Good evening, everybody. Let's
turn to Deuteronomy chapter 13. Deuteronomy 13. And we're going to look at the
first four verses. Mainly the last part of verse
three and all of verse four, but we're going to read the first
four verses here. And we're going to look at what
it means to love our God. Verse four gives us six things
that believers shall do to reveal their love to their God. So let's
start in Deuteronomy 13, verse one. If there arise among you
a prophet or a dreamer of dreams and giveth thee a sign or a wonder,
and the sign of the water come to pass, whereof he spake unto
thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not
known, and let us serve them. Thou shalt not hearken unto the
words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord
your God proveth you or tests you to know whether you love
the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
And verse four is going to be my main text, and I've titled
it What Love Does. And here's what the love of a
believer does. You shall walk after the Lord
your God. You shall fear him. You shall
keep his commandments. You shall obey his voice. You
shall serve him. And you shall cleave unto him.
We're going to look at all those one at a time. I know we don't feel good about
our love to our Lord, and rightfully so. We still carry this flesh,
and it drags us down. But I want to get the context
of this a little bit. So let's back up a little bit
into verse 29 of Deuteronomy 12. To get a little bit of context
here, 29 verse 29 of Deuteronomy 12. When the Lord thy God shall
cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou goest to possess
them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their land, take
heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them,
after that they be destroyed from before thee, and that thou
inquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations
serve their gods? Even so will I do likewise. Thou
shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God. For every abomination
to the Lord, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods.
For even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in
the fire to their gods. What things soever I command
you, observe to do it. Thou shalt not add thereto, nor
diminish from it." So things were going pretty good for Israel.
They were getting ready to enter the land of Canaan. They left
Egypt. ready to enter the promised land
of milk and honey, but the Lord knows their frame and he knows
our frame. And look in verse 30, he says, take heed to Satan,
to your enemies, to the war. No, to that self. Watch out for
yourself, because as soon as things seem to go good, we seem
to go bad. And Israel repeatedly fell into
idolatry. That's the sin that constantly
plagued them. And physical Israel and believers
of spiritual Israel, it's no different. Idolatry is our biggest
problem. We worship the God of self. all the time, self-serving, self-loving,
self-pleasing, exalting self, and that's a big problem with
us. So he warned them, take heed
to thyself that they be not snared. And he said in verse 32, whatever
I command you, observe to do it. Don't add anything to it
nor diminish from it. We're not to add our thoughts
or our opinions or our ideas, and we're not to pick and choose
and leave out the hard-to-do things. We're to do everything
that He's given us in His Word, which is His command. And what He does, He picks up
in verse 1 of 13, and there's going to be false prophets that
rise up and try to seduce us away from Christ, back then and
now. And the Lord sends them and he sends
them for a purpose there in verse three, the middle of that verse
for the Lord, your God, proveth you or tests you. And if you're
like me, tests scare me in school. You always get a little anxious
and upset and nervous and uptight about tests and rightfully so,
but imagine being tested of God, which we are. And what if I fail? Well, you're going to fail. That's
the purpose of a test or a trial. In your flesh, you're going to
fail. You're going to try to recover in your own strength,
but you're finally going to come crawling back to the Lord where
we should have never left in the first place. That's the purpose
of these trials. And it says he tests us to know
whether we love him. Now, he knows. Whether we love
him or not, he put that love in us in our new heart. He knows
we love him, but there's going to be evidences or proofs of
his love that he's given us. So others will know that we love
him. And those proofs and those evidences are in verse four. There's six of them. We'll look
at look at each one of them. He says, what does it mean or? He says, love the Lord your God
with all your heart and with all your soul. Now, all means
everything, all-inclusive, no room for anything else. That kind of intimidates me.
I know we don't feel like we do that, but before I want to
see if I love Him with all my heart and all my soul, I want
to make sure I love Him in the first place. Do I personally
love the Lord my God? And do you, if you're a believer,
you do trust me, because God's put that love in your heart,
in the new heart. And you do love him. And it's
a fruit of the spirit. We're told in Galatians chapter
five, verse 22, the fruit of the spirit is love. And if he's
giving you the news, a new spirit, a new heart, he's giving you
a fruit and a fruit grows where there's life. And he's giving
you life. And that fruit is love. But I want to see from his word
if I've got this love. So let's turn to 1 John chapter
5. 1 John chapter 5. Verse 1. So how can I know if God's given
me life from the dead? How can I know if I've been born
again and if he's created a new man or a new heart? in me with
this love. 1 John chapter 5 verse 1. Whosoever believeth that Jesus
is the Christ is born of God. There you have it. Whosoever
believeth on Christ that their salvation has been born of God. They have a new heart. They're
born again. And I've read that verse before, and it's kind of
bothered me because I know Joe Blow walking down the street,
you ask him, do you believe Jesus is the Christ? And they say,
yeah. And everybody says, yeah, I believe I believe he is. And
does that necessarily mean that person is born of God? Well,
no. Um, we're told this, I don't
want to turn it, but I'll read it to you. Second Thessalonians
chapter two, verse 13. We are bound to give thanks always
to God for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord, because God has
from the beginning chosen you to salvation. He's elected a
people to salvation and these people are saved through sanctification
of spirit and belief of the truth. They go together. This being
born again, being sanctified by the Spirit, and the new man
put in every believer believes something. He believes the truth.
And we hear the truth here every week when we listen to Todd.
And whichever man stands up here, I pray we preach the truth. God only saves through preaching
of the truth is what it says here. He says you've been chosen
to salvation through sanctification spirit and belief of the truth. Now, man's religion believes
that God loves all. The Bible says that God sovereignly
chose a people and he's loved them always in Christ. Man's
religion believes that Christ died for all and you have a free
will to choose or reject him. The truth of the Bible says we
have a sovereign savior that lived and died and completed
the salvation of his people. Man's religion believes that
spirit calls everybody. The truth says the spirit is
spiritual life to the elect. It's an irresistible call. There's
no salvation under the preaching of lies. There's only salvation
under the preaching of the truth. And if we've heard the truth
of a sovereign God electing a people, of a Christ dying for his people,
of a spirit calling his people, and salvations by grace and grace
alone, and we've heard that and we believe it, then we've been
born again. Only one that's been born again
with a new heart will believe the truth. And if you've had
a new heart and you've been born again, God's word says this about
you and about me right up above here in verse 19 of chapter 4,
we love him. God's word says we, the elect,
love God. Now, if you can't feel it or
understand it or experience it, you know it. You're a believer.
You believe the word of God. Believe what he says right here.
We love him and we do love God. And we reveal this love down
in verse two and three of chapter five. By this, we know that we
love the children of God when we love God and keep his commandments
for this. Is the love of God. Here's how
I show my love to my God that I keep his commandments. All right. What is his commandment?
Turn back to chapter three. First John, chapter three. Verse
twenty three. And this is his commandment.
That we should believe that we should rely and trust on the
name of his son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave
us commandment. His commandments is one commandment
to believe on Christ and love one another. That and joins them
together. Where there's one, there will always be the other. And where there's not one, there's
neither one of them. There's going to be both of them
at all times. So to truly love God, if you have the love of
God, it says right here, believe on Christ and love one another. And anybody that does that has
kept those commandments. You love God. You've been born
again. Well, the problem that we have
with this is, in a believer, we've got two natures in us.
The old flesh, the old nature, hates God. The new nature, in
the spirit, the new man loves God. And I use this illustration
in Alabama a month ago or so. We've experienced storms a lot.
And you get this warm system moving in. That's the new man,
warm, alive to God. And here's the cold front coming
in. That's the dead man, cold, dead in sins. What happens when
they meet? You get thunderstorms and hail and ice and tornadoes
and all kinds of misery. And that's what's going on inside
a believer constantly, all day, is this struggle of the new man
and the old man. One's telling me I love God.
One's telling me I hate God. And it drives me crazy a lot
of times. I just don't know what I'm doing
or what I'm thinking a lot of times. This is what we're to believe,
and this is what we're to go to, and this is what should tell
me if I love my Lord or not. And he says we do love him if
we keep his commandments. And his commandment is to believe
on Christ and love one another. And believers do that. That's
why we're called believers. Let's go back to Deuteronomy.
So believers love the Lord. Well, I want to know if I love
him with all my heart and all my soul. And verse four tells
us. That we do. And here's the things
we do. And we do these only by his grace. I realize that. But
we do these things because it says ye shall. It's not an option. It doesn't say you might. You
could if you work at it pretty hard. Or perhaps or to some degree
it says ye shall do these things. And that's only because he wills.
He's made us willing in day of his power. It's the only reason
we shall do these. Now the first I didn't really know what word
to use. The first evidence or trait or characteristic that
a believer exhibits is to walk after the Lord your God. To walk
after means to follow behind someone as they lead you. I'm
going to give you two examples here. One's a negative, a bad
example, and one's a One's a good example, and they both happened
to me, so that makes them bad. But anyway, the first example
is a negative example, and this is not what it means to really
follow someone. Let's say I'm going to Coles
or Garden Ridge with my wife, and she takes me with her, and
I do the husbandly thing. Sure, I'll go. And she's walking
down them aisles just all excited and looking at this, showing
this and that. And I'm behind her, slumped a little bit, but
I'm looking at her. I'm following her. I've got her
in my peripheral vision so I don't knock that mannequin over or
run over people or whatever. I'm physically following her,
but it's peripherally. I'm not really focusing in on
her. I got my mind thinking about that. waffle cone at Cold Stone
Creamery that we're going to afterwards. I'm physically there,
but my heart's not in it. That's just going through the
motions, and that's what man's religion is. They physically
carry out all the actions, but their heart's not in it because
they don't have a new heart. Now, a positive example of following
what it means to follow after somebody is, if you've ever,
in your younger days like I was, 19, never been out of West Virginia,
didn't know what a city was, and didn't have a clue how to
get around one, and your car gets stolen, and it gets impounded
in downtown New York City, you're in trouble, and I didn't know
what to do. So, back then, you know, we don't
have internet, we didn't have cell phones, we didn't, you know,
I don't know how I did it. I made phone calls and somehow
I got a train ticket to Grand Central Station. Got dropped
off on 42nd Street. Came out of this Grand Central
Station right there in the middle of New York City on 42nd Street
and didn't know what I was doing or where I was going or what
was going on. But somehow I found the address of where the car
was, got the car, and to get out of that city I had no clue. And some guy says, just follow
me. I said, all right, all right. So when you're following a guy
out of New York City and you don't know where you're going,
you are going to do everything within your power to keep your
eyes on that guy, whether you run red light, run over people,
run up the sidewalks. It doesn't matter. My whole thought,
my whole focus was consumed on keeping on him, on his tail and
not letting him go so I could get out of that city. That's
following after somebody. That's staying. That's using
your whole mind and thought and heart and everything was just
consumed with staying with that guy. And that's what it means
to walk after the Lord, our God. That he's everything to us and
we we follow him and we we try. Well, We always get the proper
answer. What are you looking to? Well,
I look to Christ and I look to Christ alone. But. We we are eyes wander. We don't
stay focused on Christ as we should, and they wander off.
If Peter can be in this having this big supper or whatever with
a good group of Gentile buddies of his and just a little glance
over at the door, see some Jews coming in. and not walk uprightly
according to the gospel and veer off and go join the Jews. If
Peter can do it, I know we're, we can do it. And we do it every
day. We look, we look to self. We look to anything but Christ. And I wish he would, I don't
wish, I know he will turn our eyes back to him and eventually,
but I want to see in scripture what we do follow. And there's
a verse I want us to look at. Psalms chapter 94. Psalms 94. Just one verse, verse 15. Psalms 94, 15. But judgment shall return into
righteousness and all the upright in heart shall follow it. Now, I read that initially and
I had no clue what that meant. And I hope the Lord's taught
me what it does mean, at least what I think it means. It could
mean a lot of things, depending on what the Lord would teach
you. But what he taught me was this. This
judgment returning unto righteousness. That means when somebody is judged,
are they being judged right or righteously for what they've
done? Is it a proper judgment to take place for what they've
done? And it talks about judgment returning to righteousness. That
means for a while they were split apart. That someone was being
judged wrong for how they lived or how they were. And that was
Christ upon this earth. He was a spotless, innocent,
holy lamb of God. His whole life on this earth.
And yet we treated him despised, esteemed him not, called him
a blasphemer, said he had a devil. We did not judge him righteously.
We did not judge him as he should have been judged. But when he
went to that cross, judgment and righteousness returned. He
was judged righteously because he went to that cross with each
and every sin of his elect in his soul. And God judged him
righteously and forsook him and killed him. And so judgment did
return unto righteousness on the cross. And that's what we
follow. That's what the upright in heart, the new belief, the
new heart, and every believer pursues and follows to their
dying day is looking to their precious savior, bleeding and
dying on that cross for him. And what he did for me. And I
pray he will keep us looking to him all times and give us
grace to. to walk after our Lord and follow
him until we see him face to face. Now, he proved his great
love for his people when he fulfilled his own saying, when he said,
greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his
life for his friends. And that's what he did. He laid
down his life. He died for his people, his friends, his believers. And we should do that. We might
not have to die for our brothers and sisters in Christ, but we
should lay down our life. Whatever is important to us,
my life, my job, my family, my entertainment. Whatever, I'm
to lay it down, put it aside, and serve my friends and my brothers
and sisters in Christ first, and lay my life down to serve
them. And I hope we can learn from
our Lord the love He showed when He laid down His life for us
that we could lay down our life for our friends. So looking or
walking after the Lord is to look to Christ. And I know staring
is bad manners. It's rude to stare at somebody
or whatever. But when it comes to looking
to Christ, may we all be accused of staring at him. If you're
looking to him, stare all you want. It's a good thing to stare
and look and rely on him for everything. So that's what it
means to walk after the Lord your God. That took a little longer
than I anticipated. So we're going to. Get through
these other five and I'll try to be a little bit quicker. So
let's go back to Deuteronomy chapter 13. Verse four, you should walk after
the Lord your God. And next, it says you shall fear
him. Fear is not the fear we think
of being afraid. Fear when we fear God is I got
the definition out of the Strong's or Vines dictionary. It's to
stand in awe of someone. It's a reverence whereby you
recognize the power and position of the individual revered and
give to him proper respect and honor. And once again, I'm going
to give you two examples, one bad and one good. One's me and
one wasn't me. The bad one was me, of course,
giving proper respect and honor when I was in the Navy. To show
respect to officers, you know, it's this, whenever they come
by. Well, after being on the submarine
for three or four years, a hardened submariner and knowing how to
run that boat and knowing everything about it upside down, inside
out, because all we did was drill day and night and they drilled
us and drilled us. So here comes this guy out of
college onto the boat thinking I'm going to respect him and
honor him. Well, I did outwardly do that, but inwardly I despised
him. I wasn't giving him proper reverence or respect and honor.
Lots of times we'd do this and we'd go, comb her hair and that
would really make a man. I love that. But that's not respect and honor
that we're to give to our Lord. When our Lord was in the Garden
of Gethsemane. And those soldiers came to take
him. And they asked him, are you Jesus of Nazareth? And he
said, I am. What they did, they lost voluntary
control of their bodies. They hit the dirt. and didn't
know what happened or how it happened or why it happened because
they were in the presence of God Almighty. And when you're
in the presence of God Almighty, you're going to bow before him,
whether you do now in your heart as your Lord and Savior and you
take him up to be your Savior or you go bow on Judgment Day
as he rightly judges you and sends you to hell. We're going
to bow in reverence. But there's some things that
we do when we fear the Lord, too, and I want to look at three
scriptures. They're just one verse scriptures that show what
we do when we fear the Lord. First one is Exodus chapter 14.
Exodus 14. Verse 31. Now we're talking about, we're
going to look at the word and here and when someone fears they
do something else along with it. And Israel saw that great
work, which the Lord did upon the Egyptians. He drowned all
the Egyptians. And of course, that shows how
he drowned all of our sins. He took them and put them away.
They're dead and gone. And the people feared the Lord
and believed the Lord and his servant Moses. So where there's
where there's a true godly fear, there's a believing of every
word that comes out of his mouth. We believe the God that we fear
and reverence. All right. Over to Job, chapter
one. Job, chapter one. Right in front of Psalms. Job 1 verse 1. There was a man in the land of
us whose name was Job and that man was perfect and upright and
one that feared God and eschewed evil. Eschewed means to turn
off, to put away, to get rid of, and that's what one that
fears God does. You put off the old man with
his deeds and you put on the new man. Exodus 20 verse 20,
when I turn, says that his fear or God's fear may be before your
faces that ye sin not. That is eschewing evil, sinning
not. So you reveal a true godly fear
and reverence when you absolutely unequivocally hate your sin. And you sin not. Now, have you
done like me? Terrible. We're sinning as we
sit here. But that doesn't mean we don't
try, and it doesn't mean it's not our desire and not our will,
because he's given us a new heart and a new will, and that new
man does not sin. He cannot sin. And the problem
is, by the time that new man puts a good motive or something
into action, it gets carried out through these hands, and
it turns into sin. But the motive behind it was
good, the motive was holy, and God looks on the heart. And when
God looks on the heart, he sees a heart, a holy heart with no
sin. And we sin not through the motives
of the new man out of love. And Ecclesiastes chapter 12,
one more verse to deal with the fear of God. It's right after
Proverbs. Ecclesiastes chapter 12. First 13. Let us hear the conclusion of
the whole matter. Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man. You reveal a true godly
fear and reverence when you obey every single commandment of the
God you fear. And we've done this united to
Christ. We will look at that later, but a true fear obeys
his commandments and true faith is always accompanied by obedience. It's obedience he gives us, but
it's there. If you can look at every gospel
command, such as loving your enemies or giving, to be a cheerful
giver, to be kind, tenderhearted and forgiving. If you can look
at all these gospel commands and not place just as much importance
on them as you place in trusting your Savior, then something's
wrong. Yes, we're saved by grace. Yes,
he did it all. And there's nothing for me to
do, yet there's everything for me to do in serving him and loving
him and obeying his gospel. So a believer truly fears his
God when he believes on the Lord, eschews and hates evil and sin,
and keeps the commandments of his God. So that was the second
trait or characteristic that a believer does. You walk after
the Lord your God. You fear God. And the next one
is, ye shall keep his commandments. We don't have to turn back to
Deuteronomy 13. Trust me, that's what the next
one is. Ye shall keep his commandments. Keep here means to protect, to
guard over, to hedge about as with thorns is what the word
comes from. And I call that hedging grace. We only keep his commandments
when he keeps us in Christ and keeps us from looking elsewhere.
And as soon as we want to go look and look at that experience
when I felt real good. And as soon as we head towards
that, we run into this hedge of thorns. these trials and afflictions,
and they turn us right back around to Christ. Every way we turn
to an experience, to a feeling, to a whatever, we're going to
run to this hedge of thorns, these trials, and he's going
to turn us around and turn us back to Christ. And in looking to Christ, I've
kept his gospel commandment, which we've already looked at
in 1 John 3, 23, which is to believe on the name of his son,
Jesus Christ, and love one another. But let's let's turn over there
real close to their first John, chapter three, verse twenty four. First, John three, verse twenty
four. So I've talked about how we keep his commandments because
we're united to Christ. Well, how do I get united to
Christ? How do I become united to Christ? First, John three, twenty four. He that keepeth his commandments
dwelleth in him, and he in him. Well, there it is. He dwells
in a believer, and a believer dwells in him. They're made one
through keeping his commandments. And his commandment was right
above there, believing on the name of his Son, Jesus Christ.
The very second you trust Christ and rely on him, that very second
you're united to him, although you've really been united to
him eternally, In time, we go through, we have to, there's
no salvation apart from faith and you have to believe and trust
Christ. And that very second you realize
your union with him. And so I keep God's commandment
by trusting what Christ did for me. He kept God's commandments
perfectly. When he walked this earth for 33 years, I was in
him. I was with him and everybody
was with him. So when he walked and when he kept a commandment,
so did we united to him. That's how we keep God's commandments.
But he tells us this in 2 Samuel. Let's turn over there to 2 Samuel
chapter 22. Christ's righteousness is our
righteousness, so much so that we can call it our own 2 Samuel. Chapter 22. Verse twenty one. Now, this is the words of Christ,
because all the Bible, every scripture speaks of Christ, but
this is also the words of David. He wrote this and it's the words
of every believer. The Lord rewarded me according
to my righteousness. My 33 perfect years of obedience
that I carried out when I walked in Christ on this earth. He rewards
me according to my righteousness and he gives me eternal life.
I was in Christ and I kept every commandment perfectly when I
walked this earth for 33 years in him, united to him. And then
the last part of the verse says, according to the cleanness of
my hands, hath he recompensed me? Not these hands. These physical
hands have done nothing but sin and taking and fighting and stealing
and rebelling and everything wrong. The hands of Christ, when
He walked this earth, helping and holding and comforting and
giving and supporting and loving and obeying without sin. Those
are my hands. Those are my clean hands. His
hands, when He did all that, are my hands. And I get rewarded
according to That, according to Christ's work and his obedience
when he walked this earth. Everything he did, I did. And I'm rewarded as such. And
that's how I've kept every commandment of God, by being united to Christ. So, we've seen every believer
loves his Lord with all his heart and all his soul when he follows
and looks to Christ, when he fears his God and King, when
he keeps every commandment of his God through faith in Christ,
which unites him to Christ. And next, you shall obey his
voice. Obey means to hear intelligently,
which that's trouble for some of us because we're not as intelligent
as we think we are, and to listen attentively. Which is even more
trouble to sit and listen attentively for 30 or 40 or if I'm going
a little long now, even longer just because we have this flesh
and it's hard to do. That's the old man. The old man
has no use and no care for the gospel. He's going to fight you
every second of the way. But the new man is sitting in
there and he's soaking it all in because he's got new ears.
They're not these ears. Ears in your heart, spiritual
ears, and we obey his voice because we hear his voice through the
preaching of the gospel. Now he's given us a new mind,
and this new mind is focused on one thing. Second Corinthians,
Chapter 10. Second Corinthians, Chapter 10. One verse, verse five. We've got the mind of Christ
and this mind of Christ. Does this Corinthians 10, verse
five, casting down imaginations at every high thing that exalted
itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity
every thought to the obedience of Christ. That's how I obey
the voice of my Lord. I bring all my thoughts captive
to the obedience of Christ. His obedience is what I trust
and look to. And that's how I've obeyed the
voice of God. through being united to Christ.
His obedience is my obedience. So the next time your thoughts
run wild and drag you down with what a miserable example of a
Christian you've been that day, ask God for grace to make your
mind and thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ. Every
breath he took from his birth to his death was in perfect obedience
to God because he loved him with his whole heart, mind, body,
and soul. That's the commandment of Deuteronomy 6, verse 5. And
every believer did the same thing because we were united in him
and walking with him and obeying our Lord and God with our whole
heart, mind, body and soul when we walked in Christ. And he was
obedient even unto death, the death of the cross. Every one of my disobedient acts,
in thoughts, word, and action, he took as his very own, and
he was justly punished. And so was I, and so was every
believer, because we were united. We never lost our union with
him. We walked with him when he walked this earth, and we
died with him when he died on that cross. It says that in Galatians
2, verse 20, I'm crucified with Christ. Romans 6 verse 6, knowing
this, that our old man is crucified with him. Union to Christ is
how I obey God's voice. So we've seen a love to God with
all our heart and soul is a love that follows, that fears, that
keeps, that obeys, and next it says, ye shall serve him. serve
him. Serve means to work, to enslave,
and we're not under any type of slavery. to the law. We're dead to the law. We're
not under it anymore. It's not a rule of life. It's
not our covenant of works. We're dead to the law by the
body of Christ. But having been set free, we're
now free to be a servant of Jesus Christ, to be made a willing
bond slave like Paul said he was a willing bond slave of Christ.
It's just like that Hebrew slave that was set free in the seventh
year. If you remember that back in Exodus 21, he served for six
years and the seventh year he was set free. But if he said,
I love my master and I want to serve him forever, the master
took a nail or something and put his ear to the doorframe
and put a hole through his ear. to show that that man wanted
to serve his master forever. Now we know that speaks of Christ
when he was nailed to a cross. He had holes put in his hands
and feet. But it speaks of us believers
too. We're made willing in the day of his power and we're made
willing to believe, repent, love, and serve our Lord forever. And
that service starts right here on this earth right now. As we
love and serve each other, because when we love and serve each other,
we love and serve Christ, because Christ dwells in that brother
or sister that we're loving and serving. Matthew 25, verse 40
says, I say unto you, and as much as ye have done it unto
one of the least of these, my brethren, You have done it unto
me. Because Christ dwells in every
believer, and you've done something to them. You've served and loved
them and gave to them. You've done the same to Christ.
And that's how we serve Christ, by serving one another. And the
last thing that a believer does. We follow Christ. We fear God.
We keep his commandments. We obey his voice. We serve him.
And lastly, you shall cleave unto him. Cleave. Acts 11, verse
23, says who, when he came, had seen the grace of God, was glad
and exhorted them all that with purpose of heart they would cleave
unto the Lord. Notice that said purpose of heart,
it wasn't an accident. It wasn't my own free will, but
according to God's purpose that I've been given a new purpose,
a new mind, a new heart, a new purpose, and that purpose is
to cleave unto the Lord. Cleave means to adhere or to
glue to, to glue to something. Everybody with kids knows that
feeling of the kid clinging to you all day some days. No matter
if you're eating, sleeping, walking, cooking, going to the bathroom,
you turn around, where do you go? Everything, and they're still
there. They never left your side. They're
clinging to you. They're holding to you. They
don't want to leave your side. And that's what a believer does with
Christ. Now, he's not going to trip over us because he's the
Lord God and he can't trip and he can't fall. But I want to
be accused of clinging to him and holding to him and cleaving
to him and never letting go. Romans 12 verse 9 says, Abhor
that which is evil, cleave to that which is good. Cleave there
means keep company to that which is good. And we're to keep company.
I want to keep company with Anybody that loves and serves my Lord
and Savior. And I want to cleave to you.
I want to be company with you guys. I don't want to be with
the world. I want to keep company and cleave unto you guys. Because
we all love our Savior and we love the gospel. And we all do
these six things. We all do. It says you shall
do them because he's made us willing. But we all do them because
It says in his word, we've done it. We love God. Keep his commandments and his
commandment is to believe on Christ and love one another.
He that keepeth his commandments shows his love to God. Now, I
reveal it by these six things. By walking after the Lord, my
God, I follow him by looking to Christ alone. He's my only
hope. I rely on him. I completely depend
on him. And the verse four says, and
all six of these things are connected. You got to do them all, but we
do do them all because he's done a menace and you shall fear him
in holy reverence for who he is and fearing to look anywhere
but Christ alone. And you shall keep his commandments
united by faith to Christ. I've kept every one of God's
God's commandments and you shall obey his voice. He's brought
our thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ, who loved his father
with his whole heart, mind, body and soul. And so did we united,
united to Christ. And you shall serve him. As willing
bond slaves of grace, loving and serving one another through
a faith which worketh by love, we serve Christ and love Christ
that way. And you shall cleave unto him.
And we do cling to him. He's our one and only hope, and
I pray we would cling to nothing else but him. And that's what
love does. That was the name of the message.
I don't know if I even said that, but the name of the message is
what love does. And those six things are what
we all do. By the grace of God, and may we do them every day
till we die and see him face to face. Let's pray.