Let's look to the Lord once more in prayer as we begin. Gracious Heavenly Father, we approach this subject with fear and trembling, as it is certainly the deepest well of the many as we consider who you are, what you've said, what you've done, and what you are going to do. So we ask, especially, for your spirit to come and help me, help us, as I speak, and we as we listen, to hear what you would have us learn tonight, and that you would, by your gracious power, change us, make us more like our blessed Savior, in whose name we pray, amen. Well, in the past two Lord's Day evenings, we've talked about faith and hope, and related those specifically to our Lord Jesus Christ, his exercise of faith, and his hope. And not particularly necessarily to contrast it, but also to give us another example, which we'll continue tonight. We've looked at his mother. and the idea of what Mary would have believed concerning her son, and what her hopes were for him. Tonight we'll pursue that, but when we come to the subject of love, and thinking about our Lord Jesus Christ, there's some things that we need to establish as a foundation, because this is different from the other two, and we'll see that as we proceed. In some ways, Wesley's hymn has stolen my thunder here as we begin. It's a tremendous hymn, the words of Love Divine, All Love's Excelling. If you don't know it from memory, shame on you. Memorize it. Sing it in the night, sing it in the day, and other hymns. So bear with me as we lay a foundation here. God is love, says 1 John 4, 8, and 16. It is striking to me how late love appears in the Bible. Now, what I mean by that is a statement of using the verb or the noun. It's not until Genesis 22. And I think it's very significant that that's where it occurs. It's not that one might not imply love. I think we absolutely can from other things that scripture says. But at the beginning of Genesis 22, when the long-sought child of Sarah has arrived to Abraham, the command of God is, Abram, Abraham, here am I. Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go and sacrifice him, for I will tell you. That, brothers and sisters, is the way love is introduced officially in the Bible. And I think that's very telling, and we'll keep that in the back of our minds. But then we get to 1 John, and all we have left is 2, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation, and we finally hear, God is love. Well, the Son of God is God, obviously. So therefore, the Son of God I suppose we imagine when we say God is love, we're just thinking of the Father. Oh no. So before anything was created, there was love among the three divine persons who are love. So that the definition and demonstration of what love is, is God. the Trinitarian love of the persons in the Godhead from all eternity. And here's what is absolutely astounding. To participate in that communion of love was the ultimate purpose for which Adam and Eve were created. To be able to enter that fellowship with God, with the Son, and with the Spirit. And sadly, sin, as we know, has made that impossible. We heard this morning, misery of sin is all mankind lost communion with God or under his wrath and curse and so made liable all miseries of this life to death itself in the pains of hell forever. The far cry from communion with a God who is love. But then when we come to Probably the most famous verse in the Bible for many people, John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. What we're saying is, in part, the father, who is love, sent the son, who is love, to come into the world and take on a sinless human nature to enable believers in him to be restored to communion with God. It's a staggering reality. And so therefore, God's two great commandments, which Jesus said all the other commandments depend on them, to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, secondly, our neighbors, ourselves, these Jesus obeyed. He loved his father, always. He loved his neighbor, always. And he did this as man, our nature, every moment of his life. However, that was expressed in all of his relations and situations and circumstances. And so therefore, following along in our thinking, father is love, the son is love, come into the world, taken on our nature, exhibit this to us, to bring us back into this communion, whatever other attributes that the words and works of our Lord Jesus Christ exhibited, and there are many of them, all those attributes never lack the root and the expression of the love that He is as God. Magnificent. Love incarnate, it's in that hymn, is our Lord Jesus Christ. So as we have seen in our Lord's life, keeping these things in mind, as a child, as a young boy, as a teenager, young adult, and over 30 years before his public ministry began, he learned, Jesus learned, what faith and hope were, and how to exercise them. Love of his father would have made him love the scriptures. We talked about this. And believe them, because they're God's own word, inspired by the Holy Spirit. And he would have loved God's ways, his disposition, his providential dealings with his creation. and with the son himself. And so we spoke of hope last week and could wonder what hope would Jesus have when he learned, as he did from the Old Testament scriptures and the providences in which his father led him in his life, of what his future would be on this earth. What hope was there? It was the suffering that the Old Testament predicted would happen with the final Messiah of Jesus, Christ, who was to rule on David's throne forever. And the thing that's so ironic about our Lord learning to believe and to hope, if nothing more, the joy that was set before him in the future, and a people that the father was giving him that he was going to redeem. And as we said at the end last time, that includes us who believe. Can you believe you were Jesus's hope? Yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. According to what he himself says. But in eternity, before our savior became man, did he need faith? Did he need hope? No, those are human qualities. Those are the things that characterize us. Can we imagine the members of the Godhead discussing faith in one another or what their hopes might be when there was no time, there was no space, there was only God and he was perfectly happy then? Never get the idea, which sometimes people will say or suggest, that God needed something. He needed us. He needed fellowship with us. No, he did not. That's what's staggering. But always, always, the Son of God knew the love of his Father, and the Father knew the love of the Son, and they both knew the love of the Spirit, binding them together. So it's not something he had to learn, at least certainly not as God, but he certainly had to learn it as man did. This is the other, or another, argument for why love is the greatest of the three. Because when we see Jesus, even the passage read this morning from Romans 8, we don't need hope. You don't hope in what you see. You don't have to exercise faith in what becomes sight in reality. So love will endure when everything else is ended. So the Lord Jesus grew in believing in God, in hoping in God, and in loving God his Father as he was man. And all the while, He was learning, as I said, who he was as Messiah and what he was to do. He was to be the spotless, holy Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, thereby enabling a return to communion with God, favorable communion with God. So, for his first 30 years, he lived and carried on his life amid misunderstanding and no doubt unbelief, a part of those around him and in his own families. We read in John 7, perhaps even abuse. And we take as our key there, Joseph's life. He was a sinner, but righteous, hated by his brothers, not realizing his dreams of the way God gave his word in those days. David's early life, also struggling with brothers as the youngest, jealousy, envy, and so our Lord Jesus Christ no doubt suffered these things, persevering in his faith in the Word of God, in his hope to fulfill what he was given, supremely his love of the Father, and his love of those people he was about to purchase. At age 12, we saw him in the temple. the teachers of the law, and by the words to his mother, and we'll talk about her, just to remind you, he showed that even then he was beginning to move away from the filial bond of love, genuine, right as it was, to focus on his life as the final Messiah, while maintaining perfect obedience to his father's commandments. Hebrews 1.9 says in quoting Psalm 45, you have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows. So the righteousness of our Savior, impeccability. Early in his ministry with his disciples, there was this exchange that he had with his mother at the wedding in Canaan. She comes to him, there's no wine, He says, what am I to you? What do I have to do with you? My hour has not yet come. Any way you soften that, as we saw, it's still stern. It's still a further breaking. It's further definition of what he has to be and what that's going to mean to his closest human relations. And then the nature and the intensity of his ministry with the 12 going and coming and so busy at one point they don't have time to eat. His mother and his brothers come to take him away because they think he's out of his mind. The stress of that. On him, we must not imagine that it didn't mean anything to him to realize that this separation, this distinction about who he was and what that would mean to his earthly relationships was easy to do. And he identified his true family, we saw, by establishing, in the same words, a limit for his followers to every other attachment or affection. His true followers, his true family, he said, are those who hear the word of God, his own words, and do it. And then there was the comment made by someone in the crowd, blessed is the one who bore you and nursed you. He said, rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and do it. Words that are similar to what we read from John 15 earlier. so that by comparison with one who hears and who believes and obeys the Lord Jesus, the blessedness of being chosen to be his mother, Mary, is nothing and worth nothing for her eternal salvation without accepting his words as who he is and doing them. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except for me, including his mother. And what about her? As we saw such an auspicious beginning, the angelic announcements, the people who came to speak to her right after the child was born. We asked, what did she believe from all this? What did she hope for this boy? And one thing I think we can be absolutely certain of is she loved him. Oh, would she have loved him? Who wouldn't love a boy like this? My goodness. Obedient, faithful, kind, from earliest years. Agent Simeon, as we remember, his prophetic word to Mary was poignant. The last thing he said was, and a sword will pierce through your own soul, too. along with these other things, you will experience this sword soul in your heart, certainly having to do with affections. And perhaps she began to feel that sword early on with the events that I just described in the temple. She says so. How could you do this to us and not tell us you were staying back? Or what were you doing staying back? No, I have to be about my father's business, my father's business. And the other times when she would have heard these things and wondered, they don't represent what I would assume. Those promises made to me by the angel, in the other words, really meant and how they were supposed to be recognized. Is this the pattern? when he starts traveling around all over with this group of men and followed by these women, is this the pattern of the one who will reign on the throne of David forever? And be mighty? What would be his future? What would be her future? And the interesting thing is, we only have silence. about Mary and our Lord. After the times when she came first to take him away because they thought he was out of his mind, she and the children, her other children, and then when she comes again and stands outside, we don't hear anything until Mary learned of Jesus' arrest. and went with the other women to witness the unthinkable, that her firstborn had been condemned by the Jewish council. And the Roman governor, and we wonder, did she ever know at that point earlier, probably not, or ever, that three times Pilate pronounces him innocent? But nevertheless, he consents to have Jesus crucified with all the shame, agony, and horror involved in this unthinkable reality. Whipped so as to weaken him with a whip that had glass and metal in it in order to rip the flesh and enable the blood to flow, to weaken the person. also making their agony on the cross worse because of thirst. And we know one of our Savior's words from the cross was, I thirst. The shame of it stripped naked and impaled on a wooden cross and publicly lifted up for every Jew to see that in hanging there, Jesus was visibly accursed by God. because that's what Deuteronomy said. Cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree. You may remember when Absalom was trying to escape from Joab's men, he catches his head in the tree and he's hanging between heaven and earth. And it isn't stated in the text, but Joab wouldn't have needed that to do what he did to Absalom, which is to kill him. But it was an evidence at that point that he was cursed and was suffering from it. And our Lord hanging there was visibly accursed. There's his mother standing by the cross. Simeon's ominous words were realized to the full as the sword passed through her soul. mother of God incarnate. How could this be? Can his life really end this way? What did Mary believe at that point? What were her hopes? I am sure she had not abandoned the love for her son. That remained. Well, what we have is a final recorded meeting of Jesus and his mother. and it's while he's on the cross. And comparing all four gospel accounts, probably words that were spoken early on in the time that he hung there. And we read that in John 19, text that I listed in your bulletin. John 19, verses 25 to 27. Hear them. Standing beside the cross of Jesus for his mother and his mother's sister, Mary, the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, woman, behold your son. And then he said to the disciple, behold your mother. From that hour, the disciple took her to his home. We may well ask, I don't know if you've thought about these words from the cross. Every one of them bears a meditation, a long meditation. What did Mary hear when she heard these words? Well, she would have heard her firstborn caring for her in his moment of excruciating agony and wretchedness. Probably, as I say, before the darkness descended, Before, at the end of that darkness, the agonizing cry of, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? She stood there and heard this. Now, handed over by her eldest, in the probable absence of Joseph, who seems to have disappeared early on, he's giving her over to the beloved disciple, John, for care. Filial love returns. He had not lost his love for his mother, caring for her up to this moment. And Luger records these words after this. And all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle, watching Jesus die, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts, and all his acquaintances, And the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching these things. So Mary and John would have slowly made their way away from this terrible scene with others. But hope, but faith. Still love? Absolutely. Crushed, the sword having gone through her heart. Well, Mary needed to come to know not her love for him, but his for her. That's always the solution. When we see who he is and what he has done to demonstrate his love for any believing sinner, no matter how terrible, think of the worst. Think of ourselves. should melt us. Paul put it in one of his prayers, end of Ephesians 3, to know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge. To know it, but it goes beyond what you can know. It's inscrutable. Well, we leave Mary there and we say to ourselves, what happened to Mary? Did Mary, was she able to come to a different view of her son to realize something further than that filial physical bond that was there? Did John help her? What happened with the boys and the girls, the half brothers and sisters of our Savior? Well, our last passage is the happy sequel. Here it is from Acts chapter one, verses 12 to 14. And we are now in the upper room with the disciples after the ascension of the Lord Jesus. And they have gathered as he commanded them to wait for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that he promised earned, and then sent out at Pentecost. And here's what we read in these verses, Acts 1, 12 to 14. Then they returned to Jerusalem, that's the disciples who had been with him when he was ascended, from the Mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey away. And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room where they were staying, Peter and John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, Judas the son of James, those 11. All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer and it could have stopped there. It could have been a period. We have this magnificent last phrase. Together with the women, Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his brothers. Salvation has come to Jesus' family. And however many of the brothers and sisters were there, because brothers is an inclusive term for both sexes, so it could include the sisters. You know, two of them, because it's almost certain that The James who wrote James was the half-brother of our Lord, and Jude was James' brother in all probability. And that James was the one who was the leader in the church in Jerusalem. God did a mighty work in those boys like he did in Joseph's brothers, but even more so here as they awaited the coming of the Spirit. And so I think we can confidently say and believe that when the Spirit came very shortly after this in the next chapter in Acts, the fullness of this Pentecost that, as I say, Jesus promised, earned, and then sent out his mother and at least some of these children were among those whom the Spirit filled to enable them to be useful in the kingdom of their elder brother and of her oldest son, beloved firstborn. Let me ask us, have we been on this journey like Mary? Have we gone? And if you haven't gone on this journey, I encourage you to take time and silence to do it. followed through the life of Christ, if not with her eyes, with your own eyes. And the problem is, at this point, with all that we have, all the epistles, the book of Revelation that shows the triumph of Christ, it's very hard, if not impossible, to enter back into what the mentality would have been like then, to follow with and through this life of misunderstanding and confusion and difficulty. And as I say, not without difficulty for our Lord in his human nature because he loved his mother. He shows it at the cross. But we need to come to truly look on the eternal Son of God in the man Christ Jesus is hanging there. to bring us back into the communion. We say fellowship. Fellowship is a word that unfortunately can mean just chatting about things. I remember the message that I heard that Christians socializing is what, and that's lovely, that's a wonderful thing to do, is really not what the Bible means by fellowship. It means talking about and reflecting on the things of scripture and the word of God and how it's affecting our lives and our struggles and joys and the things that manifest the power of the gospel. But what I would like to do for us to help us to focus on this is return to the earlier passage, John 15. And perhaps now we can hear these words a little differently. a little deeper, a little more poignantly. Here he is before he's about to suffer. And he says to them again, as the father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I've spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. Do you want full joy? Here it is. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Jesus, that's impossible. We can't, as you go on to say, lay down our lives for our brethren, or can we? Are we willing to? Not literally to die, at least not yet. willing to give up what we want, what we would like. Again, as we heard this morning, for others, for their help, greater love has no one than someone laying down his life. You are my friends, if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves. The slave doesn't know what his master's doing, but I've called you friends. For all that I have heard from my father, and I'm sure he means up to that point, All that they could understand, all that they could take, I have made known to you because they would learn much more as they proceeded. You didn't choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide. So that whatever you ask the Father in my name, especially in regard to bearing fruit and having it abide, he may give it to you. These things I command you so that you love. So, dear friends, the fellow saints, the test and the evidence of the fact that we have tasted the love of Christ is always going to include that we love one another and that we truly do it because Christ has loved those that profess his name and give even the weakest evidence of wanting to follow him. And what a privilege it is to love them and learn to say no to ourselves at times when they don't have our secular or individual interests or problematic or actually a stone in our shoe, blessed stone. May the Lord enable us by his power and his grace to better grasp what it means that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, He gave love, that whoever believes in Him might not perish, but have eternal life. Let us pray. Father, how to speak again, I prayed earlier, of the thing that is beyond us, to know the love of God which surpasses love of Christ for us. Lord, thank you for defining it in yourself. Thank you for exhibiting it in the Son. Thank you for sending your Spirit, the Spirit of the Son and of the Father, which Paul describes in Romans 5 as the love of God poured out into our hearts through his Holy Spirit whom he has given to us. May we treasure this communion. May we long to see it expanded for other people who have no hope. And Lord, help us especially to love one another in the church, our fellow saints, to listen, to be patient, to bring whatever wisdom you have given us to bear. Sometimes that's just in listening. to speak and to do as we can, and you give us resources in a way to show that we want to love others as you have loved us. And all praise and glory and honor be to you. We pray in Christ's name, amen.