Our theme for the weekend is fellowship in the gospel. And we find that term in the first letter of John, and the first chapter, and the first three verses. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the word of life. For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness. and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us, that which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you that ye also may have fellowship with us. And truly, our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. And fellowship in the gospel is indeed very precious to every believer, true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Fellowship is that ability of relating one to another. Fellowship with the Lord, first of all, but fellowship with each other. But fellowship in the gospel, the gospel of grace through the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is a wonderful thing to be a Christian in these days, to have fellowship one with another. And fellowship in the gospel includes Christians ministering one to another, to each other. And for four messages over this weekend, I want us to think about one-anothering. That is this community of fellowship of the Lord's people. We all have friends. Each one of us is part of a family. We belong to a congregation or a church of the Lord's people, of which is a community group. We all have others in our lives. A lot of the time we take these others for granted, but they are part of our scenery. They're part of the backdrop of our lives. They're always there. We depend on that fact that they will be there. They help us feel comfortable in the world. The sun rises and sets. The week marches from the Sabbath to Saturday and another one begins. We like predictability. When we dial a relative's phone number we expect them to be at the end of the line. When we go to a big city, perhaps into England and to London, we expect Big Ben and Buckingham Palace to be there. When we go out to work, when we go to school, to the college, to the office, to the shop, we expect others to be there. There are others in the community of the life of human beings. So it is with others in our lives. We expect them to be there. And for believers, disciples in the Lord Jesus Christ, fellowship in the gospel is much more than just those things that I've mentioned. We enjoy together fellowship in the gospel. The gospel of grace unites us. It keeps us together. It encourages us. It stimulates us. It focuses on our savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel of grace is that which has been imparted to our souls by the Lord God through his Holy Spirit. And it unites us together as believers. It has brought us together therefore into community. And it is this fellowship then that we will focus on over these next three days in our gatherings. And it will be the practical aspect of fellowship, the practical aspect of community, of being together, of worshipping together, of living together as the Lord's people that will occupy our time. Community is an interesting word. It comes from the Latin root, communis, has the meaning to impart, to participate. Dictionary says community is a unified body of individuals and an interacting population. And community shares the same root with communion, communicate, communal, even the word common, and communicable. And thus we are in community with each other. We are unified, we are interacting, participating, imparting with and in and to and with one another. And in the body of Christ, the church, the congregation of God's people, we bear one another's burdens. We share one another's lives. We walk with each other through dark times, times of sorrow, but also lighter times. We reach out to each other. We get involved with each other, and we care when another is hurting, and we communicate with caring. We can sit with someone who is grieving, who is unhappy. It's Christians ministering to each other. And in a moment ago, we read from John's gospel, chapter 13. And we found the Lord Jesus Christ having the last supper, the Passover supper, with his disciples and speaking to them and ministering to them, inaugurating the blessed supper that we celebrate together as communion, holy communion. And after the washing of the feet that we read about, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior, gave his new law. And immediately after that law, he says, greater love has no man than this, than a man lay down his life for his friends. And that's in a couple of chapters on in chapter 15 and verse 13. But in a very dramatic and awesome fashion, the Lord Jesus Christ did indeed lay down his life for his friends. If you're a Christian tonight, you're one of the friends of Christ for whom he laid down his life. Now we might not be called to literally die for our friends, but we may be called and are called to lay down our busyness, to lay down our own pursuits, to lay down our own agendas for a while. We may be called to give up a few moments of time in order to be with a brother or sister or a friend or a neighbor, a fellow creature. And this is what one-anothering means to give up self in order to bear one another's burdens within the congregation of the Lord's people. One-anothering These sermons at the conference will enable us to look at the whole aspect of one-anothering texts, starting with this text in John 13. It's a key passage. It's why we start with it. Verse 34, Jesus says, a new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. Now this phrase, one another, occurs several times in scripture, and particularly in the New Testament. It's a beautiful phrase, one another. It's full of meaning and suggestion for us to regard without our relationships. In the New Testament, the words one and another, put together like this, occur 38 times. And in that we find one Greek word. It's the Greek word alos, meaning another. It's a word that describes a numerical difference. So we have another of the same sort, one another. When Christ said that he would send another comforter into the world, he meant that he would send another like himself. And he used that word, alos, as he sent his blessed Holy Spirit. And so we find the background of the term one another is a relational thing. We are to relate to each other, to fellowship with each other in a particular way. We're going to discover several of these. And firstly, and as I've said, principally, we see that we as Christian believers are to love one another. And that'll be our focus in a moment. Let me just give you a list of some of the other one another's in scripture. Romans 12, verse 10, preferring one another. Romans 15, seven, receive one another. Romans 15 verse 14, admonish one another, which also occurs in Colossians 3.16. There is the word in Romans 16, salute or greet one another. There is in Galatians 5.13, serve one another. In Galatians 6 verse 2, bear one another's burdens. Ephesians 4, verse 2, forbear with one another. Ephesians 4, 32, forgiving one another. And James 5, 16, pray for one another. Teaching one another, also in Colossians 3, 16. Comfort one another in 1 Thessalonians 4, 18. Edify or build up one another in Ephesians 5.21. Into Hebrews, Hebrews 3.13, exhort one another. Consider one another in Hebrews 10. You can see how many there are. And these one another's enable us to know what it is and what to do to express our fellowship in the gospel together within our church fellowship. So coming again then to this one another text in John's Gospel chapter 13. Read it again from verse 34 and 35. A new commandment I give unto you, says the Saviour, that ye love one another as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples if ye have love. one to another. It seems to me that this, out of all the other one another texts, should be the principle, should be the bedrock, should be most important amongst them all. And yes, we are familiar with that setting that we read together earlier, the Last Supper, that special time that the Lord Jesus had with his disciples. With great desire, he had wanted to have that time with them. And during that time together in that upper room he had taught them that lesson of humility in washing their feet. And encouraged them then in a willingness to serve each other by washing their feet. He had warned them again that they were going to lose him. To lose him in the sense that he was going to die. He was going to rise again and then to depart from the scene physically. And that these disciples will not be able to bring him back again to earth. Neither will they be able to find him and go to be where he is even though called through death into the next world. Nevertheless, Although his disciples would be no longer able to see him and rejoice in his physical presence, they would still be able to enjoy one another's visible presence. And so it is for this reason that the Lord Jesus Christ utters these words in verse 34, a new commandment I give unto you. that ye love one another, as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. So we think first of all about it as it is a new commandment. And the Lord Jesus Christ uses the word here in the original Entele, which is a command or a precept, a new precept, a new commandment I give to you. It's a rule made by the Lord Jesus Christ himself, particularly for his believing people, his believing disciples. But it's illustrated by his own example of love. It was specifically for the regulation and the conduct and the inner attitude of his believing disciples. Towards him, but towards each other. And towards those outside of the kingdom yet, but will be drawn in. And the commandment, this new commandment springs from love. Love from the Father to the Son, and a corresponding response from the Son to the Father in love. And over and over again in the Scriptures we see this, this relationship of God the Father and God the Son, a loving, deep relationship. Love from the Son to his people then, and their response to him, must be shown in their love for each other, first of all, as well as for others around. And that is the unique privilege we have, brothers and sisters in Christ, of expressing love one towards another. Why then is it a new commandment? Is it something revolutionary? Has the Lord Jesus inaugurated a completely new kind of love of men and women for others? Well, the answer is given to us in the word that the Lord Jesus Christ uses. Mentioned, it's the word entele for new, commandment. If he had used something brand new, he would have used another word, nea. But he didn't. He used the word kaine, which means fresh, like a new day, like a morn, a refreshing dawn in all its beauty, and altogether desirable, a new commandment. You see, there had already been a commandment for God's people that required love from the people of God for their neighbours. And they knew from their Old Testament, from Leviticus chapter 19 and verse 18, thou shalt not avenge nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. I am the Lord. And love for God. And love for one's neighbour is a summary of God's holy law. Mark chapter 12. Jesus answered him, the first of all the commandments is, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, with all thy strength. This is the first commandment. And the second is like namely this, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is no other commandment greater than these, says the Lord Jesus Christ. Now sometimes we have to admit that we react against rules, regulations and commandments There's something in the human soul that does not like to obey. We do not like to be told what to do. But we human beings need directions. We need order in our lives. Outside a large office block in a big city, there was a spacious open car park. And it was winter and snow had fallen overnight. And a worker who had got in to work without a car that morning was high up in the office block and looked down at this car park. And he was watching his colleagues coming into the car park, trying to park their cars in a neat and an orderly fashion, but they couldn't. There was snow on the ground. And there was then something else for him to notice, that the cars as they were being parked were parked in a very haphazard, disorderly Way, strange ways, crooked ways, sideways, one inch from the next car or four feet away from the other car. And then lunchtime came and a thaw had set in and that snow had disappeared. And people were able to see the lines that had been painted on the ground for their orderly parking in their car park. And they noticed how terribly far off they were in their parking. Because the lines in that car park gave order. It gave peace to the car park. Without the lines, there were chaos, with a mess of cars facing in every direction. Well, my friends, there's another set of lines. to provide us with peace and order in our lives. The Word of God, the Scripture, which is before you in the pew on your laps this evening as you have it open. And the Word of God that is Scripture leads us to listen to and to obey the example and the commandment that the Lord Jesus Christ left for disciples, for us. And we find peace and comfort and, of course, this order, Deuteronomy 26, verse 16, This day the Lord thy God hath commanded thee to do these statutes and judgments. Therefore shalt thou keep them and do them with all thine heart and with all thy soul. And yes, the Lord Jesus Christ gave a new commandment. But you might be asking, well, where is the newness? If it is there in the Old Testament, if it was there for the Jewish people, if it was there for those believers in those days, where is the newness in what the Lord Jesus Christ has told them? Well, you recall what is written in the Torah, in the Deuteronomy passage, the Leviticus passage, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. What is different? It is what the Savior has said here. You are to love as I have loved you. It is as he has loved them that he calls them to love one another. And his way of loving is different. His example is constant. He tells us not to love once, but to go on loving. to keep on loving in a self-sacrificing way of loving. It's a love that puts one's own interests to one side in order to love another. It's a love that shelves hurts and offenses. It is one that ignores humiliation. And it loves in spite of it, whatever has happened. The Christian believer loves and should go on loving brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ because Christ did. As I have loved you. From his conception, through his incarnation, through his earthly ministry, Ultimately, his death on the cross at Calvary. He could have come with a begrudging obedience to the Father, having been sent in that covenant, that eternal covenant, to come and die for his people. He could have come saying, I have to go because I've agreed to go, because I'm supposed to go, because this is what the second person in the Trinity has to do, because if those people are going to be saved, I ought to go. And it is my duty to go and to love. But no, he had to endure men's unkindness and rudeness and their insults and their refusals to understand them, him. And yet that was furthest from his mind as he loved his people, willingly giving himself for them, yielding himself on the cross. And so he had every right to command them to love one another as he had loved them. This was to be their pattern. Those disciples gathered around him. their attitude, their commitment of relationship in community to one another. So how is this to apply to us today? We see the principle, love one another as I have loved you. My friends, voluntary obedience to this commandment is absolutely vital for the spiritual welfare of all disciples and all the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the hinge on which all these other one-anothering texts turn. Love one another. Do you find it easy? It's hard, isn't it? Why is that? What is wrong with us? Why is it so hard to love? Oh yes, we have a measure of love in our lives, a measure of devotion, a measure of esteem for each other. But do we love as Christ loved without self-giving love? If you say, I find it very easy to love my brothers and sisters I have to ask you, do you really know your own soul? Do you not know of that selfishness that resides in each one of us in our souls? That old nature that loves to raise itself up? That old nature that loves itself more than others? Love one another as I have loved you. And the Lord Jesus Christ knows these souls of ours. And therefore he goes on in the next verse to repeat his commandment and to give them further evidence of his heart filled with love for these men. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples if ye have love one to another. If you demonstrate it, people will know that you're truly born again a Christian. someone who loves Christ, because you can show it in the outworking of your love towards your brothers and sisters. This was the new commandment, and to be worked out in the disciples' lives. So genuine, deep-seated, constant, and self-sacrificing love for one another, that is the distinguishing trait of the true Christian. Let me say that again. Genuine, constant, deep-seated and self-sacrificing love for one another is the distinguishing trait of the true Christian. Oh, my brothers and sisters, how far we fall short. How much then we need this word from the Lord. For if we are to have any fellowship in the Gospel, any fellowship in the Church of Jesus Christ, it needs to be undergirded, underpinned and shot right through with this kind of love, Christ-like love. And it is by the outward manifestation of the wonderful quality of selfless love by the disciples of the Master that those disciples can expect to exert an influence on the world. So that men will begin to recognise that these Christians not only belong to Christ but they belong to each other. And they belong to no one else because there is that wonderful love. And everyone ought to be able to see Christ in the Christian, see the love of Christ in the Christian. Oh, my brother, my sister, can people see Christ in you, in me? What a question to ask. What a question to go home with tonight. Can people see the love of Christ in my soul? No excuses. But you don't know how they've treated me. Can they see Christ in you? You don't know what she said to me. Can they see Christ in you? You don't know how I've been so badly treated. Can they see Christ in you? Tertullian said in about AD 200 these words, but it is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us. See, they say, how they love one another, for they themselves are animated by mutual hatred. See how they are ready even to die for one another, for they themselves will rather be put to death. This new commandment is for us. And I say us because it is a new commandment for me. and for all of us who name the name of Christ. It has big implications for our fellowship one with another. It has implications for our evangelism. There are other one-another texts that will take our attention this weekend. But our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, was not commanding us, his followers, to do anything more than he himself has already done for us in giving himself. Why should we love one another? Christ said love one another because it indicates that we are in Christ and that his Holy Spirit dwells within us. This is his commandment, writes John in the third chapter of his first letter. that we should believe on the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as he gave us commandment. And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us by the spirit which he hath given us. What is it to know and to believe in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ? It is to know, first of all, who Jesus Christ is, and to know His wonderful name. What a name He has, a glorious name, Jesus, Saviour. And to be a Saviour, one must be motivated by some drive to save someone else. And that drive in our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, is that drive of love, a sacrificial love. And his name is love in that his name, Jesus, means that he will save his people from their sins. And this he has done, praise his name for that. And to discern Christ as we believe in him is to have an intellectual appreciation of him, of his person, of his character, of his personality, of his attributes, to know who he is. this wonderful Redeemer and Saviour. We learn these things from His Word, the written record of His life, and we learn it through the salvation experience, which is ours through faith. And so I ask tonight, is this your experience? Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ? I didn't say, do you know about Him? I said, do you know Him? Is there a personal relationship that you have with Him? If you realise that you're a sinner, you're made in God's image, but you have an image that has been marred, which shows itself in selfishness and the breaking of his holy commandments. And that selfishness means that you have loved, but you've loved yourself and not the Lord God. And if you've realised this, and if you've turned in repentance to the Lord and asked his pardon and forgiveness, then you begin to experience the love of Christ in your own soul. But if you haven't, you'll never be able to practice this one-anothering that I speak of and particularly this loving one another without faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. So what is it to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and his name? It is to have proved to be the him, to be our own personal saviour. And so we can only be a Christian if we become conscious of our sin and turn to him in repentance and faith. Conscious of the judgement and wrath of God that is upon us and that will take us to hell unless we turn to Christ. We also prove him as we believe of knowing him. in a personal way that is Him who is able to effectively carry out the work of salvation in our soul. And Him alone, there is no other way. He was prepared to come from the foundation of the world to save our souls. To believe in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ then is to actually receive Him into our hearts as Saviour, as our Redeemer and as our Lord. He has delivered us, therefore, when we become a Christian and we know that we've been delivered from the awful, terrible judgment and has brought our souls into an experience of salvation that we could never have acquired for ourselves. And to believe on Christ is to trust him with all of our hearts and to rely on him for everything, yes, everything here on earth and for the glory that is to come. I wonder if we're able to say tonight with Paul, and I say these things because I don't know you all. There may be some in the congregation still yet unconverted, a younger person, someone who's been attending and not yet converted, and I say this to you. You need to say this, for I know whom I have believed. And I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I've committed unto him against that day. And so the text says that we should believe in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. So having believed in him, what does he say next in 23, the third verse of 1 John 3? This is his commandment, we should believe on the name of his son Jesus Christ and love one another as he gave us commandment. That is the second part of this commandment here. Love one another as he gave us in commandment. And so we live in God through this happy relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. But more than this, we are to have a conscious awareness of that spiritual union that he gives us as believers, union with him through the Lord Jesus Christ. Because you see, the Lord God by his Son lives in us through obedience as we obey him. As we come to his word and read it, we have faith that is fixed on him and him alone, and it is by the work of his Holy Spirit. One commentator calls it the trial of divine inhabitation, that is receiving Christ, receiving him by his Holy Spirit. And since then we're inhabited by the Lord God, who is love in his character. God is love. Then we should act as the sons and daughters of God and reflect our Father's character and love one another. And as I said earlier, it's a challenge to us to ask, are we doing this? Is Christ living in us? Is he living that life of love through us? How can we show love one to another? It can be perhaps on the level of simple friendship, of regard one for another, of being glad to see each other's faces, of greeting one another, of exhorting one another. of being ready to go a second mile or a third mile for one another, of being ready to serve, of submit, of praying one for another. This is why this one, which will lead us to the others, is so fundamental and basic. Is it hard for you to understand perhaps the possession? of the Lord Jesus Christ of our souls when we become a Christian. Perhaps you never quite understood that. Well, there's a story about a young boy walking along with his dad along the beach who was a minister. And the boy questioned his father about Sunday sermon. And the boy asked him this, Dad, I cannot understand how Christ can live in us and we live in him at the same time. So he'd heard these expressions. Christ living in us, and us living in Christ. Well, further down the beach, the father noticed an empty bottle, and it had a cork in it. And he took the bottle, and he half-filled the bottle with water, replaced the cork, and then flung the bottle out into the sea. And as they watched the little bottle bob up and down, he said, The sea is in the bottle and the bottle is in the sea. It is a picture of life in the Lord Jesus Christ. You live under the Lordship of Christ and he lives in you. And if he lives in you by his Holy Spirit, he gives you then the capacity to love as he loved. and the duty to love as he loved, the responsibility to love as he loved. So shall all men know, whether they be in the church or even outside of the church, they shall all know that ye are my disciples. My friend, it's a tall order. There are some churches in the world that do not practise the love of the Lord Jesus Christ as he has loved, but they're at each other's throats, that they are seeking to find their own way to have self-esteem and to do all kinds of things that are nothing to do with the love of Jesus Christ. But if you want to be a real church, a real body of the Lord Jesus Christ, then love as Christ loved, with a self-sacrificing love. with putting self to one side and loving others. So as we think of these one another texts, let's see how fundamental is this first one to have been in our thoughts and in our meditation. To have the Lord Jesus Christ each of us in our souls and to allow that love to flow one to another. So may he deal personally with each one of us this weekend. that we might learn how to love and to express it in the ways that these one another texts can show us. To the end that he might be glorified and that love might flow freely in our congregations and then the world will see outside what sort of wonderful, loving saviour Jesus Christ is. Amen, let us pray together.