The Greatest Threat to Christian Community - Reflection on Peter's Denial - John 13:36-48

1:30And so we open John 13, and Jesus says, or Jesus, John declares to us that Jesus loved his disciples all the way to the end, and he loved them to the uttermost. He loved them exhaustively. And then, in the first few verses, he gives us that picture of his love, the washing of the disciples' feet, and which is certainly indicative of what's going to take place on the cross. We understand the cross even through the paradigm of washing feet. It's a service, it's something man needs. It is a practical service that Christ Himself provides a need for humanity to be cleansed, to be washed, to be renewed.

2:16And so you get to the end, and Jesus is declaring, he's actually commanded his disciples: I'm leaving, a new commandment I give to you in verse 34, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. So that is the standard of love that is to drive, to be undergird everything that happens in a church body. Jesus is leaving, he's leaving these disciples behind, and though not leaving them alone. And so he wants to instill in them that important. Principle, and that is the principle of love, and not just any kind of love, but the very kind of love that He Himself loved them. So He has loved us so that we will love each other with the same kind of love. That's the principle. And so it gets to the end, and there is a threat that I want to bring to your attention to Christian community. In fact, the greatest threat to Christian community, and that is given to us in our text this morning.

3:42Beginning in verse 36, Simon Peter said to him, Lord, where are you going? Jesus answered, Where I go, you cannot follow me now, but you will follow later. Jesus said to him, Lord, why can I not follow you right now? I will lay down my life for you. Jesus answered, Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, a rooster will not crow until you deny me three times. So today I want to reflect upon Peter's denial, what took place, and what was going on in his heart. Because the biggest threat to Christian community is not what's happening on the outside, it's what's happening. On the inside of this little community, it's not the religious establishment that has set itself against this little community. That's its greatest threat. It's not even the Roman government who will tolerate no other king but King Caesar. That's not the greatest threat to this little community. It's not even Judas defecting. It's not even the Judases of the world that defect from the community. That is its greatest threat. No, the greatest threat is something that Peter is dealing with.

5:05And that's what I want to bring out as we look through this passage this morning. And I want to relate it to the big picture of what's going on in Scripture. You remember God gave Adam a creation to enjoy. You remember that? You remember in Genesis 1:26, God says, okay, let us make man in our image according to our likeness and let them rule. Let them have dominion over this incredible, beautiful paradise that I have made.

5:45So God had created this wonderful world. There's so much potential in the world, so much potential for a glorious future. The harmony, the beauty, flourishing relationships, all of that. Potential is there in humanity, certainly in the world that he gave Adam, and certainly in the world even today. So much potential. And God gave, and he saw that everything was very good. And that's the paradise he put man in. He says, Here, take care of this. So God gave Adam a creation to enjoy, but God also gave Adam a charge to keep. You remember in Genesis 2:15, the Lord God took the man and he put him in the garden to cultivate and to keep it. And the Lord commanded, the man, from any tree and garden you may eat freely, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it, you will surely die.

6:53And then the Lord said, It's not good for man to be alone, so I will make a helper suitable for him. So he puts the man in the garden to take care of it, to cultivate, to keep it, to pay attention, to benevolently exercise his dominion and take care of the place. And this is the charge. Take care of it. In other words, go do whatever you want. Just don't sin. Don't raise yourself up. Above my word, above my authority. Go do whatever, have dominion, reflect me. Go do whatever you want, just don't sin.

7:46And so that was the charge. Take care of. Adam was to exercise his dominion by benevolent care for everyone and every creature. And his favored status that God had given him over all creation was so that Adam could be the greatest servant in God's creation. And he was to show his love for God by taking care of the paradise God had placed him in. And this certainly involves the people, Eve, and the rest that would come. But as you keep reading, you remember, man fell, right? And I want to talk to you about what happens to man, that what happens to his nature.

8:39Adam chose not to serve God, right? By eating, by disobeying, it's like Adam was saying, you know what, God, I will use my position that you have given me, and the power that you have given me, and this place that you have given me to take. Take care of myself. That's what I'm going to do. And so the operating principle of humanity becomes taking care of self rather than taking care of those and the garden and those, that place that God put him.

9:23And this paradigm, this principle has affected our relationships ever since, right? It has affected the way we view the earth, the way we view each other, and the way we view God. You know, the whole pagan concept of God comes out of this. This idea, okay, God, you are just like us. And so if I do A, B, and C for you, I expect X, Y, and Z from you. That's the way we go. We have become takers by nature.

10:04And much of our soul, so much of our so-called giving is oftentimes nothing more than a self-advancing barter system. I will do this for you so that you will do this for me. And if you don't give me what I want, then I'm moving on, or I will make you do what I want. And so we create this world of competition, a bunch of competing interests for self. You see, we come into this world loving ourselves. We look to ourselves. We advance ourselves. We rely upon ourselves. We make alliances with others to advance ourselves. We have confidence in our own wisdom, our own judgments. We have become the measure of all things.

10:52And this desire for self-advancement is contrary to everything revealed about godly love in Scripture. And this is why it takes so long for us to really learn how to love, because it goes against the very nature of who we are. See, godly love inevitably involves sacrifice. Putting somebody else's needs above your own desires is a form of sacrifice, and that is the essence of love. But see, by nature, we don't readily die to ourselves, we live to ourselves.

11:40And that's why loving is so difficult for us to truly love in the biblical sense. So the effects of the fall hang largely upon us. And let me just give you a few of the effects. Number one, we take care of ourselves as a matter of further. Priority. Second, our minds are dull to the ways of God. We tune out God's word that would contradict our own desires or our self-love. We tend to just not even hear it.

12:22Another effect of the fall is that we are self-reliant, self-confident, and think we're the measure of all things and adequate to understand the universe, understand ourselves, and to even sit on what God's Word says, sit in judgment upon what God's word says. And that's our fallen nature. And we are enslaved to this nature by birth. We often hear, does man have a free will? Debate that goes on and circles all the time, right? Does man have a free will? My answer is yes and no. How do you like that?

13:10For a middle of the road. The answer is, yes, man has a free will within the confines of his nature. But man does not have the ability to go beyond his nature. Let me say it like this. Does a pig have a free will? Yes. I saw one out here the other day. Came out of the bottom over here, came out of the creek. He was running around. He was happy. He was wagging his tail. He was rooting around and he saw something and he would dart across the field and, oh, something I want to eat over there. So he runs over there, exercises that free will. And he goes over there and he eats. And then he sees something over by the road and he exercises that free will, wagging his tail. He runs over to the road. A semi runs by. He exercises his free will again and runs back into the bushes.

14:09So, yes, the pig has a free will, but that pig can never act like anything other than a pig. If it decided to, it wanted to gallop gracefully across the field like a horse, he just couldn't do it. You see, the pig is still a pig. He has freedom within that range and likewise humanity. We have a freedom within our fallen nature to make decisions, but we cannot go beyond that freedom. We cannot go beyond those boundaries. We cannot love like God loves unless we are changed from within. And that change the Bible speaks about is a whole new nature. That's why you will hear over and over from this pulpit: you must be born again. Because until you are born again, you are nothing more than a pig exercising free will within the domain of pigdom.

15:18So Christ shows up. And it's against this backdrop of the fallen human condition that Christ enters into our world. And he came to renovate our inner man. He came to regenerate our fallen man. He came to give us a new nature, one that bears his likeness, one that is capable of loving like he loves. And he came using his position and power to take care of others. Where have we seen that before? He came to take care of that which God entrusted him. That's what Adam should have done.

16:07And so Christ comes in love. And what does he do in that love? He comes to subdue a contrary world to himself. He comes to conform this world or a portion of this world into his father's will. So how does he do it? Well, first of all, He renovates the individual. Second, he renovates society. How does he renovate the individual? By putting his spirit in them, by dying for them, by redeeming them, by washing them with the water and the word, spirit newness, spiritual newness.

16:51And he forms a new nature in them, one that wants to please him. So he renovates the individual, and then he takes these renovated individuals and he puts them together in a society and calls it the church. And he places these redeemed individuals where they can learn more about his love and they can exercise the same kind of love for one another. That's how he renovates the individual and society. What is the church? Well, there's a lot of definitions, but I can tell you one thing that the church is: it's a community or a gathering of redeemed individuals to exercise Christ's love for one another and to make him known based upon the truth, biblical truth, biblical community.

17:53And out of that will flow a biblical mission. But there is a threat to this Christian community. And that greatest threat was going on in Peter's heart. You see, Peter's love for his fellow disciples was being dwarfed by his self-interest. You remember coming into this, there's conversation about the greatness on the road coming up to Jerusalem. It's who's going to be the greatest, who's going to sit on the right and to the left. And here they are, and then Jesus stands up and washes their feet.

18:29You see, what the main threat to Christian community is the lack of Christ-like love for one another. That's what breaks the community down. It's not so much the sin of commission as it is the sin of omission. Community dies where there is not Christ-like love for one another. And I'm not just talking about a warm feeling, I'm talking about practical expressions of that love. I'm glad you laugh. It's funny, right? Yes. God wants to renovate us from the inside and give us a love for one another.

19:25Three challenges to this, because that same threat exists. Today, the same threat that threatened this community, everyone advancing themselves, still exists today. I want you to see three challenges to love Jesus, or to love like Jesus loves, so that you will up your game in loving one another, so that you will be active in showing love for one another, so that you will have a mind and an eye to every individual that passes through these walls or whatever church you tend on a regular basis, that you will be active in showing love to every single individual that comes into the room, into the place, onto the property. But there are three challenges that I warn you about that will keep you from loving like Jesus loved.

20:32The first is what we'll look at. First threat is being distracted by secondary matters, being distracted by secondary matters. Look at verse 36. Simon Peter said to him, Lord, where are you going? Jesus answered, Where I go, you cannot follow me now, but you will follow later. It's interesting. Look at the last thing Jesus said: A new commandment I give to you that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this, all men will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. So, Jesus is going on about the importance of loving. I'm leaving you, and I want you to love one another. And Peter's like, Where are you going?

21:30He seems to have completely missed Jesus' command, doesn't even acknowledge it. He could have focused upon the command, but he instead chose to focus upon the curiosity. Where are you going? And that's a very important curiosity. Where are you going, by the way? And how am I to love like you loved? I find it striking that at this point, the disciples still do not seem to understand that Jesus is going to die. He's explicitly told them this on several occasions. In fact, Peter was rebuked, right? When he said, No, this will never happen to you.

22:13And what does Jesus say? Get behind me, Satan. Yes, thank you. Get behind me, Satan. You would think that would have left an impression. It's not every day that your Lord turns around and calls you Satan. And it was in that context of him telling him what was going. To take place, you would think he would have gone. I mean, just even on the way up to Jerusalem, as they were going, he's saying, I'm going to tell you what's going to happen. You're going to die, I'm going to raise again. But their minds are dulled to this because they're still talking about, oh, whatever. I want the right and the left or whatever. Give me a, and that's where their minds, so they're not even thinking about these clear. In fact, what happens? Mary comes out and anoints them. What does Jesus say? She's done this for my what?

23:01My burial. This has just happened. And they're not connecting. Such is the dulled state of the fallen mind. It is dull to the statements of God, and especially the things which it doesn't want to hear. And it just doesn't even seem to get it. Well, all of these expressions speak about overtly about Christ's death, and they miss it. Peter gets his attention, gets distracted by a secondary matter of curiosity rather than the explicit command to love one another. You can't get a more explicit command. This is what I want you to do. And yes, it is curious. Where are you going?

23:54Very important secondary matter. But I wonder how things would have gone. On in Peter's life, that he'd been listening a little more carefully. He says, I don't know exactly where you're going. I don't know what that's all about, but I do hear you want me to love these people in this room. You want me to love them like you love me. And as I watch you pouring out your life, my mind is going to be on their well-being. And maybe had Peter focused his mind on the command of Christ when the hour of trial had come, maybe he had been too intent on loving others and focusing on himself and his own degree of loyalty.

24:39I don't know. But I do think things would have been different. This is such an important element that Jesus is going to circle back around to this conversation with Peter. In fact, what is Jesus trying to tell Peter right here? He's telling him, Look, take care. And all the disciples, take care of one another, tend to one another. Does that sound familiar? Right? This is what Adam was to do. This is what Jesus came to do. And now he's telling his disciples, I'm leaving. I want you to take care of one another. Like I have taken care of you. Tend to them. And this is so important. Guess what's going to happen at the end of the Gospel of John? Turn over there, if you will, with me to chapter 21. I find this fascinating. John tends to conclude his gospel at the end of chapter 20. And verse 30 says this, therefore, many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book. But these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. Most commentators say the gospel really ends right here, and then John throws this little epilogue on afterwards, because this is such a good concluding point.

26:09But John's not through. John has something else he wants to say. And he goes on, and chapter 21 is largely about Peter, right? And he circles back around to this conversation. It's as though Jesus picks up where he left off with Peter in the upper room. You see, the conversation about loving each other wasn't over yet. Peter had gone off in a different direction. Jesus circled, and there's certainly a lot that takes place in chapter 21 that I won't go into. We'll save that for when we get there. But I do want you to see this focus upon this issue of loving one another. Look at verse 15. So when they had finished breakfast, Jesus. Said to Simon Peter, remember, go out there fishing, Peter's back there fishing, they catch the fish, they bring him board. Jesus is over there, this is after the resurrection, and he's over there and sit down. And then Simon Peter sits, and Jesus says to him in verse 15, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? He said to him, Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, Tend my lambs. I've seen that before. Take care of my lambs. That is, pay attention to them, work for them, care for them. Let your concern be shown in practical expressions of love for them, just like I did for you. He goes on in verse 16. He said to him, Second time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? He said to him, Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said, Shepherd my sheep. He said to them the third time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Peter was grieved because he said to them the third time, do you love me? He said, Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you. Jesus said, Tend my sheep. Do you see a pattern?

28:13Jesus is telling Peter, focus on loving these people, my people. And then he goes on in verse 18, Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wish, but when you Grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will gird you and bring you, and you will go where you do not wish. Now, he said this, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when he had spoken this, he said to him, Follow me.

28:45So Jesus goes on to say, Yeah, I want you to love. I want you to pay attention. And by the way, this task is going to ultimately result in your death. But it's not just the death at the end of his life that Jesus is interested in, it's in the many deaths along the way of sacrificially giving himself to someone else as an expression of love. Take care of them. Do you love me? Take care of those I love.

29:26It's interesting that John takes us back to that thought. Some say it's an afterthought. I almost say, no, it's an emphasis that Peter, that John wants to make sure we get. The importance of Christian community. We must not let secondary issues distract us from this primary love to love each other as an expression of our love for Christ. So no matter what phase. Of life, you are in, you are to love the individuals who attend the church you are at. And you cannot have a more clear command from the Lord Himself. As I said before, don't come in here looking, waiting around. What should I do? What should I do? You already have a command from the chief shepherd himself of what you are to do. You are to come into the body, and you are to love everybody that comes in on this property or whatever church that you are in.

30:36And getting distracted in secondary issues is a challenge to loving like Christ loved and a threat to Christian community. Well, there's a second challenge to loving like Jesus loved, and that's overestimating our love for Christ. Look at back at verse 36. Simon Peter asked him, You know, Lord, where are you going? Jesus answered, Where I go, you cannot follow me now, but you will follow later. Peter said to him, Lord, why can I not follow you right now? I will lay down my life for you. I love how the Greek says it, Lord.

31:28So Jesus is. Saying to him, Look, where I am going, you do not have the power or you do not have the ability to follow me now, but you will follow me later. And then Peter says in these exact words, Through what not am I able to follow you right now? Through what? What is there that I cannot follow you right now? I'm ready to give my life on behalf of yours. So again, Peter, Jesus says something, Peter contradicted. But what he does is he's making the conversation coming around to Peter. I. Why do you mean I?

32:15That's offensive. What do you mean I can't follow? I'm ready to die. What can possibly be out there? I'm ready to die for you. In fact, you see, we can even make our so-called loyalty to Christ all about us, can't we? It's like Peter, you know, it's like there is this mentality out there. I want the one in charge to know how devoted I am to him. I mean, Peter really believed Jesus to be the Messiah.

32:47And he wants his loyalty to be seen by Christ, which is good in and of itself, until we raise it above others and can make it into an idolatry. We can make it all about us, my loyalty, my devotion. In fact, he says in Mark 14:29, Peter said to him, Even though all may fall away, yet I will not. In other words, even though all these Yahoos around here fall, yet my devotion is secure. You see, we can use even appearances of devotion to advance ourselves.

33:29I certainly think Peter is sincere in his love for Christ, but he grossly overestates it. You remember Israel in the time of Moses? They said, Look, Moses, speak to us yourself, and we will listen, but let us not hear God again. In other words, you speak to us, we'll listen. Moses is like, No, you're going to have a hard time. And in Joshua's time, Joshua 24:18, they said, We will serve the Lord, for he is our God. And Joshua says, You will not be able to serve the Lord your God because he is holy. The people said, No, but we will serve the Lord. We know his commands, we know what he wants to do. We can do them. We're completely adequate. We will take care of them. We will do it.

34:15And Joshua says, No, you won't put away the foreign gods which are in your midst. They didn't. And so they experienced God's judgment upon them. If you look back at the verse 37, the irony of it all is that the whole thing is around. Peter is thinking, I will give my life on behalf of you, Jesus, when all along it's Jesus giving his life on behalf of Peter, so that Peter can have a new nature. Excuse me.

34:58Do you really love Christ? Ask your heart that question. Your love for Christ is told by the love you have for the people and the church you attend. That's the measure of it. And the kind of love that we're talking about is not the kind of love that just is a warm feeling that sits off. It's a love that acts. You remember Jesus acted for the benefit of someone else. He did something that ordinarily he wouldn't want to do, but he did because he was moved by love for somebody else to take care of a real practical need. He cleansed them. He washed them. He removed that which was offensive. Such are the practical expressions of love.

35:52How much do you truly love Christ? I could have all the kids, I want to listen to me for a minute. All your kids. I'm talking to everybody who just sees themselves as a kid. Okay? So I don't care how old you are, but how do you speak to others? How do you speak about others? All your associations and people here in this body, how do you speak? How do you relate? How do you talk about them when they're not around? Is it an expression of love? What does that say about your love for Christ? If I take the person that you speak the worst about or despise the most in this body, I can tell you that's how much you love Christ.

36:38Your love for Christ is measured for the degree of love you have for the least among us. Very dangerous when we start overestimating our love for Christ. It's a challenge to love like Jesus loved and a threat to Christian community. Well, there's a third threat, a third threat, third challenge to loving like Jesus loved, and that is understanding the power of evil. I'm sorry, underestimating. I'm sorry, I got written up there a little wrong. It's underestimating, underestimating the power of evil. I probably sent it wrong. But anyway, that's so the three challenges. One, being distracted by secondary matters. Second, overestimating our love for Christ. And number three, underestimating the power of evil. Look at verse 38. Will you lay down your life for me? So Peter's saying, Even though all these guys, I will lay down my life. Jesus says, Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, a rooster will not crow until you deny me three times.

38:02You see, denying is the opposite of confessing. Peter, you're not only not going to die for me, you're going to not even admit that you are associated with me. How can you die for me if you won't even admit that you associate with me? Of course, Peter has greatly overestimated his own love for Christ, but he's also underestimated the power of evil that he is about to face. And after verse 38, Peter goes silent. It's like he doesn't show up again until chapter 18, verse 10. It's almost like this statement, I mean, truly, truly statement stunned him into silence. And I wonder if he may have even questioned whether he himself was the betrayer. But he Is silent. And there's a lot of dialogue. Disciples are interactive. Peter is silent.

39:09You see, Peter is being called to a standard of love for each one of his disciples that he cannot even give to Christ himself. Self-confidence is an enemy of love, and so is grossly underestimating the power of temptation that evil is able to entice us with. And we all do learn well to learn from Peter's failure. We need to recognize our own inability to carry out Christ's command. There are weaknesses in our heart that are real. We think we may not fall, yet, such self-confidence is the very seed of failure.

39:59And we need to understand that the seeds of every sin are in our heart, and evil knows how to orchestrate the right circumstances to bring those seeds out and to give them life and to bring forth a harvest of unrighteousness. Cannot trust our hearts, cannot think ourselves so above the fall, and we cannot dare underestimate the power of evil in temptation. Well, Peter is a, if you've moved into chapter 18, you'll see that Peter first encounters a doorkeeper, the slave girl, denies Christ there. Then it's in the courtyard fire, a bunch of slaves of the officers and high priest. And Peter's like, I don't know him. And so here, a few moments later, he's ready to cut off the ear. He does cut off the ear of the slave. He's ready to die for him. It appears. And yet, just a few hours later, he's not even willing to acknowledge him. I mean, what's going on? I mean, there was maybe at that moment, Peter's been thinking so much about Jesus, and I'm going to die for him. So he rashly pulls out the sword, and I'm going to go. And maybe there's a hope that maybe all is not lost. I mean, looking at Christ, they know Jesus is master. They see him come out on top of the situation over and over again. And deep down, he's expecting maybe that Christ is again going to do the surprise or come out on top. And yet, here, when he's being beaten, being condemned, it's at that point that I think Peter started to think he's really going to the cross. All is lost.

42:00And so, under those conditions, he denied him. But if we overestimate ourselves and we underestimate the power of evil, we will fall into the same trap. You see, Peter didn't listen when he should. He reacted when he shouldn't have. And when the circumstances were right, Peter did what he thought he would never do. So, let us not underestimate the power of evil that we are going to face, but also that our brothers and sisters in Christ are going to face in this fallen world. We are sojourners. We are here for a little while. This is not the time for glory. This is not our place to make ourselves known, to be great. It's a time to love your fellow brothers and sisters and to give yourself and expend yourself for their benefit. They are facing evils. They are facing reasons to deny Christ, to fall away from Christ. And he puts a body, a community of believers, that we would come alongside with not with an eye on ourselves, but with an eye for others and a consideration of others, and give ourselves to the task of building them up in Christ.

43:28You see, There are three challenges to love like Jesus loved: being distracted by secondary matters, overestimating our love for Christ, and underestimating the power of evil. We have been loved by Christ with an intense love, so that we can love each other with the same kind of love. You see, Jesus' love for his people was a God-kind of love. There's no way we can love like this unless we're born again. There is no way Peter could love to that degree, so he had to be born from above. You see, we have to go, even then, having been born from above, we still have to learn how to put on, daily put on deeds and acts of kindness and love. We have to go from self-reliance to God-dependent.

44:31Look, if ever there was a man who experienced the work of Christ in his life, it was Peter. Peter, or Christ, stepped into Peter's life and it changed him forever. And Peter had to learn what following Christ really meant. You see, there comes a time when all of us have to go through a paradigm change in our understanding of what following Christ truly is about. You see, at first, we hear the good news of Christ. Hear about forgiveness of sins, and we can relate. We want heaven, we hear the benefit of the promise of heaven, the kingdom come, a place to belong.

45:12We understand him to be God in the flesh. We see his power, we see his goodness, and we believe, like Peter, we truly believe, and we truly want to follow him. And so we set out. But then at some point, we really begin to realize what following him truly involves. He went to the cross. He really did take the way of death. He was scorned for the good news that he proclaimed. It put him on the cross.

45:45He does not take the easy road. And so, guess what? Following him is going to involve a difficult road at times. He does not take the way that leads to worldly glory. He takes the way of death. He takes the way of laying down his life for somebody else as an expression of his love for them. He loves them and he uses his strength to take care of others. Sounds familiar. He gives away himself to benefit those he loves.

46:29You see, We can have a very pagan concept of what following Christ is about. Christ, we will follow you. We will do A, B, and C. But we expect for you to do X, Y, and Z for us. And that's not, that's the pagan concept of God. That's making God out like us, fallen us. But at some point, all of us have to truly understand what following Christ means and involves. We probably won't be called to be crucified upside down.

47:15No, but you may be called to go visit somebody in this congregation, to learn their name, to get to know them, to welcome them in. And you may even have to take them out for lunch sometime. You may even, isn't that wonderful? Isn't that wonderful that in laying down our life in loving one another, there's such a reward in that, in and of itself. And that was his delight. That was his joy. And that is what he wants to impress upon us to love each other like him. And we don't have to give up near what he gave up.

47:59Maybe a time, but. We have to die. Every time we want to express true love, there is going to be a measure of death in us. It's putting somebody else above us, above ourselves. Jesus revealed to us the perfect humanity. The delight of creating man in his image is revealed in Christ. And it's the idea of taking care of looking around, paying attention to, giving your strength for the benefit of others, for everyone. And he's given us a nice set of parameters. You're not to do this for the whole world. You are to do that for those who are redeemed and put in the body. And that's why it is important to be part of a church that is Bible-driven and community-driven in truth.

48:58Well, as Peter learned, Christ had to reduce him before he could really use him. Likewise with us, Christ has to reduce us before he can really use us. So let us learn to love like he did. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for Christ's example. Thank you for his love for us, not just his perfect example, but his perfect love towards us. And that because of that love, in responding to that love, we are giving. A tremendous capacity to love one another and experience the joy of loving one another. And I confess to you, Father, that this is a work that goes against everything in us.

49:42And so we ask you to change us, teach us. Father, forgive us as we want to make this world and church about us. Forgive us. May we exalt your name by being obedient to this very simple task. Help us not to get distracted by secondary matters or overestimate ourselves or underestimate the power of evil. Let us just be obedient. Give us this kind of love in Jesus' name. Amen.