delivered on Sunday evening,
September 12, 1993, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville,
New Jersey. Now will you turn with me, please,
to the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 24. Matthew, Chapter 24. And I shall read in your hearing
the text that has on two previous occasions been the basis of our
evening meditation, one of them a communion meditation, and now
this third study, again a communion meditation based on this text. In the midst of our Lord's Hoth
described Olivet discourse in which he is speaking of the coming
destruction of the city of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and then his own glorious
coming in power and glory at the end of the age. Our Lord
speaks to his own and says in verse 12 of Matthew 24, and because
iniquity shall be multiplied The love of the many shall wax
cold or be extinguished, but he that endureth to the end,
the same shall be saved. Let us again pray and ask God
to bless our meditation on this portion of his word. Our Lord Jesus, we have sung
very sober words of confession. We have acknowledged that we
betrayed you, that we crucified you, and we know that though
centuries have passed since your betrayal and your crucifixion,
it was indeed our sins that demanded your death. It was our own wretched,
fickle, sin-loving hearts that mandated that the only way we
could ever find acceptance with your Father was by your death
on our behalf. And surely, Lord, having so loved
us as to be willing to lay down your life for us, Our hearts
ought to burn with fervent, ever-increasing love to you, and yet we confess
with shame that so often our love is cold and torpid, and
we desperately need that you would rekindle that love, even
through the ministry of the Word and the Supper of Remembrance
this night. To that end, we plead for your
blessing upon our meditation together. through Jesus Christ
our Lord. Amen. Now in our initial study of these
two verses, I sought to open up the basic truth contained
in them. First, we contemplated the condition
described Our Lord speaks of a condition of abounding lawlessness,
and because iniquity, or better rendered, lawlessness, shall
be multiplied or abound. And we establish from the Scriptures
that there are periods in human history when the steady state
lawlessness of sinners comes to highly aggravated expressions
and we are in such a season then of abounding lawlessness and
consider the evidences that we here in our own country at this
point in human history are in just such a season. And having
looked at the condition described, we consider the declension predicted. And because lawlessness shall
abound, the love of the many shall be extinguished. Here a
frightening declension is predicted, that in those periods when iniquity
abounds, There will be many who have had a professed love to
Christ that has stood and been credible in the face of ordinary
wickedness and lawlessness, but before the gathering tide of
abounding lawlessness, that love is extinguished, the declension
predicted. And then verse 13 pointed us
to the resistance demanded. All who are truly bound to Christ
in faith, in love, shall persevere in that love. But not only shall
they, but they must. But he that endureth to the end,
the same shall be saved. And the true people of God must
resist the tendency of abounding lawlessness, and by the grace
of God and the use of every means given them by God, continue to
burn in fervent love to Christ in spite of the deadening, dampening
pressure of abounding lawlessness. And then in our next study, we
began to address the very practical question, how can the grace of
love to Christ be kept burning hot in an age of abounding lawlessness? And my answer was, first of all,
that it must be properly rooted It must be rooted in a powerful
application of His saving grace in our own hearts. The reason
why the love of the many is extinguished is that that love was a professed
love and a manifested love that had some other soil other than
a deep work of grace in the human heart. Remember Cronin's picture
in the House of Interpreter. There was the wall and the fire
before the wall, and one who was throwing buckets of water
upon the fire. And yet the more the water spattered
upon the fire, the fire instead of being extinguished grew hotter
and higher. And the answer was that unseen
behind the wall was one pouring oil upon that fire. And Bunyan
has the interpreter speaking to Christian and saying, so it
is with the work of grace in the heart of a true Christian.
Though Satan seeks to put out the fire of his love to God in
Christ, The secret but real operations of the Holy Spirit from the ascended
Christ sustain the fire of devotion to Christ in spite of all of
Satan's efforts to extinguish it. But not only must our love
to Christ be properly rooted if we would maintain our love
in an age of abounding wickedness, in the second place it must be
properly nurtured. not only properly rooted, but
it must be properly nurtured. It must be fed and fertilized
and watered if it is to grow and flourish under the imagery
of a plant it must be kept at that height of burning heat from
the work of the Spirit of God within our hearts by the means
that God has established. And so that brings the very practical
question again, how is our love to Christ nourished and fed? And I want to state a principle
demonstrate the principle and begin to apply the principle
in the relatively brief time that we have for our communion
meditation. And the principle stated, with
reference to that question, how is love to Christ, if properly
rooted, continually nurtured in the heart of a true believer,
even in an age of abounding lawlessness? The principle stated is this,
our love to Christ must be nurtured by the frequent Bible-based believing
contemplation of his love to us. Our love to Christ must be
nurtured by the frequent Bible-based believing contemplation of His
love to us. Now there may have been a time
in the Christian church when someone could simply have said,
our love to Christ must be nurtured by meditating on His love to
us. But the whole concept of meditation
in our day has been so suffused with Eastern mysticism and with
dressed-up Eastern mysticism in so-called New Age self-help
therapy, that one must use sound and wholesome words to distance
himself entirely from such pagan notions. The principle stated
is this, our love to Christ must be nurtured by the frequent Bible-based,
that is, reflection, meditation, and contemplation that is under
the discipline of the Word of God written. We don't let our
hearts run out in woozy, ethereal meditations about Christ the
way the heart of a devout Roman Catholic runs out in woozy, undefined,
warm feelings to the Virgin Mary. It must be Bible-based contemplation. But it must not only be Bible-based,
it must be suffused with faith. The word preached did not profit
them, not being mixed with faith, and even Bible-based contemplations
of the love of God in Christ to us will not feed our love
to Christ unless it is believing contemplation. contemplation
in which faith feeds upon the statements of the Bible which
form the focus and the object of our contemplation and reflection. So our love to Christ must be
nurtured by the frequent, Bible-based, believing contemplation of His
love to us. The grand principle of redemptive
grace is that our love to God in Christ is always responsive,
reactive, and reciprocal. It is always responsive, reactive,
and reciprocal. It is never self-initiated, self-created,
or self-perpetuated. And if you and I can get hold
of that principle, it can save us from a thousand stumblings
in our Christian lives. For every true Christian grieves
when his heart is cold to Christ. And every true Christian is determined
to do something about the torpor, the coldness, the dullness of
his love to Christ. But if he does not understand
this principle, that love to Christ is always a responsive,
reactive, reciprocal reality, it is never self-initiated, self-created,
or self-perpetuated. It's like the pupil in my eye. I cannot stand before you now
and will to dilate or constrict my pupil. If I were to look straight
out in the direction in which I'm looking and say, pupils constrict
to a pinpoint, there's no power that I have to constrict my pupils.
If I were to say, pupils dilate right to the edge of the iris,
as far as physiologically you're able to dilate. I could crank
up all of my energy and strength. Pupils dilate. Dilate. They ain't doing nothing. Why? Because the dilation or the constriction
of the pupil is always reactive. It is always responsive and reciprocal
to light. If I gaze right up into that
spotlight, if you were standing at my elbow, you would see the
constriction of my pupil. If I were to stick my head into
the darkness of the underneath side of this pulpit, and you
were to draw near, and enough light were there for you to see,
you'd see that my pupil had dilated to its, not optimum, but near
optimum size. Why? Because the size of the
pupil is always responsive to light, reactive to light. It reciprocates the amount of
light that enters it. And so it is with the heart in
which God has implanted the love of Christ. That love is never
self-creating, self-generating, self-perpetuating, but it is
always responsive, reactive, reciprocal. It expands or contracts
in direct proportion to our believing contemplation of the light of
God's love to us. in Jesus Christ. Now that's the
principle. I've tried to state it as simply
as I know how. Explain the words I've used,
illustrate it by an illustration that you can carry on in the
presence of your children when you get home tonight, to drive
it home with them, take a flashlight and show them what happens to
the pupil of the eye. That's the principle stated. Now, the principle demonstrated
from the scriptures. For the principle is explicitly
stated with respect to love to the brethren in a text such as
1 John 4.19. And this should be familiar ground
to us in the light of our recent studies in the first epistle
of John, having stated the principle, now I want to demonstrate the
biblical basis of that principle. In 1 John 4, and verse 19 verse
John 4 and verse 19 John says we love because he first loved
us if you ever find a man who truly loves the brethren in the
household of faith With a spirit-wrought love, that love is the reaction
and the response and the fruit of God's love to that particular
redeemed sinner. We love because He first loved
us. The love that exists in our hearts
to those who bear His likeness is reciprocating love. It is responsive, reactive love
to His love which was initiated and conferred and believingly
embraced. then turn to what in my mind
is perhaps one if not the most powerful text teaching this principle
to the chapter from which I expounded the text this morning, 2 Corinthians
chapter 5 and in verse 14 Paul having taken the language
of some of his detractors who said he was out of his tree had
a few bricks less than a full load, when they saw him so utterly
obsessed with single-minded devotion and service to Christ, they said
he was a madman. You remember one of the heathen
leaders before whom he stood, he said, Paul, much learning
has made you mad. You got out of your tree. And
apparently some of the false teachers who were trying to wean
the Corinthians from Paul's influence were making the same accusation.
So he says, whether we are beside ourselves, whether in your judgment
and the judgment of others we've lost our mental equilibrium,
it is unto God. Or whether we are of a sober
mind, it is unto you. Whether you regard us as a little
bit imbalanced because of the degree to which this ambition
to please Christ thrives and motivates me and dictates what
I do and what I don't do is a matter of irrelevance to me, for this
is the reality of what makes me tick, for the love of Christ
constraineth us. And that verb constrains, sunecho,
is a verb which means to surround, to hem in, to encircle. Turn to Luke 12 and verse 50
for one of its usages in the gospel writers. In Luke 12 and
verse 50, our Lord Jesus speaking of his coming death says, but
I have a baptism to be baptized with and how am I, here's our
verb, straightened, how am I constrained, how am I hemmed in and encircled
by my commitment to the cross until it be accomplished. Now think of the significance
of that word in connection with our Lord's onward and inevitable
commitment to the cross. Way in the beginning of his public
ministry, when the tempter comes and offers him a way to come
to his inheritance, bypassing the cross, he tells the enemy
to get hence, he is to worship the Lord his God in him only. And when one of his own beloved
disciples would be an impediment on his road to the cross, and
said, Be it far from you, Lord, this will never happen to you.
He calls him an adversary, using the word for the adversary. Get thee behind me, Satan, he
says to Peter. You're an offense unto me. You'll
remember in our studies in the Gospel of Luke when our Lord
was on the way to Jerusalem for that final time with the disciples. He went before them with such
firm and resolute and strident step that there was an amazement
and a fear that gripped all of their hearts. Now read into all
of that this word, how am I hemmed up, how am I surrounded, encircled,
and pressured from every side until it be accomplished. Paul
says the love of Christ surrounds me. It exerts its 360 degree
pressure upon my spirit, upon my life, upon my perspectives,
upon my priorities. Same word used in the familiar
words of Philippians 1.23 when Paul speaks of his holy dilemma. He said, I'm in a strait between
two things. I have a desire to depart and
to be with Christ, which is far better. I have a desire to remain
and be of service to you, which, in my judgment, is more necessary. I am under the pressure, I feel
the pull of these two powerful desires. So when the Apostle
says, the love of Christ constrains me, he's using a verb that cannot
be understood as some kind of a weak secondary, occasionally
felt influence. The love of Christ, that is,
Christ's love to me in giving Himself a ransom for my soul,
Christ's love for me in dying the just for the unjust, acts
like a mighty collection of powerful bands that holds me in its grip. And each place I turn, and each
time I think, and every time I reflect upon my life and my
goals, my desires, how I will expend my energies, use my God-given
talents, each place that I touch, life indeed working out of its
specifics, there the love of Christ stands in its vice-like
grip, holding me, encircling me, determining my choices. You see, Paul was the man that
he was because he lived in the consciousness of the amazing
love of God to him in Christ. and his burning passion for Christ
that made him say, for me to live is Christ, was not self-generating,
self-perpetuating, it was reciprocal. It was reactive and responsive. It grew as he absorbed more and
more through the eye of the soul, through the revelation God had
made, the wonder of God's love to him in Christ. You see the principle demonstrated?
It is the love of Christ that constrains me. It is that love,
believingly contemplated, as we would say, scripturally revealed,
that held him in its grip. One other text, a familiar one
that clearly demonstrates the same principle that our love
to Christ and the fruits that flow out of it is reactive, responsive,
reciprocal, not self-initiated, self-created, self-perpetuated. Romans 12 and verse 1. What has the apostle done in
the first 11 chapters of Romans? Well, he has laid out in the
most systematic form anywhere in the New Testament, the whole
scheme of God's gracious, redemptive purposes in Jesus Christ. Against the backdrop of human
sinfulness, he has laid out the grand doctrine of justification
by faith based upon the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ,
a righteousness comprised of the virtue of his perfect life
and the virtue of his substitutionary death. He has gone on to show
how that when a man is brought to the faith of Christ crucified,
he enters into the dynamics of the very death of Christ for
sin, and in union with Christ he dies to sin and rises to newness
of life. And though he is dead to the
law, and the law cannot condemn him, he goes on to demonstrate
that there is an ongoing struggle with the reality of indwelling
sin. but its struggle in the midst
of the marvelous conquest over the dominion of sin through the
indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which makes him more than conqueror
through Christ, ending in that marvelous statement at the end
of Romans 8, that no created thing shall separate him from
the love of God. which is in Christ Jesus our
Lord. And then in chapters 9 to 11,
he shows how that salvation has been administered over the ages
to the place where he stands back and says, Oh, the depth
of the riches. of the knowledge of God, how
unsearchable are his judgments and his ways, past, tracing,
out, for of him, through him, and unto him are all things,
to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. Now he says, I beseech
you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present
your bodies a living sacrifice. What is he saying? He is saying,
your responses are just that. They are responses. They are
reactions. They are reciprocations to the
intelligent, believing contemplation of the mercies of God in Christ. You see, he's not trying to get
the people surrendered and dedicated based on what they can get and
based on this, that, or the other motive. He says, I appeal to
you by the mercies of God. Let the eye of the soul dilate
and take in the wonders of the mercies of God in Christ that
I've been expounding. And then you'll say, in response
to this exhortation, present your bodies a living sacrifice,
dear Lord. I give myself away, which is
all that I can do. This text clearly confirms the
principle, it demonstrates it. So if the coals of love to Christ
are to be kept burning brightly and hot in our hearts, we must
blow upon them with the bellows of Bible-based contemplation,
meditation, and reflection on the fact, the manifestations,
the magnitude of the love of God to us in Christ. And to help
you do that, may I suggest that you think of that love in three
categories or dimensions. Think of its past supreme manifestation. Think of its present manifold
manifestations. Think of its future glorious
manifestations. When you're trying to have a
handle by which to focus your Bible-based, believing contemplations
of the love of God in Christ, that your love may be kept warm,
and the embers of your love may glow more brightly, and that
the exotic plans of your love to Him may flourish and increase,
then I say, fix your mind on any given day. on the past supreme
manifestations of His love. And I hope to do that tonight,
but our time is gone, so I'll just give you the framework and
bring a pointed application to the table. God willing, we'll
take that perhaps in our next message. That past supreme manifestation,
of course, is Calvary. And think of its present manifold
manifestations, his nurturing of us, his intercessory work
at the right hand of the Father, ever living to make intercession,
our advocate, our sympathetic high priest, who in all of our
afflictions is afflicted with us. And think of its future glorious
manifestation. Peter speaks of the grace that
is to be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Now, dear people, you are not
going to do that if you're glued to your TV and to the Wall Street
Journal. To use the word meditation and
contemplation in our day I know marks me as something out of
the dark ages. But my Bible has not changed.
You want to be a fruitful tree? You must meditate in the law
of God day and night. God hasn't changed the method.
You would be a fruitful tree? Then you must meditate in the
law of God. And if you would have the embers
of love to Christ glowing and kept white hot, then they will
be kept so as you reflect upon His love to you. In its past supreme manifestation,
in its present manifold manifestations, in its future glorious manifestation. And isn't that precisely what
we're called upon to do at the table? What did Jesus say? He said, this do in remembrance
of me, but in remembrance of him as our great prophet to teach
us, not primarily. In remembrance of him as our
king who rules over us, not primarily. For Paul, by the inspiration
of the Spirit, says, as oft as you eat this bread and drink
this cup, you do preach the Lord's death till he come. This is my
body, which is for you. This is my blood, which is poured
out for many unto remission of sins. And here at the table,
God gives us a tangible aid to our contemplation of his love
to us, in that he who knew no sin was made sin for us, that
he might be made the righteousness of God in him. As we come to
the Lord's table, what a blessed thing to be able to say with
the great apostle, the Son of God who loved me and gave himself
for me. You see, that's true saving religion. If you can only say, the Son
of God who loved sinners and gave himself for sinners, the
devil can say that and be speaking the truth. And you can say that
and be speaking the truth and be no better than the demon or
the devil himself. But to say the Son of God who
loved me and gave himself for me. And where there has been
the spirit wrought reception of Christ in his love for the
sinner. You will not only be enabled
to say the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. But
you'll be able to say what comes before those words in the same
verse. I have been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. But Christ
lives in me in the life which I now live in the flesh. I live
in faith. Faith in the Son of God who loved
me and gave himself for me. The faith of God's elect is a
faith that gives us such a sight of Christ crucified, and brings
us within the orbit of the power of His grace, that for every
sinner who can say, He loved me, gave himself for me, you'll
find a sinner who can say, I'm crucified with Christ. That I
have been crucified unto the world, and the world unto me,
Galatians 6.14. So if you sit here this night
and say, by the grace of God, though at times I'm seduced and
the coals and the embers of my love to Christ are dampened by
the buckets of water thrown upon it by this lawless age, yet by
the influence of the Spirit, when I'm brought back to my senses,
I see there is nothing to satisfy my soul in what this world can
offer. And in Christ crucified is my
life, as well as my hope of eternal salvation. Dear people, if we
would have our love to Christ kept hot in an age of abounding
lawlessness, it must not only be properly rooted, it must be
properly nurtured. And its fundamental nurture comes
by the Bible-based, believing, contemplation of His love to
us. Oh may our love be rekindled
and stirred up and brought to a higher intensity than it's
ever been as we, based upon the Bible, contemplate the love of
Christ in the breaking of bread and in the drinking of the cup.
Let us pray. Holy Father, we marvel at your
grace and how unlike man's ways are your ways. For we know that
every religion concocted by man finds man with the burden of
creating the virtues that will make him acceptable to you. But
we thank you that in the scheme of grace, it is your grace that
so works as to implant in us and draw upon us those graces
that please you. So we ask that this night, as
we come to the table, our love for the Lord Jesus will indeed
be intensified as we, with our Bibles open and our minds focused
upon that greatest manifestation of His love in the past, by the
operation of the Holy Spirit, have our love intensified. O God, do it, we pray, for our
good and for your glory, and that we may endure to the end,
even while the many have their love extinguished. And for those
who cannot say, the Son of God loved me and gave himself for
me, Because there is no evidence that they are crucified with
Christ, very much alive to sin and self and the world. Oh Lord,
trouble them, make them jealous to know the blessed liberty that
is ours in Christ. And bring them to believe upon
Him, even as He is displayed in the bread and in the cup. Hear us and answer us, we plead
in His worthy name. Amen.