Love God, love people.

[0:00] 1 John chapter 4 is where we're going to start, but we're going to dwell mostly in 1 Corinthians 13.

[0:12] ! So just a heads up there, talking about God's love today. And I don't think we can talk about it enough, the love of God, can we? His great love for us.

[0:23] 1 John 4 verse 8, we'll start there, and then 1 Corinthians 13. So firstly, somewhat of a definition of love, what love looks like, and then as a second part, almost a second sermon, what love in action, love lived out by us is like.

[0:45] So firstly, of God's love, it tells us 1 John 4 verse 8, He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. God is love.

[0:56] And then to 1 Corinthians 13, from verse 4. 1 Corinthians 13, the classic chapter on the love of God, charity, God's love, the love of God.

[1:09] 1 Corinthians 13, from verse 4 through 8, of course there's more we could dwell on there, but just those verses there, from verse 4. 1 Corinthians 13, verse 5.

[1:47] 1 Corinthians 13, ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending ending and these are really the characteristics of God himself aren't they when you think of it of our Saviour we see God's love through these pages of the Bible and especially in this chapter 1 Corinthians 13 it just jumps out at us really we see Jesus here don't we you could even substitute the word charity with the Lord Jesus couldn't you to think that this is just who he is how he is so I'll put to you from 1 Corinthians 13 some seven characteristics of God that we could see here seven characteristics of God and his love really it's the character of Christ we see firstly number one patience patience verse 4 charity suffereth long love waits patiently doesn't it it's very gracious and patient look at the patience of God towards us that he would be so the father of the prodigal he strains his eyes watching waiting persevering his heart yearning for his son that's the love that God shows to us isn't it so long suffering towards us we think of 2 Peter 3 verse 9 the Lord is not slack concerning his promise as some men count slackness but is long suffering to us but not willing that any should perish

[3:39] God's patience isn't it towards us God's patience as the father for the lost son as as God reaching out through Noah's preaching they had 120 years God is long suffering he's patient he's patient so love is patient love is kind we see verse 4 love is kind think of the kindness of God for a moment see the kindness and compassion of God as we see Titus 3 4 in part the kindness and love of God our Savior toward men appeared the kindness of God think of our Lord as he talks with the woman caught in adultery in John 8 he shows such kindness and wisdom he tells her that he does not condemn them go and sin no more God's kindness was there projected through the Savior God's kindness and it's seen vitally to us in what the Lord Jesus accomplished at that Mount Calvary on that rugged cross his kindness his kindness his great kindness what kindness consider his kindness to his very enemies what extent he went to to show his love his loving kindness as Romans 5 8 tells us but God commended his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us kindness unmerited undeserved what patience what love what kindness thirdly what humility verse 4 think of the humility that characterizes God's love those for love love

[5:21] It's not puffed up. Witness the humility of God. God became man and dwelt amongst us. The witness of the humility of God, the demonstration of his absolute love towards us.

[5:34] Philippians 2.8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even to death of the cross. Humbled himself even to the death of the cross.

[5:48] There was a European king who, a couple of times a year, would garb himself in the peasant's robes. He took off his royal robes and came dressed as a peasant to live down amongst his people.

[6:00] And he would go out amongst his people. And his advisors said, this is not really safe. They were worried about him. But the king said, I cannot rule my people unless I know how they live.

[6:14] And so he was willing to come as a humble villager and live amongst his people for a time so he could see how they lived. He could experience their life. He humbled himself.

[6:25] But think of our Lord. He humbled himself to be a baby born in a barn, a humble servant to come as we see him in John 13, taking the towel and girding himself and washing dirty feet.

[6:39] The Lord Jesus, he humbled himself. What humility. What love. He went the second mile. He went the third, the fourth, the unteenth mile, didn't he? To come. And so love us.

[6:50] What humility. Such love. Patience. Kindness. Humility. Also, love lives right. We see fourthly, righteousness.

[7:02] Love is expressed in this righteousness that we see the right standing of God. We see the right living of God in Christ displayed. Verse 5.

[7:13] Love does not behave itself unseemly. So in other words, rudely, inappropriately. Love does not behave itself unseemly. Seeketh not her own. Is not easily provoked.

[7:26] Thinketh no evil. Look at all those qualities there. It's astonishing, isn't it? That if we would be such a people filled with God's love, that this should be in us too.

[7:38] Not behaving in itself unseemly. Not rude. Not selfish. Not easily provoked. Not thinking evil. Even thinking it, let alone saying it, speaking evil.

[7:52] Righteousness is here, isn't it? We know the love of God and the God who is love. He showed himself so fully, so demonstrably in Christ, the perfect righteousness of our Saviour himself.

[8:03] What perfect righteousness displayed in the person of his very Son. Think of it. God's love. It's so far-reaching, so absolute, isn't it?

[8:14] 1 Corinthians 13, it's Jesus there in every verse, isn't it? It's the Lord Jesus. And Ephesians 3, 18 talks about God's love and how we may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and breadth and depth and height of the love of Christ.

[8:34] It makes you think of the dimensions of the cross really, doesn't it? The extent of it, the breadth, the length, the depth, the height, every dimension you could imagine in that demonstration of his love.

[8:48] To think of the love of Christ, to comprehend it with all the saints. 2 Corinthians 5, 19, God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. Such humility, God's love, God's character, it's love.

[9:04] It's marked by truth as well. Fifthly, truth. We're seeing verse 6, love rejoiceth not in iniquity. It doesn't rejoice of our sin, but it rejoiceth in the truth.

[9:17] Love rejoices in the truth, it tells us. And God's kind of love has got a joy in what is true. It's what is solid and true and right. There's a joy in the fulfilment of God's love that it rejoices in the truth.

[9:33] And we have the truth in the covers of our Bible. We've got the very word of his truth. We've got his truth in print, in black and white and red.

[9:45] There's joy and fulfilment in God's love. There's a truth there that we can hang on to. A truth, a reality, a certainty, a surety, an assurance, an integrity and strength.

[9:58] God's word is truth. Thy word is truth. That's the definition of thy word. God is absolutely true and faithful, isn't it? It's one of his names. He's true and he's faithful.

[10:09] He's named that. God is love and God is truth. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth and the life. He's true and he's the true one and he is the truth of himself.

[10:23] God's kind of love is linked closely with the truth. Numbers of times they're paired together, speaking the truth in love. They go together, don't they?

[10:34] Ephesians 4, 15. Number six of these seven qualities we could say love is demonstrably grace, isn't it? God is full of patient endurance, isn't he?

[10:46] The grace of God that he should be so gracious towards us. God's love, it has this commitment, this devotion. No matter what, no matter what, we see in verse seven. Grace has relation to gift as well.

[11:01] They're allied, grace and gift as the same kind of root meanings there. And we see the giving nature of God's love, so love that he gave. John 3, 16, isn't it?

[11:12] And you could even paraphrase verse seven. Love never stops being patient. It never stops believing. It never stops hoping. It never gives up. It's got this sense that it keeps on, keeps on bearing all things.

[11:28] Love beareth all things. Love believeth all things. Love hopeth all things. Love endureth all things. Can we have that heart too? That we can have that all things, that we'll bear it all, whatever it is, whatever life throws at us, all the curveballs, all the troubles and tests and strife at times that we have to go through in human life that love beareth all things.

[11:56] There's no limitation. It believeth all things. Faith just keeps on believing. It's hope of all things. This hope doesn't ever end. It's an endless, everlasting, eternal hope.

[12:08] And this love endureth all things. Think of the endurance of our God. We see God's love in the grace of God that he should deign to give his love to us, the unworthy ones.

[12:22] Hebrews 2.9 it tells us, but we see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour that he, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man.

[12:38] Think of that. That he tasted death for you. He tasted death for you. For each one. Each one. He tasted death, that bitter taste of death itself. He tasted that.

[12:49] He swallowed that cup. Death for every man. Such grace. And number seven, endurance.

[13:00] Endurance. Love never faileth. Verse eight. Love never faileth. He keeps on loving. This love that he loves us with is a non-stop love. It's a love that keeps on loving no matter what.

[13:14] And so too, God never fails, doesn't he? He never fails. Love never ends. This love of God, it's eternal. He says, I will never leave you nor forsake you.

[13:26] It's got this emphasis there. It's like a double statement that never ever, I'm never going to leave you. I'm ever going to leave you.

[13:37] Never leave you nor forsake you. What love. What awesome love. To think if you trust him, if you trust him now, that he is yours and you are his for eternity, forever.

[13:48] God never fails us. He never fails. Humans may fail. God's love is never dying. It's never going to end. It's faithful love. So we've seen, as a definition of love, if you like, for the first part of this message, we've seen God's love.

[14:06] 1 Corinthians 13. We could unpack so much more from that very chapter. 1 Corinthians 13. We've seen God's love and his character. We've seen his patience, his kindness, his humility, his righteousness, his truth, his grace and his endurance.

[14:26] And he says to you and me, he says this, walk in love. Walk in love. The very same love. Walk in 1 Corinthians 13.

[14:36] Walk in love. Walk in that charity. Be like me, he says. Have my character. Have the very qualities, the characteristics of your God. He says to you, to me, walk in love.

[14:47] Walk in love. You can show God's love. We see in 1 Corinthians 13, it's very demonstrated, isn't it? It's very much an experiential. It's lived out love.

[14:59] So that brings us to my second part of today's message, which is, we've seen the definition of God's love. Now, as we consider that, that love defined, how can we have that love lived out?

[15:19] How can we have that love lived out in our lives, in our walking, our shoe leather, as we live life? But we'll live it out too. Love in action. Love lived out by his very people.

[15:31] How does God's love translate into our own lives? Because it should. It's meant to. God wants it to be. You see 1 Peter 1, if you want to turn there to follow along further.

[15:43] 1 Peter 1, as Peter tells of this real love, real love. It's love, not feigned, it's real, it's true, it's genuine, it's lived out love.

[15:55] And 1 Peter 1, verse 22, just that verse to pick out, to be a launching pad. 1 Peter 1, verse 22, it says, Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently.

[16:19] Wouldn't it be good to see that love in our fellowship, in our lives? Every church gets tested where love is lacking sometimes, there's niggly things between brothers and sisters, just like in any family, isn't there?

[16:36] Where there's a bit of argy-bargy and there's a bit of a clash, a conflict. It's human, it's human life. But God helping us will have supernatural enablement that God's love will rather prevail, that he'll help us to love one another.

[16:52] And so, just to unpack some thoughts along that theme, how we should love one another with a pure heart fervently. Peter writes about love, he tells about unfeigned love.

[17:05] And I like to demonstrate it as when they feign a punch, you know, in the movies, the actors feign a punch, so they look like hitting them on the chin, but really, it's just pretend.

[17:16] They just might glance or brush against their chin. It's a feigned punch. And people can have a feigned love where it's kind of pretend. It's not real. It's not, it's superficial, it's shallow, it's not real, not the real kind of genuine article.

[17:31] And it's like play-acting love, pretending that you love when you don't. But God wants us to not have a pretend love, a pretense of love, let's have genuine love. That's the sense of it here.

[17:41] So real love, the real thing, genuine, the genuine article, true love. And the thing of the world today, there's much talk about love, every movie, not that I'm interested, but there's got a theme of love of sorts, but it's generally a fleshly love.

[17:58] And it's like the worldly kind of mantra, looking for love in all the wrong places. They're looking for love. They're looking for love, but of course they're not finding it. We see in Christ that's where we find love.

[18:10] True love, real love, soul-deep love. Looking for real love and real love is based on the truth. And so God's truth obeyed can purify a soul.

[18:21] We see in our verse here, seeing you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren. See that you love one another with a pure heart, fervently.

[18:32] Sometimes people who obey God are called unloving. If you obey the Scriptures, some people say, oh, you're being unloving or judgmental because when something's a clash with the Word, we'll save this problem here because we'll direct people to what do the Scriptures say?

[18:49] And some would say, well, that's being a bit hard, hard line. But if we love God, we'll love His truth. We won't water it down or corrupt it.

[19:00] We want to share it and wholeheartedly because but for the grace of God we could be lost. I know I've talked recently in our own fellowship of evangelism, of apologetics, and how there's that sense.

[19:13] We've got to defend the truth and that can mean, hey, we've got to speak it truthfully. That can hit home with people sometimes. They don't always like it. But we love the truth enough to tell it and to tell it with the sense that but for the grace of God I could be lost myself.

[19:29] I could be in His shoes. It's not about winning an argument. It's about winning a soul. We want to be winsome. So we win some people. Not about trying to prove them wrong or big note ourselves.

[19:39] But that's the sense of that, of being honest and being real and having a heart such that we're not trying to prove a point but we want to point them to the same.

[19:54] And that's our heart. So we think about that real love. That real love that will tell the truth. God's word, as I say before, it tells of truth and love.

[20:05] They're kind of allied. They're not separated. They're very much together. As we read, Ephesians 4.15 Speaking the truth in love.

[20:17] It tells us 2 Thessalonians 2.10 Receive not the love of the truth. John says in 1 John 3.18 My little children, he says, Let us not love in word neither in tongue but in deed and in truth.

[20:33] He says, Don't love with just words. He says, Love with deeds. Love with truth. Let it be real. And so let us love the truth. Let's have a love where the truth and love is together.

[20:44] And so that's the kind of foundation for how we love is it's a love based on the truth. And we must speak the truth lovingly warning people. Warning is love and love is warning.

[20:56] We must warn people because we don't want them to go off the edge of a cliff and fall into the lake of fire. Warning those who are deceived by error. And so to some points now from the scripture, firstly, love one another.

[21:11] Love one another. See that you love one another, it tells us. See that you love one another with a pure heart, fervently. This real love is the love of the brethren.

[21:22] It tells us 1 Peter 3.8 Finally, be ye of all one mind, having compassion one of another. Love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous. It's got a sense of being tender hearts and compassionate.

[21:36] The Lord Jesus says the love that we ought to have would be a love as in John 13.35, By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples if ye have love one to another.

[21:48] It's that hallmark, that love to one another. It should be something, yeah, that's a stamp. They've got that sign, that mark. They love one another.

[21:59] 1 John 3.14, We know that we have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren. 1 John 3.16, The other John 3.16 is 1 John 3.16, Hereby perceive we the love of God because he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

[22:20] Love one another. It's a very strong theme in the word of God. It's something that our Lord Jesus emphasised. God intends his church to be a place of people, of caring, of compassion who will love one another.

[22:35] That should mark us, that sweet fellowship because we know the world out there doesn't have that kind of love. It's a dog-eat-dog world, isn't it? It's an every-man-for-himself world.

[22:46] It's look-out-for-self. It's the selfie world. It's a self-focused world. And so, you know, climb over everyone else to get up the top of the ladder. That's the kind of world that we live in, isn't it?

[22:57] But we should be different. We should love one another. And so, that's God's plan for his church. Notice it says brethren. Brethren, love one another. That's a beautiful word too, isn't it?

[23:10] We can gloss over that and think, well actually, you know, my brother, my sister, that we are brothers and sisters, we want family together. That's sweet, isn't it? Brethren. It's a beautiful description.

[23:20] It's what we are. It's the church of God. It's the people of God. We're a family. What a privilege. And we ought to be a loving family, not a dysfunctional one. That can be the case at times. I know, as people mix together, there's sometimes clashes.

[23:35] Let's try to get through that and love one another, even though we might have some falling out over something or other, that we'll still be loving as brethren.

[23:45] Love one another. Secondly, love, it says, with a pure heart. Love with a pure heart. See that you love one another with a pure heart, fervently. With a pure heart.

[23:57] Again, this sense of purity, it's not pretend, it's pure, it's unmixed, it's not adulterated, it's not a compromised love. We want to have a love that's pure, that's clean, that's right, that's true.

[24:10] From your heart, it says, love from your heart. Love with a pure heart. Can we have that heart that loves God? I think if we get our heart right, we'll get the love right towards others too.

[24:23] And the Lord wants your heart. You know, numbers of times, it's often repeated through the scriptures, the heart, the heart of man, allied to the mind, it's our thinking, it's our makeup, isn't it?

[24:34] It's our mindset, our worldview. The Lord wants your heart. How is your heart? Is it right? Is it pure? Of course, we can't make our heart right. He has to do that. But thank God, He can do that.

[24:46] How can our heart be made pure? It talks, Acts 15, verse 9, purifying their heart by faith. It's that trust, that trust, that Jesus died for my sin.

[24:57] His blood can make the fallas clean. Amen. He purifies their hearts by faith, Acts 15, 9. And has faith come into your heart? You know, we could take it for granted amongst our number or whoever else might see this message in time.

[25:14] That has faith come into your heart? That's the critical need, isn't it? As we know in Romans 10, verses 9 through 10, it tells us that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart, in thine heart, that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

[25:34] For with the heart men believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. Has faith come into your heart? That's how your heart can be made pure. That's how God can deal with our sin.

[25:46] As we trust him, as we trust the finished work, we trust that everything has been done, that we can be made right with God. Has your heart been purified? We see Luke 6, it tells us how our heart, if it's cleansed, it will show.

[26:02] A Christian will be noticed as being such. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good. And an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil.

[26:17] For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. There's this treasure trove of who you are. It's going to come out of your mouth, but it's dependent on what's inside of the heart, isn't it?

[26:30] Do you know Jesus? Is he in your heart by faith? Now we could make light of the thought of invite Jesus into your heart, but in a way there's a lot of truth to that.

[26:40] That he dwells in hearts by faith it talks about, isn't it? That he actually comes and takes up residence in our heart. How does the song go? The joy is the flag held high and it's in the castle of our heart, isn't it?

[26:53] That Jesus is in the castle of our heart as it were. There's a lot of truth in those little Sunday school songs. And so the good news is that we can have our hearts cleaned, cleaned up by the purifying work of God, by his sanctifying.

[27:08] It tells us James 4 verse 8, draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands you sinners, purify your hearts you double minded. Just as we draw nigh to God, he's going to draw nigh to us.

[27:20] That magnet, as it were, that attraction, as we get closer to him, he'll get closer to us. Our heart will get right by faith. There's a wonderful cleansing agent for the heart that can remove every bit of the stain, the guilt, every bit.

[27:37] 1 John 1 verse 7, nothing but the blood, isn't it? The blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanseth us from all sin. There's a wonderful piece we can know that whatever might be in our past, that that can be erased.

[27:54] God can deliberately choose to forget that the sin, when it's washed by the blood, it's forever washed away. The blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanseth us from all sin.

[28:08] If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Thank God, there's a wonderful complete cleansing, possible, it's available, forgiveness.

[28:21] Your hearts can be washed and purified. The love of God can come and live within, that you can be a sanctified vessel, even despite who you are, that God can intervene in every heart that trusts in him.

[28:37] So, love one another, firstly. Secondly, love one another with a pure heart. You can have that heart. And thirdly, love one another with a pure heart. Love fervently.

[28:48] Love fervently. This love that we meant to have, this 1 Corinthians 13 love, that he wants to give and he wants us to transmit.

[28:59] This love is meant to be a fervent love, a fervent, heartily, earnest, intense love. Do we show that care as brethren for one another? I think sometimes we miss that, I know I miss that, in the busyness of life, we don't always have that fervency of love.

[29:17] Do we care as brethren for one another? It can be hard to step outside of your own shell and think about, how could I love one another with a pure heart fervently?

[29:30] These people that I'm amongst this morning, this church body, this church fellowship, and the extended families and the influences that we have of contacts for this church and people that we rub shoulders with, that they know that you're a part of this family?

[29:49] How can that love that he wants us to have, how can we project that? How can we love so, love fervently? Do we show that care as brethren?

[30:00] We're family. Such that when someone's missing, we think, hey, part of the family's not here this morning. We can think to take that trouble. Sometimes it tends to fall on the pastor or who the pastor dobs in to follow up, but it ought to be something that we all naturally ought to have, isn't it?

[30:20] That we should have such a love, that we'll care for one another so and we'll look out for opportunities to bless and encourage, to seek out ways to support and encourage one another and we see maybe someone looking a bit down or maybe there's, you notice something.

[30:37] Hey, are you okay? No. How can we pray for you? Have some kind of heart that they look out for one another and sometimes it's easy to miss those signs, isn't it? Those signals.

[30:48] Do we seek out ways to support and appreciate other people? It's so easy. I mean, I speak for myself. It's very easy to be selfish. It's flesh, isn't it? You just kind of go through life and you just look out for the self and it's easy not to have a heart to look outside and think, how can I bless somebody else?

[31:09] Because that should be a heart. It should be loving one another with a pure heart, loving one another with your heart and doing it in a fervency, a fervent way. Are we tender towards other people?

[31:22] We look at, for example, Ephesians 4, 29, as the Bible talks to us very much about where the rubber hits the road, about real life.

[31:32] We see that in Ephesians 4, 29, let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth. But that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.

[31:46] And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice.

[32:04] and being kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another. Even as God, for Christ's sake, have forgiven you.

[32:17] We're a forgiven people. Or don't we have a like forgiveness for others? Did we do anything to deserve his forgiveness? Do we deserve any scarical forgiveness?

[32:30] Have we done anything to merit it? to earn it? Or has it been entirely his grace that's given it, his forgiveness? What about us towards others?

[32:44] We can bear some grievance about some perception that we have or someone said something and they're picking on me or someone said something and they didn't act very kindly towards me.

[32:58] and we can bear that little chip on our shoulder and that chip stays there for a long, long, long time. You've got to get that chip and throw it away.

[33:08] Don't hold grievances. Don't hold grudges. Be kind one to another, forgiving one another, even as Christ, even as God, for Christ's sake, have forgiven you.

[33:19] So think of it, friends, as we kind of wrap up some of the thoughts about the practicalities of this love. Are we kind? are we thoughtful? It's easy to be unkind, isn't it?

[33:33] To utter unkind words, to think unkind thoughts, to have unkind feelings, when really we ought not. We ought not, even to think it.

[33:46] Do we take time to consider one another and the needs of others? Sometimes we have, I know we can have a prayer time in our own church fellowship, pray for so-and-so, pray for so-and-so, sometimes it's even going beyond.

[34:00] I can pray, but what else can I do? Think of how you can bless. And we can live in such a selfish, uncaring way, just like our world, but we ought to be believers, we ought to be different.

[34:13] It ought to be something that actually we're profoundly different, we're distinctly different. They would show Christ's compassion that moved into action. Think about how he was driven by this love.

[34:24] God, when you see, he was always ministering, wasn't he? When our Lord was here, he was ministering to the needs of others, he was motivated, and we ought to be motivated by his mandates, his call to go, compelled by his compassion.

[34:40] love. So friends, as you think about the love of God today, think of 1 Corinthians 13, of who he is, it's Jesus, charity, it's Jesus, isn't it?

[34:50] It's the Lord Jesus, it's his very nature, and he tells us let your love be such that his love would fill your heart. That fervent love, that committed love, that determined love, we think of the love of God, those seven fold characteristics of love, as we talked earlier, patience, do we have it?

[35:13] Kindness, humility, righteousness, truth, grace, endurance, see that you love one another with a pure heart fervently, God is love, and he shows us what love looks like and acts like, his was no half hearted thing, think of his love, it was an absolute commitment, his love took him to the very cross, his love is complete, abundant, it wasn't a limitation, it was absolute, wasn't it?

[35:44] And who did he love? He loved his enemies, me, while we were yet his enemies, his love was to the unloving, it was to the unlovely, it was to the unlovable, is this fervent love in you and me, that we can have such a love, that drives us to share his love story.

[36:08] Wow, the love letter that he has written for us, I know there was a time when Julie and I were courting and we were separated, I was interstate doing some Bible school and I would treasure those love letters that she would write, unless she hates me saying it, but on the envelope it said sealed with a loving kiss.

[36:31] and she would sprinkle her perfume on her, it could get really soppy, but it was a love letter, and she's so embarrassed, she's going red now, but you think, the love letter, it's just waiting for that love letter, and I would check the letterbox every day, it's for a love letter, friends we've got a love letter, it's the Bible, it's the love story, it's the greatest love story, and don't we want to be telling it to others, that love story, God's love, friends, this love that sent him to die, that love story of a selfless, undying, unconditional, incomparable love, do you know this love?

[37:13] Number one, do you know it, the love of God, are you saved? And knowing it, let's communicate it, let's live it out, let's be brothers and sisters, a family of God, as those that have received him, he gave them power to become the children of God, the sons of God, and you've got that love on the inside of you, this love that sent him to die, John 15, this is my commandment that you love one another, as I have loved you, we can gloss over that, but that our love should be as I have loved you, greater love have no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends, ye are my friends if you do whatsoever I command you, is he your friend?

[37:53] Thank God he can be a friend of sinners, a friend of mine, a friend of yours, as you trust him, when you respond to his love and know it, the grace of God, heed his voice, obey his call, here's this the greatest love, Romans 5, from verse 5, the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, think of that, this love, it's not meant to be contained by you, as in held just by you, but it's shed abroad, shed abroad in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us, for when we were yet without strength, in due time, Christ died for who?

[38:34] The ungodly, that's me, Christ died in due time for the ungodly, for scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet per adventure for a good man some would even dare today, but God commended his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, think of that, as we think of Calvary love, what grace, what mercy, that he should love us, that in itself is really the ultimate, the greatest miracle, isn't it?

[39:08] That he should love us, and then that we can be communicators and pass that love on, pass this love on, think of it friends, of this love, that we should love one another with a pure heart fervently, let us pray, Lord we thank you that you are love personified, love incarnate, love in the flesh, you are the love of 1 Corinthians 13 Lord, and we see your nature, your heart, we see that you call your people to have such a love, that we would love one another, that we be brethren, brothers and sisters, your family by faith, Lord that we would love one another, that we would so love one another, help us Lord to look out for one another, to be that loving family, not a dysfunctional one, Lord a family that loves, brothers that love, even though brothers can have moments Lord that we'd still love, we'd continue to love, with such a love as your love,

[40:13] Lord, a love undeserved, a love that's gracious, a love that's so ever loving, a love that never ends, Lord we thank you for that, Lord we pray if there's any yet to trust you, they'd know the love of God that sent you Lord to the cross for our sin, to pay for it, that there every bit of our sin was in your own body, on that tree, that penalty of it, that was due to us, you bore it Lord, our guilt, and we're ashamed of it Lord, we thank you that Lord you can cleanse every stain, you can purify our heart by faith, as we trust you, as we turn to you in faith, Lord we come to plead your grace, your mercy upon us, have mercy upon me a sinner, Lord do your work in us, help us Lord to have a more loving heart, when we're so inclined to be self-hearted, self-opinionated, and self-centered, full of pride, flesh,

[41:22] Lord help us to rather be like you, that you'll help our church here, this church body, to be more of a loving family, that we can grow together in love, and by your mercy and love we pray in Jesus' name.

[41:38] Amen. Thank you.