Don't Trust the GPS

1 Peter 1:17-23 (NIV): 

17 Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. 18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. 21 Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God. 

22 Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. 23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. 

Transcript
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See if you recognize these words. All you need is love. And perhaps what played next in your head was. The words of a famous Beatles song written by John Lennon. Are there any Beatles fans here? Does anyone here like the. I like the Beatles. Like, surely I'm not alone in this one. Okay. Yeah. Good. Woo! Um. Love. Love it. And I learned that John Lennon was asked to perform a song that could be easily digested by an international audience, and they had thought through some different songs. But what it came down to is they're like, we just need an anthem of love. That's something that everyone can understand, even if you don't know all the words. If someone says what they're singing right now is about love, you go, okay, yeah, yeah. All we need is love. Such a simple message. But what is love really? How do you know when you've got it? How do you get it? How do you keep it? I wear what many of us wear rings. Let's say we're supposed to love someone forever, but we all know that sometimes that doesn't work out. How do you keep it? Because sometimes promises aren't enough. So what is love? I wonder for you what comes to mind. What do you think of when you think of love? When I think of objects, of love, of course I think about God. I think about my husband. I think about my kids. And I have to admit that the first thing that came to mind as I was thinking about my objects of love was none of those three. It was Mexican food. I must have been hungry. But I do. But it's different levels, of course, even if it was the first thing that came to my mind. Different levels from God, my husband, kids, and then yes, even above Mexican food. My calling, my job, going to the beach. Now, if we can combine as many of those things as possible with going to the beach, like that's Paradise for me, we can really love anything. But then are there boundaries in love? And if so, who decides what they are? Uh. In the world, you'll often hear about love that has boundaries. And I do think those are important, but what do they look like? Are they self-protective? Are they more focused on me than you? Or are they based in my comfort or your good? Is it about getting what I need, or is it about me showing love for you now? Of course, yes to all of those. But which one is it more? And this sermon is not about picking on the world's definition of love because I think it has an incomplete definition. Certainly there are places that gets it all wrong, but that's not what we're talking about here. It's incomplete. And in order to understand what love really is, we have to look to Jesus. I love the song that we just sang. It says yesterday, now and always. He was, he is. He always will be. God, this is just a song basically about that I am name that God reveals all the way back in Genesis, all the way back in Genesis. He always is. And God did not invent love. God is love. He has forever had love within himself. And so the human love he created that's coming from God, from his character. It's not something brand new that was made. And so if we want to know what love is, how do we find it? How do we keep it? We should probably go to the person whose very identity is love. And one of the spots I said that the world misses some parts of love, that it's incomplete without without Jesus. And one of the keys to love, according to Jesus is obedience. And I think that strikes some of us as funny. We're like obedience to. To who? Now, of course, we're talking about Jesus, not obedience to everyone who tells you to do anything. We have wisdom in who we are obeying, but it's obedience to Jesus. And he mentions this throughout the scriptures. Uh, in John thirteen. He has this. He's in this last Supper moment with his disciples. He's encouraging them. He's trying to build them up. They know something big is about to happen, even if they don't fully understand what yet. He says, here's what I want you to do. I'm giving you a new command. Love each other as I have loved you. He said that right after washing their feet. And so he gives a command about love. And there are many other scriptures I could quote. I just have John thirteen and first Peter one twenty two here for us that love, one of the aspects of love is obedience. Now again, to some of us we might think really? Obedience to who? To what? I don't know about you, but many, many brides take out the love and obey part of their wedding vows. They're like, I'm not obeying. We're working together. This is teamwork here. So obey. What does that mean? And what does that have to do with love? So let's think about the person who wrote this letter Peter received. Peter, of course, was the rock that Jesus built his church on, and he was there. When Jesus says, I give you a new command, love others as I have loved you. And I can only assume that Peter was thinking of that when he wrote these words. Now you have been purified yourself by obeying the truth. Love one another deeply from the heart or the full text here says this. This is um first Peter one twenty two and a little bit into to twenty three. Now you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other. Love one another deeply from the heart, for you have been born again. You've been born again. And so I, I give you this command, obeying the truth. I can only assume that Peter had this on his heart and his mind as he was writing these words to the church, I imagine that in his mind he went back to that moment with Jesus where no one knew what was happening. Everyone was scared. I bet Peter remembered that he was very full of pride. He was like, oh, I would never leave you, Jesus. All these all these losers mind, but I won't. And he did. Of course, denying him three times, he probably remembered himself so full of pride. And yet Jesus was so patient with him, saying, love each other as I have loved you. And now it's many, many years later. And Peter's been through a lot. He's probably realized by now that his fate will be similar to Jesus, and that he'll be killed for his faith in Jesus sooner than later, but that it will be worth it, because then he'll have Jesus again. And he's writing these words saying, if you want to love each other, obey the truth, obey the truth. So obedience as there's different levels of love. I don't love Mexican food at the same level that I love my husband. I promise I love you more, I do. And so there's also different levels of obedience. You as an employee tends to obey what their boss says, but if their boss asks them to do something wrong or immoral, there's not going to obey that. Hopefully a parent and a child, maybe an adult with an aging parent, like, please just do what I ask you to do. It'll make your life better. We have a doctor and patient and parent. Yeah, doctor and patient. And then loosely, if we loosen this definition of obedience up just a smidge for this context, there's this sense of cooperation in obedience. I was one of those people who took out the and obey section of my wedding vows, and he was. There was not even a conversation. It was just I'm not saying this. And he said, okay, that was it. No problem. But there is this sense of cooperation between a husband and a wife where I listen to him and he listens to me because we love each other and we know that we're looking out for what's best for each other. The same is true with friends. The same is true when we gather as committees in this church that we're we're looking out for each other, for what's best for each other and for this church and for this community. And so there's a loose understanding we can have of obedience. And that's really what I'm going to talk about here, is obedience as this cooperation, or specifically for our context, accepting the invitation to love. We're going to think of this form of obedience being accepting the invitation to love. Now, this is all. This is all good. But I know it's all kind of spiritual. Let's make it practical. Let's make it concrete or asphalt. We're going to talk about roads. Um, you all have many of you all have invited me into your homes and I have loved it. I love coming into your homes. I love being welcomed there. I don't take any of it for granted. The stories you tell, the love you offer, and some of you, I can put your address in my GPS and it takes me where I'm supposed to go. And then others of you have said, do not use your GPS, don't trust the GPS, and I intend to listen to you. But my instinct to use the GPS is sometimes stronger than my memory. And so I end up calling people saying, hey, I'm all turned around here. I know you told me not to listen to my GPS, but, um, I did. So how do I get to you exactly? It's happened several times. I've learned that GPS are very reliable in the suburbs, which is where I grew up. I grew up in the suburbs, grew up in Gwinnett County. There are so many people who live there and who pass through there that they're just constantly up to date. But I've learned that in big cities and in rural country areas, it's less reliable because in the big cities I was in Dallas once and it was like, hey, if you go this route, you're going to save two minutes going home. I'm like two minutes. Great. Let's do it. And so I go that route and I'm like driving through this neighborhood and I'm like, I am afraid this was a mistake because the GPS doesn't know that. It's just like, wow, nobody travels this road. You should take that. And then the country areas, there's just not as many people on the roads getting things updated or letting people know bridges are closed. I haven't gotten trapped with that one, by the way. I had some of y'all tell me where the bridge was closed and how far I could go. And I think that's the key here in in cities and in rural areas in particular, we need to listen to the locals and do what they say. When the GPS says go straight and they say, no, no, go left and then right, you go left and then right. You ignore the GPS. In those moments, you listen to the locals because there is a reason that they are saying, don't go that way, and you might end up somewhere scary or at somebody else's backyard. You're like, I don't know where I am, but those things have happened to me because I listened to my GPS. And I think that the connection between obedience and love is a lot to do with going to visit someone in their home. If we think about obedience as a path to love and a response to love, we can think about it like extending an invitation. Leah, would you come to my home? I have some things I want to talk through. Yes, of course I'd love to be there. Let's let's talk through it. I want to hear. I want to hear your stories. So many times y'all go, oh, I'm starting to tell stories now. It's literally why I'm here. I want to hear your stories. I want to hear what God's done in your life. I want to hear. I want to hear it all, I love it. It's an honor that you share. Share these things with me. And so there's an invitation to love here. Would you come? And again, in this loose sense of obedience and accepting an invitation, I say, yes, I'd love to. And so that began that response to love of me saying yes gets me started on a path to love. But then there's the path itself. There's the road itself to get there. And in order to get there, I need to know where I'm going. And the GPS will get me most of the way most of the time. But for many of y'all, you're saying, no, no, no, don't trust the GPS. Go this way. I learned, So I mentioned that I went to the mountains with my friends at the beginning of the week. Uh, last week, I think I mentioned it last week. And so we drove up Sunday night and managed to cram a five hour drive into nine hours. And so we're getting there real, real late. Through these little mountain roads. And I'm just I don't really like driving through mountains anyway. It just makes me super anxious. And so I'm just sitting there like trying not to look around, but I feel my whole body tensing. Phil's doing a great job. He's not doing anything unsafe. It makes me nervous. And we get there and I'm like, okay, good. Thank goodness. And then me and my friend decide to go on an outing and I was going to drive. She goes, oh, don't go that way. Don't go that way. She goes, oh no, that road. That's the scenic route. That's this way takes longer, but it's far easier and less scary. Well, now you tell me. Now you tell me now I know. Don't. The fastest routes. Not always the best option. I'm telling you, I do this to myself all the time. But in order to experience that love of being in your home or that fellowship I have with my friend, I've got to go on the road. I've got to head there. So obedience is a response to love and a path to love. Are you tracking with me? If you're not like, you're like, I think I almost got what this means. I invite you to write in your bulletin just these words. Obedience is a path to love and a response to love. Or maybe you put it in the reverse order. I think if I could do it again, that's what I'd say. Obedience is a response to love and a path to love that helps our brains start to digest things a little more. Psychology. Trick or response to love and a path to love. Let's think about Jesus with this. The one who is love and who words slow down. Leah taught us to love. Showed us as an example of how to love. What does Jesus do? Think about the fact that he was called to come to this earth as a baby and then die for us. There was an invitation there at some point in eternity. And Jesus said, yes. I love those people that much. Yes, father, I will go. And then there's the path to love, which was his whole life teaching us to love. Teaching us what obedience means. Teaching us what it means to be people of God. And of course, the end of that path led to the cross, which then, of course, had an unexpected twist of that empty tomb, showing us that that was not the end of the road. But Jesus shows us here is that sometimes when we walk the path of love, it's not easy. It's actually very challenging. But if we're really walking that path to love, if we're really walking in obedience, it's worth it. So don't trust the GPS. Trust the locals. It's so easy though to default to the GPS. It's easy to default to what the world tells us is true about love, you know. Put yourself first. Protect yourself from other people. That love is love is all the same. It's so easy to adopt these ways of thinking, and there are certain ways that they'll kind of get us where we need to go. But if we really want to know what love is, we need to look to the source of love. And that's God himself. He's the local. He's the one that knows what's going on because he is love. He's the one who paved the roads to our love. Because he is love. He knows what they're made of. He knows where we're going. He can tell us what love looks like and most of all, what it looks like to live within the body of Christ, which is the context here. Of course, it's good to love everyone. That is a global message that John Lennon saying for us, all you need is love. But in this context, and in the John thirteen passage Jesus is talking about within the church, he's saying, show love to each other. And the wording here, it tells us that this has already started. We've already started responding to love when we said yes to Jesus. And every single time we give ourselves to Jesus, we're saying yes to him. When we submit to him, when we consecrate ourselves, we're saying yes to Jesus. We're responding to him in love and obedience every single time. And so this has already started. We're already walking this road. I'm assuming we're all walking this road together, this this road of love. Well, what does it look like to just keep walking? Are there ways Jesus is calling you to show love in a certain way. Now, for many of you, the things I'm about to share of ideas of how to show love are things you're already doing. And so I hope you'll take this as an encouragement like you're doing, you're doing a good job, not by your own will, by God's strength. You're doing a good job. Keep going. Or perhaps you'll hear something and you go, oh, I think I do that. I think that's something God might want me to change. Remember, if that happens, this is not a do better, try harder religion. This is a giving yourself to God relationship. So what does obedience paved love look like? Well, obedience paved love is genuine. You're not trying to force yourself to be better. Again, none of this do do better. Try harder stuff here. It's genuine. It just comes out of you. You have a moment where you're like, wow, that was really nice. MM. I wonder where that came from. Or you have a moment where you're interacting with someone and they say, I just want you to know you're the kindest person I've ever met. And maybe that was not true of you in the past. And you go, oh, wow, God is genuinely and authentically been changing me. How cool is that? Obedience paved love is consistent. It's not just when you feel like it, which is the times. It's easy to be loving, right? We all love our kids and our spouse and our families when we've had a good night's sleep and we're not hungry. But love is consistent when you continually choose love, even when you just don't feel like it. And I don't think that's the same thing as do Better, Try Harder. I think that's taking a moment and giving yourself to Jesus and saying, I am hungry and tired, but you have given me these people to love. So how do I do that right now? It's self-sacrificing, even when it's hard. Think about Jesus on the cross. I am quite sure there were moments during Holy Week when Jesus was on the cross where he was like, I don't want to do this anymore. In fact, it says, let this cup pass from me. We know he didn't really want to do it, but his love was greater than those feelings. So that kind of love is self-sacrificing and it's evident. This is kind of. With genuine. Others notice it in you. So how might God be calling you to obedience on this path of love? Some of these ways are really fun. It's showing up to graduations. It's. It's showing up to weddings, celebrating with one another when God does something amazing. Sometimes it's showing up to funerals with those big hugs and loves. And I'm praying for you. Sometimes it's three months later when everyone else has kind of moved on and you're coming back and saying, hey, I was thinking about you. How are you doing? I know you, you miss so-and-so. Sometimes this kind of love is walking up to someone and honestly saying, how are you really doing? And not accepting fine as an answer. Not that you can force someone to share, but pushing. Are you sure? Is something going on you want to talk about? Or the flip side, which I think is harder, is when someone walks up to you and goes, how are you doing? You don't go, I'm fine. You're honest. That's a way to love yourself and those around you by allowing them to love you, being honest with what's going on in your life. This obedient love can be seen in forgiveness when your spouse or a church member, they hurt you. Maybe it was by accident, but it really hurt your heart. And then they they know they made a mistake and they come to you and they say, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it or I did mean it, but it was wrong or I just I was wrong. I should not have done or said that that kind of love forgives. Even if in the moment you're not feeling the forgiveness. Feelings come later sometimes, or choosing to let it go and say, okay, I'm letting this go. Love can look like helping someone in need, providing a meal, coming over and doing their house chores, taking care of their kids. These very tangible ways that you can show up and love for someone. Love can look like signing up for that prayer chain thing that's going around writing down your your name, your email, your phone number so that you can hear when things happen that people in our congregation want prayer for. And you can stop in that moment and pray for them. A complete prayer is Dear God, I see so and so as doing is dealing with this. Please let them feel you near. Please intervene. Please provide healing, whatever the thing is. Amen. 10s that counts as prayer. Just stop and pray so you can show love to each other by signing up for that prayer chain that was going around. It's just this loyal presence and love that we have for one another. So many of y'all have known each other for decades. Many of y'all are newer like me, but we all love each other. We all pray for each other because we love each other. Love can look like praying for the people in the back of this bulletin. You can just say their names out loud to God. Say, I'm lifting up Melissa McDonald. Robert Waller to you, naming everyone here, praying for them out loud. Praying for these families who have lost loved ones. It's funny. It's really pretty simple. It's just choosing to love like Jesus. Being present, being honest. And choosing to love like Jesus loves because he is the source of love. So we're already walking on this path of love. We're already learning it. We've already started with obedience by saying yes to Jesus. Yes, I want your salvation. And now Jesus doesn't ask us to do anything he hasn't done. He's responded in love for you at the cross or by agreeing to come to the cross. And then he's walked that path and shown us that love, and now he's inviting you to keep walking with him on that path. So I want to know if you imagine this path, are you here? Are where are you? On the path. Do you see Jesus way up ahead? You can even close your eyes like I'm doing. Is Jesus way up ahead? And you're kind of just inching along. If so, you're on the path. That's good. You're on the path. I will tell you, Jesus is always near you, even if he feels far. Are you right up there with Jesus? And you're really encouraged right now like, wow, I think I'm really doing this obedient love thing. And this is so encouraging to me. I want to keep walking. Or are you realizing maybe you're not on the path, maybe you've stepped off, maybe you've never been on in the first place and you want to. And it's so easy to just respond in love and say, yes, Jesus, I want to live the life that you have for me, the life that you bought with your blood. Jesus sees you. He's with you. No matter how far he feels. He's with you. He's ready. He's ready to walk with you on this path of love and show you what it looks like. Are you ready? Let's pray together. Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for your love. The world would probably say that sacrificing your child to save people is crazy. Not loving. And yet, that's what you did. Because you define love, you are love. And you adopted us to be your children too. Through Jesus. Teach us this obedient, self-sacrificial love that looks to you and agrees with you, the native, the local of love when it contradicts the world, help us choose you to recognize it and choose you, knowing that love is all we need. Because God, you are all we need. In Jesus name, Amen.