Our Love Must Be Properly Nurtured

Introduction: The Problem of Love Waxing Cold and the Demand for Resistance

0:03 Delivered on Sunday evening, September 12, 1993, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Now will you turn with me, please, to the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 24. Matthew, Chapter 24. And I shall read in your hearing the text that has, on two previous occasions, been the basis of our evening meditation, one of them a communion meditation, and now this third study, again, a communion meditation based on this text. In the midst of our Lord's oft-described Olivet Discourse, in which he is speaking, of the coming destruction of the city of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., and then his own glorious coming in power and glory at the end of the age, our Lord speaks to his own and says in verse 12 of Matthew 24,

1:15 Because iniquity shall be multiplied, the love of the many shall wax cold or be extinguished. He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved. Let us again pray and ask God to bless our meditation on this portion of his word. We have sung very sober words of confession.

1:54 We have acknowledged that we betrayed you, that we crucified you, and we know that though centuries have passed since your betrayal, and your crucifixion, it was indeed our sin that demanded your death. It was our own wretched, fickle, sin-loving hearts that mandated that the only way we could ever find acceptance with your Father was by your death on our behalf. And surely, Lord, having so loved us, as to be, willing to lay down your life for us, our hearts ought to burn with fervent, ever-increasing love to you. And yet we confess with shame that so often our love is cold and torrential, and we desperately need that you would rekindle that love, even through the ministry of the word and the supper of remembrance this night. To that end, we plead for your blessing upon, our meditation together, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

3:18 Amen. These are two verses I sought to open up the basic truth contained in them. We contemplated the condition described. It speaks of a condition of abounding lawlessness.

3:43 And because iniquity, or better rendered lawlessness, shall be multiplied or abound, we establish from the scriptures that there are periods in human history when the steady state lawlessness of sinners comes to highly aggravated expressions. And we are in such a season, then, of abounding lawlessness. And consider the evidences that we here in our own country, at this point in human history, are in just such a season. And having looked at the condition described, we consider the declension predicted. And because lawlessness shall abound, the love of the many shall be extinguished. Frightening declension is predicted, that in those periods when iniquity abounds, there will be many who have had a professed love to Christ that has stood and been credible in the face of ordinary wickedness and lawlessness. But before the gathering tide of abounding lawlessness,

5:11 that love is extinguished. The declension predicted and then pointed us to the resistance demanded. We are truly bound to Christ. We are truly bound to Christ.

5:27 We are truly bound to Christ. We are truly bound to Christ. Christ, in faith, in love, shall persevere in that love. But not only shall they, but they must.

5:36 But he that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved. And the true people of God must resist the tendency of abounding lawlessness. And by the grace of God and the use of every means given them by God, God continue to burn in fervent love to Christ, in spite of the deadening, dampening pressure of abounding lawlessness. And then in our next study, we began to address the very practical question, how can the grace of love to Christ be kept burning hot in an age of abounding lawlessness? The answer was, first of all, All that it must be properly rooted. It must be rooted in a powerful application of his saving grace in our own hearts. The reason why the love of the many is extinguished is that that love was a professed love and a manifested love that had some other soil other than a deep work of grace in the human heart.

Love Must Be Properly Nurtured: The Principle Stated

6:56 Remember Bunyan's picture in the House of Interpreter. There was the wall and the fire before the wall and one who was throwing buckets of water upon the fire and yet the more the water spattered upon the fire, the fire instead of being extinguished grew hotter and higher and the answer was that unseen behind the wall was one pouring oil upon that fire and Bunyan has to...

7:26 As the interpreter speaking to Christian and saying so it is with the work of grace in the heart of a true Christian though Satan seeks to put out the fire of his love to God in Christ the secret but real operations of the Holy Spirit from the ascended Christ the state of fire of devotion to Christ in spite of all of Satan's efforts to extinguish it. But not only. Not only must our love to Christ be properly rooted if we would maintain our love in an age of abounding wickedness in the second place it must be properly nurtured. Not only properly rooted but it must be properly nurtured. It must be fed and fertilized and watered if it is to...

8:27 grow and flourish under the imagery of a plant. It must be kept at that height of burning heat from the work of the Spirit of God within our hearts by the means that God has established. And so that brings the very practical question again. How is our love to Christ nourished and fed?

8:56 And I want to... to state a principle demonstrate the principle and begin to apply the principle in the relatively brief time that we have for our communion meditation.

9:10 And the principle stated with reference to that question How is love to Christ if properly rooted continually nurtured in the heart of a true believer even in an age of abounding lawlessness? The principle stated is this. Love to Christ must be nurtured by the frequent Bible-based contemplation of His love to us. To Christ must be nurtured by the frequent contemplation of His love to us. There may have been a time in the Christian church when someone could simply have said Our love to Christ must be nurtured by the frequent contemplation of His love to us. Our love to Christ must be nurtured by meditating on His love to us. But the whole concept of meditation in our day has been so suffused with Eastern mysticism

10:25 and with dressed-up Eastern mysticism in so-called new age self-help therapy that one must use sound and wholesome words to distance himself entirely from such pagan notions. The principle stated is this, our love to Christ must be nurtured by the frequent, that is, reflection, meditation, and contemplation that is under the discipline of the Word of God written. We don't let our hearts run out in woozy, ethereal meditations about Christ, the way the heart of a devout Roman Catholic runs out in woozy, undefined, warm feelings to the Virgin Mary. It must be Bible-based contemplation. But it must not only be Bible-based, it must be suffused with faith. The word preached did not profit

11:35 them, not being mixed with faith. And even Bible-based contemplation. Contemplations of the love of God in Christ to us will not feed our love to Christ unless it is believing contemplation. Contemplation in which faith feeds upon the statements of the Bible which form the focus and the object of our contemplation and reflection. So our love to Christ must be nurtured. By the frequent Bible-based believing contemplation of His love to us. The grand principle of redemptive grace is that our love to God in Christ is always responsive, active, and reciprocal. It is always responsive, reactive, and reciprocal.

The Responsive Nature of Love: An Illustration

12:43 It is. Never self-initiated, self-created, or self-perpetuated. And if you and I can get hold of that principle and save us from a thousand stumblings in our Christian lives. For every true Christian grieves when his heart is cold. And every true Christian is determined to do something about the torpor, the coldness. The dullness of his love to Christ. But if he does not understand this principle, that love to Christ is always a responsive, reactive, reciprocal reality. It is never self-initiated, self-created, or self-perpetuated. It's like the pupil in my eye. I cannot stand before

13:45 you now and will.

13:48 If I were to dilate or constrict my pupil, straight out in the direction in which I'm looking and say, Pupils constrict to a pinpoint. There's no power that I have to constrict my pupils. If I were to say, Pupils dilate right to the edge of the iris, as far as physiologically you're able to dilate, I could crank up all of my energy and strength. Pupils dilate and do nothing.

14:26 That is the dilation or constriction. The dilation or the constriction of the pupil is always reactive. It is always responsive and reciprocal to light. If I gaze right up into that spotlight, if you were standing at my elbow, you would see the constriction of my pupils.

14:46 If I stick my head into the darkness of the underneath side of this pulpit, and you were to draw near, and enough light were there for you to see, you'd see that my pupil has the ability to see. My pupil had dilated to its, not optimum, but near optimum size. Why? Because the size of the pupil is always responsive to light, reactive to light. It reciprocates the amount of light that enters it. And so it is with the heart, which God has implanted the love of Christ. That love is never self-critical. That love is never self-critical.

15:31 That love is never self-creating, self-generating, self-perpetuating, but it is always responsive, reactive, reciprocal. It expands, or compers, in proportion to our believing contemplation of light in Jesus Christ. Try to stay as simply as I know how. Explain the words I have used. Illustrate it by an illustration that you can carry on in the process. That is the dilation or constriction of the pupil. That is the dilation or constriction of the light in Jesus Christ. That is the dilation or constriction of the light in Jesus Christ.

Demonstration from 1 John 4:19: We Love Because He First Loved Us

16:14 You want to have the presence of your children when you get home tonight to drive it home with them, take a flashlight and show them what happens to the pupil of the eye? That is the principle stated. Now, the principle demonstrated from the scriptures explicitly stated, with respect to love to the brethren, in a text such as 1 John 4.19, which should be familiar ground to us in the light of our recent studies in the first epistle of John.

16:46 1 John 4.19. 1 John 4.19.

16:47 1 John 4.19. 1 John 4.19.

16:48 And now I want to demonstrate the biblical basis of that principle.

16:54 In 1 John 4, verse 19, 1 John 4 and verse 19, John says, We love because love does. If you ever find truly loves, brethren, in the household of faith, with a spirit-wrought love, that love is the reaction and the response and the fruit. We must love that particular redeemed sinner. We love because He first loved us.

17:39 The love that exists in our hearts to those who bear His likeness is reciprocating love. It is responsive, reactive love. To His love. Love which was initiated and conferred and believingly embraced.

Demonstration from 2 Corinthians 5:14: The Love of Christ Constrains Me

18:02 Then turn to what in my mind is perhaps one, if not the most powerful text, teaching this principle to the chapter from which I expounded the text this morning, 2 Corinthians chapter 5. And in verse 14, language of some of His detractors, who said He was outspoken, out of His tree, had a few bricks, less than a full load. When they saw Him so utterly obsessed with single-minded devotion and service to Christ, they said He was a madman. You remember one of the heathen leaders before whom He stood, He said, Paul, much learning has made you mad. You've gone out of your tree. Paul's teachers who were trying to wean the Corinthians from Paul's influence were making the saying, same accusation, so he says, whether we are beside ourselves, whether in your judgment and the judgment of others, we've lost our mental equilibrium, it is unto God. We are of a sober mind, it is unto you.

19:23 Whether you regard us as a little bit imbalanced because of the degree to which this ambition to please Christ thrives and modifies, motivates me, and dictates what I do and what I don't do, is a matter of irrelevance to me, for this is the reality of what makes me tick, for the love of Christ traineth. And that verse, train, sunecho, is a verb which means to surround, to hem in, to encircle. Turn to Luke 12 and verse 50 for one of its usages in the Gospel, writers. In Luke 12 and verse 50, Lord Jesus, speaking of his coming death, says, but I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how, here's our verb, straightened, strained, how am I hemmed and encircled by my commitment to the cross until it be accomplished. Now think of the significance of that word in connection with our Lord's onward

20:51 and inevitable commitment to the cross. In the beginning, this public ministry, when the tempter comes and offers him a way to come to his inherent inheritance, bypassing the cross, he tells the enemy to get hence. He is to worship the Lord his God and him only. And when one of his own beloved disciples would be an impediment to the cross, and said, be it far from you, Lord, this will never happen, he calls him an adversary, using the word for the adversary, get thee behind me, Satan, he says to Peter, you're an offense unto me.

21:33 You'll remember in our studies in the Gospel of Luke when our Lord was on the way to Jerusalem for that final time with the disciples, he went before them with such firm and resolute and striding step that there was an amazement and a fear that gripped all of their hearts. Now read into all of that this word. How am I hemmed up? How am I surrounded, encircled, and pressured from every side until it be accomplished?

22:05 Paul says the love of Christ surrounds me. It exerts its 360 degree pressure upon my spirit, upon my life, upon my perspectives, upon my priorities, same word used in the familiar words of Philippians 1.23 when Paul speaks of his holy dilemma. He said, I'm in a strait between two things.

22:31 I have a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better. I have a desire to remain and be of service to you, which in my judgment is more necessary. I am under the pressure, I feel the pull of these two powerful, powerful desires. So when the apostle says, the love of Christ constrains me, he's using a verb that cannot be understood as some kind of a weak, secondary, occasionally felt influence.

23:06 The love of Christ to me in giving himself a ransom for my soul. Christ loved for me in dying the just for the ungrateful, the unjust, like a mighty collection of powerful bands that holds me in its grip. And each place I turn and each time I think and every time I reflect upon my life and my goals, my desires, how I will expend my energies, use my God-given talents, each place that I touch, life in the working out of its specifics, where Christ stands in its vice-like grip, holding me, encircling me, determining my choices. You see, Paul was the man that he was because he lived in the consciousness of the amazing love of God to him in Christ. The burning passion for Christ that made him say for me to live is Christ was not self-generating, self-perpetuating.

24:30 It was reciprocal. It was reactive and responsive. It grew as he absorbed more and more through the eye of the soul, through the revelation God had made, the wonder of God's love to him. The principle demonstrated it is the love of Christ that constrains me.

Demonstration from Romans 12:1: Present Your Bodies by the Mercies of God

24:57 It is that love, believingly contemplated, as we would say scripturally revealed, that held him in its grip. One other text, a familiar one, that clearly demonstrates the same principle that our love to Christ that flow out of it is reactive, responsive, reciprocal, not self-initiated, self-created, self-perpetuated. In Romans 12 and verse 1, what has the apostle done in the first 11 chapters of Romans? Well, he has laid out in the most systematic form anywhere in the New Testament the whole scheme of God's gracious, redemptive purposes in Jesus Christ. Hence the backdrop of human sinfulness he has laid out the grand doctrine of justification by faith based upon the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ, a righteousness comprised of the virtue of his perfect life and the virtue of his substitutionary death. He has gone on to show how that when a man is brought to the faith of Christ crucified he enters into the dynamics of the very death of Christ for sin, and in union with Christ

26:24 he dies to sin and rises to newness of life. And though he is dead to the law and the law cannot condemn him, he goes on to demonstrate that there is an ongoing struggle with the reality of indwelling sin, but its struggle in the midst of the marvelous conquest over the dominion of sin through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which makes him more than conqueror through Christ, ending in that marvelous statement at the end of Romans 8 that no created thing shall separate him from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus Christ. Jesus our Lord. And then in chapters 9 to 11 he shows how that salvation has been administered over the ages to the place where he stands packed and says, O the depth of the riches of the knowledge of God, how searchable are his judgments and his ways past, tracing out for of him, through him and unto him are all things, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. Now he says, I beseech you, therefore brethren, the mercies of God to present your bodies a living sacrifice. What is he saying?

27:44 He is saying, your responses are just that. They are responses. They are reactions. They are reciprocations to the intelligence, believing, contemplation of the mercies of God in Christ.

28:03 You see, he's not trying to get the people surrendered and dedicated based on what they can get and based on this, that or the other motive. He says, I appeal to you by the mercies of God. Let the eye of the soul and take in the wonder of the mercies of God in Christ that I've been expounding. And then you'll say in response to this exhortation, present your bodies a living sacrifice here, Lord.

28:43 I give myself away. It is all that I can do. This text clearly confirms the principle. It demonstrates it.

How to Contemplate Christ's Love: Past, Present, and Future Manifestations

28:57 So if the coals of love to Christ are to be kept burning brightly and hot in our hearts, we must blow upon them with the billows, the bellows, I'm sorry, of Bible-based contemplation, meditation and reflection on the fact, the manifestations, the magnitude of the love of God to us in Christ. And to help you do that, may I suggest that you think of that love in three categories or dimensions. Think of its past supreme manifestation. Think of its present manifestation Manifold manifestations. Think of its future glorious manifestation. When you're trying to have a handle by which to focus your Bible-based believing contemplations of the love of God in Christ, that your love may be kept warm and the embers of your love may glow more brightly and that the exotic plants of your love to Him may flourish and increase. Then I say, fix your mind on any given day on the past manifestations of His love.

30:22 And I hope to do that tonight, but our time is gone, so I'll just give you the framework and bring a pointed application to the table. God willing, we'll take that perhaps in our next message. That past supreme manifestation, of course, is Calvary. And think of its present manifold manifestations.

30:43 His nurturing of us. His intercessory work at the right hand of the Father ever living to make intercession. Our advocate, our sympathetic High Priest who in all of our afflictions is afflicted with us. And think of its future glorious manifestation.

31:01 Peter speaks of the grace that is to be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Now dear people, you are not going to do that if you're glued to your TV and to the Wall Street Journal. To use the word meditation and contemplation in our day, I ask me as something out of the dark age, that my Bible is not changed. You want to be a fruitful tree?

31:26 You must meditate in the law of God day and night. God hasn't changed the method. You would be a fruitful tree? Then you must meditate in the law of God.

The Lord's Supper as an Aid to Contemplation

31:39 And if you would have the embers of love to Christ glowing and kept white hot, then they will be kept so as you reflect upon supreme manifestation, present manifold manifestations in its future glorious manifestation. And isn't that precisely what we're called upon to do at the table? What did Jesus say? He said this do in remembrance of me, but in remembrance of Him as our great to teach us, not primarily.

32:22 In remembrance of Him as our King who rules over us, not primarily. Inspiration of the Spirit says as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do preach the Lord's. This is my body which is for you. This is my blood which is poured out for many unto remission of sins.

32:52 And here at the table, God gives us a tangible aid to our contemplation of His love to us. That He who knows sin was made sin for us, that He might be made the righteousness of God in Him. As we come to the Lord's table, what a blessed thing to be able to say with the great apostle, the Son of God who loved me. And gave...

33:24 You see, that's true saving religion. If you can only say the Son of God who loved sinners, for sinners the devil can say that and be speaking the truth. And you can say that and be speaking the truth and be no better than the demon or the devil himself. But to say the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.

33:59 And where there is raw perception of Christ in His love for the sinner, you'll only be enabled to say the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. But you'll be able to say what comes before those words in the same verse. I have crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live.

34:24 But Christ lives in me and the life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith and gave Himself for me. The faith of God's elect is a faith that gives us such a sight of Christ crucified and brings us within the orbit of the power of His grace that for every sinner who can say He loved me, gave Himself for me, you'll find a sinner who can say I am crucified with Christ. That I am crucified unto the world and the world unto me. Galatians 6.14 So if you sit here this night and say by the grace of God I am seduced and the coals and the embers of my love to Christ are dampened by the buckets of water thrown upon it by this lawless age yet by the influence of the Spirit when I'm brought back to my senses I see there is nothing to satisfy my soul in what this world can offer. And in Christ crucified is my life as well as my hope of eternal salvation. Dear people, we would have love to Christ

Conclusion and Prayer: Intensifying Love and Enduring to the End

35:48 in an agelessness. It must not only be properly rooted it must be properly nurtured. And its fundamental nurture comes by the Bible based of His love. Tensity than it's ever been as we upon the Bible contemplate the love of Christ in the breaking of bread of the cup. We marvel at man's ways our religion concocted by man as man of creation virtues that will make him acceptable to you but we thank you that in the scheme of grace it is your grace that so works as to implant in us and draw upon us those graces that please.

37:14 That this night as we come to the table our love for the Lord Jesus will indeed be intensified as we with our Bibles open in our minds upon that grace the greatest manifestation of His love in the past by the operation of the Holy Spirit intensified. Oh God do it we pray for Your glory and that we may endure to the end even while have their love extinguished. And for those who cannot say the Son of God loved me and gave Himself for me because there is no evidence that they are crucified with Christ very much alive to sin and self and the world. Oh Lord trouble them make them jealous to know the blessed liberty that is ours in Christ and bring them to believe upon Him even as He is displayed in the bread and in the cup. And answer us we plead in His worthy name. Amen.