It is a joy to be gathered around the Lord’s table. Several prayers said that we belong to the Lord forever, from eternity to eternity. That touched my heart.
What I want to share today is very close to what was said this morning: the matter of the heart of God and the heart of man. When we consider the heart, we see that God is eternal. That is why we can say that we belong to Him from eternity past to the ages to come. We need to recognize this.
Hopefully, we can share something because the Lord has already opened the curtain, and by the Holy Spirit He enables us to see something in eternity. I think that is really what we need in these days.
Let me give you the verse that anchors our fellowship today: Ephesians 2:4.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love wherewith He loved us.
Notice the words: His great love. That is how He loved us—with His great love.
As far as the heart is concerned, there is great love in His heart. As far as we are concerned, we need to respond. There is no use in His loving us if we do not respond. Our response to His great love is expressed in a word from the Old Testament that appears three times in the Gospels. I have chosen the verse from Luke 10:27.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.
The key word here is all—A-L-L. It is a small word, only three letters, but it means with all your heart: not a partial heart, not a divided heart, but a whole heart.
Lord Jesus, we do want to give thanks to You, Lord, that You indeed have gathered us around Your table once again to show us Your heart, to show us that love, that eternal love in Your heart.
Lord, we are so grateful to know that we are Yours forever. In the same way, You are ours forever. Lord, we appreciate that.
We pray for this time together. Lord, I do want to pray for clarity, that this matter of language would not be a barrier. Lord, You are able to break through. We pray that the sharing will be clear and anointed, Lord, that You would use it to have an impact in our lives and produce fruit a hundredfold for Your glory.
We commit this time back to You, Lord. This is something with which we are very familiar, but Lord, we do pray: open our eyes, that we may gaze into eternity and receive what is in Your heart, and that we may respond rightly from our hearts.
Lord, we commit this time unto You. We thank You that You speak to us. Thank You, Lord. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
I just want to tell you a little story as an opening. Group Two has a lot of children who come to the Friday night meetings. Because there are many children, we often ask them to sing together. One of their favorites is, “Jesus Loves Me.”
“Jesus loves me.” I think that is amazing—to hear those words from little children.
Sometimes, as adults, we feel that we know about Jesus loving us so much. We have heard about it so much that it is no longer fresh to us. May that word be fresh in us every day: Jesus loves me. Jesus loves us.
During the last couple of months, with this technology, we have had the chance to FaceTime with our grandchildren in Texas. It is really precious. We have time to pray together and sing together. They have all these hand motions that we can learn.
When I hear them sing “Jesus Loves Me,” the Lord reminds me that unless we become childlike, we will not enter the kingdom of God. All this came through the little children.
The Lord Himself speaks to us in many different ways, even through little children.
“Jesus loves me.” It is a very simple song and a very simple expression. But as we learn of the Lord, we begin with the word I mentioned from Ephesians 2:4: because of His great love, He loves us.
We begin as individuals. We are saved as individuals. God, at some point in time, loved me, and that is very personal. That is our starting point.
Yet, in time, the Holy Spirit reveals to us that He is not only loving me; He also loves His church. He loves the brothers and sisters. Now there is a bigger circle.
Then again, in time, we are reminded of John 3:16: God so loved the world. His love is not only for the church. He loves the people He created, the people of this world. He wants to bring those people into salvation, into the kingdom of God.
Finally, as John says in his letters, love is not separate from God. God is love. Love is not merely a thing; love is God. Love and God cannot be separated. Love is intrinsic to God.
When we look into the heart of God, what do we find? Love. When we say that someone has no heart, we usually mean that he has no love. The heart of God is what we need to see in these days.
When I speak of the love of God, I mean the love within the Godhead. You may ask, “Are you talking about the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, or the fellowship of the Holy Spirit?” They are all together in the Godhead.
The final words of 2 Corinthians 13:14 say:
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.
Grace is the expression of God’s love, and the Holy Spirit brings that love into us so that we may have fellowship. The fellowship, the communion, the union life, is brought to us together by the Holy Spirit. All these are included.
The little song says, “Jesus loves me, this I know.” This I know.
I sit back and ask myself the question: Do I know? The children seem to know in their hearts that Jesus loves them. Do I know that Jesus loves me?
I am not speaking merely of an outward knowledge. I am speaking of an inward knowing that Jesus loves me. It is in the heart.
If I do know, the next question that arises in my heart is: What is my response to His great love?
Even when we have that inward knowing of the heart of the Lord, something happens in us. We find that we are His forever. We do not want to leave Him. We do not want to be apart from Him. We want to be with Him forever.
It is so vital that we come to know the heart of God.
Let me finish the song. It also says, “For the Bible tells me so.” That touches my heart.
After the Lord was crucified and resurrected, two disciples were walking away from Jerusalem toward Emmaus. They knew that Jesus had been crucified, and they had heard about His resurrection. Yet their hearts were troubled. They said, in effect, “We trusted that He was the Messiah, but now we do not know what has happened.”
But the Lord came alongside them and walked with them.
The account is recorded in Luke 24:13-34. The Lord opened the Scriptures to them. He used all the Scriptures—the Old Testament in this case—to speak about Himself.
At the end of the New Testament, Revelation 19:10 says:
The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.
All the words of prophecy speak of and testify concerning Jesus. The Old Testament and the New Testament speak to us about Jesus and show us Jesus.
When we read the Bible, what are we looking for? I have to ask myself that question: What am I looking for in God’s Word?
Do I look for blessings? Surely, you will find blessings there. Do I look for comfort? You will find comfort in the Scriptures. Do I look for words of confidence? You will find those too.
But we need to ask: What is God’s intention regarding the Scriptures?
It is really to reveal Christ to us. Beyond all the benefits we receive from searching God’s Word, there is one vital thing that must settle in our hearts: the Bible reveals Jesus to us. It shows us His great love and His mighty heart. That is the frame of the Bible from beginning to end.
Many years ago, I came across a book by T. Austin-Sparks entitled His Great Love. Perhaps some of you have read it. It is a very good book.
We often speak about eternal purpose and many high things that may be difficult to understand. Yet this book, His Great Love, really touched my heart.
In the introduction, he speaks about John 3:16. We are very familiar with that verse, and we take it as the heart of the gospel. Yes, it is the heart of the gospel, but it is more than that: it is the heart of the universe.
We often look for a will, a purpose, or a power that brings things into being. Yet, when we come to the bottom of it, it is His heart. It is the heart of God. Everything is rooted in the heart of God.
What do we focus on? Do we focus on the acts of God, or should we focus on the heart of God? He really wants us to know His heart.
Today I want to share four things. First, I want to speak about the love of God. The Bible speaks of God’s love everywhere, but I want to focus on two matters.
The first is found in Jeremiah 31. God told Jeremiah to speak to the Israelites:
Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.
—Jeremiah 31:3
Everlasting love—eternal love. I want to share concerning that.
The second matter is from John 13. The Lord was going away, and one thing He said to encourage His disciples was that, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the uttermost. He loved them to the end.
We also need to look at the days in which we are living. In Revelation 2 and 3, we have the seven letters to the churches. I cannot cover all seven letters, or even one fully, but I want to point out two things regarding how the Lord assesses the condition of the church on earth in our time.
The first is Revelation 2:4:
But I have this against thee, that thou didst leave thy first love.
It is something very serious for the Lord to have something against us. Yet that is His true word.
The other is from the last letter, to Laodicea. Revelation 3:20 says:
Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.
To the church at Ephesus, the Lord said, “You have left your first love.” By the last letter, the Lord Himself is outside.
Outside the church? We know what happened. It began with the decline at Ephesus. The saints left their first love, perhaps little by little. By the end, they did not even realize that the Lord Himself was outside.
But that is not the end. The Lord knocks on the door and says, “Let Me in. Open the door. I want to come in.” Brothers and sisters, do we see the heart of the Lord there? That love, that heart, that great love in Him. He wants to come in and dine with us. He wants to be with us.
The third area I want to discuss concerns our response. We read in Luke 10:27 about loving the Lord with all our heart. We must address this because love for the Lord is not merely in words. It is not just saying something. It must be real in our experience.
The last area is from the book of Revelation. Many things happen there: many scenes and all the seals. But one thing I want to concentrate on is this question: Is the Lord telling us what is in His heart and what would satisfy His heart?
Beyond the four horsemen and beyond all the judgments, the Lord is telling us something about His heart—what He wants and what His deep desire is.
God’s love is everlasting. I want to say it this way: His love is timeless. It is beyond time.
On Friday night, we fellowshipped concerning the book of Ephesians. When we think of Ephesians, we say, “It is about God’s eternal purpose.” Yes, it is about God’s eternal purpose, but that is not all it is about.
If you were to search the book of Ephesians for the words love, grace, and mercy, you would find that these three words appear in twenty-five verses. That is how important they are.
Besides revealing His eternal purpose, the Holy Spirit wants us to see God’s heart—God’s love. Ephesians is about God’s eternal purpose, but it also speaks to us about His love. His love must be eternal. It is not merely for time; it is eternal and timeless.
We have already read Jeremiah 31:3:
Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.
That definitely applies to the Israelites. In the Old Testament, we see how unfaithful they were. God desired Israel to be His wife. They were a virgin betrothed to the Lord Himself, yet they committed spiritual adultery and turned away from God.
What was God’s response? Through Jeremiah, He told them from His heart, “I saw all these things, yet there is one word I want to give you: I have loved thee with an everlasting love.” A love that is everlasting has no end. It is timeless.
I think that is amazing. I hope that touches your heart.
This matter of timelessness and eternity is something we need to know. Jesus Himself was crucified two thousand years ago, but 1 Peter 1:19-20 gives us a glimpse of what happened in eternity past.
Christ was the Lamb before the foundation of the world. Therefore, Christ’s love for the church did not begin only when He came in the flesh. Christ loved His church in eternity past. There is no question about it.
Then, if we go all the way to the ages to come, we arrive at Revelation 21. John saw a new heaven and a new earth. What else did he see? In Revelation 21:9-10, he saw the New Jerusalem. He was told, “Come, I will show thee the bride, the wife of the Lamb.”
What do the bride and the wife of the Lamb speak to us about? Love.
I hope I have made the point that God’s love for us, and all that is in God’s heart toward us, is eternal—from eternity past to the ages to come. It is timeless.
Because it is timeless, it does not change. It cannot be changed. It is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Why is this so critical in the time in which we live? As John mentioned, we are in a time of great turmoil. Everything seems to be shaking. Things we once counted on are no longer solid.
Perhaps we once counted on jobs, health, relationships, government, schools, or society. But in this time we come to know that everything is shaking. There seems to be nothing we can put our hands on. Nothing seems eternal.
Many believers are persecuted. There are countries where believers are persecuted much more than we are. Yet the Lord’s word is that if you belong to Him, you will be persecuted. There is no question about it.
There may be times when the situation becomes so bad that heaven seems closed, in the sense that we are in a situation where there seems to be nothing from the Lord.
There may be times when the enemy whispers in your ear, “God has abandoned you.” Of course, that is the enemy speaking. It is not real. It is not true. It is a lie.
That is why I say: may the Holy Spirit work into our hearts today this great love of God that is timeless, never changing, and unchangeable. Then, when difficult situations come, we can go on with the Lord, even though everything we see, feel, and go through seems contrary. It is difficult.
We need to see beyond our circumstances and look into the mighty heart of God. One point that is critical for us is to know that His love is eternal. I want to say it once again because, as human beings, when we encounter situations, our eyes naturally focus upon them. May the Lord have mercy on us so that we look to Him, the eternal One. His heart is eternal. His love is eternal.
The second aspect of His great love is that He loves us to the uttermost. This is from John 13:1:
Now before the feast of the passover, Jesus knowing that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved His own that were in the world, He loved them unto the end.
He loved them to the end. He loved them to the uttermost.
Psalm 139 tells us that God is everywhere. There is no place God cannot reach. As far as God is concerned, no matter what the circumstances are, there is love. His love is able to penetrate all circumstances.
I say it simply to myself: His love knows no bounds. There is no limit and no boundary.
We find many examples in the Bible. I will choose two.
The first is Peter. We always pick on Peter for some reason. On the night of the Passover, the Lord told all His disciples that they would fall away. Peter said, “Even if all fall away, I will never fall away.”
But we do not want merely to look at Peter. We want to look at the Lord Himself. The Lord knew that Peter was going to deny Him. There was no question about that. But what did the Lord do?
The Bible says that the Lord prayed for Peter. He prayed that Peter’s faith would not fail, and that afterward Peter would repent and strengthen his brothers and sisters.
That night Peter denied the Lord three times, saying, “I do not know Him.” After the third denial, the Lord looked at Peter. That look from the Lord melted Peter’s heart.
It was not a look that said, “Peter, you denied Me.” No, that was not the case. It was a look from the heart of love. The Bible says that Peter went out and wept bitterly.
After the resurrection, the Lord appeared to Peter in order to restore him. At the end of John’s Gospel, we see that the Lord restored Peter and commanded him to care for the sheep and the lambs. Peter was fully restored.
The same is true of Paul. Paul was a persecutor of believers. His testimony is found in Acts 22:4-10. He went around arresting believers and even putting them to death. The Lord knew that.
Yet, on the road to Damascus, the Lord appeared to Paul in a bright light and said:
Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?
I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest.
Those were not angry words. They came from the tender, loving heart of the Lord Jesus Himself.
Paul was turned around. He immediately repented, and he went from persecuting the Lord’s believers to becoming a servant of God. Paul was captured by the love of Christ. We know the rest of the story: Paul was greatly used by the Lord as an apostle to the Gentiles.
This demonstrates that God’s love knows no bounds. There is no limit.
However, God created man with a free will. God can love us, but if we reject God, there are consequences.
In the same chapter, John 13, we are told that Jesus washed His disciples’ feet. Judas was there. The Lord knew Judas was going to betray Him. Yet He came to Judas and washed Judas’s feet tenderly, in a loving way. He expressed His heart to Judas and desired that Judas would repent.
But Judas’s heart was hardened. He refused the Lord’s love, and he went out and betrayed the Lord for thirty pieces of silver.
This should be a lesson to us. Hebrews 3:7-8 says:
Today if ye shall hear His voice,
Harden not your hearts.
God gave us a new heart when we were saved. He took away the heart of stone. Our hearts are meant to be tender and sensitive to the Lord Himself, sensitive to His heart.
Yet, by rejecting what the Lord gives to us, that heart can become hardened. It can become so hardened that we turn completely away from the Lord.
Let us pray for one another, that we would have sensitive ears to hear His voice and tender hearts sensitive to the Lord’s touch.
We see these two aspects of the Lord’s love: His love is timeless, and His love knows no bounds.
Yet, when the Lord walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands, what does He see? We have to ask that question. He sees many things. In the letters, He speaks about the specific condition of the churches, the specific testimony entrusted to the churches, and the overcoming ones.
But one thing I feel in my heart is very special: when the Lord looked at all these conditions, His heart was grieved.
I do not know whether you sense that when reading the seven letters, especially the first and the last. I sense the Lord’s grief.
Sometimes we think that if we fail the Lord or sin against Him, it affects only ourselves. No, that is not the case. Yes, it affects us, but it also affects the Lord. He is capable of grief because He has a heart.
Do we really want to grieve the Lord? That is the question.
Let us look more closely at Revelation 2:4-5, the first letter to the church in Ephesus:
But I have this against thee, that thou didst leave thy first love.
Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent and do the first works; or else I come to thee, and will move thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent.
If we look at the church at Ephesus, as recorded in Revelation 2, they had good things. They seemed to do many good works. They seemed to do the right things. They had a good testimony.
The Lord did not fail to notice those things, but there was one thing He said: “I have this against thee: thou didst leave thy first love.”
It seems to me that we can have all the outward things, all the deeds, and all the works, but if they do not come from the first love we have for the Lord, the Lord sees that a key element is missing. That element is first love—our first love for the Lord Himself.
That is what the Lord is looking for: that first love.
The Lord’s word is strong. Unless they repented and returned to their first love, He would remove the lampstand. That is a serious matter. The lampstand represents the functional church and its testimony. When the lampstand is gone, the testimony is gone. The church has no purpose.
When we read this letter, what do we see? The Lord’s desire is that we would be immersed in His love and respond in like manner. Otherwise, everything becomes external.
Everything becomes an outward form. It becomes routine, a matter of duty, and is no longer motivated by love. First love is replaced with deeds only.
That is a very sad situation.
I wonder whether we merely see the elements in this letter, or whether we come to the conclusion that the church at Ephesus did not truly know the heart of God. They thought they could do all these things—A, B, C, D, E, and F—but the Lord was after first love.
That is critical nowadays. Do we know what the Lord is after? He is not only after works. He is not only after deeds. He is after these things when they are motivated by first love.
Secondly, consider the last letter, to the church in Laodicea. The first and last letters are especially significant in terms of love.
The decline of the church progressed from Ephesus, where the church left its first love, to the very bad situation in Laodicea. Let us read Revelation 3:20:
Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.
We see the condition: the Lord is outside. The brothers and sisters, the saints in the church, do not even know that the Lord is outside.
The Lord’s assessment of the church is that they are blind and naked; they cannot see. Yet they say, “We are rich.” What a contrast.
When we begin to stray away from God’s first love, or fail to respond rightly to His love, we progress little by little, one small step at a time, until we reach the point where the Lord is left outside. The Lord is outside, and we do not even know it.
But again, I do not want to concentrate merely on the acts of the church. We must look into the heart of God. What does this letter show us regarding the love the Lord has for His church?
The Lord says, in effect, “You have put Me outside the door.” What does the Lord Jesus do? He does not walk away. He is there by the door, and He knocks.
The Lord never left. He knocks and says, “Hear My voice. Open the door, and I will come in.”
Do we see the love in the Lord’s heart? Do we see that this is the way He is?
Consider the parable of the lost son in Luke 15. When the younger son returned home, the father said:
For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.
The father said, “Let us celebrate.” That was his response.
In the same way, what the Lord is looking for is for us to open the door. “I would be so delighted to come in and dine with you. All you need to do is hear My voice and open the door.”
We find a Lord with a great heart, who loves us and never gives up. Even in the case of the church, even when He is left outside, He is still knocking.
When we think about the lost son in Luke 15, after he returned home and was restored by the father, what do you think he would do? I do not think he would leave again. The same is true here. If we open the door and let the Lord in, we will be together with Him. The love of the Lord will touch our hearts, and that makes all the difference.
There is something I want to share concerning our response. We know that times are difficult. We all know that. The Lord is coming soon. We know that too.
Matthew 24:12 says:
And because iniquity shall be multiplied, the love of the many shall wax cold.
The word for love here is agape. The Lord is not speaking merely about the general population; He is speaking about God’s people. He is not saying that only a minority will grow cold. He says that most people’s love will grow cold.
Most of God’s people—their hearts will become cold. That is tragic.
It is not enough merely to know. There must be a response. Otherwise, even though the love of God touches us a little, our sense of it may fade. God’s love never fades, but our knowing of it and our grasp of it can fade.
The Lord has burdened me with the words of Luke 10:27:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.
All of this must become practical. The word is all. Again, remember: not partial, not ninety-nine percent, but one hundred percent—every day.
When Peter and Paul were touched by the Lord Himself, they were forever the Lord’s. They belonged to the Lord even unto death.
We have read the story of Kang Sentindor. In his younger years, he wrote love letters to the Lord. He loved the Lord, and his heart was captured by the Lord. He served the Lord with all his heart.
For us, loving the Lord with the whole heart must be our experience. There is no escape. I must emphasize that a partial heart is not sufficient.
If you love the Lord ninety-nine percent and love something else one percent, that one percent can become five percent, then ten percent, and very soon it becomes one hundred percent. Then you no longer love the Lord.
This must be our life experience.
I have a set of reminders for myself concerning our relationship with the Lord. When we pray for one another, we often bring these things up. They are very useful to me, and I hope they will be useful to you.
The first is to receive Him.
John 1:11 says:
He came unto His own, and they that were His own received Him not.
That is a sad story. He came to the Jews, to the Israelites, and they did not receive Him. They did not welcome Him.
But while the Lord was on earth, He found a little place called Bethany. In that home were Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. Luke 10:38 says:
Now as they went on their way, He entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received Him into her house.
She received Him.
It is a sad situation if we do not receive the Lord or welcome the Lord into our midst. If the Lord Himself becomes a stranger to us, that is not receiving Him.
We need to have a relationship with the Lord. In our daily lives, whether we assemble together or whether we are at home as individuals, we need to welcome Him. It is a very simple gesture: welcome the Lord into our midst.
Do not allow the Lord to be a stranger. He wants to be in the midst of us. He loves us.
Secondly, love His Word.
John 14:15 says:
If ye love Me, ye will keep My commandments.
If we do not know His commandments, how can we keep them? We need to love His Word.
We remember the story of C. T. Studd. He loved the Lord so much that every morning, early in the morning, he searched the Scriptures for commandments that he could keep that day. That should be a lesson to us.
I am not saying that everyone must get up at four or five o’clock in the morning. But we need to pray that we may have a hunger for the Word of God.
Thirdly, draw near to the Lord’s heart.
John 13:23 says that one of His disciples was reclining in Jesus’ bosom. We can read that as something physical: John was there, leaning upon the Lord’s breast. But do you see the picture?
We need to lean upon the Lord Himself, as close to His heart as possible—to His heart of love—to hear His heartbeat, to know His heart, and to hear every word of love.
May we be people after God’s heart.
The next point is to love to abide in Him.
John 15:4 says:
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither can ye, except ye abide in Me.
In this matter of the vine and the branches, we often concentrate on the branches. We say, “What happens if I break away? I am no longer connected.” That is a good focus, but I want us to think about the vine.
What happens to the vine when branches break away? The vine is the Lord. How does the Lord feel when branches are missing—when brothers and sisters no longer abide in Him? We sense grief in His heart.
Our goal is not to grieve Him. Therefore, love to abide in Him and to have a union life with Him.
Almost as a counterpart, we have this word: love not the world.
1 John 2:15 says:
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
Many times we think about loving the Lord and loving the world in terms of priorities. We may think, “If I love the Lord ninety percent and love the world ten percent, what is wrong with that?” There is much wrong with it.
The Word says, “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” We cannot do both. That is only a fantasy. It is not the way of the Lord.
Love not the world.
The next point is to love one another and serve out of love.
In John 13:34, the Lord gave us a new commandment:
A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
Loving one another does not simply mean doing things for one another. Good deeds are not enough.
We remember 1 Corinthians 13, the chapter of love. The first three verses show us that we can have all kinds of gifts and do all kinds of things, but without love, it counts for nothing.
We should love one another—that is the Lord’s commandment—but do not mistake serving for loving. We need to serve, but we must not serve merely out of duty. We should serve one another out of love.
At the end of John’s Gospel, the Lord asked Peter three times, “Lovest thou Me more than these?” That is the source of our service to one another. We must love the Lord more than all these. All these things may be important, but they are secondary. We must love the Lord more than all these.
Two more items, and then I am done.
Love the people of this world. We must, because of John 3:16:
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son.
Do we feel God’s love for the people of this world in our hearts? 2 Peter 3:9 reveals the heart of God:
Not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
May the Lord give us compassion so that we can pray for our family members, our neighbors, people around us, people we know, and even people we do not know. May we share the gospel and share God’s love, because God’s desire is that all should come to repentance.
Lastly, love His appearing.
Paul said at the end of his life that there was laid up for him the crown of righteousness, not only for him, but also for all those who loved His appearing.
The Lord’s coming must be in our hearts. Beyond all these things, we must set our eyes on His coming and long for His appearing.
2 Peter 3:11-12 says:
What manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness,
Looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God.
That is the way we should live today: with hearts that love His appearing, so that we may live in holy conduct and godliness.
I will skip my last part because I have run out of time. Let us conclude.
At the end of Revelation, the New Jerusalem comes down, and we see the bride, the holy city, and the wife of the Lamb. They are one and the same; they are not different.
At the end, we see in eternity what the Lord is looking for and what He receives: the Lord Himself receives His companion of love. That is the end. Now we are in the process.
In conclusion, it is vital for us to know the mighty heart of God—His great love—and then to experience a response to that love. The goal of our response is to satisfy the Lord’s heart.
The Lord’s heart has no limit. His love is timeless and beyond time. In the time in which we live, there are many challenges, but we must keep our eyes on what is eternal.
The way we live today must be practical. I have mentioned several things that remind us how we can exercise to love the Lord with all our hearts.
Revelation 1:3 says that the time is near. The Lord says near the end of Revelation, “Yea, I come quickly.” What is our response? May our hearts say:
Amen: come, Lord Jesus.
—Revelation 22:20
That is what the Lord is after in each one of us and in all of us together: that we would have such a heart.
There is something we need to exercise. We need the experience and the inward knowing of the heart of the Lord so that we may satisfy Him. We do not want to concentrate on things that are only temporary. We want to look at what is eternal and look into His heart—His heart of love.
Let us consider what grieves Him, so that we may repent, return, and satisfy His heart in these days.
Lord Jesus, we do want to give thanks to You. Lord, as You pull away the curtain, we have some sense of what is deep in Your heart—that mighty heart of Yours, Lord, and the love You have that extends beyond us as individuals: the love for the church and the love for the people of this world.
Lord, we want to bow at Your feet and give ourselves back to You. May it be, Lord, that You would work these matters into our hearts so that our eyes would not be on things that are temporary, but on what is eternal—what is deep in Your heart.
Lord, enable us to exercise and respond to Your great love, that we may love You with all our hearts. Lord, work that in each one of us. Our goal is that Your heart would be satisfied, not only today, but for eternity to come.
Lord, have Your way. We thank You for Your lovingkindness. You still knock on our door in these days. You want to come in. You want to be with Your people together.
Oh, Lord, what a heart that is. Touch our hearts with Your great love so that we would return unto You and never leave, as the younger son did.
Lord, we thank You for Your great love. We thank You for this time. Thank You, Lord. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.