I'm not sure that I know how to
address a church on anniversary day.
I've never been quite sure what the etiquette
really requires.
I know that one should begin by giving
thanks to God, and I believe we should
end by giving thanks to God.
But it is right and proper that we
should salute those who have laboured in the
days that are gone, and likewise that we
should salute those who, here with us in
this present day and age, are bearing the
burden of ministering to old and young.
And I want to do that.
There are so many here in Knox who
bear burdens of one kind or another.
The church is never built by one person
or even two or three.
It requires men severally gifted, each obedient to
the heavenly vision, carrying out what God requires
of him and of her.
And I want to salute you in that
sense.
All of you who are bearing the burden
and the task that God has given you,
may God bless you.
And I trust that on this anniversary occasion
you will catch again the vision that set
you out in the service of the Lord
in relation to the church here, or elsewhere
for that matter.
Catch the vision that the fire of enthusiasm
may burn as it never burnt before.
Know that as we move along together into
whatever years and time and opportunity may be
left for us to serve our God, oh
that we may be seen to be a
people who know the will of God and
are involved in just that.
Well now, I have felt constrained that we
should spend morning and evening worship today in
one chapter.
Not that we are going to expand the
whole of the chapter, but it seems to
me that it has been haunting me and
following me.
You know, you find this, do you not?
A word of God follows you, it pursues
you.
And this whole chapter has been at my
footsteps, tugging at my heart over recent days,
and I just want to turn to it
this morning and this evening and share a
few of the emerging thoughts with you.
The chapter is 1 Thessalonians, chapter 1, and
I want to read as the basis of
our meditation this morning, verses 2, 3 and
4.
We give thanks to God always for you
all, making mention of you in our prayers,
remembering without ceasing your work of faith and
labour of love and patience of hope in
our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of
God and our Father, knowing, brethren beloved, your
election of God.
Now, we have billed as our title this
morning an apostolic confirmation of the Church's election.
I was a little puzzled as to whether
we should do that, because mention of the
doctrine of election has well too often gendered
more heat than light.
And there have sometimes been sparks flying that
have had a detrimental effect on one and
another, and even detracted from the glory of
God.
Even so, all will agree, I believe, that
it would be a most precious boon, a
most precious benefit for any community or individual
to be assured that he or they are
God's elect.
In fact, if we are not persuaded of
this, then ultimately we are like the flotsam
on the seashore at the mercy of any
and every whim that may come our way.
If we cannot say with Paul, If God
be for us, and that's not an if
of doubt, but an if of certainty, as
sure as God is with us, who can
be against us?
But we need to be sure that God
is with us, for us, that we are
his.
Now, I like to put it in this
way.
The doctrine of election is so often misunderstood,
but may I suggest to you that basically
its purpose in scripture is to assure us
that God's redeemed, every one of them, are
God's wanted people.
The doctrine of election is meant to assure
us that we didn't simply opt for God.
We did that.
We probably remember the time, we probably remember
the occasion when, by the grace of God,
through the power of the Holy Spirit and
the preaching of the Word, we decided for
the Savior, we chose Christ.
Now, that's quite true, that's the human side
of it.
But our Lord put it like this.
Looking into the face of his disciples one
day, he said, you have not chosen me,
but I have chosen you and ordained you.
He did not thereby mean to minimize the
human aspect of this.
Of course they decided, of course they left
all and followed him, of course they chose.
But behind the human there was the sovereignly
divine.
He called before they obeyed.
He chose them before they chose him.
He wanted them before they wanted him.
And you see, this is really what the
doctrine of election is meant to do.
It's to assure us that God hasn't merely
decided to put up with us.
Now, that's very wonderful that he should put
up with me.
I don't understand how he does that from
time to time.
But he wanted me.
He chose me.
It wasn't that he was put in a
corner and he couldn't avoid it.
You can't put God in a corner.
He chose us, he chose us.
Now I find that there are many Christian
people today who are at a loss and
they don't know where they are.
And one of the reasons is this.
They don't realize that every redeemed child of
God is a wanted child.
A wanted child.
You are wanted.
You were chosen.
If you and I can bear this sense
of being chosen by God into a world
that knows not whence it came or whither
it goes, I tell you we have an
anchorage that can keep us in the midst
of the many storms and trials and tempestuous
times, intellectually and morally, and keep us stable.
God give us this.
Let me repeat then.
My friend, God wants you to know that
if you're a child of his, you were
wanted and you are wanted.
I remember hearing in London of two little
boys squabbling.
You know boys can be very cruel to
each other.
Of course girls can too.
But young life, young folk can be very
cruel.
Now the lad next door who was born
into the family knew that his partner was
an adopted child.
One day they were squabbling and he said
some very nasty things to his friend and
among the things he said was, look, you
don't belong to so and so anyway.
You don't belong.
I belong.
That said the little Mike.
He said, Mommy and Daddy chose me.
You only arrived.
Now I don't want to underline the second
point, but I do want to underline the
first.
Men and women, if you're sprinkled with the
blood of Christ this morning, if you're born
of the Spirit, if you're in the body
of Christ, I want to look you straight
in the face and tell every man and
woman among you, you are wanted.
And that is the basic significance of the
doctrine of election.
It goes beyond that.
But it's God coming to tell us however
much we struggle to get into the kingdom,
however much effort we put into it, He
wanted us.
And by the Spirit and by the Word
and by His servants and circumstances, He contrived
to woo us and to win us and
He would not let us go.
That's why we're here this morning fundamentally.
Now, the Apostle Paul is assuring the church
in Thessalonica that they were God's wanted people.
How did he do it?
What is the basis of such assurance?
Taken against the background of the context as
a whole, it would appear that Paul bases
his reasoning upon two main factors.
Now, the first I can only mention.
In the first place, he is assured of
the election of this church because of the
manner in which the gospel came to them.
I'm now reading verse 5, which I did
not read from my text, but I think
it's necessary to see this.
For our gospel, says Paul, came not unto
you in word only, but also in power
and in the Holy Ghost and in much
assurance, as ye know what manner of men
we were among you for your sake.
Now, those words speak of a power that
was inherent in the word of the gospel
and they also speak of a power that
was evident in the messengers of the gospel.
And says Paul, we are so sure of
your election for one thing, the power with
which the word came to you, the power
with which the gospel came to you, and
the power that was given to us as
we lived among you and behaved holily among
you.
Now, if our congregation this morning comprised a
majority of ministers and of pastors and of
theological students and missionaries and men who are
about to be the ambassadors of the Lord
in this full-time sense, we would have
to spend more time on this.
As things are, I will confine myself to
saying this.
Ultimately, the emergence of the church of God
depends upon the power that is in the
word of the gospel and the power that
accompanies the preaching of the gospel.
And you must have a power of the
message combined with a power in the messenger.
And all this is described here in most
graphic terms.
The word of God, the gospel came unto
you, he says, not in word only.
It's so easy just to be talking.
And there's nothing more to it than words,
words, words.
No, no, no, he says.
But also wrapped up in dynamis, in dynamite.
Wrapped up in the Holy Ghost.
Not impersonal power, but power which is personal.
God, the Holy Ghost, was present directing affairs,
convincing and convicting and converting.
Now, we need this kind of power.
Pray, then, for those of us who are
involved in the ministry of the word on
the home front and further afield.
And it is this only that I can
say in connection with this point.
Pray for us.
That we shall not blunt the edge of
the gospel of Christ, but rather know the
power of the Spirit of God in us
day by day.
Pray for the missionaries that have gone out
from here that this may be true of
them.
That the power of the gospel objectively may
be accompanied by a power of God subjectively.
That wedded together, the divine dynamic, the divine
dynamite, in the message and in men, may
perform the divine work.
Pray.
Now, what I want to dwell upon this
morning very specially is the second strand of
teaching which we have here.
Not upon the manner in which the gospel
came to the Thessalonians, important as that was
and is, but upon the ministry which the
gospel performed in the lives of the Thessalonians.
What the gospel did in them.
What the gospel did for them.
And then, ultimately, what the gospel did through
them.
Looking back retrospectively upon the solemn circumstances surrounding
the birth of this church, read for us
by the Reverend George Lowe from Act 17
this morning, though that's only a summary statement,
of course.
But looking back retrospectively upon the circumstances envisaged
there, Paul acknowledges with almost boundless joy the
wonder of the spectacle of God at work
in power.
Now, you read the story again in Act
17 and you will see that it was
a difficult time.
Paul didn't get it all his own way.
There were all kinds of people that set
machinery in motion to do this and to
oppose and frustrate in that way.
But we give thanks to God always for
you all, he says, constantly mentioning you in
our prayers, remembering before God and our Father
your work of faith and labor of love
and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus
Christ.
We can't stop praising God for you.
Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God.
Now, how could he be so sure?
Two things I want to say this morning.
The fruit of the gospel as seen in
the outward life of the Thessalonian church members
was such as to indicate that they were
really the Lord's people.
I refer now, first of all, to the
outward life, the things that were evident to
the ordinary human eye.
And they are remembering your work of faith,
your labor of love, your steadfastness of hope
in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Three things, then, in the outward life, the
evident life of the Christian community here, three
things impressed themselves upon the apostle, in consequence
upon which he was quite sure they were
God's elect.
Now, let's look at these three before we
turn over to the more inward evidences of
election.
First of all, in this connection, the ministry
of the gospel produced work.
How do you know when a profession of
faith is real?
How do you know when a person who
allegedly trusts Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord
is genuinely so trusting?
Well, ultimately, you have to wait and see
whether there is a corresponding work of faith.
Let me put it negatively, and then positively.
Negatively, we can't assess any man's profession by
its apparent emotional content.
For example, emotion like steam can be related
to the trivial or to the eternal.
Steam can simply blow a whistle, or it
can be used to drive an engine.
And emotion is the same.
Emotion can be related to the trivial and
the superficial and the passing.
Or it can be that mighty thing that
drives an engine through life across a continent
like this.
Emotion is of that order.
You can't, therefore, assume that a man is
genuine simply because he has passed through an
emotional experience.
Neither can we assess a man's experience by
reference to his ecclesiastical context at the time.
You see, the fact that an experience takes
place within the walls of a church, it
doesn't mean anything, really, in and of itself.
Let me put it to you like this.
Among the most God-fearing people, you can
find a Judas, even as among the Twelve.
People who accompany the children of God do
not necessarily belong to the children of God.
On the other hand, in an ungodly setup
like the ancient Sanhedrin of New Testament times
and the synagogue in Jerusalem, you may find
a Nicodemus.
Circumstances are very confusing.
Life is very confusing.
Among the Twelve, a Judas.
In the synagogue, a Nicodemus.
No, no, no.
Our ecclesiastical setup does not prove that our
experience is genuinely of God.
Positively—let me hurry from the negative, though there
is more we can say.
Positively, an experience is valid and genuine when
it produces the appropriate kind of work.
James says, faith without works is dead.
It's aborted.
It's fruitless.
There's no life to it.
It's a mere profession.
It's empty.
It's a shell.
Faith without works is dead.
Paul says that every newborn babe in Christ
is, I quote, created in Christ Jesus unto
good works.
Now, this is a delightful word.
Have you ever really noticed it?
Every newborn babe in Christ is created but
for into good works.
That's the preposition.
Right into it.
There are works waiting for us.
A man is born again.
He's born into a sphere of good works.
And God prepared them from before the foundations
of the world for every newborn babe his
work.
So that when God gives us the grace
to have faith in his Son, we are
born to work.
There's something waiting for us to do.
John's concern is exactly the same in 1
John 3, 10, to which I will not
now refer.
Now, these Thessalonians, then, were no mere churchmen
talking about the institution.
Oh, no, no, no, no.
Nor were they experienced mongers trying to give
a ticket for another spiritual trip into the
unseen to their fellow countrymen.
No, no, no.
They were men who had exercised faith in
Jesus Christ and that faith had generated work.
That was the first mark.
Work.
Now, it's not a good word.
It's a bad word in the twentieth century.
We want to get out of as much
work as we can.
We don't like long hours.
We don't like much toil.
Not too much work.
Work is the relevant word here.
Secondly, in this connection, the ministry of the
same gospel produced labor or toil.
Your labor of love.
Labor.
The difference between work and toil, or work
and labor, whichever translation you prefer, is this.
Toil is work, but it is work in
the face of difficulties.
It is work in the face of opposition,
and then it becomes toil.
All work is work, but not all work
is toil.
The moment work becomes toil, it envisages difficulties.
Someone's standing in my way, or I am
tired and I would rather pack it up.
But I toil on.
We read of the disciples.
They tell our Lord in Luke 5 and
verse 5, We have toiled all night and
caught nothing.
They've been out on the Sea of Galilee.
They've been trying to get a hold of
fish, but wherever they go, whatever they do,
the fish evade them.
We've toiled all night.
We've been moving here.
We've been going there.
We've been doing this, that, and the other,
but we've got nothing.
It's not exactly the same word that is
used, but it has a similar connotation when
we read that they were toiling and rowing.
They were going into the teeth of the
wind.
It's another occasion there.
Going into the teeth of the wind, and
the wind was blowing, and they were rowing,
and they couldn't make any progress.
Toiling, toiling.
Toiling is work, then, into the teeth, into
the face of difficulties.
That statement reflects opposition.
Now, the acceptance of the gospel by the
Thessalonians did not only produce work, it produced
toil.
They lived in a pagan environment.
There was much opposition.
Paul had to run away for his life
and leave two of his lieutenants behind to
pursue the work.
They got rid of him because they were
afraid that the apostle was going to be
murdered.
Now, that was a dangerous place for the
gospel of Jesus Christ and for young Christians.
But they toiled on.
They worked on in the face and in
the teeth of difficulties, and they kept on
going on.
Their moral muscles were flexed.
Their will became impregnated with a whole resolve
to go on.
Now, this is the work of God's grace.
Thirdly, in this connection, the ministry of the
gospel produced, the best translation here is steadfastness.
Not patience, but steadfastness.
Steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
The word Paul used refers more to the
steadfastness that underlies patience, rather than to patience
itself.
I heard a good English theologian say on
one occasion that the best word to translate
the particular Greek word that Paul used here
is a word which is not in the
dictionary.
Whether he coined it or not, I'm not
sure.
It's the word stickability.
You don't have that over here, I'm quite
sure.
Stickability.
You know, a man refuses to abandon ship.
He goes on, he's plodding on, and he
means to go on, and he will die
if he's going on.
This is what the grace of God does.
It doesn't simply create starters, but finishers.
You know, we can psychologically generate starters in
the church.
People who will take on the job.
People who will set a going, but it's
only the grace of God that can make
finishers.
People who pursue the course, who endure to
the end.
Now, this is God's work, this.
Work, toil, steadfastness.
Such evidences in the external life of a
man or of a church point toward a
genuine work of grace, be it in the
church or the individual.
The fruit of the gospel in outward life.
My friend, would you be assured of your
election of God?
If you can look at yourself this morning
and see, yes, God's grace has generated work
which was not there before.
Work which has manifested itself in terms of
toil, when difficulties have emerged.
And which keeps me going on, then I
tell you, that is not the work of
a man, that is not the work of
a minister, that is not the work of
an evangelist, that is not the work of
a church, that is the work of God.
The perseverance of the people of God in
Knox for 150 years, one generation handing on
the torch of truth to another, means that
God was in the beginnings of it and
God is in the continuance of it.
For he which hath begun a good work
in you will, God never gives up, will
finish it or will pursue it until it
is finished.
Now, come with me to the other side
of this coin.
The inward root.
Whence such fruit emerged, as seen in the
transformed lives of these Thessalonian Christians.
What makes Paul so glad and so reassuring
that those outward fruits were so evidently the
product of a wholesome spiritual condition?
Now listen to what he said.
If I had to finish here this morning,
I would have done great despise to the
gospel, because Paul did not simply speak of
work and of toil and of perseverance.
Notice, he traces each one of them to
their root, and he is as concerned with
the rootage as with the fruitage.
The work, he says, is a work of
faith.
The toil is a toil of love.
And the steadfastness, a steadfastness of hope in
our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now take a brief look at this spiritual
condition of soul.
It's not simply, you see, that they're active.
You can get people involved in a kind
of work, and you can get people involved
in toiling, and you can get people who
are apparently steadfast in going on, and yet
they may not be genuinely Christian.
But if they have in their hearts this,
this, this, this cluster of roots, all entwined
into one, making one, faith and love and
hope, and if the works and the toil
and the perseverance emerge out of faith and
out of love and out of hope, says
Paul, you need ask no more questions.
This is the genuine article.
You may be sure, he says, that your
God's elect people for the inward condition corresponds
to the outward manifestation.
This is no hypocrisy.
This is no play acting.
This is no religious acting.
This is the real thing.
When the heart is true to the outward
life.
Now, let's look briefly at these.
The work inspired by the gospel in the
life of God's elect is a work of
faith.
The Bible talks about a lot of works
and many kinds of works, and they're all
interesting and need to be pursued and analyzed
carefully.
There are works of the law.
There are wicked works.
There are dead works.
There are unfruitful works of darkness.
Ungodly works.
Good works and other species are like this.
Beautiful works.
Sometimes usually translated in the King James Version
as good works, but beautiful works.
The woman who broke her alabaster box of
precious ointment did, according to our law, not
a good work, but a beautiful work.
Kalos.
Beautiful.
The word you use of a beautiful person.
A beautiful deed.
A lovely deed.
A beautiful thing.
Now, all good and beautiful works, such as
those that betoken our election of God, are
essentially works of faith.
That's the point.
Works of faith.
Well, you say, what really does this mean
in practical life?
This.
A man who is genuinely a Christian doesn't
do the right thing simply because people expect
him to.
Now, this applies to those of us that
are brought up, perhaps, in a Christian home.
And we know that mum and dad expect
certain things of us.
They've prayed for us.
They've sought the covenant blessings of God in
relation to us, and they're expecting.
And as children in a Christian set-up,
we may do things just because that's the
expected thing.
But you see, if we are genuinely Christian,
we shall do it for another reason, because
we are faith in Jesus Christ.
Or there may be people that are going
to quiz you, some very bosom friend of
yours.
And you covenant it with him or with
her.
Look, I'm going to do such and such
a thing, and when you meet that person
next time, he's going to ask you, did
you do it?
And you're going to do it because you're
too ashamed to have to say you haven't.
I'm not minimizing the importance of that kind
of friendship.
Saul, I'm sorry, Jonathan and David.
I'm not minimizing the importance of that, but
I am saying this.
Ultimately, this kind of action which is born
simply to avoid the ire of my friend
is not what we have here.
This is deeper.
This kind of work emerges because of my
faith uniting me to Jesus Christ, and the
impulse of his life in me is this,
Christ liveth in me, therefore I so live,
I so behave.
Hence, the works of faith are to be
distinguished from works of convenience or works of
necessity, if I may so call them.
They spring spontaneously out of my shaving relationship
to Jesus Christ.
Is that true of us?
Listen, my friend, if there was no one
looking, and no one inspecting, and no human
eye to see, would you have done that?
Go deep.
The Christian life, the truly Christian life, is
primarily a God-like thing.
I am answerable to God.
We walk in the light, and our hearts
are open to him, and our conscience is
alive to him.
We are alive to God, as Paul puts
it in Romans 6.
This means we do it out of faith
in ourselves.
Secondly, the works of God's elect are a
work of faith.
The toil inspired by the gospel in God's
elect is a toil of love, labour of
love.
Now, just as men work for different reasons,
so also do they toil.
Some face difficulties and opposition for material gain.
I don't need to enlarge on this, do
I?
You know of men and women who get
up early in the morning and they'll go
to bed late at night and they'll spend
and be spent because they want a prize.
Now, I'm not sitting in judgment upon this,
I'm stating a fact.
A fact of life.
Some will do it for social considerations.
They want to mean something in society, and
they want to get places in society, and
they want this honor and that honor.
I'm not sitting in judgment for the moment,
I'm stating a fact.
Other people for academic reward.
Neither am I sitting in judgment upon this.
I've no right to anyway.
I'm only stating a fact.
There are people who will burn the midnight
oil and they're up early in the morning,
and they'll forget about the body and forget
about all physical needs because they're bent on
getting places academically.
They're after the reward.
But the toil or the labour of God's
elect is different.
It is traced to a heart of love.
This man, this woman labours out of love
for Jesus Christ.
There's a passion here.
It's a sanctified passion.
It's a heart passion.
And it is a passion that is a
love for the Savior who died.
As C.T. Studd put it, if Christ
be God and died for me, then there's
nothing too great for me to do for
him.
The love of Christ constrains us, says Paul.
It hedges us in.
We can do no other.
Demi, the renowned and ever-blessed Scots theologian
of an earlier age, said this.
The passion of the New Testament, he says,
startles us when we chance to feel it.
For one man among us who is using
up the passion of his soul in barren
ecstasies, there are thousands who have never been
moved by Christ's love to a single tear
or a single heartthrob.
They must learn to love before they can
labour.
That's why the one test our Lord gave
to Simon Peter before he launched him out
on his great apostolic career was this, Simon,
son of Jonas, lovest thou me?
Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?
Simon, son of Jonas, do you really love
me?
Now, you see, if you've got this, you
don't need anything else ultimately.
Oh, I'd like to qualify that.
I can't do it this morning.
But ultimately, if we have that kind and
quality of real, genuine love in Jesus Christ,
it will generate a kind of toil that
we shall need before our day is out.
You know, this reminds me of a dear
old gentleman in one of our Welsh mining
valleys.
He's recently gone to be with his Lord.
Twenty years ago, he had what he was
told was cancer in the throat.
He worked in the mine, a Saturday night
shift, and he always preached in the churches
around on a Sunday and took a Bible
class in the afternoon.
And this day had been a very difficult
day, knowing that he had cancer in the
throat.
He'd been over, not by car, he had
no car.
Colliers couldn't afford cars in those days.
He walked across the mountain, top down to
the next valley until he got to the
little church, after taking his Bible class in
the afternoon.
And he got there and he preached.
And knowing him, he would have preached.
Preached, I mean.
And he came back, and he arrived in
the house exhausted, without that much energy of
mind or of body, and he went into
his bedroom, and he was overheard to pray
something like this, Dear Lord, dear Lord Jesus,
they tell me it's stupid, but I'm only
doing it for the love of you.
And I'll be in such and such a
place next Sunday, if I'm still in this
life, cancer or no cancer.
That's what I'm getting at.
I'm not reading something from a book that's
not true.
I'm talking about Howard Griffiths, a man I
knew.
The toil of love.
What do we know of this?
And lastly, the steadfastness kindled and inspired by
the gospel in the hearts of God's elect
is a steadfastness of hope in our Lord
Jesus Christ.
Now, hope has to do with the future,
of course.
Hope is faith and love together looking into
the future.
My faith in Jesus Christ, your faith in
Jesus Christ, if it's genuine, it results in
certain things right here and now.
Of course it does.
By faith we have peace with God, says
Paul, through our Lord Jesus Christ.
By faith we have access to God.
By faith we have grace upon grace.
All the blessings of this morning, by faith
through grace.
But not all the promises of the one
in whom we believe have been yet fulfilled.
Some relate to the future.
Faith looking to the future is hope.
The same goes for love.
If you're in love with Jesus Christ this
morning, there are certain inevitable consequences here and
now.
He shares his love with you.
You keep Christ with him, and when you
meet and talk together and share each other's
secrets together, there is something here upon earth
which is a veritable fortest of heaven.
But it's all a fortest!
And so love, like faith, has this future
anticipatory aspect.
It looks forward.
Faith knows it's received something.
The end must come.
Love knows it's received the firstfruits.
The great consummation will come.
The great marriage day will one day arise.
And this is faith and love looking forward
to the future.
Hope!
Do you know anything of this?
And because of hope we are determined for
the sake of him whom we trust and
him whom we love and him in whom
we hope to go on to the end
of the road.
Let the wounds come.
Let the blisters and the wheels arrive.
Let the opposition and the fury of men,
if needs be, face us day by day.
We're going on because we have hope in
him.
Yea, though he slay me, yet will I
trust.
Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God.
Now, as I think of 150 years, I
somehow see a reflection of some of this.
Speaking generally, this must have been true.
But, my friends, I'm forgetting the past.
I want you to come with me this
morning and ask ourselves this.
Is the work which we profess a work
of grace, is it really of this caliber?
Nothing less will suffice in this day and
age and nothing else will satisfy when at
last we meet our God before the judgment
seat.
Therefore, in the words of the apostle Peter,
let us make our calling and election sure.
Let us attend ourselves to the rootage in
the soul.
Let us give ourselves to the perfection of
the faith and of the love and of
the hope.
Let us seek to fan the faith in
Christ which is in another brother or another
sister's heart.
Let us seek to pour the oil of
fellowship and the oil of the Spirit upon
the hearts of other people that their love
may be kindled to a flame.
Let us try to gender in each other
and in one another all round this hope
which is in Christ that enables a man
to go on and on and on.
Most suggestively, a historian has said that the
last time Sadhu Sundar Singh was seen, he
was still climbing.
Hallelujah!
The last view of him, he was still
climbing.
My friend, are you climbing this morning?
If you are down on your knees, then
by the grace of God get up again.
If you are wallowing and defeated, the grace
that sought you and found you in Jesus
Christ comes after you on this anniversary day
and says, Man of God, man of faith,
your love may be weak and your hope
may be weak, but look, I want to
put you on your feet again and send
you out.
May the Lord enable this to go on
in each of our hearts today.
May the ministry of this church, as long
as the church shall last, be a ministry
where faith and love and hope are perfected
to the glory of the Christ who called
us and the Father who has made us
His own.
Let us pray.
Oh Lord, our God, we bless Thee for
Thy great goodness and mercy to us.
We need reassurance this morning and some of
us have to say that our faith is
feeble and our love is cold and our
hope is dim.
Therefore, believing that Thou didst begin the work
in us, we come to the only throne
where grace is dispensed that makes weak faith
strong, that transforms the cold heart into a
heart that is ablaze with love and that
thereby strengthens the hope and makes it firm
and full and robust.
Our God, God of our fathers, Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ, who for the joy
that was set before Him endured the cross,
despising the shame, and is set down at
the right hand of the Father, come, finish
then Thy new creation.
Pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see Thy great salvation perfectly restored
in me.
We ask it in our Savior's name.
Amen.