Latest / Wesley at FSU & TSC / Rooted: Love People | Sunday Service | September 15, 2024

Transcript

Rooted: Love People | Sunday Service | September 15, 2024 · Wesley at FSU & TSC

• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: I want to give a message this morning, centering on this rooted thing.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Go back real quick, Garren, to that blue slide.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because we've been talking through for the last couple weeks about being rooted.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: The very first week, we talked about being firmly planted where we are, be where your feet are.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about all of that.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: We then talked about how love is the foundation of it.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Last week we talked about scripture being the root.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And this week I want to take the love thing one more step.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Look at your friend to the right and say, love more one more step.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: I screwed that up.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Say one more step.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Look to your left and say, I want to love people.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, go to that next slide, Garen.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I want to talk about this morning.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Love people.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the sermon.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: So all right, Ben, we're gonna get you back up here.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's it, man.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Love people.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to center us on this passage from Mark chapter 12.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Say Mark.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Mark is one of four what?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: God, okay, say it with some energy.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Come on.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Gospels, yeah.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: One of the four books in the scriptures that tell us the story of Jesus.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And this is gonna be Mark chapter 12.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Excuse me.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: One of the legal experts heard their dispute and saw how well Jesus answered them.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: He came over and asked him, which commandment is the most important of all?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus replied, The most important one is Israel, listen, our God is the one Lord.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your being and with all your mind and with all your strength.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: The second is this you will love your neighbor as yourself.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: No other commandment is greater than these.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray over the preaching of God's word.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: God, we believe that your word is a lamp into our feet and a light into our path.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: We ask that it would speak to us, that it would speak through us for the establishment of your kingdom on this earth on these campuses, here on Jefferson Street.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: That it would transform us from the inside out, God.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: That it would change us.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: God, I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be acceptable to you.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh God, you are our rock and you are our redeemer, and we love you.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: We pray this in your holy name.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: I get called old sometimes.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: I am 37.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't feel like I'm that old, but to you, 18-year-olds, you feel like I'm old.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Let me give you, for instance, this week I was texting some unnamed people that are freshman boys, and uh I was trying to set up a uh lunch with them, and I was trying to get it situated, and I was telling them, hey, like we're gonna meet here, and they were like, we're gonna walk.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, okay, cool.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is Friday.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Are you familiar with the fact that it is pouring down rain outside?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Are you familiar with the fact it's pouring down rain outside?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: L-O-L.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then they responded with a meme, being like, millennial in his text with L-O-L.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Yeah, bro, that's so true.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: I am old.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Can I indulge in this for a second, though?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I want to indulge in this second because I grew up in the 90s.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was born in '87.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh okay.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I grew up in the 90s, which uh was a fun decade to grow up in, but also, can we agree, kind of cringe now?
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you look back at the 90s.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just show you one of the songs that I used to think was the like most fire in the whole world.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is by a band called DC Talk, okay, from 1992.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is their official music video, and I just wanted to give you a sample of it.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's so nineties, bro.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's so, that's so nineties.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Man, I don't know if it's the stage lights, if it was the baggy clothes, if it's the wild drum machine, dude.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: But that is the kind of stuff that I grew up on.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember that song from a uh like a really young point of my life.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was five years old when it came out.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: I probably didn't hear it then, but I heard it in youth group later.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to just um I wanna indulge you in the lyrics of that because you probably missed it.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this is the words of the song that they just sang.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Pulling out my big black book.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a rapper, because when I need a word to find, that's where I look.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: He's talking about the dictionary.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I moved to the L's, quick, fast, in a hurry, threw off my specs, thought my vision was blurry.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Come on.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: So 90s.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: I looked again, but to my dismay, it was black and white with no room for gray.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: You see?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Ya, you see, you see, a big V stood beyond my word.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: And yo, that's when it hit me that love is a verb.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you can roll your eyes.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then I love this part.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Words come easy, but don't mean much when the words that we're saying we can't put trust in.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about love in a different light.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And if we all learn to love, it would be just right.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, tell me, haven't you heard?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Again, YA.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Love is a serious word.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, I think it's time you learned.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care what they say, I don't care what you heard the word love.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Love, love is a verb.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Come on, tell me somebody tell me what a verb is.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: You are college students.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: An action word.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, bro.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Love is a verb.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's the other thing.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Love is not just foundational, which we talked about a couple weeks ago, and and that God is defined by love.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about all those things, but love does something.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Inherently, love has to do something, it's connected to being love in the first place.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: It must do something in that way.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's the thing, it's transform transformational.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I believe that love has the ability that if it were to do something to transform the world.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And here's why I believe that because I came to be a pastor.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if I didn't believe that, I would not have done this for my job because I would, I would, something else would transform the world, like money.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've noticed, money doesn't really transform the world that much, but love has an opportunity to transform the world.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a famous quote from Martin Luther King Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: It is transformational.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is a very famous quote from him because it shows how much love can do.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the problem: if it is inactive, if it doesn't do anything, if it just sits back, it fails to transform the world.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Inactive love fails to transform the world.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we got to figure out what to do about this.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: I want to go back to this passage in Mark 12.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna start in the 28th verse.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: It'll be on the screen if you have a Bible.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: You can pull it up as well.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is uh Mark 12, 28.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: It always helps to read it three or four times, so we're gonna do that.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: One of the legal experts heard their dispute and saw how well Jesus answered them.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: He came over and asked him which commandment is the most important of all.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some translations will tell you that the legal expert is called a scribe.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, say scribe.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Scribe, yeah.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: One of the legal experts or one of the scribes heard their dispute and saw how well Jesus answered them.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the scribes, they're a religious expert, they're a legal expert, they they understand one of the things.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: The reason they're called a scribe is because they were often the ones who would copy the scriptures.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you aren't familiar, they didn't have copy machines or phones that you could scan something with, so you would literally have to write it out.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's one of the things that they did.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: They were also teachers, they were record keepers, they were copyists, they did all of these things, and they also, if you have paid attention in the scriptures before, they also had a tendency to question Jesus and come ask him things specific because they were experts in the law, and here's this man saying, Hey, I'm the son of God, meaning that he's pretty qualified, and they're starting to ask qualification questions.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: You hear this in both the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Here's an interesting thing about this scribe, though.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: He seems a little genuine.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: One of the legal experts heard their dispute and saw how well Jesus answered them.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Not like was trying to test them.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: You'll find that in other passages and say, well, he heard them and he was trying to test them.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And no, and what he it's what it says here is one of the scribes heard their dispute and saw how well Jesus answered, meaning like maybe he is qualified.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he came over and he asked him, which commandment is the most important of all.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: He came over to ask for, maybe not to try to trap him, but to say, hey, what's the most important?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, where should we put our emphasis?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Where should we put our uh interest?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus responds with something called the Shema.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Say Shema.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Shemmah, yeah.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: The Shema is a daily prayer that faithful Jews would read to themselves or pray to themselves, pray to God but themselves every single day.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: They would pray this prayer, and it comes from Deuteronomy.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, here's what Shema looks like in Hebrew, just so you know.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Hebrews read right to left.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what the Shema looks like in Hebrew, just because it's fun.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: And here's here's the thing that Shema means it means to hear or to pay attention, which is probably something we should all hear sometime.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably something in the middle of the sermon, you know.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, hear, pay attention.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's a difference between hearing and paying attention, isn't there?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a story.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: I am married to the love of my life, Allison.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: We met in sixth grade, say, uh.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: We have two kids say uh.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Six and four years old say, uh.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: I love my wife.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: I am convinced she loves me.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what she's not convinced of that I listen to her.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: I do that thing where I put my AirPods in when I'm you know working on around the house and doing something, and she'll uh she'll say something that I inevitably did not hear.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then she'll say, hello, hello, and I'll be like, Yeah, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then she'll do that thing that probably somebody has done to you at some point where they say, Are you listening?
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, uh, I heard you, and they say, Are you listening?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because the the important part is pay attention, not just hear it, verbally, like like audio go into your ears and change your eardrums, right?
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like, no, but like actually pay attention, actually listen.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's an important thing about the Shema because he's saying, pay attention, O Israel.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Here's this passage from uh Deuteronomy.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Garen, if you'll find out real quick.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you go.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Next slide.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: I put the KGJV in here so you could get those thighs in there.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that ancient Jews would pray every day.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: You can feel the chant nature of it, right?
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how Jesus responds to the scribe.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Go back to that passage there, Garen.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 29.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus replied, the most important one, when the scribe asked, What's the most important?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Listen, pay attention, don't just hear, pay attention.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord our God is the one Lord.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your being and with all your mind, with all your mind and all your strength.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the second is this, he says, You will love your neighbor as yourself.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: No other commandment is greater than these.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to hear those things together.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because he actually does something interesting.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Remember how I told you that scripture is uh the place in which we start?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's as much as love is, it's the foundation of where we come.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I told you last week that if you ever go to a church and they don't read the scripture in the church, I would invite you to choose a new church.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe come back here.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh because the scripture is so important to the work of the body of Christ.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: The scripture is so important.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And here's what Jesus is.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: When they come to him and they say, Hey, what's the most important?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: He quotes the Hebrew scriptures.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Love your Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: But guess what?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: That love your neighbor as yourself comes from a different portion.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: It actually comes from Leviticus.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: He's taking two pieces of the Hebrew practice of the prayer of the Shema and he's putting them together.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: What's the most important thing?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is Leviticus 19.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: You must not take revenge nor hold a grudge against any of your people.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, you must love your neighbor as yourself.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: What he's doing is he's connecting, and this is important, the love of God with the love of neighbor.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: They are intertwined.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: They are one.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: He's connecting the love of God with the love of neighbor, with the love of another person as one.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Loving God means to Jesus loving others.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: To put it another way, to love God's creation is to love God.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: This seems real obvious to us.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think if I were to ask any of you on the side in one of those TikTok interviews, I don't think I would ask any of you across Landis if I were to ask you a question and I would say, Don't you think we're supposed to love God and our neighbor?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you would say, Yes.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: What's the hard part?
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: Putting it into practice, bro.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like doing it.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Doing it would be the hard part.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's really easy for us to be like, yeah, no, we're supposed to love God.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, mm-hmm.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we're supposed to love our neighbor.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, if I were to ask you on Landis, hopefully you'll answer this correctly.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: What's the most important?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: You'd say, love God.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Love neighbor.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: But the hard part is putting it into practice.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Only because we're a couple days away from September 11th, which was last week, I want to share with you this story.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is a picture of Gander's uh Gander, Newfoundland's airport.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and it looks like a normal airport, except that all of those planes that you see had to land there that day at this tiny airport in this tiny town because all air traffic across North America on September 11th, 2001, was grounded.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now I shared on Wednesday that most of you weren't even alive then.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the adults in the room were you're all adults.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, okay.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: So the older adults in the room will remember this clearly.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is a really important story.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, they ended up writing a musical called Come From Away, if you're into the musical scene.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh fantastic, you can watch it on Apple TV Plus.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: But it's an amazing uh musical and it tells the story of what happened that day.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: What happened that day is they sent out radio messages to every plane that would be flying over North America, and they said, find the nearest airport and go down.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, if you're flying out from here to anywhere in Europe, you probably fly over Newfoundland.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: And in Newfoundland, they had a whole bunch of planes that were having to come into Gander Airport.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: About 7,000 people for a tiny little town.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing about September 11th that people don't necessarily remember is that we didn't know anything.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the we watched the buildings go down.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: We heard about uh the plane in Shanksville, and we did not know who did it.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, when something big like that happens, a lot of groups try to take ownership of it because they want to be the enemy, because it's good for them.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't know anything.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Planes were grounded for a while.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't like, oh, everybody go down, then we'll figure out everything's okay.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: No, we didn't trust anybody at this point.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing you gotta remember is that there were no cell phones.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's like people were using the air, the plane phones or whatever.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was really bad.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so you didn't even trust the people on your plane.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you certainly, if you were Gander Newfoundland, didn't trust the people who were on those planes that had to land.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you the story of Nick Gander.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's just fascinating.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: After a little bit of hesitancy, they started inviting in people off of those planes.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: It took about 24 hours for them to get everybody off the planes.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't have anywhere for them to stay, they didn't have any food for them.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: There were kids needing diapers, supplies.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: They also were not allowed to touch their suitcases because what's in the suitcase?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: There was no trust.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the people of Gander invited them in slowly.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: They rerouted the school buses, they put them in the airport first, and then they started putting them in the schools, they started putting them in people's homes, and slowly but surely the people of Gander offered a kind of love in the midst of a time when there was none.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: There was no love.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: I would say there was probably revenge.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: There was a desire for revenge.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: I would not say that in the heart of America at that time there was a desire for love.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: There just wasn't because we didn't trust anybody.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: And what did they do?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Is they welcomed the people into their homes.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: They gave them food to eat, they gave them diapers for their kids.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: They loved them.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Here's some quotes from some of the people who did that.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: 7,000 stranded pastors.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Shirley Brooks Jones, who was a pastor under one of the diverted planes, she said the people of Gander were so friendly, they were so open, and they were so giving.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: They took us into their homes, they took us into their hearts.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Diane Davis, who was a teacher in Gander, who helped coordinate some of the stuff, she said it was the natural thing to do.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: These people were in need, and we had the ability to help them.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's what anyone would do, isn't it?
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Canadians are different, man.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Claude Elliott, who was the mayor of Gander at the time, said, hey, we saw it as our duty to take care of these people.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't strangers to us, they were our guests.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Ozfudge, who was uh a police, he's actually featured in and come from away, said, We're Newfoundlanders, that's what we do, bro.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't say the bro part.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we do.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: I want to go back to this interaction with the scribe.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to go a little bit further.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is verse 32.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: The legal expert said to him, Well said, teacher.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: The scribe said to Jesus, Well said, teacher, you have truthfully said that God is one, and there is no other besides him.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: And to love God with all the heart, a full understanding, and of all one's strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself is much more important than all kinds of entirely burned offerings and sacrifices.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is really important.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to go back.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well said, teacher.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: You've truthfully said that God is one, and there is no other besides him.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: To love God with all the heart, a full understanding, and of all one's strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself is much more what?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's much more what?
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Important than all kinds of entirely burned offerings and sacrifices.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is a Jewish scholar, somebody who is teaching that the way in which you show God love is to offer offerings of sacrifices at the altar.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: Slotted calves.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Have you heard this before?
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: To offer these things.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's the way in which you show God love.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens is when Jesus says, well, actually, the most important thing is to love God, yes, but I cannot disconnect the love of neighbor for God.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: And what he says is he says, whoa.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: And to love God with all the heart, a full understanding, and of one's strength and to love one's neighbor as oneself is much more important than all those entire other things.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see the shift that's happening in the theology here?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see the shift that's happening?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden, God doesn't want the offerings anymore.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: God doesn't want the bird sacrifices anymore.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: God doesn't want all of the other things that have been set up.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: What he's saying through the mouth of the scribe.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: What he's saying is, how do you show the love of God?
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: Show the love of neighbor.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: How do you show God that, God, I love you?
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Man, I love you.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: Show love to the neighbor.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's a shift here.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's a prioritizing of love of a ritual.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's a reinterpretation of the law.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden the faith that had become a little stagnant becomes active.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what Jesus says to him next.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is verse 34.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: When Jesus saw that he had answered him with wisdom, he said to him, You aren't too far from God's kingdom.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to hear that again.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: When Jesus saw that he had answered him with wisdom, meaning like Jesus didn't cut down the scribe, he goes, Oh, bro, he gets it.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: He's understanding.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: He answered with wisdom.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: He said to him, You aren't too far from God's kingdom.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: We talk in the church a lot about the kingdom of God.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we often view it as heaven, right?
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: Some far-off place that we're gonna go to one day if we just say the right words, we're gonna go to heaven one day, and then we'll get to celebrate the kingdom of God.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, there is nobody who believes that more than me that if we if we celebrate in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, if we accept Christ into our lives and we allow Christ to transform us, then we will end up in the kingdom of God.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing: if you look at what Jesus says throughout all of the gospels, he talks about the kingdom coming here.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: I can't help but think that this is a moment where that happens.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: When Jesus saw that he had answered with wisdom, he said, You aren't too far from the kingdom.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Meaning, like, man, I can see it happening.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: I can see it happening.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: I told you at the beginning.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: An active love fails to transform the world.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what happened in our nation, in our generations, I don't know, is that we like read this book that tells us about the inbreaking of the kingdom.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: We we read this book that tells us that the love of God is like so strong and foundational.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: And we read this book where Jesus actually demonstrates what it's like to love somebody else by like reaching out to somebody who's been marginalized, pulling them up, by stopping the stoning of a woman.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: What Jesus does is invites us into an active love, not a love where we just say, hey, God loves you and we walk away, where we make it a verb, where we make it into something that it's gonna do something, that it's gonna bring the kingdom of God here.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what I would propose to you.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: When you love another person, the love of God is connected to that.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: Those are inseparable.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so when you love another person, what you're doing is you're inviting the kingdom into the earth.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: I get it.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to love people in college.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: I've been around on Thursday nights.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard.
• 28:48
  unknown: It's hard.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: I get it.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to love somebody else when they say that they love you and then they act very differently, isn't it?
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: I get it.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's very hard to love somebody else because you know that you're told to do that, but like it would really inconvenience you.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I would love to show that person, I would love to take that person to coffee, I would love to take to drive that person to wherever they need to, but like it's really out of the way for me, and it's gonna cost me some gas money.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: And here's what I would propose: that if we say that we love God, then we must love neighbor.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if we love neighbor, then we have to invite the inbreaking of the kingdom into the earth.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: We have to, not optional.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: We have to.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's my prayer for you.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that love is transformational, it will change the world.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: You can probably think of times in your life when someone loved you and it changed who you were.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I mean.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to think of somebody this week who you have just not shown much love to.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: You just haven't.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because it was inconvenient or because they're hard to love or because it's annoying or whatever words you want to put to it.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to think of one person this week, just one person.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: If I give you a task of 10, you won't do any of it.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, just one person, one person that's probably already in your mind right now, who is something I haven't shown love to yet.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: And now here's what I want you to do.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: I I would ask you to do the thing, and that would be awesome.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: But but first and foremost, can you just pray?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: Can you just pray for that person and for you?
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: And say, hey, God, I just want the kingdom of God to come down in my relationship with this person.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the way in which I'm gonna show that I love them and that I love my creator who first loved me.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: God, I pray for those people that are in our minds right now.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I ask that we would lift up their names to you silently right now, naming that person, saying, Hey man, we need your love.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: We need your love in our relationship right now.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: God, I would ask that uh our hearts would be humbled.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: If there's some sort of you know, wall we need to get over in that relationship in that person's life, God, I would ask that we would just hop over that wall.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: That somehow you would you would give us that that grace to be able to do that.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: God, all we want is for the kingdom of God to be present in our lives.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: For us to stop saying that we love each other and actually do it.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna need you for that.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: God, we know that the love of one another, to love people, that it is more important than any other offering.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's intricately connected, intertwined with the love of you.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus would not allow us to separate the two.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: God, right now I pray over every single person that is on our hearts right now.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: I pray that you would move within our souls and our hearts and our minds.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: I pray that we would see that to love them is to love you, and that we can't love you without loving them.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: God, I pray that you would be not only in this space, but in this town, in these relationships, that you would move over us, that you would give us the courage to say the words we need to say, to do the actions that would show them that we love them, that we would put it into action, not just leaving it on the side.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: God, we know that your love is transformational.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: And what we're asking right here and right now is for that in our lives on our campuses, in our relationships, in our friendships.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: We give you all honor and praise, God.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Let's stand and sing it.