Gilliland, David: Crucial Christianity 04 Saints ~ Ephesians 4

Now, reading today will be from the epistle to the Ephesians and chapter four. Ephesians and chapter four, verse thirty one. Ephesians four, verse thirty one. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice, and be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. Be ye therefore followers of God as dear children, and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor. But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not be once named among you as the common saints. Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient, but rather giving of thanks. For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man who is an idolater has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no man deceive you with vain words, for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. And that's as much as we take tonight for our reading from the Word of God. I think most have a fair idea what we are attempting to cover in the few meetings of the present week, so that it will be more or less unnecessary for me to go over again the introductory matters that we mentioned last night and on Monday, except to say this, that we are seeking to look at a number of passages in the New Testament that would remind us of the practical claims of Calvary. We rejoice to think in its eternal result, and we rejoice to think in the great work that has given us a fitness to be in heaven. But there are also aspects of the work of the cross that exert a tremendous claim upon the life of every Christian, and it touches those influences and aspects, they touch so many facets of a believer's life that we're encouraged to take a look at them in this week. The subject is so vast that we have curtailed our consideration, as I repeatedly mentioned, and will curtail it, to those six references in the New Testament where we are reminded that the Lord Jesus gave himself. That's a beautiful sacrificial term, and the six times that it occurs, as we've already stated earlier, is only to be found in the writings of the Apostle Paul, and in many different contexts. We have looked at the content of the statement and also its context, and we'll be doing the same tonight here at the end of Ephesians four, the beginning of chapter five. We began on Sunday night, just to get our bearings again, and this expression, it has something to do with my relationship to sinners, because we are told in First Timothy chapter 2 that God will have all men to be saved, and the reason and the proof that God will have all men to be saved is that his son gave himself a ransom for all. And because there is universal provision for every man without exception, it leaves you and me in a position that we can consider every human being as a candidate for salvation. It affects my relationship to sinners. I don't need to ask, now, owner, owner, did did the Savior do this for this man, or wonder, wonder was he included, or wonder was she included? Every sinner and every individual are within the vast embrace of that measureless atonement. He gave himself a ransom for all. It affects my relationship to sinners. We learned on Monday night that it affects my relationship to myself, because when the Apostle Paul was writing his spiritual autobiography in Galatians two and twenty, eight times he refers to those personal pronouns, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Paul said that work upon the cross, it cancelled out the old self. It gave birth to a new self. My relationship to sinners, my relationship to self. Some who were here last night will remember that we had occasion from Galatians chapter one, again the epistle to the Galatians, where a similar expression is used, and the Apostle Paul reminds us in that beautiful verse at the beginning of chapter one that he gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil age. So the work which in Timothy adjusted my relationship to sinners, and in Galatians two my relationship to self. In Galatians one it dictates my relationship to society. Because this satanic, sinful, God-hating system described as this present evil age, while I'm still in the world, if the work of Christ and its power has delivered me from it, it dictates my relationship to society. Now we discover tonight, just in a few minutes when we come to it, the Apostle Paul is writing about the behavior of Christians, and as he thinks about the interrelationship of those who are saved, he says, walk in love, even as Christ loved us and gave himself for us. And I hope we'll discover tonight that the work of Calvary also dictates my relationship to self, how we live with each other. We discover tomorrow night it dictates my relationship to my spouse, because husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. And then there was something else with Friday night. I didn't go as far ahead as that just now, but I hope you, what I'm trying to show is this. The outreach of Calvary into every sector of a Christian's life, work, and testimony. Now, almost, while those expressions are very similar, nearly every expression has a little, a little bit extra to bring in. And before I look at the context, I've been wanting to get to that fairly soon. Before I look at the context of this beautiful expression, let's pretend it was just sitting on a stool, nothing around it. We detach it for a minute. Christ loved us, gave himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor. It will be as much as I can do to curtail my remarks on that and to get to the more practical side of things, which I know Christians mostly appreciate. But if we just have that verse lifted out of its context and nothing else to look at, I tell you there's food for thought and there's material for meditation in those lovely words. You know, I read them, and the first thing that I see in them is the spirit of Calvary. Actually, out of the, out of the six, the six that we are talking about this week, on three different occasions, the idea of giving himself is associated with loving. He loved the church and gave himself for, he gave himself because he loved her. Paul says, he loved me. He gave himself for, he gave himself for Paul because he loved him. Here we have it again. He loved us and he gave himself for. Dear brothers and sisters, let us just again bathe our souls in the cloudless light of Christ's eternal love. He loved us. I don't know what I can say about you, but certainly I wasn't a very lovable creature. As a Gentile sinner, distanced and depraved and disadvantaged, there wasn't much in me to love. Before the earth received its rain, he loved me. Blessed be his name. The spirit of Calvary, we're going right back here behind the cross, away before Abraham, before Adam, before the angels, before the world was made, to the very heartthrobs of the great lover of souls. Causeless, pauseless, ceaseless, endless, he loved us. Measure, the spirit of Calvary. You know, I believe that maybe we're beginning to get away from these simple things, and I think it will do us all good just to get back to the real appreciation of some of those little hymns that we sing. I'll not go over them all now. The love that Jesus had for me, to suffer on the cruel tree, that I a ransome soul might be, is more than tongue can tell. You know that most of us here tonight would never have been her tellers, had the Savior not given us significance by virtue of the fact that he loved us before we had a being. The spirit of Calvary. I also see in this expression the surrender of Calvary. He loved us, And and he he gave gave. himself for us. Now, uh, just to point out here, maybe a little thing that doesn't, doesn't immediately strike an English reader. You would get, you would catch onto it if you're reading Mr. Darby's Bible or some of the other translations. These six passages that I'm referring to, which come into our English version as gave himself the six times. Every one of them has the Greek word for Gev. But there are three of them, have a stronger word than the other three. And so the Greek word for Gev, there's a little bit of three letters put in the front of it. That just means he completely gave. He gave up. I think Mr. Darby will maybe translate that in those expressions. He gave, he loved us, and he gave up, or he gave over. Now, a very interesting thing about that word is, it's the very word that's translated. The Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was betrayed. You know, Judas gave him. That's the verb. Judas gave him up. It's the very word which translated in a number of passages in the Gospels, Matthew twenty seven, Mark fifteen, and so on. It says the chief priests and the scribes and the elders, they held a council. They bound Jesus, they led him away, and they delivered him. That's right, they delivered him to the covenant. Judas gave him up. Caiaphas gave him up. It's the very same word that's translated in John nineteen. Pilate delivered him to the crucified. Luke twenty three, Pilate delivered him to their will. Well, they could do that, you know. Judas could give a lump. We marvel at that. The Jew could give him up. The Gentile could give him up. But none of those would have saved us. Dear brethren and sisters, there came a moment when he gave himself. There was something Pilate could never do. There was something Judas could never do. There was something that Caiaphas could never do. There was something that the Lord Jesus did as an act of voluntary, active, complete, total surrender. He gave. He gave. He gave himself over. I often say, when I'm preaching the gospel, and not of us splitting hairs, either there or here. Now, there's a great difference between the crucifixion and the atonement. You know, the crucifixion is what man did. But the atonement is what Christ did. Man could crucify him, but man could not make atonement. He did not crucify himself, but he gave himself the total surrender of the cross. I don't want to elaborate too much more upon it, but just to give you another word or two for your meditations, I see in this expression the sufficiency of the cross. The spirit of it, it sprang from the fountain of eternal love. The surrender of it he gave himself, the sufficiency of it he gave himself. Himself. And I don't need to add to that just now. You know, there's hardly a word. Some of you sisters, it's one of the little words that you put a, put a ring around in your Bible, you know, don't you? Isn't it great to have himself? You know, it's nice to have good friends. And it's all right to have good Christians. It's great to have him. He gave himself. He was there for me at Calvary. Jesus himself. You have that one on the Lord himself. Hear me? He gave himself, himself as a redeemer, himself as the risen one, himself as the returning one. I say again, brothers and sisters, we have found in Christ everything that we need for every stage of life's experience and for every dimension of complete salvation. I would also see in this expression the substitution of the cross. It says he gave himself, he loved us, and he gave himself for. Now I know this is very basic and simple. It's exactly what I wanted. You know, we can use the word for in a number of different senses. I could say, for example, that, uh, I knew I did a, I did a good turn for him. Did a good turn for him. Now, in that little expression, that little sentence, the word for means that I did a good turn that was for his benefit. It was to his advantage. It helped him. It was for his benefit. I did a good turn for him. But say, for example, this is an unlikely scenario, say there was somebody got a six-month prison sentence, and you went and did it for him. You say, I went and I did the six months for him. Now, the word for in that second sentence is far more meaningful than the for of the first sentence, because when you went into the prison and the gate, the door banged and the key turned, and you were there for six months for that man, you weren't only doing something for his benefit, you were doing something in his place. You know, I want to say tonight, because it's denied, it's denied by many of the free thinkers, and the modern gospel, it denies the substitutionary and the penal work of the Lord Jesus upon the cross. And I want to say this, dear brothers and sisters, not only did the death of Christ was a something for our benefit, but he died in our place. Bearing shame and scoffing rude in our place, and then he stood. He was actually where we should have been, and every time you get that little expression, it's a very precious one in Greek, it's super. Comes through our English language as quite a weak one, for. It means that he took our place. He suffered in our stead. He acted as a substitute. He bore what we could never carry, and he paid what we could never settle. He did it for us, and every time we break the bread, take a portion from it, and take our sip from the cup, we're acknowledging that that great work was something that was done for me. For me. The substitution of the cross. But I have to mention it and leave it because it's a beautiful expression. The satisfaction of the cross. I'll not talk tonight about the sacrifice. It says he gave himself a sacrifice and an offering. You say, well, was it enough? Was that enough? There have been plenty of offerings, and there've been plenty of sacrifices. Was this sacrifice and this offering, was it enough? Why are the two words used? Now, you'll have to find that out because I can't take any more time with it. It demands time. Sacrifice of Calvary, the satisfaction of Calvary, because this chapter adds, unparalleled in the whole Bible, that his sacrifice was a sweet smelling savor unto God. What a marvelous thing. You know, Chapman had it right in his spiritual hymn when he said, Jesus fills all heaven with the incense of his reconciling blood. My brothers and sisters, we know, we know that Calvary was a fierce, and Calvary was a foul place. The things that men said, and the things that men did, they were coarse and they were cruel. And yet from the ruggedness of Calvary's hill, when our blessed Lord died, there was a fragrance went to heaven. A sweet smelling savor to God. That expression's borrowed from the Old Testament. I'll go back to it maybe in a few minutes. It's borrowed from the Old Testament, and in the Old Testament, it just means a savor of rest. God says, when I see that sacrifice, I'm satisfied, I'll rest. I'm not be demanding anything more. I'll accept that. I'll take up. That will finish the question. That will settle the question. And when the Savior said, said on the cross, it is finished. God the Father said, it is enough. He said, I'm satisfied. The question's settled. The great problem has been led to rest. And thank God it never was cut to the open. And yeah. Now, walnut, if we just took that verse out of the context, and I just, you know, you know some of you Bible students have thought about it. It's a mighty verse. It's what the brothers talk about as the burnt offering. Just I'll say this for some of the younger brothers. This is a wee bit of, uh, deviant theology, so the rest of you just give me a fool's pardon for about a minute and a half. You know, there's a theory, they talk about the burnt offering aspect of the life of, of the death of the Lord Jesus. It's a thing that's very popular in Scotland and so on. And in Canada too, I've heard it in Bible readings there, et cetera, et cetera. And you see it in the magazines published all the time, that the burnt offering aspect of the death of Christ is Christ was all for God, irrespective of us. And they say, they say all for God, and we have nothing in, and they say when we come on the Lord's Day morning, we shouldn't be thinking about what we get from it. They say that's a very low level, that's a way down, you're a way down at the grassroots. You should climb the trees a bit, and you should think as a spiritual giant, just on the Lord's Day morning, of what God got in the death of Christ. All for God. And the sacrifice of Christ would have been glorifying and satisfying to God if there never had been a sinner to be saved. I think that's a failin' note. I miss it. What do you say sure the New Testament says that he loved us, he gave himself a sacrifice for a sweet smelling savor to God? It doesn't say that. It says he gave himself for us an offering and a sacrifice of a sweet smelling savor to God. I want to tell you, dear brethren and sisters, according to the Bible, and not according to the brethren, but according to the Bible, the reason that the death of Christ has been so pleasing to God and so satisfying to God is that in that death, God has found an answer for the problem of sin. It's because his sacrifice was sufficient for us that God was so delighted. And all this talk that God would have been delighted were there never a sinner to be saved. You see, that's all just hypothetical. Hypothetical theology. No, no, he says there's a sacrifice made for sinners, and I'm satisfied and I'm delighted with that sacrifice because that sacrifice has been of such quality that it has met the need of man. And in meeting the need of man and answering the problem of sinners, it has glorified and honored the God who accepted it. Now, I'll have to leave that. But what about the context? Well, of course, this statement doesn't just hang like a text on the wall. It sits right here in the Epistle to the Ephesians at the start of chapter five. And you know that it's linked in with another exhortation to the Christians. They are told to walk in love. So you've got the exhortation to love. And you say, well, how do we love? You say, Paul, when you tell us to walk in love and to live our lives in love, what do you, he says, well, I'll give you the example. He says, I not only give you an exhortation, but he says I'll give you the example, and the example is this. He says, you make Christ your standard and walk in love as Christ loved. You say, you say, you say it's brave and high, isn't it? You say, so you mean, you mean as a Christian now? Now this is something that a man of the world could never do. Never do. This is beyond his reach. He introduces this chapter in verse number one of chapter five. He says, followers of God as dear children. And then he says, walk in love. Now he says, to do this walk in verse two, you need to be a child. In verse one. He says the natural man would never reach this stuff, but a child of God can walk in love, and the love that the Christian is meant to show to other believers is a love that takes its pattern from Calvary. And I'm to love other Christians according to the pattern which the Lord Jesus showed when he loved his disciples. And loved us. And died for us. I'll admit, I'll admit it's, um, it's a wee bit uncomfortable. You know, all this old sloppy stuff, and all this old lovey-dovey stuff, and all this dripping honey stuff, and all these Christians going about hopping and humping, and all these petty things, and personality clashes, and all these divisions. Listen, I tell you, when it comes to this, we're a kind of left for red faces. He says, now this is the standard. He says, all that sulking about, and all that competition, and all that elbowing, and he said all that self-seeking, he said that's the very antithesis of the love of. He said, if you believers are going to live as God's children and as cross Christians, and I mean Christians of the cross, he says your life will have to be marked by a sacrificial love that reflects the love of Christ. Well, that's broadly the context. Let's look at it just a wee bit more closely. I remember I wasn't too long saved, and I remember a brother in Lurgan. He gave us a little analysis of the Epistle to the Ephesians. And at the time, at the time I was trying to read through it, I had hardly a clue what it was about, and I thought it was great. I maybe don't think it's just as great now for, for a number of reasons. I have better, there are better analysis of it, and I also have the book now from which the brother got it. But at that time, at that time it did me good, for it helped me. He said that the epistles of the Ephesians, the first chapters, the first three chapters were taken up with the Christian's wealth. Chapters four and five were taken up with the Christian's walk, and chapter six was taken up with the Christian's warfare. I see some of the learned Brethren smiling because they know the book as well. However, that's great, that's great. Some of these ones haven't just heard that. Now, you see, in the first three chapters, six times you get the word, five times actually, you get the word riches. Chapter one is the riches of his glory. Chapter two is the riches of his grace. Chapter three is the riches of the Gentiles. That is full. He says, I'm preaching amongst the Gentiles. The unsearchable riches of Christ. There was a man, and he went through the pagan world, and he preached the glorious gospel of Christ, and he scattered the gems of grace to those poor pagans. And it has come as far as us Irish idolaters. A few generations ago, just Irish idolaters for Saint Patrick and all about. We were nothing better. Here we are, tasting of the unsearchable riches of Christ, the likes of us. I tell you, we have some wealth. The Bank of Ireland and the Bank of England would know absolutely nothing compared to the fabulous resources that we have in Christ. Now he says, if you people have got such wealth, you better behave yourself. He says, live. He says, live. Live amongst the people like the aristocracy of heaven. So once we leave the riches of chapters one to three, we get our feet right down on the ground, and five times, if we get five times riches in one to three, five times we get walk in chapters four and five. Now that's where this one comes in. I, you needn't worry about turning to it, just, just for the sake of some of these younger men. I know they like these wee bits of phony analysis. Actually, I'll tell you, I'll tell you a secret. You think that's just manufactured, the walk, the wealth and the walk and the warfare. Well, you know, even in the Greek New Testament, it sticks too. I know the tape has switched the tape off here for a minute, so never let on. The Greek word for wealth is plutos, and the Greek word for walk is peripateo, and the Greek walk for warfare and the armor is panoplia. So we use three W's, but Paul used three P's. He could preach because he knew how to use the P's, and he had them even in the epistle to the Ephesians. Now, the first walk, he says in chapter number four, verse one, he says, I beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation you are called with all lowliness. He says, walk in lowliness. He says you can hold your head high because you're children of the king, but he says keep your hearts humble. You know, what would I be right, would I be right in thinking that the most of our problems come from rotten pride? I says, walk in loneliness. When you get away down there to verse number seventeen, there's a verse he says, I say that ye walk not as other Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, but he said, walk after the image of him that has created the new man. He says, walk in likeness. He said, don't go walking like them. He says, walk like God. Not like them. Walk like God, the God who has created this new man. Look at chapter five if you are looking at your Bible, verse number, verse number eight. He said, you were sometimes darkness, but now you're light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. Not walk in loneliness, not now walk in lightness. He says, walk in light. Verse number... it's during the chapter, uh, verse number fifteen of chapter five. He says, see that ye walk circumspectly, not fools, not unwise. Verse eighteen, be not drunk with wine. He says in that section, walk in line. He says, don't go staggering about like drunk men. You know, a drunk man can't walk, and he's wobbling about everywhere. He says, that's not the way you Christians walk. He says, you to walk with control, and he says, be able to walk in a straight line. Now you've got the five of them. Walk in loneliness, walk in likeness, not likeness to earth, but likeness not to the Gentiles, but likeness to God. Walk not as others. Then he says, walk in love, walk in light, and walk in life. And the middle one of those five, as you can see, is the one that we are at tonight. Walk in love. What exactly does this mean? What are we getting at? You see, in New Testament days, there was a big challenge, many challenges, but one of the biggest challenges that's greatly elaborated upon this in this epistle is that by the grace of God in this dispensation, Jews and Gentiles have been brought together into a single community. Now, getting those two peoples joined together and getting them to live together. They hated each other, their different backgrounds, their different makeups, their different scruples, their different diets. Everything about them was different. And that's why the New Testament puts a constant emphasis upon love and the fellowship of Christians. Well, you say we have no Jews here. Thank God we haven't got, we haven't got the same amount of diversity to cope with. Are you sure? Now you just take a look at any assembly of any size, and as far as I'm concerned, there's a recipe for a riot in it any time. You know, you get big bossy people. There's people just naturally bossy, and if a thing doesn't go their way, they just need to rectify. Then you get people very extrovert, very dynamic, and they're jumping about and everything else. Then you get a lot of people there dead as doodles. You get blackheads and you get redheads. You get old people and you get young people, you get middle-aged people. You get businessmen with a big business, you get people that are unemployed. You get people there with degrees. You get people there that haven't even a GCSE. You see that? And you bring them all in. And you bring them in for half an hour, half an hour once a month. No, no, the lady's there Sunday morning, and Monday back show on Sunday afternoon, and Sunday evening, and Tuesday, and maybe Thursday, and fifty two weeks in the year. And they're all involved in the greatest work upon earth, the maintaining of God's assembly. People with such a diversity and such a makeup. You say, how does the thing hold together? You said there must be a lot of give and take. You say the people, they must have a lot to put up with. Yes, they have, and that's why this verse says walk in love. Walk in love. Now, love in the Bible, I've already mentioned this, but I must mention it again. Love in the Bible is not that cozy, cuddly thing. Well, you say, what's it like? Well, you have it here. He says, walk in love as Christ loved. But how did he love? Well, one of the things, one of the things that his love involved in it was he had to leave home. And when he left home, he came to live amongst people that were far beneath his level. That's what love meant for him. Love meant for him that he spent over thirty years in this old wretched world. He gave us, and don't forget here, brothers and sisters, it's us, us, the offsprings of the earth. We will never get over it for all eternity, that he gave us thirty three years of his time. Because he loved us. And not only did he give us of his time and leave his home and live amongst people much less than himself and accept their poverty and live in their houses and stood down to their level. He never touched their sin, but when it was all over, he acted, he went and he died for them. You say that you're way far too far. Do you mean to tell me that the real love that we have, we might have to leave home just to help the Christian, eh? You said you mean we might have to mix with people that... socially are beneath our level? Uh-huh. You said you mean that real love means we might have to give people of our kind? Yes. Do you mean that we love them, we might lose sweat? Because my savior sweated in Gethsemane. And there was a hymn writer said somewhere, it was love that sought Gethsemane. Do you mean it might actually involve love? Do you mean that if I love people, that they might so fail to appreciate my sacrifice, that they might turn around and spit in my face and criticize me behind my back and call me names. Yeah, that's what they did with him, isn't it? I'm only saying that for this reason, that our ideas of a soft, softy, cuddly love, cozy thing, it's just about as far removed from the love of the Bible as the North Pole is from the South. This is the love of Calvary. This is the love that's marked with blood. This is the love that drips with sweat. This is the love that travels further than anyone else has ever gone. Dear brethren and sisters, I know, I know that if someone, if someone just gives me the smallest insult, I'm just about to sit at home and not come to the meeting for a month. You know what that shows? That shows that my love, my love is not even as much as you could put in the point of a pen. You know, the first insult he got was a manger. I heard of Christians recently, and there was one of them, they were invited to the home. And, uh, well, you know, there was one of them thought that, thought she didn't just get the seat that she should have got. And she's talked to no one since and said, I'm not for that. Thought she was insulted. You know, the first insult he got was a major. What are we doing? You know what we are? We have a bunch of mollycoddled Christians. And actually, I've noticed that there are a great number of people, and they expect to get all the love. You know, there are people come to meetings, and they expect everybody to be fussing round them, and everybody to be smiling at them and shaking hands and lifting them and laying them and putting a cushion down and a red carpet, and they expect to get all the love, but they wouldn't show any of it. I've heard it, oh, I've heard it, I've heard it all my life. You go to see somebody stop, nobody ever comes here. Never was in one of their house, I never got a cup of tea in one of their houses. And then I would say, and do they, did you often have any of them here? Oh, no, no, I never had them here, but they wouldn't know, you wouldn't think they had a mouth on you. And they expect to be drinking in everybody else's house, but nobody gets into our house. Let those people show us all the love that we don't want to show any. You see this love that sits. You see, we're living in a world that's obsessed with self. We're living in a world that's obsessed with number one. We're followers of a Christ, and if you'll allow the expression, forgive it, it's not just altogether suitable. He was obsessed with us. He didn't think upon his own life. He thought upon the things of others, and had he been self-centered, I can tell you there'd have been no hall in Uri, never mind the hundred people sitting there. You see, it's such, now Paul says that's what we want to get for our life. He says, don't be talking about it now. And he says it's not just a feeling, and this is not just an emotion. He didn't say love. He says walk in. He said this is action, so that a person who has this calvary love of Christ in him, he takes steps, and it will be the characteristic of his life. Walk in love as Christ loves us. Your love won't always be accepted. I hardly need to tell you that. Your sacrifice won't always be appreciated, but I say that with one comfort. When a Christian does something out of true love for Christ, even though he's rebuffed by others, if his motive is pure, what that Christian does, it has the very same character as the sacrifice of Christ had in this sense. It's a savor to God. So he says, you walk in love as he loved us and gave himself a sweet smelling savor. It has never ceased to touch my heart that the very same expression that Paul used here for Christ. We could turn it through the pages here, and in the Epistle to the Philippians, when those poor Christians, now they may have had one or two fairly wealthy ones about them, but the Philippians, the Macedonians were the poor assemblies of the New Testament. When they sent him a gift away from Philippi to Rome, and this man Epaphroditus, he didn't count his own life dear because of the love he had for Christ and for Paul. He crossed the miles and he took ill and nearly lost his life when the prison door, the house door opened, and they said, there's a man here, look, here is it, let him in. And he passed out with this gift from the Philippines. You know what Paul said? He says, do you see that gift that you people have sent? He says, it's a sacrifice to God of a sweet savor. And he used for their gift, their love gift to him, the very same language that he had used for Christ's love gift to us. Every self-effacing, sacrificing act is for the glory of God and for the pleasure of God. Whether other people appreciate it or not, we have the great comfort that he appreciates it. Now, the exhortation to love is plain. This is not, this is a command. Mind you, I could, I, I, I, I have to hurry on here because, uh, for a number of reasons. But you know that the love of Christ was not selective. You see, I notice we have a problem in our day, and I suppose it's not a new one. Sometimes Christian fellowship is mistaken for clubbiness. You know, amongst assemblies, I mean, in assemblies, there's an awful clubbiness. Now they're sort of, ah, they're sort of, sort of our crowd, you know? They're sort of our level. We go to their house and they come to our house. We just, that's clubbiness, that's not fellowship. You know, the Lord never picked the class. He loved all. I tell you, dear brethren, don't be a class picker, because one of the things that's dividing assemblies is a kind of a social cast between the ins and the outs. And there's maybe some believer here today, tonight, and you feel that you're not in one of the core families. You know, if you're, if you're into some of the families, you're all right. And if you have the right name, and all the preachers know your name, and they all fuss over you, and they could all greet you by name, and you're just a big fella or you're a big lady, if you're just one of the inside ones. But if you're just an ordinary, an ordinary miss or Mrs. so-and-so, nobody knows you, just let you go to the door and the party smile at you. You know, may God deliver us from class distinction, because Christ knew absolutely nothing about it. He says, I want you to love as the brethren love. Not at all. He says, I want you to walk in love as Christ loved. Oh, you say, but I'm an assembly fellowship. Maybe you just know more about club fellowship than you do about assembly fellowship. Now, the love of Christ was not only not selective, his love was never spasmodic. Oh, I love that text, and you love it too, and you often think about it in a different connection. It says, having loved his own. Peter, that was Peter. Why is it you just said Peter, you couldn't keep him right? And that was Matthew, and that was Thomas. Thomas was the dopey one amongst the apostles, you know. He was a bit dodgy, very slow in the up, and Philip, well, sure, Philip, Philip, you, he could, he could ask stupid questions and everything. Says he loved them all, loved them all to the end. You know, there's some people all over you today, and they're all away from you tomorrow. Actually, I notice I have a, I have an awful bad head for me. And I apologize, I'm caught, especially when people are going out of the back there. I would love to just get their names. I can't help it, so I miss your name. It's not intentional. I have a bad head for name. A lot of people know my name, but I've noticed this, that there are some people that know my name on some days, if they meet you the next day and certain people about to seem to forget it. What happens? What is that? Is that, can that ailment, has the doctor any cure for that ailment? Should I make an appointment? Should I make an appointment in Craigavon critical session for them? You know, it's all, it's all, I tell you, brother, you know, the half of us are just, you know, the love of Christ was never for show. Never for show. The half of us are stuntmen. We're stuntmen, depends who's there. And the way we're preached and the places we go and the things we do and the things we say, it's just really all for show. And I believe firmly when the fire begins to light the papilla, that the whole of the bulk will just form like snow. And the show will be reduced until it's a handful. May God, you know, the love of Christ was never showy. It was always genuine. He says, walk in love as Christ loved and gave. And love will never be just a matter of talk, it will be a matter of walk, and it will also involve sacrifice. Now, what I want to come to, and I, at the close of the meeting is this. On either side of this, this exhortation, that is at the, this is verses one and two of chapter five. In the last two verses of chapter four, and then in verses, uh, verses four and five or verses three and four of chapter five, we have things that are enemies of love. The great example of love is him. The exhortation to us is to walk in love. Now we've got enemies of love. Now I'll go through these very briefly. At the end of chapter four, we have six things mentioned that'll be enemies of love, and they'll chase love out of a heart or out of an assembly or out of a home. Verse thirty one of chapter four, he says, let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, evil speaking, malice. He says, get them out. Now he says, you see, if you foster those things, he says those things will be the direct opposite of sacrificial love. Bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, evil speaking, and malice. Now, as I say, I have a nearly self-explanatory, so I don't need to worry. I haven't time to go through the whole, but you think about a big pot. Bitterness. That's the spicy stuff inside the pot. Ra. That's the pot getting to boil, bubble up. Anger! That's the pot, pot really steaming. Clamor! That's the pot out over. That's the word means shouting. You ever hear people starting to shout when they get angry? Shouting. And then he says, evil speaking, when the shouting's over, he says they'll go around and the whole stuff will have spilled out and it begins to dry in. And the whole place poisoned. He says they'll not do any more shouting, but they'll go around talking and gossiping on the class. And then he said, where does malice come in? Malice is the fire that gets the whole thing going. Now, can I say just before, because I'd have to abbreviate it, but can I say this, dear brothers and sisters, there's one thing that you need to watch, and I need to watch it, and we all need to watch it. And I suppose that Christians in every country need to watch it, and people that are born with a Celtic background need to watch it more. And that's this business of a bad temper and a bitter spirit. And it amuses me, and I'm no, I'm no angel in this matter, because I'm as fairy as the next one, if I was just raised in the right way. I'll talk, I'll talk about anger. I'll maybe talk about, I'll maybe come back some night and talk about it, because we need a, we need a few lessons on anger. But I'll say this, it amazes me how we have some believers, and they could nurse a grudge for years. And they don't say anything about it. They don't say anything about it. You wouldn't hear about it for ten or twelve years, and then there's something just happened, and they let fly, and you suddenly discover the allegations they make on the old mud that they dig up and they start to sling, that the thing has been lying in and festering for them. Thirteen years. And they have crucified love. Now, I hope I'm going to make a challenge here. I'm not saying, I hope there's nobody here struggling about not shaking hands with another Christian because of some old score. I'm not saying that I could shake hands with every brother in Northern Ireland. There were some brethren that I couldn't shake hands with at the minute because of principle. They have told lies, and I cannot shake hands with them until the lie is judged. And I trust, I trust before God that there's not a brother or sister in Northern Ireland that I couldn't shake hands with because of personality. And I'm in a happy position, you know, when you're a preacher, everybody loves you and smiles at you, and they never say a word about you, and they wouldn't hurt you for a word, but they're all so nice, and nobody has ever hurt me, and nobody has ever looked askance. You know, there's some of them look at you in the meeting, and a punch would kill you, you'd drop dead behind the desk. Oh, I tell you, I tell you, we don't worry about things like that. No, no, we should be able to get above our little peccadilloes. Now, bitterness, you see that bitterness, that rancor, that seething, that simmering grudge that's being nursed, that sore that's just festering, and you bandage it up every night before you go to bed. And you take it off the next morning, and you just pull the top of it to make sure it keeps festering. And you'll have it there to show them twenty years from now what he did on me. Now Paul says, I'll tell you this. He says, you know, the blessed Lord that we are following, he never held a grudge against anybody. Was there ever anyone insulted as much as Christ? Was there ever anyone suffered so much injustice as the blessed saint? You know, they actually called him a son of the Elves above. They said he had a demon. They said he had a devil. They even cast a slur one day, possibly on his birth, and they said, well, don't know with you, but we weren't born of fornication. You know, we had plenty that he could have held, but we are to love as Christ loved, and that means no gripes and no grudges. You say, if you have something against a brother, what do you do? Well, just go and speak to him quietly and firmly about it. Because if I love a brother, and I know he has done something wrong, if I really love him, I not want the situation to go on until that brother has been delivered from the wrong and the thing has been cleared up some way or other. That's love. I hope, I hope there's no one here taking license from what I'm saying. Dear brothers and sisters, we don't want to become nitpickers. You know, there are people, there are people spend their days with a little magnifying glass of malice, and they spend their time looking for little, little spanks on other people. And I know. Get that gone, let that be gone, because Paul says that's inconsistent with Calvary. If Christ had be concerned with our peccadilloes, we would have gone to hell forever. He actually died because of our massive sin. Our massive sin. He said, never mind our little specks. You see, we're far too small. Is it any wonder I talked at the start of the week about crucial Christianity? I tell you, this is crucial. See, if we don't get back to this. Oh, let's have principle. Let's have truth in our preaching. Let's have truth in our practice. But may God grant that we'll have love in our hearts. A lady came to me just a couple of weeks ago, and she said, she told me, she said, David, I want to ask you this. She says, should we forgive people or should we wait for their panic? Huh. Of course, I knew there'd be a fair story behind this. So that if they don't repent for twenty years, I keep it stuck in me. I tell you, I tell you, it wasn't my repentance that created the forgiveness with God. The re- the forgiveness was in God's heart before I ever did the sin. We should have the forgiveness ready. If they repent, they can come and get the good of it, but before they ever come, we should have it there. He says, God, for Christ's sake, forgive you. Forgiving one another, kind, tender-heartedness. Oh, he says all these six things. Now he says these are the very enemies of love. Now I hope there's no one here, it's very strict about this, I hope there's no one here, and you're becoming a problem, and oh, you say you mean just to see eye to eye with everybody? Not at all. Not at all. You don't want to be a yes man. You don't want to be a spiritual jellyfish. Let's be men and women of principle, but let us be able to speak to each other and to treat each other with Christian respect and with Calvary love. And I firmly believe that that would be the way forward in many areas. Now to conclude, after that, just look at verses, I'll be very quick with this, verses three and four of chapter five. He has six other enemies of love. Verse three of chapter five: fornication, uncleanness, covetousness, verse four, filthiness, foolish talking, jesting. Now, as I conclude, the, the six at the end of chapter four are a breach of love. That's malice and anger and bitterness, that's a breach of love. The six here are an abuse of love. Now, when Christians are brought into close fellowship with each other, and they have this love and this tenderness and this thoughtfulness and this close connection, Paul says, now cultivate that. But he says, remember, there are boundaries that you can't cross. He says, brethren should be in Christian love with all the sisters, and vice versa, and brother with brother. But he says, don't make that Christian love an excuse for unholy relationships. He says you need to watch fornication. And he says you need to watch unkindness, and you need to watch covetousness. Now, you know, dear brethren and sisters, I- I- I'm imposing your time for just a minute. You forgive one another. You're gonna impose on your love. But you know that we're living in a world where these things are just a, they're just a very diet. You know, the tabloids, they glamorize adultery and unfaithfulness. They love to publish how many divorces a man had and how many broken marriages, and what should be a disgrace becomes a headline. They glamorize infidelity. And you know, they make a joke of homosexuality. Now, Paul says to these people, for they lived in a society of the garden, he says, you have Christian love, but he says, watch corrupt love. He says, don't go too far. He says, no fornication, no uncleanness, and no covetousness. I take it in that verse, covetousness doesn't only mean coveting another man's house and another man's donkey and so on. It's in the sense of coveting another man's wife. If that woman is married to that man, her marriage to him has established a boundary that's out of bounds for me. If I cross it, the Bible says it's sin, and it's an abuse of Christian fellowship. Then he comes closer in the next verse. He says, I want to tell you, not only do you not get involved in those sensual acts, but he says, I want you to avoid the very things that lead to it. Look at the three things quickly in verse four. He says, neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting. You know, filthiness, I take it in this verse, sometimes it's used for filthy behavior. What men today are propagating a spun? I know the Bible terms sound crude, but the Bible just calls it filth. I'm dismayed, I'm really dismayed as you are with the use of this beautiful word of the English language, gay. And it has been hijacked by the homosexual community. They've taken a beautiful word. You know, I'll tell you, the Bible doesn't call it the gay or the alternative lifestyle. The Bible calls it sodomy. Now he says we need to avoid that. I see that as an accommodation coming in many people's mind. Oh, they say people, you know, you can't, a man's just born that way. Listen, I believe that that's a pile of rubbish. And if a man's born that way, ah, there could be medical reasons for that. I'm not going into it. I'll do that again maybe sometime as well. I'm not going into it. Even he is born that way, grace should conquer nature. He come to say it. He come to say it. I'm cleansed by the blood of Christ. But remember, there's absolutely no excuse from there on. Now he says filthiness. I take it that that's not so much filthy behavior. He's talking about filthy literature and filthy language. Now listen, you younger believers here, especially. If you're not going to spoil the Christian love that flows from Calvary in your life, remember there's certain language that you will never use, and there's certain literature that you will never. Now, the novels under the bed, and the old salubrious, salacious magazine. Out. How would you say, I want to take a sneak peek? Yeah. I tell you, that could be the beginning of a long sleight of ruin. Now he says not only filthiness, but he says foolish talking. Now can I appeal to you, all our believers, younger believers here, you younger believers, if you find yourself in any company where there are males and females, and there's a lot of old indecent talk goes on. That word jesting, the third word jesting, is actually in the Greek language a word that means something that has been turned. And my personal view is that it refers to a joke that can be turned round. Just forgive me for saying it on a platform, just what people out there call a dirty joke. You young sisters with the praise of purity, and you young brethren with the potential of leadership amongst God's people, if you finding yourself in any supposedly Christian company with any telling of old double meaning things or those kind of jokes, you get out. You get out. Because I want to tell you, all that old joke and that foolish talk, it leads to trouble. And that's why the Apostle Paul says, just avoid it completely. I should say, just before I let you go home, that includes a wedding. If what I hear, I don't go to those functions. Others go, and that's great. It's a very important day, and you don't want to turn your wedding day into a funeral. And nor a mass meeting either, nor a gospel preaching much either, nor a conference either. But anyway, that's why I'm not going to all that just now. It's to be a happy day. It's the bride's big day, but if even the half of what I hear is true, there are some very doubtful things told at wedding reception, and I think they never should be mentioned. You know what he says here? He says they're not convenient. He says make sure it's such as they come up. See 'em. See 'em. He says holy people should have holy lives, and they should have holy language, and they should have holy literature. I hope that God will deliver us from all these things. These things will spoil us, because I tell you, see if this happens in an assembly. Any of these things, uncleanness and fornication. Oh, you say there's forgiveness. Aye, there's forgiveness, but let me tell you, things will never be the same again. No matter how much talk there is, we can just love it over and cover it over. Once that happens, things can never be the same again. Forgiveness, and you know, if that happens, there's confidence loss in five minutes. That's fifty years couldn't leave here. May God have Thanksgiving. Well, I'm going to stop. That's the only Thanksgiving I can give you in the tape. I'm just about to stop. I intended to stop at nine o'clock, for I've had trouble with my voice. I like to have more trouble now, so you can give thanks for this trouble and hope the next meetings will be shorter. May the Lord bless his word, shall we pray. Our Father, we bow in the Savior's precious name. We thank thee for the one who loved us. We thank thee for all that he did for us. We know that we were most unworthy. We were creatures with very, very serious deformities, most unlovable and sadly deformed by sin, and yet we praise thee for the one who died for us at Calvary. Help us to reflect this. We acknowledge humbly before thee tonight our selfishness. We confess our pride. We confess our pettiness. We confess the grudges that we have harbored, the divisions that we have caused, the hurts that we have inflicted on other people. We confess our lack of help, helpfulness and sacrifice. We acknowledge all these things and ask, Lord, that from thy word that there might be a little improvement from here on. We ask for mercies and for help for the remaining nights, thanking thee for the patience of thy people again, and ask thy blessing upon everyone in the Lord's precious name. Amen.