I count myself very blessed and
privileged to have met this man and his wife, Brother Alan Jellett,
and his wife, Christine, and their three sons. And you, after
today, I'm sure God blesses him, will count yourself privileged
to have known him also and to hear him speak. This is Brother
Alan Jellett. He lives in Southampton, England. I met him while over there two
years ago. He's a close friend of Brother
Bill Clark's. He preaches there at the church
in Welland, England quite often while Brother Bill is away. And
I'm so thankful. We had such a good time. driving
back from Ashland. Yesterday. He's going to be with
us for the next four or five days. And you're going to consider
yourself blessed. He was a little concerned. About
you understanding the way he speaks, but I assured him that
since you understand me. Being from Kentucky, you won't
have any problem with being he preaches the gospel and I hope
the Lord will We'll be with you, Brother Alan. It's a delight
to have you here. Well, I just echo what Paul's
just been saying. It has been a tremendous privilege
for us to meet Paul as we did almost two years ago. And his
father over there in England, when he came over for a conference,
that was a tremendous blessing to us. We've been blessed by
the ministry of people like Henry Mahan and Don Faulkner and people
like that down about four or five years now. And we really
have been blessed by what they've said. We've learned the gospel.
We've learned of grace through what they've said. Even that
far away, 3,000 miles, maybe more away from here. The situation
in England these days is very, very dark. I know you look around
at the religion in this country over here. There's far more religion
around, far more parading as Christianity. There's very little
parading as Christianity over there. But there's tremendous
darkness. The numbers of churches like
this, I mean, I just know of so few where grace is preached
and where Christ is loved. And it's such a privilege for
us to be here with you today. I think as all preachers, and
I'm not a full-time preacher as Paul's pointed out, I preach
when Brother Bill Clarke is away. I'm not a full-time preacher
and I think all of us, we were talking about this in the car
yesterday, feel daunted at the prospect. You're a much bigger
gathering than I'm used to speaking to. But we all have to say, who
is sufficient for these things? Well, I trust that God will be
with us today. Now, I want us to look at this
passage in Colossians, Colossians chapter 1. Paul's already said that I was
concerned you might have trouble understanding me. The saying
goes that we're two peoples divided by a common language. There are
all sorts of little phrases that we use that You just don't use. I mean, you find it a bit of
a cultural shock if we use them and vice versa. If any of you've
been over to England, you'll know the sort of thing that I'm
talking about. But the thing that we've really felt since
we got over here is being with people who love the gospel of
God's grace in Christ is that we're members of a family. Paul
said in his study this morning that you can smell error. You
can smell it. Well, you can smell grace. You
really can. And we've really enjoyed that.
And I want to look at some signs of believers, some of the things,
some of the savour of believers. We really feel as though we've
been part of a family. Well, children look like their
parents, don't they? I used to teach in what you would
call high school. and we used to have parent-teacher
consultation evenings, and I'd be sat there with the mark book
and the reports, and the parents would come to see me, and as
they came up to me, they'd say, we're Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so,
or we're so-and-so, and before they even said, I knew who they
were, because they looked like the children, or the children
looked like a bit of them. There are certain characteristics
that you can see, family likenesses. Now, What features did Paul the
Apostle look out for in Colossae? And these believers at Colossae,
what did he look out for? Well, Paul mentioned in his reading
that he'd already called them saints, those who were set apart
by God. There in verse 2 of chapter 1,
he calls them the saints and the faithful brethren in Christ
who are in Colossae, those who are set apart by God. Just as
he was an apostle by the will of God, so they were saints chosen
of God. And he calls them faithful brethren
in Christ. We'll see more of this just in
a moment. And here they were in Colossae, in a certain place. God gathers believers together
in certain places to the church, which is at Colossae. And he
pronounces a blessing on them. He pronounces grace and peace. Grace and peace. You know, we
read these words When we open the epistles, we read these words,
grace and peace, and you just read over it and go, oh, grace
and peace. And we don't really stop to think about it, do we?
To weigh it. Grace and peace, the blessing
of grace and peace from God. Oh, it's so much better than
law and enmity. Do you know, those who would
call themselves Calvinists in England, of which there are quite
a few, So many of them are preaching cold, dead doctrine. They're
preaching law and enmity. Oh, what a blessing it is to
have grace and peace pronounced. Well, Paul in verse 3 here says
that he gives thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, praying always for you, because he's seen three marks
of believers. Three marks, three signs of believers. And I want us to look at these
three things. They're in verses 4 and 5. Since
we've heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, your love for all
the saints, and because of the hope which is laid up for you
in heaven. I'm not going to take them in that order. I'm going
to take faith first, then hope, and then love. And I think when
we get to the end, you'll see why. First of all, their faith. Their faith in Christ Jesus. How are you going to distinguish
believers from non-believers? They have faith. They have faith.
Now, what is this faith? All sorts of people, you'll hear
them say, oh, I have my faith. I have my faith. They cling to
their faith. A bit like a sort of a... I don't
know if you have this over here, but people cross their fingers,
you know, they hope something... I'm keeping my fingers crossed
that something's going to happen. When we came over here, if you
saw the news, the week before last, there was a serious threat
of terrorism to American airlines flying out of Britain towards
America. And this was announced two days
before we got on the aeroplane. My mother spoke to me the day
before we left, and you would have thought that I was on death
row waiting to go to the gas chamber. She really wasn't too
pleased about us coming. And I'm sure, she's a superstitious
person, I'm sure that she was keeping her fingers crossed that
the plane wouldn't come down. You know, you hear charismatics
talk a lot about faith in healing and about having enough of it.
Have you got enough faith to be healed? And they say some
cruel things. You know, people come along with
ailments and they want to be healed of their ailments. And
the preacher will say, if you have enough faith, you'll be
healed. And they don't get healed. And they go and say, oh, you
didn't have enough faith. What a cruel thing to say. That
really is. People think of faith like a
sort of a witchy spell, you know, if you squeeze hard enough, oh,
is it going to happen? Well, Hebrews 11 verse 1 tells
us what faith really is. It tells us that faith is the
substance or the realization of things hoped for. It's the
evidence or the confidence of things not seen. The evidence
or the confidence of things not seen. Being certain about something
that you've got no external evidence is actually true. And do you
know something? It says it's the evidence of
things not seen. Did you know that? That the faith
of believers is evidence to unbelievers of the truth of it. You know,
your belief. The fact that God has given you
a faith, if you're in Christ and he's given you faith, that
faith is an evidence to unbelievers of the truth of what you believe.
I've heard preachers use chair illustrations. They say, well,
this bench over here, if I have faith that that chair, that bench
is able to, I'll go and sit down on it and rest on it. Well, yeah,
that's a good illustration, but I'll give you a better one. If
Paul was to say to me, Alan, There's a chair here, right here,
and it's strong enough to hold you. If I have faith in what
Paul says, I'll stay there, even though I've no evidence that
it's there. That's what faith is. Building your life, ordering
events in your life on the basis of things that you can't see
or touch, that's what it is. That's what Hebrews 11 told us.
If I couldn't see that chair, and he told me that it was there,
and I had faith in that statement, I'd sit down on it. I'd be confident.
That's what faith is. It's not gambling on chances,
but it's resting on certainties, even though you can't see them.
And Hebrews 11 verse 2 tells us that by it, the elders obtained
a good report. Good thing to have, this faith.
But we know from Ephesians chapter 2, that it's not something good
that you do. Oh, so many people are confused
in our day. They think that faith is something
that they do, it's their work, it's something, the favour that
they did to God by having faith in Him, and therefore they deserve
a blessing because of it. But Ephesians 2 tells us that
it's by grace that you are saved, through faith, and that, not
of yourselves, You see, it's not of yourselves, it's the gift
of God. It is a gift, you can't turn it on or off. You can't
work it up or down. It's a gift from God. Now, a
lot of people have faith, as we've said, in all sorts of things. But not all men have faith, as
here in Colossians 1, verse 4. Men trust in their works for
their rewards. There's an awful lot of that
in England, I suppose you come across it here. People trusting
in what they do for how big a crown God's going to give them. They're
adding things. They trust their background,
their upbringing, their church, their morality. They trust in
idolatrous images of God. Oh God, He wouldn't really deal
with me harshly. They make an idolatrous image
of God and they have faith in that. But the faith of these
Colossians was in Christ Jesus, in Christ Jesus. They were building
their lives on facts that they had no external evidence about,
about Christ. Their faith was in Christ. It
was in what, who He is and what He accomplished. They believed
that He was that promised Messiah, that Messiah that God promised
He would send for His people, the sinner's substitute. You
know what a substitute is? I know you're familiar with all
these terms. I'm not going to tell you anything this morning
that you're unfamiliar with. I'm sure our brother preaches
these things faithfully. The sinner's substitute, one
who stood in your place. If you're in Christ, you know
that the ball game or the soccer game is going on and the guy
comes off injured and a substitute goes on and does the job in his
place. Christ was that substitute. They had faith in Christ as their
substitute. The surety. You know, somebody
stands surety. When there's a debt, you take
out a loan and the bank will say, OK, I'll lend you the money,
but I need somebody to stand surety. So if you default on
the loan, they will pay up. Well, Christ was our surety.
For all those who are in him, for all those who were chosen
in him before the foundation of the world, he stood surety.
When there was a debt to be paid, he said, I'll guarantee that
that debt is paid. And they knew whom they had believed.
They knew him personally. This is a personal faith. You
see, you can know all these things about Christ Jesus. You can sit
down and you can pass a doctrinal test and you can get 10 out of
10. You can answer all the right questions about Christ Jesus
and give scriptural answers. But Paul said he didn't just
know in whom he believed, but he knew whom he had believed. It was a personal relationship. I don't just know about Paul,
I've come to know him, or know something of him, we hope to
get to know more and more over the next few days. That's what
a believer's relationship with Christ is like. They'd read all
of the Old Testament scriptures, all the promises, all the prophecies,
all the patterns, all the pictures, and they saw, by faith, that
all of these were fulfilled in Christ. When they read about
Noah's altar, you know, after the ark had come to ground and
Noah built an altar and he sacrificed, And God, it says, smelled a sweet-smelling
savour. And they knew it was Christ that
was being talked about there. It's talking about how God deals
with men, how he deals with us. He deals with us either in Adam,
in our sin, or in Christ. And they knew that in that picture
of Noah, he was dealing with Noah in Christ. That's why Noah
found grace in the eyes of the Lord. He was dealing with Noah
in Christ and not in Adam. And they had faith, they had
this same faith, these people in Colossae. And believers have
this same faith. When you look back at all of
those pictures, the Ark and Joseph and Samson and King David and
King Solomon, all those types and sacrifices, the temple, the
priesthood, the law and the ceremony. In all of these things, they
could see Christ. He opened their eyes that they
might understand the scriptures and know that these are they
which speak of him. Their faith was in Christ, that
promised Messiah. That's who he is. And he is Jesus. Their faith wasn't just in Christ,
but in Christ Jesus, the man, the God who became man. Just
look over at Galatians chapter four, Galatians chapter four
and verse four. tells us this, that when the
fullness of the time had come, when it was just the right time,
God sent forth his son, born of a woman, God, the infinite
God, the one who upholds all things by his powerful word. You know, the very molecules
in the seat that you're sitting on now are held together because
he is actively upholding them now. by the word of his power. He's holding the sun and the
stars and the moons and the planets all in their orbits now. He didn't
just set it off and leave it, he's actively doing it now. And
this God, this great creating God, was contracted to a span,
a little baby. When the fullness of time came,
God sent forth his Son, born of a woman. He took on our flesh. Born under the law, he subjected
himself to his own law, to redeem those, to buy back those who
were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.
Oh, the incarnation is so important. Their faith was in Christ Jesus,
the God who became a man to redeem those who were under the law.
God set him forth, it tells us in Romans 3, he set him forth
as a propitiation, a sin offering, an offering for the sins of the
people. 2 Corinthians 5 tells us that He made Him, this Jesus
Christ, He made Him who knew no sin to be made sin for us,
for His people. That's who that us is, His people,
His chosen elect people, those who have faith in Him. He made
Him to be sin for them, that they might become the righteousness
of God in Him. Oh, what a transfer. What a transfer,
this holy, pure God. And us as we are, vile sinners. And that transfer was made. He
became sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. That's what it is to have faith
in Christ Jesus, is to know these things, to believe them. Even
though you've no evidence, we can't take you anywhere and actually
show you a picture which will convince you. that there's going
to be no flash of lightning or no visions going to appear so
that everybody will say, oh, yes, now I believe it. These
things are unseen. And yet you build your life on
these things as facts. That's a mark of believers' faith
in Christ Jesus, that he accomplished all the righteousness that was
necessary on behalf of his people. That what do we need? What do
we need to stand before God? What do we need? We need righteousness,
holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. That's what
we need. Where are we going to get that righteousness? You know,
if we're honest with ourselves, we look into our own hearts and
we know that there's no hope for us. In my flesh dwells no
good thing. The heart of man is deceitful
and desperately wicked. Paul and I were discussing Noah
yesterday and he reminded me that even after the flood. God said that the thoughts and
intents of the heart of man was still evil continually. That
was Noah. That was Noah who'd found grace
in the eyes of the Lord. That's what we're like. Well,
where are we going to get this righteousness from? Well, it's
in Christ, isn't it? Don't you want it to be pronounced
about you, I am well pleased with you. This is my son in whom
I'm well pleased. Well, isn't that what he said
about Christ? God is well pleased with us. when we look to Christ,
when we rest in Christ, when we have faith in him, when we
build our lives on him, because God is pleased with him. He said
it. The voice came from heaven. This is my beloved son in whom
I am well pleased. Now, does this faith mark me
out as a recipient of God's grace in Christ? Beware, there's a
warning, because there are so many false Christs around. No,
people will come. He warned us. People will come
and say, Oh, look, here's Christ or Christ is like this. Oh, we
have to be so careful to test the spirits. I'll tell you about
a man who was in a small gathering of people. I'll call it that.
I don't believe it was a church of God now in the north of England
about five years ago when we were there. And I imagine many
of you have heard of Bill Clark. He comes over here. He's a good
friend of Paul's father. And he started coming up to this
place, Barrow-in-Furness in the north of England, to preach the
gospel of God's grace on a Saturday night. And the elders of this
place didn't used to come, and then on one occasion they came
to hear what this man had to say. And one of them, oh, such
a wise, respected man in the eyes of those people, so highly
esteemed for his wisdom, he was heard to say the following day,
that when he heard that his Jesus didn't die for the sins of everybody,
oh, it broke his heart and he didn't want that teaching there.
Well, you know something? His Jesus was not this Jesus
of the Bible. His Jesus did die for the sins
of everybody and accomplished absolutely nothing because it
wasn't the Christ of the Bible. Beware. We've got to be so careful
to test what these people say. And also, this is something I've
learned over the last couple of years. You have to listen
a long time. You know, you'll tune in to Billy
Graham, perhaps, and you'll hear him say, and you'll say, wow,
he's saying right things there. That's right. That's what the
Bible says. Well, you keep listening. You just keep on listening. Not
at the expense of listening to your pastor, but you've got to
listen carefully to what people say. Do they add anything to
Christ? Anything at all? Or do they leave
anything out? Because you know, 99% of Christ
Jesus will profit you nothing. That's right. 99% will profit
you nothing. You mustn't add anything. You
know that chair illustration? Here's the chair. You can't see
it. There's such a temptation for
our flesh to just say, well, that's good, yes, I'll sit on
that, but I'll bring along a little piece of wood just to strengthen
it, you know, I'll tie, I'll bring along my little bit of
wood just to give some strength to it. I mean, it's not a full
chair, but it's a bit of wood, I'll add it to it to show that
we're serious, and I piously say, to show that we appreciate
what he's done. Oh, we appreciate that chair,
we'll bring our little bit of wood to strengthen it. Beware
of false faith. I don't much like it when preachers
quote, but I don't know if you, I imagine many of you use grace
for today or have done in times past, and I'm going through it
this year, and I just thought this paragraph so much illustrated
this point. I'll just read it out to you.
False faith can be very deceptive. False faith produces good works.
Oh, it does. It excites the emotions. It reforms
the outward life. It performs deeds of religion.
It causes sorrow for sin. It does. It causes sorrow for
sin. It speaks well of Christ. I can tell you this because we've
seen it recently. We've seen it. It speaks well
of Christ. It does works of charity. Oh,
it really does. You're in the hospital and Folks
will visit you. They really will. Works of charity
trembles under the preaching of the gospel. False faith gains
high office in the church. It secures peace of mind. Oh,
we've got our faith. It walks in the company of great
preachers. You know, you have to really
examine your own heart. I've been really blessed by being
in the presence of Paul and in the presence of Henry, his father,
and Don Faulkner last Sunday night, and to say, you know,
it's so easy to mimic, isn't it? Do you have mimics over here?
Guys who can stand up and pretend that they're George Bush, and
you almost think it was them speaking. You really have to
examine your own heart. False faith even holds out to
the day of judgment. You know, it says, Lord, Lord,
didn't we do all of these things? My friend, beware of false faith.
Remember Lot's wife, Judas, Simon, Demas and Diotrephes. Be not
numbered among them. Such a danger. Well, do you have
a good hope? Do you trust only in Christ?
Don Fortner said last Sunday night, he said, I have a great
urgency to make my people fear. And you'd think, oh, that doesn't
sound like grace. He said, I have a great urgency to make them
fear. looking anywhere other than to
Christ, wholly and completely to Christ. Well, there's a mark
of true believers that Paul saw there at Colossae. They have
faith in Christ Jesus. Then verse five, the hope which
is laid up for us in heaven, the hope which is laid up for
us in heaven. Now, believers, God's children, are away from
home. And they're homesick for the
family. That's what believers are like. Christ didn't stay
dead. He rose and he ascended. Can
you imagine if Christ only did part of the job? Can you imagine
if he only lived a perfect life? Fulfilled that law? And if he
died and it just stayed there? Can you imagine a couple? Can
you imagine a couple deeply in love? Deeply in love. And one
of them has a heart condition, fatal heart condition. And the
other one says, I'll have an operation and give my heart transplanted
into you so that you can live. Now, what do you think the person
receiving that heart would think? He'd think, I don't want to live
because that would leave you dead. I don't want to live without
you. Well, isn't that how it is for
believers? You know, if he just accomplished
a righteousness, if he just paid the penalty for sin, but if there
wasn't glory to look forward to. If there wasn't to be with
him forever to look forward to, well, what did Paul say? If Christ be not risen, then
we're of all men most miserable. But he did rise from the dead.
And he said, I'm going to prepare a place for you. In my father's
house are many mansions. Revelation tells us that all
things are going to be made new. This whole creation is groaning
and longing to be made new. We're not in a static situation.
This is a journey. Don't ever forget that. However
sweet the fellowship is in this life, don't ever forget that
we're in a journey. And it's got a destination. You
must have read Pilgrim's Progress, a story of a Christian life.
It's a progress. It's a journey. Paul was telling
me that there's a steep hill not too far from here. And he
was talking about climbing up it with a friend. how you look
upwards, you look to where you're going to, because if you start
looking at the stones all around and how difficult it is, you
get discouraged. You're on a journey, you're encouraging each other,
but you're looking to where you're going. We really enjoyed our
flight over here, despite the threat of it being blown out
of the air. It really was a lovely flight. We saw beautiful mountains
in Greenland. I mean, those glaciers and the
snow, the hundreds of miles of snow, It really was something. But I didn't want to stay up
there. I'm glad I'm not still there looking down on it now.
We were going somewhere. We were going to a destination.
We wanted to get there. It was enjoyable. We enjoyed
each other's company on the way. But we were going somewhere.
And so it is with the Christian life. We have a hope of heaven. We're looking towards that. Paul
was torn. He didn't know whether he wanted
to stay, which was good for the sake of his people, or to be
with Christ, which is far better. We're going to be delivered from
the body of this death. It says in Romans 7, oh, this
sinful flesh, who will deliver me from the body of this death?
I thank God that through Christ Jesus, by Christ Jesus, when
we go to be with him or when he comes for us, we'll be delivered
from the body of this death. Believers have a hope in heaven,
not Well, I hope I'm going to get there. I hope so. Will it
happen? I hope so. Perhaps. It's a sure
and certain hope. What do you want most? Well,
if you're a believer, if you're Christ's, you want to be like
him. Isn't that right? You want to
be like him. You long to be like him. You long to be rid of this
old flesh. You do. The process of crossing
that river of death to be with Christ, naturally, to the human
spirit. It's cold. You know, in Pilgrim's
Progress, the water was cold, and I'm sure it will be for all
of us. We naturally shrink back from
it. But we really want to be free from the body of this death,
don't we? You know, however good you think
you are, whenever you think you're being good, the very act of thinking
that you're being good is not good. It's bad. You think about
the things that you've said, and you think, oh, I wish I hadn't
said that. I just wish I hadn't said it
like that, or I wish I hadn't done that thing. Oh, what a thing
to go and do. How I've let my Lord down. This body of this death, we long
to be rid of it. Well, a hope of heaven. We know
that when we shall see him, we shall be like him, for we shall
see him as he is. Do you have that hope? And do
you believe it? Believers do. Paul had seen this,
their faith in Christ Jesus, their hope of heaven. But then
finally, their love for all the saints. This is the... later on in that section. John
13, 35 says this, By this will all men know that you are my
disciples. By what? That you do good works, that
you are very religious, you dress a certain way, you don't do this,
you don't do that. No, because you have love one
for another. That's the mark, love one for
another. You know, you really are in a
privileged position to be in a church with a good number of
people and to have love one for another. Honestly, we're in a
situation where there are a dozen of us meet together and the very
hostile circumstances and we have love for one another but
all the privilege that you have of being in a number of people
good number of people with love for one another, true fellowship.
We've been in churches which teach Calvinism, which preach
Calvinism, which say a lot about Christ, are bigger than this
church, but yet there's no... there wasn't this love there,
you know, you just couldn't smell the sweet smell of this love
in those places, because Christ wasn't preached there, as he
should be. This is willing, sacrificial
and joyful love. I just want you to turn over
to 1 John, 1 John. We say 1 John over there. 1 John,
chapter 4. You know this, I'm sure. I'm
sure this is all very, very familiar. Verse 7. 1 John 4, verse 7. Beloved, let us love one another,
for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and
knows God. Let us love one another. Verse
10. In this is love. Not that we
loved God, but that He loved us. He's the source of that love.
He's the origin of that love. He sent His Son to be the sin
offering, the propitiation for our sins. Verse 11. If God so loved us, we also ought
to love one another. Isn't that right? He loved us. You know, when you really begin
to get a view of what you're like. You who are parents, You
love your children. If you're like us, we have three
boys and sometimes we find it hard to love them because they
do things which are not very lovable things. And we tend to
be judgmental and we put standards on them which are higher than
the standards that we put on ourselves. We expect behavior
of them which we often find that we're falling down on ourselves. And yet we try to love them.
Well, God loved us. God loved us despite what we
are. You know, the gap between God and us is infinitely greater
than the gap between us and our children. In reality, there's
no gap between us and our children. We're grown up and we think we're
so wise and we're so good, we know how to behave. All it is,
is that culturally we've learned the things that you just do and
don't do in public and with other people. These little ones, they
just haven't been around long enough to learn it yet. They're
only learning. Oh, so prone to hypocrisy. But
God loved us, so we also ought to love one another. Verse 12. No one has seen God at any time,
but if we love one another, God abides in us. God abides in us
if we love one another, and his love has been perfected in us.
Verse 16. Abide in the love of God. God is love, and he who abides
in love abides in God, and God in him. Oh, rest there, abide
there, rest in his love. Verse 18, there's no fear in
love. No fear in love. Perfect love
casts out fear, because fear involves torment. Isn't it good
not to fear torment in the love of God? And then verse 19, why
do we love him? Why should we love him? Because
he first loved us. He's the source of this love,
despite what we like. This isn't sloppy sentimentality,
which we read and see so much of under the guise of religion. This is love which has its origin
in God. This is the love which is characteristic
of Christ. That's how we distinguish it.
But we must look at 1 Corinthians 13. Just turn over there with
me. Just look at the characteristics
of this. Verse 4. Love gets very, very fond of
you. No. Love suffers long, is kind,
doesn't envy, doesn't parade itself, is not puffed up. These terms are probably slightly
different. This version that I use is the New King James Version. It's not one of these modern
paraphrases. It's the King James Version with
with the these here and there turned to thous and the bowels
of mercies put into other sort of more modern language. So I saw one or two of you looking
and wondering what I was reading just then. But these are the
characteristics of love. It doesn't behave rudely, does
not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice
in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth, bears all things,
believes all things, hopes all, thinks the best of people. Endures
all things. Love never fails. That's the
characteristic of this love. It's the characteristic of Christ.
And without it, doesn't matter how religious I am, doesn't matter
how well I preach, doesn't matter what good things I say, without
it, I'm just a noise. Just an irritating noise. And
it doesn't matter whether I've got the gift of prophecy or whatever,
whether I've got faith which could remove mountains, without
that love, I'm nothing. I'm nothing. I'm worthless. And
it doesn't matter if I'm the greatest giver. I give all my
gifts. I bestow all my good things to
feed the poor. Oh, real charitable. But without
this love, it profits me nothing. I'm bankrupt in the Kingdom of
Heaven. Bankrupt without this love. This
is the love which comes from Christ. It has its roots and
source in Him. And this is true obedience, you
know. This love of Christ, this ties in with our study in Romans
13. This is true obedience. The legalists,
they talk about law and they try and get you to behave a certain
way by putting rules and regulations on. And they talk about obligation. That's a really popular word
amongst Calvinistic Baptists over in Britain. Do you understand
the obligation that you're under? They try and do this to get people
to live a certain way and to do certain things. Do you know
that can lead to some of the most hard and cold and bitter
spirit? It really can. Some of the most
wicked things are being done in the name of legalistic religion,
trying to force you to live a certain way and do certain things. But
you know how the law is truly fulfilled? Through love. Romans 13, verses 8 to 10, they
tell us that love is the fulfillment of the law. It quotes the commandments
and it says, how are you going to fulfill it? Love is the fulfillment
of the law. Faith in Christ for a right relationship
with God. That's the first ones of the
Ten Commandments. Love for one another. Love is
the fulfillment of the law. That's true obedience. And it
produces fruit, that fruit of the Spirit that we read about
in Galatians. That love, joy, peace, long-suffering,
patience. And what does it say about that
fruit? Against such there is no law. No law against it. This
is what marks out believers. These are the characteristics
that mark them out. Faith in Christ Jesus. One hundred
percent Christ Jesus. No little bits of wood added
to that chair to support it. Trust in Him. Rest in Him. When you think of that Judgment
seat of Christ, before which it says we must all stand. Well,
you rest in Christ. You know this. Christ my substitute. He lived and he died for me.
Trust in Christ. And you look forward to that
hope which we have in heaven. We're going to be there, together
with him. All of us in Christ, we're going
to be there together. Oh, what a destination. And love. Love for one another. These are
the marks of believers. that the greatest of these is
love, because love endures. It does. Faith will not be necessary
in heaven, because instead of trusting something we can't see,
we'll see it. We'll see him as he is. And hope? Well, I always muddle up the
quotation of this scripture, but it goes something like, why
do you hope for that which you've already got? If you hope to see
the Queen of England, and you've get to meet her and she's there,
well, you no longer hope to meet her because you've met her, don't
you? Faith and hope will be no more, but love endures. Well,
love for one another and love for Christ. Let's pray. Our gracious Heavenly Father,
we do thank you for your Word. We thank you for the clarity
of your Gospel in the pages of Scripture. Oh, we thank you how
Christ is set forth plainly amongst us. Oh, Lord, we pray that our
trust might be totally in Him. Oh, teach us. This flesh is so
prone to lean on other things, to want some confidence of the
flesh. Oh, help us not to do that, but
just to lean on our Saviour, to see in Him their all-sufficient
sacrifice for sin. And, Lord, Strengthen our desire
to be with him, we pray. We get so comfortable in this
life. We enjoy each other's company.
We enjoy the journey more than the destination sometimes. Oh
Lord, it's just the weakness of our flesh. Oh, help us to
look forward, we pray, and increase our love for one another. Oh
Lord, that it might burn in us, that love, a reflection of that
love which you have for us. The most unlovely of people,
the cheapest sinners, as Paul said, that You could love us. If that's so, O Lord, we pray
that love might be evident amongst us. So we thank You for Your
Word. We pray that You will bless us
now, in His name. Amen.