All right, if we could return and take our seats. Our brother Lenny is coming to speak, and he has asked that we sing a hymn: “O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus.”
You know, in music, a lot of times—like this morning, for instance—there are all kinds of different keys you can sing these songs in. And we played them all this morning.
Oh, dear Lord Jesus, we just want to tell You that we love You. How can we ever speak enough about Your great love for us?
So we bow our hearts before You again this morning, and we trust that by Your Spirit, Your Word could be opened to us, that we might see You more clearly than we ever have before, fall more deeply in love with You, and come to know You as the great Lover of our souls.
So, Lord, we entrust this time into Your hands, for the speaking of the Word and for the hearing of it. We just tell You that we are dependent upon You for this time. We thank You for this privilege, in Thy most precious name, dear Lord Jesus. Amen.
There are many things that we can share about the Lord Jesus and about this life He has called us to, but I will never get tired of speaking of His great love for us. It has captured us.
When I was a much younger man, I used to live out on Long Island. I used to travel into Manhattan every day to go to work. I saw a little cheer section over here from the New Yorkers.
I used to travel from Long Island into Manhattan. From my driveway to where I picked up the subway, it was sixty-seven miles one way, in traffic, and then the round trip back in the afternoon. For that trip, I bought, at that time—I think it was about $1,900—a brand-new Volkswagen Bug. I would put about 87,000 miles on it a year.
It was the only car I had, and I used to take that back and forth to the city and use it for everything else. It came a time when finally it could not go anymore. I brought it back to the Volkswagen dealer to trade it in and buy another one to last me another couple of years.
We made the deal and all that good stuff, and I had to bring it back the next day. But the next day, when I woke up, I could not get this car started. So I am thinking, “Oh, here goes this deal down the tubes.”
Now, I have to admit, much younger and not knowing the Lord and all these things, I would do all sorts of things. So I called my friend to the house, and I said, “We have got to get this car to the dealership, you know?”
He got behind me and pushed me with his car. The signal was, when I got about a half block away, I would go like this. He would rev the car and just let me coast in, and I would—vroom, boom—right in front of the showroom window. I got out, signed the papers, jumped in the other car, and took off.
Now, sometimes that is the way, I think, our Christian life is. You say, “What propels us?” God has supplied us with the right propellant. He has given us instructions on how to care for this life He has given us, and He has given us, we might say, the propellant that goes into this life.
But there are times when we choose to use something else to propel us. So I hope, by God’s grace, today we can see something of what He really wants to propel us through this life.
Or, as we read in 2 Corinthians 5, I would like to read from verses 13 through 15:
For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God;
or if we are of sound mind, it is for you.
For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus:
that if One died for all, then all died;
and He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves,
but for Him who died for them and rose again.
I was very encouraged this morning because it seemed that the Word of the Lord this morning held up before us His great love for us. The prayers and the songs all spoke of His great love for us. And we all know we only love Him because He has first loved us.
So it says, “For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God.” When I looked up this Greek word—which I am not going to attempt to pronounce—this word “beside” means out of our mind.
Are we out of our mind for Jesus?
Now, I am going to give a very poor analogy, and I hate doing these little sorts of analogies, if that is even the right word. They fall so far short of the Lord’s love for us. But when it talks about being beside ourselves for God, just imagine if you were a parent in a house and you were busying yourself with household chores and things that, at that time, seemed very important to you: cleaning the house, preparing a meal for your husband or wife coming home, getting things straightened out, maybe doing something on the computer for work.
Your child is out back by the family swimming pool. All of a sudden, you do not hear him anymore, and you run out only to find him face up in that pool. All of a sudden, you dive in and drag him out. He is not breathing, and you begin to work on him to bring him back to life.
You are now beside yourself. Everything else that was important in your life has now gone aside for this moment, and you are beside yourself trying to bring life back into your child.
Everything else that may have seemed important in your life is no longer important. You are beside yourself. You are out of your mind trying to bring this child back. Then the child comes back and is breathing, and now you are out of your mind with joy. Everything else takes second place to that.
No longer are things in the same position of priority as they were before. Things have been rearranged. Priorities have taken different importance now in your life. You were out of your mind for your child.
Now, as poor an example as that is, there is something that the Spirit of God wants to say to us about our love and devotion for Jesus. Are we out of our mind in love with Him?
Has our love for Him prioritized our life in such a way that truly He is number one and foremost, and everything else has fallen into its proper place behind Him? So, are we out of our mind in love with Jesus?
For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God;
or if we are of sound mind, it is for you.
The best way we can love and serve others, really, is if we are out of our mind in love with Jesus. Then, as I have said, the priorities are set aright. When we deal with people, then we are of sound mind toward them, because Christ has been the preeminent One in our lives, in our minds, in our affection, and in our hearts.
When we interact with brothers and sisters, when you interact with your wife, your children, or your siblings, you do it in such a way that you are of sound mind. You are treating them with kindness, gentleness, and compassion. There is discernment. The counsel that comes from you comes from the very wisdom of God, who is Christ Himself. We are then of sound mind toward others.
For the love of Christ compels us.
Now, what does that mean? What does it mean that the love of Christ compels us?
First, we have to come to some understanding of the great love of the Lord for us. How does that happen? Actually, that happens through the history of the life of Jesus with you. What is this history that He has had with you?
As we remember that history, it brings us into a greater and greater appreciation of His love. We can look at our history in the Lord.
One thing we know is this: even before we considered Him, He had already considered us. Before we knew Him, His eye was upon us, and He was drawing us to Himself, even when we did not know we were being drawn.
Then there is that wonderful and glorious day when the light of God’s love shines upon us, and all of a sudden we realize, and we see ourselves as those who were sinners in need of a Savior. We recognize our own depravity. We recognize that we could not help ourselves.
We begin to discover the emptiness in our own life. The strivings were futility. Everything began to appear as vanity, and we did not know where to turn. But Christ was there, and He shined His light upon us.
We saw ourselves as we were, and we saw Him as the Savior that we needed. It was that glorious day. Here was the beginning of the recognition of this history that we have with the Lord.
We start to go on with the Lord in this life, and we begin to see how, in His love, He begins to fashion us and mold us more and more into His likeness. This is not an easy thing for us.
It is this part of working with the clay, which has no real form of its own. Unless it is placed into the potter’s hands and the potter works it, it remains just as it was. But God begins to work on our life. He begins to form us, mold us, squeeze us, and turn us.
Sometimes it is difficult, sometimes very painful. But as we go on in the Lord, we begin to see those things that had burdened us, those things that we could not escape from, the chains that had bound us, those things that we would cry out to the Lord to rescue us from.
This God who is at work in us, both to will and to do for His good pleasure, was doing just that: working in us, fashioning us, molding us. We all of a sudden discover, “Oh, the mercy and faithfulness of God. He is setting me free, setting me free.”
It is part of the history. As we go on with the Lord, we become aware of His plan: that we are not just an island in and of ourselves, but He has connected us with all this. We begin to see, by the mercy and grace of God, the beauty of the body of Christ and how we are to fit together.
It is all part of that history. We say, “Oh, Lord, wonderful are Your ways. Your body is so precious and so beautiful. Things I have never thought of nor seen, You have brought to my understanding by Your mercy.”
It is the wonderful history of His love in your life and my life. The Lord wants to bring us, my dear brothers and sisters, to a great appreciation of His great love for us. Part of that is remembering the history of His love.
Now, the Word says, “For the love of Christ compels us.” But there is another side to that, and I would like to say this: my love for Christ compels me.
We need to recognize the love of the Lord Jesus for us, but that needs to turn something within my heart where I say, “My love for You, Lord Jesus, compels me.”
Is that what is happening in our lives? What compels you? What compels you to live, to serve? Is it your great love for Him?
You know, sometimes as children—all of us children here; we are all children—especially when we are growing up, we come to these crossroads in our life where we have to make some decisions. Or we are approached with things that somehow do not sit right with us.
Sometimes the very thing that makes us go the right way is because we say, “You know, my mom and dad, they have sacrificed so much for me. They have loved me so much. If I did this, I would really disappoint them. If I did this, it would break their heart.”
Something of that is what I am speaking of when I say my love compels me to act in such a way that I would not disappoint the Lover of my soul.
That I would not grieve Him. That I would not cause Him, as it were, to suffer because He has seen His child do something which would be so dishonoring.
Is that what compels us?
We are reading, if you return to Isaiah, in Isaiah 29. When we read verse 13, we see something of an indictment—or at least a disappointment—that God had with His people. Unfortunately, we find this same condition among us at times.
The Lord said:
These people draw near with their mouths,
and honor Me with their lips,
but have removed their hearts far from Me,
and their fear toward Me is taught by the commandments of men.
“They draw near with their mouths and honor Me with their lips,” the Lord says, “but they have removed their hearts far from Me.”
Sometimes we must confess that sometimes this is the way it has been in our own lives. We can come to meeting after meeting, and we can have all the right words. There are a lot of people who might even think well of you because of the words you have spoken, but there is something else going on in your heart.
There is a life that is lived out here among the brethren, but then there is another life that is lived that some of us would be ashamed of. We come and say things with our lips to honor the Lord, but there is no reality in our own hearts.
The Lord is looking for those who would worship Him in spirit and in truth. Part of that is that, as the Lord reveals Himself to us, out of that revelation, when we worship Him, that would be the truth.
We can then offer praise and worship that is honoring to Him because it comes out of our living experience with the living God. It is not just saying pretty words to impress those who are around us.
How does it happen that we remove our hearts far from the Lord? I think sometimes what happens is that we can look at the Word of God and take what is comfortable for us to live, and those things that are uncomfortable we can sort of discard. We can think of them as not being very important.
Because of that, what begins to happen is that our hearts are placed further and further away from those things that are important to the heart of God. If it is in His Word and the Lord Jesus has said such and such, there should be something in my heart that attaches to that.
Even though I may not be there, there should be something in my heart that says, “Lord, Your Word says it. Lord, work that into me now, that what is important to You becomes important to me.”
If we see by revelation that we need to be in fellowship with one another, then I need to make it a point that I would build relationship with brothers and sisters. Why? Because it is important to the heart of God. If it is important to Him, then it should be important to me.
I should want to do it because it would be something that would please Him. Because I have come to know of His great love for me, therefore I act thusly because I love Him.
But you would get some who would say, “Well, I really do not need to go to meetings. I have my own little meeting in my house with my own family.” Well, I am sorry. That is not what the Word of God says. That is not good enough.
You and your family are not the body of Christ. The body of Christ is much larger than that. God has a plan much bigger than you, much bigger than your family, and much bigger than this assembly. Somehow, I need to come into the purpose of God. I need to agree with God. My heart needs to be joined to His heart.
Otherwise, what we do is remove our hearts far from Him. That can be very subtle when we begin to pick and choose the things that we would like to do and how we would like to cooperate with God.
I read something in a book about Rhys Howells that said, “Sometimes our lives are but the skin of truth filled with lies.” Oh, when I read that, I said, “Whew.”
Sometimes our lives are but the skin of truth filled with lies. The Lord Jesus, talking to the Pharisees, said, “Oh, you are like whitewashed sepulchres: nice, white, and clean on the outside, but inside, nothing but rotten bones.” I think that is something of what is being said here.
Now, I do not want this to sound all negative. I really do not want it to sound all negative. But I want us to see the difference: a heart that is for the Lord Jesus and is compelled because I love Him—and I love Him because I have come to recognize His great love for me.
My wife—I hope she does not mind me bringing her up during this—last Sunday had read something from Ezekiel that just touched my heart deeply. It is in Ezekiel 16.
This is such a picture of where many of us were, and maybe where someone is. We are reading Ezekiel 16, starting in verse 3:
Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem:
“Your birth and your nativity are from the land of Canaan;
your father was an Amorite,
and your mother a Hittite.”
Their heritage was outside of what God had initiated for His people—a people who had not recognized the one true and living God.
As for your nativity, on the day you were born
your navel cord was not cut,
nor were you washed in water to cleanse you.
You were not rubbed with salt nor wrapped in swaddling clothes.
No eye pitied you, to do any of these things for you,
to have compassion on you;
but you were thrown out into the open field,
when you yourselves were loathed on the day you were born.
And when I passed you and saw you struggling in your own blood—
This is the condition of mankind. We were at the mercy of the kingdom of darkness. We were born into the kingdom of darkness without hope. We were in the throes of death, gasping for air, trying to live in a hostile environment, struggling in our own blood.
This is the picture of who we are without Christ, without God, without hope in our lives. It is not a very pretty picture, but this is who we were.
Who can save us from such a condition? We were born into that, and there was a father, Satan, who birthed us, as it were, who had control, and he was not caring for us. He put us out there. He was the father of lies, and he wanted us to grow up believing the lie.
But He says:
And when I passed you and saw you struggling in your own blood,
I said to you in your blood, “Live!”
Yes, I said to you in your blood, “Live!”
It is interesting because when we read Romans 5:8, tell me if this does not sound familiar:
But God demonstrates His own love toward us,
in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
While we were there, struggling in our own blood, Christ died for us.
“I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ Yes, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’”
God came, found us in our sin, and He said, “Len, I love you. Live.”
I remember that day. Some of you have heard my little story, but I remember that moment that I was saved. I was at this retreat, and just to capsulize this, there was this saying going on during the seventies. The Spirit of God was moving in so many ways and through so many people, but there was this saying: “God does not make junk.”
I remember that morning, that dawned on me: God loved me. He saved me that moment. What a glorious thing.
Prior to that, I was the one struggling in his blood in that open field. I came to that place where I recognized I could not help myself. But those glorious words, when the Lord showed that to me—that “I love you, Len”—rescued me and saved me and lifted me, just like we sang in that song. The love of God lifted me up to Him. How wonderful.
This is what He says here:
I made you to thrive like a plant in the field;
and you grew, matured, and became very beautiful.
Your breasts were formed, your hair grew,
but you were naked and bare.
When I passed by you again and looked upon you,
indeed, your time was the time of love.
So I spread the corner of My cloak over you
and covered your nakedness.
Yes, I swore an oath to you
and entered into a covenant with you,
and you became Mine, says the Lord God.
Hallelujah.
He entered into a covenant with us, and we became His, says the Lord God.
Ephesians 5:25—you do not need to turn there—but tell me, is this not the parallel to that?
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church
and gave Himself up for her,
that He might sanctify her and cleanse her
with the washing of water by the Word.
He finds us in this condition. He says to us, “Live.” He not only causes us to live and to thrive, but now He makes this covenant, this marriage covenant, with us. Now we are His bride.
This is the great love of God for us. He not only saves us and breathes His life into us. He does not just leave us there on our own, but He supplies His life to us that we can grow and mature, and He brings us into this covenant of marriage with Him.
Then He says:
Then I washed you in water;
yes, I thoroughly washed off your blood,
and I anointed you with oil.
Just as we read in Ephesians, He clothes us in embroidered cloth and gives us sandals. He describes how He clothes His bride in beautiful garments and puts jewels upon her.
Then it says:
You were exceedingly beautiful,
and succeeded to royalty.
In Galatians, it says:
You are no longer a slave, but a son;
and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
What provision. What great love.
Your fame went out among the nations because of your beauty,
for it was perfect through My splendor
which I had bestowed on you, says the Lord God.
This word splendor there—if we look in Hebrews 1, and you do not need to turn there—it says:
God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past
to the fathers by the prophets,
has in these last days spoken to us by His Son,
whom He has appointed heir of all things,
through whom also He made the worlds;
who being the effulgence of His glory
and the express image of His person,
and upholding all things by the word of His power,
when He had by Himself purged our sins,
sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Christ was the effulgence of the glory of God. In other words, He was the brightness of the glory of God.
We read in Ezekiel:
Your fame went out among the nations because of your beauty,
for it was perfect through My splendor
which I bestowed upon you.
He gave us His life. He who was the effulgence of God’s glory, the very brightness of His glory, He has put into us.
What a salvation. What love. What great love.
Now somehow, by the Spirit of God, this should cause us to say: “My love for You compels me.”
Now, back in 2 Corinthians—in the fourth chapter, starting in verse 7—it says:
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels,
that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.
That is who we are. We are just earthen vessels. We are made of clay, easily broken. You take a clay pot and drop it on the floor, and it is in a million pieces.
But what we have in this earthen vessel is this treasure.
Paul goes on to say:
We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed;
we are perplexed, but not in despair;
persecuted, but not forsaken;
struck down, but not destroyed.
Because, you see, this One who dwells within us cannot be defeated. He cannot be defeated. He fills up this earthen vessel. He is the very strength of the earthen vessel.
For those who have come to know the Lord Jesus in this personal way, there is no need to be in despair, because the One who dwells within us, the One who is contained within this earthen vessel, has overcome all.
It is by His power and by His grace that we are able to overcome. So we do not have to despair in the most difficult situations. We can turn to this other life, this overcoming life, and He will—mark my words—He will supply grace for each and every situation that we find ourselves in.
Grace to endure. Grace for patience. It will be there.
“We are persecuted, but not forsaken.” He says He will never leave us nor forsake us. “Struck down, but not destroyed,” again because He is the One who has overcome.
Always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus,
that the life of Jesus also may be made manifest in your body.
There is this process that is always going on in you and me, this process of death and life. Left to ourselves, there would be no demonstration of power. But it is because of His life in us that, as we permit the cross to work in our life, as we permit ourselves to experience this dying to self, there emerges this resurrected and powerful life in the Lord.
What compels us? What constrains us? Is it our love for Him?
What compels your speech? Is it our love for the Lord Jesus? In other words, when I am speaking with people, when you are talking to your wife, when you are talking to your children, does the love of Christ compel me to speak in such a way that it is going to be edifying?
Even if we have to correct, is it going to be done in such a way that it edifies? Or am I going to disregard the life of God in me, disregard His love for me, flare out, and speak in such a way that could be damaging?
Or am I compelled to speak, as it says in the Word of God, with my speech seasoned as it were with salt, with gentleness and kindness? Does my love for Him compel me to speak in such a way?
Or when I serve, am I compelled by my love for Him to serve? Or am I compelled by what I may think other people think of me?
I know we have said this before, but am I compelled to come to the meetings because of what I think you brothers and sisters may think of me, whether I show up or not? Or am I compelled out of love for Him?
In my relationship with you and your relationship with me, are you compelled to treat me with kindness, respect, and honor because you love Him? Because you love Him, He has shown you that these brothers and sisters are precious to Him. Because of that, because you love Him, you love me.
Oh, are we compelled to love that way because we love Him?
When we are working or at school, what compels us there? Are we working just for the eye-service of our employer? Or because we love the Lord, we do not want to disappoint Him, and He has said that we ought to work unto Him?
Whatever you do in word or deed, do all to the glory of God.
Does that compel me to work in such a way that it would please His heart? In other words, it is this issue: is my love for You compelling me?
We need to ask the Spirit of God to continue to reveal the love that He has for us, that we could come into a great appreciation of that.
Now somehow, I hope, in some small way today, as the songs—you know, this ministry of the Word is not the whole meeting. Thank God it is not, because if it was, I think sometimes we would be in big trouble.
But the Lord spoke today. I believe the Lord spoke today. It is more than just whoever is standing up here. The Lord spoke today. He spoke through your prayers. He spoke through the songs that were sung. God was speaking.
Throughout the meeting, what I heard—and I believe you heard, and maybe in some minuscule way from what I shared—God was saying this: “I love you. I love you.”
This is the simple message of the gospel: that God loves us. His love is that which has saved us. It is His love which sustains us. It is His love that carries us through. It is only His love.
Somehow, if I would come into a deep appreciation of that, then everything else falls into its proper place. Then I will know how to serve, how to speak, how to take care of and counsel my children, and how to love my wife, and all of this.
God has spoken, I believe, clearly today. I hope we take it home with us, and I hope there is a yearning in our hearts to know His love in a deeper and deeper way, that it would move us in our heart to be beside ourselves for Him.
Oh, Father, we do entrust these simple words into Your hands. We only know that it is only by the power of Your Spirit that they will have effect. It is only by the power of Your Spirit that they can transform—not just the words that I have spoken today, but the words that were prayed and the words that were sung.
Lord, somehow would You take them, enliven them, and let them really be food to us today? Let them nourish us in such a way that we would be those who would be beside ourselves in love for You, Lord, and that it would translate in our lives with one another.
May it translate in our relationships with those who do not know You.
So, Lord, again, we entrust this into Your hands. We thank You for Your wonderful love for us. Amen.