"The Privilege of the Christian Life" - Revelation 2:2-5

Have you abandoned your first love?

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

Good morning, everybody. Want to invite you to open your Bibles to the book of Revelation, chapter 2. Revelation, chapter 2. It's really easy for you. It's the last book of the Bible. Right there in chapter 2. Thank you guys for having me. It's a joy and a privilege to be here. It's such an honor. So thankful for this church and uh the way you guys have cared for me and my family. Thank you for Jim and Shelly and your faithfulness. And man, it's so sweet. Well, I know they already said it, but my name is Noah Clifton. It's so sweet to be here with you guys this morning. It's a joy to be here with my wife and son. My wife's name is Mahela. She's beautiful, and she's here. So about three years ago, like Jim said, my wife and I, along with a few others, we moved from Washington, D.C. to Crestview, Florida, which is in the Panhandle, near uh, it's right in between Pensacola and Panama City. And so we planted Pillar Church of Crestview in Crestview, Florida, which is right outside of Eglin Air Force Base, one of the largest Air Force bases in the country. Uh yeah, and pretty much since the beginning, this church has been a partner with us in the gospel and been faithfully praying for us. And I am so thankful for you guys. Your prayers have not returned void. The Lord has blessed uh many of your prayers, and so I'm so thankful for you guys and thankful that we're able to be here in person and worship our King and Savior together. I got to share with some of you this morning, uh, but our church is part of the Praetorium Project, and I want to just share a little bit about it before we jump into the text. I'll be brief and it'll tie right in. The Praetorium Project is a family of multiplying churches in military communities worldwide. A family of multiplying churches in military communities worldwide. And this is a family of churches that are planted strategically outside of U.S. military bases for the purpose of reaching active duty military members and their families with the gospel of Jesus. Our goal is by the grace of God to renew military communities, uh, to renew them with gospel-centered church planning, which means we focus on long-term discipleship for highly transient people and advancing the gospel through training and equipping our members to go out as missionaries. We're a family of multiplying churches and military communities worldwide. We are specifically doing this in military communities because we want to take the gospel to the military and see them catch the world on fire for Jesus. The life of an active duty family is unique and challenging. One of the best and worst things about their life is that they are constantly saying goodbye. They're constantly leaving. And our church is constantly saying goodbye to people we love so deeply. Our government is sending these families to all corners of the world. And the heart of the Praetorian Project, the heart of my church and the other churches in our family, is to equip these families with the gospel so that when they go, where they go where Uncle Sam tells them to go, they're going to be missionaries for the gospel in the places God has sovereignly put them. We tell our members that is that they're not only going to the ends of the earth on behalf of the president, but they're going to the ends of the earth on behalf of the king. And these men and women who are equipped with the gospel to go to the nations to defend our country are also going to the nations to proclaim the gospel. And so, as they're on deployment in the Middle East, they're a light for the gospel. As they move every six to thirty-six months, they're taking the good news of Jesus everywhere they go. I so often say that my ministry goal is to see the day where the United States military is the largest missionary sending organization in the world. Which is a crazy thought, but we serve a big God. The church can send out thousands of missionaries every single month on Uncle Sam's dime through equipping the military. Can we imagine what that would look like for a second? Can we imagine? Can we think about how our communities would change, how our nation would change, how our world would change if our United States military was taking the gospel to the ends of the world? These highly trained leaders who are equipped and trained with the gospel, and they're spreading the name of Jesus to every corner of the world. Even the corners of the world that the church can't go yet. The temptation is to believe that this is an impossible task, but it already has happened before. We read earlier Philippians chapter 1 that Paul tells us that the gospel spreads rapidly through Asia and Europe on the back of the Praetorian guard. Where they believed in Jesus, were discipled, and the government sent them to all over the world. If God has done it before, won't God do it again? If God's done before, won't He do it again? The Praetorian Project's mission is to disciple believers and advance the gospel within the highly transient nature of the military so that the gospel can be carried to all tribes, nations, and tongues on the backs of U.S. service members. That's what the Praetorian Project is. That's what my church was planted to do. And you guys are partnering with us in the gospel, and I'm so thankful for that. But the reason I tell you all this about the Praetorian Project is because our God is a missional God. He is on mission to bring lost sinners to himself, to make dead souls alive in Christ, to bring redemption, to change our identity from slaves to sin to children of God. This is why Jesus came to earth. He tells us he came to seek and save the lost. And right before Jesus ascended into heaven, he commissioned the church. Jesus Christ commissioned you and I to go make disciples of all nations. And he promised that he would be with us always. So Jesus has invited you and I to join him in his mission to save sinners. He has invited us to play a small part in God's grand redemption story of history. And as we talk about missions this morning, I want to remind us that missions is not a burden. Missions is not just our summer VBS. And missions is not just a certain ministry of the church. Joining Jesus in the mission of God is the privilege of the Christian life. It's the special right or advantage that we enjoy as believers. It's our privilege. A privilege is a benefit enjoyed by a person beyond the advantage of most. And for the Christian, our advantage is that we get to join Jesus in his work to save sinners. To work to build the kingdom of God. We could be a part of what God is doing. And it's an act of worship to be on mission with Jesus. But that's the key. With Jesus. We get to be with Jesus as he saves the world. Missions is pointless without Jesus. Biblical missions comes from an overflow of love for Christ. In our passage this morning, we're going to see how how love for Jesus is the most important part of our privilege of being on mission with Christ. So I want to invite you, Revelation chapter 2. We're going to look at verses 2 through 5. They're up on the screen, but I hope you have your Bible. We're going to read God's word together. Revelation chapter 2, verses 2 through 5. It says, I know your works, your toil, your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my namesake. You have not grown weary. Verse 4, key verse right here. But this I have against you. That you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen. Repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent. Will you pray with me this morning? Father in heaven, we come before you. Lord, all sorts of craziness has happened to us this week. Lord, right now we come before you, before your holy and precious word. Lord, asking to be free from distraction. Asking to be free from our own opinions about what your word says. Lord, help us to sit here as blank canvases as your Holy Spirit paints the message on our hearts. Holy Spirit, we're here in your word this morning to hear from you and be transformed by your Spirit. Holy Spirit, transform us. Help us not to walk out the doors the same way we walked in. Help us to rest in the glory of God and the sweetness of the good news of Jesus. We love you, Father. In your name we pray. Please be with us. Amen. Our main takeaway from the passage this morning, our main point, if you will, the main thing you and I need to walk away with is really simple. Our main takeaway is love Jesus. Love Jesus. The one thing this passage wants you and I to walk away with this morning is to love Jesus. Now this may seem simple and basic, and it is. Loving Jesus is really simple. But it's also the foundation of our faith. If we miss this, then nothing else we do matters. We can be the most fruitful in missions, in evangelism, and church planning, but if we miss the foundational truth of loving Christ, then it's all in vain. It's worthless. Missions is fruitless and meaningless if we do not love Jesus. A deep, abiding love for Jesus is the foundation to a missional heart and a missional church. Love Jesus. Let's look at the text. The book of Revelation was written by John, most likely the apostle, and he wrote it because God gave him a vision of the end of time. The opening verses of Revelation, verses chapter 1, verses 1 and 2 say the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. So John is recording the word of God in the testimony of Jesus, so that we know that God's great redemption story of history is soon coming to its end. Our passage is near the beginning of John's vision. He sees the resurrected Jesus, and Jesus tells John to write what he sees and to send it to seven churches. And this takes place mainly in chapter one, but Jesus' message for these churches and for us that we're going to look at, we're going to look specifically at the message he sends to the church of Ephesus. And his overarching message to these churches is to remain faithful to him, to persevere through the brokenness and the suffering of this world caused by sin and Satan. These churches are all facing persecution and going through trials that were testing their faithfulness to Jesus. Some of them were remaining faithful, and some of them were starting to fall away. And Jesus is telling them, do not give up on me. Be faithful to me. At the end of chapter 2, verse 9, I think wraps up Jesus' message to these churches really nicely. Jesus says, Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. Don't abandon Jesus. All throughout the Old Testament, we see passages where God was angered that his chosen people had abandoned their covenant with him. Think about Ezekiel 16 or Jeremiah 11 or Judges chapter 2. These all talk about how God's people had broken their covenant and were abandoning the one true God and worshiping other things. God has designed mankind to be with him for his glory. We are by nature worshipful beings, and God is supposed to be the object of our worship. But because of our sin, we lust after other things. In our sin, we desire to worship creation rather than the creator. God wants us to be with him. He has created us to be under his lordship. We are designed by God to give him glory, but we have rejected God and separated ourselves from him. But because God is rich in mercy and he shows his love to us, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Jesus left the glory of heaven, put on humanity, bore the full weight of the wrath of God by bearing our sins in his body on the cross. And the punishment of our sins is covered by the blood of Jesus. And Jesus didn't stay dead. He didn't stay in the grave, but Jesus defeated death and walked out of the grave with our freedom from sin and death in his hands. His resurrection raises us to new life and secures our adoption as sons and daughters of God. Our broken relationship with God can now be redeemed through faith in Jesus. You and I can be brought into the kingdom of God by grace through faith, so that we can fulfill the purpose that God has created us for. To glorify God. Jesus is telling these seven churches not to abandon Him, but to persevere with Him. Look at the message to the Church of Ephesus. Look at verse 2 and 3. It says, I know your works, your toil, your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary. Jesus starts by praising the Ephesians for all the great things that they've done in his name, their good works, their toil, their patient endurance, how they cannot passively let evil go by, but they fight for goodness and godliness. He praises their commitment to go against and to call out false teachers. How they have not grown weary of doing good. Jesus praises this church for their work for the kingdom, their endurance in the face of suffering, their desire for gospel purity. The things this church has done has gotten the attention of the King of Kings. Their works, their patient endurance, their rejection of evil and false teaching, their steadfastness in doing good. All these good works for the sake of the gospel, Jesus says, He knows them. He knows all the good works they've done. And this word Jesus uses for know also translates to respect. Jesus says, I respect your good works. I respect your patient endurance. I respect you bearing up for my name's sake. I respect you carrying the name of Jesus to those around you. The church of Ephesus was a church that sought righteous justice in their community, sought gospel purity in their teaching, and sought to defend the faith against the attacks of Satan. And wouldn't this be a wonderful thing for Jesus to say about your church? You'd probably feel pretty good about yourself if Jesus said this. He praises your church like this. If Jesus respected the good works of the church, the patient endurance, the carrying of his name to those around him. Imagine how great that feels to say, for Jesus to say to us, I know your good works. I know what you've done for my name. I know that your church is faithful admissions. We'd feel pretty good about ourselves, wouldn't we? We'd feel like we've made it. We'd feel like we'd fulfill or done exactly what the church is supposed to do. And this is how I imagine the Ephesians felt at the end of verse 3. They probably felt pretty good about themselves. Pretty proud of all the good works they were doing for Christ. But look what Jesus says in verse 4. Look at it with me. But this I have against you. That you have abandoned the love you had at first. Jesus Christ says, but this I have against you. You have abandoned the love you had at first. Jesus says, He is in opposition to their actions. The things that they've done have gone against the way God designed them. He just prays them and then he says that he stands in opposition to them. What do they do? What do they do to be in opposition against Jesus? Well, the church at Ephesus had left, forsaken, walked away from the love they had at first. They abandoned their love for Jesus. The love for Jesus that led them to taste the sweetness of the gospel, the love of Jesus that saved them from their sin, the love of Jesus that changed their identity from slave to sin to child of God, they abandoned it. The love of Jesus that left the glory of heaven and humbled himself to the point of death on the cross so that they could be saved and brought into everlasting life with God. The love that redeemed their broken relationship with God and brought them into a new relationship with Him. They abandoned their love for Jesus. They abandoned the relational closeness with God. They sacrificed Jesus for the pursuit of justice and gospel purity. At some point, they'd become so focused on doing for Jesus that they abandoned being with Jesus. And this is the problem with Mary and Martha, we see in Luke chapter 10. Martha's problem wasn't that she didn't serve Jesus enough or she didn't do enough good works. Her problem was that she was so focused on doing that she missed the point of being. She got caught up in the mindset of, I must do great things for Jesus and sacrificed the true reward of the gospel, which is being with Jesus. He confronts the church for abandoning their true calling. At one point, the church of Ephesus was full of love for Christ. They were in love with King Jesus. They saw the broken world around them and they saw the need for Jesus. And they were fueled by their love for God to go make the gospel known in their community. So they went on mission. They enjoyed the privilege of the Christian life. They obeyed the Great Commission, but at some point this church missed the mark. Somewhere along the way, they abandoned their love for Jesus. Let me ask you, have you abandoned your love for Jesus? Have you abandoned your love for Jesus, both you as an individual and you as a church? Have you abandoned the love of Christ? Are you more focused on doing for rather than being with? Y'all are a church that desires to be on mission. You're a church that wants to see the name of Jesus made known all around the world. And you guys work towards the goal of knowing Jesus and making him known. And praise God. We need more churches like this one. But take this warning from Jesus. Take this warning from God's word. Learn from the Church of Ephesus here. Love Jesus. The most important thing in your life, love Jesus. Do not abandon the love of Christ. I think about the old hymn, Amazing Grace. There's that beautiful line in there that says, 'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fear relieves. How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed? And this is what Jesus is calling them back to, the love that they had at first. Do you remember when you first gave your life to Jesus? Do you remember how in love you were with him? How lovely he felt when the first time you saw the wickedness and destruction and brokenness of the world and saw the beauty of Christ? Do you remember how in love you felt? Do you remember what it was like when the Holy Spirit first breathed life into your lungs? We couldn't help but singing amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. How sweet it was when God first breathed life into our dead souls. And we were able to clearly see our deep sin, but the deeper love of God. This is the love that the Ephesians abandoned. And this is the love that you and I need to hold on to. A love that sees Jesus as the most wonderful and majestic thing in all creation. A love that knows Jesus is greater than all things. That Jesus is greater than anything this world has to offer. That Jesus is greater than your sin. That Jesus is greater than your addiction. That Jesus is greater than your sickness. And Jesus is greater than your good works. That Jesus is greater than your heartache. And Jesus is greater than your success. And Jesus is greater than your failures. And Jesus is greater than the passions of our flesh. And Jesus is greater than any lie of Satan. And Jesus is greater than death. Jesus is greater than grief and sorrow. Jesus is the worthy Son of God who has offered you the free gift of redemption. And the love of God. That nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. The love of Jesus is perfect. He is altogether beautiful. There is no fault in him. The world is bland and tasteless compared to the sweetness of Christ. And through the gospel, we taste the sweetness and goodness of Jesus and his perfect love. And by grace, by the grace of God, we can love Jesus in return. Brothers and sisters, let us love Jesus. Let us not be like the church at Ephesus, where our focus shifts off of Jesus and onto mission or onto church growth or onto discipleship. These are all really good things that we should be involved in. But they're not better things. These things aren't better than Jesus. And this is why Jesus calls them back to the love that they had at first. Look at verse 5. If we do abandon the love of Jesus, Jesus tells us what to do. Verse 5, remember therefore from where you have fallen. Repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent. Jesus tells the Ephesians that they need to repent of their abandonment and turn back to their love of Christ. He tells them to repent, to turn away from their works without a love, and to come back to the love that fuels the work. If they do not abandon their sin and return to the Lord, then the Lord will remove his hand and the church will fail and die. And this is pointing us to the foundational truth that the Christian life is more about being with Jesus than it is about doing for Jesus. Yes, we are called to do things for Jesus. That is clear in Scripture. But our doing must always overflow out of our being. The primary call in our lives is not ministry, it's intimacy. The point of the gospel is to be with Jesus, not to do things for Jesus. Think about how Paul opens 1 Corinthians chapter 13. He says, If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, if he can speak like angels, but have not love, I'm a noisy gong and a clinging symbol. If I have prophetic powers and understand all the mysteries and all knowledge and have all faith, as so to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all that I have, if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. It doesn't matter how much we do for Jesus, if we plant a thousand churches, if we send out a million missionaries, if we have 50,000 baptisms this year, if we don't love Jesus, we have nothing. Jesus is more worthy than everything. If we gain the whole world but have not Jesus, then we have nothing. This is the point of the gospel. This is why Jesus came to save us. Because our sin, in our sinful nature, we deny God. We deny his perfect reign and rule over all things. And because of our sin, we are relationally separated from God. We can no longer dwell with God the way we were designed for. Our sin makes us unable to be with God. But our God is rich in mercy. And as an act of God's perfect mercy and perfect love, Jesus Christ left heaven, put on flesh, and lived a perfect life and died the death that you and I deserved on the cross that was meant for us. So that through faith in Jesus, our guilt of sin is washed clean and we are clothed with the perfect righteousness of Jesus. So that when we get to the final day and God looks upon us, he will not see us covered in our sin. He will see us clothed in the clothes and the perfect righteousness of His Son. And we will be brought into the kingdom of heaven where we will dwell in the presence of God and spend eternity basking in the perfect love of God. Through the gospel, we are no longer separated from God, but we are brought into a relationship with God that we were created to enjoy. We will be with God forever. And the heart of God takes no pleasure in our death. But the heart of God is for us to repent and live. To live with Him. And this is why Jesus says to the Ephesians, repent. Return to the love you had at first. Return to Jesus, return to me, return to a deep, abiding love. The Ephesians abandoned their love of Jesus and shifted their focus on what they could do for him. Let's not follow their example. But let us fall deeper in love with Jesus every single day. Jesus is the most lovely, most worthy, and most glorious. When we take our eyes off of Jesus, that's when the world looks most attractive. So let's not take our eyes off of Jesus. Love Jesus. Love Him by knowing Him. God reveals Himself to us in His Word. So let us meditate on His Word day and night. Let us hide God's word in our hearts so we may not sin against God. Let's read and memorize the Bible so our minds are filled with things that set our affections on Jesus rather than the false beauty of the world. One of the best ways to know and love Jesus is through prayer. Look, missional people are praying people. Missional people are praying people. God is active in mission where his people are active in prayer. One of the best ways to know Jesus is through prayer. Prayer is an expression of praise and dependence on Jesus, which is all he wants from us. And what it means to put our faith in Jesus, to cry out, Lord, I am needy and you are worthy. I am needy and you are worthy. What would our lives look like if we prayed this way? What would our church look like if we prayed this way? Lord, I am needy and you are worthy. Prayer is the perfect way to love Christ. And when we pray, we are drawn, we are brought into a deeper relationship with God. I heard someone say recently that discontentment with the Lord is tied with distance from the Lord. Discontentment with the Lord is tied to distance from the Lord. When we pray, the Holy Spirit is removing the distance between us and God. And in the presence of God is fullness of joy. So when you and I pray, not only do we draw closer to God, but we find joy in God. Satan's lies tell us that having an impactful, an impactful prayer life is hard, and that is not true. God has given us a whole book of the Bible to show us how He wants us to pray. The book of Psalms is a ripe harvest for a meaningful prayer life. If you and I took 10 minutes every day and prayed through a psalm, I promise you we will fall more in love with Jesus every single day. We can pray through Scripture. We can pray God's words back to Him. Not only do we worship Him, but we draw closer to Him. We display our faith through love by being a praying people, people who tell Jesus we love Him daily. My wife Mahaila tells me she loves me every single day. And I feel so loved and close to her every single time. It's not new information. I know she loves me. But it is sweet to my soul every time she says it. And this is what prayer does for our relationship with God. Our prayers, broken and jumbled as they are, are sweet sound of music to the ears of God. We draw closer to him. We love Jesus by going to him in prayer. We also love Jesus by joining him in his mission. In fact, we cannot join in the mission without a deep, abiding love for Jesus. The foundation of biblical missions is a love for Jesus. Anything we do for Jesus is rooted in a love for Jesus. So let's root ourselves in a love for Christ and never abandon it. The work of missions is hard, but it is eternally rewarding. It is the privilege of the Christian life to join Jesus in the work he's doing all around the world. The foundation of true gospel work is always a deep love of Jesus. But the temptation we fall into is loving the mission rather than loving the Savior. A friend of mine once said, if you love your mission more than you love your Savior, then your Savior will have no part in your mission. If you love your mission more than you love your Savior, your Savior will have no part in your mission. If we want to be a people who join Jesus in his mission, who enjoy the privilege of the Christian life, we need to be a people who love Jesus deeply. It is an act of worship to be on mission with Jesus. We are invited into the grand redemption story of history by going and spreading the name of Jesus to every tribe, nation, and tongue. It's not a burden to use our life for the building of the kingdom. In fact, there's no greater joy in using our lives for something. There's no greater joy we experience this side of heaven than to use our lives for the building of the kingdom. And this is the whole reason the church exists. The church is the chosen vehicle of God to take the gospel to the nations. We don't exist for ourselves. We exist for the sake of others knowing about Jesus. And God has entrusted us with the good news of Jesus. So we cannot hog it to ourselves, but we must tell the world that Jesus saves. That hell is real and the gospel is free. People you and I love are rejecting Jesus. And when the church acts like the church and loves Jesus deeply and joins Jesus in his mission, the gates of hell will not prevail. Eternity is too long, hell is too real, the gospel is too free, the harvest is too plentiful, and the laborers are too few for you and I to waste our lives on abandoning the love of Jesus. Let's love Jesus deeply. Please don't be confused. Jesus doesn't need us. But he has invited us to the greatest privilege of your life. To join him in the mission of God. To join him as he makes dead sinners alive. He brings people from the dead and brings them into a relationship with God. He's invited you and I to join him in that work. And Jesus is worthy of our love. He takes no pleasure in the death of anyone, but desires that they all repent of their sin and put their faith in him. Let us love Jesus out of the overflow of love for Christ. Let us love Jesus out of the overflow of this love for Jesus. We will live missionally. When we live like we actually believe that hell is a real place, that real people that we know and love are going, and the gospel is really free, that Jesus really died on the cross, that his blood really covers our sins, and that there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, then all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. When we really believe that those two things are real, we love Jesus. And we will live like the gospel has actually saved us. Like we're not going to hell anymore. We're going to the kingdom of God. That's our home. We are a child of God. We can love Jesus because we were first loved by Jesus. Or we were enemies of God, Jesus died on the cross for us. The perfect display of perfect love. Our sin is great, but the love of Jesus that sent him to the cross is so much greater. As Christians, we believe that Jesus Christ actually raised from the dead. And if the tomb is empty, then anything is possible. Which means that even the worst of sinners are not too far gone for the love of Jesus. The ground is level at the foot of the cross. No good works can earn you the saving work of Jesus, and no amount of sin can separate you or make you too far gone for the death and resurrection of Jesus. The kingdom of God is going to be full of murderers and thieves and prostitutes and runaways and traffickers and adulterers and rapists and abusers and liars and addicts and drunks who have all been changed by the saving grace of Jesus. Who have all been saved by the overwhelming, unending, relentless love of God that runs after the prodigal son. By grace through faith and the saving power of Jesus, all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. No sin is too great that the blood of Jesus cannot cover. Your sins or mine or anyone else's. Our sin might be really, really great, but God's grace is so much greater. The love of Jesus is greater than anything. And the privilege we enjoy as a Christian is joining Jesus as he makes these lost, wretched sinners children of God. Wipes them clean. White as snow. Joining Jesus and His mission is the privilege of the Christian life. Not because we get to do great things, but because we get to be with Jesus as he does great things. As he brings dead sinners to life. That's the whole point of our salvation. That we get to be with Jesus. And while we wait for the day the Lord brings us home, we get to join Jesus as he goes and saves those lost sinners. As he goes after the one. We get to join him. So, church, let us not abandon the love of Jesus we had at first. If I can leave you with one encouragement, please love Jesus. He's more worthy than anything of this world. Nothing in this world compares to the surpassing worth of knowing and loving Jesus. And by the power of the Holy Spirit, let us strive to kill our love for the world and strive to love Jesus more and more every single day. Brothers and sisters, love Jesus and join him in his mission. And this is the greatest privilege of your life. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we love you so much. Father, we need you, we need you, we need you, Lord. The world is attractive. Satan's lies are tempting. Lord, we are tempted to leave the love we had at first. The love that first loved us, the love that sent Jesus to the cross. Father, by your Holy Spirit, will you give us the grace needed for today and every day that we need to abandon the love of the world and run towards Christ. Holy Spirit, make that truth real in our hearts. Lord, for those of us who are in this room who don't know this love, I pray that you make them alive this morning. Pray that they know that the gospel is free. That no matter what they've done, who they are, the gospel changes who they are. Lord, if they're the worst of sinners, your grace is greater. Father, I pray for this church right here. Lord, I pray that as they strive to join you in your mission to save the world, I pray that their focus will not be on doing, but on being with. I pray that they will never take their eyes off of Jesus. I pray that Jesus will be more attractive than anything in this world. Lord, because their eyes are so fixed on you, I pray that you use them for the glory of God. I pray that many souls in this community, in this state, in this nation, and around the world are impacted and saved and pointed to Jesus through the ministry of this church. Not because that's their goal, but because their goal is to be with you and you alone. And Lord, and you use your children for your good. You use your children for your glory. Help us to do nothing for selfish gain, but only and solely for the glory of God. Whether we eat or drink or work or parent or married, whatever it is, Lord, I pray that we do it all for your glory. And I pray we have this deep abiding love for Christ that nothing can separate us from. Lord, help us be shameless in our confidence because of you. The only reason we have anything is because you first loved us, because you did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped, but you humbled yourself to the point of death on the cross for us. Lord, praise be to God that He saved us. Lord, this is your church. Let your will be done, and I pray that they never abandon the love of Jesus they had at first. In your holy and precious name of Jesus, I pray. Amen.