The Three

Anyone like a good detective story? Let's get a show of hands. Who are your favorite detectives?

Vera? Start with a woman. That's good.

Columbo.

Columbo?

I don't know. That one goes over my head. Sherlock Holmes, Benoit Blanc from the Knives Out trilogy, Hercule Poirot.

What's that?

Clouseau.

Inspector Clouseau, of course. When a crime happens, the detective fans in the room know that the detective is looking for three things. Motive, means, and opportunity.

Why did they do it? What compelled them? How did they do it?

The murder weapon, the means of the crime. And then opportunity. When did they do it?

What was the opening? What was the opportunity that made them commit the crime? If the detective gets those three pieces right, they've solved the crime.

Now imagine this morning that no one has committed a crime, but imagine that somebody saw Christ. They grew in personal holiness into the image of Jesus. Imagine that somebody served Christ.

They did good in the world as unto Jesus himself. Imagine that somebody shared Christ. They gave an answer for the hope they have in Jesus.

Imagine somebody stewarded Christ. They ministered in the power of the Spirit in Jesus' name. If you don't know, those are the four parts.

They're not on screen. The ones I just said are the four parts of our theme for this year, Always Ready. Imagine somebody did that.

They saw Christ, served Christ, shared Christ, and stewarded Christ. We detectives could work backwards from that fact and establish that the reason they did so is because God gave them an opportunity.

He opened a door for them to see Christ, serve Christ, share Christ, and steward Christ. And they made use of that opportunity through the means of context, knowledge, skill, team, capacity, and multiplication.

But at the heart of the matter, the reason that a person did one of those four things is they had motive. They were compelled to action. They wanted to make use of the means that they had, make use of the opportunity that God has given them.

If you get these three pieces right, we will be people who are always ready. Motive means an opportunity. I wanna talk about motive this morning.

Last week, we talked about the end goal of what we're trying to accomplish by God's grace, to see Christ, serve Christ, share Christ, and steward Christ.

We also talked a little bit about the means of context, where are we, knowledge, skill, team, capacity, and multiplication. But I wanna talk today about our motive, what actually compels us to want to be always ready. Because why bother?

If we don't have a motive, why bother being always ready? Just let the opportunity pass. But this morning, we're gonna look at our motive.

Our motive is our mission as a church. We call it The Three, love God, love others, make disciples. That's our motive, the reason why we wanna be always ready.

Our mission comes from two places, the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. The Great Commandment is found in Mark chapter 12 and Matthew 22. You might wanna open to Mark 12.

For context, Jesus is in Mark 12 in the temple courts during the last week of his life before his crucifixion.

And there's this interesting scene where Jesus in the temple courts is questioned by all of the different types of Jewish leaders of the temple system, the Pharisees, the Herodians, the Sadducees, and the teachers of the law.

We read this in Mark 12 verse 28. One of the teachers of the law came to the temple and heard Jesus and the Sadducees debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, the teacher asked him of all the commandments, which is most important?

The teacher is not asking which laws matter and which don't. He's not asking which we should hold on to and which we can forget about. The teacher wants to keep all the commands.

He's asking which is first. In fact, literally, that's what it says in the Greek. Which is first?

As in, if there's a fire in the house, you can only grab one commandment out of all of them. Out of all of them, which one do you grab? Which is the first commandment?

The Old Testament law contains 613 commands. That's the first three quarters of your Bible, 613 commands. 365 of them are negative, meaning do not do this.

And 248 are positive, meaning do this. The teacher comes to Jesus and says, of the 613 commands, which is first? He is intending to keep all of them, but he's saying, what's day one?

It's kind of funny that there's 365 negative. We could do a project as a church, the year of the law. Next year, let's keep every single law in the Bible and every day we'll add a new negative law.

And every, I did the maths, every weekday we could do a positive. And that almost works out to cover all of them. So the year of the law, 2027, following the law.

So day one is do not cook a young goat in its mother's milk. Who's got that one down pat? Nailed it.

Day two, honour the Sabbath and keep it holy. My hands down. Day 249, do not deprive the foreigner and the fatherless of justice.

A new law every single day plus a positive law on the weekday. The teacher comes to Jesus and says out of 613 commands, which is first? Because he wants to keep all of them, but he wants to know the order.

Is there something that is weightier than the rest? And look at Jesus' response, verse 29. The most important one, literally the first, Jesus says, the first is this, here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. And the second is this, love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.

Jesus synthesises 613 commands into two. He says, love God and love others. That's on its own.

That's just an incredible thing that Jesus has done. He's so smart. He's the smartest human being who ever lived.

He looked at the Torah, the Old Testament, the 613 laws, and he synthesised it to two. If we step back for a second, we see, I think that Jesus is doing something else, which is equally profound.

We're talking about motive this morning, what compels us to action, what motivates us to want to be always ready to do the four. And the reason we have to talk about motive is, God could give the opportunity, the perfect conversation.

Somebody says, what did you do on Sunday morning? Like, all right, perfect chance to share Christ, perfect opportunity. You could have all of the means.

Oh, I went to church on Sunday and we talked about Jesus. Do you know about Jesus? You could be trained in how to share your faith, but if you do not have, if I do not have a sufficient motive, we will not walk through that door in obedience to God.

Right here in the Great Commandment, Jesus, well, between the teacher of the law and Jesus, we see two types of motive at work. The word motive and the noun motivation come from the Latin word motus, meaning to move. Think of a motor, moves.

Motivation is what moves you, makes you move. And here in the Great Commandment, we see there are two ways to motivate people. The first way is motivation by law.

This is extrinsic motivation, meaning outside in, extrinsic from the law you are motivated. And the power of the law is death. We have laws in this country, and if you do not keep those laws, you will be punished in order that you might keep them.

And we don't have capital punishment in this country, but if you go down that path of punishment, the furthest you can go is death. The power of the law is death. And this is the motive of the teacher of the law.

He comes to Jesus wanting to keep all 613 commands, but just needing to know where to start. What is the first command? This is the fallacy of the Pharisees.

They clean the outside of the cup, and yet the inside is full of greed and wickedness. Motivation by law is the first way that you can motivate somebody to do anything.

The second way is motivation by love, and that is intrinsic motivation inside out. And this is the power of love is life. Life is self-directed energy that flows out.

Jesus talked about rivers of living water flowing from those who have the Spirit of God in them. This is the motivational structure of the Sermon on the Mount. I have to talk about the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus turns law into love. Not that Jesus gives a new law for outside in motivation, but he's come to transform our heart so that we are motivated from the inside out. This is motivation by love.

And so in the Great Commandment, notice what Jesus is doing. Firstly, he's synthesising 613 commands into two, which is astonishingly brilliant of Jesus.

But he's doing another thing which we might miss, and that is he is turning the teacher's motive inside out. The teacher has an outside in motivation, extrinsic motivation by law. Jesus turns it inside out into love.

He turns law into love. The truth is you can obey God from extrinsic motivation, but that would be obedience from the flesh, and it will suffer when your willpower gives out, and it will give out.

Jesus has come to transform our hearts so that we want to obey the law from the inside out as rivers of living water flow from inside us. To illustrate this, I was reflecting this week on the fact that my family are very musical.

And mom and dad had a rule that we could learn any instrument we want, we just have to start with piano. And it's a great rule. I'm going to adopt that rule for Esther and my future kids.

Because piano gives you just fantastic basis of music theory that can help as you go to other instruments. So all my siblings and I learnt piano. We got years of lessons.

And I liked piano, but I didn't like practicing piano. But I had to practice by law the piano. Now, not the law of Australia, the law of mom and dad said you must practice piano because we're paying for your piano lessons.

And so I begrudgingly did. I didn't like it, but I was compelled by law. This is outside in motivation.

I didn't want to practice piano. I didn't love it. I didn't like it.

I kind of liked it. I didn't love it. Outside in motivation.

And consequently, I didn't get very good at piano. I didn't want to practice. So I didn't get good.

And then when I was 16, my parents helped me buy my first acoustic guitar. And I loved that thing. You couldn't keep me away from my guitar.

I wanted to play guitar for three hours every single day for the latter part of my teen years. I would be watching Netflix or YouTube and just play guitar because I loved it. No one had to, by law, force me to play guitar.

I wanted to. It came from the inside out. And that's what Jesus is turning our hearts into.

He turns our motive inside out. So that we want to obey God out of the love that overflows from our hearts. I think it's a profound shift in any area of your life when your motivation changes from law to love.

If you are a runner, maybe you remember the first time that you got up at 5 a.m. for a run and you realised, I'm not doing this because I tell myself I have to. I'm doing this because I love running.

Has that happened for you, Alex? Crazy. Weird.

For me, it's law. I don't wake up at 5 because it's law. Alex loves to run.

I see him on Strava. He does wild things. He loves it.

This shift of motivational structure in any area of life, maybe you're a reader or a weightlifter or a walker or a bush walker, any part of life, this shift of your motivation turning inside out is a game changer.

So as we think about what it means for us to be always ready, we could do so motivated by the law. Someone like me or dad could stand here and say, church, you must be always ready because that's the law.

The law that we're laying down, extrinsic motivation. And you would rightly say, we're in a Baptist church, bro, you don't have that kind of power here.

That's, but even if we were in a different ecclesiology church that has that kind of power, it wouldn't work. It would work for a short time, but it would fail when our motivation burns out.

Jesus has come to turn our motive inside out, that the love that he has given us, the love that we have for him would overflow in obedience. And then we will want to be always ready.

We will want to see Christ, to serve Christ, share Christ and steward Christ. First of all, Jesus said, is this, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind and with all your strength. And second, love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.

Jesus turns motive inside out. He turns law into love.

So the question then is, what does it mean to love God? Deuteronomy six, Moses says, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

That's the verse that Jesus quotes from. In Mark 12 and Matthew 22, he goes back to Deuteronomy six, love God. These are the words of Moses, that the words of God to Israel through Moses.

This passage is called the Shema in Hebrew. And it's because that first word hear, which means to listen, but also to obey is the Hebrew word Shema. So, faithful Jews would pray this prayer and two other passages that form a trilogy.

Two times a day, every morning and every evening, they would pray this prayer. Jesus says, that's the greatest commandment, first of all. But notice, in Mark 12, he makes an addition.

He adds mind. It just says heart, soul, strength. But Jesus adds the word mind.

And so, I was thinking about this. Why did Jesus add mind? Is it growing kind of cultural understanding of the minds that the Greeks had, that the ancient Hebrews didn't have?

All these kind of confusing theories came up until I was convicted that we could pick apart the difference between heart, soul, mind and strength. In fact, we could do a sermon series.

We could do a month long sermon series on the heart, the soul, the mind and the strength. And that would be awesome. How to love God.

But if we were to do that, in order to find out the parts of ourself that we don't have to love God with, then we would be missing Jesus' point entirely. His point is to say with every part of your being, love God.

Don't divide yourself into heart, soul, mind, strength and the rest that I don't have to love God with. Jesus claims, God claims all of it as love unto Him. And so then the question becomes, again, what does it mean to love God with everything?

Love is to will the good of another. How do you will the good of God? Paul says in Romans 11, no one has ever given to God that God should repay them from him, for him, through him, all things.

How do you will the good of God? In Genesis chapter 0, before God created, he was not in need of anything. God didn't create because he had some lack that he had to fulfil.

The Bible starts with a triune God, Father, Son and Spirit in eternal loving communion and relationship and out of the overflow, not the lack, the overflow of God's love, he created all things.

God doesn't call us to love him to supply what God is lacking. He invites us to love him because of the way that he made us. So what type of person did God create?

There's a few options, I think. The first option is a human thinking. You might be familiar with the French philosopher René Descartes' famous line, I think therefore I am.

This is at the height of the enlightenment, that rationalistic, brain-based movement in Western civilisation a couple of hundred years ago. This view that fundamental to what it is to be a human person is to think.

And that's not true, but it's true that humans think. That is one of the significant ways that separates human beings from the animals, the rest of the animal kingdom, is we have the capacity for reason.

But we are not just human thinkings, because we are also embodied creatures. We have a whole body, not just a brain, which brings us to option two, a human doing. And that's good, because we are embodied.

We are brains and bodies, integrated. The stuff we do with our body shapes our brain and vice versa. That's good, human doing, so maybe we settle with that.

Apart from the fact that we are not just production machines, that's a view from the industrial revolution a couple of hundred years ago, that humans are just machines, they just work, they work and work and work, that to be human is to be able to

get stuff done. Which brings us to the third option of what it is to be a human person, and that is a human being. And we love this, human beings, not human doings, that we rest. God worked and God rested and we do the same.

We exist. Our identity is not tied up in our brains or in our bodies, in our action, but in our being. That's good.

And we could stay there and that would work because we do call ourselves human beings. But the downside of that view is that we are not static creatures. Human beings are not immovable, static beings that just exist.

We have motives, we move, which brings us to the fourth option. That is a human longing. To be human is to desire things, to want to worship, in fact to need to worship.

I put it to you this morning that, well let me go to this quote. Andy Crouch says, every human person is a heart, soul, strength, mind complex designed for love. Integrating these four views is what a human person is.

We have a heart, we have emotions and longings, we have a mind, we have brains and thought life, we have strength, we have bodies that can act, and we have a soul, we have an identity. But all of these things integrated is what makes a human person.

I suggest that the Book of Genesis teaches us that human beings must worship something. We're not the type of creatures that can live as atheists. There's a certain sense in which atheism doesn't exist.

Human beings cannot live without something that they worship, something that they orient their lives towards. So think of a compass. I didn't know that we were gonna play that video with the true North compass metaphor, but it's very fitting.

Every human person is like a compass. Now, where does a compass point? As in the Arctic Circle, the North Pole of our planet?

Not necessarily. A compass orients itself to the strongest magnetic field exerting an influence on it.

Maybe you remember being a kid or an adult, if you like science, and holding a compass in this hand and a really strong magnet in this hand, where does the North point to then? To the magnet. So I used to take a compass.

Dad had a really nice compass, and I had a really strong magnet, and I used to go circles like this. North keeps changing. The whole world keeps spinning around.

North, North is this way, North is this way. You can make North point whatever direction you want. The problem with human persons is that we have a compass that must worship, and we are able to worship the wrong thing.

The Bible calls it idolatry. To orient your whole being, your heart, soul, mind and strength, towards something other than God.

Not the true North of our planet in the Arctic Circle, the North Pole, but orienting towards that which we long for the most. This is idolatry. Dallas Willard says, the first and most basic thing we can and must do is to keep guard before our minds.

This is the fundamental secret of caring for our souls. Soon our minds will return to God as the needle of a compass constantly returns to the North no matter how the compass is moved.

If God is the great longing of our souls, he will become the pole star of our inward beings. Our hearts, the compass of our lives, have no better place to orient themselves than around God.

Not around the nearest magnet of power, money or sex, or whatever this world offers that wants to tune our hearts in that direction. God is calling us to bring our hearts back to him, which brings us back to our question, how do you love God?

How do you orient your life, the compass of your heart, soul, mind and strength, orient that to the true north of God? To love God is not to give God anything that he doesn't already have. To love God is not just to think of him.

It's not just to act for him, not just to rest in him, not even just to long for him, but all of those things together. Heart, soul, mind, and strength, and all the rest of our person, to orient that in the direction of God.

To set your compass on him. This is the first of the Ten Commandments. You shall have no other God before me.

Your compass will orient no other direction, but to God alone. We must be motivated by love, not by law. Jesus said you will love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

But as we think, I'm trying to be practical. Practically, how do you orient your life, your compass to God? It's not because of our great love.

It's not that we squeeze and generate all of this great love for God that brings the compass needle forward. John says in 1 John 4, 19, we love because he first loved us. God loved us, and that is what teaches us how to love.

This is true in any area of your life. You learn how to love by being loved. And it's no less true with God.

He loved us first, and then he teaches us how to love him. Do you remember the story of one of the parables Jesus told? He says, those who have been forgiven much will forgive much.

Those who have been loved much will love much. We loved before he first loved us. And so, if you want to love God more, don't squeeze it out.

Receive the love of God. Open your heart to see what God has done for us in Christ, on the cross and in the resurrection. The love that he poured out for us, and allow that love to reform our hearts in his direction.

Tim Keller famously said, we are more sinful than we ever dared imagine. Kind of a bummer thing to say, but helpful actually to meditate on that. I'm more wicked and selfish than I thought that I was, than I ever dared imagine.

But the truth of the gospel is we are more loved than we ever dared dream. And the gospel holds those two things together. The love of God that overcomes our wickedness and our evil.

We love because he first loved us. So to love God, receive his love.

John continues, we love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God, yet hates a brother or sister, is a liar. For whoever doesn't love their brother or sister, whom they have seen, can't love God, whom they have not seen.

And God has given us this command, anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. Which brings us to the second part of our motive, our mission, love others. Now, this part is way shorter than the first part.

If you're slumping in your chair, thinking that we're only a third of the way, we're well over a third. We're like two-thirds of the way done. We have to lock in what it means to love God, because Jesus says that's first.

First of all is to orient every part of your soul, mind, heart, strength onto God and his purposes. And I think it's true that if you get that piece locked in, you are 90% of the way there for everything else.

If you love God with everything, it will naturally overflow to love others. The Great Commandment in Luke's version. So we read it in Mark earlier.

This is Luke's version. On one occasion, an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. Teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

What is written in the law? Jesus replied. How do you read it?

The teacher answered, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbour as yourself. You have answered correctly, Jesus replied. Do this and live.

Firstly, interesting that in Luke's version, the great commandment is not on Jesus' lips, but on the teacher's lips.

It could be that Luke remembers the story different or his witnesses remember the story differently to Matthew and Mark, or most likely is these are two separate times, that Jesus said it and then later a teacher said it.

This is a quote, love your neighbour as yourself, is a quote from Leviticus 19 verse 18. And when you read Leviticus, it's like Leviticus 19 specifically, it's one of those negative chapters.

Do not do this, do not do this, do not cook a young goat in its mother's milk, do not do this, do not do this, love your neighbour as yourself, do not do this, do not do this.

So if you're reading Leviticus 19, you could blink and miss what Jesus says is the second most important commandment out of all 613. But the teacher of the law and Jesus say, that's it, love your neighbour as yourself.

If you love God and love others, you are 99% of the way to obeying all 613 commands. This is interesting that Luke's Gospel is different to the other Gospels. What I think is maybe more interesting is the very next verse, Luke 10 verse 29.

The teacher wanted to justify himself. He wanted to clarify and work out what Jesus means. So he asked Jesus, and who is my neighbour?

Love your neighbour as yourself, okay, who's my neighbour? And do you know what Jesus said in response? The parable of the Good Samaritan.

I won't read it, you probably know it. But the punchline of the parable of the Good Samaritan is that Jesus takes the question, who is my neighbour? In other words, who is the neighbour of me?

And he turns it inside out again and he says, no, the question is not who is the neighbour of me. The question is, who am I going to neighbour? He puts the emphasis on the person who is loving.

He says, you should go and be a neighbour to other people. So as we think about what it means to love others, to love our neighbour, who's our neighbour? Is our neighbour John Smith, who lives in California with his wife and three kids?

Am I supposed to love John Smith? Yes, in the dignity that I give to all human beings, but I am not his neighbour and he is not my neighbour. I'm in no position to actually love John Smith.

You know who I'm in a position to love as my neighbour? My wife and daughter, my church family. What Jesus is saying is the people you are able to love are the ones that you are called to love, not the ones that you can't love.

And so every person in this room is neighbouring every person in this room.

When we have morning tea, you are entering the mission field, the mission field where you are filled, that room is full of neighbours, people that you could love, loving your neighbour as yourself. Jesus flips the question upside down.

It's not who is the neighbour of me, but who will I be a neighbour to? When I was a kid, dad used to say, do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in your power to act. And it's like, that's, that's beautiful.

Don't withhold good when it's in your power to act. So I would kind of look around for good that I could do, and I'd walk past a can on the side of the road, and I'd put it in the bin because I'm just loving the world. I'm just doing good.

And I would sometimes empty the bin without being asked to, because love, like flowing from the inside out. Do not withhold good when it is in your power to act. To love your neighbour as yourself if you are able to.

It was only later that I read the Book of Proverbs, and I realised it was a proverb. Dad didn't come up with that. It was from the Book of Proverbs.

Now, he never claimed that he came up with it, but I was like, wow, okay, so that's where it came from.

John Wesley said, do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can.

That's what it means to love your neighbour as yourself. Love the people you are able to love, not John Smith in California. We can't love him unless you are flying to California tonight.

Love the people you are able to love because the grace of God is with us and the spirit of God is in us. Do you remember the idea that the grace of God is a candle, not a coin? A coin is, I have a coin, Tony doesn't have a coin.

I give Tony the coin, Tony has a coin, I don't have a coin. It's zero sum. The grace of God is a candle where I could light Tony's candle and his candle is lit and mine stays lit.

The grace of God is an overflowing, infinite resource, compelling us, motivating us and empowering us to love others, that we might be ready to see Christ, serve Christ, share Christ and steward Christ.

Which brings us to the final part of our mission, to make disciples. We've looked at the great commandment, that's the first two-thirds of our mission statement.

Then Jesus' last words in the Gospel of Matthew is the last third of our mission statement. It's called the great commission, Matthew 28 verse 18 to 20.

Then Jesus came to the disciples and said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to

obey everything I've commanded you. And surely I'm with you always to the very end of the age. The mission of the church, Jesus' last words, the great commission, go and make disciples.

We talk about this verse all the time because it's one of our, it's the last third of our mission statement as a church, make disciples. But what I think we often miss is that Matthew has structured his gospel with a parallel passage.

And by God's providence, the number is the same. Matthew 28, 18 to 20, reflects Matthew 4, 18 to 20. The great commission mirrors the great invitation.

Matthew 4, as Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen.

Come follow me, Jesus said, and I will send you out to fish for people. At once they left their nets and followed him. Jesus is so magnetic, isn't he?

He's so compelling that people want to leave everything and follow him. They want to abandon all of the compass Norths, the false Norths that they have lived with and orient to his true North. He's so compelling.

In this passage, the one who says, come follow me, at the start of Matthew's gospel, is the same one who says, go and make disciples. He says, come and go, breathe in and breathe out, receive from Jesus, and then go on the mission with Jesus.

And so these two motions are the motions of discipleship, that we are called to be discipled by Jesus and by older brothers and sisters in the faith, to breathe in, and then we're called to pass it on, to breathe out, to make disciples.

Come follow me and go and make disciples. We live in this cycle. That's what it is to make disciples.

And everything in between those two things, come follow me, Matthew 4, 18 to 20, and go and make disciples, Matthew 28, 18 to 20, is the life of Jesus, the teachings of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount, notably, his death on the cross, most notably,

his resurrection. Everything in between is the life of discipleship that he invites us to breathe in and receive, and then breathe out on mission. As we come and follow Jesus, we go and make disciples.

One of the interesting ways to reflect on what the gospel is, it's Jesus teaching us how to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and how to love our neighbour. Think of all the stories of the disciples messing up.

Think of James and John coming to Jesus and saying, we want to be your number two and three guys. We want to be next to you. Jesus says, you don't know what you're asking.

He says, the greatest will be the least. He turns them upside down. He's teaching the disciples how to love their neighbour as themselves, how to love God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength.

And he says, I'm with you always. As he sends us out on mission, he is with us until the job is done, and the job is not done yet. And so he still sends us out on mission to make disciples.

So, detectives, motive means an opportunity. God will give us the opportunity that's in his hands. He will bring people across our path to have conversations with.

He will bring good opportunities for us to do good. He will bring people who have prayer needs that need to hear the voice of Christ in the mouth of their brother or sister. He will bring the opportunity.

His spirit is training us in the means. That's a big part of what we're doing over these next two years. The Christ in Scripture project is to learn the means, to understand the Bible, this resource that God has given us.

But he is wanting us to have the motive at the heart, overflowing with love, to be ready to see Christ, share Christ, serve Christ and steward Christ. To love God, love others and make disciples. Shall we do that together?

Shall we do that together? Let's love God, love others and make disciples. Let me pray and then we'll worship.

I thought I was gonna have to do it alone then. Father, we thank you for your grace. We thank you for our Lord Jesus.

We just remember in this moment that we are more sinful than we ever dared imagine. We're broken, our hearts are dead apart from you, God. We desire the wrong things.

We've turned our back on you, but we thank you for your grace, that you come running to meet us like the prodigal father. We thank you that you love us more than we ever dared to dream.

And it is because you first loved us that you call us to love you back. And so I pray for all of us, for this community of faith in Hornsby, that you would pour your love into our hearts, that it would overflow from us.

Give us such a passion to see you, Jesus, to grow in holiness in your name, to share your good news, to share the hope that we have with all those who ask, and to serve you, that we would do good, and also to steward the power that you give us in

your name. Lord, we want to be a church that are faithful on this corner of Hornsby. As we have been for 120 years, we ask that you would make us faithful for another 120 years until you return.

Help us, God, to love you with everything, with every part of our being, and to love each other, and to make disciples, because we pray in Jesus' name.

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