Phil Beach Jr. emphasizes the importance of love in the Christian community, urging believers to recognize their weaknesses and rely on God's grace to cultivate a spirit of brotherly love. He highlights the necessity of working together in faith, balancing personal devotion with corporate growth, and warns against the individualistic mindset prevalent in society. The sermon explores the distinction between human love, which is often conditional and fleeting, and divine love, which is sacrificial and unconditional, encouraging the congregation to embody the latter. Beach Jr. calls for a deeper understanding of love as a means to support one another and grow in Christlikeness, ultimately leading to a more authentic Christian life.

For Your precious Holy Spirit, we thank You for Your grace and Your mercy. We thank You for Your presence. We thank You for Your Son. We thank You for who You are and what You so freely and so abundantly have done for us, Lord. And our hearts are humbled this morning in Your presence. We are so aware in Your presence, Lord, of our lack, and we acknowledge our lack, Lord, but we freely acknowledge it knowing that our lack does not condemn us because we have run to You for help. And we thank You, Lord, that in our lack and in our weakness, You just bring us to the place, Lord, where we just finally give up on ourselves, stop trying to find anything good or anything resourceful that would be of value to You in our flesh. Let us just come to the place, Lord, where we can view that part of our life as You do, and that is set aside and buried, crucified, and that we could see Christ as our life and Christ as the source from which all that we could ever need is found. And so during this time, Lord, in Your Word, we pray You'll give us meek hearts and humble hearts so that we can receive Your Word and that it would bring forth fruit that is pleasing in Your eyes. Please, Father, we are very hungry for You, and we commit our hearts to You. For Jesus' sake we pray, amen and amen. I just want to, for the sake of the tape, do a quick, very quick overview of last week, and then we're just going to touch briefly on this whole topic of love. And amazingly, one of the admonitions that we were eventually going to look at, that we'll look at now, and perhaps at a future date look at it again, has to do with love. It's one of those things that God says we need to do together. But before we touch on that, we want to just briefly touch on last week. Last week we learned that God calls us to not only seek to know Him privately and personally in our prayer closets as we pray together and seek Him and study His Word alone, but equally He calls us to learn to work together and grow together and fellowship together with others, and that together we grow. And so there's this balance that God is wanting to work in our lives. It's the balance of knowing that we have to individually, individually work out our salvation with fear and trembling, and then we have to learn how to corporately work together with others. And so this whole book of Hebrews that refers to the many, many admonitions of let us, let us, let us, implies that it is something that we learn to do together with others. Now, it doesn't mean that any of these things that we're going to look at can't be done individually. They can be, and they ought to be. But there is a particular blessing, a particular maturity that cannot be realized apart from others. And that's the whole heartbeat of the book of Hebrews. It's a call from the Spirit of God to move on and grow so that there can be a corporate maturity in our lives together. And having learned that, we realized last week that in order for this to occur, there has to be a deeper, a continual deepening work of the cross in our life to deliver us and free us from our tendency to want to be individualistic, to want to be sort of a maverick sheep. It takes a deep stroke of God's hand to deliver us from selfishness, because selfishness keeps us from cooperating with the Holy Spirit and growing in our capacity to walk together with others and bear one another's burdens and share, under the guidance of the Lord, our lives with one another. We live in a culture that places great value on the individual. Individual accomplishment. Individual goals. And then goes as far as to say that you need to take whatever measures you can in order to accomplish your goals. And there's great emphasis on that. And we have to be careful that we don't allow that mindset to get a hold of us, because most of the New Testament is an admonition to the corporate church individually. Most of the time when the Scriptures talk about, know you not that you are the temple, the Greek is not referring to individuals. It's referring to the corporate meaning. You is plural. It's not singular. So when the apostles are oftentimes referring to you, you, you, it's a corporate thing. It's togetherness. It's the concept of together, together. And so we need the Lord to teach us this balance of pursuing the Lord alone and then learning how to cooperate with Him as we walk together with other people. Now, if this is going to happen, I have my little pointer here. If this is going to happen, there are two qualities that need to be raw in our life. Now, listen carefully. We're going to have to really pray this through. We're going to have to help one another. Alright? We're going to need to help one another. This is why we're going to touch on love, because only love can help us in our endeavor to help one another. Because love is the only quality that we can have that will enable us to walk together with others and not end up in a spiritual casualty. Number one, we're going to pray that God will make us flexible. And number two, we're going to pray that God will make us adjustable. Now, flexible and adjustable are qualities that are essential if we're walking with God. Now, we learned that Jesus talked about the old wine skin and the new wine skin. And what we learned was this, and this is very, very important. This is something that could be mentioned every time we gather, every time you gather, because it's worth remembering. Basically, the difference between an old wine skin and a new wine skin is the old wine skin does not have any new wine in it. And the new wine skin does. And guess what the qualities of the new wine skin are? Flexibility and adjustability. And so guess what the qualities of an old wine skin are? The opposite of flexible, which is inflexible, and the opposite of adjustable, which is unadjustable. So, what is it that makes the old wine skin unadjustable and inflexible? Very, very simple. The absence of new wine. And so let's carry that on into our Christian life. Do you find that you struggle with being flexible or adjustable? Maybe in your family life, maybe when you're working with other people, you find that your opinions or your way has got to be, and if you don't get it that way, you might even put a smile on, but inwardly there's a smoldering anger or resentment or bitterness. Do you find that to be true? Sarah's shaking her head, not at all. Okay, now why is that? It's very simple. Because there's a deficiency of the new wine in your life. It is only the presence of the new wine, which is the living, vibrant touch of the Holy Spirit working in us that keeps us flexible and adjustable before the Lord. So the solution to being an inflexible and unadjustable person is very simple. We need to be continuously filled with the new wine, the Lord Jesus Christ. And as we're continuously filled with the new wine, the Lord Jesus Christ, then we remain flexible and we remain adjustable. And when we remain flexible and adjustable, then we can be enlarged. We can be capacitated more and more and more. And our goal is to become like Jesus. And the heart of Jesus is so great and so vast and so infinite and so big and so filled, and that's our goal. We want to grow in our capacity to be like the Lord. Alright? And so that basically was what we talked about last week. And then we went into our first admonition in Hebrews 2. And that was found in Hebrews 2, verse 1. And it says, Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed. Or another way is, let us, let us. What we're looking at in the book of Hebrews is all the admonitions that begin with let us. That's what the King James uses, but other versions, the idea is let us together. This is something we need to be doing together. And so the first admonition is let us give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. And we learned that earnest heed means to hold the mind towards, to pay strict attention, cautiously applying oneself to something, to adhere, to have regard for. And so God is telling us that we must keep our mind toward something. And we learned that this phrase in Hebrews 2 is connected to what was just said in Hebrews 1. And basically what that is, is all that Jesus has said in His Word. All that He did on Calvary. All that it means for Him to have come to die on Calvary and be raised from the dead. And all that He has said and all that has been recorded in the Word of God, that is the focus of the Holy Spirit. We must keep our minds fixed on that, towards that. Pay strict attention, cautiously applying ourselves to all that the Lord has done. Meditating upon it. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates how often? Day and night. And we know the word meditate there is a phrase that is used to describe what cows do when they eat. They chew the cud. You know, cows have a couple stomachs. I'm not too sure how many. How many? Eight. Wow. Seven, eight, three. Well, we know they have more than one stomach. And so here's what a cow does. And this is what we're to do in the Word of God. And this is the idea that Hebrews 2 is giving us. This is how important it is. We can't take this lightly. A cow will eat grass, and then it will swallow it. It will chew it for a while. Now, why does a cow chew grass? What's it doing in chewing it? Boy, I'll tell you. You can tell these kids are Animal Planet students. Animal Channel, Animal Planet. Alright, that's why they do it. They chew the grass. And the purpose of chewing the grass is to what? Extract from the grass nutrients. So after it does that for a while, it swallows it. But guess what it does then after that? It pukes it back up. Now, is that gross or what? Can you imagine doing that? But it goes into a certain stomach, and then it regurgitates it back up. And guess what the cow starts doing again? You think he spits it out of his mouth? He goes, ew, that's gross. No, he starts chewing on it again. And what's the purpose of chewing? To extract. And then he swallows it. And guess what he does again? I don't know how many times they do it, but the point of the matter is this. They extract, extract, extract all the nutrients. And that's the same word that God says that we're to meditate on the Word of God. And that's the concept here where it says we're to lay hold. Our mind is to be toward the Word of God and toward what the Lord Jesus did and pay strict attention to it. We must not let these things wander. We must not let them slip from us. That's one of the warnings. If that doesn't happen, then it might slip from us. And what that simply means is that it's a picture of a boat caught in a current. The current is going this way. And here's the mooring, the place where the boat is to be anchored. And if we're not careful, if we don't pay strict attention and meditate and encourage one another and often speak the Word of God into each other's lives and often share what God is doing in our hearts and often we need to encourage and keep each other's mind in the Word of God and love reminding each other to stay in the Word, stay focused on Jesus. If we don't do that, then it'll slip from us. And what that means is we're in a current. A boat is in a current. And here's the mooring, which is the place where the boat is to be anchored. But the current takes the boat right past the mooring and it misses it and it doesn't anchor itself. And of course, that mooring is the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the Word of God. That's what is stable and that keeps us. And of course, the current is the world, the things of this world, and even the tendencies in our own flesh can be like a current and it can just sweep us right past the things of God. And so that's why we need to encourage one another and keep our minds on the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, there are many of these let us admonitions, up to 14 of them is what I have here. But we're going to skip all the ones in the beginning. We'll go back to that another time as the Lord leads. And go to Hebrews 13.1 Because this talks about love. And this is something that we were seeing a little bit this morning, so we'll just carry that thought right through. We want to talk about love for a little while. And this is just an amazing revelation that God is bringing to our hearts. Hebrews 13, beginning in verse number 1. Okay? Hebrews 13, beginning in verse number 1. We have to guard against that current. How many have found that if you're not careful, the current of life and the current of your emotions may be just the current of this life without even realizing. You can get on that current and you find yourself slipping right past the things that you know you need to be embracing. It's so easy. So we need to guard against that. Hebrews 13, beginning in verse 1, and that's what we're going to look at. Let brotherly love continue, or let us continue in brotherly love. This phrase, brotherly love, comes from the idea of being very close friends and showing and expressing love toward one another because of the common spiritual life that we possess. Being very close friends and showing love toward one another because of the common spiritual life that we possess. And so this is a command from the Lord that we are to do. Let brotherly love continue. And so let's just look at this whole idea of love for a short time here. We'll look at basically the difference between God's love and human love. Let's turn our Bibles to 1 John 3, verse 16. 1 John 3, verse 16. 1 John 3, verse 16. This, of course, is what really defines the meaning of love. 1 John 3, verse 16. We can begin in verse 11. 1 John 3, verse 11. For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning that we should love one another, not as Cain, who was of the wicked one, and slew his brother. And why did he kill his brother? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous. Do not be surprised, my brethren, if the world hate you. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. Wherefore, or whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. Now here's verse 16, and this is what defines what love is. And we need to just meditate on this. Really deeply meditate on this. Herein perceive we the love of God. For this is how we know the love of God. This is how we can see the love of God. This is how God's love is defined. This is what John is saying. This is how we define God's love. Let's throw out all of our definitions of what love is. All of our ideas, because the culture that we live in has defined love for us in a lot of weird ways. We have so adulterated love, we say things like, oh, I love that car. How ridiculous. How sad that we've reduced love down to a feeling that we have for an immaterial object. Or, oh, I love banana splits. Or, I love clothes. Or, I love this home. And I know that not always are we intending to malign God or we're not intending to misrepresent Him. But it's just the principle. The principle. We've so made common the word love. And we all say it. And I don't want to suggest that in saying that we're committing a gross sin, but sometimes it can just affect us. And it can bring what God's love is down to a level that is inferior and earthly to what it really is. We just want to make sure that that never happens. Okay, here is how we know what God's love is. He laid down His life or His soul. He poured out. He poured out His soul. He spilled His blood. Now we're touching love right now. We're touching love now. He spilled out His life for us. And then John almost naturally, without any hesitation, finishes the thought by saying what? And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. Now there's love. So let's just make a list here, all right, of divine, of human love. All right? Human love. All right. Feeling. We oftentimes associate love with the feeling, right? Now, this does not mean that divine love cannot stimulate feelings. That's not the point. All right? However, the essential nature of divine love is not feeling. It's not. That's not the essential nature. That's not the origin of divine love. What's the problem with feeling? That's it. Feeling is fleeting, inconsistent. And so if we base our definition and our hope in love on feeling, what happens when the feeling dissipates or the feeling changes? Then we assume our love is not there anymore and it's gone. And we know how dangerous that is, right? All right? Human love is based on feeling. Number two. Human love is based on what? Conditions. All right. What's an example of love based on a condition? Anyone. Okay. That's absolutely correct. Eric said this is an example of love that's conditional. If you don't make me breakfast, I'm going to hate you. Or let's actually make it a little more practical, maybe a little bit more real to where we're living. Maybe I won't hate you, but maybe I'll secretly resent you. Or maybe I'll punish you emotionally. Or maybe I'll make a little scathing comment to you that is intended to wound you. How many have ever made a comment to someone and it might have just been a passing word and you might have even defended yourself by saying, well, I didn't mean anything by it. Liar. No, I didn't say that, did I? Huh? All right, but your intent was, it sort of wounded someone. Did anyone ever speak a word to wound someone? We all have, haven't we? And so, human love is very conditional. Now, what happens to human love when all the conditions are met? It looks really good. It's really happy. And it can actually appear as if it's very sacrificial. And now, the amazing thing is that it actually can imitate God's love because the nature of God's love is what? He gave Himself. So the nature of divine love is sacrificial. But human love can appear to be very sacrificial and very selfless. But the problem is that it waxes elegant. Human love is really, really good at pretending to be sacrificial when all the conditions are being met. And so what does God do in His sovereign providence in order to help us see through this human love that all of us by nature really want to embrace at first? Because we usually are inclined to look to the natural before we look to the spiritual. That's what Paul said. The natural first, then the spiritual. What does God do in order to help us see the true nature of our human love? He takes away breakfast. He takes away the conditions. Exactly right. And guess what human love conditions? Favorable? It shines. Unfavorable? And what happens to human love? It fades. And ultimately, ultimately, human love is really, and I know this might offend some, but it is true and you can substantiate it in the Word of God. Human love is really the nice side of hate, which is really what is in our heart. Because human love can turn to hate. Do you remember the story in the Bible? Are you talking about where someone claimed to love someone? And then after a bitter experience, the hate that they had for the person was greater than the love. So that love that they had turned to horrible hate. And I'm telling you, brothers and sisters, in order to truly partake of the love of God in the measure that God wants us to, we must be brought, and only God can do it, we must be brought to the place to see the true nature of our human love and how human love will ultimately turn to seeds of hatred. Listen, even the human love that parents have for children can turn to hatred. You say, oh, I could never hate my doll baby. But when the honeymoon phase is over and doll baby grows up and it's an adult looking at an adult and things are done that can be so horrible and so wrong and so cruel, it tests to the max the true nature of human love and human love will always found lacking. And if human love is wrong deeply enough and hurt deeply enough, it will suddenly begin to take on a disposition of hate and resentment and bitterness. And so, the fact is, we have to come to see that even our human love, which can go very far, and it can. Human love can bring you a long way, but it's going to fall short. It's going to fall short. And so, essentially speaking, this is the problem with human love right here. Now, remember what the Bible says. We're looking about something that we need to do together. We need to love one another together. We just read this Scripture in 1 John where Jesus laid down His life and therefore we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. That implies, 1 John 3.16 implies, if we're to do it, that we've got to have in us the same kind of love. We know that this human love is unable to fulfill the command of Hebrews 13.1 and it's also unable to fulfill the command of 1 John 3.16. It's unable to do it. Now, we might go for a while right here in this realm, all the favorable conditions, and we might be honeymoon Christians and honeymoon church, honeymoon fellowship, and everything's going well, and oh my, we love and serve one another. But God says this is not acceptable because loving one another and laying down our life for one another is really still springing out of human love and it's because the conditions are being met. So God in His sovereignty allows the human love to go from here to here and then unfavorable conditions begin to occur. And when unfavorable conditions begin to occur, then that which shined begins to fade. And when it fades, we start feeling, oh my God, oh my God, what is going on? And we start wrestling with the true nature of human love. But the good news is that God does not leave us in this place where we are most miserable and that we are bankrupt and that we have discovered that our best human love has been found out to be inadequate. What He does at this time is He wonderfully in His mercy and His grace, He comes to us and He says now, now that you have repudiated yourself, now that you abhor your love, that which you really thought was quite nice at one time, now that you've come to see the true nature of your bankruptcy, your spiritual bankruptcy, look at my Son. And when we look at the Son of God, we see this. All this begins to fade. All this part of us, all this part of us, we just get to where there's no hope anymore. We just say there's no hope, Norman. There's just no hope. And you say, am I even a Christian? Am I even a Christian, God, when I can see how deep this stuff goes? But that's good because God is... I think all heaven is like, there's another one, there's another one. It's dawning on them. When all this begins to fade and it just all turns like this, it just all turns, it just all gets dirty and we don't even want to touch anyone. It's like all dirty. God takes our eyes and He brings us to this divine love. And we start to see Jesus and we start to see what He's made out of. And we see a man who laid his life down. Now, let's read about this. I love to read about this love that Jesus Christ has. You know, my daughter here, where is it? She just handed me a piece of paper with all these Scriptures on them about love. Didn't you, Mariah? Huh? But we're going to just stay in 1 John now, maybe. But we just need to pray, God, help us to see this love. Help us to see this divine love that is so unlike what we are, but yet it is available to us. God's making it available to us. And this love is sacrificial. Okay? Sacrificial. Okay? But now listen, this is carefully, and we're going to bring this to a close now. Sacrificial. But the sacrifice of this love is not based on condition. That's the difference between human love. It's not based on condition. It's sacrificial, and it's redemptive. Okay? It's redemptive. That is, whenever God's love is in action, it always has in view redemption. It always has in view saving, helping, rescuing, building up, bringing higher to Him. That's what God's love has in view. So, it's sacrificial, and it's redemptive. It's unconditional. Unconditional. And so, when God says, let us love one another, let us continue in brotherly love, He has this in view. Redemptive and unconditional. And so, may the Lord help us to see this. Let's read 1 John 3. Verse 16, So we ought to lay our lives down for the brethren. Verse 17, But whoso hath this world's good, and sees his brother have need, and shuts up his boughs of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him. My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth. And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him. This is how we know that we're of the truth, because this love is in our heart, and it's growing more and more and more. In 1 John 4, verse number 7. 1 John 4, 7 Beloved, let us love one another. For love is of God, and everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God. For God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only Son into the world that we might live through Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be an atoning sacrifice for our sin. Beloved, here it is again. If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No one has seen God at any time, but if we love one another, God dwells in us, and His love is perfected or brought to completion in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in Him, and He in us, because He's given us His Holy Spirit. And so there's great value that's placed on this love, this divine agape love. And this is what God wants to perfect in our lives, and God does it by bringing us through, and then as we go through, He shows us Jesus. So, let's just ask the Lord, alright? Let's just ask the Lord to show us. And here's something too from the Holy Spirit. Please listen, alright? You don't need anything other than what currently is happening in your life for God to work this. Here's the big problem that we often fall into. We think that we need to find something, a cross, or a mission, or go somewhere, or do something. And it's always elusive. We always say, well, if I could be a missionary, I would really come to know God. Or if I could be like this one or that one. That is nothing but illusions. Here's what we need to realize. Everything that is right now touching your life is God's provision for you to come into the good of this right here. Everything that has touched you past tense and everything that is touching you present tense is God's provision for you to come into the good of divine love. Your family, your family life, your children, your husband, your wife, your in-laws, your neighbor, your boss, your friends. Everything that God is allowing to happen, the good, the bad, the pain, the joys, it's a package sent from a loving God who knows your name. What was the song we sang? He knows my name. He knows my name. He knows exactly what to give each one of us, right? Now here's the thing. If we will submit and not resent or resist these things, God will fulfill His promise and perfect His love and His Son in our lives together. I recently talked to an older man, much older than I am. He's 80 years old. And he said one of the dangers that we can encounter is that we have selective memories. We tend to only want to remember certain things. We tend to only want to remember certain events. We have selective crosses too. We tend to only select certain things in our life that we're going to allow God to break us over. And other things, we just push them aside and we never change. But if we would come to God and say, Lord, everything in my life, everything, every person in my life, every circumstance in my life, every pressure in my life, I surrender to You and I'm asking You to show me everything that has been revealed in my heart through it that is not like Jesus Christ. And I offer it to You and I pray that You will deliver me from it and in its place, give me more of the heart of Jesus Christ, more of the love of God. Everything. And if we will do that, we will become authentic, genuine Christians. Authentic, genuine Christians with no hypocrisy, with no selective crosses, with no areas in our heart that we're basically saying to God, this is off limits. You know why this pastor ended up having a wife that left him? Because he decided that in his home, among his family, he was going to be the king. And he wasn't going to let the normal struggles that come when you're in a family, the normal tribulations, the normal things that children reveal about our selfishness and our pride, he wasn't going to let those things change him. That's why he ended up with a woman, a wife who said, I don't even want you anymore. So is there an area in our life right now where we're not letting God have His way? If so, then we need to say, Lord, I humble myself in Your presence. I want every area of my life to be changed by Your grace. Alright? So let's bow our hearts and let's pray and let's let the Lord minister to us from His Word here. Father, thank You so much for Your presence today. Thank You for all the sharing that was done, Lord, in our lives. We're so thankful for the contributions of everyone. And now, Lord, we're just amazed in Your presence, at Your love, and we pray that You'll just draw close to us in these last moments and help us to see, Lord, that everything that has come to us in the past and everything that is presently touching us by way of pressure and circumstance, all the people that have touched us have come by divine appointment or divine permission, intending one thing and one thing alone to bring us to the place where we cease from looking in ourselves for any good thing and find all that we need in the beauty of Jesus Christ. Thank You, Lord. We thank You, Lord, for all things. We pray Jesus may increase more and more. Don't take lightly, brothers and sisters, don't take lightly the small things in your life. Don't take lightly. Don't brush them off as they're not important because it's a bunch of small little things that we basically say, I'm not going to let these things break me. I'm not going to let these things change me. It's those little small things that keep us being flexible and adjustable in the eyes of God. And that's the seeds of hypocrisy because we start pretending every little thing, every little pressure, every little difficulty, every time the children demand something, every time husband and wife have an interaction, every time family, work, don't blow it off. Say, Lord, make me more like You in this. And I tell you, brothers and sisters, He'll come through. Amen?