Let us pray. Heavenly Father, everything about you is good. And we thank you that what you have made is good. Lord, we thank you that your purpose in all you have made and done is good. And we thank you that in Christ Jesus you have made us good. Father we thank you that you have put your good spirit in us. That we may indeed, as Martin has beautifully written, bear the fruit of the Spirit. We therefore thank you that your commandments are good. and we have relished in their goodness and affirm it. In this our final study we pray that you will continue to enlighten our hearts with every good and perfect word and work. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. So my friends, we come to study number five. To conclude our series, we come to the fifth of these commandments. Let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and truth. The context of this fifth commandment is as follows in John's first letter. By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. So love is in deed and in truth, in action. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth. Now the word for deed in the Greek is orge, from which we get all those words organise and all those work action words, because orge means work, or if you like, action. As Eliza Doolittle put it, don't talk of love. She might have had something else in mind. We sometimes speak of someone walking the talk. The idea of work or works has in evangelical circles tended to be associated mainly with St Paul's assertion that we are justified by faith and not by works. As Paul says in Romans 4, to the one who does not work, but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. Now, while this is absolutely true in relation to the action that brings us reconciliation with God, which is the work of Christ, it is not meant to imply that a believer is to be anything other than as Tabitha of Joppa was, which was full of good works and acts of charity. She was full of it. Indeed, what is important, says Paul, is faith working through love. Again, if we follow this theme through the New Testament, we find that Christian women are to profess godliness with good works and are to have a reputation for good works, bringing up children, showing hospitality, caring for the afflicted, devoting themselves to every good work. issues there, most of the active women today work in paid work. But nevertheless, I believe there is a womanly gift which is unique and wonderful and precious. The believers are to do good and to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share. Paul instructed Titus, who was leading the church in Crete, to show yourselves in all respects to be a model of good works. He instructed Titus that all the believers are to devote themselves to good works, which is excellent and profitable. I'll just go back through those, so full of good works, profess godliness with good works, have a reputation for good works, devoting ourselves to every good work, rich in good works, to be a model of good works and to devote ourselves to good works. So clearly this is a very real part of Christian life and faith. time of the commencement of the evangelical revival of which Wesley, Whitfield and others were known, the Christian church in England was at an all-time low and the works of Christians were not necessarily good, especially leaders and priests and so on. And the movement that began and came to be known as the Methodists picked up on this with the understanding that the Biblical faith actually generated itself into active good behaviour, right behaviour and good works. And so the Methodists were very diligent to ensure that their faith did carry through into that. And if you look up the original rules for the people called Methodist, they were explicit in ensuring that their people did as the scriptures were telling us in this respect, that this counts, was what they were saying. Jesus himself made it very clear that neither hearing nor speaking are adequate without doing. He said, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but the one who does, the will of my Father who is in Heaven. And you remember he said that he who hears these words of mine and does them, He it is who builds his house on the rock. When the Risen Lord is speaking through John to the churches of Asia, He says to several of the churches, I know your works. Then He says something about that church's works. For example, He says, I know your works, your love and faith and service and patience and endurance. and that your latter works exceed the first. You're actually getting into it and becoming more effective and efficient. To each of the churches his exhortation is for them to live out their faith practically and consistently. Couch potato Christianity is not an option. It's an active, diligent, deliberate life, which was the intention of the early Methodists as I illustrated. Would you like to pause there and see whether there are any comments or reflections on that? It's profitable for all. I don't think income earning is not his intention. Advises the cause. He advises the cause. Thank you. Happy to continue. And secondly John says we are to love in deed and in truth. John addresses his second and third letters to believers whom I love in truth. What does it mean to love in truth? The Greek word for truth is aletheia, which has the sense of the reality behind the appearance, authenticity if you like, genuineness. Consequently it has the meaning of genuineness and integrity of character. Jesus says of his father, he who sent me is true, is authentic, is faithful. This is in contrast to the hypocrites that Jesus spoke of. Won't you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, will you clean the outside of the cup and the plate but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. So if we're thinking in terms of the reality behind the appearance, that is found wanting. The Greek word hypokrisis, which is our transliterated word hypocrite, means wearing a mask and acting a part. Now in Roman and Greek plays of that era, the players would often assume a particular character with a hand-held mask, hold it up and be that person. I may actually have two of these and be different characters in the play. So here you have the mask, but it's really someone else behind. So the hypocrite is someone who pretends to be someone or something that they are really not. I often say that the first law of Adam is do your own will rather than God's. But closely following it is the second law of Adam. If you can't be good, the next best thing is to look good. Which is very deeply ingrained in us, isn't it? What will the neighbours think? Sadly then, hypocrisy is a great burden to the whole human race and even to the witness of God's people. Or as it is written, it says Paul, the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. And he was speaking of the Jews as God's people, the people of the name, and sadly we are painfully aware in our day that principle sadly still applies. By contrast, Jesus faithfully demonstrated the character, genuineness and integrity of true love. We see His genuine love in action on the cross. In the midst of His pain and suffering, He interceded for those who crucified Him by praying, Father forgive them for they know not what they do. He then ministered grace to the penitent thief and said to him, truly I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise. And finally he made provision for his mother to be looked after by his beloved disciple John. A good day's work really. The character of God so shone through Jesus in his death. that when the centurion who stood facing him saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, truly this man was the son of God. So there you have two contrasting demonstrations of behaviour, one which being a pretense leads the world to blaspheme the name of God because of his people, the other which rings true. In Australia we might say that Jesus was fair dinkum or true blue. I think that authenticity is a really big issue and factor and dynamic for God's people in every age. We can think of positive and negative illustrations of that. Now I know that it's a justification but probably the most common reason for not going to church is that those who do are a bunch of I say it again, I know that there is a self-justification, but that it could ever be said. Let us weep. And one of the things I think I said last week, it's hard being a clergyman and watching TV and films because they are all such dodos or hypocrites or whatever. But so often the Christians, or the Christian in films today, are portrayed as hypocritical. And I think that's the world justifying itself and hating God, but that they could ever make it credible is through our Shagram. Would that the public would say, no that's not right. That's not the way the Christians are that I know. This film lacks credibility. But that they could get away with that accusation is food for thought. Both Peter and Paul encourage the believers to love in a way that is genuine and sincere. Let love be genuine, says Paul. Abhor what is evil. Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection, having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth of the gospel for a sincere brotherly love. Love one another earnestly from a pure heart, a heart made pure by a cleansed conscience, the washing with the water of the word. The word sincere here is an hypocrisis, literally without hypocrisy. Our souls are purified by our obedience to the truth of the Gospel for a brotherly love that is without hypocrisy. We are then, as we have seen, commanded to love in deeds, actions, works and in truth, in genuineness. Does anyone want to respond to what John is saying to us? And that is indeed what we have been finding in these That's right. And we love because He first loved us. And we love as He is loving us. we love with the love that he is loving us with. Thanks for that. So to come back to the point that I made in the first study, we could never see the commandments of God, particularly commandments to love, as simply a raw and bare moral directive. This is what you've got to do folks. Because it would be like getting blood out of the stomach. Can you do too much in the area of good works? Yes, that's right. The good works which God has prepared for us to do. And I think too we came up against this point at some time through the studies that We love and we act in response to the directives and leadings of the Holy Spirit. You can't just say, OK, I'm going to do mass good works. I'm just going to go crazy with good works. That is a selfism of the first order. And there's too much to do out there. Q. Yes, that's what I'm leading up to. It has to be spiritually inspired. I am personally hugely disappointed and anguished that our only public newspaper, daily paper in South Australia, devotes one to two pages with adverts at about page 30 to 40 to the world. You get to the world after the gossip, after the opinion, and what they've got on the world is usually about royalty or some actress or something. It really is morally bankrupt. And ten pages on the sport. Only ten? That's pretty poor. Absolutely. So where I'm going with this is to say, I think in the next 30 to 50 years, humanity is going to face an absolute moral dilemma in relation to human need. because it seems to me that it is just expanding exponentially and one of the responses to population intensity is genocide. And I think we're just going to be faced with wave upon wave of human need and we're going to have to ask your question over and over again. And we need Geoff's answer. Well, St Paul's actually. Geoff borrowed it. But yes, I think if we have marked out for ourselves any sort of secure, protected dream of affluence, I think we need to forget it. Because to maintain that isolation you will have to lose your soul. You will have to die to any moral sensitivity to the needs of your fellow human beings. But then being open to them, you will need to exercise restraint and an accurate understanding of your resources and limitations. I see lots of nods with that. You're not going to save the world, right? And it's important, I think, to understand that the world remains firmly in God's hand and His direction towards His goal. I think that was a useful interlude. The scriptures say that we are to put on love and to walk in love. God's creation is a place of reality and action and His commandments are the living ways of the living God in His living creation. We in the Western world are more and more being offered a virtual reality, we call it virtual which is a lie, it's not anywhere near virtual. It's a counterfeit reality and you can live in relation to electronic stimuli of experiences and actually escape the real world. Just climb on a bus and look at all the people playing with their mobile phones. It's like there is no one else there. It's a strange feeling. A really impish little boy in me rises up. The only place I get on the bus or train is in Sydney. That's usually trains. And every person jumps on, gets the phone out. So I feel like saying, G'day everybody. Because it's such a denial of reality. So God's commandments are the living ways of the living God and His living creation. True love is incarnate or embodied. Our living then is to be clothed with love. Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Over all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. I'm old enough now to know what the grumpy old man syndrome feels like. And part of that is that when it comes to people, quite often you just assume they're not. And I think we have to resist that. quite deliberately. Whereas I can remember earlier days, in some ways I couldn't get enough of people. I was out there, go, go, go. Another thing that happens to us is that I think we can easily take on a largely sedentary life as an older person. My dad's just gone into permanent aged care in Victor Harbor. and prior to going in he used to very determinedly as a 91 year old drive his car down to the foreshore at Encounter Bay and walk a kilometre up and back on the foreshore to maintain his mobility. So now he's in aged care he can't do that, so he does it around the corridors, round and round until he's done this kilometre, because he doesn't want to lose his mobility. And I think as older people we need to study not to lose our active loving, because the carcass will say, let's not today. Again the scripture says we are to walk in love. The Greek word for walk is peripatio, literally to tread our way around. around, a patio, a bit like pat-a-pat-a-pata really, or to go about in love. So walk in love, says Paul, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. So we are to go about, we are to maintain our mobility and we are to go about in love. The greatest gift of love. In his great little book, Where I Love I Live, Geoffrey Bingham has said, Love is caring enough for another to discern that one's needs, and then caring enough to go through to try to supply them. Love is the deed that meets the need. James gives us an example of how that should but often doesn't work. If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food and one of you says to them, go in peace, be warmed and filled, without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? Taking this further, we can see that for human beings who have been created in the image of the relational God, Our greatest need is for the other person. That is, someone who, in relating to us, gives themselves to us in love relationship. As fallen human beings, our self-life includes loneliness, isolation, guilt, self-deprecation, fear and doubt. Is that true? That's the spin-offs of being a sinner. There is therefore a kind of other person who is pure gold to our bruised and fragile personhood. And that is the one who sees us. They have a saying in Africa, I see you, I see you brother, which means I perceive you and the situation you're in and what you're going through. I see you. A person who sees us, understands us, cares for us, affirms us, helps us and gives themselves to us in secure and affirming relationship. What a healing and what a blessing that person is to us. This reminds me of my wife actually. She just seems to do that all the time to so many people. It's the gift of our person that meets the need. This kind of love is certainly the deed that meets the need. How wonderful that God has met that need by giving us that other person in Jesus. He really is that kind of a person to perfection, isn't he? See him sitting down with the woman at the well. So many in her life had withheld themselves from her. But he gave himself to her. Come and see a man who told me all I ever did without condemning me. And how wonderful that in Jesus we can be that person to others in their need. And that is exactly what he tells us to do. Just as I have loved you, so you are to love one another." I think we come to a wholeness in the Lord which gives us a growing confidence that we actually have something to give to other people as a person. That the gift of ourselves in relationship is a genuine gift. I, over the last 14 years, have been a travelling itinerant preacher all over Australia and in the course of that time have been to a couple of hundred different churches. And I've got to tell you that it ain't a bag of laughs being a visitor in Christian churches even if you are the preacher. Because after church people gravitate to their friends who perhaps they haven't seen for a week and busy themselves and the stranger can be, they can have an unmet need. And a lot of the people there would say, well I haven't got anything to give to that person. Let the elders or let the Minister or let the person who is good at that sort of thing. But I think in Christ we become, all of us, a person who has got ourselves to give as a real and genuine benefit to another's need. In his short life from 1561 to 1595, which by mathematics is correct is 34 years, Robert Southlaw was able to encapsulate our theme for this series, and indeed to express how it is in the Kingdom of God. And how it is in the Kingdom of God is, that not where I breathe, but where I love, I live. So that brings us to the end of our five studies. Maybe we've got a minute for any reflections, any things you've been thinking about maybe during these five weeks as a result of this study. It's true, isn't it? I saw a lead line in an article somewhere in the paper this last week. I didn't read it but the lead line was, don't get too close to your heroes because, well you can see why can't you, but you can get close to God because everything about Him is good. Which is very good actually. That's right. Absolutely. And we need to return to that point. In a sense in this last study, The purpose of this study is to face the fact that our faith is a lived out incarnate faith. It is not simply a disposition of conviction that we believe certain things. Now we need to return to the point that you are making that if we are to live that out it has to be the love of God shared abroad in our hearts. But I think this point still needs to be heard by the Church today, that the world is watching and waiting for an authentic witness, probably absolutely hungering and crying out for it actually. Who in the world is true? And they probably won't see that by going to church. They'll see it probably in their ongoing relationship with you person to person. I am encouraged that so often when unbelievers want to turn someone to someone who really cares for them, they will turn to a Christian believer. And someone gave me a story after last week's study. Can you tell it please? Come up here so it gets on the tape. Are you used to standing up in front of a class? A few years ago I was teaching at a school with a principal. She'd been a deputy principal at another southern high school and the principal at that school was an atheist and she knew that Jenny was a Christian. She went out of her way to make life miserable for Jenny. And Jenny thought, what can I do? She did everything she could to make life for the Principal as easy as possible. So she needed a pen or sharpened pencils or paper or a pad or anything. She did it. The Principal became ill and Jenny visited her in the hospital. And eventually it got to the point where she said, could I, would you like, I would like to pray for you, is that OK? And the prince said yes. When they had to make up their minds who was going to be the acting principal, Jenny was the one she wanted. Just showing the love of God to this other person. And that's what it's all about. Let us pray. Father, You have created us in love, for love, and You have, as the Apostle says, shed abroad Your love in our hearts by the Holy Spirit through our Lord Jesus Christ. We give You great thanks for Him He truly Lord is full of love for us and for all people. So wise and so true. And Father we thank you for the Holy Spirit who does well up in us with gifts of compassion and outreaching and joy and affirmation towards other people. So Lord, to obey your commandments is not burdensome to us, rather in Him it is our delight. Save us from the evil one who would tell us otherwise, and save us from ourselves whenever we would seek to do things out of our own power. Bless us all as we go in the truth of these things, in Jesus' name, Amen.