The Light of the World // Love // Pastor Josh Evans

Amen.

Amen. Did you enjoy the music today? And I tell you, they did such a good job and it was good to see Pam and also Spencer up here playing. And that song sounds so beautiful when you add that arrangement to it. And so such a great, a great song. And some of you have been listening to Christmas music for a long time already. And so you're going to really enjoy the worship services today, but also in the next couple of weeks and leading into next Sunday, as well as it'll be on Christmas Day. And just before we jump into God's word here in just a moment, I wanted to remind you about just a couple of things. First off, this Wednesday night, okay, this Wednesday night, I want everybody to make plans to be here for our family Christmas service. In fact, look to your neighbor right now and say, I want to see you there. All right.

All right. Now, if you're wondering if anybody cares or not, if you're coming, the person next to you just told you that they want you there. And so you need to be there.

That's Wednesday night. We're so excited about our family Christmas service. And what I kind of am excited about, I love doing these family services where we can bring the kiddos into the audience here and they can be a part of the chaos. And I love that. I welcome that. I think we should be a church for that. And so I want the kids in here a little bit more often. And so this is a time what I'm envisioning is for our children, families, being together, grandparents with grandkids and their kids and everything else. And you guys just kind of celebrating the real meaning of Christmas together on Wednesday night. You say, what is that service going to look like?

Well, a couple of things. Wednesday night, it's going to start at six thirty. Six thirty, not seven. I know our adult Bible study usually starts at seven. It's going to start at six thirty. And we got a ton of things happening. The kids are going to be singing, which I'm really looking forward to.

Any time you get those kids up here, we should come out and support them. We'll be taking communion as well on Wednesday night. And then we will be singing a couple of songs by Candlelight here in the room. And I'm looking forward to that. And then to top it off, after everything gets done that night on your way out, we will have hot chocolate and Christmas cookies for you. And so it's just going to be a fun time. We are looking forward to it.

And we want everybody to be here. If you're worried, if your kid can sit still throughout the entire service, don't worry about it. Just bring them on their way in. They're going to get a little packet, a little gift. Every single kid will get a gift on their way in on Wednesday night. And if you have young ones, it will have something in there that they can kind of be entertained in here.

Some of those three and four year old. So you're a little concerned if they can sit in here for that long. It'll have something for them. So don't let that keep you from coming.

Bring them. It's going to be a great, great time. And then next Sunday is Christmas Day. It's on a Sunday this year. And so we are going to have one service 10 a.m. like we do now. The only difference is there's not going to be Bible fellowships that morning. And then also the kids.

We're not going to have primary or junior church. So your kids will be in here with you for that next week. And so we'll all be back in this room here together. And that gives some of our people that might be out of town, some of our volunteers a chance to have a little bit of a break. And so I want you to join us. I know many of you have traditions on Christmas Day.

If you can find a little bit of time, come on over here. 10 a.m. be with us. Worship with us. Going to be a Christmas service next Sunday morning. And that'll conclude the series that we are in called The Light of the World. Well, if you have your Bible, you can go to Ephesians chapter number five.

Ephesians chapter number five here today. And as you're turning there, I'll remind you, we began a brand new series recently, just a Christmas series taking us all the way through Christmas Day. And this series is called The Light of the World. Can we say that together? The Light of the World.

And we say that all the time. In fact, you know, our choir so beautifully saying here today that Jesus is the light of the world. He is the light of the entire world. He came to bring to bring light. If you think about it in darkness, we cannot see.

It's gloomy. There's no hope in darkness. But Jesus came to be the light of the world. And if you make that personal, he came to also be the light of the light of your world in the light of my world, because we were without hope and we were in darkness.

So Jesus came to be born so that he could eventually die so that he could be the light of your world. So over this series, we've been looking at four different words that are taking us in, proving that Jesus has come to bring to bring light into the world. And so today's word is this is the word love. The word love. Let's say that word together. Love.

All right. Love. Jesus came because he he loved us. And so as we look at this word today, the word love, I want you to think, you know, have you ever wondered our culture is obsessed with the word love, aren't they?

Our culture is obsessed. If you look, songs are written about about love all the time. Books are written about about love. Movies are written about love.

In fact, this time of year, there's an entire channel called the Hallmark Channel that is all about about love. Right. And by the way, if you're a Hallmark fan, you know this, that they all end the exact same way. Right. Right.

Everybody understand that? Like, I don't have to watch any of those movies on the Hallmark Channel to know exactly how it ends. You know, the person moves out of the old town and they go to the big city and it wasn't for them.

They come back and they meet up with a childhood friend and they get together. That's how every single Hallmark movie sometimes goes. But but, you know, many of you, that's what you watch the entire year. You watch all these things because everyone loves a good a good love story. We love everything about the idea of love.

And here is why. Here's why we love that. The fundamental reason of why we are attracted to that is this. Every single one of us in the deepest parts of our heart, we have a desire to be loved.

Right. We have a desire to be loved. Every single one of you. You have a desire to be to be loved. But here's the harsh reality about the idea of us wanting to be loved is this. Every single one of us know that deep down we don't deserve the kind of unconditional love that we are searching for. Every single one of you, in fact, every single person in this world, they have born into them this desire to be loved. But here's the thing. Deep down, they also know that the kind of unconditional love that they are searching for, they are not deserving of it.

You want to know why? Because we all know that we fail people. We make mistakes. I mean, the person sitting next to you, you've probably failed them at some point.

You've probably made a promise to them that you have broken at some point. We all know that we will eventually make mistakes and even say things that we do not mean. And we are searching for this unconditional love of Jesus. But we know deep down that we are not deserving of it.

And in the midst of that, here's what's awesome. God loved you in spite of knowing that. That's the good news of Christmas. That's the good news of the Gospel, is that He came to you to be the light of your world, to be the light of my world, not when we were searching for Him, but when we were actually rebelling against Him. That's the beauty of the Gospel. And so Jesus came because He loved us.

Because He loved us. And we're going to see that here in Ephesians 5. It says this, verse 1, we're going to read two verses here today. It says this, Be ye... Now, he's talking to Christians. He's talking to the church. So if you're a child of God here today, you're a born-again Christian. You know Jesus as your Savior.

He is talking to you. In fact, this was written by the apostle Paul to a real church, the church at Ephesus. And they were writing directly to them. They were experiencing persecution. And they were experiencing all of these problems there in Ephesus. In fact, some of the world had even tried to infiltrate itself into their church.

And because of that, a lot of the church people had been scattered throughout the city. And they were fearful, many of them, for their life. Because if you profess to know Jesus, there was a chance you could lose your life for that. Isn't it amazing how we think sometimes that we know what persecution looks like? We don't know the half of what they experienced because of Jesus. In fact, some persecution like this is all over our world.

And you and I, in our American Christianity, we don't have a clue about what real persecution looks like. Well, the church of Ephesus was experiencing some of that. And so the apostle Paul has been spending chapter after chapter after chapter talking to them specifically about what Jesus has done for them. He reminds them in chapter 2 of who they were before Jesus Christ. And then he tells them that Jesus, everything changed in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 4. It talks about how bad we were in verses 1 through 3. The sinful nature that you and I, we couldn't run from.

It's just a part we were born into. And then in verse 4 it says, but God, who was rich in mercy, wherewith he loved us. Notice he didn't, you didn't have to fix up your life in order for him to love you.

He loved you just the way you were. Just as broken and messed up as you were, Jesus came because he loved you. And now here in chapter 5, Paul is writing to these Christians and he's telling them, because of the love that you've experienced, be ye now therefore followers of God as dear children. And he says in verse 2, and walk in love as Christ also hath loved us and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor.

Notice that the apostle Paul, he's not telling them to follow and to act like Jesus in the way that he loved people. He doesn't say do that so that you can be loved by God or so that you can be accepted by God. No, he actually tells us that we should go out and love people because we have already experienced the love of God. You see, you don't go out and love people in order for God to accept you, in order for him to love you. No, you go out of here and you treat people and you love people the way that Jesus loved you because you've already experienced that love. That's what the apostle Paul is saying. He is saying that you and I should walk in that love. Now the word follower in verse 1, it's where we get the word imitator. It's where we get the word imitator. And so it carries on this idea of mimicking or acting like our Heavenly Father. So what Jesus or what the apostle Paul rather is saying here is he's saying this, that a follower of Jesus Christ, it could be defined as someone who acts or mimics Jesus in the way that we treat one another. You see, what he's getting at is that those who are born again, those who are born into the family of God, you're a Christian, those people who are Christ followers should look and act like Jesus. That's the plan. That's how it should work. Now I'm sorry to say that there's a lot of Christians in our world who really don't act like Jesus, right? We've all experienced them from time to time. And I'm sorry on their behalf, but let me tell you this. The way that it was designed is when somebody has experienced the love of Jesus, out of that love that they've experienced, they should go out and they should love other people.

That's the idea. We should begin to look like our Heavenly Father. It's no different in your family. If you think about your family, you probably look and act like your mom or dad. If you're around me, you would find, if you ever spent some time with my dad, you would understand me and my dad, we look and we act alike. If you think I'm loud, you wait till my dad walks into a room. You don't understand, like he's louder than I am. And a lot of people will say, and they've said this to me over the years as I've grown up, they'll say things like, Josh, the apple sure doesn't fall far from the tree. Or they'll see me and they'll hear me talk and they'll say, man, you really get it honestly.

Because it's something we should act like our parents. My mom sent me a picture recently of me as a kid and it made me think how much, I don't realize how much that I look like my son and how much I act like my son. But there's a picture up on the screen that shows us. That's me on the left and that's my son on the right. We took that picture of my son. I'm licking my fingers for some reason.

I'm eating something, I think. And so, but that was me back in the day. I mean, probably the cutest kid you've ever seen, honestly.

And so, but that was me. And my wife took this picture on the right of my son and we were looking at this and I was amazed at how much, like we don't even notice this, you know, as my kids change. And I don't even notice it, but other people might notice it, how much we resemble one another. We resemble and not only this, like we look like one another because he is my son, but he also, in a lot of ways, he acts like me. All my good characteristics he acts like.

The bad ones he gets from his mom. And amen, thank you, thank you, yes sir. All right, there we go, there we go.

I'll be bucking at Brandon's house later on, all right. But here's the thing, like, no, our kids, because they're our kids, they're going to look like us. They're going to act like us. Now that's scary for some of you, right? Because you look, man, they're going to do the bad things that I did.

There's a chance because they're a product of the environment and they're a part of your family. And so there's going to be times when they are going to look like you. That's the idea of what the apostle Paul's writing at here in chapter 5. When he says that Jesus came because he loved you, he's saying that the same love that you have experienced and the same love that I have experienced, we should go out and we should instill that love and show that love with the people that we come in contact with. We should go out and mimic that love. Imagine this, what if the way that Jesus loved you, what if that became the standard for how you treated one another? Think about it. Imagine, imagine just for a moment if the way that Jesus treated you and how he treated you, why he treated you that way, the nature that he treated you, imagine if that became the standard for how you treated everybody else.

I imagine that if that was true that your relationships would look different. Your attitude would look different. What you believe about people would look different. You'd probably be less judgmental if Jesus became our standard of loving one another.

You see, here's the big idea today. Followers of Jesus, they will mimic Christ's love and how they treat other people. So when we talk that Jesus came to be the light of the world, that's what we sing about and we talk about around this time of year. When we look at that, I want you to understand that the reason Jesus brought light and he lit up your dark world is because in the midst of not being loved, Jesus came and he showed you a love that you have never experienced and a love that you could never receive on your own. Let's look at that and what that love looks like.

The first thing is this. Let's look first at the nature of Christ's love. Let's look at the nature of Jesus Christ's love. If we're going to mimic and act the way that Jesus has treated us, if we're going to do that to other people, we have to look at how did he love us? What was the nature of Christ's love? So the first thing I want you to see of the nature of Christ's love is this. Jesus loved us relentlessly.

Jesus loved us relentlessly. You remember that story in Luke 15 when Jesus, he's telling this parable, and he mentions three things that were lost. Do you remember that? He starts off with there was a sheep that was lost and it went away. And so the shepherd, being the good shepherd that he was, he went and he searched. In fact, he was able to leave this big herd of sheep in order to go and find the one lost sheep. You remember that story?

Jesus, he can tell even by his audience at that time as he's speaking to a multitude, he's talking to them and he recognizes, hey, they might not get it. So let me go to this other story. There was this woman who lost a coin in her house. And so she had turned her house upside down looking for that one coin.

And you can imagine people were probably like, hey, is it that important? And she's freaking out wanting to find this coin. It meant the world to her. It was just this sum of money that could never, ever be calculated in her mind.

So she's turning the house over just to find that one coin. And still people, you know, they didn't understand really what Jesus was trying to get at. And he said, okay, let me tell you this way. There was a man who had two sons. And he had these two sons and one of the sons, you know, stayed, worked with the father.

The other son came to him when he was young and said, hey, dad, really, I don't want to work here. And I just want my inheritance. And what he was essentially saying is he's like, dad, you're not worth a whole lot to me alive. You're worth way more to me dead. So I want your inheritance.

Can I have your inheritance early so that I can go and live the way that I want to to live? Jesus is telling the story. And as he's telling this story, you can imagine the tension that the people experienced.

You can imagine how uneasy they felt. What a terrible son that was. What a terrible son that he wanted to live the way that he wanted to live. His dad had been good to him. And so what did the dad do? The dad grants him his wish. The dad grants him his wish so he gets the inheritance. He gets all this money and he leaves.

He leaves the house. And the one son's still back doing his thing, working for his dad. His other son leaves and his dad, I can imagine, looks for him, you know, waiting for him to return. Well, the guy squanders all of his money, loses it all. We know the story.

It's a familiar passage. And so he loses everything. And this son, he had nothing else. He's finding himself.

He's eating what the pigs eat and living where the pigs lives. He had nothing. And he finally came to himself and he came back to the father that he had once looked at dead in the face and said, you don't mean nothing to me alive.

I just want the inheritance and let me go. Thinking he would never see him again as he came back, he came back to the father. And it says that the father leaped and ran after the son. Now, think about this. Did the son deserve it? Did he? No.

Nobody in here. In fact, if Jesus had asked the audience that, every single one of them would have been like, no, absolutely not. The son didn't deserve any of that. But you see, the father went to the son when they were not deserving.

Does that sound familiar? Let me remind you that you and I, we were born into this world. We were not deserving of the love of God. We were not deserving of the love of God. We didn't go to him. You see, that's the point. The gospel, Christianity, it does not begin with your pursuit of him.

We get it wrong so often. Like, you're not going to get to heaven one day. You're not going to get to heaven one day.

And I don't know how all that's going to be. You know, it's left up to mystery. But when you walk into heaven, just say, hey, why are you here? If an angel asks you, why are you here?

Listen, here's what's not going to be your answer. I'm here because I searched for God, and I went after God, and I did this. No, you see, when you get to heaven, it's not going to be anything that you have done, but everything that he has done for you. You see, that's the message of the gospel. That's the message of Christianity.

It does not begin with our pursuit of God. It begins with his pursuit of us. You see, that's what it means that Jesus came to bring love. He came to be love.

He pursued you. When you were unworthy, he went after you. When you were unlovable, he loved you. When you were full of brokenness and sin, Jesus didn't ask you to fix up your life and clean up your life and then he would love you.

Guess what? Jesus said, I love them in the midst of their brokenness. Listen, if you walked in here today, I don't know everybody's story. I know most people in this room, but I don't know your background. If you're a guest here today, I don't know your story. Nobody else in this place might know your story.

They might not know what you're into, but let me tell you this. You could be the most broken person on the side of the planet and I want you to know God has willingly extended his love for you today. And his love is for all people. You see, God, he pursued us. He pursued us.

He went after us. Luke 15, like what we just looked at, he wasn't going to stop until we are found. You ever lost something that really meant a lot to you and you wanted it?

You're not going to leave until it's found. Early on in my ministry, I was a youth pastor and so I worked with teenagers. And this is before I came here. There's some stories that I have in youth ministry that I would have never told them here or else they wouldn't have hired me. So there's some stories. There was one time I was a new youth pastor. I don't even know if Abby, I think we might have been engaged at the time.

We weren't even married yet. So I was a full-time youth pastor and I took these kids. I took about 30 kids to what they used to call a rally, a youth rally.

You remember those? If you've been in church a long time, you know what I'm talking about. Rallies, right? And we get excited because it's a rally. It's not a conference. It's not a camp. It's a rally.

You know what I'm saying? And so we went to this rally. And so we took a bunch of kids there and it was a great night. And these rallies, they went really long sometimes. So it was like 1130 one night, service ends, and we were all on a high, you know.

And all these kids, I mean, they've made decisions. It just was a great night. So we're all excited. So we head to the bus and we're heading back to the hotel. So we get there to the bus and we're at Ridgecrest, if you've ever been there. So over near Asheville, Marion area. And so there's this big conference center, right?

And so it's this huge conference center, tons of land and different things. Well, we had this one girl and her name was Hillary. And we had this girl, Hillary, and we get back to the bus. And being like a good youth pastor that I am, I did a head count, right? Head counts are important.

If you're in youth ministry or kids ministry, always do one, okay? Because when we counted heads, we realized that we were missing one. Just one.

Normally they're in twos, but this was one, all right? And we couldn't find her. You know, it's late. And so I'm thinking, man, the buses, I mean, people are pulling out of there. I'm like, where on earth did she get on the wrong bus? You know, I'm like, what in the world? And so I was like, man, I don't even know what to do. And so I go and we start looking, me and another youth leader, I tell all the rest of the kids to stay there, right?

Don't leave. So we all, you know, they're there and me and this other youth leader, we're like, man, we'll just find her. She probably had to go to the restroom or something and we'll be good. And so we go in and, I mean, there's nobody there. Everybody's pretty much gone. And we can't find her. So I was like, my last resort, the last thing that you ever want to do when you're in charge of a group is go up to a security guy and say, listen, we lost one of our kids.

Can you get the search teams out and things like that? But we finally got to the point where there was no chance. There was no, I was like, man, we got to tell somebody. So I went to them and I said, I told them that, you know, we were from a different church and just kidding, just kidding. I was placing blame on another church and all this.

I was joking. And they didn't find my humor in anything. And so I told them, we can't find one of our teenagers.

Can't find them. And so they're like, all right, sir, we got this. You know, it gets on the walkie and all of a sudden there's all these people chiming in and I had to describe her and everything else.

And I'm like, oh my goodness. Like, I mean, they got the whole place searching for her. And finally we found her in the parking lot looking for where we, where we were parked. Cause there's a huge parking lot and there was all these different parking lots to find.

She had wandered into this crazy parking lot. So it took us at the time. I mean, it was like well after midnight when we eventually found her.

Okay. I say all that to say every time I think about this story of God's pursuit for us, I think about that story because listen, we didn't, we'd have still been there today. If we couldn't find her because we were not going to leave that night until she was, was found until she was in our group, until she was in our care, we were not going to, to leave that night.

And here's the thing. When we think of that pursuit, that's the way God has pursued you. He has pursued you. He has come to you. When you couldn't get to him, he came to you.

He came in love to you, not because you were deserving of it, but because you were actually doing the opposite and rebelling against him. But yet God still loved you in spite of that, that he sent his son Jesus to die for you. You see Jesus, the nature of Jesus's love is he pursues us relentlessly, relentlessly. The scripture has the idea that he's not going to stop until you're found.

That's what he wants. If you came into here and you've been rejecting Jesus, let me tell you this, receive his free gift of salvation today because he's going to continue to pursue you. The second thing in the Jesus, in the nature of Jesus's love is this. He not only loved us and pursued us relentlessly, he loved us sacrificially. We all know the scripture John 3 16, for God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

You know that word, we've heard it. The word love is the agape usage of the word love. It's the highest form of the word love and that it embraces this deep and even profound sacrificial love. And here's what's interesting about the agape form of love. It is the word love. The agape form of love. It embraces this sacrificial form of love and it goes even further to where it is given to people who genuinely do not deserve it. In other words, the agape form of the word love is that it is extended to you and is extended to me by God the father through Jesus the son and it's extended to us and it's something that can't be earned. It's freely offered. You see, when it says that we know that verse, for God so loved the world. Everybody in here can probably quote that verse. I want you to think about this, that God sent Jesus because he loved you in an agape sacrificial way and there is nothing that you can do to earn his love.

It's just freely offered to you. You see, Jesus, he loved us sacrificially. In fact, he sacrificed everything for you to have everything.

You ever think about that? Jesus, he sacrificed it all. He gave his very life so that you could actually have eternal life. That's the message of the gospel. You see, Jesus, he relentlessly pursued us but he loved us sacrificially. What Paul is saying is, he's saying this, the same way that Jesus loved us, we should love other people. We should sacrifice for one another. You know, being a pastor, I hear about marriages sometimes struggling and marriages falling apart and things like that. It amazes me when you get down to the root, sometimes it's because we're not willing to sacrifice.

I know there's a lot of other things that come into play but for the most part, it's like we struggle sacrificing for other people, don't we? If you don't believe me, ask your family where they want to eat tonight, right? Does anybody fight or struggle or argue over where you should eat tonight or is that just our household? Please raise your hand if you're okay. Don't make me feel bad up here.

Don't judge me. But that's when I'm always like, hey kids, where do you want to go tonight? My son, always. It's either McDonald's, oh Lord help us, or it's stay at home and eat a sandwich. It's always his. You know what my daughter's is? It's never to eat at home.

It's always to go out and it's usually Chick-fil-A. Well, me and Abby, we always have different opinions and things like that and sometimes, you know, I even said this I believe one time, I said this is terrible. Can I be honest with you guys for just a moment? I remember saying this one time. This is bad, okay? You're going to think I'm a terrible human being but a terrible human being. I remember, this has been several months ago, I remember being frustrated because we could not decide on where to eat and here's what I said and you've probably said this or you've thought this at least, man. I said you know what? I'm buying the dinner. I'm choosing the dinner. That's what I said.

Is that bad? How many of you have said that or thought that at some point? Amen.

Thank you. I appreciate that because like, man, that makes me feel so much better, right? But listen, we struggle in just the little things of sacrificing for, we don't like to ever put other people before ourselves because we are born with this sinful fleshly nature that wants what we want when we want it. That's how you were born.

That's how I was born. And so Jesus, He came not so that He could be served and not for any other reason. He came and sacrificed it all. He gave up everything so that you and I could have everything we ever need in the person of Jesus. You see, the nature of Jesus' love is that He relentlessly pursues us, He sacrificed for us, but He also loved us unconditionally. You see, here's what that means. We say that a lot, that Jesus' love, it's unconditional. I want you to really grasp this because this is so true. His love for us, it's not based on your performance for Him. Let me say that again. His love for you and for me, it's not based on your performance for Him. Now, this does not, I want to say this up front, this doesn't give you a license to sin. I want you to understand that. It doesn't mean that if my performance doesn't change the way God feels about me and it doesn't change the way God loves me, it doesn't just give me a license to go out and do whatever I want.

But here's what it does. It's Jesus, when you've experienced His love, when you've accepted and received His free gift of salvation that was because of His love for you, when you receive that, He comes in and He fundamentally changes who you are at the core. And when that happens, the natural tendency now shifts to where we, yes there's a war, but yes now we have the ability within us to treat people the way that we have been treated. That's not because of anything you have done, that's just the righteousness of Jesus Christ that was placed into your life at salvation. It's not because of you, it's because of now who lives inside of you.

But Jesus' love was unconditional. That means that there is absolutely nothing, and this takes a lot of weight off of you, so if you came in here with a burden, I want you to listen to this. There is nothing that you can do today that's going to make you, that makes God love you any less than He does right now. Nothing. Say, what if I go out of here and I lose my cool with my family?

Guess what? God's love for you stays the exact same. What if I go out of here and I yell at the driver who cut me off? God's love for you stays the same. But if you say something that you regret today, God's love stays the same. There's nothing, because it's not based on your performance, it's unconditional.

It's not based on your performance. It's not based on how well you did that day will determine if God loves you or if He doesn't. No, there's nothing that we can do today that's going to make Him love us any less.

But here's the other good thing. For a lot of you who grew up in church your entire life, I want you to listen to this part of this. There's also nothing that you can do today that's going to make Him love you any more than He already does right now. So if you're like me and you grew up in church and you're like, man, I've got to do every single thing, listen, that's not going to change the way He feels about you. You see, we don't do good things and good deeds and try to live for Him. We don't do any of that so that He will love us. We do all of those things because we've already experienced His love. In other words, it is actually coming from that new life that we experience. That's where it's coming from.

It's not in order to gain anything more. You see, that's the nature of Jesus Christ's love for you. He loved you sacrificially. He loved you unconditionally.

And He relentlessly pursued you. Is that the way, when Paul says you should walk in the way that He has loved you, is that the way that you love other people? You say, absolutely not. I don't sacrifice for anybody. Then you're not loving the way that Jesus loved you. If you're in here and your love is conditional, hey, if that person, you know that old saying, if they scratch my back, you know, it's kind of a weird saying if you ask me, but if they scratch my back, I'll scratch theirs, kind of that business idea or whatever. That's not the way that Jesus loved us.

That's not the way that He has treated you or me. And then are you relentlessly pursuing people? Think about it. Jesus, He pursues us. Some of us aren't willing to go across the street for somebody's soul.

Think about that. And yet, Jesus, He wasn't going to stop until we accepted Him. That's the nature of Christ's love. Let's look quickly at the attitudes of Christ's love. First, Jesus' love, when you see in verse 2 of Ephesians 5, back to our text, it says, And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering.

That's a collective term. That's more than just the apostle Paul. No, that's the Gentile believers and the Jewish believers. That now, because of Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection, the gospel is now for all people. It's for everybody. It's for you here today.

It's for us. And so, that shows me something about God's love, the attitude of His love. I want you to understand this, that Jesus' love was, it was unbiased.

Isn't that good? That Jesus' love, it was not based on the family that you grew up in. It wasn't based on the status that your family was in. It wasn't based on your race. It wasn't based on the class of people that your family was. It wasn't based on whether you were a little bit of a sinner, or a whole lot of a sinner, right? It wasn't based on that.

Why? Because Jesus' love, it was unbiased. It was unbiased. No, it was for everyone. For God so loved the whole world. Everybody. That means the person you don't like the most. Now, this is where it gets real. The person you don't like the most is loved by God as much as you are.

Now, that's hard to take in. Because there's some people that I don't like too much, and it really humbles me when I realize that God loved them as much as I love them, as much as that He loves me. And if I'm going to actually extend love because I've been loved, then the way I extend it can't be based on race because Jesus' love was not based on race. It can't be based on social status because Jesus' love wasn't based on social status.

It can't be based on any of those things. We are supposed to love people the way that Jesus loves, so our love for others should be an unbiased love. Let me say this to our church. Our church should reflect the community in which it lives. I believe this from the core, that if we, Union Grove Baptist Church, are going to love our neighbors and we're going to love this community that God planted us in 76 years ago, let me tell you this, that this church should look if we're accomplishing the great commission that God has called us to right here, this church family should look a little bit like the people around us. Whatever races are around us, they should be in our church. Whatever classes of people that's around us, they should be in our church.

They should be a part of us because Jesus' love is unbiased and we want to show the same type of unbiased love to everybody else. Number two, Christ's love was selfless. He came to serve. He came to seek and to save. You know, Jesus could have easily came to me and everybody just, you know, put off the red carpet because he was king.

But you see, he didn't do any of that. He came only so that you could be a son or daughter of the king. You see, he came for you. His love was selfless. Number three and finally this, and we'll close with this, we see the result of Christ's love. We see the result of Christ's love. If you look back in our text, verse two, it says this, that when we walk in love, here's what it does, it's as if we're offering a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor. You see, when you demonstrate and extend the love to others the way that you have been loved by God, it says it's as if we're offering a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor.

You say, what is even Paul talking about? The book of Leviticus, we see a phrase that's similar, it's the same thing here, the phrase an aroma, an aroma. It's mentioned 16 times in the book of Leviticus and what it is is when the Israelites, when they would, you know, sacrifice to God, that sacrifice, it would send an aroma or a sweet-smelling savor up into the Lord. In fact, Noah, in Genesis chapter 8, verse 21, after Noah gets off the ark, you remember the story and, you know, he sends the bird out and the bird finally comes out and says it's safe to get out on land, so his family gets out on land, says in Genesis chapter 8, verse 20, that Noah, he built this altar to the Lord and when he built this altar and prayed and thanked God for the provision, he built this offer. In verse 21, it says that that offering went up to God and it says this exact phrase that it was as if a sweet-smelling savor went up to heaven out of that altar. So you say, what is Paul referring to, if it's mentioned in the Old Testament, as this pleasing sacrifice to God? Here's what he's saying is that when you love people the way that Jesus has loved you, it's like this pleasing sacrifice, this sweet smell, this aroma is being sent up to the Father, this sweet-smelling savor is being sent up to the Father and it's signifying that he is pleased by your love for other people. You see, this is why it's important for us to imitate and mimic Christ's love is because God is pleased and it's as if you're receiving this sacrifice up to him.

Now this is why it's important and I want to speak to this and then we'll be done. Some people are hard to love, right? How many of you, be honest with me, you don't have to look at them, you don't have to nudge them. How many of you would say there is somebody in your life that is hard to love, be honest with me, raise your hand high. Okay, a few of you. I'm speaking on lying next week, just coincidence, I don't know. But here's the thing, we all, if we're honest, we have somebody, you know, some of them are going to be at your house next Sunday.

You know what I'm talking about? And they're just hard to love. You have to work at it. It doesn't come natural, right? We have people in our life who are hard to love.

This is why it's important and I want you to see this and we will seriously be done. Some don't deserve your love. There's people in all of our lives, they do nothing to earn my love, right? It just is what it is. But here's what we have to remember.

Based on Ephesians 5, 1 and 2. When we love other people, it's not for us. It's for Him. It's not for you.

So if you say, pastor, this doesn't make sense because the person at my job is very hard to love. Oh, that's fine. It's not for you.

It's for Him. You say, oh man, this person, they did something to me and it made me mad. They do not deserve my kindness and my love to them. Oh, I get that and I'm sorry about your hurt.

But guess what? It's not for you. When you love other people the way Jesus loved you, it's going to cross those lines and it's actually going to go to the people who are the least deserving of your love. Those who don't deserve it, it's going to cross all of those lines and it is going to reach them because that's what God did for you. See, you weren't deserving of it. You were that person.

As many of you raised your hand a second ago, I have somebody in my life that's hard to love. You were that person. It's who you were before Jesus. You don't believe me, read Ephesians chapter two, one through three.

It'll blow your mind at who you once were. Some of you might be in that state right now and let me tell you this, that's who you were. You were that person and God extended His love for you and that while you were yet a sinner, Christ died for you. So Paul's saying this. He's saying that love, that selfless, sacrificial, unconditional love that you've experienced, he says, walk in love the way Christ has loved you. In other words, live, mimic, follow, the way Jesus loved you, you need to love other people.

Are you loving people the way Jesus has loved you? You say, pastor, I'm not. Well, let me tell you this. This is where it starts.

I don't know every person in here. I don't know everybody's story or their testimony, but here's where it begins. You have to have a relationship with the God of love first. You can work tooth and nail at trying to love every person in your life the way Christ loved you, but if you have never received His gift of love, then it is going to be endless work without the result that you want, without the peace you're looking for, without the joy, without all of these things.

It's going to just be endless work. Your first thing is to receive His love, to receive it. You say, how can I do that? It's as simple as admitting you're a sinner, admitting that you can do nothing to get to Him, believing that He is the only way for you to get to Him, that's trusting in Jesus death, burial, and resurrection for you, and then simply just confessing and asking Him to come into your life and change your life. That's what Jesus has offered us all. And for you who have already received it, you've already trusted Jesus as your Savior, let me tell you this, that it's through that that you have the power in you, not because of you, but because of the Holy Spirit living inside of you. You have the power now to extend that same type of selfless, unbiased, sacrificial, unconditional love to every person you come into contact with. That's the kind of love He says, walk in peace and love as Christ has loved you.