Well, it is always a joy for me to be here and to sense the presence of the Lord in our midst, especially in these days in which we are living.
I would like to turn you, in the Word of God, to the first letter of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians: 1 Corinthians 12:31 through 1 Corinthians 13:13, and 1 Corinthians 14:1.
But desire earnestly the greater gifts. And moreover a most excellent way show I unto you.
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.
Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil;
Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth;
Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall be done away.
For we know in part, and we prophesy in part;
But when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things.
For now we see in a mirror darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known.
But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
Follow after love.
Beloved Lord, we are so thankful that we are here, found in Your presence. We have been worshipping You; we have sensed Your being in our midst. We are so thankful, Lord, to have the freedom to be able to gather in this way.
And Lord, we come now to Your Word. Lord, we want simply to recognize that without that anointing, grace, and power of Yours, it will all amount to nothing.
We thank You that You have provided the anointing both for the speaking of Your Word and the hearing of Your Word. Into that anointing we stand by faith this morning, that, Lord, You will pour upon us in this place such power, such grace, that our eyes will open even more widely than ever before to behold the Lord Jesus and all that You have given to us in Him.
Beloved Lord, we will be careful to give You the thanks and the praise for answering this our prayer. Be with us, Lord, and touch our hearts. And when we speak about a subject that is, in one sense, known to us all, we pray, O Lord, that You will bring it home to each one of us in all the power of Your Holy Spirit. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus the Messiah. Amen.
I have read a very well-known portion of the Word of God. It is so amazing, this 1 Corinthians 13, that it almost stands on its own. I see it in many homes, on the wall—not, unfortunately, necessarily in the lives, but certainly on the walls.
It is something that every child of God knows. Everybody knows this 1 Corinthians 13, this amazing declaration of the essential nature of love—divine love. But few people ever recognize where it comes.
You would almost think that this poem, this wonderful declaration, which can be taken simply sentimentally, comes in a passage all to do with the building up of the body of Christ.
From 1 Corinthians 11—actually a little before then—Paul begins to deal with matters all to do with the church: with the breaking of bread, how important it is; with men and women, their function in the house of God; and then he speaks about the body, about gifts, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the manifestation of the Holy Spirit.
He goes on in 1 Corinthians 14 to talk about our gatherings, how we should meet together, how important it is that everything should be done so that everybody understands, and much more. But here, suddenly, he says, “Desire earnestly the greater gifts.” Then he says, to put it in a more modern way, “And I show you the most excellent way.”
I really sometimes wonder whether it has ever sunk into us that the greatest agency in the functioning of the body of Christ, and the building up of the body of Christ, is the love of God manifested in the members of the body.
The problem with Christian people is that they know their Bibles—sometimes superficially—but, as we say in an Irish idiom, it is like water that runs off a duck’s back. We know it so well.
“If I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing.” But nobody really faces the stark reality of what the Apostle is saying by the Holy Spirit.
Listen again to what he says: “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, it is like sounding brass, and nothing more.”
And if I had the gift of prophecy, and knew all mysteries and all knowledge—think for a moment what he is saying: “I know all mysteries, and have all knowledge, and have not love.” It equates to nothing.
That means we can have a thousand Bible studies. We can know our Bible from Genesis to Revelation. We can give outlines. We can give systematic teaching. We can do a thousand and one things, but if there is no love, it equals nothing. Nothing is nothing. However much you multiply it, it is nothing.
It is not as if he says, “It does not amount to much.” He says, “It is nothing.” That means all those Bible studies equal nothing. All that study of the Word amounts to nothing. I am not putting this myself; this is what the Word of God says.
Unfortunately, none of us really—and myself included—takes it in. We think, “No, no, no. Paul was a Jew. They exaggerate, you know. Jews always exaggerate things, and he is overstating the case in order to get our attention.”
Of course, he means that if you have knowledge of all the mysteries—would to God every child of God knew the mysteries by revelation: the mystery of the church, the mystery of the incarnation, the mystery of the gospel, the mystery of Israel, the mystery of His indwelling, and others. If only believers had such a knowledge of the mysteries; if they had a knowledge of the Word of God—a real knowledge, a deep knowledge, a full knowledge of the Word of God—if they were able to utter prophetically.
Some people feel all this idea has gone out with the canon of Scripture. I have never been able to accept that. They quote this very chapter about tongues ceasing, and so will knowledge, it says. We never think about that, do we?
The fact of the matter is that Charles Haddon Spurgeon was a prophet. Again and again, when he preached the Word, he would suddenly go over to, “And you, O child of God, God says to you this, this, and this.” We read his sermons, and suddenly you see: here is a prophetic utterance within the very message. It was the same with many others.
But I must not digress. To come back to this: to have the knowledge of all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains—would you not like that?
Just to be able to remove the molehill that is troubling you; just enough faith to look at the obstacle that troubles you, the problem in your home, the insoluble problem that means so much to you. But if you could have all faith so as to remove mountains, Paul says, if you have not love, it equals nothing.
It means that you can have faith to remove enormous obstacles, even overcome them, but if there is no divine love in my heart or your heart, it amounts to nothing. Let it sink in.
He goes on. He says, “If I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.”
Most of us would think that if we gave our body as a martyr, that is profit. Paul says, if there is no love there, it profits you nothing. If you were to take every single thing you own, turn it into cash, and give it to the poor, but if there is no love, it profits you nothing.
I think this is the missing link in fellowship. We tend to think that if we have good Bible studies, good prayer meetings, if we have some zeal for the Lord, some concern for missions, some outreach—that is good. Of course it is good. But if there is no love, it equals nothing.
J. B. Phillips, a canon in the Church of England—I will not say the Episcopalian—decided at some time to use his Greek knowledge to translate the letters of the Apostle Paul. His own testimony was that, as he did it, he felt as if he was an electrician rewiring a very old house. He said every now and again he got a terrible shock.
The way he renders 1 Corinthians 14:1 is as good, in my estimation, as it is possible to render it: “Make love your aim.” My version says, “Pursue love.” Make love your aim.
It is not just knowledge—you need it. I will say you need it. You need a faith that is exercised, a faith that is relevant, a faith that is practical, a faith that works. But it is not enough to have such faith, nor is it enough to have such zeal that you are prepared to give and give, if there is no love there.
Do you not feel that sometimes this is the key to the paralysis in our assemblies and fellowships? We know it all. We know church truth. We know the doctrine. We know the ground. We know the foundation. We know the purpose of God, the eternal purpose of God. We understand how essential it is, how necessary it is, but we are still paralyzed.
We are like little groups collected around something that, somehow or other, never seem to move. If I may, the Apostle Paul has put his finger on something that lies at the heart of the realization of God’s purpose in our midst, and it is love.
Well, you say, we all know that. Of course we all do. But unfortunately, we do not all confess our need to the Lord. Is it not interesting that the Lord took that marvelous fellowship, that marvelous assembly—one of the best of the lot, of the seven letters to the seven churches—Ephesus, and He said, “I have this against thee, that thou didst leave thy first love.”
“Repent,” He says, “and if you do not, I will remove your lampstand out of its place.” The lampstand actually is not the church. The lampstand is the testimony of Jesus. In other words, you will become an institution—a Christian institution—but the testimony has gone.
The testimony of Jesus is something organic, something living, something growing, something developing. It is a place where the Lord is discovered, a place where the Lord manifests Himself, where the Lord expresses Himself, where the world touches the Lord and the Lord touches the world. When there is that, there the testimony of Jesus is.
If you read the letter to the church of Ephesus, He commends them for so much. They were a marvelous bunch. We would say, “Oh, this is a place we would like to attend. We would like to join this group. It is good, sound—sound in faith.”
But the Lord put His finger on something and said, “I have this against thee, that thou didst leave thy first love.” Now, I think many of you will know I have said this a number of times, but it is worth saying again.
First love is not something to do with puppy love. It is not to do with when you were young, the kind of love you had that absorbed you. We call it puppy love.
First love is a quality of love. When a person really falls genuinely in love, nothing is too much. Nobody talks about going over miles to see the loved one. They do not come and say, “I have had a terrible journey to get to you, and I am worn out. I wish I had never come.”
First love is that you walk on air. It does not matter if you traverse the world: you are in love. It does not matter how much it costs you: you are in love. It does not matter how much work is involved: you are in love. You do not talk about it being a duty or a responsibility. It is a quality of love.
You understand? You even sometimes buy some flowers. It is a quality of love. Oh, you would not dream of doing that later. The first love has gone. The quality of love has been forgotten, and now it is a question of duties and responsibilities.
“You have left your first love.” Every one of us who is a real child of God must surely have had that experience with the Lord Jesus when we first really saw Him.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face;
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace.
Surely every real child of God has somewhere had that experience. You surely did not just become a convert. I feel sorry for you if all you are is a convert. You belong to some religious organization; you signed on the dotted line; you have become a member of the church.
Surely, if you are a real child of God, at some point in your life you saw the Lord. You saw His grace. You saw His mercy. You saw the way He handled you. You saw the way He was prepared to put up with you.
Sometimes we think we do the Lord such a great favour in getting saved. “You know, Lord, I am going to join You. You should be very thankful for me. I am going to put myself behind You, Lord. I am going to support You and help You in every way.”
Is that not the kind of thing—that somehow or other we are going to be a great asset to the Lord? I do not know if any child of God has ever been an asset to the Lord. I think we are a load of trouble, every one of us.
I feel sometimes so sorry for the Lord when He has to deal with me: moaning and groaning, so slow to see what His will is, so slow to discern the way He wants me to go. Then, when I do discern it, a thousand questions: “Why do I have to go this way? Could I not go another way?” And all the rest of it.
It is amazing to me how the Lord loves us. If there is someone with first love, it is the Lord Jesus. He has never fallen out of it. Having saved you, He loves you, and loves you to the end.
I say this is a tremendous thing when it comes to the building of the church. You do not build the church by knowledge, although it is necessary. You do not build the church by an understanding of the mysteries, although it is necessary. You do not build the church through living faith, although it is a necessity. You do not build a church by giving and giving and giving.
All of that is absolutely necessary, but it is not how you build the church. You build the church by love. And when love is absolutely absent, there is a paralysis. It is all up here, and none of it is here.
Where there is love, there is functioning. We do not minister or contribute because it is the done thing, or because somehow or other it enhances our reputation. We do it because we love the Lord Jesus and we love the people of God.
Now, I find this tremendous because here you have this—unfortunately, you know, let me put it another way. I thank God for that monk who went mad, who reduced the New Testament to chapters and verses. I do not know where we would be without him. How could we memorize Scripture? You would have to memorize whole portions. Where do you begin? Where do you end?
We thank the Lord for that monk. He did go mad. Of course, there were others who went mad as well: Cruden’s Concordance—he went mad; so did Strong. Such hard work they put into producing their concordances and lexicons.
But the fact still remains: we are very thankful for these chapters and verses, but sometimes chapters, particularly chapters more than verses, do get in the way of our understanding. Because you see, all of a sudden, “Ah, 1 Corinthians 13.” We never think of 1 Corinthians 14.
Paul did not write in chapters and verses. If you did not have chapters and verses, you would understand it much more clearly. It is all to do with the body of Christ, with the gifts of the Spirit, the manifestation of the Spirit, the gatherings of God’s people. And here suddenly he says, “And I will show you a most excellent way. Make love your aim.”
I have always felt that the Gospel of John is the most Jewish of all the Gospels. It is not normally spoken of in that way. Most people who are not Jewish speak of Matthew as the most Jewish of the Gospels. But I believe that the Gospel of John is the most Jewish of all the Gospels.
He begins where the Old Covenant began: “In the beginning, God.” And he says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Then he goes on and says, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Then he takes eight declarations of the Lord Jesus and links them to the unmentionable name of God: “I am.”
I am the bread of life: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.
I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth on Me, though he die, yet shall he live;
And whosoever liveth and believeth on Me shall never die.
I am the door: by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved.
I am the good shepherd.
I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by Me.
I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman.
He links this unmentionable name of the Lord—what we know in a horribly mangled word, “Jehovah.” We do not even know how it was pronounced, because it was only ever uttered three times on one single day of the year, the Day of Atonement.
It was never reduced to writing, and nobody really knows how it was pronounced. The pointing comes from Adonai, which means “the Lord.” So we really do not know how it was pronounced.
But the interesting thing is this: right in the heart of these declarations He says, “Before Abraham was, I am.”
This Gospel was not a history. Of course, it is historically correct, but it is not a history. It is not a synoptic Gospel like Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It is an interpretation.
Now, do you know how he ends this magnificent interpretation—I do not like the word “interpretation,” and I cannot think of a better one—of the life of our Lord Jesus and the work of our Lord Jesus? Like this: “Do you love Me?”
Peter could not rise to it. He used another word: “Well, Lord, I have an affection for You.” Then the Lord said to him, “Tend My lambs.” In other words, it is 1 Corinthians 13.
Service has to come out of love for the Lord. When you have lost your love for the Lord, when you have lost your first love, your service means nothing.
Three times He said it: “Do you love Me?” And he said, “I have an affection for You.” And He said, “Shepherd My sheep.”
The third time, the Lord came down to Peter’s level. He said, “Do you have an affection for Me?” Peter was irritated and said, “You know very well I have an affection for You.” “Tend My sheep,” He said.
Is it not incredible that this magnificent interpretation of the life and work of our Lord Jesus the Messiah ends with, “Do you love Me?”
If you love Me, look after My sheep. In other words, you cannot do it through knowledge. It is not enough. You cannot do it through zeal. Not enough. You cannot do it through grit. No. Do you love Me?
If we take the Word of God, it is a love story. It began in Genesis, and it ends in Revelation.
When a scribe came to the Lord Jesus to test Him, he said, “What is the greatest commandment?” Now, the rabbis were always arguing as to what was the greatest commandment.
Jesus said:
Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God, the Lord is one:
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the great and first commandment.
And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
On these two commandments the whole law hangeth, and the prophets.
In other words, if love is absent from our life as a believer, if love is absent in our work as a servant of God, if love is absent in our life as the church of God, we are missing the point.
It is really as simple as that. It is a tremendous challenge, really, that comes to us. Where do you stand in this? What shall we do if we have left our first love?
The Lord gave us the answer: repent. Repentance is not just sackcloth and ashes, looking miserable. Repentance is owning up.
It is foundational for the Christian life, not something that happened in kindergarten spiritually, but something that is the foundation upon which everything is built.
We live in a society that blames everyone else for all the wrong. “The way I was brought up—that is the problem with me. My parents, that is the problem. My children, they are the problem. I would be a saint but for the children. My husband—I do not know how I ever married him. Hopeless. Here is the problem. My wife—have you ever heard my wife? A dripping on a rainy day. Here is the problem. My boss, the problem. The government, the problem. Even sometimes Satan is the problem.”
As long as it gets us off the hook. Do you understand? We are so adept at finding excuses because we live now in a society that is all for the criminal and has nothing for the victim. “Well, the criminal would never have been a criminal but for his background, for the way he was brought up.”
There is no repentance. Repentance is owning up. Do you remember the story the Lord Jesus gave, when He said there were two men who came into the temple? One was a Pharisee.
Now, we in Christian circles run the poor old Pharisees down left, right, and centre, as if it is a peculiarly Jewish thing, being a Pharisee. Everybody thinks of people with coats and hats and stocking legs, and somehow or other they fast, and they give to the poor, and they keep the Sabbath, and they keep the festivals. That is a fallacy.
I always say all religion, when it dies, is Phariseeism. There is a saying in Norwegian: “It is easier to wear black stockings than to have a pure heart.”
In other words, we hide in ritual and in façade and in what we do not do, and then we are holy. Sadducees.
The Lord said this Pharisee stood there and said, “I thank Thee, Lord, that I fast so many times a week—I think it was twice a week—and I do this, and I do that, and I give alms to the poor, and I thank Thee, Lord, I am not like this poor fellow over here.”
That poor fellow over there was on his face, and he could only pray one prayer: “God, be merciful to me, the sinner.” The sinner—not just a sinner.
He could have said, “Lord, do help me. It is my wife’s fault. That is why I am in this mess. I need You to get me out of it, but she is really—my kids, Lord, they are a disaster. Forgive me. My business partners, they have ruined me. Do forgive me, Lord. But really, I had attenuating circumstances.”
What he said was, “Lord, the buck stops here. I am the sinner. I do not blame anyone else. I am in this mess because of my own stupidity and sin.” That is repentance.
Now, you see, very often when we talk about love, people say to me, “Oh, well, you know, we have problems in our fellowship. It is no wonder our love has fallen cold. Some people are behaving like this; some people behave like that. Of course, who can be full of love when these kinds of things happen?” That is not repentance.
Or some people say, “Well, no, no, I believe that doing my duty is really a kind of love.” But it is all wearisome duty. The light has gone out.
The key to the Lord touching our hearts is to say, “Lord, I hardly like to put it into words, but I have lost my first love.”
It is now a question of endurance, of gritting my teeth and doing the job.
I have never known anyone stop, repent, and start to seek the Lord in reality where the Lord has not revealed Himself in a new way.
The Lord loves us so much. He has, in one sense, a certain interest in our first love being restored. He is not interested just in your beautiful discharge of responsibility. He wants your love.
This could be understood in a sentimental way. It is not sentimental. It means this: that when you fall in love again with the Lord, you will tend the sheep.
It will not just be a little closeting of you and the Lord away on some mountaintop with twittering birds and sunrises and sunsets and all tranquility.
It will be like C. T. Studd, when he irritated the whole Christian world with a little jingle:
Some like to live within the sound
Of church or chapel bell;
I’d rather run a rescue shop
Within a yard of hell.
May God challenge your heart today. Do not think of others who need this message. Think of yourself.
And maybe, if in you and me the love of God was kindled in our hearts again, maybe something would happen that would touch our colleagues at work, our unsaved relatives, our neighbours, and many others.
So simple is the message: a love story.
Few of us, Lord, could ever say that we are full of love, if any. And indeed, O Lord, if there is love in our hearts, we are so conscious of the poverty of our love.
It is, Lord, when we are not conscious of it that there is, in fact, an absence of love. Dear Lord, we pray by Your Holy Spirit that You will come to each one of us. Do not let us escape, Lord, this matter.
We can talk about tremendous things, tremendous truths, life-changing truths. But in the end, it all comes down to a question that You ask: “Do you love Me?”
Lord, we pray together: work by Your Holy Spirit in every one of our lives where there is lovelessness, where there is a faithful discharge of responsibility, but that first love has gone.
Bring us, Lord, to the place of genuine repentance and a readiness to seek You until You kindle in us that love again.
O Thou who camest from above,
The pure celestial fire to impart,
Kindle a sacred flame of love
On the mean altar of my heart.
Do it, Lord. Do it in every one of us, we pray. May we be renewed in love. As Your Word says, as we approach the end of the age, the love of the many will wax cold. May it not be so, Lord, for us.
May it be exactly the opposite: that as we approach the end of the age, it will not just be knowledge of prophecy, or knowledge of mysteries, or even faith—not even zeal—but, Lord, may it be that our love grows more and more unto Your coming.
Hear us, Lord. We commit ourselves to You and to the work of the Holy Spirit, Who watches over Your Word, Father, to make it a reality in our lives and in our life together as the people of God. We ask this in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.