Sower Church

jesus and his disciples went onto the villages around caesarea philippi on the way. He asked them who do people say I am? They replied. Some say john the baptist, others say elijah and still others, one of the prophets. But what about you? Who do you say? I am? Amen. Welcome. Good morning. If you’re on the live stream, welcome If you’re here in the room, welcome. Um, you reminded me Chloe of what I interaction I had with my daughter this week. I was at my son’s basketball practice and I turned to my five year old daughter. I said, maya, do you want to go with me to the daddy daughter dance? And she looked at me like this is like we’ll see. So I don’t, I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but I’m hoping I can woo my five year old to join me. So dad’s come on down, it’ll be fun. We’ll have a good time. It won’t be a long, long night. It’ll be a little power hour of hanging out. I don’t know what dances we’re going to do with five year olds in whatever age, some of you have a multiple daughters. So you have to work cut out for you. But we’ll figure it out. Welcome. Thank you for coming. I’m also reminded of uh, I was thinking of this message this morning, this passage and I was thinking, it reminded me of a conference I went to when I, when I first became a pastor, I got invited to multiple little conferences. Big conferences, Small conferences. I was the new shiny object in our old network of churches and I’ve since then retired thinking I’m not that big of a deal and I enjoy spending my time with you and Lincoln in this church. But there’s just one conference I got invited to. Whereas like 3000 people at the conference and then they had these breakout sessions where they had uh, junior speakers speaking at the breakout sessions and I was one of those newer preacher speakers at those sessions and you got a little blurb and you got a little bio. Um, and then you would be fishing for Those 3000 people had to go somewhere and they would go to your session. Maybe if your wife helped you write a creative enough blurb in bio. And so I feel like this is one of those things where if you had a choice, you would not pick this session if you had a choice unless I was slated up against how to suffer. Well how to share your faith, how to give money, how to, how to endure under persecution. If those were my competition, I would, I would get some of you. But, but this is not a topic we enjoy speaking on. Just to be honest, every time I speak on this subject and I think it’s probably a dozen or more, probably two dozen sermons I’ve given on this subject my entire life. I feel like a a cold wet legalistic blanket we slip on has a congregation and that’s not my desire. I understand this is not a strength of ours, some of your flipping head trying to find work. This is not a strength of ours as a church, as christians as people. But regardless of gifting or current strength, this is the reality of the kingdom of Heaven. This is what jesus has for us as people and we need to grow and it’s okay to grow. And so in light of that tough, bleak mountain we’re gonna climb today as we work through this topic, will you bow your heads with me? And let’s let’s pray God, I thank you for the word of God. Thank you for those passages that we give out of our strength. And there’s passages, we look at out of our weaknesses as christians and this might be a passage that is the strength of brothers and sisters in this room. This might be a passage. That is a weakness of brothers and sisters in this room. Ultimately, we all don’t measure up and we all fail. We all need you, jesus. We need your gospel. We need your help to accomplish anything that is in the bible. I pray. We as individuals would do business with you and we as a, as a congregation, as a church would do busin…

well good morning and happy New Year to all of you and a big shout out to those of you who began with a New Year resolution to eat healthy that you’ve already paused until monday. My name is dan. Um if I haven’t met you yet, I’m one of the pastors here and we’re going to Continue our coverage of the gospel of Luke and we’re gonna begin in verse 21 this morning. But before we get there I want to set the table for you by kind of laying out the title of this teaching which is the good portion. Now you’re probably wondering what, what is the good portion? Well, let me tell you this. So the last two months, right? The last two months been two big holidays where we probably ate more food than we could possibly eat in an entire year. Right, christmas, thanksgiving and christmas, lots of food, large family feast for some of us multiple family feast multiple times, getting together and eating lots of good food. And when I was a child, whenever my mom would make one of my favorite foods, one of my favorite dishes. I really wanted the good portion, I wanted a good sized portion, I wanted to dig in and I wanted a large amount, give it to me mom, this is my favorite right? And then when I got married and when my wife would prepare one of my favorite dishes, one of my favorite foods, she already knows you gotta fill this plate up. It’s got to be a good portion. And so this morning when we think of the good portion, I want you to think of God’s will being the good portion and that you would have the same desire that God would would help you to desire his will being done in your life like this is it, this is it for me, nothing else. I want your will. That’s a good portion for me for my life. I needed God. I’ve got to have me some of that in my life, your will being done for me. But I also want you to know something though. We would all agree and say amen and nod and shake our heads. Yes, God’s will. That’s a good portion for me. I want that in my life. We also need to be aware of the fact that sin is constantly leading us to bring our will up to the place of God’s will and even supplanting God’s will and us wanting God to bless our will and that God would adopt our will as his will. But it doesn’t work like that. And yet we’re all tempted to operate like that. And so not only this morning do we want to say yes to the good portion to God’s will being done in our lives, but we want to be aware of the way in which sin would lead us to bring our will elevated up to the place of God’s will and try to get God to adopt our will as his will for us and then let’s pray and then we’ll jump into the passage, Father in Heaven, thank you for your word, it is your revealed will for us, help us to understand it, Help us to desire it, not only in word, but Lord also indeed that our hearts would reflect that we desire your will as a good portion for our lives Help me this morning to teach your word with great clarity so that we, your people would indeed be satisfied with a good portion of your will. I pray this in christ’s name. Amen, I mean, so luke 10, beginning in verse 21. Um we’re actually gonna read through to the end of the chapter that might scare some of you, you’re probably like how long are we gonna be in here today? You know, there’s 21 verses, he’s talking about covering man, how are we gonna get through all of this? Right? Um but bear with me, we’re gonna we’re gonna walk through this and we’re gonna see God’s will for us is a good portion as we do so, But again, verse 21 is where we will begin now, just a little bit of context here, this is jesus gathering with his disciples. He has just sent out the 72 they’ve done some incredible things in his name. Derek talked about this last week, Pastor Derek talked about this, where we are called to be good …

Alright church, good morning. As you can tell, we’re back in the book of luke after taking a hiatus and going through an advent series in the book of luke and decided to come back into luke. Some people are, if you’ve heard of the red letter christians only and I think that’s so where we’ve decided to become luke Luke Christians only. Um at some point we might get back into another book. I’m sure we will uh well we’re gonna jump into Luke. Chapter 10 versus one through 20 is where we’re kicking back back into this series. So I’m gonna read that and pray and we’ll get going here. So Luke. Chapter 10 verse one says after this the Lord appointed 72 others and sent them on ahead of him to buy two into every town and place where he himself was about to go and he said to them the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out his laborers into his harvest. Go your way Behold I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves carry no money bag, no knapsack, no sandals and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter first say peace, be to this house and if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not it will return to you and remain in the same house eating and drinking what they provide for the laborer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house whenever you enter a town and they receive you eat what is set before you heal the sick in it and say to them, the kingdom of God has come near to you. But whenever you enter a town and they do not receive, you go into its streets and say even the dust of your of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this that the kingdom of God has come near. I tell you it will be more bearable on that day for sodom than for that town. We’re gonna stop there for now. Let’s pray father. We we love you, we thank you for your word, thank you for your gospel that has impacted our lives and the people you’ve sent into our lives and we thank you, you’ve called us to be a part of your word. God opened our eyes to the power and the truth of your word. And I pray father that you would give us your heart for your people, for the nations that you would help us to become more like you in jesus name. We pray Amen Amen. So one of the stories that I love to, to share with people is how I got connected with uh church in Kansas, went to the University of Kansas. My software, how I got connected them and that’s where God really impacted my life transformed my life was through this college ministry of this church. Uh there’s people there and it’s actually through my great uncle. Less, so less is uh just an amazing man of God that anybody who gets to know him meet him is truly blessed. And because less is a man who is, he’s generous, so generous with all that. He has a soft hearted man. It’s it’s hard to spend time with him without him welling up over people and what God is doing in the lives of people. Uh and it’s just just totally committed to what God is doing in his life and through his life. And so less his story is that he grew up in a roman catholic family are our family is a roman catholic family and and got into a time of heavy drinking and just waywardness and God rescued him, took him out of the pit and and totally transformed his life and his marriage and and to see the life that he has today is truly a testimony to God’s power. Several years later after his conversion story, God put it on less. His heart gave him a conviction to bring the gospel to his family, to reach out, go back to his family and to share the good news of christ with him. So him and his wife would travel an hour every sunday to lead a bible study for my grandparents were there, my parents were there several o…

well merry christmas, merry christmas to everyone of you, this is the last day of advent and this is so good to be in the house of the Lord with you all tonight to worship him to lift up our praise to him and to hear from him and his word and I just want to say real quickly to the parents. We I know this is a special occasion. We have the little kids in here with us, don’t be embarrassed by their little sounds, they are a reminder to us of life and vitality and our savior came once as a little babe and that is so amazing to me and so tonight as we gather in in the name of our savior, I want to say yet again merry christmas to you, merry christmas man, have you ever considered why we say merry christmas, have you ever thought about that? Is it simply a traditional holiday saying that we just toss around? No, there’s something more to it isn’t it? We say merry christmas because we wish and we hope for the recipient to be full of joy and happiness and cheerfulness at the revelation of the Lord, jesus christ and him have him come to the earth, we say merry christmas because we want you to be full of joy at the revelation of the Lord jesus christ so we say merry christmas and yet too many people during this time of the year, they feel the very opposite of joyfulness of cheerfulness of happiness, they feel pain disappointment, frustration, a time of the year. What we ought to be full of cheer is for too many people a time of despair. Okay, and there may be a few of you in this room tonight who are in that place, maybe you said merry christmas, but inside you are well acquainted with your pain and disappointment and hurt and my goal for you tonight. It’s for you to drink deeply of the hope that we have in christ is for you to see him with fresh eyes and for you to drink so deeply of his hope and his life. It will set you free of the very things that you’re feeling right now and for others of you, you may actually be in a good place in your soul. I still want you also to drink deeply tonight of the hope that we have in christ. I want you to drink so deeply of this hope that it will overflow from your life into the lives of those around you, so that you would encourage them to have hope in christ. I want to offer you encouragement to drink deeply of the hope that we have in christ tonight. I want you to leave here tonight with the kind of hope that we find in hebrews chapter six verse 19. It says hope is an anchor for the soul, the kind of hope that we have in christ that anchors your soul in every circumstance, I want you to be able to say with the Apostle paul as he said to the the church and colossi christ in me the hope of Glory, I want you to drink deeply of this hope and I want you to experience it in such a way that it anchors your soul and then it spills over into the lives of those around you. And so tonight I’ve entitled this teaching the incarnation of hope. Now that word incarnation, it simply means that God has come in the flesh. God almighty God has come in human form and because he has come in human form, we always have hope, We always have hope. We always have hope. God incarnate is for us. Hope. So I’m going to talk about the incarnation of hope because the bible directs us to have hope in God, the kind of hope that reflects a confident expectation or a solid assurance regarding future outcomes. That means right where you are at a hope in God that allows you to have a confident expectation of the outcome, a solid assurance that your God is good and that the outcome will be for your good and his glory. And because God has come in the flesh, we always have this kind of hope. And so tonight you need to drink deeply of this. I want to I want you to turn with me in your bibles to Isaiah chapter nine we’re gonna read verses six…

All right, good morning. It’s good to be here with the eyes. I love the advent season christmas. My our christmas events have already started this last week. We came back last night from our first set of christmas events and so it’s off right off to the races here, plenty of things to do. Uh We’re back home, I was back home in Norfolk and I I was driving by and I seen the the biggest nativity scene I’ve think I’ve ever seen Um I think the camels were eight ft tall, so I mean it was huge, just spread out on this whole church for the whole on and so it was pretty cool to see. I that’s kind of how my brain works. I was just like where do you store that in the off season? You know, like Alright, so uh but yeah, I mean the nativity scene is very common, it’s very familiar, we we see it a lot and uh you know, I got one up here, it’s been kind of been going around and so alright, if you see if you can catch the the air in here, right? Yes, Yoda doesn’t belong there I guess. But so a lot of times with christmas season though, you see the nativity scene it’s very common, right? But but what happens is the story gets so condensed and you’ve got everything going on at one time and you got the shepherds and you’ve got the wise men and you got everybody, it’s just everything’s together And so real quick. I’m just gonna kind of lay out, it’s very high level, very elementary, just the where we’re at in our story because we’re gonna be looking at Luke 225 through 35 and write the events happen so fast. Sometimes it gets a little convoluted. And so the beginning part is pretty easy right? Where we see uh an angel appeared to mary and tells her that she’s gonna be pregnant and give birth to the messiah. And then an angel appears to joseph reaffirming that right, don’t leave her. And so they go through and then there’s a census happening. So that’s why they have to go to Bethlehem, that’s where the the origins of joseph’s family is at. And so they go up, she gives birth at Bethlehem. The angels appear to the shepherds who then come in and praise God and give him glory. And then they leave. What happens though in that process now is on the eighth day, they are they are believers and and they’re gonna follow the mosaic law. And so on the eighth day, they’re gonna come in and they take jesus up to Jerusalem to be circumcised, that’s part of the jewish law. And then they go back to Bethlehem and then after 40 days after the purification that that has to go through again through the mosaic law for mary, they go back up and they combined two events. One is this dedication where they dedicate and they present and they give their firstborn to God and then they redeem the child back and that kind of um goes back to the Passover but then mary also offers a sacrifice for her purification. So we’re right here, that’s that’s in the midst of our story, this is why when we go into luke too, they are up in Jerusalem at the temple and just to kind of close out that season here is then they go back, right and and when the wise men come, jesus is a toddler. So we got the whole nativity scene with these wise men and the shepherds and that’s probably a year and a half to two years apart. Alright, so there’s a huge time gap and we just kind of throw it on the nativity scene. Um Rightfully so it’s perfectly fine but it’s but the stories are separated by a lot of time and then they flee to Egypt and then later after Herod has died, come back to Nazareth. And so that’s again that’s kind of the gist of where we’re at but we’re we’re right, there day 41 probably uh them going up and presenting jesus and dedicating jesus. So we’re gonna start right here when it when we look at luke two, we’re gonna jump into 25 so luke 2 25. Uh In fact actually I I told my some of my family y…

merry christmas livestream people merry christmas, real people in the room, we sure appreciate and love you. Um just thank you for bearing with us christmas I think like four years ago when we did christmas, we don’t even like saying christmas songs and we kind of forgot I’m saying the royal, we like me. I kind of forgot about we’re rolling through some other passages and stuff and I know how do you forget that? I don’t know. So we’re growing up here as a church and getting our act together. I mean like I’m wearing a jacket then and dan wore jackets, we’re just we’re getting better at celebrating christmas as a church. Amen. All right. All right, so merry christmas welcome. So a lot of christmas parties. I’ll give you a conversational piece. You should not use a conversational piece. You should not use for all these many christmas parties you’re going to is tell me your birth story. That’s a that’s an awkward exchange. Every time my my friend’s wife started talking about babies and births and what happened and stuff. I leave the room or try to awkwardly change the conversation. I have my own kids, birth was traumatic enough. I am not looking forward to hearing about someone else’s kids traumatic birth. It is just brutal what fathers have to go through. So bring life into this. Welcome merry christmas. All right, So today we’re looking at the birth story of jesus before we jump into that I had a New Year’s resolution last january that I would send and receive more memes that I gained weight and I watch more netflix and so here is a mean one of our leaders posted into our leaders group, me threat where we communicate, it was supposed to be a broadcasting communication thread but it’s becoming more like a ha ha funny meme thread for our 50 some leaders in our church. So we just love you all merry christmas and so this week is advent week three next week, Shane is doing advent week for christmas eve, we like that fifth candle for our christmas eve advent advent series. So I appreciate you taking time to come here and think and celebrate and contemplated worship with God and others. So let’s bow our heads and take a moment and pray God. I just, this is a visited planet God, we are lucky to be able to spend time together and worship you this morning through songs and through prayer and through contemplation and through the way we live, this is a visited planet God, you’ve been very good to us. Up to this point in our life, we can trust you gonna be good to us the rest of our lives Lord, this is a visited planet Lord where you sent your son, jesus the visit of this planet through the birth of the virgin teenage mom in Bethlehem that is an amazing birth story that we’re gonna look at today. We just want to worship you, appreciate you, admire you and let you and your example form the rest of our world do we just commit this time to you, create the word of God will come alive in our lives and that we would respond rightly to the word of God. We’d listen rightly to the word of God. We listen to understand and listen to obey the word of God. We commit this time to you in jesus name. Amen in luke eight luke two verse eight we’re gonna pick up in verse eight, but I’m going to tell you the quick backstory to the birth story vs. One and two. We talk about the caesar who is leading the known world at that time, who is occupying the nation of Israel mary and joseph lived under the roman rule. They required all of the people to go back to their their their hometown to register for a census so they can tax people. All right. So taxes is what got mary and joseph mobilized 80 miles on back of a donkey mary on the back of a donkey. Nine months pregnant. As the miles went by. The reality, the cold, grim reality of that cold winter day was that she is go…

well good morning we are in the second week of advance and then did a great job last week setting the stage for what advent is and how we are in between two different events. First advent which is the birth of christ that he came as God to this earth. We celebrate every year at christmas and the second advent which is the coming of christ again. And we look forward to christ’s return. And so part of the event is celebrating the birth of christ and how he came to pay for our sins and all of that. But also to look forward to his second return. And today we are in luke chapter one vs 46 through 56 or grab your bible turn with me to that passage because we’ll be reading through that passage today um it’s a it’s a song, a psalm of praise from mary and it’s called the Magnificat. It’s that’s a latin term. So it describes uh the glory to God, praise to God Magnification of God and that’s what mary does in this psalm um is that she praises God and lifts up and glorifies him. And so we’re going to be seeing different character qualities and attributes of God today as mary proclaims this psalm of greatness. And if you recall what happened was marrying Elizabeth were coming together and as they did Elizabeth makes some proclamations and some prophecy and uh the baby within Elizabeth john the baptist leaps within her womb as a response to hearing mary’s voice and and uh and then she makes these proclamations and mary turns and then uh proclaims this overwhelming joy this welling up and she proclaims the song and it’s a psalm of praise. She proclaims to us all today who God is And it’s similar to the kind of the song of praise that Hannah did. If you’re, if you’ve read the scriptures a lot in first Samuel chapter two, you can read that later today. Hannah makes a song of praise psalm of praise and it’s very similar. Hannah focuses in on how God has triumphed over his enemies. And mary here focuses more on humbly receiving the mercy and blessings of God. Okay, and so we’re going to read this psalm together. My name is Ben Lander Pastor here at so our church and and glad to be going over this psalm together. It really is a uplifting uh glorifying psalm to God. We’re gonna learn about God together. So let us read beginning in uh four verse 46 after I pray here Lord, we just come to you this morning. We ask you to speak to us from your word. We ask you to help us learn about you today. Um and to to trust you in jesus name. Amen. Okay verse 46. And mary said, my soul praises the greatness and glory of God, My spirit rejoices in God, my savior because he has looked with favor on the humble condition of his servant, surely from now on all generations will call me Blessed Because the Mighty one has done great things for me and his name is holy. Yeah, his mercy is from generation to generation on those who fear him. He has done mighty deeds with his arm and has scattered the proud because of the thoughts of their hearts. He has toppled the mighty from their Thrones and exalted the lowly he has satisfied the hungry with good things and is sent away the rich empty. He has helped his servant, Israel remembering his mercy to Abraham and his descendants forever. Just as he spoke to our ancestors. And so you see this uh this kind of overwhelming joy that that bubbles up and flows over. And as you read that song, you see four different sections. This this psalm of praise is broken up into four different sections and I want to highlight four different aspects for different character qualities of God and who God is, that mary has proclaimed to all of us through this song. Okay. And so the first one I want to look at is we go back to verse 47 and it says oh how my soul praises the Lord, how my spirit rejoices in God my savior. And the first thing that we see th…

morning. So a church family, Good morning, merry christmas. My name is dan if I’ve not met you, I’m one of the elders here. So glad that you’re here. We’re thankful for this time. We thank you for this season. Um, and today we get to kick off our advent teaching series and those of you who are familiar with where our church has been the last several months, walking through primarily the gospel of luke. What we are going to circle back around to some of those early chapters in luke to make this advent series uh, worthwhile for you. So for some of you, you kinda gotta dust off your those teachings from, you know what, a couple of years ago now. Um, we’re on the deliberate pace through the gospel of luke. I’ll just say that alright, the deliberate pace. So, but anyway, I’m excited to kick off this series this morning and I’m so excited that I told myself that it wouldn’t be wise to begin this morning’s teaching by making a joke about the huskers and the season that our beloved huskers had. And I was also reminded that we just walked through a miniseries entitled Love Well and that wouldn’t be loving you all well if I made that joke. But I do understand that you guys have had lots of practice on loving Well because you root for the huskers. So I will say that right, hey man or ouch, right, You can say one or the other. But really this season is for me one of the most fun seasons this advent season coming off. Thanksgiving. Looking forward to christmas and then a New Year is one of the most fun seasons for me, I know that there’s a lot of stress that people have to deal with. There’s travel. There’s a lot of different things that happen unexpectedly during, during this time that can sour this season. And our hope is that through this advent teaching series that you will stand firm on the truth of God’s word and that you will learn to rejoice in this season even as we sang this morning, even when times are hard that you’ll be able to rejoice in this season. On that note, I want to talk a little bit about advent in the history of it. Before I jump into our passage, advent simply means the coming or the arrival of a notable person or event, the coming or arrival, the notable person or event for God’s people, especially the characters that we read about in the bible. Many of them waited for thousands of years for the arrival of God’s messiah God’s machine, Doc, the anointed one that would save God’s people that would restore God’s people back to a blast relationship with God and usher in the kingdom of God in a life changing and powerful way and waited thousands of years. In fact, when you survey the old testament, which is, I kind of want to give you a brief survey of the old testament. Really. It’s not a survey, but here’s some passages to kind of help. You see the Messianic promise as it was understood by characters in the bible and by characters. I don’t mean fictional characters. I mean people who were living on this earth hoping and waiting for God’s machine shock to appear Beginning with Adam and Eve Genesis 3 15 we’re told that the machine would be the seed of the woman, that he would crush the head of the serpent that would mark a return back to paradise and a return back to this place of a blessed relationship with God. Now the seed of the woman that’s important even as we think about the advent season and the person of mary. Secondly, we see what Abraham who’s one of the patriarchs right, Abraham Isaac and Jacob, they’re called the patriarchs right with Abraham. He understood this promise, this coming of God’s machine doc as the offspring who would overcome his enemies, he would possess the gates of his enemies and in him all the nations of the earth would be blessed. This is what he looked forward to. This was the advent that …

Amen. Good morning. Welcome Welcome as well as we approach the holiday season. Think of any weird family traditions. Y’all might have my uh my family does some stuff, it just seems wrong. Um they, they do a family fun run, which feels like a five K. To me. And there’s all these nephews that are like adolescent teenage track guys who do cross country and they run a spirited seems like a three mile race after we do thanksgiving meal, which seems wrong. Doesn’t that seem wrong on many levels like that should be like a six a.m. Optional event, not at two o’clock required. Everyone line up, go by age group. Anyway, that’s that’s my family tradition. I don’t know what traditions you have of your friends and family, but this is the tis the season, the holiday season is approaching uh that is different. Not my deal thanksgiving. My ideal thanksgiving involves feasting, food, football, power nap boot and rally leftover turkey stuffing. If there’s any left over, you know, go to sleep for the night, that’s my ideal thanksgiving. But people are different families are different. Uh friends are different. Last week we thought we’d do a micro series as a church. Looking at Loving. Well as a church as a preemptively striking a reality that we’re all walking into as christians walking into our different families, it could be your in laws, your actual family. It is a different world we’re walking into last week dan looked at Loving. Well when, when you disagree with others, it was excellent. You can check out our podcast, youtube, our website today, We’re going to look at how to love. Well, people who are different from you. So last week we’re looking at, we’re looking at disagreement. This week. We’re looking at different people if there’s disagreement is our differences. But our next couple months there’s a lot more family interactions than there used to be uh for most of us and that might be a good thing. That might not be a great thing for some of us. There could be a lot of history attached to the holidays for many of us. And so you go home and then you’re sleeping in the room, You grew up in the sheets you had on your bed as a kid. I mean, I don’t know what your context is, but some of you going home, their siblings at home, maybe you know, siblings fall back into the old relational ruts, there’s family, there’s friends, it’s just you’re going back in time for some of you and you’re going back to a different or difficult season of life. So in light of that, the scripture is not silent. Let’s uh let’s bow our heads and pray and focus our thoughts and our hearts on God this morning. God, we confess we need you, we need to show up and make this time worthwhile. I pray to you just encourage us instruct us with your word this morning. Help us to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves and how we live in the day and the time we live, help us to understand this concept and apply this concept into our lives. Just make this a meaningful time. Looking at your word this morning where we can walk away if meaningful action steps we can take as people. We need you God, we need you to come through and make it work in our lives. Help us to love people well, we pay some jesus name. Amen. All right. So our main passage is first john 47 through nine. We’ve spent time look at this last week. It says beloved. Let us love one another. For love is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love in this, The love of God has made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. The title of How to love Well, people who are different from you, our culture says you cannot love well, people that are different from you. You cannot engage, do not …

well, good morning. So a church family. So good to be with you guys this morning. Um good morning to those of you tuning in on the live stream, we are excited for you guys this morning, we’re taking a two week pause on our series on the gospel of luke to tackle a series called Love Well and for those of you who are new here, welcome, welcome to Soar and I hope you take Alex up and connect with us. We would love for you to connect with us, let us know that you were here and let us kind of get you connected in some kind of way into this great community, that is my church home. So on that note, let’s get started with this series. Um why don’t you open your bibles to first, John Chapter four And I’m going to read verses seven through 9, but while you’re turning there, I do want to set this series up a little bit for us. Um, we know that we are approaching the holiday season where you know, thanksgiving christmas and then eventually New Year’s, a New Year man, a new year, another year is coming, another year is coming right. But during this holiday season we might find ourselves is some interesting conversations around the dinner table with extended family, with friends and those conversations can get really, really awkward if we’re not prepared. If we’re not ready to engage in them and if your struggle looks any where close to what this mean would convey, then this series is for you. My problem is I want to follow jesus and slap people too. If that’s your struggle, then this series is for you. Um if that if that isn’t your struggle, this series will still be a blessing to you. So don’t check out on us. But the point is is that we know as christians, that we are called to walk in love, that we are to love one another. But we also recognized that that can be very challenging at times. We’ve got to deal with our own sinful tendencies and we’ve got to deal with the sinful tendencies and others. And we’ve got to deal with our own imperfections and shortcomings of character. And we’ve got to deal with the imperfections and shortcomings and characters and others. So it just makes for a challenging process to consistently love others. Well, maybe one day we do it and it’s great. And then the next day I thought we were doing so well, what happened again because of these issues of sin and ourselves, sin and others? Um the imperfections that we have and imperfections that others have, the fact that we’re just human right, present a challenge. So we hope that this series will help you to love well, and so on that note, let me turn to our passage and let me begin the reading of the passage and from there, I’ll pray and we’ll jump into this teaching. So first, John four, Beginning in Verse seven, beloved Let us love one another for love is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God and anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love in this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him, father in heaven. We thank you for sending your only son into the world that we might live through him. And this morning as we look at your word, God, would you breed fresh life again into our souls so that we can walk into these difficult relationships and settings and image you more fittingly and God, I pray that you would use me during this time in christ’s name. I pray amen All right. If I, if I were to summarize for you. Kind of the argument that I want you to take away from this passage this morning and one that I believe that john is trying to make when he is consistently and repeatedly emphasizing it would be this God’s love motivated him to save us. It was God’s love that motivated God to save us in christ. And if God’s love is in us, then it is to b…