Our text this evening you will find in the 20th chapter of Exodus and verse 3. We will read the first three verses. The 20th chapter of Exodus and God spake all these words saying I am the Lord thy God which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage Thou shalt have no other gods before me. These words in particular, Thou shalt have no other gods before me. This is the first commandment. The first of ten on an equally divided presentation of ten commandments in the first five and the last five. As I would remind you of what we have already said upon this point, we have come to the conclusion for some time past that the tables are so equally divided, and it isn't four and six, that the fifth commandment, thou shalt honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, belongs to the table of our duty towards God, because for children and young persons, until they arrive at years of discretion, their parents stand in the place of God. Before ever the child can know sufficiently about God to be able to to him that worship which is due. The worship the child is taught to render to its own parents, who are responsible entirely before God for it. This worship is considered as worship done to Almighty God himself. Let us make no mistake about that. Throughout our lives we ought to Remember those who have brought us into the world, nor ever think ill of them, even although we may know many of their faults, and they may not have been, in some cases, all the parents that they should have been. Always remember that we are not always the children that we should have been either. We are very, very far from perfection ourselves. We may have many, many faults too in the bringing up of our own families, but that it is required of us to think with respect of those who brought us into the world because they were the instruments of God of bringing us into life. You sometimes hear the foolish statement, I didn't ask to come into the world. Nobody ever suggested that you were us. But we ought to be mighty glad that we are in the world. It's a great privilege to be alive. And a wonderful thing it is, too. The gift of life. There's a tremendous mystery about it. We are born to be immortal. And immortal we shall be in the sense that we shall never die in that eternal world to which we are travelling. The spirit which God created and made is incapable of mortality. There are some sects which have arisen which try to tell us that the wicked should be extinguished at some time or other. in the world it is to be, because it is unthinkable that they should be in hell for all eternity, and so they relieve their anxieties by propagating an even worse error, and that is that they teach that there should be a blotting out or extinction of the being of the wicked. Life is a wonderful thing and God never created life to destroy it and to pinch it out at the last. Whatever may be the eternal fate of the wicked, it has a place in the divine sovereignty and in that eternal kingdom. We do not know, or indeed we know very little indeed, and whereas on the one hand we would not be a party to raising any false hopes that the wicked shall ever find things comfortable for them in the world to come. That is a great error too. There shall be a resurrection of the just and of the unjust and there are those who shall not only pass out into the outer darkness but also shall be glad if, as such a word can be used, to flee from the presence of God. As they say, hide us from the face of him that sitteth upon the throne, for the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand? As creatures of the night, nocturnal creatures which cannot bear the light of day, but are creatures of darkness and of the night, and they move in their forests and swamps there when the rest of the world is asleep so indeed the wicked shall find themselves creatures of darkness not of course the material darkness if we may so call it which is merely the earth's own shadow as it turns away from the sun Not that kind of darkness, but darkness which may be felt. That is the darkness of being under the perpetual displeasure of God. You say, well, I think that that must be a terrible waste of human life. any kind of life, angelic life, seeing that the devil should be there too. Are we to believe this? Yes, we're to believe this, but don't let us run away with the idea that anything is ever wasted in the divine creation. That is saying too much. We just don't know. It may be that the wicked shall fulfill a function. It may be a negative function, I don't know. But then eternity is not time, and time is not eternity. It is not a succession of years and ages, with the clock ticking away the seconds of eternity, because there are no seconds in eternity, and there is no time as we know it. And conditions there are entirely different. And so we must not use our imagination too much, using earthly figures to describe an eternal state. We can't. And all this arises out of our consideration, somehow or other, of the duty that we owe to God, and the duty that we owe to our parents and let that stand is not our subject this evening and we proceed. But mention is to show that all God's commandments hang together and that there is a point where they all meet and that point is clearly stated by the Saviour when he was asked by one of the scribes, one of the lawyers at which day, is the greatest commandment of the law. And he said, this is the great commandment. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and mind and strength. And the next, he said, is like unto it. And thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Upon these two hang all the law and the prophets. So that there is really, there are really only two commandments. To love God, to love our neighbor as ourselves. And yet, in the estimation of heaven, these two are one, and there's only one commandment. And it's all expressed in the one word, love. And the Lord was only quoting, you know, the word that he gave to Moses, which you'll find in the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 6, and verses 4 and 5. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. Thy heart, that is the affection, thy soul, That is the spirit, the intellect, the knowledge, the recognition, the personality, what we really are. With thy might, that is with all our capability which God has given to us, that this is the reason for our existence. And only as we fulfil the reason for our existence Can we ever be happy either in this world or the world that is to come? Now this is elementary and yet it is profound. There is nothing more profound and there is nothing so profound as this. This is the sum total of all earthly wisdom and if the philosophers and scientists of this world, the thinkers of this world would only look at these ancient sayings which were given to the human race so early on in its history. They have bespared a lot of idle speculation and foolish statements and wrong conclusions such as that man in the earth has no particular purpose to serve but only to propagate his own species and then to pass on. and leave some kind of inheritance of achievement or history behind him. What earthly use that's going to be to the generations that come on? Well, even they cannot strictly tell us. But you see, they take too low a view of man. First of all, they deny that he has a soul. They place him on the same level as the animals, a little bit higher up of course, but after all he is only an animal who comes up from the history of the animal race and somehow or other acquired a superior intelligence. And so if some little creature, some other creature by its training or its power of imitation seems too approximate to some things that men can do. They say, there you are, that's the origin of it all. And they give a high rating to a budgerigar, chattering away and using the words without any meaning to the poor tiny creature, for it doesn't know what it's saying, except it has a power of imitation. If your ear is attuned to what the poor thing is trying to twitter about, you'll recognise sometimes quite a variety of words. Well, well. What does that teach us? It teaches us absolutely nothing except this, that of course, even the animal creation, the creation of the fowls that fly in the firmament of heaven, and the beasts that roam upon the earth, are in themselves very wonderful. I often look at the ox in the field, the horse in its store. What a magnificent creature is the horse. What a fine intelligence has the dog. What mystery lies behind those open eyes of the cat. Yes, very, very wonderful indeed. What a marvellous study. No soul, no soul, no spirit, no mind, only an automatic brain which responds just like a computer to what is fed into it and produces an inevitable and mathematical result. which is conformable only to the nature of the particular creature, and to no other. For the cat remains a cat, and does only what a cat can do. The dog is a dog, and can only do what a dog can do. He can only train a horse to what a horse can do, or an ox can do, as the case may be. And you say it's very wonderful, their achievements, and yet obeyed in arms. how quickly it surpasses them all. And the wonder of an intellect, independent, something new, something in its potential so vast and wonderful, begins to open before our eyes and our children, even when they are in arms, in our arms, as a flower opens to the dawning of the day and we see recognition, enjoyment, smiles, tears. Bring me the animal that can smile. Give me the animal that can weep. No, only man. The fact that he can smile and that he can weep places him at once at an infinite distance above all the visible creation. Sufficient attention has not been paid by the scientist to these two things which are our first characteristics as human beings, to smile, to cry, all what one How amazing! We travel on, and we read that man is capable of love divine, and indeed was made for this. What is the meaning of our life? Well, here it is, spoken long ago by Moses unto the inspiration of the Divine Spirit, and quoted by our glorious Redeemer when asked the question by the scribe who stood up and sought to entangle him in his words and in his thoughts, he found that he was one with whom was the ultimate wisdom and the ultimate answer. For he put his finger at once upon the meaning and purpose of life. Why are you here, dear friends? You are here to love. Isn't that worthwhile? Doesn't it dignify and ennoble every moment of your life? Does it not convict you to the very core of your being? that you are not perfect in this exercise, that you come short of it daily and continually. Yet what is there to compare with love planted in the heart? Oh, the world of mankind goes on by this means alone. The pure love of man for woman, of woman for man. Oh, don't despise it, even although the novelists and the film writers and the philosophers too write of another kind of love altogether, which isn't love at all, but which is a peculiar and dangerous and even fearful form of selfishness, which claims the sensations of love just for itself instead of pouring itself out for another. Oh, the wreckage of this false love which it creates in our human society. How every aspect of our being requires constantly the discipline of a divine love. freely surrendered to, and giving ourselves up unto it, and finding therein not only meaning and purpose, but finding the fulfilment of our own being and perfection in the love of God revealed in Christ Jesus. I couldn't dwell this evening upon the meaning of it all and the way in which it is all carried out but throw out these hints for you to think upon and pray about for yourself that you may know why you are here and what you have to do and then you have an answer to those thoughts and questions which arise in your mind. Here is a preacher, it might be myself, it might be some of my brethren who are just as capable as I am, and for aught I know even more so, who are listening to me this evening. Here is a preacher, maybe, who feels frustrated, as most preachers do, unless they're swaying a great crowd of people. They started out in life, they thought, as all of them usually think, that they're going to be spurgeons. Nothing will ever do unless they can sway a thousand people. People sitting up the pulpit steps in a building not big enough to hold those who are crowding in to hear their eloquence. Barely they have their reward. Not that what this poor creature would I'd be very pleased indeed to see every seat occupied. People squatting on the floor, sitting behind them in the pulpit or in the window ledges because there's nowhere else to sit and go. It'd be very fine, wouldn't it indeed? I think we'd all be very glad of that, but cheer up, it's not going to be so. I don't think so anyway. That's not the measure of achievement, you see. That doesn't prove anything at all. It doesn't prove, and it might prove, that the man is a great entertainer. It may prove that he's a man of very great gifts which he can display, and the entertainment of the people, but when he isn't there the congregation disappears. Even though some other man may be there with whom the Spirit of the Lord is, but that's not the point, is it? They've not come for the Spirit of the Lord, they've come to have their ears tickled, so often. Yes, very often this is the sad case. So many examples of this. No, this isn't achieved at all. I know sometimes if he's trying to make life easier for the poor preacher, if he feels that he's getting somewhere, the crowds are coming. But no, that's not the criteria. That isn't the point of judgment. That isn't where the question is settled. The question is settled only in the words of the Redeemer. Love. Love. The fulfilling of the law. The fulfilling of the whole purpose of our being in this world. And here's somebody else who's never going to be a preacher and doesn't want to be a preacher either, and I don't blame you. You say, I'm just a housewife. Well, what's wrong with being a housewife? That great preacher I was talking about couldn't do anything unless he had a woman at home, who maybe to whom any credit is due, that may be going around anyway. Makes life comfortable and easy for him. He's seldom seen in public. Sits on the back seat in the church, while her beloved stands and pours forth his eloquence and the pulpit. She knows better than anybody else what he is. She knows what he is worth. She's the only one on earth who can really measure him. Yes, indeed. She knows the whole secret, the whole story. Still she backs him up. Her loyalty, when the rewards are paid, I wonder to whom the largest and brightest crown will be awarded. Yes, you're just an ordinary person, perhaps. But can you love? Who am I to love? You're supposed to love everybody anyway. And you don't do that. I feel I don't either. There are some people who just irritate me. I don't think the Saviour was ever irritated. Oh, this lack of love. This lack of love. It's our greatest problem, isn't it? This is what we're here for tonight, to hear something about it. To have our hearts searched. Not to selfishly want things for ourselves. If we are men, wanting fame and fortune. If we are women, well, you know better than I can tell you what they're after too. But oh, to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and mind and strength. And thy neighbour as thyself, who is made in the image of God. You're responsible for him and her as much as you are responsible for your own soul. You'll be held accountable for it. Oh, this is a mighty thing. Was it not Dante who said, and he was a great man too, a man of unique intellect, one of these great minds which arise only once in an age, He quoted, with approval, the saying from ancient times, that in paradise they shine the best who loved the most. As any crown's growing won't be necessary to the preacher. If Mr Spurgeon were here he would say the same, I'm sure. He said, no, no, no, I never did think that I was going to get a particular crown for my preaching. Spurgeon was too wise a man for that. Too wise a man. He knew the whole story. No, is there any crowns going around? Might be some of you who are sitting far back or even well forward for what I know. The Lord knows the heart and He weighs the spirit and the motives. He who is love knows what love is. And He knows that love loves to pour itself out, not for itself or claim things for itself, but to give, to impart, to bestow upon others. love thy neighbour as thyself and the Lord thy God with all the secret and meaning of our creation. Now you say we come far short. True we do. That's why we've got a Saviour isn't it? That's why we've got a Redeemer. Because we come far short. It's why we need to be redeemed. All have sinned. and come short of the glory of God. So somehow I've never committed murder and never would commit murder, but you have and you do. Every time you think ill of somebody you commit murder in your heart, the jealousy, the selfishness is murder. That was the first crime that was committed in the human race, wasn't it? When man was banished from the garden of paradise. And because the younger of the first two sons, Abel, was exalted by God to be the first priest and prophet of the human race, So the people came to Abel on the day of rest from their labors, for the Sabbath was there from the beginning. And the Lord God sanctified the day upon which he rested from all his labors of creation. And so they came to hear Abel and to see him offering the lamb upon the altar with the fat thereof, the word says, And that is significant as showing that there was a revelation from God to Abel which anticipated the Mosaic sacrifices thousands of years later. With the fat thereof, that which is consumed so readily in the flame and the smoke, flare up to the very gates of heaven as they symbolise the devotion of the worshipping heart. so able offered of the firstlings of the flock, and the fat thereof, to God. And he would preach and tell the people why it was this way. He would tell them of the fall of man, his first parents who were there sitting in his congregation. There they were at the back of the church, Adam and Eve, approving of everything that he said. They'd brought him up from a baby, they'd wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in the ancient cradle They had taught Him from infancy about what took place in the garden, the wonderful invisible Creator, and why they were made, and the awful sin they had committed, but the wondrous promise of the Redeemer that was to come, of the very seed of the woman that should bruise the serpent's head. And God added to this Word, in the case of Abel, many other words besides. In his meditation the thoughts came to him and the voice of God spake to him and he knew what the sacrifice meant and he saw the coming Redeemer offering up himself as sacrifice upon another altar to God by which he would destroy the evil and bring in the good and restore that which he took not away and establish the kingdom of God in a place where it had been ruined and brought down. He would speak of the mercy of God and the grace of God, his eternal wisdom. He would point to the flowers and the trees. As a good preacher he would explain to them what it was all about and how divine love had created the world. Divine Love was sustaining it. By Divine Love we must be redeemed. You say, where is all this? I don't read this in the fourth and fifth, third, fourth and fifth chapters of Genesis, no. You only read the principles there. There's a tremendous lot in those early days. We have the history of 1600 years going back almost there to, in our time, to the beginning of the Christian era. And you've taken us right back to around about the year 300 A.D., just about the time when Augustine was going to be born and the fathers of the Church were flourishing. Long time ago that, and Caesar was upon the throne still. And in those 1600 years between the creation and the flood, God revealed himself marvelously to men. He took away Enoch the 7th from Adam by a wonderful translation into heaven. He was not because God took him. And so disclosed the secret of man's immortality. All tremendous things were done in those early days when men lived to nearly a thousand years and were gathering information When the mind of man was fresh all the way along the road, I am gathering more experience of evil as well, till the earth could not contain them any longer. So God was ever busy, and ever teaching man his first lesson. Thou shalt have no other God before me. And this is the God that thou shalt have, a God who is a Redeemer, and a lover of the human soul, and lays down His own life for its redemption. Yes, indeed, this is what the Word of God is saying. Right throughout history, before the flood and after the flood, God was adding, adding, more and more preparing the way for that moment when eternal love itself should step into the scene, and one who bore the likeness of man, who was the seed of the woman, who was God's manifest in human flesh, with a true human soul consistent And yet, in His person, the Eternal God, came down an infinite love, who said, Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends, and ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. And so by a great sacrifice, in sin and shame, With all that that means, heaped upon him who was in himself eternal holiness and perfect love. And oh, how the world hated him, and how the world hates him to this day. And how this awful man appears, and we mustn't speak too badly of him. We must see our own sins in his sins, and not wax too indignant at the sins of others. until we've had a reckoning in our own souls with our own sins. There is this man who comes and desires to enact a film about our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, which is too filthy for me to pollute your pure minds by even referring to it. in any further terms than those I have already used. There are certain things which are said which ought not to be repeated, which are too indelicate for the souls of God's people to be discussed amongst themselves or spoken about. All I will say upon that point is this. Thank God for the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster. that he spoke out in favour of Christ. I don't care what his religious association is. Our own Archbishop of Canterbury came a poor second to him. Not enough has been said and done yet. It bears a terrible shame in what was a Protestant country that the man who really says what ought to have been said was of what we have been pleased to call the other side. So let that pass. Let us give honour and credit where it is always due. Our Prime Minister, having been driven from behind to say something about it, and I do believe that he is a man disposed to the Christian faith. We know that to be the case. I understand he has belonged to a Baptist church in Cardiff, and we thank God that anybody has even the association of the Christian Church with him was in high places. I don't want to say anything at all that would take from the power of his words spoken yesterday, Mr Callaghan, when he said that this would indeed be a great offence and he will instruct the Home Secretary to look into the matter very, very carefully. But I don't like that. I don't like this idea of looking into the matter very carefully. It is not a matter which ought to be looked into very carefully. It is a matter which ought to be denounced from the highest places in the land immediately and at once with all the vehemence that a man can command for the purpose. He ought to have said, as long as I am Prime Minister this shall not be so. If the whole cabinet is against me I'll resign and go to the country over it. That's what I should expect a man to do in a case like this. not to be mealy-mouthed about it. An offence like this which is a greater threat to the existence of this country if it were carried out and permitted in this land than anything else I can think of that's ever happened in my lifetime. A man who is in a position of authority should say the ultimate word upon the matter. I will see that the whole I will require the Home Secretary to give it very serious attention. You don't give some things very serious attention. Here's a man committing murder. We will give it our serious attention as to whether he ought to be prevented or not. We'll have a committee meeting about it and decide whether to intervene, but the blow is already struck and the victim is dead. We've no time for people to consider in committees or cabinets what they're going to do about an offence of this nature. I think you'll agree with me. I would say that of any politician, no matter what side of the house he belongs to. I don't know that we've heard very much from the other side either about this matter, any more than we've heard it from ecclesiastical circles, as we ought to do. But this is the age in which we live, when things are tolerated and things are possible, which never before were possible. But we see something else behind it, behind all the follies and the weaknesses of men. We see the vindictive power of the evil one. He who is the Lord and Spirit of darkness itself. He who took a leading part in putting the Son of God upon the cross. The devil put it in the heart of Judas Iscariot to betray him. We had a formidable hand in that, and yet, in so working his will upon the Son of God, he only succeeded in destroying himself and his own kingdom. For we have a sovereign God who is able to turn the greatest wickedness and evil to account, so that it works even negatively, to bring in at last the divine glory. Let us remember that. The devil can do nothing against God. It only appears to be so. It is his intention, but it cannot succeed. And every word spoken against the Son of Man, and there's plenty of words spoken against Him in these days, ah yes, shall be pruned, shall be pruned, to be the shameful, wicked, evil thing that it is. You say, where are we getting with our first commandment? This is the first commandment! All that I've said has to do with the first commandment. I wasn't going to stand here and simply tell you that we ought to come to church every Sunday and worship God, we ought to think well of God, we ought not to set up idols for ourselves, I shall have no other God before me. What did you expect the preacher to say? when a text like this, when the Lord himself says this commandment means thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and mind and strength and in heaven's name. Has he not proved himself worthy of love? It was my Redeemer who bore all ill and shame and the abominable filth that was thrown against him. He said behold an evil man and a winebibber, they said it in his day. without any grounds, an evil man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners, hallelujah. Yes, he was a friend of publicans and sinners, this poor sinner amongst them. For that reason we love, do we not? For that reason we are ashamed that we love so little. For that reason we are sometimes alarmed that we love not enough. And for this reason we pray. O Lord, pardon my offenses. Oh, what have I done to grieve Thee? What have I done to soil and pollute Thy holy name? Where shall I hide myself in my shame? In the face of Him who sits upon the throne, the lover of my soul, my greatest friend, my Redeemer, who loved me with an everlasting love, Therefore with love we come.