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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Jason Sliger

The Commandment of Love - Part 2

Father, we thank you for the beautiful Sabbath day that you have given to us.

We thank you, Lord, that we can come into this comfortable building in our comfortable clothes, driving here in our comfortable cars to sit with our Bibles in our hands.

And Lord, as we come together this morning, we don't do this merely out of a formality, or because 19 million other people in the world do it.

We do it, Lord, because we want to have an encounter with You.

So, Father, we pray that the Spirit would be here, that He would take the message and send it home to our hearts.

If you have your Bibles, please turn with me to John chapter 13.

John chapter 13, I will do a quick few minute overview.

For those of you that weren't here last night, this is a three-part series.

This morning we were looking at part 2, John chapter 13.

Jesus is in the upper room here with his disciples that he is about to commemorate what would be the last Passover that had any significance to it.

He's there with the disciples who obviously have been bickering amongst themselves about who should be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Judas has deceived Jesus, or betrayed Jesus at this point.

And there is much that is weighing on the mind of Jesus as He is there with His disciples.

And in John chapter 13 and verse 35, Jesus makes this piece, or gives this piece of advice to His disciples.

He says, A new commandment give I unto you, that you love 1 another as I have loved you, that ye also love 1 another.

Now you'll know that there are other places in the Bible where Jesus told the disciples that they were to love each other as they would want to be loved.

But here in the final few hours of the life of Christ, only moments, only hours before he would be condemned and ultimately crucified, Jesus as his heart is weighing heavy, As the gospel commission is about to be laid upon the shoulders of this bickering group of men, Jesus reaches down into the deep recesses of his heart and he shares with them a piece of advice that maybe we might be tempted to just glaze over and continue reading the larger story.

But this little piece of advice that Jesus gives has huge ramifications.

He says not to love as they want to be loved, but he says to love as He has loved them.

And then he makes this bombshell statement in the next verse, verse 35.

By this, by the fact of them loving 1 another as he has loved them, by this, Jesus says, shall all men know that you are my disciples if you have love 1 to another.

Back in the time of Christ, there were many different religious leaders that people followed, and they had different ways of distinguishing themselves from these different religious leaders.

But in Jesus' mind, what would distinguish His disciples as being distinctively different from other religious leaders' disciples is that they would have harmony amongst themselves, that they would manifest in their heart a love for 1 another very similar to the love, identical to the love that Jesus showed them.

The way that we would show the world that we are disciples of Christ, Jesus says, is if we have love 1 towards another, as he has loved us.

Now, I should give you some pause for thinking here a little bit this morning.

Of course it's easy to love those who are kind to you.

Of course it's easy to love those who are nice to you.

Of course it's easy to love those who love you.

What about those who are impatient with you?

What about those who make your life miserable?

The ultimate expression that I believe we see in the life of Christ is when he hangs upon the cross, he has gone through all of this terrible physical agony and the emotional draining of being rejected by those who he loved, by being cast to the side by the world at large.

And as He hangs there upon the cross, cruelly treated, beaten, spit upon, and now being ridiculed, He says, Father, forgive them.

By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you love them as I have loved you.

The servant of the Lord tells us this in the Southern Review, January 1 of 1901.

He only who loves his fellow man to a purpose can know God.

The Bible says, he that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.

We cannot know God if we do not have love 1 towards another.

But then she goes on and she says this, this is the reason that there is so little genuine vitality or life, strength, energy in our churches.

Why is there little strength, energy, and life?

Why is there little vitality in our churches?

Because the servant of the Lord tells us there is little love.

She goes on and she says this, theology, And we have plenty of theology in our church, praise the Lord.

Theology, she says, is valueless unless it is saturated with the love of Christ.

Theology is valueless, she says, unless it is saturated with the love of Christ.

Now, when you think of the idea of saturation, what is it that comes into your mind?

The sponge, we talked about it last night.

You have your sponge on your counter there, and that thing in between washing, It gets dried up and it curls up.

But when you stick that thing underneath the water, it fills up with the water and it becomes saturated.

It is so full, it is so overflowing that there is no room left inside of it to hold any more water.

And the servant of the Lord tells us that if we want our theology to have value to it, it must be first saturated with the love of Jesus.

And then she goes on And she says, God is supreme.

His love in the human heart will lead to the doing of works that will bear fruit after the similitude of the character of God.

And then she makes this little statement, we read this last night, and this is just a review from last night, 9th Manuscript Release, page 128, paragraph 3, she says, a loving, lovable Christian, a what kind of Christian?

A loving, lovable Christian is the most powerful argument in favor of the truth.

Now listen, we're not talking this morning about a weak, manby-pamby, half-sided love.

We're not talking about the type of love that you can get at any corner evangelical church.

What we are talking about is a type of love that moves people to have a closer walk with the Lord and moves them to dig deeper into the reasons why we have this type of love in our hearts.

It is love that ultimately leads to the truth of God's word.

If you want to be effective in your witnessing for God, the best way that you can do that is to become a loving, lovable Christian.

It's not merely the regurgitation of theological concepts.

It's not merely the expression of spiritual principles or lining up all of your proof texts that is compelling to the world.

But it must first be saturated with the love of Christ.

And then when that happens, we will find that we will have explosive results in our ministry to other people.

We will have Acts chapter 2 experiences, I believe with all of my heart, where the church of God will grow exponentially when the truth of God and the love of God are married 1 to another.

Turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 12.

This morning we're going to look at the second part of 1 Corinthians 13, but I wanna just quickly run over the preamble here.

What does Paul say in his introduction of 1 Corinthians 13?

1 Corinthians 12, verse 31, Paul says this.

Earnestly the best gifts, and yet show I unto you a more excellent way, or a way that is beyond comparison.

Now, When you look at 1 Corinthians 12, Paul is talking about the gifts of the Spirit, the purpose that God gives us the gifts of the Spirit, and he lists them in verse 28, and in other places in the chapter.

But the primary reason why God gives us the gifts of the Spirit is for the advancement of the cause of God.

The purpose why God gives us the gift of tongues, the purpose why God gives us the gift of evangelists, and pastors, and teachers, and all of these things is so that the Gospel can move forward in a rapid fashion, hopefully by God's grace to bring this world to an end sooner rather than later.

But Paul tells us that not only are we to covet earnestly the best gifts, but then he says, yes, these gifts are good.

These gifts help in the spreading and the advancement of the gospel.

But then he says, now I'm going to show you something that is beyond comparison.

Now I'm going to show you something that is beyond comparison.

Now I'm going to show you something that adds power to the advancement of the cause of God that is so amazing, that is so all-encompassing, that it is beyond comparing it to something else.

That this, what he is about to tell us, will help the gospel move forward in a fashion that we have never experienced it before.

And then he goes on and he says, though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels.

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The Commandment of Love - Part 2

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