Lord, as we come to Your Word this morning, it is the cry of all of our hearts that we would be dwelling within the veil, within Your very presence, Lord; that we could hear Your voice and that we would be able to really allow Your Holy Spirit to work in our lives, Lord.
We thank You that You have taken us out of a kingdom of darkness and placed us in a kingdom of light. Lord, as we go on in this life, we see how dark the darkness was, and we see more and more of the beauty of the light.
Lord, we come today and give ourselves unto You. We give ourselves unto You with a worshipful heart, a worshipful attitude, because of Your great love that has drawn each one of our hearts unto You. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Can we turn this morning to the letter to the Ephesians, Ephesians 3? I would like to read a couple of verses from this letter.
Actually, I was reading a commentary the other day, and this brother made a good point. He said, “We call these books.” He said, “Actually, we need to remember that they are letters that were written.” And what is the difference between a letter and a book?
The source. A book can come from your head; letters come from your heart. You know, letters are something personal. Letters are something where you care about the person you are writing to.
And Paul, in all of his letters, and Peter and the other ones too—these were burdens the Lord had put upon their hearts and that the Holy Spirit inspired. Each letter is a love letter to those to whom it was sent.
So I have been trying to readjust my thinking. I always say, “Turn to this book,” or, “Turn to that book.” I have been trying to readjust my thinking to say, “Let’s look at this letter,” because there is something very personal about it.
It was written not only to those ones in that age, but it is written to every one of us throughout all the ages—a personal love letter from our precious Lord. May He use that to speak to our hearts today.
Looking at Ephesians 3, we will start in verse 8:
To me, the very least of all the saints,
this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles
the unfathomable riches of Christ,
and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery
which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things;
in order that the manifold wisdom of God
might now be made known through the church
to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.
This was in accordance with the eternal purpose
which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Then in Ephesians 3:14:
For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father,
from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name,
that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory,
to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man.
And look back in Ephesians 2. We will read just one verse there, verse 19:
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens,
but you are fellow citizens with the saints,
and are of God’s household.
You are no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens with the saints. What a joy that is: that we are not strangers, sojourners, and aliens just wandering around, but now we have been brought into the precious family of God—God’s household.
Over in Ephesians 3, there is one verse that touched my heart, and I just want to read it again. It is verse 10, speaking of how the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church.
Before I really get into this, I have a little test for us. When we read these verses, we hear phrases such as the unfathomable riches of Christ, the eternal purpose of God, the manifold wisdom of God, and the family of God. What is your initial response to this? What is your mental apprehension when you hear this?
It is actually a very serious question, because we generally respond one way or the other. First, we will either respond by tuning out. We tune out because, “Boring. Heard that, been there, done that.” Or, “That is too high for me.” Or, “I already know that. I have heard that. I read a book on that. I went to a conference on that. I know that.”
What is our response when we hear these phrases? Or are these phrases very precious to us? There is a gauge, a kind of temperature gauge, on our life. How does it impact us when we hear these phrases? Do we tune out, or do we tune in to what the Lord has to say?
Do we ask, “How do these precious phrases impact our lives? How do these precious truths impact my daily life? How do they impact our lives together?”
Actually, my burden for today is that we, as the Lord’s people, could come into a greater experiential reality of living together in the family of God—not just knowing the teaching. John touched on that last week: not making an object out of the teaching of the family of God, but coming into the experiential, daily reality of living together in the family of God.
May the Lord really help us. May He help us to see the blessing of being in the family of God, the honor of being in the family of God, the privilege we have, and the responsibility we have in being in the family of God. And may we be aware of the pain there is in being in the family.
Now, all of you liked what I was saying until I got to the part about the pain. We all love the privilege, the joy, and the fellowship, but if we really stop and think, within any family there is pain.
Sometimes, through the pain, we learn more deeply. We come to know more and more of the Father of our family, of our Elder Brother and His care for us, and of His great love.
We have referred to this in the last couple of family meetings: we have been through a crisis, and there was much pain and tragedy and many consequences. The Lord has touched all of our hearts. We have not been faithful, but praise the Lord, He has been faithful.
He is faithful, and He is bringing us through into a broader place, into a fuller measure. The greatest tragedy when you go through a crisis is not the pain and all that. The greatest tragedy is not learning from it.
We hope that this is our desire: that in the hours we are living in, we can continue to learn. May we learn of Him in these days. He gives us every day other opportunities to learn of Him, so that when—not if, but when—the next crisis comes, we will be able to go through in the strength of His life and to the praise of His glory.
As we see this wonderful privilege, and how He has joined us together as the family of God, we see how He enables us. He equips us with the unfathomable riches that He has put in our lives. We have the very life of the Lord Jesus within us. That is how we can go through. It is not in our strength, but in the strength and power of His life.
This is really what I want to touch on today: this matter of living together in the family of God. Before that, I want to give a little background, just to set the scene and go over some things that we know. It is always good to bring them to remembrance and set into perspective the burden we have.
One of the phrases we read in Ephesians 3 speaks of the manifold wisdom of God. What is this? In my daily life, when I get talking—I am an accountant, and I have trouble talking anyway—I do not usually use the word manifold.
When I first hear the word manifold, what do you think of? Automobiles. I mean, I am sitting here looking at Mac Berman and John Blant. Do you think of automobiles? Man, that is what I think of. See what happens when you sit there?
But as the Word of God uses it, what does it really mean? It means multicolored, many variations, a great variety of colors—a great variety. It is like a rainbow that you see.
One brother, Westcott, lived back in the last century. When he was speaking of this manifold wisdom of God, he said that it is really the majestic wisdom of God. God is one in the unity of truth, life, and purpose, but there is so much to God that, because of our finite minds, we can only comprehend in part.
So He shows us this manifold, this multicolored, this great variety of the wisdom of God. He shows Himself to us in different ways so that we can come to see Him.
As I said, it is like a rainbow, or like a kaleidoscope. I used to love a kaleidoscope. You turn it and see all the different patterns. It is all the same ingredients, but you turn it one way and you have the diamonds pointing in; you turn it a little more, and it makes a whole other shape and another color. The ingredients are the same.
What makes the rainbow beautiful, and what makes the kaleidoscope work, is the light that shines through it. A rainbow is beautiful because of the sun behind it that shines through.
Why is the church the manifold wisdom of God? Because the Light, the Son, is shining through. The church is not the object; it is simply a vessel through which the life of the Lord shines. He wants us to see more and more of Himself and His Son.
We were talking the other night about studying the book of Acts. One of the precious testimonies of the life of Christ in the early believers comes out of Acts 11, with the church in Antioch.
Why is Antioch famous? Because that is where they were first called Christians. To me, that is a wonderful testimony. It means they were Christ’s men.
I am so thankful that Paul had been there for a year, teaching them all the time, and Barnabas had been there a little longer. But I thank the Lord that, at the end of that time, what were they known as? They were not known as Paulites or Barnabasites—Barnabas pipes. They were known as Christians.
What did Paul present to them? Christ. When the outside world looked upon the people, what did they see? They saw Christ. They saw ones of Christ.
When the world looks upon us, what do they see? The challenge for the individuals, and the challenge for the church in this hour, is presenting Christ—that Christ can be manifest within our lives. That is what draws people. That is what brings one to saving salvation.
Paul had such a burden upon his heart, and he kept trying to use different ways to show people: What is this church? He speaks of it as the body. He speaks of it as a bride. Ephesians speaks of it as a warrior. He speaks of it as a family and as a house.
He keeps looking at it from all these different angles so that we might see more and more of the fullness of the Lord’s heart, because no particular example fully encompasses everything. The Lord wants to show us the fullness, and one aspect of that fullness is found in the family of God.
The church is described as the body, the house, the bride, and the family—so many different descriptions. What is the purpose of the church? It is to manifest Him. Within all of these pictures—the body, the house, and the family—the purpose is to manifest Him.
Whose is it? It is His church. It is not our church. It is not my church. It is His church. Whose body is it? It is His body, the body of Christ. Whose house is it? It is the house of God; it is His house. Whose bride is it? It is His bride. Whose family is it? It is His family.
The origin of all these things is from Him. How do we become a part of them? When we are born again, we not only receive eternal life, and we are not only made believers, but we are born into this wonderful family. We are born into and made part of this house of God. We are born into the very body of Christ.
What is the very character and nature of all of this—whether we are speaking of the body, the house, or the family? It is His life, His nature, and His character. We go through this walk upon this earth so that Christ may be formed in us.
That is the whole objective of the process we are going through: that He can be formed in us. As He is formed in you and me, we are joined together in Him. Within each of these pictures, what is the governing law? It is that royal law of love—the royal law of love that draws us unto Himself.
How is this manifold wisdom displayed? This manifold wisdom is displayed through a wonderful working together of diversity and unity.
If you look at the house of God, you see a diversity of materials, a diversity of rooms, and a diversity of functions. Each room has a function, and there are many different materials.
If you look within the family, you have fathers, sons, and children. What a diversity. Within the family, you have male and female. What a diversity there. We will touch more on that later.
Within the body, what a diversity there is. Within your natural body, you have all sorts of diversities—the head, the eye, and the legs. What shows forth the fullness is when, within this diversity, you see a unity flowing together.
How does this unity in diversity work? It is Christ in us. It is His life within us that brings forth this unity. It is His life that allows us to come forth and manifest His glory and the fullness of Himself.
When we think of the body, 1 Corinthians 12 begins by speaking of a variety of gifts, a diversity of ministries, and a diversity of works. There is tremendous diversity, but it is all for the common good. It is all for one purpose.
Why do we have a family of God? Why do we have any of these pictures? It is for one purpose: that the Lord would have a people prepared. What is one of the purposes of the family? Bringing many sons to glory.
We, as the people of God, can really come into knowing more and more of what He is after in these hours. He uses each of these pictures. If you consider the church as a house, you see one aspect. If you look at the church as a family, you see another aspect. All of these aspects show us the fullness of how Christ desires to be manifested and displayed through His people.
When we talk about this matter of diversity, it is really upon my heart today. We need to realize how the fullness of the Lord comes forth in this matter of diversity. If I ask you today, “Are you comfortable with diversity?” most of us are not.
Most of us are not comfortable with diversity. We like sameness. We like uniformity. We do not like things that are different.
It is amazing how Americans go to other countries. They go to Europe, and you ask, “Did you like it?” They say, “No, I did not like it over there because they did not have the food like I like.” Well, what do you expect? It is a diverse culture. But we want it the same.
Within the family of God, it is a tragedy that so many of the Lord’s people, when faced with diversity, flee. We do not hang in there and allow the unity of His life to bring us through into a fuller measure.
This diversity is used throughout Scripture to show forth the fullness of our Lord, the fullness of His love, and the fullness of His heart toward us and toward His purpose.
There is a word used in Scripture for diversity. So this is an English test. If we look at the three words fair, chair, and hair, they are all pronounced with one syllable.
But then we come to another word: naïve. All of a sudden, it is pronounced in two syllables. What is the difference? Those two little dots over the “i.” Are there any English majors in here? Do you know what those two dots are called?
It is a diaeresis. That is the Greek word, and we have brought it into the English language. The whole purpose of that is to distinguish two parts from one another that are ordinarily together, in order to show forth a greater fullness.
Distinguishing two parts from one another that are always together shows forth a greater fullness. This is the Greek word used in 1 Corinthians 12 when it speaks of a variety of gifts, diversity of gifts, and diversity of ministries.
There is diversity within the body of Christ, within the house of God, within the church, and within the family in order to show forth a fullness. The Lord does this throughout Scripture.
If you look at the Gospels, you see the same thing. There are four Gospels. You see the Lord as King in Matthew; you see Him as Servant; you see Him as Son of Man and Son of God. All throughout Scripture, there are these diversities that the Lord brings in to show us a fuller presentation of Who He is.
Even in the book of Acts, we have the apostles. We have Peter as the fisherman; Paul as the tentmaker; John mending nets. They are all so different, with different functions, but all with one goal in view.
If you look through the book of Acts at how the Lord is manifested in the different churches, you see different manifestations, but it is all the same Lord pointing us in the same way. Through this diversity, we come into seeing a greater and greater fullness of our Lord.
There is a saying that your greatest strength can also become your greatest weakness. One of the greatest strengths—and what a testimony to the world—in the family of God is diversity.
How was the early church to let the world know that they were believers? By loving one another. As they came into this royal law of love and displayed the love of Christ one to another, He said that the world would know they were His disciples.
To me, there is a tremendous testimony when you have diversity. You look around this room: everybody is so different. There are different cultures and different physical appearances. Thank the Lord everybody does not look like me. We have different backgrounds, but in this fullness we show forth the manifold wisdom of Christ.
He is so jealous for that in this hour. Yet this is also what can be our biggest stumbling block. If we talk about living together in the family of God, brothers and sisters, there are some brethren we just do not like—ones who are really difficult, who get on your nerves and drive you crazy.
If that has never happened, you never played the game.
I played basketball in high school. I was never any good, but I played because they needed people over six feet just to stand out there. Back then, our center was six foot two, so we just needed bodies.
One coach I had said he would never fault anybody for fouling out of the game. Does that mean you were in there playing, at least? If you sit on the bench, you never foul out of the game.
You stay on the sidelines. There are people on a basketball team—really, in any sport—who can go out there and run around and look like they are playing, but actually they are not. They are doing their own little thing. They are protecting themselves. They do not want anybody to see them. They are kind of hiding.
They run down the court and always position themselves in such a way that they can never get the pass. That way, they never have to take a chance of shooting, passing, or catching the pass.
It is the same way in any sport, and actually within our life as the family of God. We can position ourselves in a way that makes it look like we are playing the game, when we are not.
Are we playing the game? Do you get your feelings hurt? Do you get disappointed in people? Do people offend you? You know, the glorious thing about that is that it means you are playing the game.
If you do not care about anything, you will never get offended. You get offended because you care. You care about what the Lord is doing. You care about the direction. You care about things. You have a heart.
If you do not have a heart for something, you are not going to be hurt by anything. But the Lord wants us to come in and play. When we get hurt, when someone cuts you off, when someone knocks you down, what do you do? You get up, and you keep going.
We learn from that. And we learn the next race, we cut them off—no, I am not sorry. John did not tell you the rest of the story.
But I am afraid that is how we do. We get up, but what is our thought? “How can I get him?” In this Christian life, I cannot make it look obvious, but I will get him. I will get even.
Living together in the family of God—what a challenge it is. What is the purpose of the family? The purpose of the family is to reflect the Father and to allow His heart’s desire to come through, that we would see His desire for His Son.
As we see His desire for His Son, we would let His Son bring us into sonship. He wants many sons brought into glory. We need to remember, too, that this is His family.
A beautiful thing about a family is this whole matter of family resemblance. The question we have is: Do we resemble our Father? Do we resemble our Elder Brother?
Are people ever surprised when you tell them you are a Christian? How much resemblance is there? I will never forget a time in my life when I shared something, and another brother said, “Mac, I never knew you were a Christian. I knew you were a good person.”
That convicted me more than anything else I went through in that period. It was a tremendous thing. What do we want to be known as—a good person? Or are we known by the name of our Elder Brother?
What I would really like to spend time on today—I wanted to lay that foundation—is how we need this matter of the royal law of love to be working through our lives.
It is only as the royal law of love works through our lives that we can allow this wonderful manifold wisdom of God to be manifest within our daily lives. There is such a diversity within the family of God, and the Lord created it to show forth His fullness.
Unless we enter into this royal law of love, we will not be able to make it through. His love works in us. How does He want us to love? As He loved us.
Look at the diversity within the family. First, you have the difference between male and female. That is the greatest diversity the Lord ever created, but it is to show forth His fullness.
He created the woman with a heart for nurturing and caring. There are certain characteristics of a woman. Then the man is more of the mind and the head—calculating, planning, and bringing forth. What a diversity there is.
There are some newlyweds around. They are starting to experience more and more of that diversity. Some of us have been around for a while. If you do not think there is diversity between a man and a woman, get married.
You enter into that family. The husbands are sitting there very straight-faced. I can see your faces. Nobody is blinking. A lot of amens, but there is a diversity there.
Through that diversity, we see a wonderful picture of Christ and the church. That is what He has chosen to display to us upon this earth: a living testimony of Christ and the church.
If you look in 1 John 2:12-14, there are three groups within the family spoken of there: fathers, young people, and children. What a diversity there is.
When we are speaking of fathers, young people, and children, we are not necessarily talking about physical age, and we are not really talking about male or female. We have male and female children, male and female young people, and fathers and mothers within the house of God.
The Lord is looking for us, wherever we are, to really show forth the diversity of His life. Think about these three groups. You have the children, the babies. What is a new believer like? They are totally self-centered. Their whole world revolves around them.
They need their diapers changed. They make a mess of things, and you clean it up. They do not even appreciate it; they just make another mess. Their whole world is themselves.
If they want to eat, if they want to be fed, they do not care what time it is—two o’clock in the morning or four o’clock in the afternoon. It does not matter what you are doing. If they want to make a mess, they make a mess. If they want to be fed, they need to be fed, and they let you know it too.
They cry a lot. Within the family of God, we have children, and we cannot expect children to act like adults. We cannot expect a child to function like a father or mother.
That is the challenge for fathers and mothers: to be patient. What did Paul say in both Ephesians and Colossians? He said, “Fathers, do not provoke your children.” He said, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children.”
We need to come, through this royal law of love, into a greater experiential expression of taking care of and nurturing those within the family of God who are children. That is where they are.
The wonderful thing about the Lord is that He met each one of us right where we were. He says to us, “Love as I have loved you.” When we first came into knowing His love, where were we? We were in darkness. We were in a pit.
But He met us right there. He brought us in, and He showed us His love. We made messes and cried, and He just loved us more and more. Through that, we saw His nurturing and caring.
He wants us to come into caring for the children and for the young people too. Again, this is not physical age; we are speaking of spiritual age. These are the ones who have started to grow in the Lord.
It is amazing how, at this adolescent stage, the first symptom is that you go from knowing nothing to knowing everything. You know everything. You are invincible. You can do anything. You are spontaneous, but you are also naïve.
There is a knowledge without wisdom. Why do you think they recruit young men from the age of eighteen to twenty-two to go into the military and fight?
I grew up in the military and was in it myself. One of the ways you could always tell the difference between a soldier who had been in battle and a soldier who had never been there was this: a young soldier would come in saying, “I am going to Afghanistan, and I am going to get Osama bin Laden.”
But those sergeants with all those stripes were praying for a peace agreement, because they knew the horror of war.
Young people think they are invincible. Their world still revolves around them, though it gets a little bigger. There is still that little sphere in which they live: “We can do anything. We can conquer anything. We can go forth and do anything.”
Praise the Lord for that spirit. We need it. The Lord gave it. But we also need to know that within it there can be a naïveté and, at times, a lack of knowledge.
How do mothers and fathers nurture? How do those who are more mature in the Lord nurture? Do they say, “Sit down. You do not really know that. Sit down”? No. They let them go through things.
As they go through things, we watch and care. At times we correct. They have to go through things. At times, it can break your heart when those you love have to go through things.
That is when knowing in your head that something is good for them translates into knowing in your heart that it is good for them. Out of that, you see a growth within them. You see a growth and a fullness.
As we go through things in the Lord, we all grow in Him too. Fathers and mothers, those who are more mature in the Lord, may have some wisdom from experience. But those who are more mature can also suddenly become set in their ways.
What becomes the key word for mothers and fathers? Orderly. Oh, we get that verse: “Let all things be done in order.”
How many times does a spontaneous expression of life come out from a young person, and what is the adult response? “It has got to be done in order.” Another spontaneous burst of life comes forth: “It has got to be done in order. All things in order.”
There is an order. I am not making fun of order. But we all need to learn to grow together in the Lord, so that we do not squelch life and neither do we just let it run free. There is the issue of discipline. Whom He loves, He disciplines. He corrects and brings us into a fuller expression of Himself. But it is all through this royal law of love.
Who had one of the greatest hearts of a mother in the New Testament? A man named Paul. Look over at 1 Thessalonians 2.
As I said, we are not necessarily speaking of male and female, but there is a nurturing aspect within the family. The greatest need within the family of God today is for mothers, for fathers and mothers, to be raised up who can really care.
You notice within this description that there are no grandmothers and no grandfathers. The wonderful thing about being a grandmother or grandfather is that when the baby cries, what do you do? You give it back to the mother.
Well, there are no grandmothers here. We are all mothers and fathers. So when that baby is crying, you cannot pass it off. We are all in this generation together. It is this living generation going home.
Look at 1 Thessalonians 2:7-8. You see Paul’s heart here, this motherly characteristic coming forth:
We proved to be gentle among you,
as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children.
Having so fond an affection for you,
we were well-pleased to impart to you
not only the gospel of God
but also our own lives.
Brothers and sisters, Paul and those with him not only presented the Lord; they gave themselves to these Thessalonian believers. How much giving of ourselves is there to one another in this hour?
Within a family, it is very natural to give yourself. I have a sister in South Carolina. If she calls up and needs something, it is done. Within a family, that is a natural response.
The Lord wants us to naturally be giving ourselves one to another. He gave Himself for us. We can give ourselves to one another because our Elder Brother gave Himself for us. He did not withhold anything.
Paul also speaks of his father’s heart in 1 Thessalonians 2:11-12:
Just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging
and imploring each one of you
as a father would his own children,
so that you would walk in a manner worthy of God,
who calls you into His own kingdom and glory.
Look at the characteristics of a father there. We were exhorting, encouraging, and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children. Why? So that you could walk in a manner worthy of God, Who calls you into His own kingdom and glory.
The father is exhorting, encouraging, and strengthening those family members—the young ones and the children—so that they can walk in that worthy manner. We have all been called to walk in a manner worthy of God.
The Lord is calling us, as a family of God, to help one another walk in a worthy manner. Within a family, there is an interrelationship and an interdependence. How much we need one another.
We need encouragement. In the Old Testament, there was one individual referred to as the mother of Israel. She exhorted the nation of Israel to rise up and fight. Her name was Deborah.
We usually remember her as the bee, the one who buzzed and stings you. But she was also referred to as the mother of Israel. What an honor: to have that heart to encourage and to care.
We are a big family, and we are a diverse family. There is a tremendous testimony to the world. But how do we live together? It is wonderful to talk about diversity. It is wonderful to see that we are diverse. We can look around the room and see how diverse we are. But how do we live it?
How, day in and day out, do we put up with people that we get so sick of that we just want to walk out the door? How do you live with people who say something and you wonder, “How could somebody say that? Where does that thought come from?”
There is a diversity there that sometimes is so great you cannot stand it. But that is only so that the Lord can show forth a greater measure of His life through us.
I was thankful to the Lord for the spirit in the last two family meetings. If you look at the facts, there was a diversity of thought expressed—from one end of the spectrum to the other.
The other night, some were saying, “We need to be together more as a whole group.” Others were saying, “No, we need to be together more as a small group.” You have the whole spectrum there. One says, “We need to study this.” Another says, “We need to study that. We need to do this. We need to do that.”
Praise the Lord. It is through that diversity that we see the Lord and find Him, and He brings us into going on. But how do we do that? It is through allowing this royal law of love to work within our hearts.
How is this love manifested? There is a key verse in the Gospel of John with which we are very familiar: John 13:34-35. We have already referred to it a couple of times.
A new commandment I give to you,
that you love one another, even as I have loved you,
that you also love one another.
By this all men will know that you are My disciples,
if you have love for one another.
It is a new commandment. It is a new source of life. The love is coming from a new source—that love is coming from His life within each one of us. It is not our own self-love.
The first step in recognizing this matter of loving one another is to be able to honestly admit before the Lord and one another: “You know, I cannot love you.” There are some people whom, in my natural self-love, I may be able to love. There are others with whom we are not going to hit it off.
We have to be honest with the Lord. The Lord is not looking for the expression of our natural self-love. Natural self-love does not go with diversity. The Lord wants us to come into a place of loving one another and allowing His love to come forth.
How did He love us? He loved us with a sacrificial love. He loved us by denying Himself and going to the cross. What was our condition? We were ugly. We were self-seeking. We were self-serving. We were doing everything for ourselves.
Some were deserting Him. Some were disappointing Him. Some were betraying Him. Some were denying Him. Yet He loved each one of them to the uttermost.
That is the love with which He is calling us to love one another. Someone deserts you—does love fly out the window? Someone is ugly to you—does love fly out the window?
How wonderful it is to love the lovely. There is nothing wrong with you. That is the way we think. We can love the lovely, but do we love the ugly? Our love is so conditional.
Brothers and sisters, we need to allow this love to come forth. How can it come forth? Because He first loved us, and we now have that love within us.
As we deny ourselves—brothers and sisters, I am not saying any of this is easy. I am simply saying it is impossible in yourself. Do not get into this hard-and-easy bit; you have lost the argument already. It is impossible.
There is a brother or sister whom we all have for whom it is impossible to have love—except by the grace of God and the love of His life that is within us.
As we deny ourselves, what we do is release that royal law of love. Then there is that supernaturally natural manifestation of His love. That is what He is calling us into, brothers and sisters: that we could really love one another and manifest Him.
One of my favorite phrases in the New Testament is this phrase, one another. Have you ever gone through and looked up the number of times “one another” occurs in the New Testament? It speaks of relationship. It speaks of togetherness. That is what the Lord is after.
When He says, “Love one another,” He goes through and shows all the different ways in which we are together. How is this loving one another manifested? How is this royal law of love manifested practically within our lives?
There are close to fifty different references to “one another.” But just so you can relax, we are not going through all of those. We will just look at some of them.
First, love one another not just in word, but in deed and truth. It says that in 1 John. To me, this is the same thing John was saying to us last week: not just in word, but in deed and truth.
Love has hands and feet. We reach out to one another, and love is manifested to one another. There is a caring for one another.
Romans 12:10 says, “Be devoted to one another.” Be given to one another in love. There is a devotedness to one another, brothers and sisters. When the royal law of love is manifest, there is a giving of ourselves, a giving of that life to one another in love.
Romans 15 says, “Accept one another.” Receive one another as He received us. How did He receive you?
When He first received us, we were in pretty bad shape. Thank the Lord He does not leave us in that condition, but He starts working. He calls upon us to receive one another in that way—that we can accept one another in Christ, encourage one another, and show His love.
Who has had the greatest impact upon your life? A hard taskmaster who told you what to do all the time—“Do this, do that”? Or someone who said, “Yes, I know you have all these faults, but I still love you, and I am going to help you through”?
“I want to walk with you through each one of these things. I know you have trouble in this area, but I am going to walk through this area with you.” That is how we change lives. That is how we impact one another and care for one another: we start with that first step of accepting one another.
1 Corinthians 12:25 speaks of having the same care for one another—having that same care without prejudice, without preference, and without partiality.
In 1 Corinthians 12, some parts of the body thought they were kind of big: “I am a big part. I do not need anybody else.” Other parts thought too little of themselves.
Are we supposed to think too big of ourselves or too little of ourselves? There is a third option: we are not to think of ourselves; we are to think of Christ. We are to have that same care for one another.
We have to admit that within ourselves we have built-in prejudices and preferences. A person can walk through that door, and before they say one thing, every one of us has assessed that person. You have an opinion based on prejudices and preferences in your individual life. It might be the type of clothes they are wearing.
We never know. That is where we need, through denying ourselves and allowing the cross to work, to let His love come forth, so that we have that same care for one another.
One person gets sick, and they receive a hundred meals. Another person gets sick—how many meals do they get? When we go through things, let the Holy Spirit convict us of where we show partiality.
How we love to favor the big members, the so-called big members, in the body of Christ. If one of the big members has a need, everybody is rushing to get there. Some unknown little person has the same need, and we say, “Oh, you can go down to the drugstore. They will take care of you there.”
How do we care for one another? May it be manifested in our lives.
Galatians 5:13 speaks of serving one another through love—of laying down our lives in that way.
Then there is this wonderful verse in Galatians 6:2: “Bear one another’s burdens.” Do we come alongside? We need to bear one another’s burdens. This is how this royal law of love is manifested.
Whatever someone might be going through, we come alongside and bear one another’s burdens. The more we are together, the more we need this.
Ephesians 4:2 speaks of showing forbearance to one another. I love how the Holy Spirit always adds words. He does not just say, “Forbear one another,” but He says, “Showing forbearance.” That is an outward display.
It is more than saying, “Yes, I can grin and bear it.” It is forbearing one another outwardly, in such a way that everybody does not know that you are forbearing.
We love, when we are suffering or forbearing, to let a few people know we are going through something. We let a facial expression out. We let a grunt out. We let some little word slip out so people will really know that we are forbearing and really suffering for the Lord.
But the Lord wants us to show this forbearance. What a wonderful testimony it is when you hear somebody testify at a Friday night meeting, or whenever, that they have been through something, and you say, “Gosh, I never knew you went through that.” There was a forbearance there.
Ephesians 4:32 shows us how much the Lord knows us. It is amazing that He even has to write these words to Christians: “Be kind to one another.”
It is amazing that here we are, supposedly Christians, and the Holy Spirit is saying, “Well, yes, you need to be kind to one another.” It is like, “Duh.” Why would that even need to be said? But He knows us.
In our natural selves, we are so unkind. We are to be tenderhearted, forgiving one another. Brothers and sisters, how we need to enter into that.
In that spirit too, Ephesians 5:21 says that we submit to one another. Then 1 Thessalonians 5:15 says, “Seek what is good for one another.”
Seek what is good for one another. Sometimes that goodness can be correction, but it comes out of that heart of love, nurturing, and caring. Sometimes it is discipline. Who knows what that particular good may be? But it is seeking what is good for the situation, so that this love can be manifested in very practical ways within our lives.
Then we come into Hebrews—sorry, I mean Hebrews 3:13: “Encourage one another daily.” The word I like the most in that verse is daily.
That shows again this whole matter of relationship. It does not say, “Encourage each other when you see each other once a week,” or, “Encourage each other when you see each other twice a week.” It says, “Daily be encouraging one another.”
That speaks of relationship, relatedness, and being with people. I know physically it is impossible for everybody to be together every day, but there can be that reaching out—that phone call, that email, that letter, that postcard, that note, whatever. However this love is manifested, encourage one another daily in the Lord.
Hebrews 10:24 is another familiar verse: “Consider how to stimulate one another.” Consider how to stimulate, or provoke, one another to love and good works.
This whole matter of considering is a matter of seeking the Lord. It is not something flippant. It is not something careless. We have prejudices, and thoughts form within our minds.
When we hear of so-and-so going through a situation, we have already assessed that person. “Oh, that person is careless. That person needs to loosen up. That person needs to be more diligent.” We are so quick and flippant with all our assessments.
But may we really consider how to stimulate one another. It is a stimulus, provoking one another to love and good works.
There is a beautiful story of a father and a son who came back from church one day. The son said, “I do not want to go to that meeting anymore. The music is horrible.”
What did the father do? Did he say, “No, you are going next week”? He said, “All right, son.” He considered how to stimulate his son.
He said, “Okay, son, if you think the music is so horrible, why do you not write a song?” So the young man went and wrote a song. Within a few weeks, they sang the song.
His father considered how to stimulate. His son went on to be one of the greatest writers of hymns we have ever known, a man named Isaac Watts.
It started with his father’s encouragement. His father considered how to stimulate him to love and good works. Do we consider how to stimulate one another?
Isaac Watts ended up writing over six thousand songs: “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” “Jesus Shall Reign,” and “Joy to the World.” All this flowed out because the father took time to consider how to stimulate his son.
Brothers and sisters, we need to take time to consider when we see people coming along, maybe struggling. What is the real issue?
The father saw beyond the words that his son said. He saw what was in his heart. There was something of a touch for worshiping the Lord.
So often, people will say things, and we hear the words, but we miss the whole thing. Husbands are great for that. At times the wife can come back and say, “You did not hear what I said.” We repeat verbatim what they said, and they say, “You did not hear what I said,” because we missed the heart.
How we need to really hear the heart. What is the issue when we consider how to stimulate one another to love and good works?
Then we continue into James 5, and it says, “Do not complain about one another. Do not murmur about one another.”
In the Old Testament, when the spies came back to the nation of Israel, ten had the bad report and two had the good report. It says they all went to their tents. What did they do? They murmured in their tents.
We need to be careful, within our homes first of all, not to complain about one another. Because when we are in our homes complaining about one another, who hears? Our children hear. Images are formed.
How we need the discipline of the Holy Spirit, that we do not complain about one another, but allow the Lord to work within us. In that, we pray for one another.
We will close this consideration of loving one another with 1 Peter 4:7-11. Let us turn there.
As Peter writes, he sets the scene for us. He says, “The end of all things is at hand.” Again, when we hear that phrase, are we so familiar with hearing that the end of all things is at hand and that the last days are here that we say, “Okay, yes, yes, we have heard that”?
Or do we say, “Okay, Peter is trying to get our attention. Because of the times we are living in, there is something very special he wants to say to us”?
Be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer.
Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another,
because love covers a multitude of sins.
The closer we are together, and the more we allow the Lord to bring us together and work together, the more we see one another’s sins.
But may the love of God be greater than that—covering, while letting the Lord deal with it. There are things in my life, and thank the Lord He is dealing with them. We have a long way to go, but He works.
He wants us to keep fervent in our love for one another, not allowing it to wax cold. It waxes cold because something is missing. The ingredients for that fire to stay hot and glowing are not there.
May we have the life of the Lord—the royal law of love—living within us, to keep that glowing love of His life pouring forth, brothers and sisters. We can be so restrictive, but may we not restrict His love in our lives. May we allow it to really go forth.
Peter says again, “Be hospitable to one another without complaint.” In Romans 12, it says, “Be hospitable.” Here he adds that little phrase, “without complaint.”
It is kind of like showing your forbearance. We can be hospitable, then all of a sudden, “Blah, blah, blah, blah.” Without complaint. It is a heart issue.
Then Peter says:
As each one has received a special gift,
employ it in serving one another
as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.
There is a responsibility we all have in the family. We do not just have the privilege of being in the family and being recipients of everything. There is a responsibility.
We are stewards of this manifold wisdom of God. We are stewards of these unfathomable riches. We are stewards of the love of Christ in our lives. We have this responsibility to employ it—to put it to work in serving one another.
I love that phrase: put it to work. Do not just store it on your bookshelf to collect dust; put it to work.
Whoever speaks, let him speak, as it were, the utterances of God;
whoever serves, let him do so by the strength which God supplies;
so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.
What is the goal and aim in all of this? That in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. What is the goal and aim of the church? That God may be glorified through Christ Jesus.
What is the goal and aim of the house and the family? That God may be glorified through Christ Jesus, in you and me. To Him belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever.
Brothers and sisters, as the time approaches and as these days approach, may we thank the Lord that He gives us opportunities to learn of Him. May we see that He gives us these days so that we can learn of His life and learn of His love.
When we see this diversity becoming more and more manifest within our lives, may we see it as the Lord sees it: as a way of showing forth a fuller measure of His life.
We thank the Lord that we have children. We thank the Lord that we have young people. We thank the Lord that we have mothers and fathers. But what good is it if they are not flowing together to the glory of the Lord?
What good is it if we do not allow the Lord to come into the situation and bring us through to a greater and fuller measure of Himself?
We love because He first loved us. Greater love has no man than this: that he lays down his life. We have a call in this hour to lay down our lives one for another.
We have a wonderful opportunity to learn a lesson of the greatness of our Lord. We have a wonderful opportunity every day to experience the faithfulness of our Lord. May we be those who take advantage of this opportunity.
Billheimer wrote a book called Don’t Waste Your Sorrows. May we not waste the opportunities that we have. May we allow the royal law of love to touch our hearts, bring us into that oneness, and lead us on in Him.
In that, we can hasten His return. May we love one another as He has first loved us.
Lord, we do thank You for Your love that never lets us go. Lord, I see how often I would deserve to be let go, but Your love never lets us go.
Lord, today we put our trust in You: that You, Lord, as we live together as part of the family of God, would allow Your life—a life of love within us—not only to reside there, but to be made manifest.
Manifest Your love within each one of our lives. Manifest Your love toward one another. Manifest Your love in Your people, that You would be glorified, that You would receive the honor and the glory, and that Your light would shine in a brighter and fuller way.
In Your precious name, amen.