Dear friends, if it may please
Almighty God this morning to come and grant much needful help,
I'd ask you to turn to the chapter that Tom has read to us this
morning, John's Gospel, chapter 15 and verse 12. John's Gospel, chapter 15 and
verse 12. is my commandment that ye love
one another as I have loved you. I'd like to read also verses 13 and
14. So John chapter 15 from verse
12, this is my commandment that ye love one another as I have
loved you. Greater love hath no man than
this, than a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever
I command you. Beloved friends, this morning
we have such a vast subject a great ocean fullness. In this word love, it's so immense, it's so great. May we know something of the
blessing of it, the favour of it, even the renewing of it,
the sweetness of it, the joy of it in our souls. and in our
lives from this day onwards. This is my commandment, that
ye love one another. And this is why the Lord Jesus
Christ said it, as I have loved you. And so therefore we cannot
separate it from the next verse. Greater love hath no man than
this, that a man The man Christ Jesus lay down his life for his
friends. May we by faith come to Gethsemane this morning. Come to Calvary. our Saviour, the Son of God,
God's own dearly beloved Son. In Gethsemane's garden, being in an agony, the Saviour sweat, as it were,
great drops of blood falling down to the ground. You are my friends if you do
whatsoever I command you. Was ever love like this? The Lord of life and glory came
down from heaven to seek and to save that which was lost. His name was called Jesus at
his birth. he shall save his people from
their sins. So the Lamb of God he came forth
to be slain. Greater love hath no man than
this. The Lamb of God, God's Son, stooped
down into this lower world of sin and darkness. and wickedness, greater love
of no man than this. He left his father's side in
glory. He stooped so very low. He came
to bear in his own holy body the sins of all his people upon
the cross. We read in the Gospel accounts
that which he bore, that which he suffered, that which he went
through, that which in willingness and obedience to his Father in
heaven he gave up his life as a ransom for many. Greater love has no man than
this. This is the very pinnacle of
love. This is the very highest form
of love. Love that is beyond our comprehension
and yet It was for sinners that Jesus Christ came to suffer for,
to bleed for, to die for, to give his life for. Sins that were not his own. The Lamb of God was pure and
holy. harmless sinners undefiled separate
from sinners and yet that deep and great and tremendous compassion this is my commandment as he speaks to us this morning
that ye love one another How does this speak to you this
morning? May the word speak to us individually. May it speak to us collectively. Because it affects us each and
it affects us all. This is my commandment. commandment is not one that you
can pick and choose. Do if you want to. Don't do it
if you don't feel like it. It's not something you can pick
up and you can put down. It's not something for today and then
we've done it. This is that which we must strive
for. We need that constant daily help
of grace, of patience. We need that God-given
desire and longing in our hearts to be obedient, to be willing. This love one to another is a
two-way thing. It's not that we can sit back
and think everybody else can be loving and kind and forbearing
and gentle to us. There are, of course, those times
in our lives when in various situations there may be that greater need whereby we are the recipients
of others' love and kindness, tenderness, gentleness, These
are the fruits of the spirits. May we each long for them, pray
for them, and seek to be doers of the word, not just hearers
only. Not to just hear that we must love, that we may have that
urgency, that desire, that which is in the very depths of our
hearts to fulfill. word of God. You may say I'm
not very good, I'm not very able. Friends in truth we none of us
are. Sometimes try and build up a
little wall around ourselves by which we can distance ourselves
and such things. something perhaps we're not in
our comfort zone with and that we feel that we can not do. It's not what the Word of God
says. The Word of God is clear. The
Word of God says this morning, this is my commandment. And a commandment is a word of
authority. God is the Almighty Judge. It
is God's Word. God sent his only dearly beloved
Son into the world. God is love. God is faithful. Psalm 18 and we've sung just
in the beginning of that hymn this morning or part of it. about
the perfection of God. The Word of God is full of the
wisdom of God. Who are we then to say what we
will do, when we will do it? Beloved friends, it's not under
our terms. An army officer, someone in authority,
you're high ranking in the forces, in the military, speak the word
and there is that with which it is spoken it is spoken under authority and those
that are in the unit they hear it is that word of authority
and they work together as a unit. You had a group of soldiers,
a battalion, a troop And they were all doing what they wanted,
whenever they wanted. It would be chaos. They would never have any mastery
over the enemy that was coming. The Word of God is pure. The Word of God must be our rule. She's a lamp to our feet. Perhaps even a word like this
this morning. Or it may be a testing word. The word of God is used in many ways in many
lives and has been so down through the generations of time. We are
gathered together on God's day in God's house. with God's Word. This is my commandment. My, the great and the eternal
and the holy God who rules and reigns and in a moment can crash
this world and bring it to nothing. Who are we then as a puny man
or a puny woman to say what we can, can't, will or won't do? For when we would do it, it is
not under our terms, friends. Humble yourself therefore under
the mighty hand of God. It is then that humility we can
keep such a word. Greater love hath no man than
this to ever come back to the humility of Jesus Christ. Can any good thing come out of
Nazareth, that humble place? Shall we call to Nazarene Now we are thankful that the
Lamb of God as he came to this little world, born in that humble
stable, in that humble place, those humble parents, became the Saviour full of truth,
full of love. full of power, full of authority. This is my commandment. So this is not a gospel writer's
commandment. This is not me coming among you
this morning to tell you that you must be loving, tender, gentle,
kind, thoughtful, willing, one to another. This is the commandment. This is the word of the Lord
Jesus Christ. This is the word of God's Son. I and my Father are one. Greater love of no man than this. And so as we come together this
morning, there is much throughout the
whole of scripture that speaks of love. But as God may be pleased to
help us this morning to keep this here in context, there
are many aspects of love. many callings in our life to
do all things in love. We'll come back to the third
chapter at the beginning, near the beginning of this Gospel of John. Greater love hath no man than
this. Come to verse 13, 14. As Moses lifted up the serpent
in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. Greater love hath no man than
this, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but
have eternal life. For God so loved the world that
he gave his only begotten Son and whosoever believeth in him
should not perish but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son
into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through
him might be saved. Hallelujah. What a Savior. What love, what manner of love that this man lay down his life
for his friends. Is there a wonder my dear friends
this morning that we are called to love one another? And that's
through thick and thin. It's through the hard times as
well as the good times. To love. You may be able to cite things
in your own life, in your own families. Nearby we see what the complete opposite of
love does. It destroys. It breaks up. There is no cohesion. And so there is this great exaltation. In which we must each strive. Individually. And as a church. As the body of Christ. It's made
up of many members. How needful and how necessary
it is for every member of the body to be working. How needful and how necessary
it is to have a heart. But quite equally, it's needful
and necessary for the body to have all the little tiny veins
and capillaries. Yes, the heart may do the great
work, but how the little veins, they take the blood to the very
extremities of the body. And so how needful and necessary
it is in the church that we strive not, but that we love, that we do
all things in love, whether that which we do is as a greater part or seemingly
or feeling as a lesser part. It is as one. To be one in Christ,
the one thing needful, dearest Lord, is to be one with Thee. That oneness. So how is it that
we can come, that we love one another, that
love is not a momentary love, that love is not even just to
be spoken and to intimate perhaps that we have a love and yet that
love within us is not real, it's not deep-seated, it's not that
which strives and continues to love and to love and to love
again. For the Word of God tells us
we will each pass through much tribulation if we are to enter
the kingdom And so we're not promised a smooth and easy, trouble
free, worry free, care free, affliction free life. But for the wonders of God's
grace, the wonders of his love, the goodness that he bestows
upon his people and upon his church, that we each bear one another
and bear with one another in love. And without this great ingredient
of love then there is enmity, there's
hatred, there's evil, there's wickedness. And we don't have
to, I started to mention it just now, didn't I? You may know that
in our individual lives and our families perhaps, but we look
out into the world. You don't have to look very far
away from us. The increase in hatred and evil. Stabbings. Stabbings are on the increase,
not just among older people, but young people. young boys
young girls living up living and growing
up in broken lives the generation growing up in
the world now for the most part are godless not growing up is
going to a Sunday school even or church any place of worship no worship of any real or great
sort even if it's done in schools it's godless. Forsaken God with
forsaken his word and so the great principles and truths of
the Word of God are not known by some let alone being ignored
or not heeded to. Perilous times shall come. We
see it, we hear it, we know of it. Let us come back to ourselves
this morning. Let's come back to you. Let's
come back to me. What do we know of the love of
Christ? What do we know of this dear
man, the son of God, the saviour of sinners, the friend of the friendless? go through the Gospels can't
you? You see to whom the Lord Jesus
Christ went to, whom Jesus had compassion on, touched the untouchables, to the blind, to the sick, to
the deaf, to the lame, to the weak, to the lepers, to the poor,
not to the rich and the famous and the wealthy and the well,
those high in society and those who might be able to help him. Jesus came to serve. Every Christian believer is called
to serve, to be a disciple, Paul said to Timothy, be thou
a good soldier of the Lord Jesus Christ. I remember James saying a long
time ago now, you can always tell a lazy soldier
because his boots are never dirty. Those who are in the unit, they will be grafting
one for another. Just as it is, if you have any
team, they're each there competing in a team for each other. Their aim and their goal and
their desires is to win, is to go forward, it's to be
able to progress. And the same in a team, they
will have a manager or a captain. That manager or captain will
be the one who gives the command. He gives them the plan. He gives them that which they
are to do and that they are not to do. He tells them the way
to do it and the way not to do it. And so that action plan is
put into place for a reason, for a purpose. So we have God's words. God is over all. God is almighty,
all powerful. You see in that team, if there
are those that decide, well, I'm going to do it my way. I know better. I've got this, I've got that. There is no humility to bow under
the one to whom is a captain or a manager who knows the better. Or perhaps if in that team there
are various groups and they have their own little
game plan. And they're not willing to listen.
They're not willing to heed. They're not willing to be doers. Now I realize that's very poor.
Friends, now bring that back and consider it in the church
of God. We have the word of God. God has given you a pastor. A man in and of himself, yes. But it is that God-given way
to deliver the message to the people, to the churches. It is that right way. He seeks to bring the Word of
God to you. How do you receive it? Do you
hear it? Or do you reject it? Do you hear
it and then forget it? Or is there that good ground
in which it goes? The good sea which is the Word
of God. This is my commandment that ye
love one another because as in the Church of God
if there is strife, if there is that struggling, if there are those who think they
know better, there are those who think that
they can do their own thing in their own way, in their own time,
does not bring for unity, doesn't bring love, does it? It brings that difficulty. It brings trial,
it brings trouble. There is no honour and glory
for God. And the dear labourer, he still
has to come and stand here each week. The Lord knows why we've
come here this morning. I know nothing. But in these things and principles
from the Word of God, the man still has to stand. And
unless anybody has stood in the pulpit and ministered the Word
of God, having been sent with the authority of God to do so,
no one else can ever understand. No one else can begin to realize
how it feels. in the before time, times in
the night times, in the vestry, so on their knees in the pulpit
and then as they stand. You love one another. There is no greater joy and no
greater benefit the Church of God and to our
souls individually than loving one another, that real love,
that God-given love, that God-motivated love, that love that's motivated
by the Word of God, that we may be used in the service
our glorious Master. We have in the Word of God the
great example of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are called to be followers
of the Lord Jesus Christ. What compassion, what love, what
zeal, what care he gave over those whom he was with and those
whom he was about. And so we have his great example, the fulfilling of his love from
the beginning of his life to the end of his life, it is finished. He wept. He bled. He died for you. What more, ye
saints, could Jesus do? Why me? Why me, O gracious God? Why such
a wretch as me, who should forever lie in hell, were not salvation-free? Love one another. He reiterates this in verse 17. These things I command you that ye love one
another. May the Word of God motivate
us. May the Word of God find us out. May the Word of God be
the influence. May that Word of God this morning
melt our hearts. How very short we come. very
lacking we are. But may it stir us this morning,
may the Word of God shine with that brightness and with that
power that it might rest upon us, that it might remain with
us, that it might go forward with us all the days of our life.
The love of Christ, how rich and free fixed on his own eternally. And just as we close and remember
as these come to be of the words at the end of Romans 8. Those well-known words. For I and persuaded that neither
death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers,
nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth,
nor any other creature shall be able to separate us. from
the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen. May the Lord help us in closing
by singing hymn number 1024. O for a heart to praise the Lord,
a heart from sin set free, a heart that's sprinkled with the blood,
so freely shed for me. Hymn number 1024 to the tune
231. Her heart that's sprinkled with
the blood, so she should forgive. Her heart presides, so she should
forgive. The quake with him has thrown,
Where only Christ is heard to speak, Where Jesus prays alone. Now, O Lord, I am weak, O Lord,
joyful, Each life and life, both death
and life, from Him that births to reign. The nature gracious,
Lord, imparting, Now may the grace of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ love of God, our Heavenly Father,
sweet communion of the Holy Spirit, rest and abide and remain with
us now and for evermore. Amen.