Season two of Love in Context podcast welcomes you.
Get ready for engaging unscripted conversations with your host, Ben and Spencer.
Our mission remains unchanged to explore the Bible through the powerful lens of love.
In this new season, we'll embark on a journey together, unearthing fresh insights and gaining
deeper understanding of how we can love God and live out our faith in practical ways.
So let's dive into this season of Love in Context, where love in the context of the
Bible intersect to transform our lives.
Mini series number two.
You guys have made it.
If you did not stop listening to us when we talked about women in ministry, we're going
to try to send you off with this one.
So we're excited to be with you here today.
I'm Ben.
I'm Spencer.
And we're joined by Brian Qualls, not quite yet captain at the Salvation Army.
Not quite, almost there.
We've got a few weeks left.
And if you remember, we had his wife on during the women in ministry mini series and we definitely
made comments about you not being a captain.
Look, even when I become a captain, we're both captains.
She's still the captain.
Yeah, she's got seniority.
She's got seniority.
She's slightly more captain.
That's it.
You're like Captain Kangaroo.
She's Captain Crunch.
Exactly.
I don't get that reference, but exactly.
Oh man.
It's a serial joke.
It's serial.
It's very serial.
So before we get kind of rolling in here, because people have never met you, tell us
a few things about yourself.
Yeah, I am a transplant.
Grew up in Los Angeles.
Dodgers fan, angels fan, Lakers fan, Raiders fan.
And we've been here now for about two and a half years.
We started serving at the Salvation Army just about my wife six years ago and me five years
ago.
And we've just enjoyed our time here, you know, barring the weather.
We like the sunny days more than the rainy days.
All five of them.
And, you know, it's been good.
Yeah, we love serving God in unique places.
So yeah.
Yeah, that's exciting.
It is.
It is hard to be a Raiders fan now, but it's good that you are.
Now like 20 years.
Just sorrow.
It's basically since Madden retired.
Pretty much.
Yeah, it's been pretty tough.
All right.
So our new series is we're going to be talking about spiritual gifts.
We're going to be talking about what it means to operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit,
but we're actually not jumping directly into that because Spencer and I, as we were talking
about putting this series together, we said one of the issues is immediately people go
and they talk about, you know, they want to talk about tongues.
They want to talk about healing.
They want to talk about prophecy.
And those are all really good things to talk about.
We are going to talk about them.
But the foundation of spiritual gifts has to be right relationship with God and right
relationship with your community.
Yes.
Right.
We're going to call it love God and love other people.
And so that's what we're talking about today.
Why this is so fundamental to actually operating in the gifts, because if you operate in the
gifts without this, there's a whole chapter that Paul wrote in first Corinthians about
it and which was we know the church in Corinth had some really crazy things going on.
They had they had an outpouring of the spirit that was that was different than what the
other churches were going through.
So it was a little messy, but that's usually what is the case when God does transformative
work is because there's so many people being changed by the power of God.
There's not a chance to actually disciple them into it.
And so like Paul's writing this letter, he's like, listen, this stuff is all good.
We just need to add some order to it now.
You know, and so and so, yeah, we're going to start our talk there.
And the two are so intertwined.
Love God and love people like you can't separate the two like you in conversations like this,
you kind of have to talk about one and then the other, but they're really meant to be
talked about together.
Yeah.
Like coupled.
So you can't have one without the other.
Can't have one without the other.
I knew you were going to go there.
Yeah.
So soon as I said it, I was maybe many of those.
I'm pretty sure that I can do that because we don't charge any money to listen to the
podcast.
So I'm pretty sure I can do that.
But if not, they come out for you.
They come for me.
I'll be like, you can have half of everything that we make for this podcast.
50 cents.
Fair enough.
So speaking of love, God and love other people, Jesus talks about it right now.
Basically when in the Torah series, we talked about where those original conversation pieces
come from.
There's the Shema and there is from Leviticus 23, 19.
19.
23 is something else that I was just reading about.
And so we were going to come back to those, but I want to start with Jesus.
So if you remember, the main place this just shows up is Jesus is teaching.
Not surprising.
That's what Jesus does.
And a expert in the law.
I love that Luke specifies that.
It's an expert in the law stood up to ask him a question.
And he says, what is the greatest command?
Now in American ears, we're like, okay, what's the most important one?
Except that's not actually what the teacher is asking.
Because in rabbinic culture, when you ask somebody, what is the greatest command?
Everybody agrees that the first one is love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul,
mind and strength.
The question is, what's the second one?
So there was two schools of thought at that time.
There was the school of Shemai, who was a rabbi during that time, just preceding Jesus.
And there was a school of Hillel.
And Shemai said, there was love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength
and obey the Sabbath.
Then Hillel said, it was love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength
and love your neighbor as yourself.
Now Hillel's is probably the more liberal in sense of open interpretation.
Not necessarily, we're not talking politics.
We're talking about open or closed, right?
Liberal interpretation of the lens by which Hillel governed.
So Hillel is essentially saying that the lens by which you obey Torah is through the lens
of love.
Both the way you love God and love other people.
Shemai says the way that you obey Torah is through obedience.
Obedience shows that you actually are following Torah.
Jesus agrees with one of them, right?
But even Jesus's interpretation turns it on its head because Hillel was also, he didn't
consider the Roman a neighbor.
He didn't consider, he definitely didn't consider Samaritan's neighbors.
And so if you remember how the story goes, is that the teacher of the law seeking to
justify himself.
By the way, I found myself in that position multiple times seeking to justify myself.
I asked a further question of Jesus.
And mine went just about as well as his did.
And then there is this story he says, he says, well, so then who is my neighbor?
And then Jesus tells the parable, which is a very familiar parable to most of us, which
is that of the good Samaritan.
And we have talked in the past in the podcast, but Samaritans are, it's not just your enemy.
The Jews at the time really thought of them as like dirty half breeds.
Now this is not my commentary on Samaritan people.
I'm saying what this was the feeling at the time.
They were not a good people.
They were not thought of fondly.
When Jesus goes into Samaria, I was, I remember the chosen and they're like, are you sure?
Like that is a legitimate perspective of the Jewish people.
They're like, I've never even set foot in Samaria.
I wouldn't.
Right.
Like that is, that is a, that is absolutely the mentality of that time.
And Jesus says, this person, this person who showed grace, even when they didn't have to,
and even especially when they wouldn't have felt like it, this is your neighbor.
The person that you think is completely on the outside, that person that you think is
completely gone.
This is the person that your neighbor, which resonates with a lot of his teachings, talking
about loving your enemies, praying for those who persecute you.
You're just not of this world.
It's different.
Turning the other cheek.
Yeah.
It's all about like, yes, standing for justice, but also learning how to have grace and mercy
with people and in a, in a nonviolent confrontation.
Right.
No, that's powerful.
You know, I think what you're saying there with the, you know, the, the recognition of
Jesus, he's taking something that they knew and he's breaking it and making it something
new.
Right.
And he does that multiple times in scripture or something that, unless you know the context
now, he's taken this thing for the Jewish people and saying, no, this is not just for
this.
Right.
It's not just reserved for your definition of what God's holy people are.
It's, you know, from the beginning, the Gentiles are part of this plan.
Right.
And he goes to Genesis 12.
Yeah.
He says to Abraham, you're going to be blessed so that all nations are going to be blessed.
All nations are going to be blessed.
And so like to your point, which I love that you said, Jesus is breaking something.
He's breaking their traditions and reminding them that's not what the Torah ever said.
The Torah was always about all nations.
In fact, we went through 43 episodes, by the way, I counted them last year, 43 episodes
through Torah.
And over and over again, God is incredibly concerned about how Israelites treat each
other and how it impacts the people around them and not letting the people around them
impact them.
Right.
That your job is to actually walk these things out, be a physical representation and show
the world what it means to follow Torah.
Right.
Be my holiness in the world and change the world around you.
Speaking of, speaking of Leviticus 23, where I misquoted before Leviticus 23 is at the
post of Leviticus, God says to his people, he says, if you follow my rules, you're going
to have all these things.
He talks about reversal of the curse, you're going to, the ground is going to yield food.
Your women are going to have children.
Your animals are going to multiply.
You're going to be safe from those around you.
Or the last thing he says is I will actually come and tabernacle among you.
I'm going to walk among you, which hearkens back to the story of Genesis where God is
walking with them in the cool of the evening.
Now the interesting thing is people give Pharisees and the rabbinic system a really hard time,
but it was the first system that was instituted where they were regularly learning and attempting
to at least follow Torah on a regular basis as a nation.
Sure.
And guess what happens?
Torah made flesh comes in tabernacles among them.
Right.
There's an invitation that when we actually walk in the ways of God, there is an invitation
to now his spirit to come and walk with us as we go, which is why we say if you don't
have love God and love other people, if you don't put the yoke of Jesus on correctly,
then walking in the spirit is going to be a non-starter.
Right.
And often when I've heard people talk about love God and love people, they like, we need
to love God with everything we have and love people.
And they jump straight to, okay, this is how we love people.
And it's like, okay, let's actually pause and back up a little bit.
Right.
Like how do we love and live in fellowship with God?
Because the love that we're going to be giving to the people around us comes from God.
Yeah.
Doesn't come.
If I was loving in my own strength, it would be a disaster.
It would end very quickly sometimes.
Sometimes.
Yeah.
And, but when I am reliant on the Lord and his love is pouring through me and I am extending
that to the people around me, that's when we get to see transformation happen in our
communities.
Yeah.
100%.
Well, and, and I think also with your, what you're talking about where we jumped immediately
to this, to this position, well, this is how we're going to love.
You posted about something just yesterday and you just share that with us because I
think, I think this is where we tend to jump almost right away.
Yeah.
You know, I think for me in my walk with God over the years, I've learned to ask the question
if, if the way that I'm trying to love somebody, are they accepting that love, right?
Do they feel loved?
Do they feel like how I'm, you know, it's kind of goes back to maybe like the love languages,
you know, if you're married out there, you understand that you might think I'm trying
to love my wife a certain way, but that they don't receive love that way.
Yeah.
You know, it creates conflict, right?
And I think the same way in our relationships with others, if we're saying we're loving
people, but they don't feel that way, you know, because of whatever, it just, it just
comes off wrong.
So, you know, for me, it comes down to that old saying, right?
That love the sinner, hate the sin.
And you know, a lot of times that's just justification for vitriol, justification for bigotry.
And you know, so I try to get rid of that second half of that, right?
Like it doesn't mean that I'm going to give ground to sin or make excuse for sin or not
teach on sin, but my focus is to love people.
Like God's focus is to deal with sin.
Right.
I'm not God.
Yeah.
Who's doing the transforming work?
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
We, we are not, it is, it is Christ.
It is the spirit.
There's a spirit.
It is his father.
They're doing the transforming work.
It's not us.
It's the indwelling of the spirit.
Right.
Like until they have salvation and have the spirit transformation is not possible.
Right.
So our job is to re-present Jesus, right?
To invite them to relationship with Jesus because Jesus is actually the one that transforms
lives.
And I always think it's interesting.
This is not a trick question, but it is a little bit.
I ask people this question because I want to understand like how they've actually read
the Bible.
Sure.
And I asked them, I said, what is the gospel that Jesus Christ preached?
Most of the time, the answer I get is he came to save us from our sins.
And I was like, that's the gospel that Jesus preached.
Yeah.
Right.
And I was like, I'm pretty sure I read it and it says, repent for the kingdom of heaven
is at hand.
Right.
Now that interaction with heaven, now you're able to, it's here and it's ready to be interacted
with is available through the life, death, burial and resurrection of Christ, which we
proclaim.
And I stress life because his life tells us why the death, burial and resurrection matter.
Right.
And it also gives us instruction on how to live.
But it is so quickly people go, well, we're going to go proclaim the gospel.
I was like, well, which gospel?
What are you actually saying?
Are you actually proclaiming that the kingdom is here and a better way of life is at hand
and you're being invited into it?
Or are you preaching a gospel that says you are decrepit and terrible, but don't worry.
We have a squeegee that we can clean you with.
And maybe you can squeak into heaven.
Right.
The good news is there's heaven on earth here now.
There's the presence of the spirit, the presence of Jesus here now in this life, right?
Not some life, you know, the life we're waiting for and we're excited for.
We should be excited for it today.
Eternal life starts now.
Yeah.
When you say yes to Jesus, eternal life starts now.
Yeah.
And to your point, because I really want to stress this because I think somebody could
hear what we're saying and run with it.
We're not saying you don't talk about sin.
No.
Sin, like you, when Jesus saves you, you are saved from something, but you're actually
saved from life without God.
I think you're saved to something.
You're saved to something.
You're saved from and to.
You're saved to life with God.
You're saved to life with God, yeah.
And so what we're trying to, the reason I bring this up is because the mentality shift
in the way that we present the gospel can't be fire insurance.
Because I think a lot of evangelical systems have been geared around, we need to save people
from hell.
We actually need to save people to a reality that they're being invited into that changes
you from the inside out.
Right.
So it's not fear-based, it's love-based.
It's love-based, yeah.
So you often hear that Rowan verse where we quote the first half, where it's like, oh,
the wages of sinners death, and it's like, finish the verse.
Right.
Finish the verse.
But the gift of God is eternal life.
And that's a big but in that one.
That's a Ben-sized but right there.
That is a big but.
And so we, but oftentimes we just stop at the wages of sinner death and then we're like,
see, this is what's happening.
You're all going to die and blah, blah, blah.
And then we're like, well, where are you going to go when you die?
I was like, that in itself actually negates the relationship we have with God.
Yeah.
Right.
It circumnavigates it to where we're like, okay, it's about where are we going?
And it's like, no, it's about the relationship you have with God.
It has a reward of being in fellowship with the Father, with the Creator, with our Savior,
with our Redeemer.
We get to spend eternity with Him.
Right.
All right.
We're not just trying to, sometimes we can circumnavigate that and be like, oh, well,
we're just trying to get to heaven.
And it's like, okay, well, would you go to a stranger's house and just walk in and be
like, oh, hey, I'm here.
Yeah.
Right.
At least in Alaska, that's a good way to get shot.
That's a real good way to get shot in Alaska.
Or to have the dog sicked on you.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
Yeah.
Everybody's got dogs.
Or the moose, you know.
Yeah.
Some people got moose.
Man, you ever been close to a moose?
I have up in Anchorage.
They're so big.
Yeah.
They're massive.
Like, so people, like I was explaining to them that there's actually more moose incidents
than there are bear.
Yeah, that's crazy.
Because, you know, bears, they're like, well, we eat whatever.
Yeah.
And like they're not interested in fighting with people.
But moose, man, they can be mean.
Right.
Mean guys.
Just honoree.
Yeah.
The gals are mean too.
So I'm not, I don't want to be sexist here.
Like all sexes of moose, all mean.
I am more worried about the female moose with the calf.
Oh yeah.
100%.
Yeah.
They should say mama moose because I like the mama moose syndrome because like it's
more than mama bear.
Because you will get the horns.
They like wrecked cars.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
Well, and yeah.
I probably wouldn't have to do that too much here.
You know, so whoever is our listener in Belgium, like you're probably like, what's a moose?
No, I'm just kidding.
You know what a moose is.
But you probably haven't seen one.
Yeah.
Do you see one up in person?
You should go Google one and then like look at the size and then be like, oh, these things
are massive.
They're probably like, if you have a good phone, you could probably, you know, do one
of those AR things into your living room and see how big it is.
Terrify you.
Yeah.
So, but to the point of all of that, it's like we're actually, rather than we're trying
to teach sin management, because I think that's sometimes what churches are, or I've heard
this phrase because you're talking about love the sin, hate the sinner, right?
So what then people try to do is they take hating the sin and they start to try to find
ways to demonize people to not make them people.
Yeah.
Right.
So I understand the mentality of hate the sin.
I don't even dislike that idea.
But what we've done with it is we've now used it as ammunition to not love people that we
have to love.
Yeah.
By the way, there are people in my life that I know that I have to love and I'm not excited
about it, but I do know it's the way of Jesus.
He's talking about me, by the way.
Yes, that's exactly it.
The audience probably knows that.
I want to go back to that verse, you know, Jesus talking about the two commandments,
right?
His, his response.
Yeah.
By the way, Brian brought a whole sermon for you.
I did.
I wrote it.
I'm a pastor, right?
So I wrote a sermon.
You guys get ready.
You know, the words are gone with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.
That's the first and greatest commandment.
And then second is this love your neighbor as yourself and all the law and the prophets
hang on these two commandments.
Yes.
I think that last part is so important to, to, to really emphasize the importance of
loving God and loving others.
Yes.
And that word hang, you know, I love strong concordance, right?
I love different translations.
I recently ran into this, this ideology that I didn't, wasn't too aware of the King James
only movement, you know, and I don't want to discredit anybody out there that believes
that, but I love the kind of rich tapestry of God's word.
When you look at different translations and when you look at the original language words,
you know, which I think that I use a website, blue letter Bible dot.
That's great.
Yeah.
And helps you get down into the road.
And really, so that word hang was really interesting to me because it literally means to hang,
to suspend.
It's only used seven times in the new Testament.
This being one of them, two other ones kind of hanging off the hand or hanging around
the neck.
The other four Jesus hanging on the cross, you know, and it kind of, it just really emphasizes
love.
Yeah.
What does God do?
God loves us.
Jesus hangs on the cross.
Yeah.
So, and, and so from a Binnock perspective, like Judaism, Jewish perspective, one of the
things that that's going to be is they're going to call it a yolk.
Yeah.
So the two commands are the yolk.
In other words, it's the way that your rabbi interprets Torah.
And so he's saying he's in everything that you read in Torah comes through love God and
love other people.
And the reason that's important is because I think we have a tendency to read the old
Testament where say, well, it's fire and brimstone.
If that's the case, then Jesus is a liar because Jesus says, I came to represent the father
and he says the entire Torah is about loving God and loving other people.
Oh, and he also claims to be the fulfillment.
Fulfillment.
Yes.
Sure.
Exactly.
He's literally Torah made flesh.
You see that in 95 where he says, I didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill the
law.
So if, if, if the law.
This is what it looks like when put on display.
Yeah.
If the law was fire and brimstone, then why did Jesus live?
Yeah.
It's a vast misunderstanding.
And one of the reasons we spent 43 episodes in Torah is to help people understand you.
If you read it in American ease, you're going to misunderstand this, but what is God doing
in the midst of a people to actually make them different?
You know, Leviticus, by the way, I love those episodes and we may do more in Leviticus because
I just got a Leviticus book.
It's a great book.
And usually people are scared of it because they're like, I don't know what to do with
these things.
Right.
Well, I mean, there, there are chapters that when you read it, you're like, how do I preach
this?
Yeah.
So there, there is a term of this for today.
What is the chapter where it's talking about like different sexual purity laws?
Like that's a rough one.
If you had to bring that on Sunday morning, you're doing a chapter by chapter.
Sure.
That'd be a rough one on Sunday morning.
Right.
So our church, you're lucky to get all the teenagers that week.
We started a series of a year long series, cover to cover the gospel story.
I don't remember if we talked about that in Leviticus, but we haven't hit every book.
But you know, most of the major stories.
It's really hard to do that.
Yeah.
I mean, it's been just a year time, right, but kind of showing Jesus shows up in every
aspect of the Old Testament.
You know, we're still in the Old Testament.
And he should because he's the Torah made flesh.
Because he is.
Yeah.
Right.
It's one of those things that we were talking about.
I've talked about in prophetic word before, right?
In prophecy.
So in like Isaiah, I'm just going to use Isaiah as an example.
You read the suffering servant.
People go, well, that's Jesus.
I was like, well, it will be.
It will be.
I was like, but it actually has a context in this moment.
And then Jesus is also going to step into that context.
And because he knows the context of this moment, when he steps into it here, something significant
is going on.
And the writers pick that up and they're like, hey, Jesus is stepping into this context
and this context.
He's redeeming our history.
Yeah.
Because I always want people to go backwards, forward, not forward, backwards.
You know, so yes, see Jesus all the way through because Jesus has always been there.
Well, we make that, we make that problem today, right?
We look at that time from a 2020 lens, right?
Or 2024 lens now.
And it's natural for us to do that, but we have to see what was the context of that at
that day.
Correct.
You know, because there's idioms, right?
Paul writes all kinds of local idioms into his speech that we wouldn't know without studying
that that we don't understand.
Well, this, this is a fun one.
We talked about when we were doing John three, so because we're talking about love.
And so one of the most famous verses on love is John 3 16.
Forgot to love the world.
He gave his one and only son who ever believed in him would not perish, but have eternal
life.
And I don't think you can separate that one from John 3 17.
Correct.
God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through
him.
Yeah.
So we were having this conversation and I, and I, and we were reading through that and
we were talking about this conversation and John, because he references the snake being
lifted high.
Cool.
We were talking about that in numbers, the, the bronze serpent.
And I asked the question, I said, when Nicodemus is talking to Jesus, what does he think Jesus
is talking about?
Because we have the benefit of already knowing Jesus is going to go be on the cross, crucified,
resurrected, and he is the, the one and only son of God.
Right?
Like we have that benefit of knowing that.
So what does Nicodemus think he's talking about?
Because Nicodemus doesn't seem to understand nor do the disciples.
John obviously understands because he's writing it after it happened.
So but in that story, if you actually read it and you take the idea of Jesus, but you
replace the idea with Israel being God's firstborn, which is what he says in Exodus, Jesus and
Nicodemus are having this conversation about how Israel was always supposed to liberate
the entire world.
Now they ultimately don't.
So Jesus as a representative of Israel comes and does that and becomes that, that same
firstborn son.
If you understand the context of this conversation with Nicodemus, then when Jesus comes back
from the dead, he goes, Oh, he's like, cause like, I mean, yes, cause even for Nicodemus,
he's hearing, he's like, okay, Israel was, it was always about all nations.
It was always about redemption of mankind.
And so that's why Nicodemus is even blown away.
What he's talking about.
He's like the Jewish people were always supposed to be about God loved the world.
So he sent you so that all the world could be saved.
Right.
And who was Nicodemus?
Teacher of the law.
Right.
So he was not just some random dude who showed up one night.
Well, he's called a, he's called a teacher of teachers in traditional history.
Yeah.
So he's, he's someone who knows Torah.
Like he knows Torah.
He knows prophets.
Yeah.
He knows that language and then he's still going to Jesus and being like, okay, you gotta,
you gotta share some of what's going on here.
Rabbi David Foreman, who I've quoted multiple times here, comments that he says when you're
reading the text and he's talking about the old Testament because he's an Orthodox Jew,
he doesn't accept Jesus as Messiah, but he says when you're reading the text, sometimes
we fall into what he calls the lullaby effect where we've heard the story so many times,
we bring our assumptions into it.
And it says when you read the text very frequently, he's like, it's okay to do that once in a
while because you're just reading and getting it inside of you and stuff.
But when you're actually studying and you're going to coming to a text, you need to stop
and remove all your biases from it and say, read the text, put it in its context and like
remove all the things like that you know are going to happen because you know the future
in this moment.
What does this mean?
Right?
Right.
I know it came before it.
I don't know what comes after it, but in this moment, what is the speaker saying and what
are the hearers here and how does that impact the things around them?
Yeah.
Well, coming back to this, this loving God piece, right in scripture, we're called the
bride of Christ.
The church is called the bride, bride of Christ.
Now I know healthy marriages are a thing that might not exist everywhere, but that's the
example we're going with today, right?
When you are in a good, healthy marriage, right?
You are striving to spend time together, right?
You are striving to be together.
You are striving to get to know one another better.
And when marriages fall apart, it's when that gets broken somewhere along the way.
When that desire to connect with the person gets, when that gets broken, the marriages
start to drift apart and things happen and then that's when families break.
Right?
But there's always a moment, there's always some moment where it's like, okay, what's
starting to break that up?
Our job, one of the things that we have to do if we are truly saying yes to our calling
as a bride of Christ is seek after Christ, right?
Seek after Him and get to know Him, spend time with Him.
Right?
Like if I never took my wife out on a date or just never made time for her, it would
not go well.
Right?
I could probably say the same about your wives too, right?
It would be weird if you took my wife on a date.
It would.
It's not what I was getting at Ben, but thank you.
Thank you.
She might enjoy it.
It's not what I was getting at.
If Ben did not take his wife on dates or spend time with his wife, there we go.
Let's clarify here.
Please don't date other people's wives.
Yeah, please don't date other people's wives.
That is a nugget you can take from today's episode.
Do not date other people's wives.
Oh God, love others, don't date other people's wives.
That's the name of the episode right there.
Oh man.
But as you, but as me as a husband, as I spend more time with my wife, what I find is our
relationship gets stronger.
Right?
Right.
It doesn't mean that there's definitely times where you have tough conversations.
There's definitely times where you get called out.
Right?
But our love is growing stronger when we make sure we take that time.
And so we, with our relationship with God, if we are not taking that time to be with
him, we cannot pour out his love.
Yeah.
Right?
Like if we're trying to pour out his love without spending time with the father, we're
going, it's not going to go well.
Right?
So you have to spend time with God to like have that be a big part of the loving God
piece, the spending time.
Yeah.
And that's getting into the word.
That's prayer.
That's meditation.
That's Sabbath, by the way, which is, it seems to be like a curse word for the church.
It's really interesting to me that of the 10 commandments, if I told you to, you didn't
have to obey one of the 10 commandments, right?
Somebody would be like, are you crazy?
You know, I was like, you don't need to honor your mother and father.
You know, you don't need to, don't worry about not having other gods, but yet we're completely
fine with just completely not honoring the Sabbath.
And yet the Sabbath itself is something that is actually built to rejuvenate us, connect
us to the nature of God and help us to trust in his power, not ours, which by the way,
seems like it would be important if you're operating in the Holy spirit to trust in his
power, not yours, because a lot of the time when people get really screwed up in ministry,
specifically prophetic ministry is where they start trusting in their popularity, their
platform, their authority, and stop relying completely on Jesus every second of the day.
Right?
Because we're conduits of God's mercy.
We're the royal priesthood, which means that we are bringing the nature of God to people.
Right?
It's not our checks.
We're just delivering them.
Right.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
And we've seen that, right?
In recent years of very famous, well-known, well-respected, you know, people who have,
it's been revealed that they have really deep sin, you know, and, and some of that's hidden,
some of that's not.
There's other people who around them excused it or felt fear and so they didn't talk about
it or, you know, there is no fear in love, but rather perfect love drives out fear.
Yeah.
And what you're talking about with like, with, with the fear thing, it's if there is fear
in a ministry, I got news for you.
You're doing, you need to get out.
Yeah.
And that's not like you're nervous about doing something like, will it work or not work?
That's not the kind of fear we're talking about where you're like, I don't know whether
what we're doing is good or not.
Right.
You need to get out or you need to have real conversations with the people running it.
If you ask the question, is this how Jesus would lead us?
Yeah.
And you can't say yes to that, you know?
Yeah.
Well, and this, and this comes, okay, so we've talked a lot about love of God, so, but this,
this is really plays into love other people part.
So Spencer and I are in a unique kind of ministry relationship because like I'm on committee
for young life.
My wife is a volunteer for young life as well.
We serve at the church together.
We do music together, all sorts of things.
We have, we have a podcast together.
I don't know if you know that, but this is shocking information.
But if Spencer sees something in my life or I see something in his life and I'm like,
Hey, I see this in your life and I just don't understand how this is bringing you closer
to Jesus.
Like these are real conversations we can have and I have them because I love him, not because
I'm trying to beat him up.
But the other thing that comes with that is I've spent the time building connection with
him.
That's huge.
I quote pastor Reverend almost Reverend Sarah Harney from last, I believe it was last week.
You can't correct without connection.
And you can try, you can try, it's not going to be good.
It's not going to be effective.
It's not, well, it's not, a lot of times it's going to be filled with animosity.
It's not going to be filled with love.
I was like, if you can't, if you don't have like genuine love for somebody to come and
talk to them, then you should not be the one bringing it.
Yeah.
Right.
And I think that that's coupled with this shift from brimstone theology, right?
To kingdom theology, you know, that we're preaching the kingdom because we want people
to know and love Jesus and be loved by Jesus.
And we want to draw them into that, right?
We don't want it to be fear based.
We want it to be love based because God is love.
Yeah.
And it's not, it's not that there's not judgment like revelation.
And many of the books are very clear there is judgment, but the invitation is not judgment.
The invitation is love.
And I liken it to this, it's like, if you, if, if I have my kids grow up and I said,
you want to live in my house, there's some rules.
Yeah.
If you don't want to live here, you don't have to follow those rules.
But if you want to be here, this is what life like this looks like.
This is what life in the Edwards family looks like.
And they're like, well, I don't want to do that, but I want to live here.
Well, that's not how that works.
Yeah.
That's not how that works.
There's a way that life is here.
Right.
If you want to live life a different way, you have to go out and I'm not kicking my
kids out.
You're choosing not to live in, in the way that the world, my, my world is supposed to
be.
Now you take that from human example, me, and you expand it to God.
This is God's world.
It operates a certain way.
And when we operate outside of that, we get this corruption called sin that literally
kills us.
Yeah.
You know, you think about cancer, deformity, mental illness, all these things that kind
of come as a result of brokenness in the world.
Yeah.
And the interesting thing about that is the more studies they've done around death and
disease, the more that they found, if you have a connection to, they call it like faith
or religion, but if you're like, have a connection to religion, in my case, I'm going to say
God, if you have a connection with God, you're less likely to experience those things.
Right.
It's not that you won't, but you actually have a less likelihood if you are dwelling
with dwelling with the father.
Right.
Well, and that, and that comes back to this idea that we talked about in Genesis.
There are these curses that people call them that are levied on, on humanity where the
ground is going to be tough to operate and it's going to be difficult to get pregnant.
And it's going to, you have to list that episode about, there's some Hebrew going on there
that it's not actually childbirth, but actually getting pregnant.
And these are the things that are levied out that are going to happen in community.
And God says in Deuteronomy, he says, if you follow me, the ground's going to yield easily.
Yeah.
You're going to have tons of babies.
Yeah.
Right.
And you're like, oh, you know, great, the guys are going to get fruit of the field and
blah, blah, blah.
And they're like, way to, way to be chauvinistic.
I was like, you don't understand that it, what these things that are were curses are
being reversed when you live in harmony with God.
In other words, you're going to be brought back to the garden, right?
You're going to be back back to this garden life to Leviticus 23.
He says, you're literally going to, I'm going to walk with you to restoration.
Yeah.
Like if you want the garden back, it's available.
Yeah.
But there's a way to live to have the garden come.
And we're like, well, God's not bringing the goodness.
And I was like, no, you can't receive the goodness.
I'm about to preach.
Hold on.
You can't receive the goodness in this condition.
It's why Jesus came to change your nature.
Because you weren't capable of receiving the forgiveness before.
But when you've trust in the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, it changes who you are.
Now you're the very righteousness of God and you receive the forgiveness and you're
enabled to walk in the spirit.
Right.
Like this is the good news, right?
That we are, we were one way.
And now after interacting with God to steal from the chosen, I'm fully acknowledging I'm
stealing this quote.
Now I'm a different way.
Right.
And the thing in between was him.
Now we foster that relationship and it impacts not only this, but it impacts the way we reach
out here.
I was thinking when you were talking about knowing your spouse, I typically have ketchup
on my eggs.
Right.
People don't necessarily know that.
So but when Tara, like if I go and I'll make myself food in the morning, I'll take it
out there and I'll sit down and go, because I forgot something.
She'll walk out and she'll hand me the ketchup.
I didn't ask for it, but she knows me.
Right.
And she knows what I'm frustrated with myself about.
And she anticipated my need because my wife is a way better spouse than I am.
Right.
But like that's part of knowing.
And like we've been married coming up on 14 years now.
And you start to just know things about people.
And I think the temptation in Christianity is like, well, we got to know everything about
God immediately.
I was like, no, you need to spend time with God and grow in your knowledge.
It's an upside out pyramid.
That's never going to end.
It's never going to end.
And each time you think, you know, he's going to open up a whole new level.
And you're like, wow, I had no idea.
Right.
I feel like the more that I know about God, the less I know.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
There's still more.
There's so much more to know.
I only know this much.
Yeah.
And when it comes to loving God and loving people and the reason why we can't separate
that those two as well.
I mean, just go look at first John four where he's like, hey, if you say you love God, but
you hate your brother or sister.
Right.
So John's like, then you're a liar.
Yeah.
Right.
Powerful.
Yeah.
Like a strong word.
Like old pants on fire.
Hanging from a telephone wire.
Right.
Like he's like, you are not living in the call that the Lord's put on your life.
Yeah.
And then, and then John's the fun thing about this passage is then he goes and he's like,
this is what love is and talks about Jesus and what Jesus did.
Right.
You know, right after he makes a statement about you're calling God a liar for you can't
love your brother who is seen.
How can you love?
How could you love God who is unseen?
Now this, this in your head should connect you to the 10 commandments, right?
Because we're being told not to create images for God.
Yeah.
Now why do we not create images of God?
Because there's something on earth that's already made in the image of God.
It's humanity.
God says, I made male and female together.
They are the image of God.
And so if you now go and make a idol that's supposed to be an image of God, how insulting
is that when he made you the image of God?
And he made your brother the image of God.
And if you look at your brother and you can't see the image of God, how could you possibly
love God who you can't see?
Yeah.
So you jump over to first Corinthians 13 where he talks about this, where he's like, Hey,
you can know everything, but if you don't love, it's worthless.
You can, you can be a superhero of the faith.
You can throw mountains in the sea.
You can like perform all sorts of miracles.
You can even sacrifice yourself.
Doesn't matter.
But then he goes into what love is.
Right.
And when you actually read that list and be like, Hey, I'm going to practice that to
the T without God.
It is extremely difficult.
Right?
Love is patient.
Love is kind.
Okay, great.
Doesn't envy.
All right.
It's not boastful.
Okay.
Keeps no record of wrong.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
I'm going to get my list.
Like, right.
You know, like, I don't know about you, but I mean, there's definitely been times in my
marriage where it's like, well, you remember this time.
And then we've had to be like, we did that early on in our marriage.
We had to be like, no, like we are pushing that aside.
Yeah.
We are not holding onto the things of the past.
Right.
And then we have to be like, record of wrong, right?
Endures through all things.
Right.
And you know what?
How many things are all things?
A lot of them.
Just some of them.
All of them.
And then, and then Paul closes that passage.
I was saying three things remain, faith, hope, and love.
And the greatest of these is love.
And then the crazy, the crazy thing I was thinking about as you're talking through first
Corinthians is this is why when you come to Galatians, when we talk about the fruit of
the spirit, which we're going to do in two weeks, we're going to talk about the fruit
of the spirit in your life, because this is the, the physical evidence that God is moving
in your life.
Right.
He says the fruit of the spirit is love.
And there's a reason why the people in the Greek say that it's, it's almost like a semi-colon
there.
Love, and then joy, peace, patience, kindness, faith, illness, general self-control.
Right.
These are the things that describe this.
So the fruit of the spirit is love.
And these are the characteristics of love.
Right.
Because I think the, one of the things we have not talked about today, which is really
important, love is not subject to your definition.
It's subject to God's.
And what I mean by that is in, and especially in America today, so people who are in different
countries may have a different perspective, but there's a statement.
They'll be like, love is love is love is love.
Sure.
And that's not true from a biblical perspective.
It is not love to let somebody drown.
It's not love to just say, you can do whatever you want.
If I did that, my child would be insane.
I love my child.
And so I create parameters.
And so I create structure.
And so I, you know, it's not love.
I remember, I remember you saying early on, it was one of our first episodes and your
daughter was like, you don't love me because you won't let me have a donut.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
No, it's because I love you that you can't have a donut.
And so there's always that flip side of it because I think we tend to absorb culture's
definition of love rather than God's and there is room for that.
But the way that God defines love is that there's joy, there's peace, there's patience,
there's kindness, there's goodness, there's faithfulness, there's gentleness, there's
self-control.
It does not envy.
It doesn't boast.
Right.
Well, we've often coupled love with accepting.
Correct.
There's a degree to which that's true.
Correct.
But like you were talking about earlier, you're not going to be accepting of sin.
Yeah.
Right?
Like I'm not going to be accepting of sin in my life.
Right.
If I get convicted of sin, we're bringing that to the cross.
Yeah.
Okay.
But I was-
In your sin, I will love you, but I will not accept your sin.
Yeah.
So I was, this was a few years back when I was at a pastor's conference and they were
talking about some tough issues.
And then at the end of it, the speaker, he just asked one question.
He's like, okay, are we able to love those who are broken?
And then a friend of mine actually got up and said, if we have to ask that question
as a group of pastors, we should not be in ministry.
Wow.
Yeah.
Right?
Which that is a fair, like-
It's a fair statement.
100% fair.
Because like if we're saying, hey, we can't love broken people, AKA all of us-
Yeah.
You, you, you, you, you, the audience.
If we can't love broken people and we expect to run a fruitful ministry, it's not going
to work.
Right.
It's going to fail every time.
Right.
And so we know we're not accepting of sin, but also if someone's not proclaiming Jesus
as their Lord and savior, it's not my job to say, hey, you're, you're living a crap
life.
Right.
It's my job to come alongside them and get to know them.
Well, you're holding them to a standard they're not willing to accept for themselves, right?
So that's going to immediately create conflict.
I'm so glad that after this mini series, we're going into James because I feel like a lot
of times in American Christianity, and so I'm only throwing ourselves under the bus
here.
Okay.
That we have fallen in prey of James two, where we show, we, we tend to favor what we
think is put together and helpful.
Yeah.
There, there's an old joke, you know, where, where like the, you show up to a church and
they're like, Oh, you play guitar.
You want to be in the worship team?
Right.
And then you're like, Oh, you're capable of reading.
Would you like to lead a Bible study?
Right.
Oh, you like kids.
You want to be in kids ministry?
Right.
And none of you are drummers.
Yeah.
You know, well, you know, right?
No, see when you're a drummer though, they're like, you play drums and then they like pick
you up and set you behind the drum sound.
They're like, okay, that's what we did.
This is your home.
They're like, you live here now.
Yeah.
We actually enclosed the drum cage and then I put a lock on it.
I only let him out to record podcasts.
There's a cot and a bucket, you know, you can do the math on what the bucket's for.
But this idea is that we're, or somebody who makes really good money and gives a lot to
the church and we're like, well, they're, you know, they're really valuable to the church.
Well, are they?
No, I don't want to discount that.
It's like so many people with really good hearts give a ton of money and like a lot
of ministry happens worldwide because people who make a lot of money give.
Yeah, of course.
But that doesn't necessarily mean because they're giving money, they're, they're a good
member of the church or following Christ or those different things.
Like we want those things to work in tandem.
It's more important that we're finding people who are about the mission.
And then discipling those that are not.
Yeah.
Amen.
When we were, when I was preparing for this, one of the questions I was kind of wrestling
with is to get back to like the gifts themselves, right?
Like where do they come from and what are they for?
Yeah.
Right.
And you know, it's so clear to me that they come from the indwelling of the spirit.
Right.
When we believe in Jesus Christ, when we confess with our mouths and believe in our heart that
Christ is Lord, we're saved.
We received the Holy Spirit.
And by receiving the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit enacts these gifts in us, imparts these
gifts to us.
Right.
And what are they for?
They're for the betterment of the body.
You know, there's a couple of scriptures I wanted to highlight that really talked about
that.
It's for the good of others, right?
In the first Corinthians we would talk about chapter 13, but chapter 12 verses four through
seven, there's different kinds of gifts, but the same spirit distributes them.
They are different kinds of service, but the same Lord.
There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in every one, it is the
same God at work.
Now to each one, the manifestation of the spirit is given for the common good.
Yes.
And I love that word manifestation, right?
It's, it is, it's like us participating in the incarnation.
Yeah.
And that we are becoming like Jesus and by becoming like Jesus, we receive the spirit
and receive these gifts for the common good of others, you know, for loving others.
Well, and so, and so Paul, and you know this, but Paul is addressing an issue that they're
having is that each person is being really selfish with their gifts.
Yeah.
That they're, they're like, well, I have the spirit of prophecy and well, I have the spirit
of speaking and I have the spirit of music and I have the spirit of healing.
And he's like, well, there's not four different spirits, right?
There's one spirit that is giving gifts appropriately for you and it's not for you.
Right.
It's for everyone.
Yeah.
It's really interesting that there's this mentality and it's, it's not stuck in just
Corinth.
It's, it's all over the place.
It's today.
Yeah.
That we have this talent and we're like, well, it's for me.
Yeah.
Now, listen, you can get the benefit of it.
I mean, here's the thing.
I've been singing, playing music for a really long time.
I get the benefit that I can hang out and worship in my, in my room playing guitar and
sing and just, just, just, just, just, you want me to come worship in your room?
So it's also not for me.
It's for everybody.
And so like, and that's not to say that I think there's also a little bit of five smiles
being people like, they're like, well, it wasn't me.
It was Jesus singing through me.
Listen, it wasn't that good.
Like, you know, you know what I mean?
We are combining with God to serve, but there's also something when somebody is really humble
with their speaking gift and they preach and you feel the power in what they say, it's
not their power.
Right.
They're yielding their gift to God and they're actually sharing it.
How many times have you talked to somebody and they, and you, they're like, oh yeah,
the sermon touched me because God talked to me about this.
And you're like, that sermon didn't even talk about that.
Sure.
Yeah.
But the spirit of God used your willingness to use your gift and spoke to them in a different
way.
It's a manifestation.
Yeah.
I had a run at our church where I preached, preached a few times and each time someone
came up to me like this really spoke to me and this is really great how you drew that
out.
And I was like, I didn't even talk about that.
But what they were receiving was good.
Right.
It was like, I don't like, I remember it was one during Christmas that I spoke and I was,
and I was talking about Bethlehem being the place where sacrificial lambs are raised up
and stuff like that.
And a lady came up to me and she like talked about, I forget the story, but it was, it
was something like Jesus turning water into wine or something like that.
And I was like, I wasn't even there.
Like wasn't even in that passage.
But something you spoke sparked something in their spirit, which God used to change
that.
Right.
And that's not to say that God didn't, you didn't preach the exact sermon that God wanted.
Yeah.
Right.
Like I don't understand how he does that.
I mean, here's the deal at Shavuot at the following of the sparing at Pentecost, right?
They were speaking one language and everybody understood it in their own, which we're going
to talk about in a couple of weeks when we talk about tongues.
That'll be good.
Yeah.
You know, I don't understand how that works, but I do, I do kind of understand where sometimes
you'll say something and it gets translated and they hear something else because God is
doing something with them.
Yeah.
So I have had that happen in my life and it's usually when they're, and you can feel it
when you're speaking or when you're participating.
And like, and the reason I bring up preaching and music is because I think sometimes people
say, well, the spiritual gifts, it's, you know, healing tongues prophecy, right?
Right.
I was like, no, it's also preaching, serving, administration, generosity, you know, like
it's all of these things that are not natural to humanity.
Right.
They're well, they're natural to the correct man.
They're not natural to the corrupt man.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
And I think one of the things we got to talk about when talking about loving others too
is that love is sacrificial.
Yes.
Right.
We have a love, right?
Because you were talking about hanging.
Right.
So the greatest example of Jesus's love is actually using this word hanging of commands
on a cross.
Right.
And then Jesus models this throughout his life too, right?
Like in John 15, 13, no greater love than to lay down your life for a friend.
And then in John 13, I believe when he's washing disciples feet, right?
Right.
He's like, okay, I'm going to serve you.
I'm going to serve you.
I'm going to be a blessing to you.
It comes back to that.
You can't correct without connection.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
If you have to have that connection and often, and if people are wondering like, well, how
do I connect with people?
I was like, go, go serve them in some way.
Yeah.
Right.
They have a need, offer to help.
Yeah.
Right.
A few years back we were building a house and I had, I had friends who were like, oh,
I'll come help you.
And a number of the friends that I had, they were just, they were like, we just want to
help you with this.
We have no idea what we're doing.
Yeah.
Right.
And so it was like, they would show up.
I would take lead.
I'd talk through what we're doing.
Yeah.
And it was a lot of like teaching and coaching along the way, but it was like, but it was
still stuff I couldn't do on my own.
Yeah.
Right.
Like, like raising walls, like, you know, I can't really, I can't, I need hands on that.
And so, you know, we're teaching people how to do the work.
But the flip side of that is they showed up and they're like, we're going to be of service
to you.
Yeah.
Right.
That's huge.
Can I talk about something?
It's going to be a little controversial because it's, it's all over Instagram, Tik Tok, people
complaining about it.
So at the Superbowl, there was a commercial that came out from a website called he gets
us.com.
Yeah.
Right.
And there's a, there was a lot of opinions that flew very quickly afterwards.
Now I know very little about the organization itself.
Okay.
I believe they had it last year too.
I don't think this was the first.
No, they had a different one last year and they, they do them periodically because they're
trying to, you know, obviously in their own way, they make a statement.
Yeah.
So the, the big controversy about the, about the, the thing was, is about the said, Jesus
didn't hate people.
He washed their feet.
Right.
When I watched it, I was like, when I watched the commercial, I saw a bunch of people in
different walks of life learning how to serve people that they normally wouldn't serve.
Okay.
Now that was my takeaway from it.
Sure.
Almost immediately there were people who claim to be followers of Jesus, who, who got onto
their keyboards and stuck up their glasses and went, well, actually, right.
First of all, if you start your statement with, well, actually it drives me crazy.
Yeah.
Now, what, one of the statements that they made is they said, well, Jesus didn't wash,
just watched anybody's feet.
He watched the feet of his disciples.
So it's really about like learning how to serve, you know, blah, blah, blah.
It's like, okay, but the problem is serving the least of these is a command that Jesus
says on a frequent basis.
Okay.
So I want to break down this idea though, is that you say, well, he watched his disciples
feet, people who went with him everywhere.
Who were his disciples?
There was the 11 and Judas.
Okay.
Yeah.
But where'd they come from?
All over the place.
I mean, we're talking tax collectors.
We're talking zealots.
We're talking fishermen.
Yeah.
Like his disciples were the least of these.
Yeah.
They weren't the well-educated.
They weren't the Torah, you know, reading the Torah the whole lives.
So these are people to your point, they're from all over the place.
They're the people that wouldn't have been accepted.
They're the people that would have been on the outside.
They're the people that would have been downtrodden.
And Jesus took time to build a relationship with them so that at some point he could get
down and wash their feet.
Insert record scratch right there.
Insert record scratch.
The whole point of that video is that you aren't taking the time to build a relationship
with somebody because you hate them.
And it's time for you to stop, build a relationship.
And if you get a chance, wash their feet.
Because you need to be the one who bridges the gap.
Jesus Christ came from heaven to earth to live a human life.
You think you're divine and you got to go live a human life.
It kind of sucks, right?
But he goes and puts it on display.
Three and a half years answering the most inane questions over and over again from people
who don't get what he's talking about.
Literally is crucified, comes back from the dead and people still don't understand what
he's talking about.
Like this is love.
And then gives his very spirit to live inside of us to empower us to be different.
Like if you want to talk about what to live like Jesus, he was very insistent about building
intentional relationships with people.
So maybe should we.
In that commercial, I think there's a lot of good about it.
There are things that I heard too that I was like, okay, I get that too.
All the criticism was not unwarranted.
No, no.
There was definitely criticism that I think was warranted on that.
So in the movie Jesus Revolution, Kelsey Grammer plays a pastor.
There's all these quote unquote dirty hippies coming to his church.
Some of the members of his church come up to him and they're like, you know what?
This is a problem.
We have an issue with this.
The comment that they made was they're going to ruin the new Shag carpet.
He's like, carpet.
And so the next scene was Sunday and then there's a line at the front of the church
and he's there washing their feet.
He's like, okay, you're afraid their dirty feet are going to ruin the carpet.
We can solve that.
I'll wash the feet and welcome them in.
And my favorite part about that is the church member Hula is putting up the fuss about the
carpet.
He just walks past with his family and then Kelsey, his character, washes the person's
foot and he's like, hey, you should go sit next to that person.
But it's not to like, what it's saying is it's saying, hey, go sit there, give them
opportunity.
Right?
Yeah.
The thing that broke my heart with all the videos that came out almost immediately afterwards
was first of all, all the, oh yeah, praise Jesus comments.
Right?
And I was like, dude, do you realize who Jesus was?
He was revolutionary.
Right?
It's okay to not like the video.
It's okay to disagree with the video.
But there was such an outcry of like, oh, this is emasculating, this isn't who Jesus
is.
Jesus was the guy with the whips.
I was like, well, there's one story.
He's the one carrying his cross and he's ripped.
Yeah.
And it's just this mentality where we're immediately going to just go in and like try to devour
these people, but we don't even know them.
And we are always looking to your point, love the sinner, hate the sin.
We're always looking for ways to demonize other people so that we don't have to love
them.
That has happened in my life where people have, have said things about me to a purpose
where I am not a, not a believer.
Like they've made this comment about that.
I'm not a believer that I'm on the outside.
Now if that's true, should you not be like trying to bring faith to me?
Sure.
Well, Jesus, but what they actually do is they're pushing me away.
So when Jesus is talking about correction, right?
He's like, Hey, if you have an issue with someone, go to them.
Right?
If, if they don't listen, take someone else.
And he specifically talking about correction of sin.
Let's specify that.
Yep.
There's a difference between correction of sin and just having an issue with someone.
Yeah.
So go to them, take someone else, take them, bring them before the assembly, bring them
for leadership assembly.
If they still don't listen after all of that, then cast them out and treat them like a tax
collector or sinner.
Now we've interpreted that so long as like, Hey, we're going to write them off.
But it's like, no, no, no.
What did Jesus do with tax collectors and sinners?
He sat down and had meals and at, and if, and in the case of most of his disciples washed
their feet because he built a relationship with them.
And so like once again, I think coming back to Brian, like whereas we've been talking,
we're not accepting the sin.
We are loving you in spite of it.
Right?
It's just like I do for myself.
Yeah.
Right?
Like we do that for ourselves every day.
God does that for us every day.
Yeah.
That person may just not be there yet to be able to recognize that that's sin in their
lives because they don't have the same belief that I do, you know?
And to your point, the more we push people away, we're not pushing them away from us.
We're pushing them away from God.
Yeah.
And how terrible is that for us as Christians to do that?
God cannot possibly approve of that.
When we say love God and love other people, I think sometimes people hear us saying, bring
people to church.
I was like, no, how about you go be the church and go to the people?
How would you go to their house and have a meal with them?
Speaking of Salvation Army, like you guys love people in very tangible ways.
We try to.
Like that is, that's, it's a whole, the whole mindset.
Yes, you're an evangelical church, but your mindset is tangible ways to actually love
people.
You're feeding them.
You're trying to get them clothes.
You're trying to, you know, take care of the least of these on a regular basis.
Right?
And I mean, you're doing other things beyond the organization for sure.
Right?
But you're at least that.
Yeah.
And there's so many, like, we're like, oh, we got to bring people to church so they hear
about God.
I was like, why don't you go and be Christ to as the church to people?
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
And I can tell you, you know, serving people is, is so important, right?
Wherever we are, we, we, and kind of going back to this idea of like coupling, loving
God and loving others, they're not, it's two, two sides of the same coin, right?
It's not one and two.
It's one, one and one a, right?
But you have to do both.
If you say you love God, but you don't love others, you're either a liar or you're, you're
mistaken, right?
Or you don't fully understand what it means to love God.
Because what it means to love God is to love others.
Right.
You know, that's a natural response to loving God.
And it's not an intellectual ascent.
It's actually a lived truth.
Yeah.
What you're doing is if you're saying, oh, I love God, but you don't love others, you're
saying, Hey, only the head side of the quarter has value.
Yeah.
Right.
Like that's the only side has value.
The tail side doesn't have any of that.
I want to come back to this one idea because I love the thing that you talked about hanging,
right?
The entire law and prophets hang on these two commands.
I don't feel like we're understating it to say your ministry effectiveness, your ministry
effectiveness in bringing the gospel and walking in the spirit and actually impacting the world
for change is going to hang on whether or not you love God and love other people.
You may have numerical growth.
You may put together a platform.
You may have, you may write books, you might get deals.
You might even have like a TV series, all of these different things that you could have.
But if they're not hung on love God and love other people, then they're just going to be
a clinging gong or a resounding symbol and just a little bit more noise in the religious
atmosphere.
And I would even go as far to say is when you step into that loving other people part
of it, you are going to look like a fool.
Yeah.
Like to the world around you, they're going to be like, what is that guy doing?
Why is that guy caring for this person?
Why is he taking the time to do this or so on and so forth?
And I don't want to take one step back here because you're not going to do it right.
No, you're not.
I guarantee you're going to mess it up.
So what we're asking and we're saying is you need to be the kind of person who is dedicated
to being OK with messing up in pursuit of loving God and loving other people.
Because you're not going to do it right.
I guarantee it.
It's a we've been really focusing on this for like in my family for an entire 14 years
and we're getting better.
You know, but the thing is, is that when we realize we're off, we go, hey, God, we screwed
this up.
We're going to try to get back on track, just empower us to be this way.
And then we start.
But we're moving with the Holy Spirit and we're growing in relationship.
We're going from infants to toddlers to teenagers.
Right.
Eventually, hopefully we're full adults.
Yeah.
Maybe on that side of maybe on that side.
Yeah.
And personally, I believe that when we fail to love other people like we're called to,
we're actually we actually insult the image of God.
Yeah, because we are created in his image.
Yeah.
Right.
Humankind, male and female together, created in his image.
And then when we say, OK, I'm going to love God.
But man, those people, like that's too much.
Yeah.
Right.
And what you really you just said was, hey, your creation doesn't matter.
Yeah.
And I go back to that kingdom.
Yeah.
Ideology.
You know, I was reading Ephesians two this week during our Bible study and it talks about
there's the prince of the air.
Yeah.
Right.
Satan is ruler ruling over people today.
Right.
And I love that ideology because it presents that there is the spiritual battle going on
and we have to be certain of who we're serving.
And so if we're saying we love God, but not serving others, not loving others, are we really
loving God?
Are we really serving God?
Yeah.
Or has the enemy twisted?
Right.
Like he does our ability to really love God.
So I want to recommend some resources because there's going to be there's going to be a
lot of talk on this and there's going to be a lot of different opinions.
Ultimately, your definition come from the Bible and from God himself.
Right.
There is a couple of different books that I think are going to be helpful in the way
that we engage people.
One is going to be from a Pentecostal Charismatic bent.
This guy by the name of Danny Silk wrote a book called Unpunishable talking about learning
how to treat people in discipline, but not punishment.
It's a really good book.
There's also Dr. Stuart Townsend has one is like, how do people receive love?
That's probably not the title, but it's Townsend and that's about what it is.
And there's Henry Cloud, I think is the other author on there.
There is also Francis Chan has a book called Crazy Love.
Right.
And so one of the things I love about Francis Chan, I've always loved is his is his just
absolute devotion to pursuing God.
Right.
He's one of the few teachers that I've heard be like, hey, I got this wrong.
Yeah.
Forgive me.
Yeah.
Actually, what I thought about him earlier, too, just because you brought him up there.
I remember watching a video one time where a college student, whoever said, you know,
something to the effect of, you know, do you think that I'm a sinner because of scripture,
yada yada.
And he basically said, let's read it together.
Right.
Let's let's sit down.
That's connection.
Right.
And that's what we're trying to strive for is that same.
Well, it's this invitation.
We've talked about the image of God.
We're inviting people to live into their image.
Yeah.
Because most of the time when we're lost from from Jesus, we're not living into the image
that we're created in.
We said, hey, it doesn't have to be that way.
Yeah.
You can actually live into this image you're created in.
Right.
And in a day where ideology and individuality and identity is so skewed, speaking identity
into people's lives is such a big deal.
Right.
Do you guys have any books that you'd recommend on on just this conversation of love?
I know I might get some emails type to me, but Love Does by Bob Goff.
I love Love Does.
And this equal everybody always.
Yeah.
I think one of the things those books do really well is give you practical examples of what
it means to love.
Is it done perfectly?
I don't think so.
But I mean, Bob is a lot more intentional about his love for other people than most
people I know.
Yes.
Yeah.
I was like, so all your issues that you may have with Bob Goff, he practices what he preaches.
He does.
Yeah.
And we mentioned earlier, you know, love languages.
Yeah.
Gary Chapman.
I think that helpful to understand maybe how you receive love and especially in a marriage,
you know.
You know, there's a sequel to that book that he wrote called The Five Apology Languages.
I think, yeah.
Yeah.
That's also worth a read too, because because part of loving people is you're going to have
to say I'm sorry occasionally.
Right.
We don't all receive sorry the same way.
Sure.
Yeah.
That's interesting.
Yeah.
I'll have to look that one up too.
Well, we are super excited that you're here.
What's the likelihood we get you back in the future?
Whenever you call.
Yeah.
All right.
You just call.
Yeah.
Oh, unrelated.
You're going to get a phone call right when you walk out the door.
Yeah.
Well, we are excited.
Any final thoughts to anything we didn't get a chance to cover from your sermon?
Good question.
OK, let me pull it up.
You know, we've got another 30 minutes probably.
You know what?
There was this really cool about the gifts specifically.
You know, it's like this all these gifts that we and we all have it.
If we believe in Jesus and we've received the spirit, we have gifts from the spirit,
right?
Whether we're enacting them, whether we fully realize what those are.
Sometimes it takes time.
You know, I didn't know I was going to be a preacher growing up.
Right.
I was I had stage fright.
It took me a long time.
I worked at camp for a long time.
Most people when they're four or five are like, I'm going to be a preacher.
Yeah.
I want to be a mathematician.
So for what that's worth.
Wow.
I was a kid without friends.
OK.
You know, in this quote I saw or this this phrase that I saw was like God's gifts that
he gives to his people.
It's like a kaleidoscope.
Right.
And it reveals this incredible array of God's grace on us.
And so I hope as you guys kind of continue to study these gifts to remember that it's
all God's grace on us.
Right.
For the betterment of people, for the common good, for loving others well.
That's what the gifts are for, to love others well.
So that's my final thought.
I love it.
All right.
Well, with that, we will see you guys next week.
We'll have Les Kronk with us talking about learning to hear the voice of God.
Amen.
Till next time.
Yep.
And that's a wrap for today's episode of Love and Context.
We hope you enjoyed this engaging conversation and gained valuable insights into the powerful
message of love within the Bible.
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Remember, love is at the heart of it all.
Until next time, keep seeking wisdom, embracing love, and living out your faith in the context
of today's world.
It's the like Jesus movement with Kelsey Grammer that just came out.
Jesus revolution.
Yes.
You need to edit.
No, I'm not editing.
I'm not in the video version of it.
You are just going to look like a fool.
Sweet.
Have a great time.