← Red Rocks Church Weekend Messages
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Red rocks. You guys excited for a good day at church today? Hey, would you keep that going and help me welcome every single one of our Denver based locations. Austin, Texas, Brussels, all of the men and women at all the correctional facilities and anybody tuning in online right now. We love you all so much. Hey, listen, listen, listen. It's not an accident that you are here today. So no matter who you are, no matter what your story is, here's what I can tell you. We are just a bunch of broken, messed up, imperfect people who love to come together to serve and worship a perfect God. And that perfect God has a plan and a purpose for your life. You're in the right place. This is our final week of our relationship series, Summer Love. And you guys been enjoying this series so far. All right, one passage to get started today. Matthew 22, verse 34. Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadduce, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question. Never a good idea to try to test Jesus. Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus replied, and he quotes Deuteronomy 6, verse 5. Here, love the Lord your God with
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all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And then he quotes Leviticus 19:18. He says in the second is, like
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it, love your neighbor as yourself. And then this is a powerful statement. All the law and the prophets, everything in the entire Old Testament, it all hangs on these two commandments. And so Jesus makes it very simple for us. What are we to do? Love God and love others. There's another story where somebody goes, yeah, but who's my neighbor? And he tells another story to the effect that everybody is your neighbor. And so it's our job as the church to love God and love others. Now here's my question for us today. Which one of those two is easier for you? Is it easier here for you to love a perfect God who has a plan and a purpose for your life, who literally stepped out of heaven to lay down his life so that you could go free? Or is it easier for you to love a bunch of broken, messed up, imperfect people who are going to talk bad about you sometimes and gossip about you and let you down? Like for me, it's so much easier to love a perfect God than it is to love imperfect people. You know what I mean? Especially when people are tough to love. Anyone can love somebody that they're in love with. But Jesus calls us to love everybody, including those who are tough to love anybody. Have somebody in their life who's tough to love. If you're standing by him, don't raise your hand. Don't raise your hand. To close this sermon series, I want to preach a message called When People are Tough to Love. So at every campus, give away a high five and say, this message is for you. This message is for you. Hey, if we haven't met, my name is Ryan Weckman. I've gotten to be down in Austin, Texas, helping to make heaven more crowded down there for the last eight years. I love being a part of Red Rocks, and it's such an honor to. To be here for this message. Let's begin here. If you are newer to the Bible, the first two pages of the Bible are beautiful. Genesis 1 and 2. Adam and Eve living in perfect unity with the Creator and with creation and with each other. Like, there would be no need for a relationship series in Genesis 1 and 2. But then everything falls apart in Genesis 3. By the end of chapter 3, Adam and Eve go from being naked and unashamed to running and hiding and sewing fig leaves together to cover up. And then God comes down and says, hey, what happened? And. And Adam goes, it was Eve's fault. Now, I'm not married, but I would imagine, like, that would come back up in arguments down the road. You know, like a couple weeks later, they get in another argument, and Adam says something. And then Eve goes, oh, yeah. Remember when God was here and you literally blamed me for everything? Like, Adam was great.
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He was also proudly pretty tough to love.
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Sometimes their sons were worse. Within one generation, their son Cain kills Abel. So if you thought your family reunion was awkward, imagine that one like, Cain was tough to love. We can keep going through the entire Old Testament. There's this guy named Aaron who's the first high priest. He was Moses's brother, and he was great. And then there's this day where Moses is up on the. On Mount Sinai hanging out with God.
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And all the Israelites come up to Aaron and they go, hey, you know what we should do? We should melt together all of our gold and form it into a golden calf to worship.
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And Aaron, the high priest, goes, yeah, let's do that. You know how crazy that is? That would be like, if Pastor Sean walked out of the room and I came up here and was like, have you guys ever heard of Scientology? You know, like, he just completely changes everything. Like, imagine that conversation between Moses and. And Aaron afterwards, where Moses is just like, hey, man, like, what happened? Aaron was great. He was tough to love. How about David, if you know his story, the man after God's own heart and yet commits adultery and then murder to try to cover it up. Like, David was great. He was also really tough to love. I love David, but sometimes I read his psalms and I'm like, oh bro, your text messages would have been exhausting
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to try to keep up with.
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You know, like David would have been the three minute voice text guy. You know what I mean? Three minute voice text people, we love you, but you're tough to love. But we love you, but you're tough to love. Hey, let me help you out for a second. If you get to like minute three of leaving a voice text and you go, so I guess what I've been trying to say is, okay, great, great, great, great, you got there. Here's what we need you to do. Delete the message and whatever you're about to say next, just say that to us. That's. Anyways, David was probably tough to love. Let's, let's do a New Testament example. The apostle Paul. I'll give you a post conversion Apostle Paul, because pre conversion he was very tough to love. He was like carrying Christians off to prison. Post conversion, Paul gets into an argument with his friend Barnabas. You can read all about this in Acts chapter 15. Barnabas is one of his best friends. They were buddies.
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And then one day Barnabas is like,
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hey, for our next missionary journey, we should take John Mark with us. And Paul goes, no man, not John Mark. And Barnabas is like, come on. And it turns into this like junior high level drama where Barnabas and John Mark sail off in one direction to tell people about Jesus. And Paul and Silas sail off in another direction to tell people about Jesus. This is the apostle Paul. Like I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. Paul, he was amazing and also pretty tough to love. Sometimes I say all that to say this. When you read the Bible, what you are going to see is a whole bunch of people who are tough to love.
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And then Jesus, you're going to see a bunch of imperfect people and then Jesus.
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And so if we have any shot this weekend at loving people who are tough to love, we better go to a Jesus story. And so if you have your Bibles, turn over to Matthew chapter 26. And as we read this story, I want you to bring to mind one person in your life who is tough to love.
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Maybe it's a co worker, maybe it's a friend in laws, that person at the coffee shop that drags the chair across the room, instead of lifting it
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up and makes that awful sound, you know what I mean?
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Like, just lift up the chair.
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One person to mind. And I want to point out three
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things that Jesus is going to teach us about how to love people who are tough to love so that you can bring these three things with you as you head into this week so that we can continue to love God and love others. Matthew 26. If you're newer to the Bible, the New Testament begins with four Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Matthew is the first one. And there's 28 chapters in Matthew's Gospel. So we're about to read in chapter 26. So this is right at the very end of the gospel. In fact, this is the night before the day before Jesus went to the cross to pay the price for our sins. Verse 17 says this.
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On the first day of the festival of unleavened bread, the disciples came to
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Jesus and asked, where do you want us to make preparations for you to eat the Passover?
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Now, that's one of those verses that would be very easy to skip over. But we just picked up a lot
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of very important context in this verse.
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First, the festival of unleavened bread is at hand. If you were Jewish in the first century, your calendar, your year revolved around seven festivals. One of them, one of the most important, was this festival that happened every
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spring called the festival of unleavened bread, where you would come to Jerusalem to remember how 1,500 years earlier, the Israelites were living in slavery in Egypt. And then God brought them out of slavery and into freedom. And fun Bible fact, they had to leave so quickly when Pharaoh let them go that they didn't even have time to let the bread rise. They just had to take what they had and run. So they would call the festival the festival of unleavened bread. And they would eat unleavened bread to remember how God was faithful. Here's what you got to remember. They're remembering that God brought them out of slavery and into freedom.
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Now, another layer to this they also,
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what we found out in verse 17, they go, Jesus, where do you want us to prepare the Passover meal? So you would eat the Passover meal on the first day of this festival of unleavened bread.
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And what the the Passover meal was
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all about was remembering how God brought them out of slavery and into freedom. There is a series of 10 plagues. The 10th was the most intense. And if you know the story, death went through every household in Egypt. Unless you Sacrificed a lamb.
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Stick with me for a second. And took the blood of the lamb
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and smeared it on your doorpost.
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If you did, death passed over. Your house is where we get Passover.
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And you were allowed to go free.
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So if you're paying attention, here's what I need you to know. It was the blood of the lamb that saved them from death and brought them into life and took them out of slavery and brought them into freedom. Why am I saying all this? Jesus is doing everything that he does very, very intentionally. He picked Passover on purpose for a reason. Passover is at hand, and he shows up and goes to the cross and allows his blood to be spilled so that you and I can be saved from death and into life and out of slavery and into freedom. The entirety of the Bible tells the story of a God who so loves
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the world that he sent his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have life everlasting is the most beautiful news in the world.
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But we gotta keep going. Remember, we're trying to figure out how to love people who are tough to love. But I wanted you to get that up top right from verse 17. Let's keep moving. Verse 18 says this. He replied, go into the city to
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a certain man and tell him, the Teacher says, my appointed time is near.
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I love that Jesus is going, this is the time. The appointed time is here. So. So Jesus knew that he needed to be in Jerusalem for Passover to help all of us make sense of the entire Bible. Like, go read Mark's Gospel. You'll see time and time again, he'll do something really cool. He'll heal, heal somebody. And then he'll go, don't tell anyone about that.
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Don't tell anyone about that.
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Don't tell anyone about that. And you're like, jesus, don't you want to get the word out?
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What are you doing?
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Well, he knew that he needed to stay alive to get to Jerusalem for Passover so that he could lay down his life that we all could go free.
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Jesus is just so amazing.
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So many levels to that. Okay, my appointed time is near. I am going to celebrate the Passion
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Passover with my disciples at your house. So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them and prepared the Passover. Verse 20. When evening came, Jesus was reclining at the table with the 12. Jesus is about to share Passover meal that that now becomes the Last Supper and is about to explain communion and show how all of this has been pointing to what he's about to do as he lays down his life for us on the cross. But notice it says, when the evening came, he's reclining at the table with the 12. That language gets a little lost on us today, 2,000 years later, in the first century, to recline at the table was to make a statement. It was to say, we're in this together. They would literally lay on their left side and eat their food with their right hand. And it was a way of saying, we're not going anywhere.
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You know, like, when you go to
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a party, there's always, like, levels to the crowd.
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Like, there's some people who are just, like, hovering by the front door. And you're like, oh, you're not. Like, you're here to make an appearance, but as soon as nobody's watching, you're
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leaving and you're going home to watch the game. I know that move, you know, but
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then you go in a little bit deeper into the party, and there's, like, some people hanging out. But if you keep going further and further, it's like, there's always a crew that is like, we're going to help you wash the dishes at the end of the night kind of a crew like. Like, we're here. That's what it meant to recline at
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the table with somebody, is that you're going, we're not going anywhere. When you're reclining at the table, it's
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not, hey, what should we do after this?
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It's.
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This is what we are doing.
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We are having a meal together, and Jesus is doing that. You got to get this with his 12 disciples. Think about that crew for a second. You want to talk about tough to love?
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First off, Judas is at the table.
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More on that in about seven minutes.
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Before we get there, this man named
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Matthew is also at the table. And Matthew has got to be reclining with Jesus. Three years into ministry. Feeling so grateful for these last three years, because in Matthew chapter nine, we get to hear about Matthew's origin story. So. So stay in Matthew 26, but also flip in the left of your Bibles over to Matthew 9. Let's read Matthew 9, verse 9, part A. As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth.
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So when we meet Matthew, we find
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out that he is a tax collector.
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And when we hear that, we go, okay, fine. Good for him. But in the first century, that held a lot of meaning. Rome ruled the known world. How do you rule the world with
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a very large military? How do you fund the military?
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You tax the very people that you
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are oppressing, and you make them pay for it.
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How do you get that money from them? You offer the job to anybody who will turn their back on their own people, to take taxes from people so that you can fund the very military that is keeping you oppressed. Do you understand? So if you saw a tax collector in the first century, you didn't like them. You saw them as a traitor. But it was worse even than that. Because what Rome would say is, hey, here's the amount that we need you to tax them. But you tax as much as you want, and if they have a problem with it, go get one of those Roman soldiers and he'll settle it real quick. And so tax collectors were notorious for also taking more than they needed to. And so you're just trying to get by in the first century, and one of your friends becomes a tax collector and starts taking money from you and then taking even more money from you to have more money for himself. Can you see how tax collectors would
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have been hated and ignored by everyone? Let's read part B of that verse.
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Follow me.
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Jesus told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.
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Matthew would have been ignored by everybody. And Jesus walks by and goes, you're with us. The rest of the disciples had to be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, not Matthew. Are you kidding me? Jesus goes, yes, Matthew. So Matthew was given a gift.
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Right from the beginning of his ministry,
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Matthew knew that he was tough to love. And so from there on out, for the next three years, you know, anytime Jesus would go up to somebody who's tough to love, and all the other disciples are like, no, not that person. Not him, not her. I bet you in the back of his mind, Matthew was like, yes, him. Yes, her. He understood that Jesus loved people who were tough to love because he understood that he was tough to love. And Jesus saw him. Hey, get this. Jesus didn't just see what was. He saw what could be. Matthew went on to write a gospel that we are still reading from 2000 years later. Why? Because Jesus loved him when he was tough to love. So step one in loving people who are tough to love, here's what you got to remember. You are tough to love. I am tough to love. Matthew was tough to love. We're all tough to love. We gotta start there. My friend Ryan Leake just wrote a book called how to Work with Complicated People. He's preached here a bunch, and I read the book a couple of weeks ago.
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I can't recommend it highly enough Especially if you work with people in any capacity. It's absolutely brilliant. But.
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But he says this while you're sipping your coffee and mentally drafting that how to be less complicated manual for your colleagues, someone else is doing the same for you because you got to realize you're complicated to work with. And let's just be honest, like, we're so much better at pointing out other people's flaws than seeing our own. Jesus said it like this in Matthew chapter seven. Why do you look at the speck
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of sawdust in your brother's eye? Pay no attention to the plank in your own eye.
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That's one of the most telling verses
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in the Bible, isn't it?
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Jesus goes, hey, but also you also, you're probably pretty tough to love sometimes. So you're like, okay, real talk.
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You leave for work with plenty of time. You expect the traffic, the traffic comes, no problem.
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But then somebody speeds around you because
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you know that they're late and they're putting everybody else in danger. And what do you do?
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Are you kidding me? That person, they're taking this way too seriously. They're putting other people at risk. I can't believe they're driving like that. Okay, but how do you drive the next day when you're late for a meeting? It's a lot easier to point the finger at other people than it is to realize that you're probably capable of driving the same way. Here's what I've been doing recently. When I start to feel myself judging somebody else for their driving, I just pause and I go, I'm probably pretty tough to love sometimes too. Just keep on driving. Or like, like that co worker who's
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always playing the game.
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You know the game I'm talking about?
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Always keeping score.
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Everything becomes like, oh yeah, you can just owe me, you know, I'll help you out here, but you can owe me. This is the person who like you, leave to go on vacation.
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And they go, must be nice, must be nice.
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I'll just be back here working. You know, it's like, I wish that
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you would use your vacation too, cuz rest isn't important, but whatever.
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It's so easy to judge that person. But hey, how about you?
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How are you doing at celebrating your coworkers?
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How are you doing at.
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At lifting others up? It's so easy to point out flaws in others. We gotta remember that we're tough to love sometimes too. Matthew got that. You know what else Matthew understood? By the time they were reclining at the table together, he understood that everyone's fighting a battle. Jesus was so good at seeing this and understanding this. Every single person that you meet is fighting about it.
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Like when Matthew was a kid and they said, matthew, what do you want to do when you grow up? He didn't say, I want to be a tax collector. Like, I'm pretty. We don't have a verse for that, but I'm, like, pretty positive about that. There's a backstory to every behavior.
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And Jesus was so good at understanding that everyone's fighting a battle. And if you got any shot at loving people who are tough to love. This week, we got to remember that when I was in elementary school, there was a kid on the playground that he was just mean. And I remember going home one day and I said, mom, he's just.
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He's just so mean.
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And I.
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We're trying to, like, invite him in.
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And she looks at me and she goes. She goes, I wonder what else is going on in his life.
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I said, that's not. Did you hear what I said? I said, he's mean. I want to vent about this right now. And I remember so wisely, she was just like, yeah, I wonder what's going
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on in his home right now?
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And I didn't understand it at the time, but now that I'm a little
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older, I understand what she was doing. She was teaching me to remember that everyone is fighting a battle. And until we get that, we're going to be so quick to judge others. We're going to be so quick to point out the speck of sawdust in their eye without realizing that we've got our own stuff, too. So, single people, let's chat for a couple of minutes.
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If you're married, good for you.
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Don't worry about it.
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Just tune me out. I'm kidding, kidding.
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I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
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This is for everybody.
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Singleness is a subject that I'm very passionate about because I've been single my entire life, and it's a sacred subject for me. And let me say this. There's a rise in singleness happening in our cultural moment right now. People are waiting longer to get married. Lots of people are not getting married at all. So there are more and more single people. So even if you are married, I bet you have a friend or a coworker or a son or a daughter who is single. And so let me help you for. For just one second. One of the things that I've noticed when it comes to the rise of singleness is I'm going to paint with Very broad strokes, just for a second, is that one thing that is happening is that single women seem to be getting more and more frustrated and single men seem to be getting more and more apathetic. And the two things don't play well together before. The more apathetic the single men get, the more frustrated the single women get. And the more frustrated the single women get, the more apathetic the single men become. There's almost this like Genesis 3 story happening where Eve takes the fruit. But Adam is just sort of there in this apathetic cloud and he doesn't seem to be able to understand what's going on. And what I feel, what I just sense from my own survey of what's going on is that there is this growing chasm. We kind of have this like junior high dance thing going on where men are over here and women are over there. And then there's just this like cloud of resentment in the middle. And listen, as dating goes more and more digital, it becomes harder and harder and harder for us to remember that every single single person has their own singleness story. And every single single person is fighting a battle that we know nothing about. And so may I just offer a pastoral word? If marriage is something that you desire, that is a good God honoring thing. We are cheering you on. And it's going to take us realizing first and foremost, hey, you're tough to love sometimes too. And every single person that you talk to is fighting a battle. I'm telling you, the world is now set up for you just to keep swiping. If you've been around for this series, you've noticed that Doug has this like, personal vendetta out against the ick.
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And he's like pointing out over and over and over again like, hey, so every single person is imperfect. And what he's trying to get at, he's. He's trying to help us see, hey, love covers a multitude of sin. And you're not going to find the perfect person, but the current world is set up for you just to keep swiping. And what we have to get back
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to doing is realizing that we're created
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to be in relationship with each other, but that we're all imperfect and broken. And so it's going to be messy
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and it's going to be difficult. But those are opportunities for us to treat people the way that Jesus would treat people, which is he would realize
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everybody's fighting a battle. Make sense? And if I may, I just see
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a day where singleness is not synonymous with selfishness but with selflessness. And single people lead the way in serving the church and loving the city and making heaven more crowded. I believe that for us, we can step up and we can do that. Now, back to the table.
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Let's keep reading.
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Matthew 26. And we are now on verse 2021.
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While they were eating, he said, truly,
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I tell you, one of you will betray me. Oh, they were very sad and began to say to him, one after the other, surely you don't mean me, Lord. Jesus replied, the one who has dipped his hand into the bowl, underline that phrase, Dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me. The Son of Man will go, just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man. It would be better for him if he had not been born. Then Judas, the one who would betray him, said, surely you don't mean me, Rabbi. And Jesus answered, you have said so now. So much here, so many layers here, let me give you 1. In 2nd Corinthians 7. I'm sorry.
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In 2nd, 2nd Samuel 7, we find
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out that the Messiah, the coming Messiah, is going to come from the line of David. And so if you read the Gospels carefully, you'll notice everybody who knew who Jesus was uses the. The term Son of David. It's like this, this little subtle flex to go, I know who you are. I know who you are. You're the Messiah. You're the Messiah. You're the Messiah.
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So what Jesus would do is he
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would often quote David's Psalms from a thousand years earlier as these subtle hints, these breadcrumbs that he's leaving for us to find along the way so that we can realize, oh, this Jesus, this is the Messiah. This is the Son of David. Like one is Psalm 22, verse one
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that says, My God, my God, why
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have you forsaken me?
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That's what Jesus says on the cross. That's also Psalm 22, verse 1. So while Jesus is hanging on the cross, he is also going, I knew this was gonna happen. I'm still in control of all of this. I'm just laying down my life so that they can all go free. Here's another one. Psalm 41, verse 7, verse 9. I'm sorry. Even my close friend David wrote, a thousand years before Jesus, someone I trusted, get this. One who shared my bread has turned against me. Do you see what Jesus is doing? He's going, judas, I knew this was gonna happen. Even in the middle of one of his best friends betraying him, Jesus goes I'm King of Kings, I'm Lord of Lords. I've got this under control. It's okay, Judas.
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Go do what you need to do. And then he continued to recline at the table and share a meal with his friends Matthew and Judas.
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And we could go through all 12
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of the disciples and point out how
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tough to love they were. This is the context. All this has been context for the next three verses as we read communion together. But here's what you got to know. Here's the last thing we got to remember. Jesus went first. If we get any shot at loving people who are tough to love, we gotta realize we just love because Christ first loved us.
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That's it.
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Jesus went first. So in the middle of a moment where.
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Let this sink in for a second, where one of his best friends is about to betray him, we read this verse 26. While they were eating, Jesus took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, take and eat, this is my body. Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant
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which is poured out for many for
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the forgiveness of sins. In the middle of being betrayed by one of his best friends, Jesus goes, I'm doing all this for you. Jesus went first. And every time we come back to the table and take communion, we remember that the only shot we have of loving those who are tough to love is remembering that Jesus loved us when we were tough to love. So let me tell this story and I want to end here and then we'll take communion together. When I was 19, I got my start in ministry. I, like just gotten saved. Got my start in ministry leading mission trips in Costa Rica, and I was like the least qualified person ever to lead. And we get. It's the first day and we're in the slum in Costa Rica and I'm leading a team of like 30 people with my friend Lyndon, and we're down doing construction and the whole place is beautiful and so much fun. And there's one man who's kind of like standing out there. He's a bigger guy, he's just tattoos everywhere. Pretty rough looking guy. And I can tell he's just like glancing and then he would look away, glancing and look away. And somebody warned me, like, hey, essentially like, tough to love guy. Well, about halfway through the first day, Linden and I have to go back to the van to go get some more supplies. And so we're Walking through. We're kind of walking through this slum, trying to get back up to the van. And as we turn the corner, there's nobody around. That guy comes out the other side, and it's like a narrow pathway. So he's got us cornered. And so I'm thinking, oh. And I walk up to him, and his opening line is, I want to follow Jesus.
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And I thought, this is so easy. Who said evangelism is tough? You know, like, great, let's pray.
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And he goes, you don't understand. I want to follow Jesus, but I can't. He said, I've been a drug addict since I was 12, and over the years, I've done anything I can to get money, to have more drugs. And I've hurt people and I've killed people. And I want to follow Jesus, but I'm too messed up. I can't. And remember, I'm like, brand new to all this. I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm like, that's pretty bad, man. That's not good. I don't know. Fortunately, Lyndon is there, and he starts talking to him. And one of the things he says is he goes, hey, a lot of people think that you have to clean yourself up first, and then you can come to Jesus. That's not the message of the Bible. The message of the Bible is, just come to Jesus. Just want you brokenness and all addiction and all. Just come to Jesus.
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And Jesus goes, we'll take care. We'll start taking care of the rest as we go.
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But I just want you to just come on. He starts crying. He goes, nobody's ever explained that to me before. And we have this moment where this guy who's pretty tough to love start to realize that he has a backstory. And then he hears this message that Jesus went first, and it breaks all of this shame off of him and all this condemnation off of him. And we get to pray a prayer with him and he puts his faith in Jesus and heaven gets more crowded. And it's one of my favorite, like, starting moments of ministry that I've ever had. But as I was reflecting on it,
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I realized the reason it's moved me
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so much is like, that's my story.
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In my own way, I'm tough to love. And there's behaviors to that backstory, and
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I'm fighting my battles. And yet Jesus saw me when I was still far from him. He laid down his life that I may go free. And before we even get to communion, we gotta stop and you gotta Hear this at every single one of our campuses, that's true for you. Romans 5, verse 8, one verse for you. Today, God demonstrates his own love for us in this while we were still sinners. Someone say still sinners? Not once you clean up your life. While you were still sinners, Christ died for you. So here's what I want to do. I'm going to pray a prayer in just a second. There's anybody at any one of our campuses, men and women at the correctional facilities, anybody watching online who needs to realize, oh, wait a second, I don't have to clean myself up first, I can just come to Jesus and then we'll start working on all that stuff later. Yeah, that's the good news of the gospel. Jesus went first. He died for you while you were still a sinner. And so in just a second, I'm going to give you a chance to raise your hand and make that decision to put Jesus first in your life.
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Then I bet you there's some people
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at all of our campuses who have somebody that, that are tough to love. So then I'm going to ask the second question will be if you have someone that that's tough to love, give you a chance to raise your hand and respond, I want to pray a prayer of blessing over you. Then we're going to take communion together and we're going to worship. And so, Father, we thank you at every single one of our campuses. Lord, we thank you that you went first. Jesus, thank you that you saw us while we were still sinners.
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Lord, I, I thank you for that
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reminder that I'm tough to love sometimes, Lord, for the, the one who needs to put you, to make you the king of their heart, I pray that you would begin to speak to them right now, Lord. I pray that you begin to remind them right now that, that you see them, that you paid the ultimate price, that they may go free and that you love them and that everything else pales in comparison to this decision. And so if that's you, if today is your day of salvation, if it's time for you to, to put Jesus first in your life, at every one
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of our campuses, you just boldly throw
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your hand up in the air and as you do, just simply pray, Jesus,
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forgive me of my sins.
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Jesus, I want to make you my Lord and Savior. Jesus, would you be the king of my heart?
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Now, for anybody at any campus who
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is like, man, I just need some help loving some people who are tough
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to love, you just boldly throw your
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hand up in the air. And God, you see every hand and you know every story.
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And I pray right now at every one of our campuses that you would remind us that we love only because you first loved us. And so as we go to the table and take communion and then as we sing, would you give us a fresh revelation of just how good that love is, that we may carry that with us into every conversation that we have this week.
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In Jesus name, Amen. Now, first and foremost, heaven just got more crowded. And that's why we exist.
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We make some noise, everyone. Hey, if you made that decision, that's the best decision you will ever make. Make.
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And now to close out, we're going to take communion. So you should have a cup nearby. Go ahead and take the bread out. We're going to take this together and we're going to read Matthew 26, 26 through 28 one more time. Hey, picture Matthew like for a moment, picture the gratitude that Matthew must have had. As he reclined at the table, Jesus didn't see what was. He saw what could be he called potential out of Matthew. And because of that, he became one of the most important warriors for the kingdom that, that we've ever had. I wonder if the same is true about somebody in your life who's tough to love right now also. That's true about me. It's true about us. So Matthew 26, while they were eating, Jesus took bread. And when he had given thanks. My goodness, real quick. Notice how Jesus is always giving thanks. When it comes to loving people who are tough to love, gratitude goes a long way. You stop complaining about the qualities they don't have yet and start being grateful for the qualities they do have. You watch how it starts to change the game. He gives thanks and he broke it. He gave it to his disciples saying, take and eat, this is my body. Let's take that together. Verse 27. Then he took a cup and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, drink from it, all of you. He says, get this. This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus is going, hey, you don't understand this yet. Tomorrow I'm going to finish this whole thing once and for all. My blood is going to be poured out for the forgiveness of sins that we all may go free. So let's take and drink. At every campus. Would you guys stand up to your feet if you are able?
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We're gonna sing one more song to
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together today to end out this relationship series, Summer loving.
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And here's what I want to leave you with. The only shot we have at those horizontal relationships working is to get back to remembering our vertical relationship with God. That's why Jesus starts with love God. That's first. Love God with all your soul, with all your heart, with all your strength. And then you will find the strength to love and your neighbor as yourself. So whatever you got going on in your life, whatever you are going through, whatever battle you are fighting, whatever person in your life you got right now who is tough to love, let's put all of that aside for just one second. And let's fix our eyes on the King of Kings and on the Lord of Lords, the one who went to the cross, that we may go free. Jesus, we love you. We give you all the praise in this place tonight. We worship you. We thank you for everything that you are doing in and through this church. Would Red Rocks Church be a church that is marked by love, Lord? Love for you first and foremost and love for one another. Lord, we thank you and we remember that that is only possible because you first loved us. And so would you remind us of that today as we worship in Jesus name. Amen.
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Let's worship.