor.

Now that changes the whole passage because if I'm just basing my love for you based on how I love myself, I've got limitations. But if I love you the way God loves me, that means I'm willing to go to the cross for you.

And this is what Jesus says on these two commandments. Depend somebody say all the law and the prophets. When the Pharisees were asking Jesus, give us the greatest commandment in the law, they were quoting the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, the law of Moses, they were saying, Hey, we know we understand all of the laws. If you've ever read the first five books of Bible, you know that there are tons. You have the 10 commandments, but in addition to 10 commandments, you have all of these other rules that God and boundaries that God had given them. And so when they came to Jesus, they were saying, give us the one that is the most preeminent. And Jesus said, not just what's in the law, but also what the prophets were told and how the prophets were engaged. Jesus said, everything in the complex expression of all of scripture can be factored down to the irreducible minimum being you should love God and love people the way that God loves you.

Remember that Jesus is not talking to individuals that just got saved. He was talking to the Sadducees and Pharisees who understood the law, frontward and backward. They could recite to you the 613 Jewish laws. They understood every single word that was expressed in the Torah. They had access. Their whole job was to study the law and the prophets. And Jesus said, you can do all of this stuff. Go all through your religious practices, look great, smell right, give tons, but if you don't understand the irreducible minimum of Christianity, you are just going through the motions and have no power. This means that everything that we find in scripture, from creation, from the creation of the world, every miracle recorded, every deliverance depicted every battle one, every commandment given, every prophecy for told, every discipline executed, all of it boils down to love. Lemme just put it this way. You cannot claim to be a Christian and not love God and others. It is impossible to say that you are a Christian without loving God and loving others. Now, let me just say this. We don't become Christians with this revelation upfront. In fact, I would be so bold to say this.

All of us come to Christ with selfish ambition and selfish motivation. Think about your life and think about when you became a Christian. Did you become a Christian because you thought, you know what? I'm ready to sacrifice my love, my life for Jesus. Most of our testimonies

Had to do with us trying to outrun something that was running after us. We generally become Christians because of self-interest. I want to escape the bad place. I want to experience what my friends are experiencing. I want to get away from this lifestyle. I need a change of pace. I need a change of scenery. Most of us come to the Lord and that's okay. Why? Because you come to Jesus as a baby. You come to Jesus as a child. Any parents in here? What happens when your child is first born? Do they come into the world and say, I'm here to serve. I am here, my dad, dad to do whatever you ask me to do. They come into the world screaming. Why are they screaming? I want milk. I want warmth. I want comfort. Babies come into the world with selfish ambition and motive and interest, and that's okay. We would think it would be weird. Lemme tell you, if our 2-year-old comes up to me and says, dad, I'm here to serve whatever you need, I'm tripping out. I'm taking him to the doctor, I'm going to get him evaluated. What's wrong bro? Because we expect children to be selfish.

But if you are 30 and you're still screaming for milk and comfort and hold me, we're asking questions. Why? Because we expect God expects, Christ expects you to move out of the immaturity of needing to be loved, to the maturity of loving the way you have been loved. All of us begin this journey with self-interest. The problem however, is when we still have self-interest and we've been in the faith for a while, we expect young Christians to still be sorting out, how do I find comfort? How do I get? But at a certain stage in your Christian walk, you need to figure out how can I give?

As we mature, we become more like Christ. And what we understand about Christ is Christ's interest. We're all consumed with love. Everything that he did was out of the motivation of love. He wasn't consumed with his own ambition. No, he was a living example for us of what Christian maturity looks like and it looks like loving. In fact, when Jesus says that the irreducible minimum is that you love God and you love others, he was using a word in the Greek, which is agape. Now I know you've heard the term agape, and this is the verb form of agape. Now, there are three different types of love that you will find in scripture. Three different types of definitions of love. In English translations, you'll see the word love. But that's why it's important for you to go look at the original Greek because there's a love that's called the aeros love. And this is where we get the word erotic. It's the romantic love.

If you're married, you should have some aeros love. You know what I'm saying? You should have some love that is sexually based. It's a sexual love. And then there's phileo. Love is where we get the word filet steak. I'm just kidding. Some of y'all like really? No, I am just messing with you phileo. Love is brotherly love. It's the kind of love that we share with one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. It means that this is not a sexual love. This is a love that I have. It's a deference that I have for you. I can love you as a brother and sister because we are brothers and sisters in Christ. It's the type of love that I share with my brother and sister, right? There's a brotherly love and then, but the deepest form of love is agape love. And agape love has to be spiritually motivated. You cannot show agape love without the spirit of God. In other words, if you're out in the world and you are not filled with the spirit of Christ, you don't even experience agape love because agape love is motivated through the spirit of God. Now, now check this out. Let's look at love the Greek word agape, the verb form of agape. It means actively doing what the Lord prefers with him by his power and direction. So what does agape or agape love look like? It means that I prefer to do what God wants to do.

I thought y'all catching this yet? Alright. When I first got married to Janice, I got married to her and I said, man, I love her. I remember telling her dad, when I asked for her hand in marriage, I said, I want to marry her because I love her. Now in retrospect, I realized I had a limited understanding ending of what love actually means because there was some selfish interest involved. One, you are fine. So I got Eros love. You're my sister in Christ. I got phileo love, but I didn't really understand agape love until we've been married for a while because I always had selfish interests that were getting in the way of agape love.

When we went out to eat where we both agreed where we want to go out to eat, there'd be times where she says, I want a salad. And I say, I got to have chicken with my salad. So let's go to Del Frisco's. But as we grow in love and as my love for her grows and as I recognize the love that she has for me, it becomes more sacrificial to others, but to me becomes my preference. So as I grow in relationship with my wife, I should begin to understand what she prefers and to do those things with her. That's agape love. As a Christian, you should get to the point to where you're not coming to service just to eat. You are coming to service because you love God and you know that he is filling you and as you are filled, you are ready to go out and fill somebody else. Isn't it interesting that when Jesus brought it down factor it down to the irreducible minimum of Christianity? He used the love agape for the love that you should have for God, but he used the same word agape for the love that you should have for your brother.

Think about that. Usually we say, I got agape love for God, but I got phileo love for you. I got limitations. And yet Jesus says that the fullest maturity expressed in a Christian's life is that they're willing to be like Christ to others. They don't even know. Jesus didn't say that the law and the prophets were not necessary. He didn't say that it wasn't necessary to have the laws to have the foundations that were written in the commandments. What he was saying is that the motivation behind the commandments that God gave and the motivation behind the prophecies for told were not self-serving. They were all rooted in love. If your motivation for being a Christian is not rooted in a deep agape love for God and others, you will never understand the value of the Christian life. The reason why there are so many frustrated people.

That are Christians is because there're still living for God to get. The reason why there are so many frustrated marriages is because you're in the marriage still trying to get versus give. I dunno why I'm on this marriage thing. Stop looking for your own interest and serve the interest of your spouse and watch what happens to you.

Now, why am I telling you this? Because we've gone through one Corinthians and we've looked at all these issues that are in the church of Corinth and we're looking at what Paul is writing. And one thing you have to realize about the book or the letter of one Corinthians is Paul begins by saying, Hey, this is what I love about you. And he ends it by saying, this is what I love about you. So he sandwiches all that He talks about in between the statements of love. And here's what's interesting about one Corinthians. We have to look at it and go, why would Paul talk about all this stuff? Why is it important

To have sexual morality? Why is it important to have unity in the body of Christ? Why is it important to have boundaries? Why is it important to practice generosity? Why is all of this important? And Paul reiterates to the church at Corinth, what Jesus reiterated to the Sadducees and Pharisees and that is this. He says, you can do all the stuff that I told you to do. You can prophesy, you can exercise the gifts of the spirit. You can stay away from sexual immorality. You can stay away from idol idolatry and pagan worship, but if it is not rooted in a deep love for God and other people, you are just going through the motions and your life will not be fruitful. Paul says, at the root of your Christian life, it has to be rooted in a deep sense of awareness that God loves you unconditionally. And it is that understanding that while I was yet a sinner, Christ died for me and greater love as no man than this that he would lay down his life is that revelation that leads me to love him back. We love him because what he first loved us, my response to God, my willingness to do what he asks me to do is an understanding that I didn't have it together in my life, but he loved me regardless and because everything that I do, I do out of love for Jesus.

I give because I love him. I serve because I love him. Oh my

Goodness.

The fundamental problem that led to all the crazy things in Corinth was an overemphasis on self. Think about this. Think about all the things that we talked about, a personal preference for preachers. Remember we talked about celebrity preachers? At the root of that was that people in the community of Corinth preferred the preacher that I want to hear the case of incest in the church where nobody said anything. Paul says the reason why this is happening and it is unaddressed, he said, is because you're arrogant and you're boasting what is arrogant and boasting. It means that you have this selfish reason why you're not addressing the sin. One is you're either priding yourself on being gracious or you're so proud that you don't want to reveal that you're dealing with the same thing. Jesus. Number three, suing one another. Paul says, the reason why you're suing one another is because you won't humble yourself. Take the L, lose the money for the unity of the brethren. And the reason why you're suing people is because you owe me. And what's interesting in the church is there can be many divisions within the church and it's not based, you're not going to court, but people are suing one another spiritually.

You owe me for what I did for you. The reason why there are marriage problems, Paul talks about it. He says, because you think your body is yours, he says, your body is not your own husbands. Your body belongs to your wife, wife, your body belongs to your husband. What are you talking about? That's called agape love. And as long as you are worried about yourself and you think you own yourself, it's a selfish ambition eating meats off the idols. What did Paul say was the root of that problem? He goes, some of you are elevating your personal liberties over the fact that you're creating a stumbling block for your brother and sister. Selfish interest, the Lord's Supper. And they were having issues with the Lord's supper because there were those, the wealthy were coming into service early and they were drinking up all the wine and eating all the bread. And he said, some of y'all are getting drunk off the wine. And he said, but the greatest problem with what's happening is that you are leaving no wine and bread for when the poor come in. So the poor cannot participate in the Lord's supper because y'all are so greedy.

Self-interests, spiritual gifts. The reason why they were going buck wild with spiritual gifts is because in the service people were popping up. They said, I got this gift. I got something to say. I don't know why I just did that, but is I just feel like that's that type of person. I got something to say. I got the gift of prophecy. And so they wanted everyone to be quiet while they gave their word. Some got up and they said, well, I got the gift of tongue. Some say I got a word of knowledge. And Paul said, shut up. He said, you got to submit yourself to one another. Why? Because your gift is not more important than your love, which actually will lead you to humility. The scripture says that your gift will make room for itself. A lot of people are trying to make room for themselves to exercise their gifts. The reason why all these divisions and factions were plaguing the church of Corinth is because of selfish ambition and motivation. And remember the cultural context in which they were in It was Corinth. Corinth was full of what? Sexual immorality and idolatry,

The epitome of self-love is unrestrained sexual appetite and the worshiping idols made by the hands of man, right? And it permeated the church. And the church was, they came to know the Lord as babies. And Paul said, that's all right because when I was a child, I spoke like a child. I felt like a child. I did childish things. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. I became a man. I became fully mature. And then what does he say? To move from immaturity to maturity is a revelation of the irreducible minimum that everything I do is motivated out of love. As we've gone through Corinthians, you've probably noticed that there's not much difference between the Corinthian church and the capital C Church today. We're still dealing with celebrity preachers, with sexual immorality, with people suing one another and having aunt with one another with the overemphasis on personal gifts versus how do my gifts actually edify the body of Christ? If your motivation for preaching is just to get another clip for you to post, your motivation is off. And I'm talking to the capital C church. We preach to edify the body of Christ.

What does edification mean? Build up. So every message that I preach, I go to the scripture, I say, Lord, how is this edifying? How is this building up the body of Christ? Here's what Alan F. Johnson wrote. He says, love distinctly Christian. Love is inseparable from the revelation and acts of God centered in the coming life, suffering, teachings, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. Christian Love then takes on the shape of the Christ's story and becomes the CE quote of authentic Christian existence in the world. It is therefore christological, cruciform and communal in nature. The preeminent sign who paid attention to this, that the spirit of God is present and freely operating is love within the Christian community and through it to the world. This love is above all else. Zealously concerned with the interest and welfare of the other, going beyond mere concern. This love identifies with the other, taking up the interest in the concerns of the neighbor and making them one's own.

This is precisely what God's love expressed through Jesus Christ to us has modeled. Paul's great hymn of love calls for this very understanding of the importance, characteristics and function of love in the Christian community. The reason why we've done this series is to bring us to this culmination that if we're going to be a church that doesn't go into the way of Corinth, we've got to understand that the irreducible minimum of Christianity boils down to how you love God and how you love others. If you are going to boil down what is the intention, what is the root, what is the value of what God intends for my life? It is this that we love him with agape love and the way we demonstrate that we love God is by loving others the way that he loves us.

Thank you.

Paul says that you can preach all you want, you can have all the eloquence, you can have all the spiritual gifts, you can have all the right things, but if you're simply seeking holiness, you will never be holy. But when you seek the holy one, it is inevitable that you become holy. Spiritual formation is not about spiritual formation. Spiritual formation is about inner transformation. I think John sums it up the best one. John chapter four, verse seven, beloved let us love one another. For love is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.

Anyone who does not love God, who does not love does not know God because God is love. And this the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. And this is love. Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this, we know that we abide in him and he and us because he has given us his spirit and we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus, the Son of God, God abides in him and He and God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love and whoever abides in love, abides in God and God abides in him by this is love perfected with us so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment because as He is, so also, are we in this world?

There is no fear in love. There is no fear in love. There is no fear in love. I don't care what they did to you. I don't care how they manipulated love. I don't care how they came at you, how they described it. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear for fear. It has to do with punishment. And whoever fears has not been perfected in love, we love because he first loved us. If anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot Love God whom he has not seen

And this commandment we have from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother. How do we know that we are motivated by the love of God and growing in spiritual maturity? How do we know that is when your life looks like the love of God? What's the love of God look like? It's generous. God so loved the world that he God's love is sacrificial, greater love have no man in this that he would what? Lay down his life.

God's love is other focused. He took no thought for himself, but took on the form of a servant. God's love is unconditional, meaning that nothing that you do or don't do changes the level of love that he has for you. My performance doesn't change the love of God. No. Then why am I doing all this stuff? Because I love him. You know that me not having an affair is not making me love my wife anymore because I love my wife. I'm not having an affair. The rules and regulations within a marriage covenant is not what makes you married. What keeps and makes you married is your love for one another. That is agape love. How do people end up in extramarital affairs? They move away from agape love. They serve their own interests. And I know there are people in here and watching online that you know what I'm talking about because you've lived this.

And I'm telling you what Christ is saying is get back to the irreducible minimum of Christianity. Stop worrying about the complexities of start here because if you start here and you try to solve the equation, you're going to be here forever trying to figure out what does this mean? No, no, no. Start at the irreducible minimum of Christianity. Love God and love people the way God loves you, and I promise you everything will work out. Why? Because once you figure out the root, you plug the root into the equation. Yes, and you find the value. When you plug love into everything that you read in scripture, you realize, ah, there it is. I want to close with this. God is calling us to practice agape love and for some, and we just challenge you. You need to practice agape love by changing your motivation behind why you're a Christian. Realize that it's not about your personal desires, but it's out of a pure love for God. For some of you, you need to practice love and your morality denying your sexual desires and your personal interests, not because you're trying to follow some rules. Why? Because you recognize that your body was given to you by God and he owns it. Therefore, I will keep it holy. For some you need to practice love and generosity.

Your wallet has got a grip on you and God is calling you to let it go. Well, what are they going to do with it? It's not about day. It's about him.

If you view generosity as ROI or some kind of business investment, you're missing it. It's about Jesus said, we're your treasures. There shall your heart be. Also, God is looking for someone us to practice agape love, generous, sacrificial, others, focused unconditional love with our pocketbooks. For some you need practice love by humbling yourself and serving your spouse. You've been living with Eros love, maybe even phileo love, and God is saying, listen, I know you prefer to go to outback, but she likes Hawaiian bros. Go to Hawaiian bros. For some, you need to practice love by signing up to serve no longer being a consumer. I'm not talking about those who have just been saved or your brand new Christian. I'm talking about for those of us who have been here a while, you are full. Your plate is full. Have you ever seen somebody go through a buffet line and you're like, what? You know you can go back. Well, I'm just trying to get it all at one time. It's a free buffet. You can get as much as you want. You can go pass through as much as you want. The only reason why your plate should be full is because when you get to the table, you're giving it to others at the table

And signing up to serve in areas that you would not naturally serve in parking lot kids. Well, I'm want kids. Maybe God's going to try to teach you something. Well, it's hot outside. Jesus walked in the desert. You want to be Christlike? Oh man, that ain't even one of my notes, and I'm calling on some men, some men, some brothers. Well, I'm just, we need some men to step up to the plate and serve. Lemme say it again. We need some men to step up and serve. You got everything that you need. We need some men on the prayer teams, in the parking lots, in the kids' ministry, opening doors. For some of us, you need to practice love and joining a group and be in a community. You cannot live life in isolation. Stop. Well, I'm just an introvert. We are shaped most by what we love most. We are a reflection of what we love. We are shaped most by what we love most. What do you love most? What is your conversation about most? You can tell a lot about what somebody loves, about what they talk about most. If you always talking about football, you love football. If you always talk about basketball, you love basketball,

But I promise you, you spend time with someone who loves Jesus, they're going to tell you about Jesus. They're going to say something, listen, my mom loves Jesus. She will give glory to God over finding a penny on the ground, and I'm not even lying, man. The Lord knew that thing was $6 and one penny and I had $6. Look at God. God is calling us back to the basics. This entire series boils down to this. Forget the six weeks that I preached. If you don't get this, you throw the rest away because if you do the rest without getting this, it's just performance and performance is not going to save you. Love for God and others is going to, it's going to save you. Could you stand on your feet as we've done with every

Message? We've been taking a time of pausing and reflection, and I know some are ready to go, but I implore you not to. I implore you to wait and Ines this word. Just take a minute or two to injustice this word. I ask the Lord, Lord, what are the ways that we can as a church community, make sure that we're not going to fall into the ditches that we found in one Corinthians? And I really felt the Lord impressed on me that there are three areas that the Lord is challenging us as a church. One is in community, getting together with brothers and sisters in Christ in circles, not just in rows but in circles so we can benefit from one another. And so I encourage you groups, sign up starts next week, next week, and then the eighth. We're going to have groups sign up after the week of the eighth group start. I implore you to practice agape love by getting into a group, but there are two other things that the Lord said that impressed on my heart is one is serving and the other is generosity. Now, I'm not going to pressure you.

That's not my job. I'm going to follow the principle that Paul writes about in two Corinthians, which he says, no one should give out a compulsion, but everyone must decide in their heart. Now, here's what he said. Everyone must decide. So if you say, well, I, you missed it. Everyone must decide in their heart, for God loves a what? Cheer, forgiver. You know that I love, I absolutely love surprising my wife with things. I like buying her stuff. I get so much joy. I get more joy than she does. She's like, I'm not into that. I'm like, I'm into it.

I'm into it. Why? Because I love my wife so deeply that sacrifices that you may think are sacrifices are not sacrifices to me When I jump, if somebody pull out a gun, I'd jump in front of the bullet and catch it and others would say, man, that's such a sacrifice to me. I'd be like, no, duh. That's exactly what I'm going to do. It ain't a sacrifice to me because I'm deep in love with her, but you know what? That love is based out of God's love for me. You got to serve out of the abundance of a revelation that God loves you and because he loves me, I'm going to love someone else the way he loves me. I'm going to give to others the way he gave to me. So this is what we're going to do. We're going to have a time of just a short time of pause and reflection and worship, and this is what I want you to do. I want you to listen to the Holy Spirit and I want you to respond to him. The reason why I put these QR codes on there is because I don't want you to leave. Let me pause that. I don't take myself out of the equation. My prayer for you is that you don't leave here without responding to the word. If that means, if you haven't been serving, I encourage you to serve.