Video Transcript

Toggle Timestamps

So I've spent my, my morning packing some ideas together here, drawing some pictures and the, the topics we bro here include love, justice and covenant, all of the things we're gonna talk about here. Um They're very, very difficult to pack down into concise form. And as I think about these things, I can't help but think about years worth of extremely rich experiences and information. I guess that was all vitally important for me to understand these things. And it's pretty tricky to present that in a way that's designed to just convey as much as we can out of that um in a brief way. But if I do any measure of a decent job at this and if you understand it even a little, it should radically change your life. And if, if you don't find yourself with a completely different paradigm as a result of watching this one or both of us has failed miserably. So let's begin. There's an awful lot that could be said about God's justice and I will say an awful lot about it, but not today. In brief, I think I just want to talk about the idea of justice we have this concept as the balancing of the scales and with God's justice, it's almost never like this. That's a funny thing. And I could give you an at length argument for, for why I'm of that position. But uh instead I just want to talk about some of the potential dynamics here. So I want for the rest of this presentation to talk about this paradigm of one side of the scales being what you put in and the other side of the scales being what you get out. So if life is some sort of black box machine, the left side of the scales uh represent the inputs to that machine. And the, the right side of the scales represent what comes out of that machine, inputs and outputs. So let's start with what we get out of it. This is, this is what motivates us. And by the way, when we talk about what we get out of things, I, I think our minds go to a place where we're assuming that what we're talking about is selfish and that's not necessarily the case um to put it to put it differently. A selfless person still does what they do for what they get out of it. They've just chosen to denominate what they get out of it in terms of what others get out of it. But they're still very much doing it based on what they consider to be a worthwhile outcome. And in some sense that's, that's still selfish. It's just that they're desires are oriented toward the benefit of other people . Anyway, I think generically speaking, what you get out of it is some mix of things like the joy you feel, the satisfaction you feel and then there's probably a healthy dash of material well being. What's the point of feeling good if your existence terminates? Um, of course, sometimes those things can't coexist. But the point to make here is that even when we're talking about internal things, like feelings of joy and satisfaction, those are very much conditioned still on the reactions of other people. So simplistically, we might think, well, it's good to not care what others think and it is. And if you're fixed at that level of simplicity, that's a wonderful axiom to live by. But there are greater details embedded in that, that you have to face to come to something better. And those include the idea or the fact that if what you're after is joy and satisfaction, you will be immensely limited in that if your calculation does not include other people. So that's not to say that you should care what other people think in the sense of what they think about you per se. But it does mean that you should be concerned for uh or about the reactions of other people in terms of uh thinking about the long term benefit of all. But even if you're more self oriented you, you won't get material well being without the participation of others, or at least without them leaving you alone, even if you're on a plot of land by yourself. And, and you say, well, I just want to be left alone. That is going to be a , a factor of whether others leave you alone, isn't it? And so even then what other people do as a result of what you do is going to matter if they come at you with torches and pitchforks, uh your joy and satisfaction will be short lived, right? All right. So let's just zoom in a little on joy because it happens to be immensely important as an example of what you get out. So what are some examples of this? Well, maybe we can talk about your gratitude and that's very valuable. But like I said, and I've made a case for this elsewhere, joy denominated only in yourself is quite limited. It turns out that that if you want massively more joy, the only way to get it is to involve other people and to learn to see benefit, including the benefit of others. And so the joy of other people is necessary to fully experience as much joy as you can becomes a network that just keeps growing. So when we talk about this joy, uh that includes the joy of other people. What what do we mean by, by gratitude? So skipping over what gratitude means to yourself? But what, what does it mean for other people to be grateful to you? Almost always, we oversimplify this and, and think about it in terms of expressions of gratitude , in words or even small gestures. Ok. Well, that's really not sufficient. I if you get into any reasonable cost, that just isn't enough to warrant it. So someone saying thank you is, is quite hollow when the cost exceeds, what can be covered by a thank you. If, if that's the end of it, there is no point and it's, it's not about, it's not about reciprocation here. It's about justifying the cost even if we're denominating it in what others receive from it. So if, if all someone does, it says thank you. Obviously, their life has not changed very much because of what you did. And there are many sacrifices which exceed what a thank you can justify. And so not even needing to get too far into this very quickly, we have to come up with a different idea of what gratitude means or what sufficiency means in gratitude because joy will only come to the extent that the people you're serving experience joy beyond the cost to you. And I hope it's clear I've touched on it, but I hope it's clear how this is independent of an idea of reciprocation. You're not getting things from them, but you'd like to see that in their lives. They've received enough joy that it justifies your cost. So you're not gonna chop off your leg if the only good it does is some little kid gets a gum ball, right? That would not be worth it. And it's not a selfish calculation. You can be looking at this strictly in terms of the benefit of the world. And in that case, anyone's leg is not worth a gumball to anyone. Right? So that's what we're talking about. The, the, the joy has to justify the cost to produce it. It turns out that this is really important for, for ways that might not even be completely clear after this presentation. But we have to sort of draw the line somewhere and focus on what's in the box. Sincere gratitude. It's not something that's expressed through words alone, it's expressed through change. Now, you may have never thought of that before. Sincere gratitude is change. It's a question of improvement. Now, maybe the only improvement is the joy that's felt, which is great. That's wonderful. Usually it comes with character changes as well. People live their lives differently as a result of what you've done. And, and even, I mean, I, I think people would struggle to even describe a situation where joy could be experienced without changing something. I'm not sure there's any such thing as pure joy, joy, absent anything else because it has to come from somewhere. And the second it's experienced, it's going to change something. It's actually a very important quality of joy and that might be more apparent as we go through this. So if I were to ask you, how do you measure how grateful someone is for something? I think the only good answer might be but the degree to which they've changed. So how differently do they act, feel or think because of what you did, you noticed feel is in there. That's a change. If you feel immense joy because of what someone else does, that's a change. So it's in the definition, but there are also other changes. You might not feel overwhelming joy per se because of what someone else did for you. But you might change your whole life because of it. You might live your whole life differently and maybe those changes provide you immense joy. But regardless whether you feel that joy or not, another person could feel tremendous joy at seeing you make those changes. If their improvement, you see or we could run down the same example, using thinking instead of acting. If you think differently as a result, that's a change. So this is really important because if you want to be grateful for what you've received from whoever, including God, it's not just a matter of saying thank you. And there are actually things that are much more important than saying anything at all. And that's where we ought to focus if we want to facilitate and accelerate this process, as you'll see, it is a process. It is a flow . All right. Now, let's look at the other side of the scales and explore this a little bit. What do we mean by what you put in? Well, in short, it's a measure of faith and you could read all about that in the book I wrote, Called Through Faith. Uh This is, this presentation is a completely independent approach to these ideas and it involves an awful lot. That's not in the book, but these are overlapping Venn diagrams to some extent. But we could just say faith. And if you understand what faith is, you'll get an awful lot of this. But let's explain it independently of that. So here are some things to think about and they are measurements of what you put in. How unlikely is the expected result of whatever it is you're doing, probably never thought about that before. But something that is risky has a greater cost than something that is not all other things being considered equal. So let's say, uh let's use money just because it's easy to measure, let's say something costs $5 but you're pretty much guaranteed to get the thing. It's meant to buy. Suppose something costs $5 and there's only a 1% chance that you'll get the thing it's supposed to buy. Do you see how that $5 costs a lot more? So that's what we mean by how unlikely is the expected result, but we can break this down further how long will it take? So, um even again, $5.05 dollars all at once and then you, you know, right away if it worked or not, it's a lot less expensive than $5 over five years. And you don't know until the end or $5 upfront and then you have to wait five years. Most people will not do things that take a lot of time. And this is why, how much sacrifice will it require? That could refer to many things. But maybe we could, we could uh just highlight one piece of that is how unpleasant is it? How much of what you previously valued? Do you have to suspend or get rid of in order to do this? Whatever it is? How likely is it to work sufficiently? Meaning some, some things can pan out but, but that might not be enough so they could pan out to differing degrees of result. So let's say you do a scratch off and the ticket costs you $10 and you win, but you only win it uh 25 cents that, that still wasn't worth it, right? And then how will others respond? So let's say that that you envision some path where you're going to spend the next 40 years of your life researching this idea, you have to cure cancer. Now, you, you would think if you're successful, wouldn't it be worth it even that tremendous cost while so many people suffer from cancer. If you created a cure, wouldn't it be worth 40 years of your life? Even with the uncertainty and it's almost, surely not gonna work, but maybe, maybe it'd be worth it if, if you came up with such tremendous outcome. Well, what if, what if the cure required something that no one would ever do? Like something that's very, um, very unpleasant for people, like eating half a pound of kale every day or something. No one's gonna do that. And so even if you had this wonderful outcome, if no one is going to care and they're not gonna use it to benefit themselves, then it's probably not worth it. Right. So, all of these things are a measure of what you put in that you've probably never thought about before. Someone doing something extremely unlikely that almost no one is going to listen to even if it works out, which is probably not, that has an immense cost. All these things are much greater sacrifices than just working really hard on a predictable thing that has constant signs that it's going to work out and maybe pays out benefits routinely from day to day their worlds apart. And now maybe you start to understand a little more why, what the Lord did was so difficult and how that echoes through and the sacrifices of all of his servants to a lesser degree. Ok. What about other attributes? And the, these are not exhaustive. I'm just trying to draw attention to things. You probably have the capacity to think of yourself. How consistent are you versus what seems necessary or is expected by others. So, with, with this, we're getting into the societal threshold, like the societally acceptable threshold of lameness because what you put in is going to be some percentage of what you could put in and it's almost undoubtedly less than 100 it's probably a lot less than 100. And why do you stop short? Well, one reason is that no one expects you to keep going. They say, well, I mean, no one could ask for more. He or she does the minimum that everyone else does. So why keep going? Indeed ? Why keep going? How, how intense are you? How consistent are you and how good are you compared to everyone else? Because normal people stop once they hit the average, they don't do anything else because no one forces them to, no one expects them to and they don't believe that it will be worth it to keep going. And deep down inside. The reason they don't believe it's worth it is this scale they've hit diminishing returns. They don't see right in front of their face. Any reason to believe that they're going to get more out of it because most people operate under a motive that is described in the scriptures with the phrase to get gain, what I'm going to lay out to you in this presentation is the alternative and there are only two choices in this opposite of to get gain is for the benefit of the world. And when you operate for the benefit of the world, you don't count the cost, you just count the benefit, the net benefit. So the cost is included in the calculation of net benefit. But you aren't looking at what do I get out compared to what I put in, You just go all out and what you put in. So my question to you is this, have you ever met a person who is all in? Even one? Have you ever met someone who is all in, in all they do every way all the time. Now, maybe that frazzles you a little because I've never met anyone like that. Although I am like that, the only other being I've ever met like that is Jesus so far. So there might be some floating out there or some might arise. But so far I don't know them, haven't met them yet. Now, your answer might be nobody. And if that's the case, OK, if your answer is more than one person or that person's not me, I'd like you to reach out because I'd like to know this person, regardless your answer is probably going to be a very small number. If not zero. It's probably only one. So my question to you is why, why is that the case? Why aren't you that way. Why isn't some other good person quote unquote in your life that way? Because if I ask you, do you know any good people? You'd probably be able to name a few people. Maybe not a ton, but a few people, if you're on the more naive side of things, your list might be longer. But maybe, you know, two or three people that you'd say, well, they're, they're pretty good people. But if I explain to you what I just did and I said, well, do they go all out, you'd say, well, no, no, there's this and there's that. Well, why is that? The answer is because of the cost. Now, the funny thing about this is we're talking about very exceptional people here and yet you can start to discover the cost of this very early on and not just you can, but you absolutely will. And that's why people stop. They don't keep going because they get an idea of just how much it costs. It doesn't take that long. A few steps in, you're going to figure it out. It happens very quickly. There's a reason why Jesus gave these parables like the, the king going to war or the person building the tower and plainly stated, it costs everything on multiple occasions even to people that were quite early on in the gospel because you hit this very early and it's not just a religious problem, although it is always a religious solution. Anyone in life that pushes into life as hard as they can, they are going to fall flat on their face very quickly . But if you were to keep going very soon, you would reach a point where you could not even adequately describe the cost of what you're facing to other people. Now, here's the kicker without knowing what that's like, you cannot know the true cost of everything that you enjoy and just how much of it relies on people that at least push into all of this. When you see that it's quite something you see just how much of life rides on the shoulders of people who are willing to do things that no one else is willing to do. And it's an extremely small fraction of the population. So now let's dig a little deeper into why people stop. And then I'm going to give you some information that will hopefully entice you to not be part of the problem anymore. So here are scales and now I've added a few little cubes to them. I have chosen these colors intentionally. Um I think of sorry, we're slightly off the slide here . I I think of um I use the color blue. I'm trying to explain this without explaining it. I use the color blue to denote things that come from above. And I use the color red here to denote things that come from below and you could call those red things sacrifices and you could call the blue things. Gifts that color scheme is going to come back in future presentations in very important ways. It's, it's immense. But for now, let's just leave it at that. So red is what comes from below. It's sacrifice and blue is what comes from above. And it is a gift. What you will find in life is that most people will only contribute up to what they get out of it. You, anywhere you look in life, anywhere you look in society, you're going to see this again and again and again and again, ok, young man gets a job. What's he looking for in a job? He's looking for pay, that's at least equal to what he puts into it. The second that changes where he feels like the pay he's getting out of it is less than the work he's putting in. Guess what he's going to do, he's going to quit relationships. How do people see relationships? They're willing to be in those relationships up to what they get out of it. The second they feel like it's a one way street, they're gone and on and on and on. Everything that everyone does is like this. What you'll find. We, we, I bet that there are people listening to me right now who are going to say, but here's an exception. I bet if you dug down into that you're going to find it's not an exception . And I would also bet that a piece of evidence that could support this is the fact that people will never act this way in just one thing in their lives. Cause you might say, well, I have this relationship with my dog that I will just give them anything and it doesn't matter what I get out of it or your significant other or whatever. For one, if I was some sort of cosmic genie, I could open up my menu of things that I know happened in this life and I could point to 10 different things on that menu that would cause you to change the behavior that, that you are performing, that you say is invariable. In other words, there are conditions that would break that, but we don't even really need to go there because if you're a little more honest about the situation, you would realize that the real reason you're doing those things is not because you love that dog, that person, your job or whatever. It's because you feel good by doing what you do. If I could flip some circuit breaker in your brain or your heart and cause you to not feel that way anymore, to feel really bad when you do those things, really tired, really angry, really disappointed, whatever would you keep doing it? What you'll find is the few people who do this who put in more than they get out, they do it all the time in all things. It's never case by case. It's never just for their dog or their significant other, their child or their job. They're all in all the time because it's a question of transcendental motive, transcendent motive. It's not a rules based, uh, protocol. It's something that comes out deeply out of who they are and what they're all about and they can't selectively apply it in their lives. Only putting in up to what you get out is a very bad way to live your life. You simply can't have nice things. You can't even scratch the surface of what our lives were designed to be. But they have the potential to be. Now, we could go through the entire canon of scripture elucidating these ideas. But I'm just going to share one passage. This is from Matthew five. The Lord says give to him that ask thee and from him that would borrow of thee, turn not thou away. You have heard that it has been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them, that curse you do good to them that hate you and pray for them, which despite use you and persecute you that ye may be the Children of your father, which is in heaven for he maketh his son to rise on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust for if ye love them, which love you, what reward have? Ye do? Not even the Publicans the same. And he says in another place, if you're going to have a feast, don't invite all the rich people that can have a feast and invite you back. Invite the poor and the maimed specifically because they have no ability to pay you. So who does that? Who does that? And what you'll find is the people that you think do that in specific instances. Sometimes they're actually only doing it because they feel good when they do. You see, they're still getting something out of it. Who does it when they get nothing out of it? And you say well, but if you're doing good, you're going to feel good. You should have a conversation with the Lord about that. You should reread the gospels and show me exactly at what point he felt good about what he was doing. Is that when they were driving the nails or when the whip was landing and tearing his back open? Was it when his best friends left him? Was it when he could not sense the presence of his father during the toughest time of his life? Is it when he sweat blood, taking upon himself? The price of the sins of those who hated him? When exactly did he feel good about all of that? Wasn't while he was doing that, doing it? I promise you that. But this is the cost of becoming a son or daughter of God. In that passage, we just read Matthew 545. He said that you may be the Children of your father, which is in heaven. And this, this word Children, it's the neuter version of son. So son or daughter, what does it mean to be a son or daughter in the scriptural sense? It's much more than just to, to be the genetic offspring of someone . It's to be like them. It's to be a worthy heir. It's to be prepared to receive all they have because you are like they are. And that's why the specification is here, father, which is in heaven, you adopt the law of heaven, the manner of heaven, which is to be all in all the time to give all you can all the time. That's what it means to be a son or daughter of God. Now, this is a long passage, but I think it's important to read from Matthew 25 watch. Therefore, for, you know, neither the day nor the hour wherein the son of man cometh. Now, I just want to pause there because the parable talks about a literal king coming literally to his servant. So he goes off and he comes back. But we should not just apply these references and there are many of them in the New Testament to talk about. You don't know when God is coming back. He's not saying the second coming. It includes that but it's not just in judgment, it's an opportunity. It's an invitation. It's in command. He comes back all the time and he will give you opportunities to learn more about him and act more like him all the time. And each and one of the, every one of those opportunities is him coming to you. And the question is how do you respond in this parable? It's a good demonstration of that because he's gonna talk about how you treated that person you saw in prison. That's how you treated me. That that opportunity was him coming. And that the moral of the story upfront before I even read. This is in this case, in this context, it is always do all you can all the time watch. Therefore for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the son of man cometh for the kingdom of heaven is as a man traveling into a far country who called his own servants and delivered unto them his goods and unto one, he gave five talents to another two and to another one to every man. According to his several ability. Straightway took his journey pa all of your time, all of your opportunities. Every choice that you have the potential to make. Every breath, you take the blood in your veins every day of life. Every single person around you, every drop of resources that you have or could have every character quality you have or could have all of these things are the talents that God has given you. We continue. Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same and made them other five talents. And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two. But he that received one went and digged in the earth and hid his Lord's money. After a long time, the Lord of those servants cometh and reckon with them. And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents. Saying Lord thou delivers unto me five talents behold, I have gained beside them five talents more. His Lord said unto him, well done. Thou good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a few things. I will make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. He also that had received two talents came and said , Lord, thou deliver it unto me two talents behold, I have gained two other talents beside them. His Lord said unto him, well done. Good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a few things. I will make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord pots. One of these servants was given five talents, he doubled it. Another of these servants was given two talents, he doubled it. Two talents is less than five talents. And yet the Lord said the same thing to both of them. He said, well done. Thou good. And faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a few things I will make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. They both had joy. They were both given much more than they had before. This is important and we'll come back to it. It's in everything you have for, in everything he has situation. How does he give you more? Well, he gives you a little more to see what you will do with it and the more you do with it, the more he will give you again. Now we continue. Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art in hard man reaping where thou hast not sown and gathering where thou hast not strawed and I was afraid and went and hid thy talent in the earth lo there. Thou hast that is thine pause. How could this servant claim that the master was a hard man where that he reaped where he had not sown and gathered where he had not Strawn who gave this servant, the one talent everything the servant had with which to increase to barter came from the master. And yet this is an attitude that we see all the time. People say, well, I would do more if I had more. Well, what do you have already? Are you really saying you don't have anything already? Are you really saying you're already all in if So raise your hand, come to the front of the class. I'd like to get to know you. His Lord answered and said unto him, thou wicked and slothful servant. Thou knowest that I reap where I sowed not and gather where I have not strawed thou oughts therefore to have put my money to the exchangers. And then at my coming, I should have received mine own with usury. Oz. Now this servant was not telling the truth, but instead of saying you're a liar, that's not how I am. His Lord said, OK, let's go with that. So did you even act according to that? No, you did not. Because if you really believed it, here's what you would have done instead so often our excuses for why we do the things that we do are utterly dishonest and even the smallest exercise of reason would identify that fact, always act according to what you say you believe. And if you find a reason that that's not a good idea, change, the belief, always be a fully reconciled person, do not create nonsense excuses for what you do. And least of all, if someone calls you out on it, that's the perfect time to change and become a better person that in itself is a tremendous gift. So don't throw it away. Continuing in verse 28 take therefore the talent from him and give it unto him, which hath 10 talents for unto everyone that hath shall be given and he shall have abundance. But from him that hath not shall be taken away, even that which he hath and cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Pause. So the Lord took away what the unprofitable servant did not make adequate use of. He received a gift but because he did not live up to the gift, the gift was taken away and it was given to one who deserved it. The Kingdom of God is a meritocracy and he will not hesitate to give even more to one that already has a lot if that person in fact deserves it more than anyone else. Verse 31 when the son of man shall come in his glory and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory and before him shall be gathered all nations and he shall separate, separate them one from another. As the shepherd divides his sheep from the goats and he shall set the sheep on his right hand. But the goats on the left then shall the king say unto them on his right hand. Come ye blessed of my father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was in hungered and ye gave me meat. I was thirsty . Well, hold on. Let's back it up. The kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. So I hope you see here. What's happening is the Lord says he created all of this from the foundation of the world as a process where you could have more if you were willing to get it. And how do you get it? You make use of the gifts that you're given, you go all in and you will ascend as much as you choose to because everything has been provided. The only thing that remains is your choice. How much heed, how much diligence will you exercise? Now, he tells us how we do it 35 for I wasn't hunger and you gave me meat. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you took me in naked and ye clothed me. I was sick and ye visited me, I was in prison and you came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him saying, Lord, when saw we thee and hungered and fed thee or thirsty and gave thee drink . When saw we thee a stranger and took thee in or naked and clothed the when shall we be sick or in prison? It came unto the and the king shall answer and say unto them verily. I say unto you inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. So it's in how we treat the people who cannot or will not reciprocate. That's how we treat the law. That's how we magnify the talent. Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, depart from me, cursed into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels for I was in hungered and ye gave me no meat. I was thirsty and ye gave me no drink. I was a stranger and ye took me not in naked and ye clothed me, not sick and in prison and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him? Saying, Lord, when saw we then hunger or thirst or a stranger naked or sick or in prison and did not minister unto thee, then shall he say it? He answered them saying verily, I say unto you inasmuch as you did it not to one of the least of these. You did it not to me and these shall go away into everlasting punishment but the righteous into life eternal. Now, there are two subtleties that I need to mention for the sake of due diligence to not lead you astray on this. Uh One is when we're talking, whenever we Jesus talks about the least or little Children or whatever, you have to at least think about the fact that he might be talking about his servants and not actual little kids or actual least of these like you talked about John the Baptist as the least um or in reference to John the Baptist. So you have to be careful there. But the other thing we have to be careful about is that this is not an admonishment to just throw your resources to the wind and say, well, ok, it's not gonna go anywhere. But that's exactly what the Lord's telling me to do is to focus on these things that aren't going to actually improve anything. It's not at all what he says, the servants are commended for improving what they were given. They had more of it to give in the end. Not less, they were using it in justifiable ways, but they did not stop short for fear of what might go wrong. They didn't just bury it in the earth and say, well, at least I've got this, they used it, they used it. So now we need to call attention to things that you probably aren't going to connect to all this without a little outside help. When we talk about giving all you can, we could talk about this for a long time and give you details. But we're just going to briefly talk about it in two categories within and without internally and with others. So to give all you can internally it means and if you've been with us for some time, these things are gonna ring a bell, it means to have a life plan and live it. You're never ever going to get to your full potential if you don't have an explicit plan and you haven't thought about it and you don't have a way to decompose that down into your daily activities. You absolutely need to do that. Or you will never ever even scratch the surface of your potential. These people, they always speak, feel and act according to what they believe, they don't lie to themselves, they don't lie to others. They don't feel one way and act another. They're consistent, integral people. They always revise their beliefs the moment they have sufficient reason and they only do what they have sufficient reason to do. That's how you stack the, what you put in inside of yourself. These are little things. There's four bullets. It's, you can say it in a minute. If you did even just one of these things, you will have a radically different life in every way. How many of them do you do consistently? Probably not right now. But you can change that. You just go, it's like going to your breaker box and go down the line and flip the breakers, just do it starting today, write this down, maybe work on one of them a week, but look at it every day, look at this, every night, look at it and say, did I deviate from this in any way? How write it down in your journal? Say I'm never gonna do that again. You can achieve this. I promise you. What about externally? What about with others? They do? What they believe is best for the world all the time . They, there's no such thing in their accounting anymore. There's no separate column for just themselves and then everybody else, they're just another person in the world and that's how they choose everything that they do all the time. If anything, they care more about other people than they do themselves , they don't just care about others as themselves. They will let someone else have that last doughnut because they care more about that other person than they care about themselves. How do they care about other people? It, it's not in terms of what the other people say. They want. You know, if your kid says they want to light the woods on fire, you're not gonna say here's a can of gas and some matches have fun. You say no, we don't do that and here's why or maybe I'll explain to you later, but we're not gonna do that instead. I need you to eat this broccoli. So you care for others according to benefits , not desire, not their desire, stand up for what is true, good, beautiful, useful and on and on and on anything that's Godly. They praise what is praiseworthy. They correct what is wrong, they support what is right. They actually do what Jesus would do in their situation. They forgive everybody all the time automatically and immediately can you imagine what this world would be like if everyone just lived according to these two slides? Now, if you have the guts to take even a step towards this. I need to warn you and I'm not going to pull any punches in the warning. I promise you 100% that if you live your life this way very quickly, you're going to see at least signs that this is where it's going or you may find yourself in this place, what you get out of doing, this is going to be far less, far, far less than what you put in. This is going to be true in very large ways. But I'll tell you, it's , that's not the part that hurts the most. That's not the part that hurts the most. So I can tell you, you know, I can read these bullets. This, these are the big things. You're going to learn the depravity of humankind. A fullness of hate can only be seen in the face of a fullness of love. It won't come out before that can only see it in that context. Only those who love with a fullness can ever know what a fullness of hate is like because those are the only people who will ever see it. The only, the only people who experience it. It's pendulum. You'll experience the insufficiency of meaning in everything that is valued by the natural man. You'll learn that nothing here, nothing can justify its true and total cost. But those are the big things. The little things that are actually even worse are are when you come to see, for example, just how many people are willing to do so little, so little to support what is good, right? Justified, reasonable. And you'll see just how little it takes to make a seemingly good person do outright evil things. And that will break your heart more than any of this, more than any of this. You'll see that, that in cases where the most tremendous suffering could be alleviated so substantially with the tiniest, tiniest gesture of just human decency and people won't do it. So that's the bad news folks. I'm not pulling punches. This is how it really is. So, what the heck, I mean, I led you up to what you thought was a, you know, a ramp going higher and higher and we've come to a cliff and I just shoved you off it. Not quite. Sometimes you have to descend in order to ascend. That's certainly the case with all of this. So let me tell you now that the good news, it's not just good news because it solves this problem. All of this is by design because it's the only thing I i it's the very reason all of mortality is structured the way it is, this was all intentionally done. We're all mixed up what I just showed you wouldn't be the case in heaven because we're all arranged differently there. We're not subject to the same circumstances. All of it is intentionally situated here for one purpose really. And that is to better understand and live more of God's love. That's where all of this leads you to. This is darkness. And now with that contrast, I'm going to show you light that you can't see without it. This picture tells the story. What you have to understand is that even though your scales will always look like this, if you live this way or what you get out of it is going to be far less than what you put in. This does not tell the whole story. This is true, but there's a bigger picture. You are someone else's right side of the scale. And now I'm gonna show you what what I mean by that. Here's the picture we've been using. And now I wanna show you the same picture in a different representation which is a network. And on this network, each white globe is a person. You're at the top of this one. Now, these blue arrows are the same blue arrows here and the red arrows are the same red arrows here. And so the blue is the gift that you give to those below you. Red is what they give in return. And again, when we talk about reciprocation, just to call your memory back to the beginning of this. We're not talking about quote unquote things they do for you that's included in it, but that's not what we're talking about. We're also talking about just the joy they have how they're going to live their lives differently as a result. You know, if you took your life savings as this Blue Arrow, you took your life savings and it was a lot because you've worked your butt off and just sacrificed everything and you're old and about to die and you gave all of it to some random young man who said, you know what I really wanna do, I wanna be a mechanic and for some reason I can't do that working for someone else. If I just had a shop, I could do all these tremendous things and hire people and make everyone's lives better. And you say, well, it sounds good to me. Here's the check and then what he, what he actually does is he spends the money on a, on a sports car and gets a job at mcdonald's and you're like, all right. Well, I mean, he's getting something out of that but he's really not getting out of it. What he said he would and what I was hoping he would and, uh, it's not really helping anyone else. So that's a lot less than what I gave because I know what it costs for me to earn all that money and save it and not spend it on things for myself or, uh, you know, even just things that you need for life. I just, I wore my clothes longer than I had to. I put holes in my shoes. I had old cars, we didn't go on vacations as a family. And now this Yahoo just bought, bought a sports car and I guess he's getting joy out of that, but not really. You see and more often than not, that's the way it goes. Ok. In fact, it always goes that way because if it doesn't go that way, this person actually goes ahead of you. But I digress, this is not the whole picture though. Yes, you're giving much more than you ever get. But these people are not the limits of the universe. There are other people, there are other people. And what you might not be seeing is that everything you had in the first place was a gift from above and everything that's coming to you is a gift as well. And that gift. So that remember the parable of the talents, I have 10 talents. I get another 10. What does he say? I'm going to give you even more? Well, he already gave me five and because of what he gave me, I got another five. He technically gave me that too. And now he's going to give me even more. You see who counterbalances the scales. It's the one above you and now you're scratching your head and you say, OK, well, jeez, you just exploded my inside on all of this. But why are you saying one above? Why don't you just say God? Because God stands at the top of this chain. He employs many other people that's critical to understand. All right. Now, what about, what about our service to God? We're gonna , we're gonna address this middle part here because I just threw this up here and I didn't explain it. Uh This is, this is the merger of the, of the networks here. And I want to illustrate some ideas and we're going to go to uh first John 316 to talk about this. This is a wonderful little verse hereby perceive we the love of God because he laid down his life for us. We ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. Now again, it's a little ambiguous who the brethren are. But for now, let's just assume this means others. OK? Will take in the most general sense to me and everyone else. Let me ask you a question and you can look to this first to get the answer. How do you come to see more of the love of God? It's through what other people sacrifice for you? People who are better than you? What should you do about that? You should take everything they give you and give it to those who are less than you. You flow the love down. Why? Why shouldn't you give it back to the person who gave it to you? Wouldn't that be the right thing to do? Love those who love you? Don't you remember? We read about what Jesus had to say about that. He says, no turn and love others. The ones that can't ever love you back the same way you love them. Go love them. Instead, we could talk about this more extensively and I don't know how appropriate it would be, but maybe we'll just poke a little into it. One danger of, of paying attention to this is you're going to get into situations where you feel like you have paid back the person who has loved you. But here's the thing we, I always like to use the example of a mother because it's I think very easy to understand your mom decided to, to give birth to you. Even if you weren't planned, she had nine months to think about it. She decided to give birth to you without any way of knowing if it would ever be worth it. And because she did that, you owe her your life forever, at least for this life and nothing you ever do. You could be the most brilliant, successful, loving, compassionate, charitable whiz bang, genius person and funny and good looking to boot and it still would never repay her. There's literally nothing you could ever do to repay her for that sacrifice. And this is just like when we read that while we were yet sinners, Jesus loved us first. He is the reason he is the way he is everything about our capacity to become more than we are and get anywhere near where it would be worth it to do what he did for us because he did it first. And he is the reason there's nothing we could do to ever repay him. And so he instead, he says, well, I'll tell you what I'd like you to do. You're never going to repay me. But what I'd like you to do because we owe him everything he says, all I need you to do is love others the way I already have loved you. So look around you and all the people who are still quote unquote sinners, all the people who can't possibly right now love you back the way you already love them because I have loved you. That's the love that you're projecting out. You know what that's like and you know, I love them that way. So now what I want you to do is you love them that way and because you did this while they were yet sinners quote unquote, this is much bigger than just sin while they could not love you back. You love them or before I should say before they could love you back, you love them, you love them more than they could ever love you because they did not know how much God loves them, but you do a little more, at least because of that, there's nothing they could ever do to pay you back. Do you see how that works? This is how he says right here hereby perceive we the love of God. You cannot appreciate a gift until you pay the price to give it to someone else as you love others, the way that God loves you, you will more fully understand His love for you. And it's a flow as you flow out everything he has flowed, flowed to you. He will immediately flow more to you. So I hope this is starting to make sense. OK? Now, now let's address this bit here. The equivalents is between what you give to others. That's, that's never going to be equal to what He has given to you. But it is how you determine the sacrifice you're making for Him. This arrow here , your gift. If you will to God, it's composed of all the gifts you give to those lower than you. That's how we serve Him is in what we suffer for the benefit of others. That is your love for God. It is no different than that. And so if you limit the love, the gifts, you give the love, the amount of suffering you suffer for the benefit of other people. If you have a cap on that, you will also have a cap on how much you love God because they're inseparable. They're the same thing. Your sacrifice to God equals your suffering for your fellow men, for their benefit, not arbitrary suffering, but suffering for their benefit. Do you understand that that's the only equal scale in this whole system and it's always equal. It's always the same because you control this one through this. They're one and the same, this scale will never ever be equal. God will always do more for you than you do for Him. Just as you will always do more for those that you serve. It is a hierarchical flow. Now again, there are many scriptures about this. So we're just gonna keep it brief. Your sacrifice to one above is what you give to those below. No, we switch back into this one above language. Why? Because it's true at every level, it's true at every level. Are you grateful for what someone has done for you? Then go do something for someone else, do the same something, Mosiah 217, when you are in the service of your fellow beings, you are only in the service of your God. It is a completely coupled equivalence. You want to serve God, serve your fellow men. Are you serving your fellow men? You're serving God. John 2116. The Lord says Simon son of Jonas love is thou me. He saith unto him. Yeah, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. So Simon is saying in his words. Yeah, II I do love you and he knows that Jesus can see his heart. So he's confused by all this. And what does Jesus say? Feed my sheep? Jesus repeats this several times. You can read the chapter he's trying to get into Peter's head. You show your love for me and you feel your love for me and you express your love for me. Only there. How you, you feed my sheep , how you love others. John 1334 a new commandment I give unto you that ye love one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another. It's crystal clear. Even if you've never seen it before. Now you do. this is how you become one with God by doing at your level. What he has done at his and continues to do at his John 15 9 as the father hath loved me. So have I loved you? Continue ye in my love, slow it down the network. John 1723 I in them and thou in me that they may be made perfect in one and that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them as thou hast loved me. How does the world know more about Jesus through you treating them as he would, this will cause them to climb up the chain and know Him better to be perfect. And one John 15 9 to 13 as the father hath loved me. So have I loved you? Continue ye in my love. What is this continue business? We've seen it now twice. It means to keep flowing. The love. Don't let it stop with you. Respond to the fact that someone has loved you more than you deserve or before you deserved by going and loving everyone else. The same way. Verse 10, if you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love. Even as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. It's how you get in and stay in this network. These things have I spoken unto you that my joy might remain in you and that your joy might be full. Do you see how He does not say that my joy might be full in you? Why? Because His fullness of joy comes from above just like yours. Does it come from below? But because of His joy that comes from above, your joy might be full. If you love others as He has loved you, you take your place in His kingdom and flow out to others. What has been given to you? Verse 12, this is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends and who are your friends. They're the people you choose to lay your life down for. This is not a description of what they give to you or how they feel about you. It's what you do to them before. There's any reason to accept the fact that God did it to you as you think about where you are with respect to God. I want to clue you in on something if I ask you, well, what's, what's holding you back and say, oh, I struggle with this sin or oh, this person did me wrong and I really am struggling to forgive them or I really need to be better at this. And I just, every time I try, I slip into my old, no, those could all be true at some level. But let's get to a higher level at the root. Every single thing holding you back in your life is actually a lack of love. It's a lack of your willingness to love others . It's a difference between how much God has loved you that you know about and how much you're willing to love others the same way that is 100% of your problem. We could talk through every one of those issues and I could show you convincingly that it's a lack of love. I'll just go through a few. Maybe you, you'd say, well, this or that and what it comes down to is some kind of fear. Well, all fear is really just a fear of loss. The fear of loss shows a lack of faith and love. Love conquers all things. Love definitely conquers fear. The scriptural phrase is perfect. Love. Caste out all fear. Charity doesn't fail. It conquers everything. Love conquers all. And if you really love, you cannot fear, you will stick your neck out again and again and again. What about hesitation or lack of intensity. If you just, you're holding back in some way, you're not all in, you're not going all out. The only reason for that you could say whatever you want, it boils down to you believe that there's something better than God's love. You can only fully abide in God's love. When you're going all out, it takes everything. If you want everything he has, it costs everything you have. There's no partial way to get it. And if you're holding back in any way, if you're not chomping at the bed, if you don't jump out of bed every day and detect every single day with your full tenacity to the point that you scare the people around you. It's because you think there's something better than God's love. But I'm telling you there is not, it truly is the greatest of all things. Finally. What about sin again? You think your sin is this that whatever you think it's some specific thing. It's not, you can't repent of one thing. It's never just one thing. It's much, it's always a deeper bigger thing that is to say it is always one thing, but it's not the specific thing you think. Oh, I, I struggled to with lying. No, no, that's not the problem or whatever it might be. I get angry. I do this, I do that whatever. It's because you believe there's something better than God's love. If you had any clue what God's love was and just how good it is. That's why in heaven, none of these temptations exist because there's no veil on God's love. It's not to say that all people see it equally. It's to say that whatever you're aware of that could possibly tempt you. You're aware of enough of God's love that none of that tempts you ever again. That's what changes temptation takes it away. It's God's love, your knowledge of God's love. All right. So what do you do about all this? OK. I hope your takeaway from this. Look at the left side of your scales and you put everything you can into that, you pour out your whole soul into life. You only do what, what makes sense to do that with you, find those people, those things, those situations, those hopes that will support the full weight of your whole soul and then you eat it up. You do what is best you do everything you can. You're all in all the time. You crash down on your pillow at night , more exhausted than you thought anyone could ever be. You jump up the next morning and you do it again as you're doing this, you know, with the fullness of expectation and trust, you know, that God will make it worthwhile and nothing less will do. Now for a final slide, I, I just want to specifically clue you in on a few things and these are going to be dense statements that I just don't have time to go into, but I wanted to give some bread, bread crumbs for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. Love is hierarchical. It's not reciprocal, reciprocally balanced. It's always a flow. If you take any two people, even those that say they love each other, they're going to have a difference in love. Love always flows from greater to lesser. Even if there's some loop back to the greater, it will never compensate for what they give. It doesn't work that way. It's always a flow. What we've been talking about this entire presentation is not just what we've been talking about. It's also been uh a better explanation of covenant than you've ever heard before. Everything you have is in exchange for everything someone else has when that someone else is better to you. That's what a covenant is better than you. Specifically. The new and everlasting covenant is the love of God. And it too is hierarchical. Different people have different amounts of the love of God inside of them, meaning that they love others with different amounts of the love of God, but it always flows from greater to lesser covenants are never initiated from below. That's a crazy idea. There's no support for that in the scriptures. It's never happened. They're received by responding to what has already come unbidden from above because the second you live up to what you're given, you will receive more God jealously guards his position as the head of all things. Remember he who is greatest is he who is least he does everything necessary to be the servant of all in these things. Reciprocation is not an equality but the necessary condition to abide love. That's that loop back to hire. It's not a reciprocation. It's just the minimum that it takes for you to stay there as the father hath loved me. So have I loved you continue ye in my love. If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love. Even as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love, John 15 9 to 10. And I want to leave you with a profound thought which I hope changes your life, every piece of information you have about what God would do in your place, which includes all the commandments. It's designed to help you better live how He would in your place, which is a tremendous gift because it's how you become the channel of his love to another person in , in his commandments. These are not arbitrary things for which he punishes or blesses us, depending on how we react. He's giving us the very ingredients we need to carry the love of God to others. That is a tremendous gift, a tremendous gift.