Good morning. If I haven't met you before, my name is Michael. I'm one of the pastors here. Uh, I'd love to hear you guys sing. Uh, we gotta work on our clapping a little bit, but, um, you know, practice guys keep coming every Sunday. Keep practicing. Right. All right. Have you got a Bible? Turn with me to First John chapter four. First John, chapter four. If you are new with us, we are really thankful that you're worshiping with us today. Thanks for thanks for being here. Whether you're with a friend or a family member or maybe it's your first day being here, thanks for being here. Um, so typically we march through books of the Bible. So we start at the beginning of a book in verse by verse all the way through it, which is what we've been doing here with First John. We will actually finish first John at the end of June. Um, but we've spent more weeks in chapter four than any other chapter in this book because it has, um, really significant things. Not that the rest of it's not significant. It is as well. However, um, does anybody know what the second half of chapter four has been about? Yes. Love and specifically loving. Who? Loving others. Loving one another. Right. And so that's always a dangerous thing. I never know if you're going to get that one right or not. And you did so you better than you're clapping. All right. Um, I'm sorry. I just was standing in the back and I heard clapping and then it stopped really suddenly there. Guys, I don't know what happened. Okay. Um, okay, enough about your clapping, all right? We're talking about loving one another today. I'm sorry. Okay, so loving one another has come up over and over and over and over and over. And that idea sounds great. How many of you are for loving one another? Okay, good for you. All right. If you didn't raise your hand, um, but, uh, it sounds really great, but sometimes loving one another is really hard. A lot of times, loving one another is really hard. And the difficult thing about loving people is probably the people part. People can be really difficult to love. Now there's a popular quote often attributed to Gandhi, who obviously was not a Christian, but he said something like this I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians. I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians. Now some of you go, well, well, he wasn't a believer. He just doesn't get it. Now, how many of you, though, maybe have heard somebody say, yeah, I like your Christ and I'm a Christian, but I'm not so sure I like Christ's church. Now, when I say like the church and I say God's people, I'm going to use those terms interchangeably because the church is not this building. The church is the people of God. So as I say those words throughout this morning, I just want you to understand I'm referring to the same thing. Okay? You see, there are lots of people who claim to love Christ but really struggle to love his church. People who call themselves Christians, who say religious faith is really important to me, but they don't really think it's necessary to be around his people. We saw kind of the height of this during Covid, right when we were trying to determine what's essential, what's not essential services. And one of the things that got quickly cut out across the world was like, well, surely being around Christians on a Sunday, that's not essential, really. I think our text today would say otherwise. But if someone were to say, I love God but not his people, Or I love God, but I don't think it's really essential to my faith to love his church. What does that say about somebody? What might it say about you? What is a lack of love for God's people reveal about you? What does it say about your faith in God if you don't love God's people? Let's see what God says through John in First John chapter four, verses twenty and twenty one, just two verses this morning. So I'd only go two hours. Okay, here we go. 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. Now extremely blunt words from John. Right. No sugar coating this at all. Not messing around. But he's actually not saying anything new here because he's used this phrase multiple times throughout this letter. If anyone says if anyone says if anyone says or something like it, and the whole idea is like, oh, if you say this thing, but your lifestyle looks differently, watch out. Let me give you a few examples really quickly. I'm going to give you four of these examples. First John chapter one, verse six says this. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. Then verse eight of chapter one, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Chapter two, verse six, whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. And then chapter two, verse nine, whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. So he's saying, look, if you speak of having fellowship with God, but you walk in darkness, you do not practice the truth. This doesn't line up if you speak that like, oh, I don't really have sin in my life. You deceive yourself and the truth of God is not in you. If you speak of I abide in Christ. I make my home and reside in Christ. Well, then you ought to walk in the same way in which you're talking. If you speak of being in the light, but you hate your brother, you are still in the darkness. What John is trying to get at over and over in this book is that your words and your practices need to align. They need to align. It is not good for your speech and your life to be misaligned. And John has done this, given us multiple tests throughout this letter, like he's given us doctrinal tests and moral tests, and he's given us this love test over and over and over because he wants us to get it right. And he's going to dive really deeply into this love test today by giving us the opposite example of it. So look back at verse twenty. It says, if anyone says, I love God, some of you, if you have a different translation of the Bible, it might say, whoever claims to love God. So people in this setting were claiming that they loved God, either with their words verbally or with their life. Now, there's a lot of ways that people in our culture today can claim that they love God. They could say it, oh, I love God. Or they could say, oh, well, I love God because I go to church, or I love God because I pray before bed, or I love God, I say the Lord's Prayer before the game, I love God. I go to Hobby Lobby and eat at chick fil A, right? I, I love God, I repost Christian things on social media. I love God. I watch a church's live stream. I love God like I listen to podcasts from five different pastors each week. There's a lot of ways that we could claim that we love God, and many people in our world claim to love God, but John is about to expose some of them as counterfeits. Because of how they treat other people. Back to verse twenty. If anyone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. John is literally calling people liars if their life claims that they love God but they hate their brothers. Now I'm going to make a big assumption here that none of you walked in today, or most of you didn't walk into this room today going, I hate a lot of people. Okay. Because when we think of hate, we think that's something that other people do, right? That's those people. And I'm thinking that maybe we think that because we probably have a misunderstanding or there's some cultural confusion about what hate actually is. Because if we had a spectrum here, most people would think of of hate as like this seething fury. I'm enraged. I want to harm somebody. Okay. But then on this end, our culture might say, well, you must hate me because you disagree with me. You must hate me because you don't affirm my lifestyle and you see how wide that spectrum is, right? Oh, I'm enraged and I want to hurt you. I disagree with you. Now, I'm not going to spend much time over here because I don't I don't think this is hate at all. Like you can love somebody really well and disagree with them. You can love somebody really well and not affirm their lifestyle. Okay. But I don't want you to just think of this like seething rage when you think of hate, either. So what I want us to do is I want us to look like throughout a lot of the Bible this morning. What what is this idea of hate? And then what does John mean by this? So this specific word here in verse twenty is a word in Greek, and it's where we get the word misogynist from somebody who hates women, right? It's this I detest something, I disregard it, I have a strong aversion toward it. Now, the tense of this word is if someone keeps on hating, it's this ongoing thing, not just a fleeting thought of like, oh, I don't like that person right now. In our redeemed minds, we want the Lord to even take those fleeting thoughts away. Alright? But what John is trying to get at, like, there's this like habitual lifestyle where you're disregarding and detesting other people is this strong dislike for the things of God and for his people. Now, generally, I'm going to just give you some general thoughts about what the Bible says about hate. The book of Ecclesiastes says there's a time to love and a time to hate. All right. Okay, well, this is weird because he's saying, I don't love God. If I if I hate, but Ecclesiastes is saying there's a time to do that. There are certain things that God hates, and he's justified in his hatred because he's holy, he hates religiosity. He hates wrongdoing and hypocrisy and lies. He hates divorce and violence and idolatrous practices, again, because of his holiness and his justice. Scripture would say that foolish people hate discipline. Foolish people hate peace. Foolish people hate knowledge. The scriptures would tell us that Christians are to abhor what is evil or hate what is evil, and cling to what is good. So we're even told as Christians, okay, we're supposed to hate certain things. We're to hate what's evil, but cling to what is good. And then we've heard it in first John from the mouth of Jesus. Even the world's actually going to hate you because it hated him first. So there's a lot of this talk about what hate is, and it still feels like, well, that's still kind of abstract. What are we talking about here? What I want to do is go all the way back to Genesis, and I'm going to give you three examples in Genesis for how we're kind of introduced a little bit to hate. All right. I don't have time to go into all the examples, but these are three family relationships where hate comes out. Okay. First one's going to be Joseph and his brothers in Genesis chapter thirty seven, verse five through eight says this. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him, Joseph more than all his brothers, they what? Oh, that was week, guys. Day what? They hated him and could not speak peacefully to him. Now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. He said to them, hear this dream that I've dreamed. Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field. And behold, my sheaf arose and stood upright. And behold, your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheep. Now, this may not be the best way to tell your brothers what you dreamed, right? Like, wait, oh, you were all bowing down to me? No, he actually didn't do anything wrong because this became true later. But maybe not the wisest move to tell your brothers this. So then it says, his brothers said to him, are you indeed to reign over us? Are you indeed to rule over us? So they hated him even more for his dreams and his words. So Joseph's brothers hated him because their dad loved him more than them. And he had had this dream that they didn't like the dream, so they hated him. Now, many of you know what happens after this. They get so angry. They're so they hate him so much that they couldn't speak kindly of him. They throw him in a pit. They sell him into slavery. They turn their backs on their brother. This is kind of the first time we start to see like, what this hate is like. Oh, it's it's turning your back on something. Now let's read about two more brothers, Esau and Jacob. Now, Esau hated Jacob, but because of the blessing with his excuse me of the blessing which his father, with which I can't read. This morning his father had blessed him. And Esau said to himself, the days of mourning for my father are approaching. Then I will kill my brother Jacob. But the words of Esau, her older son, were told to Rebecca, their mom. So she sent and called Jacob her younger son, and said to him, behold, your brother. Esau comforts himself about you by planning to kill you. Now therefore, my son, obey my voice. Arise, flee to Laban, my brother in Haran, and stay with him a while until your brother's fury turns away, until your brother's anger turns away from you and he forgets what you have done. Then I will send and bring you here. Why should I be bereft of you both in one day? So what's happening here? Two brothers. One of them stole the birthright. It's. It's just a mess. And the other one's jealous, and he hates him so much that he's willing to kill his own brother. Well, mom finds out, and when mom finds out, she's like, hey, you, you got you got to go somewhere else until until his anger or fury or hate turns away. So he loved his brother, but now he is turned away from his brother, and now his brother needs to go away until his hate turns back around. So you get this turning aspect. One more example here. Um, this is Jacob. Later when he's trying to, he he's going to get married and he wants to marry one lady, but he gets tricked into marrying another one. It says he loved Rachel more than Leah, so he chose one over the other and served Laban for another seven years. When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb. But Rachel was barren. So here's a guy saying, oh, I love you, but I hate you. I'm going to turn to you, but turn away from you. Because this idea, this picture of hate we get here in Genesis is a deliberate turning away from deliberately turning away, intentionally turning your back on something in order to choose something else, choosing one person over another person. So maybe not just this seething rage, but this gentle yet firm rejection of another person. I'm going to give you one New Testament example, Luke chapter fourteen. This is Jesus talking. And listen to what Jesus says. And if anyone comes to me. So if you want to follow Jesus, listen and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters. Yes, and even his own life. He cannot be my disciple. Now that's confusing, right? Wait, Jesus is saying like, if I want to follow him, I have to hate my family and hate my own, even my own life. What? That doesn't that doesn't make sense. This idea of hate here is to love something less by comparison, to love something less by comparison. This is what Jesus was saying. I want your love for me to be so great as a disciple that when other people look at how much you love me and they start comparing that to how you love other people, it's going to seem like you hate other people. Now, is he telling people like, hey, if you want to be my disciple, you need to be furiously wanting to harm your family and yourself. Of course not. That's not what he's saying at all. But he's saying, I want your love for me to be so great in comparison, it's going to look like hate all your other relationships because of how much you love me. So biblically, what is hatred toward another person? To turn away from someone because you love something more. To turn away from something because you love something more. You love another person more. You love your own pleasure more. You love your own comfort more. You love your own lifestyle more. Oh, I'm going to turn my back on something else or someone else because I love this more. I hate this thing. Jesus said, look, I want you to hate what is evil. Cling to what is good. Okay, now I'm going to give you an illustration of this. And I'm not trying to minimize hate, okay? But how many of you moms have ever cooked something for your kids? And you put it on the table because it's a vegetable and they go, ah, and they turn their face away from it really quickly. Anybody, any mom's ever been there before? All right, kids, look at your mom when they're raising their hand. Don't do that. Okay. I don't like the broccoli. And they literally turn away from it, right? Like, has there ever been a point in your life where you saw another person and you had that type of aversion to them? You're in dangerous waters. Have you ever been driving down the road in the middle of a day, and you saw a person with a different skin color and turned a different direction? That's hate. You ever heard somebody speak in a different language and rolled your eyes? Hate. Now maybe let's hit a little closer to home. Have you ever been walking through our lobby? And you look up and you see a person walking through the lobby, and all of a sudden you're like, ah, I got to go to the bathroom because I don't want to run into that person. and you've turned away from somebody in our own congregation because you didn't want to have that convo. Be careful. Watch out. And I think this is what John's trying to get to here. He's trying to get not just like, oh, we don't hate people out in the world. Now. Should we hate people out in the world? Of course not. We should love like our love for people shouldn't be limited to just Christians. Jesus is really clear. Love your enemies, right? It's way easier to love the people in the church than than your enemies. Like, do you love the people that bear the image of God? Do you love image bearers of God? So that's everybody. We're all made in the image of God. But I think what John's getting at to here is like something more narrow. Because what does he say? If anyone says, I love God and hates his brother. I think this text is referring specifically to brothers and sisters in Christ, those of us in the church together. Where do I get this from? Let's look at the context before and after chapter four. So we're going to look at a couple verses in chapter three and a couple verses in chapter five to help make this point. First John three thirteen through sixteen says, do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. Now, if he's just talking about generally the world here, that would be weird. Do not be surprised world that the world hates you. He's talking specifically about Christians. Do not be surprised, brothers, Christians that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. Not just like vaguely brothers, but the brothers, the Christians. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. By this we know love that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. So coming into chapter four, in chapter three, we've got multiple times like love the brothers, love the brothers. And then in chapter five, which we'll get to next week, I'm not going to spend much time here, but chapter five, verse one, says this. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. So you're a believer if you've been born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves whoever has been born of him. So who is he telling Christians to love those who have been born of God? Other Christians. So chapter four is sandwiched in between this. So I think what John is doing is saying, hey, don't hate the people in the church. Now, we're not saying you can hate other people. Jesus has made that clear. That's not you don't do that. But John's directing this toward. Don't hate the people in the church, you know, we can we get to choose what church we go to these days. Early church didn't have that opportunity. It wasn't like first, second, and third Baptist Church of Philippi or Ephesus, right? They didn't have that opportunity. And so it's like, oh, this is the church that I go to. So it doesn't matter who's in that church, I don't get the option of loving some of those people in the church and not loving other people in church. But we think like, oh, I can go to any church now. And if this church is two thousand people, then that means I don't have to love every one of them in the church. Mhm, mhm. Yeah. We might get to choose what church we go to, but when you choose this church, you get the whole family to love. Even the crazy uncles, right? The whole family. So what does it say about you if you're turning away from certain brothers and sisters? Go back to verse twenty, if anyone says, I love God and hate and hates his brother, he is a liar. What we're going to see here is hate, for God reveals a couple different things. Number one, hate for God reveals hypocrisy. John is saying, if you claim Christ but your life doesn't prove your claim, you are a liar. Now, this is not the first time that John has talked about liars. In fact, first John chapter one verse ten says, if we say we have not sinned, we make him God a liar, and his word is not in us. Chapter two, verse four. Whoever says, I know him, but does not keep his commandments, is a what liar, and the truth is not in him. Now, I thought Jake did a great job early on in first John kind of summarizing John's purpose by saying that what John is trying to do in this whole letter is to make Christians confident and make liars uncomfortable, because he's saying, oh, there's going to be a lot of tests to show. Is your faith actually genuine? And my hope is that all of us who have heard sermons in First John, we've questioned like, is my faith genuine? Is it is it authentic? And so now some of you that should bolster tremendous confidence. Oh, like, yes, I'm getting Jesus right. I'm loving people. Like, this is wonderful. It makes me confident to stand before the judgment seat one day, like Matthew talked about, like, oh, I can be confident to stand before God because I'm passing these tests because of what Christ is doing in me. But for some of you in this room, as you've asked these questions and you've taken these tests, it should make you feel uncomfortable. So. John Stott once said, every claim to love God is a delusion if it is not accompanied by unselfish and practical love for our brothers and sisters. Proverbs twenty six would say it this way whoever hates disguises himself with his lips and harbours deceit in his heart. So what does hate looks like? Hate looks like deception. You're disguising yourself verbally. You're harboring deceit. Internally. You're putting on a disguise. You're putting on a mask. And what is that called? Hypocrisy. You're playing a game before Almighty God and he's going, this isn't a game. You say one thing, you do another. Your lingo doesn't align with your life. Your life doesn't match. Now, how many of you have played with a kid at some point? Or maybe you played early on the matching game, right? Easy matching game. There's a bunch of cards laid out. You flip one card over, then you got to flip another card and you hope you get a match. It's the one game that I think you get worse at the older you get. You thought you were awesome at six years old, then you get older and you got a lot of things on your mind. You're terrible at the memory game, right? But you start flipping cards over and you go, oh, that one matches. That one doesn't match. Oh, let's flip a card over. Oh, I made a social media post about God, and then I made a seething post about somebody else that doesn't match. Oh, I raised my hands in worship, but I gossip about somebody sitting across the room that doesn't match. Oh, I sing loudly to God in here, but I silently slander church leaders. That doesn't match. This is what John is saying. Like hatred for God's people reveals hypocrisy. But not just hypocrisy. Number two, it reveals incompatibility. Incompatibility. 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. So what John is doing is he's making this argument from lesser to greater. Hey, if you can't love people that you can see, how in the world are you going to love a God that you can't see? An inability to love Christians that you can see is a demonstration that you surely cannot love the God that you cannot see. And that word cannot means cannot. It's impossible. It it doesn't line up. These two things don't go together. It's incompatible to turn your back on God's church and claim you love God simultaneously. Yeah. guys, this is the norm in our culture. I was looking at a Gallup poll from a while ago, but it said, for those people who claim to be Christians, fifty six percent of them said they attend church once per month. Seldom or never. Fifty six percent over half the people who claim to be Christians said, oh, I only gather with God's church once per month or less. George Barna did a survey. It said the average church goer attends worship services one point six times per month. Guys, I think John would hear those stats and we go, oh, this cannot be. That doesn't line up. That doesn't match because it is incompatible. If you claim Christ yet consistently choose getting things done at your house on a Sunday over prioritizing the household of faith. It is incompatible if you claim Christ, yet consistently choose sleep over resting in Christ with God's people. It is incompatible if you claim Christ, yet consistently choose gathering with your kids travel team instead of gathering with God's people. It is hypocritical. It is incompatible to communicate that you love God, but don't show it in a love for his church. Your love for God is a fraud. If you fail to love God's people, your love for God is a fraud. If you fail to love God's people, hating the people of God shows that your love for God is a hoax. If you are consistently turning your back on other people, it shows that you're a liar and your life doesn't make sense. Now some of you are like, oh, this is that's a lot. Let's look at verse twenty one. And this commandment we have, we have from him. Whoever loves God must also love his brother. So there's this, I don't want to say a spin, but God, what Paul's do or not, Paul John is doing here is he's saying the opposite. Like, oh, if you say you love God and hate your brother, you're a liar. But let me tell you what you should be doing. I love for God's people reveals that man, you love God. If you're proactively and sacrificially gathering with God's people and you're sacrificing for them, it shows like, oh, you love God. It says, this commandment is from him. Who's the him? Jesus. John thirteen thirty four through thirty five. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you, so you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you're my disciples if you have love for one another. And then in chapter fifteen, this is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. Oh, if you love me, you must love your brother, right? It's an imperative. It's not optional. It's not a suggestion. It's not a recommendation. It's not just a good idea. But I think God has to give us an imperative here. Because it's not easy, guys. It's not easy to love other people. But let me tell you some good news in Titus chapter three. Listen, for we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days and malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. This is who we were before Christ. But now hold on. Listen to this. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us. Not because of works done by us in righteousness. So it's not just like, oh, I gotta love more people today. I just gotta do it. No, you don't have the ability to do it. Listen to this. But according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Like, how in the world are we going to love other people? It's only through the righteousness of Christ. That's it. You're not going to leave here today and go, oh, I guess I got to love people better. You can't pull it off. I can't pull it off without your heart being transformed by the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Loving God's people isn't easy, but it's also not optional. If you love God. Let me explain it this way. So I have four kids, three older boys, and then our youngest four year old little girl named Eliza. Eliza has this inseparable buddy named Bunbun that she carries around all the time. Yesterday she was at two baseball games for her brothers carrying around Bunbun. She'll be here at the eleven o'clock service. My guest. I haven't seen her this morning because I was here early, but my guess is she'll have bunbun with her. She loves bun. Bun. Bun bun smells terrible. Terrible. Dingy bun. Bun. Can't do anything for anybody. Now, what if we said, oh, it's dirty, it's dingy. We just need to get rid of bun. Bun. Now, some of you moms and grandmas, you better not get rid of bun bun, right? But what if we thought, well, woman's not really easy to love because it smells so bad. It looks different. Like it's not what it was four years ago when she got it. Like nobody in their right mind who loves Eliza would want to get rid of bun. Bun. Would want to turn their back on bun bun. Why? Because we love Eliza deeply. There have been multiple times at our home where I yell and I say, stop what you're doing! We're all in a bun bun hunt because sleep will not go well if we don't find bun bun to the point that Eliza one goes, daddy, shall we call the cops to look for bun bun? No, we got this girl. We can do this, right? But we're not at all going to get rid of bun. Bun because we love Eliza. We love her so much. That's not even an option. And I believe what God is telling us through John. If you love me, you'll love my people, too. You won't disregard them when they look differently. You won't detest them when they stink. You won't struggle to love them when they can't love you back. Because not loving God's people isn't an option because they're tied too tightly to their God. There is an inseparable connection between loving God and His church, even when it's hard. And if you want to prove your love for God, love God's people. Authenticate your love for God by loving God's people. Authenticate your love for God by loving God's people. How do you do this? I'm going to give you two quick applications. One. Confess your hate. Confess where you've turned away from God. Confess your hate. Where you've turned away from others who are different than you from other ethnicities and socioeconomic classes and people that don't align with you politically and where you've turned your back on different generations. Those millennials, right? Come on. Like confess that to the Lord. Confess where you've hated and turned away from one of God's people, God's church. So confess your hate. But secondly, turn toward God. Here's the crazy thing. What do we know? That crazy word about turning away from something and turning to something? It's called what? Repentance. Oh, I've turned away. But now I need to turn back to God. Turn back to God. Get back in his church. Prioritize gathering with believers. Turn toward your brother, your sister in Christ. Turn back toward your spouse or your children. This church. Some of you. Before you take communion in a second, you need to stop and not take communion. And you need to go and be reconciled to a brother or sister in this church. Please don't take communion. If you need to walk out of here and you need to walk up to a brother or sister and say, hey, I'm really sorry. You may not even know this, but I've. I've harbored hate against you. I've turned away from you, and I'm sorry. Will you forgive me? What what what a great picture of the gospel. Don't take communion before you do that. Make a phone call this afternoon. Write a letter. Please don't send a text. Show up. Engage like. Go through membership. Like. Serve this church. Give sacrificially. Let me tell you a story. And I'm going to end here Well, the story of what this could look like. So I was meeting with a guy a couple weeks ago, and we were talking about what his life was like before he before Christ radically changed his life. And before Christ. I often hear stories of, oh, I was self-centered and I was arrogant. Maybe I was an addict. There's just a lot of things you hear. And I asked this guy, tell me about your life before Christ, and he said I was a hateful, racist. And he said, but then God changed my life. And in college, he was like, I felt like God was calling me to go on a mission trip overseas. And I was still growing in my walk with the Lord. And he was with salt company in another church. And there was a lot of people going on overseas mission trips. So they chose for him, like where he should go. And the one place that he was chosen to go was the people that he hated the most. And he gets on this plane sort of reluctantly. And he gets out of the plane to see a massive city. And as he sees this massive city of people that he is hated for his whole life, he said, Michael, you will never believe that. I began to look upon them with compassion, like sheep without a shepherd. And my heart was radically changed by God. And now this person has become one of the greatest advocates in our church for overseas missions. That's what our God can do. So if you think I can't pull this off, I don't know how to do this. You can't. But our God sure can. And when you experience the love of Christ, you want to extend it to other people. Guys, that's the kind of church we want to be that loves God deeply. And other people in this church experience that same kind of love. Amen. Let's pray. Father, I'm so thankful, so so thankful. For your redemption. For your reconciliation that we will never be reconciled to a brother and sister until we have been reconciled to you, a holy God. God, we were once enemies. But you've brought us close as friends. You've adopted us as your own children. God. Thank you. Help our church. Help me to love other people well, the way that you have loved us. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.