Scripture: John 13-17
Our Mission
The mission of First Baptist Church is to develop missionary disciples who worship God, grow spiritually, and share the Gospel and their spiritual gifts.
WORSHIP – Our lives are made to glorify God and recognize Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. We love God by glorifying him through obedience and showing others what Jesus is like in our words and actions. (Luke 10:27)
GROW – Developing Disciples, Spiritual Growth & Maturity, Fellowship. We love each other as we mature to become more like Jesus and we help disciple each other to grow and mature spiritually. We do this through intentional fellowship and living life involved in each other’s lives. (1 Thessalonians 4:3 and Ephesians 4:13)
SHARE – Called to share the Good News of the Gospel and God’s love with our community & the world and to share our spiritual gifts and abilities. We love our local community and communities around the world by serving them and sharing the Gospel with them. God places believers together in local churches to be part of a living body each doing one or more parts. (Matthew 28:19-20 and Ephesians 4:15-16)
Series: Mission 2023
Our three-week series will be looking more closely at how we put this into actions of love – again individually and together as a church family. Worship and Love God. Grow and Love each other. Share and Love our community.
Today we will look at the third command: Share or Love Our Community
Share the Gospel
First we are called to share the Gospel. We love our community by sharing the life-giving message of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection with them.
Divine Love – John 13:1
When we love our neighbors and people in our community, we show them God’s divine love.
Sacrificial Love – John 13:14
When we are willing to sacrifice our pride or even giving something up for the people in our community, they will see and better understand Jesus’ sacrificial love on the cross.
Exemplary Love – John 13:34-35
People will know you are my disciples when they see your love. What is First Baptist known for in our community? A nice building. A small but caring school? Are we known for love?
Expectant Love – John 14:1-2
People won’t come ask for help or see answers when all they see is anger, pride, self-righteousness, or despair and loss of hope for the world. But they just might come when they experience first-hand God’s love through you.
Supernatural Love – John 14:16; John 15:8-9
We cannot love our community in our own strength, but when we experience God’s grace and forgive love, He will be glorified as we live and love others.
Obedient Love – John 14:15
To keep loving even when they don’t love back. We love our community because Jesus commanded us to.
Realistic Love – John 15:18
We don’t love our communities because we want them to love us. We love our neighbors and the people in our community because God loves them and we hope that they will over time come to know Jesus as Savior, and better understand and love God themselves.
Anticipatory Love – John 17:15, 20
We love our community anticipating that souls will be saved as we show God’s love and His glory to the people around us.
Challenges to Loving Our Community
- Hatred
- Apathy
- Self-Righteousness
Share your spiritual gifts and abilities
In addition to sharing the gospel and God’s love we are called to share our spiritual gifts and abilities within the local church and our community. As we are each unique parts of the body of Christ, we have been supernaturally equipped for one or more areas of service.
“The Bible’s story is about a God of love invading the world in the person of his Son of love to establish his kingdom of love by a radical sacrifice of love, to forgive us in love and draw us into his family of love, and to send us out as ambassadors of the very same love.”
– Paul Tripp, New Morning Mercies
Take Homes
- Do you fully know and accept God’s unconditional love for you? Have you repented of your sins and trusted in Jesus Christ alone for your salvation?
- Do you really know and appreciate God’s grace in your own life? It’s hard to show others grace when you don’t see it first hand.
- How is our church doing on a scale of 1 to 10 in loving our community?
- What could we be doing better?
- Where would you like to be involved personally?
- Where could you be serving in our church? Turn in your “Share” form at the Welcome Center.
