As we continue to worship the Lord, let's turn in our Bibles to 1 Corinthians 13. We'll begin reading at verse 8. And our text is verse 8a. The title is Love Never Fails. Follow along as I begin reading at verse 1 of 1 Corinthians 13. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not parade itself, is not puffed up, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. never fails. Those last three words are the title of the message today, and there is so much truth in these three words. This coming Friday, the 18th of June, 2021, I'll be admitted to the hospital, Stanford Hospital, in Palo Alto, California. So it's very likely I won't be preaching for several months due to my treatment after a bone marrow transplant. Perhaps I'll never preach again. Well, that's in the hands of the Lord. But I wanted to give all of you a parting word of encouragement and exhortation. I wanted to admonish the church, but I wanted to encourage the church. I will be joining you, God willing, through Facebook, your services, and in the coming weeks, But I'm especially eager to encourage you because we've been coming out of almost a year and a half of serious trials and afflictions, not only on an individual level, but as a local church, Christ Bible Church, our sister churches around the world, as well as many, many, many other churches. Not only has our church suffered, but the church worldwide has suffered. loss in many ways. Thousands of churches have closed their doors and disbanded permanently. The Church of Jesus Christ in general has undergone a lot of testing, a lot of self-examination, a lot of challenges, a lot of trials of faith over the last year and year and a half. And many have not risen to the challenge. Many have fallen away. Many churches have become like houses of cards because their faith was not necessarily built on a rock, on a solid foundation, which is Christ. And so during these times of affliction, we experience many testings. We go through the fiery furnace of affliction to see what our faith is like. And so how do we survive the trials that our Lord says will come against us through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God. And many of us have experienced trials on an individual level, the loss of jobs, there's been civil unrest throughout the entire world in one way or another, especially in the United States of America, our precious nation. We have been grieved, have we not, all of us, to a certain extent, watching the riots and all of the upheaval and the meltdown of our nation politically over the last year? Well, I want to encourage you because the Bible teaches that God will preserve us, but we must persevere by his grace. by his grace. You see, it's not how you start that matters. It's how you finish. And there may be many, many more trials, not necessarily a pandemic and pestilences that consume societies and cultures where millions have died from such diseases. But other kinds of enormous severe trials may come against us. But one thing is important. You and I, as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we must persevere to the end. For Jesus said, he who endures to the end will be saved. And as a shepherd in the Church of Christ and under shepherd, along with many, many other pastors, it is our responsibility to encourage, to exhort, to teach, to build up, and to help the sheep be nourished in the faith, and to encourage each and every one of God's children under our care to endure to the end, to make it until the last day. There are three things along these lines then regarding love never fails that I would like to share with you. First, love upward. Second, love inward. And third, love outward. First of all, let's look at love upward. In our text, In the context of 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verses one through eight, we have the most profound, some say even poetic and beautiful statement of the love of God, divine love, agape love that has ever been written anywhere, even in the Bible. It truly expresses the spiritual nature, the divine nature of love. But in the context, we learn that there will be some temporary spiritual gifts that will pass away. There are other things that will leave the church, maybe fads and trends and various forms and ceremonies. Perhaps even churches in particular generations will not necessarily meet consistently. because they are under persecution and they may have to hide in caves and worship in homes or where they can. But one thing we are told in the text, verse 8, that will never pass away, that will never fail, is the love of God. For we learn that love never fails. Love is everything to God. It is the very essence of the Christian faith. God's love to us and our love to God. We call this oneness. We call this communion. We call this relationship. God created human beings in his image and he saved many of them from sin. The original creation was purposed and designed for God to have communion and union with Adam and Eve and their posterity. The basis of that union was the exchange of love. from God to them and from them back to God. That is the core goal of Christianity, to glorify God through the exchange of love between God and his people. Some call it spiritual marriage, some call it spiritual oneness, but the spiritual DNA of glorifying God is this transfer of love from the heart of God to us and from our heart to God. The enemy, Satan, does everything within his power and his skills that he's had a long time to cultivate to dampen and diminish and destroy this exchange of love between God and his people. But our job, our job is to preserve the love of God in us. We learn in the book of Revelation chapter 3 that the Ephesian church was warned by our Lord Jesus Christ himself, the head of the church, not to lose their first love, to maintain their first love. In other words, to sustain the love of God in them, as well as this exchange of love between them and God in worship, in their daily walk, in their meditations and thought life throughout the day, we, as well as them, are commanded to preserve the love of God in our hearts. If you've been a Christian for any length of time, you know how hard it is to do, how difficult it is to do. But we are told to, first of all, love upward. When I talk about upward, I'm referring to our love for God. and his love for us, the vertical aspect and exchange of love. When we say love upward, we're talking about love to God or loving God. Like I said, this is why we were created and this is why we were saved. We were not created to be receptacles and filters for food and for sleep and for words for 70 or so years, we were created very, very uniquely, like no other being God has created, to be vessels and receptacles of the love of God. That's a glorious purpose, is it not? We read, going back all the way to Deuteronomy 6, verses 4 and 5, a critical statement, the most important statement in the Old Testament about love upward. As a matter of fact, this statement is so important. The Jewish people, the rabbis in the Old Testament, the priests called this the Shema. It is the motto of the Jewish people. Every conservative and Orthodox Jew, or almost all of them, can quote this in Hebrew by memory. Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Achad. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. But they forget verse five. In Deuteronomy 6, verse 5, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. Verse 4 is a noun in essence, and verse 5 is a verb. The name of God and the being of God is identified in verse 4. We're to only worship the Lord our God, the God of the Bible. Jehovah Elohim, who in essence is a trinity. The very name Elohim is the plural name for God, representing the three persons of the trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And then verse five is a verb. What are we to do in this relationship we have with God? What does God require? foremost above every other commandment in the Bible, above every other ordinance and rule and regulation he gives his people in scripture, what is the number one activity that we are to be engaged in, the greatest commandment of all? You and I are to love God with all of our heart, with all of our soul, and with all of our strength. And God has given us a tremendous amount of time in this life, most of us anyway. We have years and years and years and decades and decades, most of us in this world. How much of that time is spent in loving God with all of our heart, with all of our soul and with all of our strength? Proportionately, not much. And that depicts the battle that we are involved in. It depicts the war that is waged against us to diminish and to weaken this greatest of all privilege to love God with all of our intellectual, spiritual, and emotional faculties. And these were given to us primarily to love God with. intellectually to understand truth about him in our minds, to rationally comprehend truth about God, the nature of his being, who he is in his eternal attributes, in the variety of his personality traits, where to comprehend who he is. God wants us to know. who he is, we are given the reveal things of scripture so that we can know God. Spiritually, once you and I become a child of God and receive a new nature from God, we become equipped with the spirit of God to be able to have, through our spirit being equipped by the spirit of God, a relationship with the living God, heart to heart, soul to soul, as it were. And emotionally, in response to this intellectual and spiritual union with God, our emotions have a response in love to God. These are godly emotions. There's fleshly emotions, but we're talking about godly emotions that the Spirit of God produces within us as a response to God in worship, in praise, flowing with love, from our hearts to God. The New Testament equivalent of Deuteronomy 6, 4, and 5 is found in Matthew 22, verses 37 through 40. Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. as we get closer to the end of the world, and as trials and afflictions increase in society and in culture, and as more and more pressure comes upon the church, the two greatest commandments in the Bible are going to... we're going to be pressured not to keep up in obeying them. In other words, the entire law All of the other commandments in the Bible are designed ultimately to motivate and enforce love for God and love for other people. That's what it means when he says on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophet. All the other commandments in the Bible are given to us to motivate and enforce love for God and love for other people when we obey them. Let me put it in another way. God's greatest desire for any human being is that he or she love God. Everything else we ever think about God, believe about God, say to God, or do for God must be motivated by this core impulse of love for him. Ultimately all the rules and directives in the law flow from the idea of loving God. So When the love of God is renewed and stirred up afresh within our hearts, and we approach obeying any commandment, we will have the right attitude and mindset in obeying that commandment. Of course, love to God is not the only greatest commandment. It's the number one commandment in the Bible, of course, and it's the number one goal for the church, which is the way we glorify God. When we love God, Loving God is indispensable to glorifying Him. You can't glorify God without the right motive and without love in your heart for Him, truly, in a way that pleases Him. Well, to love God, then, is to appreciate His great value and worth. In 1 Peter 2.7 it says, Therefore to you who believe, He is precious. When the love of God is poured out afresh on your heart, perhaps it's during your reading and meditation of the scriptures, perhaps the Holy Spirit pours out or gives you a fresh token of his love, you instantly are made aware of something of his great value. You are given an ability to appreciate who God is, you're able to value and esteem Him as something infinitely precious and of priceless worth. That is what the love of God does in us. We're able to esteem and understand how great God is, how loving He is, how holy He is. We read in Isaiah 28 5, in that day the Lord of hosts will be for a crown of glory and a diadem of beauty to the remnant of his people. Oh, what the love of God enables us to do in terms of loving him and opening for us a very wide grasp of comprehending how glorious and unsearchably precious and rich the God is in his grace and in his nature. God puts love in our hearts so that we can love him. You and I cannot love God unless he first puts that love in our hearts for him. You and I would be of all men most miserable if we did not have love for God. Let that love diminish in our hearts. Let it wane, let it grow cold. And when we approach those holy privileges of worship and Bible meditation and reading and prayer and all of the spiritual activities of the church, we respond with such slowness to praise him and such coldness of heart. He has to put his love in our hearts. Remember when you became a Christian and you were made aware that you were a child of God, What was one of the first things that you experienced? It was the love of God flooding as floods upon a dry ground of your heart and mine into our inner man. So He puts love within us so that we can love Him and we can worship Him in the way that He requires and is worthy of. In Hebrews 10.16, it says, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord. I will put my laws into their hearts and in their minds, I will write them. God puts his word into our hearts, but he also creates an ability within our hearts to love him. As we read in Deuteronomy chapter 30 in verse six, and the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul that you may live. Why is it that you and I love God? Why is it that we experience the love of God? Why is it that his spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are his children and that the spirit of adoption cries out, Abba Father, we love you. It's because he has circumcised our heart. He has put it in our hearts. He has enlarged our hearts to love him. He has softened the coldness of our hearts and replaced it with love for Him. He puts it in our hearts to love Him, even fervently, to love Him with all of our hearts. There are times when love flows fervently from our hearts to God so that we can love Him with all of our heart, with all of our soul, and all of our strength. Oh, that's why we were created. And in heaven, When we are perfected, we will be given the ability in our hearts to love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, with no diminishing, no weakening of it. I love that. I can't wait for that. Well, He has put His love into our hearts, and He's told us that we love Him because He first loved us, 1 John 4, 19. And in the same chapter, verse 10, it says, in this is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us. My friend, my brother, my sister in Christ, can you praise God right now for putting his love into your heart? Can you thank him that he has given you the taste of his love? Well, why did God put love in our hearts if he wasn't looking for love back? Why did he put love in our hearts if it wasn't for the purpose of loving him? He did not just put love within us for no reason. He put love inside of us so that we can give that love back to him in the form of adoration, in the form of love, telling him we love him, in the form of pouring out our affection at his feet. Have you done that lately? When was the last time you bathed in his love? When was the last time you had a crumb, a token of his love? And the first thing that you wanted to do was give that love back to him by telling him you love him. And with that love being renewed afresh within our hearts, behind it comes the memory of his love to us. As we recall the Lord giving his only begotten son to die in our place, as the Holy Spirit reminds us of the love of God as manifested on the cross, The Lord Jesus Christ taking our place in our behalf, on our behalf, paying our sin debt and bearing in his own body on the tree all of the punishment we deserve. And we are reminded of his love in redemption, reconciliation, justification. And we could not help but pour forth words of praise from a heart that is filled afresh with affection for him at the memory of our Lord's dying for us, his people. Many times our love goes out to God because we remember his faithfulness. He calls us to love him because of his faithfulness. As we read in Psalm 31, 23, oh, love the Lord, you, his saints, for the Lord preserves the faithful. And in Psalm 116 verses 1 and 2, I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and my supplications, because he has inclined his ear to me. Therefore, I will call upon him as long as I live. Can you love him and praise him at the memory of answered prayer because you remember that he has heard your voice. He's been faithful to you all the days of your life. He has inclined his ear to you when you called upon him. and that has spurned you on and motivated you to love him. And so this is describing very briefly love upward, love to God and his love to us. That's why we were saved. And this is what will never fail us. We will always love him, always love him. We never stop loving him. Love never fails in an upward way between us and God. And as, No matter how bad persecution and suffering and deprivation gets in the coming days, no matter how many trials may come, you and I, by his grace, may still worship him and love him in the midst of it. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had a worship service filled with love when they were cast into the fiery furnace of affliction so that they ignored, basically, the torment and the fire under their feet that was all around them because the love of God not only preserved them, but it gave them joy. It gave them joy in the midst of the fiery furnace of affliction. Well, secondly, love inward. Well, love works both ways. It works vertically. Love exchanged between us and God. but also there's the horizontal love, the inward love that we have for everybody, for our neighbor. We also experience the knowledge of his love in a way that is able to love other people. In 1 John 4, 16, we read, and we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him. Romans 5.5, now hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. We receive the love of God. We have been made and created to experience the love of God in our hearts. Not only do we love God and he gives us his love, but the reason that Christianity is a religion of the heart and not merely of the head, not merely an institution or a religious organization, but in essence, Christianity is a personal relationship with God himself in which God is always pointing us and directing us to the core element of the exchanging of love between God's heart and our heart. This is love inward. We read in 2 Thessalonians 3.5, now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God. God is always pushing us in the direction and reminding us of the importance of love. of having that love experienced within our hearts. Jude 21 says, keep yourselves in the love of God. Don't let go of that love. Love is so vital and indispensable to knowing God that we are exhorted to keep ourselves in that love. Don't let go of it. Don't lose that first love. Do the first works and the greatest work we are called to do. is to glorify God by keeping the first commandment, to love him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, to devote as much time and as much of your heart and your mind and your spirit to loving God, even to making it your business during the day to love God as much as you can. to seek God for the ability and the grace to not just read the Bible and pray as much as you can, but to have that Bible reading and prayer or the means of grace be that channel with which God will pour his love into our heart by the power of the Holy Spirit. We read in 1 Corinthians 8.3, but if anyone loves God, this one is known by God. Paul uses the Greek word agapeo, which comes from the word agape, referring to a love that is pure, selfless, and sacrificial. That is divine love, which is the highest form of altruism. Those who love God are known by him, it says. In other words, we are known by him in the sense that he's heard our prayer of praise and adoration. and he has received the love we have expressed to him into his heart. Did you hear what I said? He has received our love into his heart. You see, he not only knows about our love when he says that we are known by him. This does not merely mean he knows about our worship and our love, but the sense is more of a heart knowledge. In other words, he receives our love into his heart and is blessed by it. He knows that love in his own heart by way of intimacy and spiritual experience. And so it goes back to this exchange of love. We love him because he's enabled us to know him spiritually, and he says that we are known by him, that is, he knows us intimately because he has heard our worship, he's received our worship, and he has received our love that comes with it as we pour forth our adoration to him. I am describing, brethren, the greatest calling and the highest calling, the most sacred work that he has given to us. the work of love, loving him and knowing his love in our hearts. Knowing his love in our hearts. That's why we were saved. And the world is going to forget that love more and more. We're told about the end times that the love of God will grow cold in these last days. More and more, his love will grow cold. Oh, I beg you. I plead with you. to make sure this is something on your mind and heart every day, that it'd be a supreme daily goal is to remember that that day, as much as God enables you to do, to love him, to love him upward and to love him in a way where that love is renewed inwardly, inwardly, upwardly, inwardly, And thirdly, and lastly, love outward. The love of God always manifests itself outwardly in love for others and in good works. The love of God is essential to be able to love other people and to be able to do good works based on love for God. Are you following me? What I just said summarizes about a fourth of the New Testament writings that our love needs to find expression by loving others, in our hearts loving them, and by doing good works to them. Well, the first thing you want to do when you love someone and when the Holy Spirit gives you the ability and the renewed grace to love them is you want to do something good for them. Love always expresses itself in good works. So let's talk about some practical ways, shall we? Before we do that, let me just mention one or two other things about love outwardly. We read in Matthew 22, by way of reminder, in verse 37, Jesus said, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, This is the first and great commandment. We all know that. This is one of the first things we learn as new Christians. The greatest commandment is to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. But how often do we neglect the second commandment? Jesus said in verse 39, and the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. A Jewish lawyer asked the question of Jesus, well, who is my neighbor? trying to make an excuse for not obeying this commandment. And of course, we learn that everyone is our neighbor, even our enemies. We are called to love our enemies. And so let me remind you of how important it is that we have love for others. So I encourage you, I even exhort you, my friend, take a moment every day to ask God in prayer to stir up your love for other people. Not only your family members, not only loving those who love you, but ask God for love for people who don't love you, even for your enemies. You see, love, we learn, is the motive for good works. In 2 Corinthians 5.14, it says, for the love of Christ compels us because we judge thus, that if one died for all, then all died. And he died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again. And when the Spirit of God enables us to dedicate and consecrate our lives afresh to the Lord Jesus Christ, we have our motive adjusted and corrected for all the service that we do and the good works that we do for God and for others in the name of the Lord. We're able to Remember that we are to do good works, not because the person may deserve it, or because we are nice people, but because the love of God drives us to love other people through the manifestation of good works. James 2 in verse 8 says, if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, you do well. And so if you are loving everyone around you with unconditional love and you have nothing against them, you are doing really well. Romans 15, two and three says, let each of us please his neighbor for his good, leading to edification. For even Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me. And then in Galatians 6.10 we read, Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith. So these verses are enhancing and complementing the second greatest commandment, which tells us to love our neighbor as ourself. Especially we are told that we're to do good to all, The manifestation of our love is by doing good to all, especially believers, and even doing good to our enemies as a testimony of the grace of God to them. Well, let me close by enumerating some practical ways we can love outwardly, ways we can demonstrate love. For the last year and a half with COVID-19 consuming the world and the church suffering such great weakness, so many of us have put off, even at Christ Bible Church, loving the Lord like we should. We've been weak in this area, loving others and doing good works. And certainly it's been difficult to be faithful in some of these areas because we have not been gathering together. A lot of our good works and expressions of love are demonstrated to one another when we're together. So I'm not blaming anyone because of this. It's been very hard to do, but let's not forget as we begin worshiping corporately next Lord's Day on the 20th of the month, let's remember to pick up where we left off before COVID or during COVID since March of last year. And some of the outward demonstrations of love, which are taught us in the New Testament scriptures, Number one is hospitality. We are told, distribute to the needs of the saints, given to hospitality. Romans 12 and verse 13. It's been kind of difficult to do, to gather with a bunch of people because we were told, and it was even against the law to gather in large groups of 25 or more. At the beginning, we couldn't even gather in groups of five or six. It was against the law, the state law. But let us remember that we are to show hospitality. It's okay. And even if we can invite small groups of people of two or three, or now as many as you would like over to our home, show hospitality to one another. This is love outwardly expressed. When was the last time you invited a family over, a friend over? Please brethren, use the resources God has given you to show hospitality. Make the time to do it. That's what God commands us to do. That is a way to show the love of God. Secondly, love is demonstrated by forgiveness. Very often when we are apart from one another, love grows cold. Sometimes we harbor grudges against a fellow believer or someone else, and unforgiveness grows. God tells us that the greatest way, one of the greatest ways to show love is by forgiving other people. As we read in Ephesians 4.28, forgive one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. If you have the love of God in you, my friend, don't harbor resentment. Proverbs 10.12 says, Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sins. 1 Peter 4.8 echoes this, And above all things, above all things, have fervent love for one another, for love will cover a multitude of sins. Two things stand out in this verse. Fervent love. Sometimes love needs to reach a place of intensity called fervency before it forgives, before it covers all the offenses made towards me. Love will cover, secondly, a multitude of sins. It will cover every sin. God will give you grace, the grace of love to forgive all. and any offenses. So forgiveness, if you have something against someone, forgive them. Pray about it until God gives you a heart full of agape love to forget those offenses. Thirdly, no harm. Do not do harm. Perhaps you've been weak over the last six months or nine months and you found yourself doing harm to somebody else. You say, How have I done harm, Pastor Joe? Well, you've been engaged in gossip and slander and evil speaking. The Bible says in Romans 13, 10, love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the Lord. And when we speak evil about other people to third parties, we do harm to them. We tarnish their reputation. So that's a practical way we can demonstrate love is by not speaking evil against them. or deliberately avoiding them or giving them the cold shoulder. No harm. Love does no harm to a neighbor. You cannot harm them with your words or actions when your heart is filled with the love of God. Number four, reconciliation. In Matthew 5, 23, it says, therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Ephesians 4, 31, let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ has forgiven you. If you are not reconciled with a person, whether it be a Christian or an unsaved person, maybe a family member, God commands you to reconcile with them. And that is one way that we demonstrate love to them. Take the initiative and reconcile. You say it's so hard, Pastor Joe. It's not hard. When you go first upwardly, vertically to God and receive fresh agape love to love them and to forgive them. At that point, it's easy to reconcile with them. It's easy. to take the lead and call them and go to them and say, can we be friends? Can you forgive me of my part in our estrangement? Please reconcile. Reconcile. Reconcile with God first and then with others. Next, another way of showing love practically at Christ Bible Church is serving one another. Pick up serving one another again. Don't be selfish. Don't think about yourself. your church activities around yourself. The Bible says in Mark 10 45, for even the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for any or for many. And so we are called to show love by serving one another, not demanding or expecting others to serve us. If we, served others for the rest of our life and no one ever served us, if our heart was filled with the love of God, we'd be okay with that. It's more blessed to give than to receive. So let us not be selfish, always looking for people to do something for us and never doing anything for them. Don't demand your rights. Think of others' needs before your own. Take the low place. As we read in James 2, 14 and following, what does it profit, my brethren? If someone says he has faith but does not have works, can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, depart in peace, be warmed and filled, but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. You say, Pastor Joe, my good works have not been really good lately. My faith has been weak. Ah, my friend, that may be true. But think about this. If your heart is filled afresh with the love of God, faith will have wings to reach out and serve others. It will be second nature to you when your heart is filled anew with that agape affection to reach out and serve the needs of brethren and to do good to all men, especially those of the household of faith. Let's not be isolated. Let's not be sequestered anymore, more in our homes and in our bubbles. But let us reach out. Let us go out of our homes. Let us go out of our places and minister to the needs of others. Let's visit the brethren. Let's show hospitality. In 1 John 3, 16 and following it says, by this we know love. Listen, Listen, will you indulge me for a second? By this we know love because he laid down his life for us and we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has this world's goods and sees his brother in need and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? Don't shut up your hearts. Don't let your love grow cold. Don't become isolated. The Bible says a prideful person isolates himself. But as Galatians 6.2 says, bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. Another way we're to show one another and get back going in this direction is to pray for one another. We read in 1 Timothy 2.1, therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men. Oh my friends, We have no option when it comes to prayer, not only private prayer, but attending the prayer meeting where the saints gather and we intercede on behalf of their physical, spiritual, and emotional needs. We had our dear brother Will last week who had congestive heart failure. How many of us were praying for him? How many of us were reaching out to him? The Bible says that we are to pray for one another. interceding on their behalf, sacrificing our bodies, our time to pray for someone else. That's very unselfish when we do that. We're commanded to pray for one another. As Colossians 4.2 says, continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it with thanksgiving. Don't be weary in well-doing. Don't get weary or complacent or discouraged as we read in the parable that our Lord gave in Luke chapter 18, one through eight, where he says that we are always to pray and not grow faint or weary. So if you haven't been coming to the prayer meeting, make it your business. Obey the Lord. Even them I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations." I'm not giving you an exhausted list of things we ought to do to show our love in an outward way to one another. I'm reminding you of things most of you already know. If you've left off practicing these practical and outward expressions of love, I exhort you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to begin doing them again. These are ways we are commanded to edify and build the church up that has been greatly weakened. Our church has been weakened over the months. Some members have left permanently. Others are bordering on leaving. Others have left off, reaching out with love and in good works to others. So I encourage you and admonish you in the Lord. Pick it back up again. Show hospitality. Forgive those whom you have been harboring sins against or offenses against. Go to them and work it out. Confess it to the Lord. Do not harm anyone by evil speaking one to another. Be reconciled to everyone that you may have ought against or you may be offended. Serve one another and pray for one another. Intercede on their behalf. We're to be serious in these end times in our prayers. We're to be watchful in our prayers. Make it your business to be at the prayer meeting next Sunday at 12 noon and online during the prayer meeting. And lastly, personal evangelism. Share the gospel. Fulfill the great commission as we read in Matthew 28, 19, where our Lord said to you and to me, go therefore and make disciples of all nations. baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I've commanded you and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen. And so these are just a list of things that if we've left off doing them, we need to pick them back up again. We need to do, we had no excuse to stop doing them in the first place. But remember, If we have love upward and love inward, loving God and experiencing the love of God in our own hearts and to one another, all of these practical and outward expressions that God commands us to observe will take care of themselves. They will all automatically fall in line because the love of Christ will compel us to do all of these things based on love for God. Aren't you blessed? Aren't you truly a happy believer that you and I have been given the privilege to share the gospel with others, to pray for one another, to serve one another, to be reconciled and to show love to one another, forgive one another, show hospitality, exercise our gifts in other people's lives. These are the pragmatic ways in which we glorify God. Oh, I beg you. I beg you to, first of all, return to your first love if you have left him. And then you will be able to obey the Lord with the right motive and with the love of God bursting forth in your heart. The Lord Jesus is full of forgiveness, full of grace to restore us to a place of love where we were just loving to everyone, even our enemies. And He is so kind and gracious and compassionate to return to us when we return to Him. Don't you just love the Lord today? Aren't you so thankful that of no other creature that God has made, the angels, the animals, the insects, nor any other creatures, the creatures in heaven, the elders or whoever they are in heaven, the cherubim, the seraphim, we are the only ones that have been created and designed to be full of the love of God, to be vessels of the love of God, to carry within our hearts and minds the love of God wherever we go in this world and in eternity future, to be bearers of that love and to proclaim that love in worship and to enjoy that agape love in our relationship with God, with the Lord Jesus Christ, and with the Holy Spirit forever and ever. My imagination is not capable of comprehending such love, enjoying such love forever and ever. Well, this is why we were saved. Let's get down to our glorious business of loving God more so, more so than the past with all of our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our mind, and all of our strength in demonstrating love upward, love inward, and love outward. Let us pray. Lord, we thank you for your love. We praise you for your love, especially the highest form of love demonstrated to us in the Lord Jesus Christ and in his death on the cross. For God demonstrated his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Oh, bless thy name. We worship you. We worship you. We love you and adore you because you have saved us and you have put your love in our hearts and we have been made known that love by the power and love of the Holy Spirit shed abroad in our hearts. Love for God and love for one another. How can it be that such unworthy creatures as we can know the love of God not only in this life, but in the life to come, except by your amazing grace and your eternal mercy. Oh Lord, we pray that for those listening who are not saved and have not known the love of God, we pray that you would pour out that love into their hearts. And for your children, for us poor, needy, weak saints, we pray that you would fill our hearts to overflowing afresh with your sweet, precious, priceless love for this is our prayer in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ we pray amen and so brethren we will certainly continue to join you as God enables me to from the hospital in the coming weeks and months in worship but as a church as Christ Bible Church please Do not forget the love of God. May God indeed encourage you to have that love filled to overflowing like a well of water springing up unto eternal life. Amen.