Okay, so a little bit kind of older, old school today. I don't have any slides, so everybody has to pay attention and use your Bibles like Professor Sean says. But we are still in all script. And it's been an interesting study this week, looking at it and reading it over several times. Kind of challenging to me too, And it shouldn't be, but looking at the details of it, it's been kind of a challenge. The chapter title is called Love Your Own, okay? If you wanna turn your Bibles to John 13, we'll be in that most of the time this morning. I'm gonna read the first verse here and then we'll pray and get going. We start in verse one. This is now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. Let us pray. Gracious Father, God, we are thankful to be together this morning. Thankful for the time that you've given us to fellowship, to be around fellow believers, to fellowship around your word. Lord, I pray that you would guide my words and calm my heart as we go through this lesson. Lord, that you may be glorified and that we will learn exactly what you would have us to learn today. And God, may you be glorified through it all. In Jesus' name, amen. So, a couple of questions to start off with. We're all busy. We all have busy lives. If you have kids, you're busy just right off the bat. Add jobs, other family, just life in general, we're busy. Busy with work, to-do lists. If you're anything like me, at the end of the day, when you've had a full day, and I'm just worn out, You know, I just want to plop down and do nothing. But then you think. Did I do anything of worth today? Was there something missing? And what we did today? Is your conscience unsettled? These are questions that were asked here. So diverse. really homing in on what he said here while John wrote. Jesus said, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. Now think about the context of this. It's a very familiar passage here. Right after this verse, Jesus is washing his disciples' feet. This is the last meal that they'll have together, the last time that they'll have together before Christ is betrayed and crucified. And we'll see through his example what real love looks like. So 13.1, Jesus loves his own. In the hardest time of his walk on Earth. How do you love your own? And you are your own. Jesus, he walked everywhere he poured himself out. To everybody came across. His whole time walking on the Earth and this this last time. Sitting down with this meals this meal with his disciples. These were his own. One of the commentaries I read said this was these 12, these 12 disciples, and one of them was betraying that very night. This was his family. This was his community that he had built. These are the ones that he loved just as much as we would love our family, right? So, how do you love your own? Well, Jesus showed us in the following verses. Verse 3 says, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments and, taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with a towel that was wrapped around them." So here's Christ. The disciples have been with him these last two and a half, three years, right? They've witnessed all of these He is done. They know who he is. They know he is the Christ. He is the son of God. And yet, the one they're calling master. I'm sure we've all heard sermons on these, the washing of the feet. This great humility that Christ shows, and not just humility, but his love. His love for these men that have been with him for this time. So how do we, how do we show our love for the ones that are closest to us? First, when we start serving, you know, it's hard for me. A lot of times after hard days at work, I've been crawling in an attic or under a house or something. I'm just, the older I get, the harder it is to do that kind of stuff. And I just want to sit and do nothing. after that, but now my wife and my family still need me at the end of the day, even if I don't feel like it, even if I'm grumpy or have a grumpy face as I usually do, even if I'm not grumpy. Love is not easy sometimes. True love. It takes an effort. It takes work, dealing with our own families, dealing with each other in our marriages. It takes work. It takes an effort to show that love and act on it. Not just say it, but true love acts, right? I'm open to any commentary too, so you guys don't have to sit quiet. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I grew up in a blended family. You know, my dad remarried. I've got three or two other sisters from that marriage. So, I mean, that's, yeah, definitely. But it's something that we have to do, right? If we are Christ and he loves us, As we'll see, we're to follow his example and love those that are around us. By serving them the best that we can. Verse 13 to 17. It says you call me teacher and Lord and you're right for so I am. If then your Lord and teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to walk off to watch one another's feet. For I've given you an example that you should just that you should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master. Nowhere is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them." So, that's along with that first one. We're commanded to serve. We serve God, but we also serve each other. and serve our family first, well, after God. We're called to serve God and love him first, right? And that's something that I've always tried to teach, especially my boys, my kids. You love God first and you love your family. Everybody else, everything else is secondary to those things. So we're to serve one another. What are some ways that we can serve each other? Yeah. Yeah. that I had to learn growing up, it was so difficult because my mom was sick on and off for some of her life. And after she had her stroke, over how many days, some of them very much changed her personality. And she became a very angry person, period. And I will never forget that time. You know, family would go through divorces and go in different places and all that. It was fun. It was awesome. And she said, what do you mean? You know, and we were in the middle of the hallway. I was in my nightgown. My mom was laying there kind of going around, and my dad was there. It just was an intense moment. And it was sad. I promised God I would love my mom as soon as I met her. And he goes, when I made that promise, I didn't know what it was going to mean. There's no way you can know those things. He said, but I'm not going to do it. And this really isn't your mom. This is a result of medication and treatments and stuff like that. And I thankfully, to one of these days, your mom's going to be okay and she'll be back. I will tell you that that was a powerful lesson to me because there were many, many more instances after that that were very, very hard. A lot of things I wanted my mom to be there for if she was, and she just was very, very difficult. But I kept that in the back of my mind. I think as I got older, that helped me. There's already a history of learning love and realizing that while my relationship with my mom is not what I wanted it to be, when I looked at my friends, it was what God had designed for me. And that was something that my sister and I had been talking about for years. And so sometimes God calls us to love our families when we're not in those hard situations. But as I look back, as a believer, I realize that God brought me through that one step at a time. It wasn't the overall thing that brought me to the level of concern that people do with us. And because of that, I think that's how I came to know God. When you were talking, I was just, I was thinking about my, I have an uncle named Bob. Um, It's my aunt's husband. When my great-grandfather was dying from cancer, my great-grandmother had dementia at the time. And my grandpa, he just, he got to the point where he couldn't take care of himself much either. But my uncle Bobby was over there. They lived across the field from him. Showed that love and compassion for him. He would, he would go over and give my grandpa a bath and take care of him. No, no, it was his wife's grandparents. So yeah, those are great examples of how we should be. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he knew, yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. watch his feet and taught this lesson because he knew what was going to happen. Yeah. And it's like even the people that betrayed him washed their feet too. Yeah. You know, they betrayed you. As a person who's gone through a lot this year, I've been betrayed. It's pretty rough. Just sit there and swallow that and be like, okay Lord, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he knew he knew his hour had come. He knew what was coming within the next day. Yeah. And that's what I remind myself so often is, you know what? I live in a modern world. I'm a believer, but I am a sinner. And every day, I am terribly ashamed of something that I have done, whether it's an attitude or a word or whatever. I've been called to sin sometimes by people who are not believers. And they don't have the same faith that I do. They are living in darkness. So, you are called to serve those who aren't going to understand, who aren't going to care, who aren't going to serve back, but the calling has changed. And that's really, really hard. Even sitting with families and talking to them, you know, realizing, okay, the people I'm speaking with, they are not believers. They are falling back. They are acting like non-believers are sinners. None of that justifies, but it gives me that mindset of how much I struggle as a believer. I might not have to go through some of the trials and struggles for comfort, for the comfort of the Holy Spirit. Convicting us when we need it, or calling us to serve somebody who we otherwise wouldn't. When we were gone for all this stuff, and we went to a pastor on Leaky Minus saying this, and we were like, bless him, he's doing all these things, and he's like, what do you expect from a sinner? And from that perspective, we were like, wow. Why would we expect a sinner to act like they have the Holy Spirit? And all of those struggles like that point to us more. How much more should we love the ones that are closest to us? Let's read verse 34 and 35. This is Jesus still talking to his disciples. So there's a new commandment I give to you that you love one another. And here's the hard part. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples. If you have love one for another. from a human, fleshly perspective, that's nearly impossible for us to love that much as Christ loved his disciples and loves us. But yeah, we're commanded to do that, right? Jesus made the time to prepare, to love, and invest in the lives of these he loved, his disciples, his hard-headed, sometimes driven from other perspectives, disciples that he had, but yet he spent that time to invest in, right? And that's what we're supposed to do. I think of our, a lot of parents in here, that's what we're supposed to do with our kids. A lot of times I feel I've failed in some of that, investing that time and showing that All consuming love. To them. A human tendency for us for me. Going through hard times. Or just going through a rough day. Sometimes I just want to. be by myself for a little bit. You know, I just need some quiet time and we're and that's okay. Sometimes we need that quiet time to recharge and refocus as we've seen in some of these lessons, going to our secret place for a little bit. But on the other side of that, we're also commanded love your own. You have to, we must, I must invest that time in my wife, my daughter, The author in the book gives an example of taking his 10-year-old daughter out on a date in the middle of all his treatments and everything for this, I think it was Hodgkin's lymphoma that he was dealing with, the author of this book. And 10-year-olds take a lot to heart that we don't realize. And in the book, He gives the example of taking his daughter out on a date and just just heard him. For the day going out to eat and go shopping and all that. And he said she came back. A different girl that night because she had that time with her dad. She was OK now that she understands. And that's something that we need to do as parents. Family is to take care of each other. Take the time one on one. Just to be with him. That's something I plan on doing with my daughter too, taking her out on a date. Except for tubing yesterday, that was fun. We were on the tube together. She was screaming a little bit. I might've been a little bit too. I don't know. Might've been from the salt mist spraying in my face, I don't know. But moments like that, even just like sitting around the dinner table, laughing and joking with each other. You know, those are the times that we have to cherish because those are the times it doesn't have to be big events, you know, that make memories. Sometimes it's just sitting around playing a game together, playing cards together, like we do sometimes, or just around the dinner table, talking about our day and joking around with each other, laughing. Those are the times where we can really get into the hearts of our children and our family. Yeah Yeah So decision nine from the book, if you're keeping track. Love your own, like we've been talking about. Love the ones that are closest to you. And sometimes, especially in a military town like this, it may not be flesh and blood. Sometimes it's the closest friends, like this group. or even just groups within the church. You may not have flesh and blood family close to you, but you can be just as close as family. That's the way we feel about a lot of folks here in this room. They are around, so we love them, right? A quote here from the book says passionately passionately cherish your family and love them as Christ loves them. Make every day special. Make every good day special. We may have bad days and we might be off. We might have an off script day or week or month. But on those good days, cherish it. We can't control everything. but we can always love. Right? Like we said, do we need our time alone with God? Yes, absolutely. We have to have that time to refresh, to grow closer to God. When God gives the strength and grace we need, turn towards your own and earnestly love on them. Do what you can to love the people that God puts within your reach. question we have to ask ourselves at the end of the day, how did you live your life today? Was it fruitful? Did it mean anything to those around you or to your family? Don't wait for tomorrow to love As as we've seen in the news all over the place, there is no promise of tomorrow. We could be a 4th of July parade. I was reading a story this morning. There was a two year old boy. That was shown both his parents were shot and killed. At the parade. And he's still calling out for his parents. He doesn't even know they're gone. We're never guaranteed. tomorrow. It's reminded of a person, James. We all try to plan our days. We've got our own script for the day and how we think it's supposed to go and all that. Of course, the Bible speaks to that too. I'll start in 13. 4.13, James. Come now, you who say today or tomorrow we'll go in such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit, yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. Here's the point. What is your life? or you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. In the context of what we've been talking about, we don't have a lot of time in the service compared to eternity. So what's the most important thing, things, people we need to invest our time, our love in? Yeah. It's not video games or spending time watching football on TV or getting all riled up on everything. And it's okay to have some passions like that sometimes, but don't let it distract from the most important things. It's your family and those around you that are your own. That was a phrase that Jesus said or that was spoken of him. He loved his own. So we ought to love our own as well. Yeah. I experienced a little bit of putting somebody else first. Or you can mix them in. That's what we're supposed to be doing.