Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayerful attention to the first epistle of John,
chapter 3, and reading from our text, verse 16, especially the
first part. Hereby perceive we the love of
God, because he laid down his life for us. The verse goes on,
and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. And the context of the passage,
and even the next chapter, is also drawing from this, that
if we know the love of God, then we will bestow that love upon
the brethren, and in a practical way. I don't want to take away
from what the overall context is here. But our text says, hereby
perceive we the love of God, or realize, or come to realize,
the love of God toward us. Now many of the Lord's dear people
are often tried on this point, as to know whether they really
do love the Lord or not. whether they are his or not. There are varying degrees of
assurance and faith and it is often because we do not know
the word of God or realize what God has told us so that we may
know whether we do have the love of God upon us or not. And that is my burden this evening
that we might be able more clearly to see and to perceive the love
of God for us or towards us. If we look at the next chapter,
chapter 4 and verse 16, we read there, and we have known and
believed the love of love that God hath to us. So here is the apostle, a sinner
like you and I, and he has said that we have known and we have
believed the love that God had to us. Now maybe that those of
us here that would cover such a saying as that to be able to
testify and be able to say very clearly We have known, we have
known and believed the love that God hath to us. And may it be
through the word then this evening that we do come to realise that. I want to notice as well as what
is recorded in Jeremiah chapter 31 verse 3, that the love of
God is an eternal or an everlasting love. Yea, I have loved thee
with an everlasting love, therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn
thee. And so when we discern in one
particular or another clearly from the Word of God that there
is a true token of the love of God toward us, then though that
may be years ago, though that may have been one or two times
in our life, those times they point to that everlasting love
of God. God does not change, we do change,
and may we bear this in mind as we look at some of these points,
and to realize that we are not called, as it were, to have every
one of these evidences all the time and every part of the day,
and especially in times of darkness or trial or temptation, we may
have it very clouded, and then it is the work of faith to lay
hold from what God has wrought in us, has done for us, and how
he has shown us his love, shown that he does love us, does not change, though we change,
though clouds come in between. And in saying this, in no way
do I encourage that we should say, well, the Lord showed us
his love years ago, so it doesn't matter how we live and what we
say and what we do now. No. If we do know the love of
God, it will, as the whole context here shows, affect us in our
lives, how we are towards God, how we are towards sin, how we
are towards one another, it will have a daily evidence and witness
in our lives in one way or another. So I want to look this evening,
with the Lord's help, at five ways how we come to realise or to perceive the love of God
to us. The first one is by what God
has done as recorded in the Word of God. And I bring this one
first. In a way it is not a personal
one, a personal evidence. but is a vital, vital evidence. And it also shows the goodwill
of God toward men. We must always remember this.
Do not look upon God in these gospel days as an angry judge,
as one that delights to crush underfoot, who has set forth
a gospel, but he doesn't really want people saved. No. May we always remember the points,
the two points, two main points that I want to bring under this
heading. And both of them you will find
in these two chapters that we have read. 1 John 3 and 1 John
4. First one I bring is that in
1 John 4. And that is found from verse
9. In this was manifested, or opened
up and shown to view, the love of God toward us, because that
God sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might
live through him. The sending of our Lord Jesus
Christ into the world is set forth here as manifesting the
love of God toward us. Remember, with the angels that
appeared to the shepherds, they testified that it was goodwill
toward men, on earth peace. That was the message, the Lord
coming not to condemn, but to bring forth salvation. The Lord
Jesus Christ is the only saviour that this world has ever known,
will ever know, the only name given among men whereby we must
be saved. Now one added aspect of this
verse here, it states this, God sent his only begotten son into
the world. How vital it is for us to realise
that God's only begotten Son is equal with the Father. He is God, truly God. I and my Father are one. The
end of this epistle clearly sets it forth in chapter 5. We know
that the Son of God is come and hath given us an understanding
that we may know Him that is true and we are in Him that is
true Even in His Son, Jesus Christ, this is the true God and eternal
life. The Lord Jesus Christ, this is
one of the main reasons, main reason for the Nicene Creed,
is to establish the true divinity of God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Spirit. Three persons in the Godhead,
all equal in divine power, in eternity, every attribute of
God is born by them each equally. And the Lord Jesus Christ, having
taken upon Him a true human body, or the seed of Abraham, body
and soul. And so when we realize that,
and that God has sent forth not a created being, but himself. Will God, says Solomon when he
dedicates the temple, will God himself dwell upon the earth? And he has dwelt upon the earth. God manifests in the flesh. Emmanuel, God with us. And so this is set before us
here, as a manifestation of the love of God toward us. The second one under this heading,
what God has done as recorded in the Word of God, is that which
is set forth in our text. In our text, verse 16 of chapter
3, hereby perceive, hereby we understand or come to know we
love, we the love of God because He laid down His life for us. That Lord Jesus Christ laid down
His life. I have power, He said, to lay
it down. I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received
of my Father. And here in this verse, is set
forth that this is how we perceive the love of God. Because of this
point, it was love that brought Him to this world. It is love
that brought Him to the cross, to suffer, to bleed, to die,
to take on Him the sins of His people and to bear them away,
to endure the wrath of God in the place of His people. This
is what is set before us, set before the world. This Gospel
is to be proclaimed throughout all the world. It is not stating
that God, the Lord Jesus Christ, died for every man, woman and
child, but what is set forth is that He died as the Saviour
for the human race, that there is none other name given among
men. We are not born into this world
knowing that we are elected, knowing that we are chosen, knowing
that the Lord Jesus shed his blood for us, but we are born
into this world knowing that the Lord is the only saviour
and that he commands his love to men commends himself to every
man, woman and child in what he has done in coming and in
suffering and in bleeding. This is set before us. He is
not a God that comes to crush underfoot man. He is not one
to condemn us. The law does that. Every soul
outside of Christ is condemned by the law. He that transgresseth
the law. The law, the sin is the transgression
of the law of God. We've read it. And that is the
condemnation. The Lord said, this is the condemnation,
that light is come into the world, meaning himself, and yet men
love darkness rather than light. Why? Because their deeds were
evil. But that doesn't make the light
evil or the light wrong. That puts the condemnation on
those that do not want the light, do not want the Lord, do not
want to believe, do not want to embrace Him. And the love set forth to poor
sinners. So may we remember this. Here
in these two points, yes, until we open up others, We are not
able to discern a personal interest in His love, but we are able
to see very clearly the love that God has bestowed upon men,
upon the human race, that He should come and set forth a salvation,
a salvation in His beloved Son. The whole key is in His coming,
and in his suffering. No wonder the Apostle Paul, desiring
to know nothing among men, saved Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Dear friends, those that may
listen to this message, this word, never, never resist the
gospel, the word of God, never blacken the name of God as if
there is not a way of escape from the wrath to come. There
is and it is set forth in the Lord Jesus Christ. There is nothing
that is deceitful or underhanded in the Lord's coming at all.
The gospel is to be preached in all nations to every man and
to everyone that hears it is set forth this way of escape
from the wrath to come. And our desire should be that
we have, and as we look at these further points that we can clearly
see that this coming was personally for us and that the blessings
that flow forth from his coming and from his death are ours. And really, one of the first
tokens and evidences of it is that when we hear of his coming
and when we hear of his sufferings and death, instead of rejecting
it, Instead of saying we have no interest in it, or we don't
want to know more, or we're not interested in whether we are
saved or not, we view these two events with great hope and expectation,
with a who can tell, and with joy that the shepherds had and
the angels had, and that the disciples had when the Lord not
only died, but rose again from the dead. It is a blessed thing
to embrace these two truths as a precious hope set before us
in the Gospel, and it is a solemn thing that we hear these two
truths and we reject them, we have no need of them, we deride
them, we do not follow up with a diligent reading of the Word
or with prayer for the Lord's blessing that we might know this
blessing ourselves. And I would add in this, how
vital it is to have a personal faith, a personal love of God
in our hearts, because there are those that teach, and sadly
the Church of England seems to preach this, that the Lord Jesus
coming and dying has put away sin, so there is no sin in this
world. There is no condemnation to anybody,
but that is not true. We are all under condemnation
until we are brought to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. In
Romans 8 verse 1, the Apostle is very clear. There is now no
condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not
after the flesh, but after the Spirit. If we are not in Christ
Jesus, we are under condemnation. If we are walking after the flesh
and not after the Spirit, not after the Word of God and following
the Word of God, we are still under condemnation. We need a
personal faith and a personal love to God and that we're declaring
that God loves us. And that is what I want to look
at further in the following four points. So the second point of
the way that we come to realize or perceive God's love toward
us is in calling. What the Lord has done in calling
us. That is calling us out of nature's
darkness and into his glorious light. Now I want to go back
to the Apostle's epistle to the Corinthians. In his second epistle
to the Corinthians, in chapter 5, we read in verse 14, For the
love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge that if
one died for all, then we're all dead. and that he died for
all that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves,
but unto him which died for them and rose again. Our Lord in John 6 said that
no man can come unto me except the Father which sent me draw
him. And we commence this evening
with the word in Jeremiah 31. I have loved thee with an everlasting
love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee. And here it's
put as constraining. The love of Christ constraineth
us. That is, moves us, causes us
to do things that we would not otherwise do. Drawn to walk in
the ways of the Lord, an irresistible grace, an effect of the Word
upon us. And the token of this, the blessed
thing of this, is that it makes changes and differences in our
lives. Some of us can look back and
think when the Lord first began with us, this constraining of
God It caused us to stop doing things that we were doing, that
were inconsistent with the Word of God, and to start doing things
that we didn't do before, or that we were doing, like attendance
on the means of grace with no interest and no love or no desire,
that we started to do it with a real desire and longing. We
began to pray. Why did we begin to pray? We
are constrained to because of the sense of our sinnership,
our need, our ignorance of the things of God. And we are constrained
to go where the people of God were and to hear the Word of
God preached. Why did these things happen?
Why these changes that happened? This is the love of God upon
a poor sinner. It constrains them. When the
Lord gathered his apostles, many of them. He passed by them. When
Matthew, when he is at the receipt of custom, Levi and the fishermen,
he passed by them. Follow me, he said. And off he
went. And they followed him. They left
their nets. They left their receipt of custom.
They followed him. Why did they follow him? Constrained
to do so by the love of God. No natural man would do that.
Jesus of Nazareth passing by and bid you follow and you go
and follow. This is the power of God, this
is God's working in a sinner that makes a difference. Why
are some, when they hear the word of God, not affected at
all, not moved at all? And others they are. This constraining,
this work of God upon the heart, upon the people of God. And this is what is calling.
When the Lord calls his people, my sheep, they hear my voice
and they follow me. Why? They're constrained to do
so. They're brought to do so. We believe in the powerful work
of the Holy Spirit, the work of God upon a sinner. And very often it is through
the word, through the preaching of the gospel. It is, please
God, through the preaching of the gospel, to save them that
believe. And that that is what then makes
the first point of changing that heart. Change the heart, renew
the will, and turn the feet to Zion's hill or to the Church
of God, to the people of God. And then not only that, but closely
joined with that is that which we find in Galatians. Now remember what we said with
the constraining. It is the love of God that constraineth
us. God's love toward us, and we
may say then our love toward God that causes us to do these
things. And then what of our life from
then on? In Galatians chapter two and
verse 20, We read the Apostle saying this, I am crucified with
Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth
in me. And the life which I now live
in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son
of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Let me put that
a different way. Because the Son of God loved
the Apostle Paul and gave himself for him, he gave to the Apostle
Paul faith. And the Apostle Paul then lived
by that faith that was given him. His whole life then was
changed. Instead of walking according
to the sight of his eyes, He walked by faith, that is trusting
in what is not seen, trusting in the Word of God. Faith is
the evidence of things not seen, the substance of things hoped
for. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
author of it. Why was it that Noah built an
ark for the saving of his house? 120 years before the flood came,
he began that. Why is it? that a poor sinner
begins to change their life and do those things in preparation
for death in respect of the world that is to come. It is not by
faith, viewing in the word of God and believing the report,
believing that we are sinners, we have a soul, it lives forever,
we shall stand before the judgment day, we need thee. justifying
righteousness of Christ. We need the precious blood of
Christ shed for us. We need repentance. We need the
change of heart that comes through God's work in us. The Lord exalted
to give repentance and remission of sins. And so our whole life,
in everything what we do, in our homes, in the church, in
our families, in our employment, All what we do, we're living
by the faith of the Son of God. All what we do is in respect
to the Word of God. The Word is a lamp to our feet,
a light to our path. It shapes our thinking, it shapes
our worldview. Everything is governed by the
Word of God that is infallible, it is pure. All scripture is
given by inspiration of God and is profitable. to the law, to
the testimony. They speak not according to these
things, it is because there is no truth or no light in them. And so, it is in what God has
done for us. Has he called us? Has he constrained
us to change our lives? Do our lives, do we live different
than the world? The world has respect, or will
this do good for a bank balance? Is this good for me, for me? Or have we changed and we ask,
is this according to the will of God? Is this the way that
we should walk? All that we do, regulated by
it, making prayer over all things. Lord, show me thy way. I will
instruct thee and teach thee in the way that thou shalt go.
I'll guide thee with mine eye. Wherewithal shall a young man
cleanse his way by taking heed thereto. according to thy word,
faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God, and
that will be a lamp to our feet. So calling is always followed
up by a changed life, a life that answers to it. The Lord
said to those Jews in John 8, verse 30, who believed on him,
that if ye continue in my word, ye shall be my disciples indeed,
He shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
Maybe not just be one that says, oh, I'm a believer, but you don't
continue in the word, and it doesn't shape your life, it doesn't
change a life. The apostles, they took notice
of them, that they had been with Jesus. Their lives were different,
and they answered to Him. Their lives should be a witness,
and of course, the very context of of our text here is in how
it affects our relationship with those around us. We are compassionate,
we help them, we love them, we lay down our lives for them.
This is an effect of the grace of God. The third way, the third
way that we may perceive the love of God toward us is in how
He has blessed us. God does bless His people with
spiritual blessings and we have in chapter 4 here and verse 19,
we love Him because He first loved us. If we love God, we know that
that love verse began with God. Peter, after he denied his Lord
three times, the Lord met with him after he'd risen from the
dead. And he didn't say to Peter three
times, Peter, I love you. He asked Peter, lovest thou me? And Peter testified three times
that he did love the Lord. Thou knowest all things, Thou
knowest that I love Thee. And so really what Peter is testifying,
he's testifying what he feels. He cannot know what God feels. He cannot look into the secret
counsels of God and know that he loves Him. But he can by this
verse, because we know that we love Him only. because he first
loved us. Be encouraged, dear friend, if
you know something of times of love to God in your soul. We
think of what a token that is, and perhaps to back it up even
more, if we go back to Paul's epistle to the Romans, in chapter
five, verse five, and hope maketh not ashamed because the love
of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which
is given unto us. This is not something that we
work up, that we try and read a lot or be able to attain to
ourselves. This is a blessing, a spiritual
blessing that the Love of God is shed abroad in our hearts
by the Holy Ghost. If we know something of those
blessings, those blessings that make us truly to feel for that
love, it may only be for a short time, but we don't forget those
times, how sweet and blessed they are. And to you which believe
He is precious, and there'll be that love, that love to the
Lord, and closely joined to that, and this is very much the context
of these chapters here that we've read, is a love to the brethren. In 1 John chapter 3 and in verse
14, we know that we have passed from death unto life because
we love the brethren. that is passed from spiritual
death and under condemnation of the righteous God to a blessing
of life. The Lord says, I give unto them
eternal life. They shall never perish, neither
shall any man pluck them out of mine hand. When the Lord gives
that life and gives his love to us, it will make us love those
of his kindred, those whom he has also died for, those who
love the truth and love the Lord as we do, we will gravitate towards
them. We will love them for the truth's
sake. We will love them for the word's sake. Yeah, there might
be things in them that are irritating and we don't like them because
of this and that, but when we see the mark of God upon them,
we love them for Christ's sake. We love them as dear brethren,
remembering we also are sinners, and also have things that are
irksome perhaps to other people, but the Lord, looking at the
heart, and it will have that effect upon us. When we see it,
maybe from another land, when we came over from Australia back
to this land, and we meet the brethren, when we go over to
Holland and we meet the brethren, when we went over to America
and we meet and see the brethren, it's a blessed thing too. When
we come to them, we speak with them, we hear them in prayer,
and we feel real love to them. And when we hear what God has
done for them, it warms our heart and strengthens our faith. And
so it is how the Lord has blessed us. Has he blessed us with a
love to him? Or is love shed abroad in our
hearts? And has he blessed us with love
to his people and a love to his ways? Think of the book of Ruth
in that, where Ruth began, and it all begins with love. She
has a love to her mother-in-law, a love to her mother-in-law's
faith, to her people, her land. And it's a blessed thing if we
see that beginning with us, we begin, we love the Lord, we love
His word, we love His house, we love His people, we love His
ways. to be evidenced in all of these
things that sometimes will be felt in a greater or lesser measure,
sometimes really shed abroad, softening our hearts and making
us feel a real bond of love to the dear people of God. The fourth way that we may perceive
or realize the love of God toward us is in trials, and in chastening. We might not think that at first.
We might think, how can it be that we have great trials and
great troubles and that God still loves us? But we read that faith,
the trial of your faith, is much more precious than gold that
perisheth though it be tried with fire. And the dear saints
of God, David, Jacob, Job, Daniel, they all had great trials and
great afflictions. And when we read Psalm 107, we
read in that psalm of how the people of God, they were blessed,
but then they sinned, they fell down, there was none to help,
and they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, And he delivered
them out of their distresses. Then they rebelled again. Then
they got into fresh troubles. They fell down, there was none
to help again. Then they cried unto the Lord. And he delivered
them out of their distresses. And right through that psalm,
we have trial after trial. And that prayer was the turning
point each time. Brought to prayer and God answered
prayer. Those trials were working for
good. It was bringing them to prayer. It was making them to
see answers to prayer. Cast thy burden upon the Lord. And in the margin of that psalm,
it says gift. How often would we look upon
a trial or something that is hurtful to us and say, this is
a gift from God to bring us to pray and to get answers to prayer. How many of us can look back
of things where the way has been bitter, we've been anxious, we've
been concerned, we've been worried, we've cried unto the Lord in
our trouble, and the Lord has heard, and he's answered those
prayers, and he's worked for good. At the end of that psalm,
we read this, whoso is wise and will observe these things, even
they shall understand the loving kindness of the Lord. Our Lord's love is a love that
is to be understood. A child that's given sweets and
lovely things from their parent, they think, oh, that's nice,
and my parent loves me. But when they do something wrong
and they're chastened and smacked for it, they think, oh, mom and
dad, they don't love me anymore. But actually, there's more love
shown in that chastening than there was in those good gifts.
And so with the Lord as well. In his dealings there is love
inscribed upon them all. And we had to see that. The end
of Job was better than his beginning. And the trials of God's people
weren't for good. We spoke of chastening in Hebrews
12. We have this that is set before
us as a very true token of the love of God. And these portions
I'm bringing I'm specifically turning to the Word of God, because
the authority is not mine. The authority is the Word of
God. And when the Word of God tells us that the love of God
causes one thing to happen, then we know when that happens to
us, when we are brought into it, then the love of God is being
bestowed upon us. And so you have in Hebrews, Chapter
12 and verse 6. For whom the Lord loveth, for
whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth and scourgeth every son whom
he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God
dealeth with you as with sons. For what son is he whom the Father
chasteneth not? We are all sinners. We do sin.
The Lord speaks first. He warns us in His Word. He shows
us what we should do, the way we should go. We refuse to walk
in it. We don't learn our lessons. Then
the Lord brings a rod. And always when He brings that
rod, whether it's an affliction, or something goes wrong, or a
car breaks down, or a car accident, the Lord has many ways of being
able to touch us, and immediately He does. He will bring to mind
His Word that we have rejected or not listened to, and we'll
learn that lesson that what we were doing was not right in the
sight of the Lord, that we should listen to His Word. No parent
would just go straight away smacking, chastening a child without warning
that child first and telling that child what is expected of
them and what they should not do. And so this chastening, God
will bear witness with the conscience that he is dealing with us, that
he's not just letting us go our own way and living our own lives
how we like, completely independent of his word. No, the Lord has
a way that he'd have his people walk, and when they don't walk
in it, then he will chastise and correct them. The lash is
steeped, he on thee lays, says the hymn writer, yet softened
in His blood. It is done in love, and it bears
a token of the love of God upon us. We have another one in Romans
8, verse 28. We know that all things work
together for good to them that love God, to them that are the
called according to His purpose. to them that love God. So we've got the love of God,
we've got the calling coming in here at well, not working
together for good in a material, worldly way, but for our soul. For our soul, for eternity. The
chastening and the troubles and the trials, they work together
for good. The psalmist says, it's good
for me that I was afflicted. Before I was afflicted, I went
astray. but now have I kept thy word. Now a child left to himself bringeth
his mother to shame. If a child is not corrected and
they just run right, they're an embarrassment to the parents,
they're trouble to all that they go near, but you see a family
that has been brought up with loving chastisement and obedient
children, what a difference that that is. So I want to just bring
one last one. So we've had what the Lord has
done as recorded as our first thing we considered, the Lord's
coming and His sacrifice, His sufferings at Calvary, laying
down His life. What the Lord has done in calling
us and quicking us by grace and how He has blessed us, if He
has blessed us with that love of God, in our hearts and in
the trials and the chastening that he brings to make, to work
for our good spiritually, bring us closer to him and at one with
him. And the last point is then looking
back. Looking back. When Paul writes
to the Romans in the fifth chapter in verse eight, He says, but
God commendeth his love toward us. That is, presents his love
towards us, or recommends it towards us, in that while we
were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And it is in this point,
where we looked at these other points, and you started to get
this spirit's witness with our spirit, The love that we have
known is a scriptural love and God has bestowed it in this way. And then to take this and to
look back, why? Why has the Lord called us? Why
has he given us to know these things and to believe in his
word and to know these blessings? Why? It is because before we
were born, before we were born, while we were yet sinners, when
we were born, and we were rebellious against him, we hated him, we
rejected his word, we went our own way. Many of us in childhood,
even though brought up under the sound of the truth, we did
that. And yet this last point, as we
look back, and we look back and we think, why? Why were these
blessings? Not because of anything in me,
but God is commanding His love towards us. If you say, poor
sinner, the reason why I have called you, why I brought you
through these trials, why I have blessed you, why I've answered
your prayers, why I've brought you to know the love of God,
is because while you were a sinner, I died for you. I shed my blood
for you on Calvary's tree, even before you were born. And I had
that love to you, I watched over your path and your way when you
had no regard to me whatsoever, and you hated me. And God commends his love toward
us in that. You know, when we were unregenerate,
we couldn't see the mercies in those unregenerate ears. But
you know, now I can. I can look back to what the Lord
did in childhood, in youth, in guiding, in keeping, when I was
not praying. I was going my own way. I was
not asking for help, for mercy, for grace. for providential
things or spiritual things. And yet the Lord gave each, while
I was yet a sinner. Christ had already died, already
shed his blood. And the time came when he made
that known, and when he called me and opened my eyes and brought
me to walk in his ways. And then we can look back. The
children of Israel, you know, had to always remember the Passover
night, Remember going through Jordan, they had this service
of the Passover, the stones with Jordan. When your children ask
you, what mean you by this service? What mean you by these stones?
Then you tell them what the Lord did for your fathers. We're to
remember that in our lives. Raising Ebeneezer's, hitherto
have the Lord helped us. And we are to remember all the
way the Lord thy God had led thee. these 40 years in the wilderness
that like the children of Israel had to do, and is looking back,
we can be able to see these tokens of the love of God and evidence
of what the Lord has done for us and bestowing love. Can you point to things that
have done in your life and would you dare to say, Lord, in that
I cannot discern any love to me in what was done? Would you
dare, in those things that you've looked upon as wonderful answers
to prayer, deliverances, guidances, wonderful things that have happened
in your lives, and be able to say, God, there has been no love
in that, but rather must we say there's love inscribed upon them
all? Would the Lord have done these
things? if he had no love toward us. May we through these five
points be able to see and realize, come to realize if we don't already,
God's love to us. And if we have realized it and
known it, may we have it strengthened tonight. And may that love freshly
constrain us Invigorate us again to walk in His ways, to love
Him more, and His desire to be with Him forever and ever after
this poor world is done. May the Lord then grant unto
us this blessing. Hereby perceive we the love of
God, because He laid down His life for us, My way to save itself.