[0:00] Musik Good evening. Welcome. Good to see you. Good to see folk who are visiting us as well.
[0:53] And good to have this opportunity that we can come to worship the Lord our God. I'd like you to turn with me, if you would, to Paul's letter to the Romans and to chapter 5.
[1:06] Romans and chapter 5. If you have one of the Red Church Bibles, that's page 1132. Page 1132. And often when we come to worship in the evening, we might read a psalm or some other portion of scripture to not to set us in the mood, but to center our thoughts upon who it is that we're coming to worship, what this God is like and who is our saviour.
[1:31] And chapter 5 of Romans is, particularly the verses we're going to read, verses 1 to 11, set out before us the gospel and what it means to be a Christian and what has God done for us to bring about that wonderful transformation and salvation.
[1:48] So I'm just going to read those first 11 verses. Listen with me. Follow with me in your Bibles and then we'll turn to the Lord in worship.
[1:59] Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.
[2:16] And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character and character hope.
[2:31] And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.
[2:49] Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might be tempted possibly to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this.
[3:01] While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him?
[3:13] For if while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life?
[3:23] Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. Reconciliation is the very essence, as it were, of what God has done for us in Christ, bringing together the two and making us one with him, through his blood shed for us on the cross.
[3:45] And this, of course, is all of his grace. Let's stand then and sing our first hymn. Oh, how the grace of God amazes me.
[3:57] 501. Only got one word to say at the end of that.
[4:11] Hallelujah. It's great. I know it's a long hymn. It's wonderful, isn't it? The truths that we can sing and rejoice about. Let's pray together as we continue to praise our Savior and our God.
[4:24] Oh, we are amazed, oh Lord our God, when we consider your grace to us. You are amazing in the most high and exalted way.
[4:35] You are so wonderful, so glorious, so marvelous. Lord, there are no words to fully explain, to fully declare your praise as you deserve to be praised.
[4:50] We thank you that even now in heaven there are a myriad, millions, how many we cannot counter, of angels and those who've gone before us, believers, who are there worshipping you.
[5:03] Thank you that they're able to do it without any taint of sin, without any sense of pride, with any duff notes. We thank you that your people who have gone before are glorified in your presence and enjoying your presence now and throughout eternity.
[5:22] We thank you, oh Lord, that in your grace and goodness we are going to be there one day too. Those who put our faith and trust in you, Lord Jesus, have been promised by you yourself that you have gone to prepare a place for us.
[5:37] And if you've gone and prepared a place for us, you'll come back and take us to be with you. Oh Lord, how we thank you for that confidence and assurance that we have, that we shall one day be in the very presence of the living God, with all our sin removed, with all our doubts dealt with, with all our fears extinguished, with that perfect confidence and peace, that we are with you.
[6:05] And we thank you, oh Lord, that we know with confidence that we shall be there, not because we are good people who are here on church on Sunday evening, but we know that we shall be there all because of your grace.
[6:18] That wonderful grace of which we've been singing. That grace, oh Lord, that even before the world was made, was in your heart and mind, that you should save us and rescue us for yourself.
[6:32] That same grace by which you created this world and made human beings in your image, that we might relate to you. That grace that was still in your heart when our first parents, Adam and Eve, sinned against you.
[6:48] Lord, even then your heart was filled with grace and you promised them that one would yet come who would crush the head of the devil. We thank you that throughout the Old Testament, your heart and your mind was only grace towards your people.
[7:04] Though they continued to stumble and to fall and to sin, you kept restoring and reconciling them to yourself. And we thank you especially that just as we've been reading and thinking, it was especially the giving of your son, the gift of grace, the perfect sinless God, man, Jesus Christ.
[7:24] To rescue us, he came into this world. To save us, he became one with us. To deliver us from the devil. To deliver us from hell.
[7:36] To deliver us from the curse of sin. He himself became a curse for us. He himself, oh Lord, was punished for us. He himself bore our sin in its entirety upon himself at the cross and died in our place when we were still powerless, when we were still in our sin.
[7:54] Lord, it was grace that took him there so that he willingly laid down his life for us. We thank you that by the power of your spirit, you raised him from the dead on that third day.
[8:06] We thank you that he is now the Prince of Peace. We thank you that he is now the one who is established upon a throne of grace so that he is able to dispense and give grace to all who come to him in need.
[8:21] And we thank you for that wondrous day. For some of us, it was decades ago. For some of us, just a little while ago. For some of us, Lord, it's not even yet happened when your grace came to us in power.
[8:34] Your grace came to us in the depth of our sin, in the grave of death. And you gave light and life and we burst forth from that grave, from that dungeon, from those chains, because we saw not only our sin and its immensity and the curse that it deserves and the punishment it deserves, but we saw for the first time as we never saw before, the love of God in Christ.
[8:59] We saw the Savior. And we looked to him and we cried to him and we said, Lord, save me. And because of grace, you saved us. Not because we deserved it.
[9:10] Not because we'd turned over a new leaf. Not because we'd become better people. But because of your grace. We thank you that you have given us God's riches at Christ's expense.
[9:23] He has paid the debt. He has purchased salvation. He has done everything. And oh, Lord, we thank you that the wages of sin are death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ, his Son.
[9:39] Lord, we ask that afresh our hearts may delight in the grace of our God. That as we come to worship and sing your praises, as we come to prayer, as we come to your word and we hear it preached, Lord, we ask that again the very grace of God may be all the more real to us.
[9:55] And that, oh Lord, our hearts, filled with your Spirit, may determine to live those lives, those lives of obedience and faithfulness and trust and joy.
[10:08] Those lives that seek for your glory first. Oh, come amongst us by your Holy Spirit, we pray, and lift us up, we ask, that we might stand and that we might delight in the grace of our God who amazes us.
[10:24] for we ask these things in and through the name of Jesus Christ, our Saviour and King. Amen. We do thank you for coming. Well, Tommy, Tommy was with us this morning.
[10:36] I'm going to ask Tommy in a minute to come up and just share a little bit about what him and Joel were involved with in Scarborough. They're both from Harrogate originally, but Tommy's been in Scarborough for a year and Joel just recently, the last few months.
[10:48] And so I've asked Tommy just to, in a moment, to come and share what they're up to and then we're going to pray for them. But Joel's going to be bringing us God's Word a little later. I'm going to read the passage he's going to be bringing to us.
[11:01] It's from Luke and chapter 10. Luke and chapter 10 and verse 25 through to verse 37. And again, if you've got one of the Red Church Bibles, that's page 1041.
[11:17] page 1041. Luke chapter 10, verse 25. On one occasion, an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus.
[11:36] Teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life? What is written in the law? He replied. How do you read it? He answered, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.
[11:59] You've answered correctly, Jesus replied. Do this, and you will live. He wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, and who is my neighbor? In reply, Jesus said, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by robbers.
[12:18] They stripped off his clothes, beat him, went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road. When he saw the man, he passed by on the other side.
[12:31] So to a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was.
[12:42] When he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he brought the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
[12:54] Next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. Look after him, he said, and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.
[13:04] Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers? The expert in the law replied, the one who had mercy on him.
[13:16] Jesus told him, go and do likewise. Good evening. I think I'll just open up with a word of prayer. Father God, we're gathered before you.
[13:37] We've come to hear your word, so I just ask that you'd speak through me now. I ask that you'd speak to us all. Just open up this parable to us all now, pray. You glorify yourself. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. So the parable of the Good Samaritan, it's a pretty popular parable.
[13:56] It's one I remember hearing a lot in school assemblies, actually. And I think the basic message that we often hear is this. It's, be like the Samaritan, help those in need.
[14:08] Don't be like the Levite. Don't be like the priest. Don't look the other way. Be compassionate. And it's quite a simple message for kids. You can see why teachers like it. I'm not sure that's the whole meaning of it, though.
[14:23] So, I think the nub of it is this. You need to look at the lawyer and the encounter with the lawyer and Jesus. And the lawyer, he's, he's really self-righteous.
[14:36] And he says this, he's coming to Jesus to put him to the test. He's not coming to Jesus to ask him a serious question. But he's, he's self-righteous in himself and he's coming to the very word of God.
[14:51] He's coming to Jesus himself who the whole law is written about. And he's not coming for answers. He's coming to try to get one over him. He's coming to put him to the test. So, who is a lawyer?
[15:02] Well, it's not like someone who sits in a court like we'd think today. but he's actually a studier of the Mosaic law, of the scriptures. And he's a teacher.
[15:13] He'd teach it. And these guys were meticulous. They'd be scribes. They'd have to copy the law down. There was a group called the Masorites. And they would copy, copy the scriptures word for word on a scroll.
[15:25] If they got one comma, one full stop out of place, they'd have to throw the whole thing away. So, these guys were pretty serious about their job. They memorized it. They knew the scriptures more than any of us will ever know.
[15:37] I'm pretty sure of that. But although he's got all this head knowledge, he comes to the one who the scriptures are all about, who all the scriptures are pointing to. He's coming to Jesus.
[15:50] It says, he's the word of God incarnate. and he's coming to put him to the test. He's coming to try trick him. And he should have known better. Remember Nicodemus, when Jesus came to Nicodemus and he talks about you must be born again.
[16:07] And Nicodemus says to Jesus, how can these things be? What do these things mean? And Jesus says, are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? So really, he knew the scriptures.
[16:21] He should have known who Jesus was. But he was too, in a sense, he was too self-righteous to see that. And I want to take a step back and think, how can we be like the lawyer?
[16:37] You see, we don't have Jesus face to face today. We can't talk to him. But we've got the scriptures. And that's how Jesus actually speaks to us today. And do we come to maybe a Bible study?
[16:49] Do we come to the scriptures expecting Jesus to speak to us? Or do we come to puff ourselves up? Maybe we think it's interesting, we want to increase our knowledge. Maybe we want to discuss it in Bible study, we want to try and get our point across.
[17:03] Or do we come before God humbly and expect him to speak to us? So Hebrews 4, verse 12, it says this, for the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow and as a discerner of the thoughts and intent of the heart.
[17:23] So the word of God is alive. Do we believe that? Isaiah 55, verse 10 to 11, it says this, for as the rain comes down and the snow from heaven and do not return there but water the earth and make it bring forth and bud that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth it shall not return to me void but it shall accomplish what I please and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.
[17:53] So we can have our doctrine perfect, we can know our scriptures perfectly and the Levite, he'd know everything, he'd be able to answer all the questions in Sunday school in Bible study but he'd miss the point completely.
[18:07] So how does Jesus deal with him? Well we see that Jesus is gracious, he doesn't rebuke him, he actually meets him on his own level. Jesus knows exactly how to respond to each one of us. In a sense that's the, that's why it's so important to look to your word because he still deals with us in the same way today, he knows exactly how to deal with us and he says this, Luke 10, what is written in the law?
[18:34] How do you read it? And he answers, he knows it off by heart, of course he knows, he says this, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind and your neighbour as yourself.
[18:50] And of course he's got it right, he knows the answers. In Galatians 5, 14 it says this, for the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, you shall love your neighbour as yourself.
[19:03] But did he really get it? You see Jesus, what's his response? he says, you've spoken well, do this and you shall live.
[19:17] Now this is a pretty big, it's a pretty big ask and if we're honest with ourselves, none of us can do this. Who can truly do this? Did he know what he was saying or was he just riling off? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, that's all your emotions, all your intents, all your desires are for God, 24-7 all the time.
[19:35] You shall live with all your strength, with all your actions, with all your mind, all your thoughts are for God. And in this, you shall love your neighbour as yourself. Are we selfish?
[19:47] I think we all have to admit we are. Or do we truly treat others as if they're ourselves? I think we have to admit that no one can do this. It's a big, it's a hard ask.
[19:59] But how does he respond again? He doesn't humble himself. He doesn't realise he's wrong before Jesus but he says this, these telling words, and trying to justify himself.
[20:17] Desiring to justify himself, he said to Jesus, and who is my neighbour? He was still trying to get one over Jesus. He was still trying to make make himself look good, you know?
[20:28] So Jesus knows how to respond and he tells this parable. And the purpose of the parable, I think, is this, it's to crush his sense of self-righteousness.
[20:40] Because before someone can come to Jesus, they need to realise that they can't love like Jesus, they need to realise that they're not sufficient in themselves. This is what Jesus is going to do. We see this time and time in scripture, he uses parables to get exactly to the heart of the issue and what this guy needs to hear.
[21:01] So let's have a look at this parable. So he tells this parable. A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho.
[21:13] Now, this road from Jerusalem to Jericho, it was known as a dangerous road. He would know this. He might have heard a story similar to this recently. Jericho was a place where many priests live, many Levites live, and they would commute to Jerusalem when they had their duties there.
[21:30] And it was called the Ascent of Blood. It was a steep hill. It was called the Ascent of Blood because there were red rocks either side of the road. And thieves would hide in these rocks. And they'd come out and they'd often steal from people.
[21:42] It was known as a dangerous route. And this guy, we don't know who he is, we don't know much about him, but he fell among robbers and they stripped him and they beat him and then they departed and they left him.
[21:55] They left him for dead. If he was left by himself, he probably would have died. And it says this, now by chance. These three words, now by chance, I think they're quite telling.
[22:09] I think often these things, they come on us by surprise and they're a test. And this Levite and this priest, they were caught unawares. and in a sense, it showed their true heart because God wasn't, well, no, sorry, God was watching.
[22:24] No one else was watching. No one else could see them. And what were they going to do when no one else could see them? Would they do the right thing? It says this, now by chance, a priest was going down the road and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
[22:40] In a sense, he ignored him. He went on the other side. He tried to get it out of his mind. And the second man is a Levite and he does the same thing. And the shocking thing is this, the priest and the Levite, in the mind of the lawyer, these two would definitely have eternal life.
[22:56] These two were assuring they were the teachers of Israel. They were the spiritual leaders and yet they couldn't live it out. They weren't fulfilling the law.
[23:08] But then who's this man? But the Samaritan as he journeyed came to where he was and when he saw him, he had compassion. Now why does Jesus choose a Samaritan?
[23:20] I want to go into a bit of the history of who the Samaritans were. So think of a map of Israel. You've got the southern tribe, the largest tribe and that's Judah. And you've got the ten smaller tribes in the north.
[23:33] And during the reign of King Rehoboam, he was the king of Solomon, third king of Israel, these two constituencies, they split into two nations.
[23:44] So you have the north which was Israel, the south which was Judah. Judah was the place of the temple, it was the place of the worship of God. Israel fell into a lot of idolatry. Judah was a bit better but not much better.
[23:58] And eventually the Assyrians came. God was judging Israel and they took the Israelites into captivity. They took many of them away from the land and they left Assyrians in the land. and it was commanded in the law not to marry with other nations and not to worship their gods.
[24:15] They were to be pure and they were to worship God but some of the people in Israel, they intermarried with these Assyrians and they started to worship their gods and this group was called the Samaritans.
[24:25] This is how the Samaritans were formed. And then later the Babylonians took over Judah and did the same thing. They took them into captivity and they destroyed the temple. And later God would have mercy upon them, they'd come back to the land and they'd start to rebuild the temple.
[24:40] This group, the Samaritans, they came and they tried to stop the building of the temple. So as you can imagine the Jews, they hated the Samaritans. They were looked as lower citizens. They were a lower class.
[24:52] These Samaritans, they weren't allowed to ever worship in the temple. In a sense, they, just by birth, they would have no access to God. They had no chance of eternal life just because of who they were.
[25:04] This was in the mind of the Jews. They had separate worship and they mixed up the worship of Yahweh with paganism as well and they, they worshiped in a different center.
[25:17] And the Jews, they hated the Samaritans. They'd spit after the word Samaritan. He had an inward hate for Samaritans. And when he says this, who is my neighbor?
[25:28] Well, the Jews, they wouldn't see Samaritans as their neighbor. So the law didn't apply to the Samaritans. They saw a Samaritan on the ground. They wouldn't have to by the law. They wouldn't have to help him.
[25:40] So this lawyer, he's, he's from a, well, a priestly line. He knows the word of God. You know, the Jews, they were, they thought they were great because they were God's people.
[25:55] But what's Jesus saying here? He's saying the two teachers of Israel, the priest and the Levite, they didn't fulfill the law. But this man, the Samaritan, this man who was hated, this man did. We don't know who this nameless man who was, whether, whether he was a Jew, but he could, could have well been a Jew on that road.
[26:13] Yet the Samaritan goes the extra mile and he helps this man. It says this, he has compassion. He looked at him and had compassion. In your, your versions, I think it says pity. But, I don't know Greek, but the, the Greek word is something like spoleg nismoi or something.
[26:30] It's used in three parables in the New Testament. And the other two parables are about the love of God. One is the unforgiving servant, we'll look at that later, and the king has compassion on his servant.
[26:43] And the king represents God. The other one is the prodigal son and the father has compassion on his son. Now there's these two parables and every other time that this word compassion is used is of Jesus towards other people.
[26:56] It's never used of one person to another. And I think, in a sense, that's telling because who of us can love like the Samaritan did?
[27:08] What does this word mean, compassion? Well, it was a churning of the bowels and that sounds a bit strange but what it is is that was the seat of the emotions in their thinking.
[27:18] It was sort of the innermost parts. It's like a deep yearning from your innermost self. This Samaritan, he loved them. He looked upon him in love. He yearned inwardly for him. And what does he do?
[27:30] He goes the extra mile. He binds up his wounds. You know, some people would say he wouldn't have bandages on him. He must have used his own clothes. We don't know that but it's a possibility.
[27:41] And he pours an oil and wine. The wine is for the cleansing of the wound and the oil is to help it heal. And then he sets him on his own animal. He goes the extra mile. He goes out of his way.
[27:52] He probably has plans but he puts him on his animal and he takes him to an inn. He takes care of him. He gives them money to carry on taking care of them and he says this, look, spend whatever you want.
[28:03] I'll come back and I'll repay you. And as you can imagine, the Levite would be shocked at this. And Jesus is getting right at his pride.
[28:18] And this last sentence is telling. He says, who was the neighbour in this story? And he doesn't even say the word Samaritan but he's forced to say it's the one who showed mercy.
[28:29] And then Jesus says this, you go and do likewise. Now who can love like this? Of course the Levite couldn't but of course we can't either.
[28:39] Who can? But we are called to love like this. That's a challenge. That's a challenge. And James says this, faith without deeds is dead.
[28:58] And we can have all the head knowledge in the world. We can have amazing Bible knowledge. If it's without love, it's nothing. Read 1 Corinthians 13 and it's all about love.
[29:09] How you can do all these amazing things but without love, it's nothing. And we can have all this knowledge. James also says this, even the demons believe yet they tremble.
[29:23] So saving faith is this. It's that which works in us and it will cause us to love. But where does this motivation come from? It can't come from ourselves.
[29:35] It has to be the love of God we love because he first loved us. Now I want to think who do we find hard to love? Maybe it's the homeless man on the street.
[29:47] Maybe we walk by the other side and we walk past him. Imagine this, if you saw a man in need and he was in shabby clothes, maybe he was a homeless man, maybe he's suffering.
[30:01] Would you help him straight away? Would you stop and think about it? Imagine if the same man was a man in a suit. I think we all have to admit we would probably be much quicker to help him.
[30:14] Maybe we watch TV and we see these adverts for refugees or children in Africa. Do we want to change the channel? Do we want to not think about it?
[30:25] Or do we truly love all the time? Who are the people we find hard to love? Maybe people from a different, with different beliefs to us, from a different background, from a different nation.
[30:35] Maybe it's that person who really annoys you at work or at school. But we're called to love. And I think one of the biggest things might be forgiveness. And I think we all have to admit that there are people we find hard to forgive.
[30:52] And for this man, for the Levite, could he forgive the Samaritan? It seems not. And as a, remember that parable I was saying about the, the unforgiving servant.
[31:06] and that talks a bit about forgiveness. So I'll just mention that quickly. So there's a king and he represents God and there's a servant and he owes the king. It says 10,000 talents.
[31:19] And that's about 200,000 years of wages. It's about $7 billion. The idea is no one could pay it. But that's how much we all owe to God. We've all sinned against God.
[31:32] And this guy begs the king for mercy. and amazingly he wipes away his debt. And that's what God's done to us. He's forgiven us far more than we could ever forgive. He's wiped away our debt completely.
[31:44] But then there's another man who says he owes this servant 100 denarii. And he takes him by the throat and he says pay me what you owe me.
[31:55] And he says I can't do it. Have mercy upon me. And this servant he says no. He throws him in jail and he says you won't get out until you pay every penny. And the king's angry rightfully. And he says I'll send you to the torturers.
[32:12] Now we think about that parable and we think of course he should have forgiven him. That's shocking. But you know 100 denarii is not a small amount. It's about a third of a year's wages. It's in the thousands.
[32:24] And our hurts people who hurt us the things that we deal with that we try and forgive they're often not petty. They're often quite big. But how do we how do we get the motivation to forgive?
[32:37] Well it's this it's that God's forgiven us far more than we ever deserve. And if we're looking at those around us and we're looking within ourselves purely we'll never get the motivation to love we'll never get the motivation to forgive.
[32:50] But this is where the motivation comes from it's this that Christ died for us Christ forgave us everything. When we were dead in our trespasses and sins Christ died for us. and I think about this parable of the good Samaritan and where does our motivation to love like this come from?
[33:08] How can we do it? None of us can do it. There was only one man who loved like this and that was Jesus. You know the Samaritan sorry the man was there dead on the road half dead.
[33:24] and we can look at the story and we can think I hope I wouldn't be like the Levite I hope I wouldn't be like the priest I hope I'd be like the Samaritan but we all have to admit we're probably far more like the man on the road Ephesians says this you are dead in your trespasses and sins that was our spiritual state but this but Jesus he didn't just stoop down to help us he came down from heaven and he was the one person who didn't wasn't obligated to help us yet he was the one man who did he was the only man who truly loved like this all the time says there he was in the form of God he did not count equality with God a thing to be held on to but he made himself nothing taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men being found in human form he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death even death on a cross see the Samaritan he was hated but Jesus was hated more he was called a Samaritan by the religious leaders he was called a tax collector he was called sorry not a tax collector they said he had a demon even worse but all he did was love and it says he came to his own but his own did not receive him and it says this in
[34:44] Isaiah he was despised and rejected by men a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief yet he didn't just help us in our deadness he didn't just help us in our suffering he actually took on our suffering he went more than anyone could go he went the extra mile he says while we were still enemies of God Christ died for us he became sin who knew no sin that we might be the righteousness of God he didn't just wash us in wine and oil he says he washes our sins in his own blood he sheds his own blood for us he bears our burdens he puts his spirit in us he puts his life in us he gives us everything you see we can't love like the Samaritan we can never earn God's favour by loving like the Samaritan we don't love to attain God's favour we love because his love has already been lavished upon us we do it out of love for God until we see how much
[35:47] God has loved us until we humble ourselves we'll never get the motivation to love others 1 John chapter 2 verse 19 to 21 it says this we love him because he first loved us if someone says I love God and hates his brother he is a liar for he does not love his brother whom he has not seen how can he love God whom he has not seen and this commandment we have from him that he who loves God must love his brother also you see it's a command we must love our brothers but the important verse is this where it all starts we love him because he first loved us that's the only way we're ever going to love 2 Corinthians 3 verse 18 it says this but we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory just as by the spirit of God so what's that saying we become like Jesus when we behold his glory when we gaze at him we need to remind ourselves of what he's done for us every day that's the only way we're going to change that's the only way our hearts can change just to finally illustrate our spiritual state before
[37:05] God there's this passage in Ezekiel chapter 16 starting in verse 4 and it's talking about the state of Israel when God first found them I think we can apply it to ourselves as well it goes like this as for your nativity on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut nor were you washed in water to cleanse you you you were not rubbed with salt nor wrapped in swaddling cloths no I pitied you to do any of these things for you to have compassion on you but you were thrown out into the open field when you yourself were loathed on the day you were born with you and you became mine says the
[38:14] Lord God then I washed you in water yes I thoroughly washed off your blood and I anointed you with oil I clothed you in embroidered cloth and gave you sandals of badger skin I clothed you with fine linen and covered you with silk I think we'll close there the final hymn number 506 we'll just close in prayer Jesus we look into this parable and we realise that we can't do this that we can't love but we thank you for what you've done for us we thank you that you died for us just help us to realise how much you've forgiven us how much you've done for us help us to humble ourselves help us to remember every day just what you've done for us and help us to go out and love more because you first loved this we just thank you and praise you in
[39:26] Jesus name Amen Amen