Father, it's nice to come out early in the morning with our brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, to listen to your word. And we pray, Heavenly Father, that the words that we have just said in this hymn will be a living reality in each one of us. And we pray that during these days, as we're led to think about renewal, that your spirit will renew us in our hearts and in our minds and in our dedication. Now we pray that you'll be with your servant and with us during this time. We ask this for the sake of the Lord Jesus. Amen. Our verse for this week is the 17th verse of the 5th chapter of 2 Corinthians in which Paul makes this remarkable declaration that offers more hope than any single statement I'll know of in all the world. When anyone is united to Christ, he or she is a new creation. The whole life is over and a new life has already begun. Now when Paul uses a little phrase like, if anyone is in Christ and you're familiar with the fact that he over and again uses that little term in Christ, he's really opening up to us the wonderful world of Jesus Christ. And a great blessing that is available for us far this side of heaven. And that is that right here in this world, we can live in a brand new world. And we can start living in that world at any time. And that's the world that is in Jesus Christ. The best place in all this world to live isn't Jackson, Mississippi is wonderful as this place is. In this world, the best place to live is in Jesus Christ in his control, in his care, in his keeping. Now all of us are familiar with the fact that the place is very important to a lot of things. And salvation really depends on where he are. And the place where salvation is is in a person, Jesus Christ. Place means safety for one thing. If you're in a, well, in baseball, if you're on the base, you're safe because that's a place of safety. If you're in a storm and you're in a storm shelter, that's safety because you're in a place of safety. If you're in a bombing raid and you're in a bombing shelter, that's sufficient, you're safe because you're in the place of safety. And it is true that the New Testament certainly teaches that part of salvation is finding safety in Jesus Christ. That is once we come into him, we're safe from the falling of God's judgmental wrath upon us because of our sins. Christ has already borne that for us. Under the cross in Christ, we're delivered from ever receiving the wrath of God in condemnation for our sins. We're in a safe place. Therefore we live in peace. Paul says we've been justified. We've been made pardoned and right in the eyes of God through faith in Jesus Christ. So we're now at peace. We're in a place of safety. But place also determines the quality of life. And I must say that in evangelical Christianity, we put more emphasis on our standing. And the New Testament puts more emphasis on our condition of living. It is true that the New Testament pushes justification. And that's wonderful and great. But it's the life that issues out of that that is really the object of the force of movement in the New Testament. And so in Jesus Christ, we not only have a place that makes us safe and we can feel it peace because our sins are forgiven. But in Jesus Christ, there is the place that determines the quality of life that we'll now live. If you could pull, for instance, over Jackson, Mississippi, over the state of Mississippi, we'll say the climate of the tropics, just pull that climate up to where Mississippi is enveloped in that climate for a while. And you'd begin to see a brand new kind of life growing in the yards and in the fields of Mississippi. You'd find a new kind of foliage and fruit coming. And the New Testament teaches this is just the way it is. When we move into Jesus Christ, we began immediately to live in a new climate. And Paul describes that climate over and over again. And this is one of the wonderful things about living every day, even in Jackson, Mississippi, in the wonderful world of Jesus Christ. The climate is so good. In every letter, just about every letter that Paul writes, he magnifies this climate that the Christian is privileged to live in. It blesses us and it makes us a blessing because we're the happy people then. Paul will go, perhaps the most familiar single place where he sums it up, though I say you'll find it in Ephesians, you'll find it in Colossians, as you find it in first Corinthians and other places. Paul says, now these are the three abiding areas of climate for the Christian. Faith, hope, and love. Just imagine living every day in that kind of climate, a climate of crust in Jesus Christ, a faith that has Jesus Christ, the most wonderful person that ever has been in this world, a constant life of just related to him, related to him interest, a faith, of love, of love for others. Just think of the blessing as of being able to rise in the morning and go through the day and in the day, just loving folks. And that's the climate we Christians live in. A climate that is a love climate that comes from God envelops our own hearts and just radiates out from us. And hope regarding the future, pessimism gone, discouragement gone, fears began to go away. The future is bright with hope. Black Jeremiah said, there is hope in your future. The Christian knows this. Just think about that kind of world. How wonderful it is to move into Christ and suddenly find a brand new world, a world now that is strengthened by a constant faith in the most wonderful person who is right with us. I love for everybody. And I'm sure hope for the future. Encouraged attitude toward the future. But now then while the first of these Paul indicates all along is faith, the greatest of these is love. That's what he says in that thirteenth verse of the thirteenth chapter, first Corinthians. The greatest of these is love. Now faith comes first in this sense that faith is that by which we are introduced to Jesus Christ. But then when Paul starts listing the things that happened to us after we become believers in Christ, love is first. You read that in Galatians chapter 5. He says, now the fruit of the spirit, once you've come into Christ and you're united by the dynamic of faith and the blood of Christ and the spirit of Christ are invading your personality. The first thing that begins to come forth is love. So the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, there that wonderful world in Jesus Christ is again, just a great climate, a great place to live. But love is first. So the first thing that begins to take place in the life of a true believer, of the life that's renewed. The first thing isn't really something spectacular. It isn't going out and winning a thousand people in one day to Jesus because you're a Christian. It isn't going out and performing some great act of righteousness that everybody will see and applaud. The first thing that happens and the best thing that happens and the greatest thing that happens, the Bible says, we become lovers. The Holy Spirit sheds the love of God abroad in our hearts and that love spills on out. Now then that's what we're talking about this morning. The renewed person, the person who's been redeemed in Christ and made a new creation, the Christian who has recognized the laxity of their own relationship to Jesus Christ and gets right with him will have as the greatest thing that comes into his life for his own, her own experience and for the blessing of others. Life that begins to be a fountain of love. But we have to sort of look at that in particular because it's a broad field and we can't take the whole sweep of it this morning. So I'm going to call your attention right now to the way Paul presents it in Colossians chapter one. He's writing to some people he's never known. He did not found the Colossian church. He's writing to Christians, new converts of a paparus. He's heard about their conversion. He's thrilled at it. So he writes them a letter and in the beginning of his letter he says this, I thank God for you because we have heard Paul says I've gotten the word a paparus has come and seen me and I know what it is with you. Here's the way I know it is with you. I've heard of your faith which you hold in Christ Jesus and the love you bear toward all God's people. And then it goes on to mention the hope that is stored up for them in heaven. There are the three again. See to this Congress. But love is a thing and we're looking at love now this morning in terms of where it first begins to emerge if we're genuine. Here we see the difference between the faith Christian and the genuine, the true the real love for God's people. That's it. John Calvin explains this. He refers to this statement and the others were in Ephesians. For instance, another place is where Paul talks about a Christian is one who loves fellow Christians. He says we're not to think that this means that the Christian has a love that's just limited to loving fellow Christians. He says what the New Testament certainly teaches us is that our love goes on out to our neighbors on out to others even embracing our enemies and everybody. He says when Paul is writing to Christians and speaking of their love for one another, he's talking about where love naturally, supernaturally arises. First, it's like that in the natural world isn't it? A little baby born into a family. First of all, learns to love the members of the family, mother and father and brothers and sisters. And as a little child, the circle of love of that child will begin to embrace uncles and aunts and cousins and finally friends and neighbors. And the circle of love and affection even in the natural world grows and broadens as one matures. So it is in the spiritual world. When we're born again, the first expression of love begins to go out toward our father and all our brothers and sisters. And that's what Paul is talking about here when he tells East Colossians, I've got the word on you. You're already showing that initial love. You're loving one another. And so that's the kind of love that we're really talking about here and the initial love. Now then the example of this, I just say this. This is an important thing we're talking about for this reason. It does also seem to be easier for us to show the love we have for people who aren't in our families better. It does seem to me, and I'm just speaking for the way my own heart reacts and what I believe I've seen maybe in others a lot of times, I believe it's easier for Christians to be loving toward pagans than it is for Christians. Just like it is, a lot of times it's easier for a father or mother to be more gracious and kind towards somebody else's children than their own. A husband often is more courteous to the neighbor's wife than his own. It really is a, this is something that we have to pay attention to. And there's something bad about that. Here's a man who lives next door to another family. This man is, he's harsh to his wife and he's mean there. Any children kicks him around and abuses him. That's not that he doesn't love them. He probably does, but I mean, it doesn't come out. It isn't seen. And the next door neighbor sees that. But another thing the next door neighbor sees is that the man is very kind to him. Very courteous and gracious. Always speaks very kindly to his wife and is a very courteous toward his children. And so this, this pagan over this man who lives next door is conscious of the fact that this fella expresses a loving attitude toward him and his wife and his children, but he doesn't do it toward his own. And that makes him lose his respect for that person. Now he's glad that he gets treated well by it. But down in his heart, though he may never say anything about it, he notes it that guy's peculiar. And you know, that's the way people on the outside look at us. When they see us not manifesting a patient enduring constant love toward one another, but we're very kind to the pagan. We're trying to win the Christ. We're very gracious to all the people we work with. I went into a barber shop about three weeks ago in a town where I'm not known. I just pulled in. I wouldn't dress like a preacher. I drove up in a car that a preacher ordinarily didn't drive and parked right in front of it. And I went in and there were three men engaged in conversation along with a barber who was the fourth. And I sat down in the chair. They didn't know me. It didn't make a better difference. I sat there and listened to him for about 15 minutes to discuss particularly one church in that neighborhood. And then it spilled on over to other churches. I could tell from the conversation that none of these men seemed to be actively associated with any church. And I know they may have been excusing themselves. But that church they were talking about, which was just a short distance from the barber shop, evidently was engaged in some sort of internal dissection. And things were going kind of badly. Well, I'll tell you, these guys didn't go to church, but then you all about it. And they were talking about it and being highly critical. And what I got for 15 minutes is the typical American pagans attitude, I guess, toward those of us in the church when they see this kind of thing. It's odious. So it's important what we're talking about here. Well, now then the example of this you see is Jesus Christ himself. So now I'm going to switch back to John chapter 13. You remember to end the chapter and all of this that takes place in John 13 and 14 takes place at the large supper table. Jesus is gathered with the 12 apostles. And in the course of his discourse with them, this is what Jesus says to them. He says, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another as I have loved you. There it is. I give you a new this is the first evidence of the new like obedience to this new commandment. A new commandment I give on. I really don't think that loving one another is the new commandment here because it's in the Old Testament, too. But the new part of it is this I think. I give you a new commandment. Love one another as I have loved you. Now Jesus is saying the new thing is I want you to treat one another the way you see me treating you. Well, now then look what he said. John tells us right at the beginning of chapter 13 as they go up to the Lord. It says this it was before the Passover festival. Jesus knew that his hour had come and he must leave this world and go to the Father. He had always loved his own who were in the world. And now he was to show the full extent of his love and he did it right there at that table. I don't think we ever see a greater manifestation of Jesus' love-rece people than you see at the Lord's supper table. I don't know what your idea about the Lord's supper is. I mean that original one. If you think about it as a sweet, peaceful oasis, right in the midst of a stormy time for our Lord and his disciples just before the cross, then you've missed it all. It wasn't a quiet, sweet time. We're told two times once those disciples were distressed. Secondly, another time we're told in the gospel they were disturbed. We're told that Jesus was in great distress. I'll tell you that was never a more trouble time than that time at the Lord's supper table. That was no sweet oasis of peace. I'll tell you if the storm was brewing anywhere it was there. Our Lord was even troubled. Well there was reason for all of this. Here's the reason. Jesus has spent three years with these men. They'd had the best that he had to give. Now then he gathers with him at the table and Luke tells us that even as they come up and sit at the table they get into an argument about who's the greatest. Now it has started before James and John were sort of the problem there. They had maneuvered for top places in the kingdom, got their mother involved in it. She went to Jesus and pled for them to have top places. The other disciples heard about it and I'd meet everybody made. Now this is going on when they go up to the Lord's supper room. Luke tells us they're still arguing at the table about who's the greatest. You can imagine what grief this is to Jesus and how unhappy it made them to be vying with one another. Listen the seed of the first church problem was right there. Not only that as Jesus explained to them one of their number would betray him that very night. Oh that disturbed them very much. Their first reaction was healthy. They said is it eyes and eye but they got over that real quickly and then they began to look at what it's him and suspicion ran across the table as they eyed one another with suspicion. Trouble time. Then Jesus a little later not right then told them what he knew though and here's what he knew. Not one of those disciples would stand with him in the three trials he would go through with in the next few hours. These men had been with him three years. He poured the blessings of fondament in them and there wouldn't be a one of them that would bear witness for him. Not one. They'd run as he put it. They'll run like scared sheep and he knew they would. They didn't but he did. He knew that sea about those men and then the spokesman and sort of the leader Peter. When Jesus said you know talked about this. Peter said, well Lord I'd be willing to die before I deny you and then Jesus really upset the whole crowd when he made a direct reference to Peter in front of them. He said this night before the cock crows three times you will deny me what you did. I'm telling your friends how did Jesus feel about all of this? How did he feel? Wouldn't you have thought this would they were failing the finals? They didn't pass the question. They'd been with him in seminary three years and they were flunking everything that night and he was going to the cross and on out of this world. You'd have thought that would have been a time when Jesus would have made a whip and beaten them and just laced them and said I won't die for you. If this is the best I'm gonna get out of the world. But he didn't do that. You know what he said? I'm sorry there's a chapter division between the last verse of 13 chapter and the first verse of the 14 chapter because the last verse right at the end of 13 he's telling Peter three times you'll deny me this night but he goes right on to say but let not your hearts be troubled. I'm gonna get you to heaven anyway that's what he tells. I'm telling you this is patience beyond measure. Jesus is displaying his love how the perfect one is able to accommodate himself to such imperfect disciples and not kick them out and not write them off. I can't understand how he treated Judas. Judas was not really one of them. He was a child of perdition from the beginning and Jesus knew it but he never really publicly exposed him at the table everything he said was calculated to make Judas pause. He said one of you will betray me better that that man had never been born. Jesus was not trying to condemn him. I think he was saying the word that might bring Judas to his senses and it didn't. From the synoptic gospels and I believe also the fourth gospel it can't be proven that Judas was not there when the elements were served. It does appear that Jesus didn't even think him off from the communion the first time it was served. It does say in John that after he'd taken the bread he went out and it was night. I can't understand Jesus patients with him. I know it was predestined that he'd be the betrayer but I'm talking about another element here. Jesus is showing his love and John flies the banner over this at the beginning of this description. Put a patient love he had and when Judas finally came and that final act of humiliation all Jesus had to do was point him out that night to the soldiers. He did a bizarre thing. He even went up and gave the betrayal with the kiss and Jesus said to him, friend, what are you doing? Almost one final appeal for Judas to even then as far as he'd gone there was forgiveness available. I'm just telling you friends that justice must be tempered with mercy and discipline must be tempered with the example of Jesus Christ and he went the limits. His toleration point is intolerable to us and he was perfect and we show intolerance toward imperfect people out of our own imperfection and so this is the love that is the birth of love in the Christian's heart and the ability to live with imperfect Christians in peace. Paul goes on to the Colossians and makes a further statement that I think is illuminating here. The love that we're called to display with the reason it's such a wonderful thing is it really isn't living just people that we like. It's living in the fellowship of the church, people who disappoint us, people who don't do like we like them to do and you see just what Jesus was manifesting here. Now then it also means we're loving people who are different from us. We wish they were like us and they're like that and so Paul talks about that in Colossians at the third chapter when he picks this love theme up again and he's just above that he said now we're constantly being renewed in the image of our Creator Christ and then that leads him to say this then if that's true put on the garments that suit God's chosen people, his own, his beloved that is put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, spacious. Now that's what love is into feeling. Love isn't a feeling. The Bible never talks about how you feel in love. Here's what love is. It's compassion and kindness, humility, generally. It's how you do. Love is the way you do with people. Before bearing with one another and forgiving where anyone has calls for complete, you must forgive us the Lord forgave you to crown it all. There must be love to bind all together in complete harmony. There's the word. The kind of love that the New Testament is talking about for those of us who are Christians is the love that creates a harmony by God's electing graces. We talk about it but we don't practice, you know, we don't follow his example. God has set a marvelous example for us in his electing grace. In his electing grace he just moves out to all different kind of people. He just overflows into every area. He gets all kinds of people and brings them together in one fellowship in the church and he does it without even taking the differences away. All colors, all races, all ages, all sexes, all kinds of people. He brings them together. They don't even share the same ideas a lot of times. And he puts them together in one fellowship and then the Holy Spirit comes to give a love that will make a great testimony to the world and that is different people can live together and be different and still not be divided but be united. It's the harmony. Harmony requires, there's a beauty in that. If every key on the organ, every key on the piano was just a C note, you couldn't get any music out of it. I would be uniformity but there wouldn't be any harmony. On a trip to Greece not several years ago, we were taken to see the Parthenon, a young Greek woman was our guide and she stopped us some distance away. We could see the outline of the building, the matchless pillars there, columns. She said, look at these and decide in your mind whether they're equal distance apart or whether they're different distances apart those columns. They looked at me like they were all the same distance, you know, I didn't speak it out because I knew she must be some trick in this. But anyway, and it was because she said, well, they're not the same distance apart. She said, they're different distances apart but they look like they're the same. But she said, I'm getting you the first lesson in the Greek concept of beauty. In the Greek concept of beauty, it isn't uniformity, it's harmony. I think that's the beauty that is to be seen in the beauty of the church. God brings different people together and we begin to accept one another and Paul put it like this, when anyone is accepted by Christ, you accept. And we begin to live in a foreign balance which means, I'll bear with you even if you don't get just like I want you to get. And I'll love you and be kind and gracious with you as you will with me. And when this spirit pervades the church, the world gets the idea there must be something to this. We wouldn't have, listen, the church hasn't taught anybody yet that if you became a Christian, you wouldn't have wars. But we ought to be teaching that lesson. We ought to be the, that's why Jesus and John 17 poured out his heart to God when he started praying. He said, Father, first of all, I pray that you praying for those you've given me out of the world, that you keep them one like we are. And when he comes to the end of his prairie, he comes back to that and then he adds to a apologetical statements. He says, Father, make them one and he's now praying for those who will believe on the basis of those original disciples. I pray for them also, he said, Father, I pray that they'll be one as we are one, that the world may believe that you sent me and then he repeats it, that the world may know. I had a lady asked me within the last couple of months, she said, why is it if God is sovereign and the spirit is active and we've got a wonderful gospel, the church hasn't made more headway in 2000 years and we made. If God is sovereign and the gospel is true and the spirit is active, why haven't we made more headway? Now that's a good question to ask. One thing I thought of was what Jesus said. Jesus seemed to throw the whole weight of the evangelistic success of the church on the demonstration we gave that Jesus Christ can take all kinds of people and put them together and fashion a beautiful unity in a family. But you see we've interrupted that with secondary election. We kind of, we don't rule out God's election because we can't but we alter it down here at the earth level. So we gather in our churches, people who are just like us, same color, same class. More of the same ideas than Jesus ever required. And so we've got, you know, we've got, the harmony isn't there. We've got all the senotes over here and all the other notes here and other notes here and no harmony is coming. Competition if anything. And Jesus said, this ought to be something that the pagan world, not the spiritual people, it isn't a spiritual unity. He's talking about a display of a loving accommodation for Christian, for Christian that the world can recognize and know that something supernatural is at work here. And the display isn't our living the lost, it's living the saved. It's our ability to love one another and be kind and gracious to one another. And to be honest and truthful with one another in love and be bound together in this beautiful harmony, that's what we're called to. And if you've been called to be a Christian, that's the first thing Christ is interested in in our lives. And many of us have been Christians for a long time and we've been violating this all up and down. We're critical and and and hurtful and there are people perhaps in this very congregation that we've said cutting things to as imperfect as we are. We have acted unloving toward them. We've said in judgment they disappoint us. We don't think they do like they ought to do. Oh I'll tell you, revival would start and the attention of the world would come if Christians got right with Christians that they've sinned against by unloving words, unloving attitudes and unloving acts. And any other kind of display of righteousness is superficial until this kind of harmony comes in the congregation in the church at large. So we are talking about a salvation that has very practical results right down here on earth and brings great happiness and blessing when it's real. In our Heavenly Father we thank you and praise you. For the fact that to guarantee that it's possible for us to begin living like that, even if imperfectly, to begin to get a start on it. Having been justified by faith, now the Holy Spirit is shedding abroad in our hearts the love of God so that we can pour it out toward others. God help us to do it and make this part of our new life so obvious Lord that we'll enjoy life better and everybody else will enjoy us better and forgive us dear God for our failure. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.