Love is the Foundation-pt.2a
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Introduction
Introduction
Review:
Review:
To develop what love is in the Bible is vital to the local church.
Remember:
Love Is The Greatest Commandment.
Love is the Essence of the Nature of God.
Love is the Foundation of the Church.
Love is the Foundation of Evangelism.
Remember Peter taught that Satan is prowling about as a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
I said that the way that looks is that he seeks those he can chew up and spit out.
He wants men and women in Christ to be useless, powerless, and fruitless.
He knows that he can’t kill them or take their soul with him to Hell.
However, he CAN and DOES tempt them away from truth, Christ, and ministry.
However, another way in which Satan devours believers is:
Satan devours a local assembly by means of hypocrites who do not love one another.
But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.
For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, carrogant, revilers, cdisobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,
unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,
treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.
For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses,
always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
The tools of Satan to destroy a congregation of God’s people begins with “lovers of self.”
The result is that they hold to a form of godliness, but they are not walking in its’ power; i.e. they are unregenerate.
They love to enter households and tempt women who are weakened by heavy hearts and lure them away from the truth.
In our day, it is important to understand the ways in which love operates inside of the church, particularly in its’ meeting.
Why does Scripture make such an emphasis upon love?
We are saved in love.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,
even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.
Those who know Him are characterized by love.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.
And, if this is the case, what does this love look like?
Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.
Then He *poured water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.
Jesus is our pattern of this love.
In Christ, we understand that divine love serves those it loves.
In Christ, we understand that divine love cleanses those it loves.
The effect of and the true nature of love is that it seeks the holiness and cleanliness of those it loves.
Therefore, today I would like to get specific.
Therefore, today I would like to get specific.
The goal is this:
The goal is this:
Now as to the love of the brethren, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another;
for indeed you do practice it toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia. But we urge you, brethren, to excel still more,
I strongly desire that we, at Grace Bible Fellowship, gain a reputation with the Lord for loving one another, having been taught of God directly.
We will see next week that this kind of love is the basis for evangelism.
However, we can also understand that this kind of love gains a reward from God as well.
When we are faithful.
When we are imitators of Christ.
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children;
and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.
But, how do we get there?
But, how do we get there?
For the answer to this we need to turn to the book of Hebrews.
Now the main point in what has been said is this: we have such a high priest, who has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of the bMajesty in the heavens,
a minister in the sanctuary and 1in the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man.
We have a High Priest ministering before God Himself, in heaven, and before His throne.
The basis of this greater ministry is the “better” covenant of the New Covenant.
The greater covenant is one in which God Himself reveals truth and teaches the saints.
“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
After those days, says the Lord:
I will put My laws into their minds,
And I will write them on their hearts.
And I will be their God,
And they shall be My people.
“And they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen,
And everyone his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’
For all will know Me,
From the least to the greatest of them.
“For I will be merciful to their iniquities,
And I will remember their sins no more.”
When He said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.
This “ministry” of Jesus Christ is in a better and more perfect tabernacle-heaven.
But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation;
and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.
The ”Holy Place“ in this instance is heaven, the throne of God.
The result of this perfect sacrifice is not the ordering of the flesh in conformity of an external standard.
Rather, the result is the cleansing of the conscience.
For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh,
how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
Therefore, a true Christian is one in whom his conscience has been cleansed from guilt of their sins by means of faith through the effective work of the sacrifice of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us;
nor was it that He would offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the holy place ayear by year with blood that is not his own.
Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.
This sacrifice and this cleansing of the conscience, which leads to the cleansing of the behavior, is called sanctification.
By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.
And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us; for after saying,
“This is the covenant that I will make with them
After those days, says the Lord:
I will put My laws upon their heart,
And on their mind I will write them,”
He then says,
“And their sins and their lawless deeds
I will remember no more.”
Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.
The ongoing ministry of Jesus Christ is that of forgiving sins, writing His Law of love on the heart, and cleansing their minds.
THEREFORE!
We can have confidence to approach God personally!
and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity.
And He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were cnear;
for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father.
The effect of all this work of God in Christ is that the “sanctified” can now access the presence of the living God for worship.
Before, we were as distant from God as light is distant from darkness.
Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus,
by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh,
and since we have a great priest over the house of God,
THEREFORE, since all of this is true…
We have confidence to enter the holy place of God.
We have a great priest over the house of God.
These two truths are unbreakable.
The holy place of God and the house of God are simultaneously effected by the past, present, and future work of Jesus Christ.
The house of God = the sanctified.
The holy place of God = His throne.
Jesus ministers in both!
Now Moses was faithful in all His house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken later;
but Christ was faithful as a Son over His house—whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end.
Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?
If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are.
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household,
having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone,
in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord,
in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.
Is there anything that we can/should do?
Personal holiness-v.22
Personal faith-v.23
Personal ministry-v.24
“Let us…” (vv.22, 23, 24).
“Let us (not)” = (v.25) forsake assembling.
The assembly of the house of God is the focal point of the ministry of the Son of God.
Therefore, it is to be the focal point of life and ministry of the saints of God.
Therefore, it is also the focal point of the destruction of Satan.
“forsake” = ἐγκαταλείπω impf. ἐγκατέλειπον; fut. ἐγκαταλείψω; 1 aor. 3 pl. ἐγκατέλειψαν (TestJob 43:10); 2 aor. ἐγκατέλιπον, subj. ἐγκαταλίπω; perf. ἐγκαταλέλοιπα LXX. Pass.: 1 fut. ἐγκαταλειφθήσομαι; 1 aor. ἐγκατελείφθην; perf. 3 sg. ἐγκαταλέλειπται Ps 9:35, ptc. ἐγκαταλελειμμένος LXX, inf. ἐγκαταλελεῖφθαι (s. prec. entry; Hes., Hdt.+)
① to cause someth. to remain or to exist after a point in time, leave of posterity Ro 9:29 (Is 1:9.—Cp. Lucian, Dial. Deor. 25, 1 εἰ μὴ ἐγὼ … , οὐδὲ λείψανον ἀνθρώπων ἐπέμεινεν ἄν).
② to separate connection with someone or someth., forsake, abandon, desert (Socrat., Ep. 14, 10 [Malherbe p. 258] of soul and body; SIG 364, 88; 97; 495, 135 [III b.c.]; UPZ 71, 8 [152 b.c.]; POxy 281, 21; PTebt 27, 16; LXX; TestJos 2:4) τινά someone (X., Cyr. 8, 8, 4; Polyb. 3, 40, 7; Diod S 11, 68, 3; 18, 7, 6; Appian, Mithrid. 105 §493 desert one who is in danger; Jos, Vi. 205) 2 Ti 4:10, 16. Of feeling or being forsaken by God (TestJos 2:4) Mt 27:46; Mk 15:34 (both Ps 21:2; cp. Billerb. II 574–80; Dalman, Jesus [tr. 204–7]; WHasenzahl, D. Gottverlassenh. des Christus … u. d. christolog. Verständnis des griech. Psalters ’37; FDanker, ZNW 61, ’70, 48–69 [lit.]); 2 Cor 4:9; Hb 13:5 (Josh 1:5; Dt 31:6, 8; 1 Ch 28:20); B 4:14; Hm 9:2 (as Dt 31:6, 8); Hs 2:9; 1 Cl 11:1; abandon the fountain of life B 11:2 (Jer 2:13); God’s commandments D 4:13; B 19:2; ἐ. τὴν ἀγάπην forsake love 1 Cl 33:1 (Dio Chrys. 57 [74], 8 τ. φιλίαν; Jos., Ant. 2, 40 τ. ἀρετήν).—Cease assembling Hb 10:25 (do or carry on someth. in a negligent manner, be remiss is also prob.: Diod S 15, 9, 1 τὴν πολιορκίαν; Mitt-Wilck. I/2, 72, 8ff μηδένα δὲ τῶν ἱερέων ἢ ἱερωμένων ἐνκαταλελοιπέναι τὰς θρησκείας).—Leave (Menand., Epitr. 550 τούτοις μή μʼ ἐγκαταλίπῃς), allow to remain (cp. Demosth. 57, 58) τὴν ψυχὴν εἰς ᾅδην the soul in Hades Ac 2:27 (Ps 15:10), 31 (for ἐ. τινὰ εἰς cp. PsSol 2:7).—DELG s.v. λείπω. M-M. Spicq.
William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 273.
Examples:
for Demas, having loved this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica; Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia.
At my first defense no one supported me, but all deserted me; may it not be counted against them.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Is there an overriding principle that will help us to love one another in the church?
YES!
“And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me;
but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.
“See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven continually see the face of My Father who is in heaven.
Treat the church as a whole in the manner of family.
We are the house of God.
Siblings should love one another.
This love promotes what is holy, godly, on the basis of truth.