Alright brethren, let's turn
to 1 Corinthians chapter 16. Here in 1 Corinthians 16 we find love being
expressed. Some of you just came back from
the conference at Apopka and while you were there, you expressed
your love to others, and they express theirs to you, and they
send it back to others here, and you send it to others where
they are. And that's what I'm reminded of here.
The love of God's saints for one another. When I read these
first three verses, look at 1 Corinthians 16 and 19. The churches, plural,
of Asia salute you. There's love of all the churches
for other like-minded churches. The churches. Then we have Aquila
and Priscilla salute you much in the Lord. There's the love
of individual believers for a local church. And then it says with
the church that's in their house. There's the love of one local
church to another local church. Then it says all the brethren
greet you. There's the love of all God's
saints towards all our brethren. Greet ye one another with a holy
kiss. There's the love of one saint
to another saint. Individual love. The salutation
of me, Paul, with mine own hand. There's the love of a pastor
for the saints. Now those are ways God's people
love. The Lord said, by this shall
all men know that you are my disciples. if you love one another,
if you have love one to another. Verse 19 then shows us now where
this love originates, where it comes from, where it resides,
and how it's the common bond between believers. It's right
here. This is why we love one another. Verse 19 says, they
salute you much in the Lord. in the Lord. Look down there,
verse 23. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
be with you. Verse 24. My love be with you
all in Christ Jesus. God's love is in the Lord Jesus
Christ. He loves His people in Christ
and only in Christ. That's where God's love is. And
the love of God's people to God is in the Lord. We love each
other in the Lord. And then our love to God is in
the Lord. And we love one another in the
Lord. All this is in the Lord. God gives His people a heart
of love when He creates them anew and He's formed in the heart
and He causes you to love God and love one another. Now, we
don't like to talk about it. We don't boast of it. Because
our love is nothing in comparison with God's love for us. God's
people do love Him by His grace. Now here will be the verse we'll
focus on, verse 22. If any man love not the Lord
Jesus Christ, if any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let
him be anathema, maranatha. Anathema means curse and maranatha
means when the Lord comes. Let him be accursed. If any man
love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be cursed when the Lord
comes. Now all who are found not loving
the Lord Jesus Christ will be cursed when He comes. The Scriptures
tell us this in Matthew 25, verse 41, the Lord said, Then shall
He say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from Me, curse
it. You curse it into everlasting
fire, prepared for the devil and for his angels. And these
shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous
into life eternal. And when I read that, that makes
me ask myself, do I love the Lord Jesus Christ? Do I love
the Lord Jesus Christ? To not love Him is to hate Him.
To not love the Lord is to hate the Lord. The carnal mind is
who does not love the Lord. The man that is unregenerate,
not been given life and faith, does not love the Lord. And the
carnal mind is enmity against God. It is hatred against God. It's not subject to God's Word,
to His Law, to His Word. It can't be at all. He that's
not with me, Christ said, is against me. And he that's not
gathering with me, Christ said, is scattering abroad. So there's
no middle ground. God saves and He gives love in
the heart and He loves you. But the man who is rejecting
the Gospel and rebelling against the Word and will not hear cry,
will not bow to Christ, he hates Him. Just like the man who is
just indifferent to it. There's no middle ground. It's
we either love Him or we hate Him. One of the two. Now what
is it to love the Lord Jesus Christ? What is that? Why do
we love the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, first of all, it's to love
Him as my Lord. You can't hardly separate Him
from His character, His attributes, and His person, and His office. And He says here, if any man
love not the Lord, Jesus Christ. So we're going to take those
three words. First of all, to love Him is to love Him as my
Lord. As my Lord. And then secondly,
is to love Him as my Savior. And thirdly, it's to love Him
as the Christ, God's anointed, the Messiah. Now let's look at
these. First of all, it's to love Him
as my Lord. He says, if any man love not
the Lord, the Lord. God gives His saints a new heart. He gives you a heart of love. He gives you a heart to love
our Redeemer as Lord. He gives your heart to love Him
as your Lord, as my Lord. We love Him as Lord. We love
Him as the Lord of creation. I love the fact that God created
all... My Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,
created all things. He spoke it into existence. You
can go read Colossians 1. He created everything that is.
And we love Him as the Lord of creation. We love Him as the
Lord of Sabaoth. We sing that. That means He's
the Lord of hosts. That means He's the Lord of armies
in heaven and in earth. That means everything that comes
to pass, He's bringing it to pass. Because He's the Lord of
everything, using everything at His disposal. And I love that. I love that He's the Lord of
Sabaoth. And I love this. He's the Lord of glory. When
we go to be with Him finally at last, there is going to be
no praising of anybody but the Lord. Everybody is going to be
glorying in Him. He is the Lord of glory. But
here is the thing that we love Him for especially. He is the Lord of salvation. He is the Lord of salvation.
The Lord is sovereign in the salvation of His people. That's
what Lord means, sovereign. He's God and He's the God of
salvation and He's the sovereign of salvation and He's Lord in
our salvation. Personally, personally the Lord
is the sovereign possessor of His people. He possesses His
people and has all control over His people. When did that start?
when God gave them to Him in eternity. The Lord gave, chose
a people, God chose a people and gave them to His Son, the
Son of God, to Lord over them, to possess them. They became
His when He gave them to Him. And He's our Lord and our owner. He possesses us. And He's the
disposer. Every blessing that God God gives,
Christ is the disposer of the blessings. In fact, He is the
blessing. If you read Ephesians 1 when
He says, He blessed us with all spiritual blessings. How? According as He chose us in Christ. There is where all the blessings
are. And Christ is all the blessings, and He's the disposer of those
blessings sovereignly. And He's the one who has full
control over His people, even over those who are not His elect,
so that He makes certain we will know He is the sovereign of salvation. Thou madest Him to have dominion
over the works of Thy hands. Thou hast put all things under
His feet. He must reign till He put all
enemies under His feet. He's the Lord. He's the Lord. Now, I love Him knowing He is
the Lord. He is sovereign in my salvation. And as Lord, He ruled all things,
everything that came to pass. You know, you stand back. We
zero in sometimes. We look at the Old Testament
Scriptures. We look at the New Testament Scriptures. But think
about this. Those shadows and types we love to look at in the
Old Testament Scriptures. He is Lord so sovereign that
He ruled all the events and all the happenings and had it recorded so you and
I could see a picture and a type of Him in the Scriptures and
preserve those Scriptures. That stuff wasn't just happening
by chance. He is working every bit of it to paint a picture
for us in the lives of men and in the lives of rebels. to then
record it and preserve it, so we got the Word of God to see
a picture of Him. He spoke and gave the Word to
those that He would have pen it, and they wrote it down. And
He's kept it for us all these years. All these years. He's the Lord of our salvation.
And as Lord, He sends His preacher with His gospel to His lost sheep,
wherever they are. He sends them there to Him, and
none can stop Him. He said, Peter, on this rock
I'm going to build my church and the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it. And our Lord can penetrate anywhere
His child is and bring the gospel to His child and nobody can stop
Him. Nobody can stop Him. He worked
everything to put that eunuch out there on that road out in
the middle of nowhere because that's where He worked to put
His prophet out there to preach the gospel to him. He told Paul
one time, you can't go there to preach. You've got to go over
here to this river bank because there's a woman down there that's
mine. You've got to preach to her. He's in control of everything. And as the Lord, He gives the
dead sinner life. He's the one who said, I'll pray
to the Father and He'll send forth the Comforter, the Holy
Spirit. So He makes intercession at the
time appointed and He sends forth the Holy Spirit and He gives
a new heart. Unseen, unnoticed by anybody
except the one He does it to. The Lord enters in and they began
to hear for the first time. And they began to see for the
first time. And they began to have a delight for the first
time because He is the Lord of salvation. He said this, You
have not chosen Me, I have chosen you. And I've chosen you and
I've ordained you that you should go forth and bring forth fruit.
And that your fruit should remain and that whatsoever you shall
ask of the Father in My name, He may give it to you. He calls
us, He gives us a heart to believe it, but then what does He do?
He uses us to send that same gospel. He said, because I ordained
you to do that. to call you and give you a heart
and make you believe and then send you forth with my gospel
as a group supporting the gospel. When I go down to Missouri tomorrow,
Lord willing, and I preach Saturday, I'm not just preaching there
by myself. We're all preaching there. I wouldn't be there if
it wasn't for you. And we're all preaching to them there.
That's our ministry there. It's not my ministry, it's our
ministry. We're going to be preaching to them. That's what I mean.
He calls us and assembles us and He uses us to send it forth. Because He said, you didn't choose
Me to do this though and you didn't choose Me. I chose you
and I sent you forth. I ordained you to bring forth
fruit and sent you forth. And as Lord, He preserves all
His own. He keeps us. Preserves us. Before
we knew Him, He was doing it. Aren't you glad? Boy, I'm glad. And after we knew Him, He's done
it. And He'll continue to do it. He said, I give unto My sheep
eternal life, and they shall never perish. Neither shall any
man pluck them out of My hand. It will never happen, He said.
And then, this goes with Him being Lord too. As Lord, He is
our ruler. He's the Lord of our personal
life. What does that mean? He calls
the shots. He's the Master. He's the Master. When we're lost, just like all
God-hating rebels, you know what we said? I will not have this
man reign over me. I won't have him reign over me.
That's every person who does not believe the Gospel. You know
what they're saying by not believing Him? They're shouting to the
top of their lungs, I will not have Him reign over me. He won't
be my Lord. And that's what we did. That's
what we did until He forced us into the dust and made us see
what we are. And made us see His glory and
the light of His glory. And He made us to tremble. And
He made us astonished. And when He got finished, you
know what we said? Lord, what will Thou have me to do? What
will you have me to do? And from then on, He is the Lord. Now our lives are governed by
His command. We believe on Him. You know why?
Because He commands effectually in the heart and says, Believe
on Me. Trust Me and you will be saved.
And you hear the Scriptures. All this is His Word and you
hear the Scripture. A Scripture you just read over
and read over and one day somebody reads it or preaches it and you
hear it. Believe on Me and you shall be
saved. And it comes as His command. And now He is Lord and you believe
Him effectually. He tells you to go forth and
to love His brethren for His sake. Remembering what He's done
for you and being constrained by His love. And you know how
you'll do that? He commands it effectually. Love
my brethren. And just like faith, He's put
a new heart in us and we love Him. We love Him. We love one
another because He constrains us. And then we'll do good works.
You know why? Because it says, He before ordained
them that we shall walk in them. And He works everything sovereignly
as our Lord to put us in the place and to present the work
and to have us prepared and have us supplied with everything we
need. And He works effectually in you
and says, now do this. And you do it. So we can't boast
about our work. If it wasn't for our Lord being
sovereign in our salvation and being our ruler in our heart,
we would never do it. He does it. And we hate to disobey
Him in any way. You know why? Because He's a
good Lord and we love Him and we want to obey Him. If He was
a tyrant that was whipping us and ruling us like Pharaoh was
doing the children in Egypt, you'd want to be free. I run into so many people just
like the Egyptians. They hate a place where they
yoke and bind with the law and rule with the law and discipline
them and threaten them and all that. And they just want to get
out of that place and they leave it. And they go to a place that's
the same way, just a little less than what that was. Still want to be saved by the
law, but still love the garlics and the leeks and the onions,
just don't want to be under quite severe A pharaoh is that one
in Egypt. But despise that light prayer.
The Lord gives you a heart. He gives His people a heart where
we're content to be with Him and His people and we love Him.
Because He's a good Lord and He's a good Master. And then
as Lord, He sovereignly, affectionately commands us. This is just a side
note. He commands us to preach the
Gospel. Preach Him alone. Not to yoke
and bind and use all the vain means that churches use. He commands
us to preach Christ only. You know why we do that? We can't
take glory in that because the Lord of salvation commands it
affectionately in the heart of His people. And so we preach
the gospel and then we obey Him by waiting on Him to make it
affectional. We don't try to coerce people
to make it affectional. We wait on Him to make it affectional.
before conversion or in the process of conversion. We do so when
it comes to growing and teaching His people. And we do so when
it comes to disciplining His people. We wait on Him to do
it through the Gospel. Because that's the way He's going
to do it. That's the way He's going to do it. And this is truly loving brethren. He said, inasmuch as you've done
it unto one of these, the least of my brethren, you've done it
unto me. And that's what all this greeting and loving one
another and saying, you know, Aquila and Priscilla greet you
and I greet you and my love's with you and we love you much.
It's all because of the Lord who's given this heart and made
us love Him and constrained us to love one another. That's what
it's about. And that's why you preach and
you wait, because that's love. And you wait on Him to work it,
His people. Now, do I love the Lord? If I
do, I love Him as sovereign, as the Lord, as the Master, as
my ruler, as my Master, as the one who tells me, you can't do
that, you can do that. I love Him for that. There's
nothing about His Word that I find harder or grievous to me, I delight
in it. Don't you? Every word in this
book is for our good. I don't care if it comes out
of the Old Testament or the New Testament. Every bit of it is for our good.
Every bit of it. Sometimes I read the law and
I think, you know, one day we're going to be in a place where
we're not going to be under law, but we're going to be in a place
in glory where that's going to be the heart of everybody there.
That would be good, because if our society operated like the
Lord commanded for Israel to operate, it would be heaven on
earth. It really would. Nothing about it is bad. Nothing
about it. But we follow Him, and we listen
to Him, and we obey Him, and we don't turn from Him, do we?
Because He is our Master. Now secondly, and I will be a
little more brief here, but to love Him is to love Him as Savior.
I said, now He's the Lord of salvation. He brings you salvation.
He makes salvation effectual. He also is that salvation. We love Him as our Savior and
as our salvation. Matthew 1.21. Look there with
me. It's very familiar to you. Vincent, can you turn that air
down just about a click or two? If any man love not the Lord
Jesus, he said. We're looking at Him as Savior
now. Jesus, Savior. Look here. Matthew 1.21, She
shall bring forth a Son, and thou shalt call His name Jesus.
Now here's the definition. For He shall save His people
from their sins. It means Savior. He's the Savior. I love Him as Savior because
there is no yea and nay. There is no yes and no with our
Savior. It's all yes. He shall save His people from
their sin. He shall. All that the Father
giveth me, He said, shall come to me. And I will in no wise
cast them out. The psalmist said, The Lord shall
send the rod of thy strength out of Zion, and you shall rule
in the midst of your enemies. That's speaking to Christ. He
said, the Lord shall increase you more and more and your children.
He said, the Lord shall preserve you from all evil and shall preserve
your soul. He said, the Lord shall preserve
you going out and coming in from this time forth even forevermore. Scripture says of Christ, He
shall feed His flock like a shepherd. He shall gather the lambs with
His arm and carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead
those that were with young. Paul said, The Son of God, Jesus
Christ, who was preached among you by us, by me and Silvanus
and Timotheus, was not yes and no, but in Him was yes. Because all the promises of God
in Him are yes and in Him amen unto the glory of God. All of
them. It's all yes. That's why I love
Him as my Savior. I know He's going to save me.
You know, we've talked about this before a lot, but salvation
is not needing Him to be the author of it to start me off
and then I can finish it. Salvation is needing to be saved
from the beginning to the end. Salvation is needing somebody
else to do all the saving. And that's what He says He shall
do. That's why His name is Jesus.
We love Him as Jesus, the Lord Jesus, the Sovereign Savior,
because He shall save His people. And we love Him as Savior because
He laid down His life for His people. He said, as the Father
knows me, even so I know the Father, and I lay down my life
for the sheep. I really should have read the
verse before that. He said, I know my sheep and am known of mine,
as the Father knows me, even so I know the Father. What he
said is, I know my sheep just like I know the Father and the
Father knows me. And I lay down my life for the sheep. He came
here to do something for a particular people. And He did it for a particular
people only. He laid down His life for a particular
people only. When you start hearing men talk
about, well, it's sufficient to save everybody in the world,
but it was just designed for His elect. Let me tell you something.
A salvation that is sufficient to save everybody in the world
is going to save everybody in the world. Because it wouldn't
be sufficient if He hadn't accomplished it. But it is sufficient for
the elect because He said, I lay down my life for the sheep. And
He accomplished it. He accomplished it. And that
is why we love Him. Listen, He said, therefore does
my Father love me because I lay down my life that I might take
it again. And you know what? That is why
we love Him. Because He laid down His life
for us, for the sheep. That is why we love Him. And
now He said, this is my commandment, that you love one another as
I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than
this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Our Lord
Jesus Christ laid down His life for being made of a woman. He
came from glory. The psalmist calls it being in
the lowest part of the earth, in the womb. Why was He made
of a woman? Why wasn't He made of a man?
to be that holy thing, that holy man, the only holy man that could
come forth and save His corrupt, polluted-hearted people. That's
why He was made of a woman. And then He laid down His life
for being made under God's law. He came down, the Lord's pleased,
well-pleased for His righteousness' sake. He will magnify the law
and make it honorable. That's why He was made unto the
law. He came to magnify the law and make it honorable. That's
what He was talking about when He said, I came to fulfill the
law and the prophets. He came to magnify, to make it
honorable, to fulfill everything that's written for His people.
We love Him as our Savior because He laid down His life by being
made sin for us. All of these were absolutely
necessary. He had to be made of a woman
He had to be made under the law. He had to be made sin. Listen
to this. He hath made Him sin for us. He knew no sin, but He hath made
Him sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of
God in Him. And he was made sin so that God
could justly punish him for the sins of his people. But he had
to be made what we are so that when God poured out wrath on
him, it was just. Because he had to be made guilty.
He had to be made what we are and stand there representing
all his people. It's much more than what Paul
did when Paul told Philemon, if He's offended you in any way,
put that on my account. That's what God did in eternity.
That's what Christ did in eternity as our surety. He said, put that
on my account. When the time came to go to the
cross, He didn't just walk in and pay a debt we owed and then
walk out. No, to satisfy divine justice
and manifest the righteousness of God, He would be made sin
for us. Yeah, take those debts now and
be made those debts for us. And He did it so real that He
said in Hebrews 12 too, He despised the shame. He despised the shame. Yes, all that that went on to
Him and around Him, that was shame. But most of all the shame
was being made sin before His Father. He said in
Psalm 69, 5, O God, Thou knowest my foolishness and my sins are
not hid from Thee. That's what magnified the shame
of the sin was that they were not hid from the Godly love.
And then the Lord Jesus laid down His life for being made
a curse for us under the fierce wrath and the just affliction
of God. Now He's punished. Now wrath's
poured out in place of His people. He has
redeemed us from the curse of the law being made a curse for
us. And the Scripture says, He says,
is it nothing to you? It's something to His people.
This is why we love Him. Because of what He did. He's
our Savior. It's something to us. Is it nothing
to you, all you that pass by, behold and see, is there any
sorrow like unto my sorrow which is done unto me? Wherewith the
Lord hath afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger." That's
when he was made a curse. Affliction and fierce anger and
it was all just, every bit of it. And we love Him as Savior
because turn to Romans 5. When did He do all this for His
people? All this magnifies His love to us right here. Look at
this, Romans 5 and verse 5. It was done for us when we were
enemies, ungodly sinners, hating Him. Look, Romans 5 at the very
end. The love of God is shed abroad
in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which He has given unto us. And
here's the love of God shed abroad in our hearts. When we were yet
without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. Scarcely for a righteous man
will one die. Yet perventure for a good man
some would even dare to die. Good's a little worse than righteous.
But if you just had a good man, somebody would die for him too.
But God commendeth His love toward us in that while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us. much more than being now justified
by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if
when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death
of His Son, much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also
joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ by whom we right now receive
atonement, that reconciliation. We joy in God also, just like
we joy in our Lord Jesus, because He has given us that reconciliation,
that atonement. You see that? That magnifies
that love. Herein is love, not that we love
God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation
for our sin. This is love. People talk about
loving God and bragging and boasting about it, and God looked down
and saw I loved Him. No, He didn't. No, He didn't. Not those He say. We didn't love
Him. And we wouldn't have loved Him
if it wasn't for His love. So He revealed all this to us
and now, brethren, we love Him, we delight in Him and we won't
leave Him. You know why? God is pleased
with us as much, as fully as He is pleased with His Son. Ephesians
5.2 says, Walk in love as Christ also hath loved us, and given
Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling
savor. God is pleased now with His people
in Christ. That's why we love Him. We love
Him because He is Lord of salvation. And we love Him because He is
the Savior. He is that salvation. And then
lastly, and I'll be very brief here, it's to love Him as God's
anointed. He says there, if any man love
not the Lord Jesus Christ, Christ is his office. He's anointed. That means anointed. It means
God's Messiah. It means He's God's choice. He's
God's choice. He said, He chose him that in
all things he might have the preeminence. Preeminence is to
be exalted. To have the first, the preeminent,
the exaltation, the praise, the glory in everything. That's why God chose him. Because
it pleased God that in him should all fullness dwell. He has all
preeminence in all things because he's the fullness of all things.
Everything we need to come into God's presence, He's the fullness
of it. That's what I was getting at
when I said, He is the blessings. He blessed us with all spiritual
blessings according as He chose us in Him. Because He's the fullness
of everything we need. The fullness. We love Him because
He's God's choice. We love Him because He's God's
Christ. He's God's Messiah chosen for His people. And we love Him
because God exalted Him and has given Him all preeminence and
we want Him to have all preeminence. There are three offices in the
Old Testament that were anointed. No man ever held all three until
Christ came. He is the God-man who held all
three of these offices. It was the office of a prophet. The prophet was anointed. And
nobody else, no preacher that has ever lived will get the glory
that belongs to Christ our prophet for teaching His people in the
heart and for being the Word His people are taught. Nobody
will get that glory. I can't ever say that I have
any reason to boast or get any glory for anybody that says or
continues or anything else. He is the prophet. He is the
prophet. And the second one was the priest. There is no priest. There are
no priests. These men that walk around with
their collar turned backwards are not priests. They are one
priest. Christ. Christ. He is the high priest. He entered
into the holy place, not made with hands, the presence of God.
He entered in not with the blood of a bull or a goat, but with
His own blood. He obtained eternal redemption for His people. He
brought us out of sin and death and hell and brought us out from
under the law and we're His now. And He did it so that now we
can live under God. Let's quit living under ourselves
and to Moses and to the law and to the earth and everything else.
Preachers and what have you. Living under Him. He's the High
Priest. And now He continues to ever
live to make intercession for us. So we can come to Him anytime
to His throne of grace and come in with welcome, with open arms. He will receive us and we can
come in and find grace to help in time of need because He is
our High Priest. And then lastly, there was the King. The King
was anointed. And we have covered that with
the Lord. He is the anointed King of His people. The King
of kings and Lord of lords before whom every knee is going to bow
and every tongue is going to confess before it is all over. That is what is going to happen.
He is our King and He is the King of this holy nation called
His chosen people. He is the King. And all of that culminates in the fact that He
is the Christ. Christ, anointed, chosen of God. God's choice. God is pleased
with Him. Now, here's the question. Do
I love the Lord? Do I love Him as Sovereign Ruler
in salvation, in my heart, in my life? Do I love the Lord Jesus? Do I love Him as my Savior in
that salvation? Everything, wisdom, righteousness,
sanctification, redemption, all in all. Do I love Him as Jesus,
my Savior? Do I love Him as the Lord Jesus
Christ, God's choice? Is He my choice? God makes him
your choice just like he's God's choice. He's the choicest of the choices. Now, I can't love him if I love
him for one of those and not the other. I can't love him just
for something and not the other. I've got to love him because
he's the Lord Jesus Christ. He's all. Now, if any man loves
not the Lord Jesus Christ, Let him be anathema. Maranatha. And we can say that. We can say that. Let him be cursed
when the Lord comes. Because with a Lord this good,
a Savior this good, a Christ this good, a man that hates Him
deserves to die. Justly. Justly. Because this
is a wonderful Lord. A wonderful Savior. A wonderful
Christ. Amen. Alright, Brother Eric.