Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayerful attention to the first epistle general
of John, chapter three and verse 14. That is page 1132 in the
Bible Box Bibles, 1132. 1 John chapter three. and verse 14. We know that we have passed from
death unto life because we love the brethren. He that loveth
not his brother abideth in death. 1 John chapter 3 verse 14. We have In our text, one of those clear
tests or ways that we know that we are God's children. There
are of course many different ways that this is shown us in
the Word of God. The Lord says in John 10, My
sheep, they hear my voice and they follow me. That is another
evidence, a token of being one of God's children. And so, right
through the word of God, there are those various ways. It may be one, the Lord's people,
they cannot see their mark in one text or one illustration,
but they can see in another. And Though of course all will
be in a measure, will be true, yet the Lord has seen fit to
give these different and isolated, you might say, tokens throughout
the Word of God. We read the portion in the Gospel
according to Matthew with the a special thought of the division
at the end of that chapter, but really right through the chapter
there is a division. We mentioned the Kingdom of Heaven
being the professed church or the outside church. Looked upon
it, we see them all being the same and sadly and It is in our
day, many of the Lord's true people, they are sleepy, spiritually
so, and really very little difference, it would appear, between them
and those that are not God's people. But in the church, in
the professing church, it is very evident from the word of
God that there are those that come under the name of Christian
joined together with the people found amongst them and yet they
really are not the people of God. The first parable was the
parable of the five wise and five foolish virgins and really
what is taught there they all had the outward lamp of profession
but those that were wise they had grace with that profession. It was not just outward. They
had the secret of the Lord, the supply. And what is most solemn
in that parable is that when they were told that the wise
would not give them, then they knew where to go and get it. And really, I believe many that
are lost, they do know really where that supply is. but think
that they can get away without it. And then we have the parable
with the talents, and the Lord does give to his people. We had this morning of some of
those gifts the Lord gives to the Church of God, and it is
for the express purpose of edifying the body. When we think of the
body of Christ, And we compare it to a human body, and yes,
there are those sad cases where there may be a paralysis or something,
and we have an arm or a leg, and it doesn't profit the body,
it cannot. It has no strength, it has no
power to at all. But generally it is, when the
Lord gives a whole body, then each arm and leg, each part of
that body, is helping the whole of the body, even the little
finger or whatever it is, to function. And so in the true
Church of God as well, whether one has one talent or five talents,
where that is given by the Lord, where there is a true use of
it, it will be to the honour and glory of God. It won't be
just buried, it won't be just coming and going from the house
of God, and yes, there is those things that need to be done in
the house of God, there's the sick to be ministered to, there's
the things to be attended to amongst the people of God, even
the building of the house of God, but the talents are not
used in that way at all. We need to ask ourselves if the
Lord has given us abilities, then how do we use them? Do we use them for the body of
Christ, or do we use them for ourselves? And then we have at
the end of the chapter there, that which has been more linked
to our text, because our text speaks of a love, a love to the
brethren. And in the end of Matthew 25,
it is speaking, in my say, of charitable works. Now, the world today, it loves
charity, hundreds, thousands of charities. And those that
do great works for charity and helping others are praised on
every sign. They're anointed, they're given
the approval and blessing of the world. We're not talking
about that. It is good, it is right to do
good and to help our fellow mortals here below. But the question
is, what is the motive that we do these things, why are we actually
doing them? Does it have anything to do with
God at all? Or perhaps it is only to do with
him, in that that is our hope for heaven. And we see the difference
between These two that our Lord spoke of, those on his left,
those on his right, what was the difference? One, the righteous, they ministered
to God's people, and yet they were not mindful that they were
actually doing so. The ones on the left hand, they
didn't minister to the Lord's people, But they wanted evidence
to show them where they had gone wrong, where they hadn't done
so. As if, well, they had done everything
right and they had ministered, show where we have failed. Works are a fruit. They are not
a cause of salvation. But especially what is to be
emphasized here is to where that love is placed. We read in Matthew 10, our Lord
there, he says in verse 40, he that receiveth you, receiveth
me. And he that receiveth me, receiveth
him that sent me. He that receiveth a prophet in
the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward. And he that
receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall
receive a righteous man's reward. And whosoever shall give to drink
unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the
name of a disciple Verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise
lose his reward. And the emphasis is in two things
in that passage. One, the link between Christ
and his people. And in Matthew as well we have
it, the link between Christ and his people. Our Lord saying,
that inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these,
my brethren, ye have done it unto me. And when Paul, the apostle
Paul, was accosted on the Damascus road, the Lord said to him, Saul,
Saul, why persecutest thou me? Saul was persecuting the people
of God, The Lord was saying, you persecute them, you persecute
me. And so the expressions of love
to the brethren are love to God. The giving of a cup of water
to a person, because they are the brethren, and a love to that
brethren, that is as done even unto the Lord. And so with those
thoughts, I want to look then at the words of our text. And I do want to try and be very
careful here because whenever we have a text that it is really
pointing that we might know something, is a real evidence it must be
divided in a right way. Otherwise, those who have that
evidence might not be able to see it, or those that have not
might think that they do. And so, may the Lord help to
give a right dividing of this word. We know that we are passed
from death unto life because we love the brethren, He that
loveth not his brother abideth in death. So there are three
things I want you, with the Lord's help, to look at. Firstly, what
it is to pass from death unto life. Our text says we know that
we have passed from death unto life. What is it to pass from
death unto life? Secondly, who are the brethren
spoken of? Those are they that are loved
here, because we love the brethren. If we mistake who it is that
we are loving, or not distinct in it, then we'll miss the token
and the mark as well. But then thirdly, the way we
know that we have passed from death unto life that is told
us here because we love the brethren. But firstly, what it is to pass
from death unto life. When our first parents sinned,
they brought upon them the sentence that God had said, in the day
that thou eatest thereof, that is, of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, thou shalt surely die. God gave the law. He gave the
sentence on breaking of that law. We're told that as by one
man, Sin entered into the world and death by sin, in that all
have sinned. It is the sentence that is passed
upon all mankind. All have sinned and come short
of the glory of God. There is none that is righteous,
no, not one. We go forth from the womb speaking
lies. We are fallen. We are dead spiritually
and we shall die in due time in the natural way, our body
returning to the dust as it was, the spirit returning to God that
gave it and then coming before the judgment with that condemnation
still upon us to be cast into outer darkness and to have the
sentence of that eternal damnation that our Lord spoke of in Matthew
25. We must understand that all of
us are by nature dead in trespasses and sins. Though we hear outwardly
the word of God, yet we do not have a spiritual ear or capability
of hearing that word because we are dead spiritually. The
things of God are spiritually discerned. Our Lord was very,
very clear in John 3, you must be born again. There must be
a new birth, a new life, a spiritual life. It must be born of the
Spirit. And so when we are talking about
passing from death to life, we are talking about this life,
an experience in this life, an experience of coming from being
dead in sin to be made alive unto God, being born again or
converted unto God. And the description here is that
change that is as stark and as vivid as death unto life. Once dead, but then quickened
into life. We think of the miracles that
our Lord did with Lazarus. Lazarus was dead four days. Those of his sisters, they said
he had been Dead for days already, by this time he stinketh. It
was seen impossible that he ever should be raised to life again. But the Lord brought him to life.
Loosed him and let him go. Lazarus, come forth. A miracle, wonderful miracle,
can be seen literally so. One that was dead and then he
was alive. He did the same with thee. widow
of Nain's son and raised her, him, to life again. And we can understand that. We
can look upon a dead body and you say there's no hope for that
dead body. There's no life there. There's
no hearing. There's no feeling. There's no
motion. There's nothing at all there.
But we are to understand that. in a spiritual way. The dead know not anything. We can be certain of this, that
those who have never passed from death unto life have not had
a change. Whatever may be understood of
death and life in our text, it must be understood there is a
vast change, a difference that has happened in that person's
life. Once they were dead, and now
they are alive. As John Newton puts it in his
hymn, once he was blind, but now he saw. The difference is the same. But a dead soul cannot know and
does not know the things of God in a spiritual saving sense. They are hidden from them. It
is a mystery. They know the outward teachings. They can be numbered amongst
the people of God. and yet still be spiritually
as dead as the seat that they sit on. To pass then from death unto
life is to be brought to a spiritual
life in Christ. The Lord says, I give unto them
eternal life, they shall never perish, Neither shall any man
pluck them out of my hand. And that life gives new ears,
new eyes, new feelings, new senses, new affections. The life of God that God gives
his people in conversion and a new birth is eternal. It begins at conversion. It is given by God. How vital that each one of us
have that change, that we do pass from death unto life. One day, and the words of our
text are in the sense that it's already happened, we have passed
from death unto life, so he's speaking to believers, speaking
to those that are spiritually alive. But one day, those that
have died in Christ, They shall be raised again at the last great
day when the Lord returns and at the end of the world. And
the dead in Christ shall be raised first. And we which are alive
shall be caught up with them in the air. And there shall be
then a passing from death unto life in that sense to the quickening
of the body. But the spirit doesn't change. The spirit does not die. Once it is quickened, then death
is spoken of for a believer as sleep. Stephen fell asleep. Paul speaks to those, the Thessalonians,
as those that sleep in Christ shall. God bring with him. That life is the life of the
soul that does not die when the body dies. It is absent from
the body, present with the Lord. We know that we have passed from
death unto life because we love the brethren. So we may give
many other illustrations or evidences of passing from death unto life,
but this first point, I just want to emphasize the great difference
between being spiritually dead and spiritually alive. That is having the root of the
matter in us, being a real Christian, that that which the Lord Jesus
Christ came to do, has been done in us. That our sins have been
put away, He has died for us, endured the wrath of God for
us, and risen again. And because He has risen again,
And then he is able to quicken us justly, righteously, without
any jarring note, though we do not deserve it in any way. But
it is because Christ has died and put away sin that he then
can quicken and bring to life those that were dead. Well I want to look then secondly
at who are the brethren that are spoken of here. Because we
love the brethren. I want to look at it from the overall
views of who those brethren are If we go to before the world
was, we see a people that are chosen
in Christ, before the foundation of the world. We see a people
that Christ says, thine they were and thou gavest them me. The Father gave a people to the
Son to redeem. We see then the other side, when the world is no more, and
we see an innumerable multitude in heaven that are praising and
blessing God and the Lamb. They are the same people. And in between is the world,
all the generations of it, and the Church of God through the
Old Testament and the New Testament. Each one is brought into this
world as dead, but by the time they leave this world, they have
been brought from death unto life, and they are numbered then
amongst the brethren of the Lord. The Lord does have a church,
a church that he has foreknown and foreloved with an everlasting
love, a church made up of people that he has shed his blood for,
he has borne their sins at Calvary, A church that is spoken of as
his body, that has many members, but that he fashions in time
to be his bride. He has gone and prepared a place
for them in heaven. I go to prepare a place for you. He will come again and receive
them unto himself. It is a people that is a very
distinct people, a peculiar people, we might say, very different,
as Hayman observed, concerning the Jews, different than any
other people, and having laws that were different than any
other people. The brethren, the true brethren,
are those that are the purchase of Christ's own precious blood,
the gift of the Father to the Son, and are the work of the
Spirit in their hearts. The Spirit has made them what
they are, quickened them, made them alive, and united them together. If we think of the Church of
God as a temple as a building, Christ the Foundation, Solomon's
Temple. The stones all had their own
shape and fashion, and they were fashioned in the quarry and then
brought and placed in the building. The place where they went was
known, designed, described and there's no need of any hammering
or noise in the placing of that building. No extra stones. No holes where a stone was not
put. It was all designed and all finished. God has a plan. God has a people. And those people are known here
below as brethren, the Church of God, the people
of God, the people that are the Lords. Now you might say, well, if we went to Jehovah's Witnesses, or went to the Mormons, or went
to the Roman Catholics, or even if we went to the world, because
we are told that the world, they love their own. In John 15, we have this word, if ye were
of the world, The world would love his own. But because ye
are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world,
therefore the world hateth you." And you'll find all these groups,
the world, and then religious groups, that would say, well, we are
the brethren. If you love us, you pass from
death unto life. How important it is that we truly have the witness
as to who those brethren are. I think it was Abraham's servant
that was sent to get a wife for Isaac. And when he gave thanks at the
well, when Rebecca came, he gave thanks that God had led him to
the house of his master's brethren. When we're talking of brethren
here, We're not talking about saying, well, the brethren, they
are people in gospel standard churches. Or the Presbyterian
doesn't say they are people in the Presbyterian churches. The
Lord has a people in every nation, kindred, and tongue. throughout
many, many different denominations, and some denominations that outwardly,
you might say they're error, what are the Lord's people doing
in them? Sometimes they are brought completely
out, sometimes they may stay and remain in them, and yet truly
be brethren. It is not measured by what clothes
we wear, by outward things, but by God's
work in the heart, the work of the Holy Spirit, making known
what Christ has done for that soul. Job said to his friends,
why persecute thou me, seeing the root of the matter is in
me? When we meet with the brethren, we should be meeting with those,
or when we see the brethren, we should be meeting with those
that we might say are brethren to not just those in our day,
but throughout scripture. because those in the inspired
word of God that have passed from death unto life, they are
the brethren. And a people that look at that
long cloud of witnesses spoken of in Hebrews 11, and that see
them, they are possessors of faith, The Lord is the author
and finisher of their faith and of faith, and they all died in
faith. And we're exhorted then as being
surrounded, compassed, with so great a cloud of witnesses. Let
us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily
beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set
before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our
faith. And he's joining our faith with
the faith of those who've gone before. And remember, he goes
right back to Abel. The brethren will be brethren,
firstly with the scriptures, and then of those in our days
our generation that have been partaker of the same spirit,
the same blessings, the same faith, the same vital things. There are many things and we
are taught by the apostle when he writes to the Romans of those
things that are not essential, but the essential things, the
essential work of the spirit, and partaking of the benefits
and blessings of Christ's death and faith in Christ and solely
trusting alone in Christ's work and not our own. That binds the brethren together. And so we have, in the third
place, the way we know that we have passed from death unto life,
And the way we know is we love the brethren. We might hear someone give a
testimony of what God has done for them. Those that give their testimonies
often feel how poor that is because words fail to convey what is
actually felt and experienced in their hearts. But those who
know the same thing will interpret it by what they have felt and
they'll immediately feel a bond and a union to that person and a love to those people. And that is what is said before
us here. When we find a people, and they're
not stranger, to the Spirit's work. They're not strangers to
wrestling prayer. They're not strangers to feeling
the corruptions and sin of their heart and groaning under a body
of death. They're not strangers to the
apostle, the good that I would, I do not, the evil that I would
not, that I do. They're not strangers to having
the love of God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost.
They're not strangers of having the joy of the Lord. They're
not strangers when they speak of the Lord Jesus Christ as being
precious. Unto you which believe he is
precious. There are those things that bring
a real bond. Though sometimes we can have
it in a natural way. Maybe one person has had a particular
illness or an operation in hospital, and we've heard about it before,
but then we have the same, we experience the same, and then
when they speak of these things, there's a bond between us because
we know from, and they don't have to say much, just a few
things that they say, that they have experienced what we have
experienced. And so this love, a love to the
brethren, love to God's children, it means that we have handled
and tasted and felt the same things. The same spirit has revealed
the same Jesus, has made the same word precious, has made
us love. It may be the language of the
hymn writers. Have you ever known that? Where you've sung a hymn and
you've read a hymn and you've felt such a love to that person. You think, I could not have expressed
that. But the way that that hymn has
been put is just how I feel. And you feel a love to them. I know I've probably said this
before, But I remember one time leaving a prayer meeting we had
at Clifton for the ministers of our denomination. And as I
was driving back on the M1, it suddenly swept over me, such
a love to the brethren. And I just said buckets of tears,
tears of love, tears of real feeling of bond to them. There's
no specific words or anything. I'd been with them, I'd hear
her, their prayers, and I really felt real love to them. And those
are sacred times when that is so. I often think of in the book
of Ruth, it was that love that joined her to Naomi in adversity,
in troubles. Very often it is that which binds
the brethren together, not in times of prosperity and ease,
but in times of tribulation, times of trouble, and persecution
even, the bad times. And so it was with Ruth she claimed
to Naomi, and in that she was brought to Boaz. Naturally, we do not love the
brethren. We do not really feel a real
netting to them for the truth's sake. Not for anything else,
but because you see a little glimpse Christ's image in them. When
our Lord says, if you've done this to the least of my brethren,
you've done it unto me. You've persecuted me, them, you've
persecuted me. They took knowledge of the disciples
that had been with the Lord. His image upon them. His spirit
upon them. In the word it speaks of the
Lord saying that he is like a green fir tree, from me is thy fruit
found, but you don't find fruit from a green fir tree. But what
the Lord is saying, my fruit is seen in my brethren. The fruit
of my work on Calvary, the fruit of the Spirit, it is seen in
the brethren. They see Christ's work. They
hear in their breathings in prayer, in those little things they do
for one another, for love's sake. They see that mark, the brethren. We read when the apostles were
persecuted, being let go, they went unto their own company. And my own mother was dying,
and she was lying on her bed just a few days before she died,
and gave no evidence that she was conscious at all. And we had a visiting minister
that was known to the family, and he was very kind of him to
visit. But it was one that was free
will, very different than what we had felt need to. And he sat
by her, he talked to her, and she made no recognition whatsoever. And then he got up and he stood
next to me near the door. My father sat next to my mother. Suddenly she said, I don't want
this people. I want my own people. And it
will be that, that where the spirit knits hearts together,
there'll be a drawing to that people, attraction to that people. And he's not for any other reason,
but these are Christ's brethren. There may be things that differ
outwardly, but the root of the matter in them. One of the deacons
in Australia said concerning one of the last pastors there,
I loved him for the truth's sake. And that will be so. The token
here then We know that we have passed from death unto life because
we love the Brethren. That we are discerning who that
Brethren are, recognizing them flowing together with all the
Brethren of the Scriptures and a real evidence of love to them
and wanting to walk with them. With them. May I be now and to
eternity. Well, may the Lord bear that
witness with our spirit and may we feel that love and have this
token. There's a high degree, you may
say, of assurance here. It is not we think we have passed
from death unto life or we might have passed from death unto life. The word here, the inspired word,
is we know. We know that we have passed from
death unto life. And not just because there's
just no foundation or basis to it. There's a reason. Because
we love the brethren. Dear friends, if you have this
token, you are the brethren. May you
be helped to walk as brethren, join with them in baptism, in
membership, around the table of the Lord. May the Lord bless the words
and unite the brethren together, bring them together.