love

Prelude to a Dying Savior’s Last Words

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Sunday’s message from John 13:31-38 is now on the web. You can listen to the audio here.

Here’s how I summarized things:

Because of Jesus’ great care in preparing His own for His departure, we should believe in Him as the Messiah, God’s Son – His pointing to glory both of the Father and the Son, His providing for grief in the New Commandment to love one another, and His protecting from guilt in the predicting and praying through betrayal. Have you put your faith in Jesus as the Messiah? His miraculous works commend Him to you. His astonishing claims do the same. And His compassionate care for His own beckons you to trust Him. No one will ever care for you as thoroughly, lovingly, and completely as Jesus. Believe Him today!

6 Reasons to Be a Faithful Member of a Local Church

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A friend of mine in ministry posted a link on Facebook to an article about church membership.

I am so grateful for over twenty-five folks in this fall’s edition of Discover OGC! I am looking forward tomorrow to sharing with them about the doctrines of grace.

Here is #3 of the reasons in this post:

You become a more committed part of a spiritual family. Joining a local church demonstrates a certain level of commitment. It shows that you want to be more than a bystander, that you want to be involved in ministry in a more significant way. Joining a local church is like entering into a covenant relationship with other believers in order to love them as an active part of a spiritual family (1 Jn 4:7). We also need the spiritual oversight and soul care of faithful shepherds (Heb 13:17).

I couldn’t agree more. You can read the entire piece here.

37 Ways to Love One Another

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Someone sent me a link with a thorough list of the one another passages of the New Testament confirming my notion that they all constitute intricacies of the ultimate grace of loving within our relationships in the body of Christ.

The author introduces the list with this provocative assertion:

A local church is not built by one man, or even a few men, but by every believer being actively involved in ministry through evangelizing the lost people in their lives and serving their fellow Christians. A quick glance at the practice of the New Testament church reveals that they thought very little about programs and very much about relationships.

For more of his thoughts as well as the complete list of the one another passages for your study and prayer click here.

The Grace of Serving (Part 1)

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Today’s message from Galatians 5:1-15 is now on the web. You can listen to the audio here.

I articulated the main theme of the text this way:

So here is my main take away from this text in terms of what it means through love serve one another. Beware turning liberty in Christ into license to sin by serving others through love by practicing biblical peacemaking. Love one another well through a devoted bondslave-like service in so-far-as-it-depends-on-you-live-peaceably-with-all (Rom. 12:18), God-glorifying, Christ-imitating, biblically-informed conflict resolution at every turn.

As promised, here is the link for the September 22-25, here in Orlando, Peacemaker Ministries National Conference, with the theme of Hope in Brokenness.

Christ's Love the Source

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I continue to read through the Free Grace Broadcaster edition of Loving One Another as I launch our new series The Graces of Gospel-Shaped Community.

In a reprint of one of Charles Spurgeon’s sermons, I came across this powerfully motivating paragraph:

Do you feel the love of God shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Ghost? Knowing is [good], but enjoyment as the result
of believing is better. Does it not sometimes force the tears from your eyes to think that Jesus loved you and gave
Himself for you? On the other hand, does it not at times make you feel as if, like David, you could dance before the
ark of the Lord? To think that the love of God should ever have been set on you? That Christ should die for you?
Ah, think and think again: For you the bloody sweat, for you the crown of thorns, for you the nails, the spear, the
wounds, the broken heart—all, all for love of you who were His enemy! In proportion as your heart is tender and is
sensitive to this love, it will become a constraining influence to your whole life. The force of this influence will also
depend very much upon the grace that dwells within you. You may measure your grace by the power that the love
of Christ has over you. Those who dwell near their Lord are so conscious of His power over them that the very
glances of His eyes fill them with holy ardor. If you have much grace, you will be greatly moved by the love that
gave you that grace and [will be] wondrously sensitive to it. But he who hath little grace, as is the case with not a
few, can read the story of the cross without emotion and can contemplate Jesus’ death without feeling. God deliver
us from a marble heart, cold and hard!

What he said.

The Ultimate Grace of Loving (Part 3)

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Yesterday’s message from 1 John 4:7-12 is now on the web. You can listen to the audio here.

I summarized the text this way:

So treasure the centrality of love – sweet, endless, lavish – love in the Godhead – ultimatley sourced in the Father’s amazing being, historically secured in the Son’s atoning mission, and continually seen through the Spirit’s abiding presence – seen in the intricacies of showing honor, showing hospitality, mutual burden-bearing, and bearing with others and forgiving others.

If you would like to order a subscription to Free Grace Broadcaster, the gratis quarterly publication I mentioned at the top of the message, click here.

May the Lord grant us grace to dress ourselves in the garments of virtue, especially the ultimate grace of loving in our gospel-shaped community.

The Highest Charity

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I opted to preach from Hebrews 13:4 for my wedding sermon last Friday night.

Let marriage be held in honor among all.

The context at the end of chapter 12 urges the reader to offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, since He is a consuming fire. Presumably the bullet points at the top of chapter 13 spell out what that looks like in all kinds of ways, like esteeming marriage as an honorable estate.

But for this post, my attention turns to the first thing on the writer’s list in Hebrews 13:1 – Let brotherly love continue.

Now I can think of a host of specifics which flesh that out in the everyday covenant commitments among followers of Jesus, but none perhaps more virtuous than that of intercessory prayer.

J. C. Ryle, in a tract entitled A Call to Prayer, comments:

This is the highest charity. He loves me best who loves me in his prayers. This is for our soul’s health. It enlarges our sympathies and expands our hearts. This is for the benefit of the church. The wheels of all machinery for extending the gospel are moved by prayer. They do as much for the Lord’s cause who intercede like Moses on the mount, as they do who fight like Joshua in the thick of the battle. This is to be like Christ. He bears the names of his people, as their High Priest, before the Father. Oh, the privilege of being like Jesus! This is to , be a true helper to ministers. If I must choose a congregation, give me a people that pray.

This morning in our weekly prayer/staff meeting six of us prayed through the Tuesday group on the OGC prayer/directory call list. Am I ever glad we did.

Is it time to dust off your copy of that sheet with all those names and phone numbers? Why not lay a little charity of the highest form tomorrow on the J through Ms?

And then just keep on rolling through the rest of the week and beyond so that love of the brethren might continue in our precious flock.

What God Truly Requires of His Covenant People

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Today’s message is now online. You can listen to the audio here.

Matthew Henry writes this about what God requires of His covenant people in Micah 6:8:

The good which God requires of us is not the paying of a price for the pardon of sin and acceptance with God, but doing the duty which is the condition of our interest in the pardon purchased. (1.) We must do justly, must render to all their due, according as our relation and obligation to them are; we must do wrong to none, but do right to all, in their bodies, goods, and good name. (2.) We must love mercy; we must delight in it, as our God does, must be glad of an opportunity to do good, and do it cheerfully. Justice is put before mercy, for we must not give that in alms which is wrongfully got, or with which our debts should be paid. God hates robbery for a burnt-offering. (3.) We must walk humbly with our God. This includes all the duties of the first table, as the two former include all the duties of the second table. We must take the Lord for our God in covenant, must attend on him and adhere to him as ours, and must make it our constant care and business to please him. Enoch’s walking with God is interpreted (Heb. 11:5) his pleasing God. We must, in the whole course of our conversation, conform ourselves to the will of God, keep up our communion with God, and study to approve ourselves to him in our integrity; and this we must do humbly (submitting our understandings to the truths of God and our will to his precepts and providences); we must humble ourselves to walk with God (so the margin reads it); every thought within us must be brought down, to be brought into obedience to God, if we would walk comfortably with him. This is that which God requires, and without which the most costly services are vain oblations; this is more than all burnt-offerings and sacrifices.

May we heed Evan’s exhortation to live each day with eyes to see the opportunities He puts before us to live well with both bottom-line trajectories, horizontal and vertical, in mind.

With Whom Are You Fighting?

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The apostle Paul calls the Christian life a fight in places like 1 Tim. 6:12.

J. C. Ryle devotes chapter four of his book Holiness to this notion.  You can read an online version of the book here.

HolinessEarly on he asks a crucial question that reminds us of the paramount importance of practicing biblical peacemaking in the local church.

With whom is the Christian soldier meant to fight? Not with other Christians. Wretched indeed is that man’s idea of religion who fancies that it consists in perpetual controversy! He who is never satisfied unless he is engaged in some strife between church and church, chapel and chapel, sect and sect, faction and faction, party and party, knows nothing yet as he ought to know. No doubt it may be absolutely needful sometimes to appeal to law courts in order to ascertain the right interpretation of a church’s articles and rubrics and formularies. But, as a general rule, the cause of sin is never so much helped as when Christians waste their strength in quarreling with one another and spend their time in petty squabbles.

Let us fight the good fight with our mortal enemies the world, the flesh, and the devil (1 John 2:15-16; Eph. 6:11) but let us eschew any strife among one another in the family of God.