You know, dear friends, to us, loving is
a difficult business, real loving, because our natures
are fond of each other.
Earl tells us that, sitting about the nature,
unregenerate in man, he says, hateful and hating
one another.
And you know how natural it is to
resent.
Immediately, you feel the self-like hurt, where
pondering the love, but with God, it's quite
different.
The quiet, restful, rigor-like flow of the
divine nature of the man is love, and
there never has been love, love.
And when Jesus came into the world, love
was manifested in human form.
What the Jews said of Jesus, by the
grave at Lazarus, as they stared him weeping
with Mary and Martha, look how he loved
him, might be said of Jesus Christ in
relation to every man and every woman.
The whole, how he loved him.
One day it puts it like this, Jesus
taught me when I was growing up, love
divine laid a hold on me.
Love incarnate in the mind.
Love in thinking, on the free, and then
God, especially that great poet of the Methodist
Revival, brings it home in one of his
great hymns.
I know thee, Savior, who thou art.
Jesus, the feeble sinner's friend.
Nor wilt thou with the night depart, but
try and love me to the end.
Thy mercy never shall remove.
Thy nature and thy name is love.
How did Charles Wesley discover that?
How did the other poets discover that the
name and the nature of God is love?
Probably by a twofold vision, first.
The vision of the manger and of the
cross.
The vision of life.
The vision of death.
The vision of birth.
The vision of blood shedding.
The vision of deathly end.
The vision of salvation.
That's how they discovered it.
And what they discovered, I can discover, and
you can discover.
That mangled form upon a cross, with blood
and wounds and bruises all over his body.
That marred face more marred than any man.
That agonized form wrestling with the pain of
crucifixion and the burden of a world sin.
That whirlwind of abuse.
That fire of anger.
That earthquake of eruption.
And then a still, small voice.
He first loved us.
God commended his love for us.
In that voice he rejected us.
Christ died for us.
He first loved us.
And because of that, dear friends, because of
that, the apostle says, we love.
We love.
We love the Savior, because he first loved
us.
That's on the natural.
That's on the right.
That's on the response of any grateful heart.
We love the Savior.
If you read the New Testament carefully, I
think you'll find on nearly every page of
that lettered book, a portrait of Christ's dying
love.
A portrait of his dying love.
Have you ever carried photographs about with you?
In two world wars, in my children's process,
I carried photographs just to keep loved ones
in front of me.
To be able to glance at their faces
and to remember them.
And one of the saddest sights I ever
saw in action, was a palace Australian souvenir
hunter, taking from a German prisoner, a photograph
of his wife and family.
The man was desperate in his own language.
He grabbed the photograph.
The Australian souvenir hunter pulled it from him.
And the tears came rolling down the man's
face.
That he did take a photograph of his
wife and family.
Dominant as the souvenir.
And how they loved to look at those
portraits.
As dear ones in the homeland.
And I was a businessman away in the
southwest.
I remember reaching one of those lonely outback
townships.
And I was asked by a certain Baptist
man there, would you go down brother and
see our new Baptist pastor.
He's a very young man.
He's only just started in New York.
And he's terribly homesick.
He only got here two or three days
ago.
And he's wiped down in the ditch.
Don't have a word with him.
So I went down to where the Baptist
pastor was staying.
In a very gloomy room.
A dead city room.
In a very gloomy house.
In a gloomy street.
And to tell the truth, it was a
pretty gloomy church he'd gone to.
As well.
And I could understand the poor fellow's feelings.
He'd come out on his first long separation
from home.
He was very young.
He had to do his studies.
And he had to build up the church.
He'd had a very poor welcome.
And there he was sitting.
Everybody sort of thought a man down in
the dumps.
I saw one way.
There he was sitting and his head was
down.
The gloom of the room was all around
him.
Right in front of him was his table
with his books.
And there a large photograph of a very
nice young lady.
Just there he stroked at him.
And after we'd had a few words together,
and I tried to be a little sympathetic
to him, I said, oh, brother, who is
this lady here in the photograph?
And he dropped his head lower still, poor
fellow.
Why, he was aggravating his own sickness.
He was stabbing himself through by that photograph.
But he would have it so, you know.
He always have it so.
Though it's so aggravating.
You see that photograph, that portrait of a
loved one.
Alexander McGrath and the great expositor once said,
you know the trouble with many of us
Christians is this, just this, that we spend
our days like amateur photographers, going about taking
snapshots all over the place, snapshots.
Sorry, but that's not the way to excel
in photography.
You sit down and study the view.
Let its beauty go in.
See its splendor.
Get it at the right angle.
Take a good photograph of it.
But the trouble with us, we just take
snapshots.
And I hurry five minutes by the bed
in the morning, and less time at night
perhaps, and then into bed.
You'll never teach us the love of Christ.
Never.
Oh, what time those early saints spent upon
adoring love to Christ.
How John must have studied the portrait of
Christ, love to him, to all men.
How he must have studied them.
How he must have looked upon them, until
out of that burning lover's heart there came
these words, behold, what manner of love the
Father hath displayed upon us, that we should
be called the sons of God.
Quite wonderful.
The passionate Paul sits down in front of
the photograph of Christ's dying love, and he
studies it.
He studies it from every angle.
He views it in different directions.
And then he tries out to know the
love of Christ, which passes not.
Which passes not.
And then you think of other great names.
Samuel Rutherford of Amherst, one of the great
lovers of the Church of Scotland.
He produced a book, the like of which
I've never read.
Spurgeon, the most practical priest, the one who
said, let the world know that Spurgeon considers
Rutherford's letters the nearest to divine inspiration amongst
the mere writings of men.
I haven't such another book in my life
as Rutherford's letters.
And Rutherford so studied the love of Christ,
and that he cried out, oh, for eternity's
leisure to look upon him.
Oh, for the long day of summer ages,
to stand before him and to enjoy him.
He fell in love with Christ, I think.
Absolutely.
And the great Baptist missionary Judson of Burma,
who endured more sorrows and sufferings, I think,
than any missionary, cried out in his deathbed,
the love of Christ.
The love of Christ.
Why should I do for eternity?
So it is, dear friend.
We'll never get to the end of it.
You'll never fully understand it.
You'll never fathom its depth.
You'll never stand its height.
You'll never measure its width.
The love of Christ.
Oh, to study that photograph, that portrait of
his dying.
Love him, love him, love him.
You love him, of course you do.
Say, I love him.
I love him.
You know, when Lord Nelson is the hero
of Great Britain, he fell in love with
another man's wife.
One of the saddest stories in all of
history.
England's greatest hero.
And the most lovable man at that.
Fell in love with another man's wife.
Lady Hamilton.
Wife of the British ambassador to the nation.
And she loved him passionately as he loved
her.
And though it caused the domestic tragedies, it
never for one moment reflected Nelson from his
duties.
And he died saving England in the great
battle of Trafalgar.
And poor Lady Hamilton.
For ten years outlived the hero of Trafalgar.
And then she was found dead in the
miserable garrot in Calais, France.
In a poor dead hand.
The plucking of portrait of Nelson to her
grave.
All that was left, of course.
And you remember how Hardy stooped and kissed
his great captain, Gadmore, just before the death
of Nelson.
And Captain Hardy lived on, away many years
after Nelson's death.
But when he came to the hour to
die, Captain Hardy asked that the portrait of
Nelson be placed in the coffin with him.
He was a man to love, you see.
And the poor woman's back supported to her
breast.
And the great captain asked that the big
boat stay a dead body in the coffin.
But I'll give you something better than a
trumpet even.
Oh, I'll give you something better.
Listen to the sister.
Listen to the great apostle Paul speaking.
We all, with open faith, beholding as in
a mirror the glory of the Lord, are
changed from the same image, from glory to
glory, changed by the same image, from glory
to glory, as by the Lord Himself.
That is, looking, as in a glass, at
the love of Christ, which then pours unto
the become-like person, unto the love-like
person.
Though, as in that remarkable story by Nathaniel
Hawthorne, a grave story about a boy who
used to go out of his home away
in one of the districts of old England,
and that he'd walk some distance to a
quarry, and he'd look upon a great hill,
and there, right in the centre of the
hill, in a stone, there was a noble
saint's car.
And the boy would look on the car,
and look on it, and look on it,
and then come back to his house.
And years afterwards, the neighbours said to the
parents, You know, your boy is just the
same as that portrait, that face, on the
hilltop.
Well, he's taken the likeness to himself, by
looking so nicely at that face in the
rock.
That has become like God, looking unto Him.
We love Him.
Because He first loved us.
And we love the saints, because He first
loved us.
We love the saints, because He first loved
us.
Because we love Him.
That's why we love Him.
Because He loves us.
We love the saints.
By this, you know what I mean?
Now, you're my disciple.
If you have love, one to another.
One to another.
That would prove you're a disciple of mine.
Oh Lord, I thought if I had power,
that would prove.
If I had eloquence, that would prove.
If I gave large gifts, that I were.
If I was considerate of the poor, if
I was friendly to my neighbours.
No, He said, Yes, you'll prove that you're
my disciple.
If you've got love, one to another.
Love.
And I tell you, by nature, we're not
lovers, friends.
David is one of the grandest figures in
the Old Testament.
David was a man after God's own heart.
Now, listen to what happened to David.
Adultery.
Murder.
Deception.
The threats of sin.
He made a revolution.
And yet when David said from a broken
heart, I have sinned against the Lord.
God forgave him.
God took a life.
Life is not God.
God loved him freely.
Loved him freely, then He forgave him.
I want to tell you, his family and
his friends said, Why didn't you forgive him?
Why his own son led the rebellion that
split his kingdom?
Absolutely.
David's dearest friend, a hippopotam, turned traitor to
him.
Julii of the house of Saul, whom David
had spared from death, picked up stones as
the poor king went out a fugitive, and
hurled them at him, and cursed him.
Poor David.
His friends didn't forgive him.
His friends didn't love him.
Oh, dear friends, that was happened frequently in
the church of God.
God forgave him.
God took the life.
God pardoned everyone.
A brother is saved, and he comes into
the assembly, and he begins to act with
a good deal of self-confidence.
He does this, and he does that, and
he does the other, and he makes a
mistake or two.
Perhaps he speaks to somebody and asks them
to come further.
You go further with them, make a stand
for Christ, and the other one resents it
and is a bit of an upset, and
then somebody pokes it on themselves, to abuse
this brother, this Christ.
Ah, that's not the way, dear friends.
That's not the way.
That's not God's way.
Kind a little word, maybe said, but we
look behind the scenes, and we see a
man who's trying to do something for Christ's
sake.
And we love him.
A sister has a cause.
A fair, moral cause.
And her sister is raised in the assembly,
raised if they don't want to speak to
her.
Get together and whisper, make her feel embarrassed,
make her see the signs as though she
isn't wanted, and then she's raised, raised, raised.
They who should have got right round her
and loved her back into blessing, pretty well
throws her out.
And I don't know how many thousands of
people have been driven from the sanctuaries of
God by lack of love.
I know they have, though.
I know they have.
How differently Jesus acts.
Peter denied him three times with oaths and
crosses, but when Jesus Christ rose from the
dead and met that woman, you remember what
he said to the girl, tell my disciple,
will do anything to her because of his
love for her.
I love him.
That's love.
And I want to tell you, dear friends,
that the love that can't love on in
spite of resentment, in spite of failure, in
spite of mistakes, can't love on, love on,
is not really love.
It's not love born of God.
No, it's just a perception that rises or
falls according to the state of another person's
standing or life.
Not once in this New Testament, not twice,
not seven times, not ten times, not twelve
times, but fourteen times.
Fourteen times, Jesus.
I am called to love one another.
Love one another.
You know, I ought to know, because I've
just written a book on love, and this
is a hundred chapters.
I ought to know something about the subject,
I'm busy on this morning.
I tell you, it's wonderful, wonderful to place
love in the Scripture.
Fourteen times.
Stupid little girl, and she's learning her text
for the Sunday school, she's only five years
of age, can you hear her going over
the text, love one another, love one another,
love one another.
What's that mean, says her other little sister,
about four years of age?
Don't you know, she said.
Why, that means I've got to love you,
and you've got to love me.
I'm one, and you're the other.
No simple theology, no little lips, simple theology,
but true theology, sublime theology.
Yes, love one another.
Henry Drummond, you know, who wrote the greatest
thing in the world, tells us about a
nice young woman who grew up in a
church, and ministered wonderfully, and kindness, and love
in the church, and was a blessing and
a benediction, and she went into the thirties,
and she stepped up towards the forties, and
some of the dear people who, you know,
get interested in little links, and relationships, so
why do you think she ever married?
Well, well, look, she wears a locket around
her neck, and inside that locket, it says,
and I don't know, but they say that
there's a photograph of a lover who kissed
her first love.
Oh no, no, it wasn't that, says someone
else, she's darling to me.
But she never told me that.
No, but it did seem so, and I've
heard somebody say that, but anyway.
And so they talked about that locket, and
it was a suspicious thing about that family,
and then, just as she reached the forties,
she passed away.
And then they opened the locket, someone opened
the locket, the truth was out there, just
a little bit of paper, on which she
had written, with her own handwriting, who having
not seen, she loved the saints, and yet,
if she loved Christ, then she would have
said that she didn't have.
Or she loved the saints, because he first
loved her.
And then of course, in closing, I must
say that they love sinners, because he first
loved her.
Of course they do, because they're the sinners
themselves.
The only difference with us, to anyone who
hasn't come to Christ, is this, that we're
sinners under the blood, and they're sinners without
the blood.
We're sinners saved by the grace of God,
and they're sinners under the wrath of God,
and don't come to the grace of God
if we're like them.
Because Jesus did.
Jesus came into the world and saved sinners.
Jesus sat down with the publicans and the
harlots and the sinners, and he had his
meal with them, and he shed his kindness
and his grace over them.
Jesus touched the rotting, leprous body with his
hand.
That was an inauspicious thing to do in
Eastern countries.
That was a profounding thing to do.
Jesus put his two fingers into the deaf
ears and opened them.
Jesus clasped the two eyes that had been
blind from birth with the poses of Christ
and said, Now you go and watch in
silence.
And he went and came to.
Jesus went into the room and took the
dead hand of the little girl of twelve.
And he said, Oh Lord, what was the
fire of the game?
I tell you, the day before it was
a strange experience.
And he lifted that little girl up and
she was raised from the grave.
Oh, sweet love of God.
He knew.
He knew the death of sin.
He did a lot for us.
At some point, I went back to China
following Christ and he went out with the
same spirit.
I love these Chinese, he said.
And he began to work for them.
He couldn't get to their hearts.
And he decided he'd dress like a Chinese.
He'd pray and all.
And then he decided he'd eat like a
Chinese.
And he'd live like a Chinese.
And he went down and became one of
them, and he won them, won them, won
them in hunger.
Until he died.
Worn out, colonized.
That's what he said.
Worn out, colonized.
That's grand, isn't it?
Some of you may have heard of a
Chinese man named Luke Duke.
He sold himself as a slave in South
America.
That's the thing I couldn't do, sell myself
as a slave.
He sold himself to work in the mines
in South America for one purpose, that he
might reach the coolings.
The poor Chinese coolers that were lost in
their sea.
And as a slave working with them, he
preached Christ to them.
And after five years, he had a church
of 200 converted Chinese.
And a great Baptist preacher, Dr. AJ Gordon
of Boston, said, when you look at Luke
Duke, you can see why many men have
even laid down their lives for Christ.
It took a Chinese Christian to sell his
liberty for Christ.
But it is worth it.
He loved to save people.
You have to be a friend when it
comes to a meeting time and again.
You'll find that you can't get people to
love souls.
They come out one night out of about
four in the week.
That's a bad day, all those souls.
They hardly put in an extra effort to
pray for half an hour a day, the
souls have a run.
If you put on a prayer meeting before
the meetings, and I don't doubt the pastor
will, you don't find them very much.
And yet they say, I love God, man.
They love God, whom they haven't seen.
And him whom they have seen going down
to death, they don't love.
They long to be saved.
No, I tell you, it's reality I want.
Reality I long for.
If I meet a man with the image
of Christ in him, no matter what he
may say, what label he might put it
in, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, but he's got
the image of Christ on him, I love
him.
But I shall be in heaven with that
man.
I shall dwell in God's city with that
man.
He's my brother in the Lord.
Isn't that so with you?
Oh, yeah.
You know what?
I'm certain of this, that many a mother
has come into the dust of sacrifice for
love of their children.
I saw one mother do it in my
own home.
And most of you can remember the mother
who was willing to do it.
I know that some men have come right
into a collapse, a nervous breakdown, for love
of business.
I know some soldiers that have given their
life, but most love on the battlefield is
the love of country.
Oh, Pickling said, never the lotus flowers, never
the wildflowers wait, but the soul went out
in the east wind of God, for England's
sake.
That's all very well.
That's good.
What about love of souls?
Oh, I'm just ashamed, dear friend.
When I think of the little love I
have, although I've been laboring for souls for
thirty-odd years, the little love I really
have for them.
I tell you, it's a sad thing when
you can't even work up a sorrow or
a tear for the love of the lost.
And when we've got the opportunity that we
have now together, as the world's laborers, to
try and fill up the lifeline, you do
your best to cooperate, because you love them.
Sometimes we say, and we say it rightly,
we don't agree with certain systems, and I
know that's right, but we must never, never
embrace all the people, the souls in that
system when we say that.
You know, amongst the Roman Catholics there have
been some remarkable saints.
Dr. A.
J.
Burden, that great Baptist preacher, once said Catherine
of Siena was a pearl of piety and
purity in the middle ages of the Roman
Catholics.
And Dr. A.
J.
Burden quotes, and he was an out-and
-out Baptist of the finest order, he quotes
how Catherine of Siena used to pray to
God for the salvation of souls.
She'd scorn heaven's throne.
She'd plead with Christ to lose his power
upon the poor souls of men.
She'd stretch her hand up into the distance
as though she was laying hold upon the
garments of her Saviour.
Oh Lord, she'd say, Lord, my Jesus, promise
me you'll save them.
And one day, her hand seemed to come
down just for her.
And she felt the piercing of her nose
as though she had heart.
And Dr. A.
J.
Burden doesn't need to tell me the application
of that.
You're never to be a soul lover or
a soul winner until you know something, something,
that the fellowship of Christ says.
So they're not swept up like the man
sleeps up for sleep.
So we have to be restful for them.
Go on, off to travel into the kingdom
of Christ.
And some of us, you know, can't pay
the price.
May God make you become most devoted to
Christ.
And you will do your part.
And we'll praise to the glory of Christ
and love of souls, love of saints, and
love of Saviour.