Let her take me home, thus says my Lord, my Lord, to the cross of shame. Love found the way, the way is holy. Thank you very much, and now Brother Taylor. I always, uh, now that particular hymn I've always enjoyed, but I've always admired the song leaders that call it out, because it's almost impossible to get through that chorus on the right time, with all the traditional timings that we have for it. So I always, about three bars from the end, stop singing to hear how they're gonna do it. I've always enjoyed it, though, and I always admire the courage of the song leaders who call for it. I always thought it was a fine hymn, and of course we tenors love to sing the harmony and bounce along with that one. It really has some movement to it, but that happens to be one of the tricky things. That becomes one of the great tests of love when you're the song leader and nobody follows your direction. Can you love them still? That's one of the great. I'm talking with you about the concept of application, application, application, understanding, reality, and expression of Christian love. That's what I'm talking with today and what I hope to talk with about in the evenings that come at this seven o'clock hour. I'd like to make it plain that you can come to any one of these hours. You're not obligated to both of them. In fact, you're not obligated to either of them, I guess. Uh, but sometimes, you know, people look at an evening schedule and they don't have two hours, they don't have three hours, they don't have four hours. Uh, so you don't really have to feel under any great burden, at least as far as I'm concerned. If you, uh, no apologies, no questions, no nothings. If you can make one, wonderful. If you can't, nobody comes at all, I'll be very quiet. But if you can make one wonderful, you can be with us for both of them, that's good. If you can only come for the second one, we can live with that. We'll be happy to have you, whatever the case might be. The chief difference is that in the second session, which will probably start about eight fifteen, and we'll try to be pretty exact on being done by nine, in that particular session, I want to talk about how to study the Bible, and I'm working against the background of the book of Titus. It's an awfully important subject, and as I've said several times, maybe not here, but other places, uh, I don't know all there is to know about that subject, but I do know that studying the Bible is really a wonderful thing to be able to do. It's my privilege to get paid to do it. That's a kind of a high calling. Of course, I get to do a lot of other things too, but I'm just thankful to have an opportunity in life whereby I can spend a fair amount of time studying. I'm somewhat apologetic for how ignorant I am for as much opportunity as I have, but we all have a lot of opportunity that we don't use. We all have it, and much of the time it's a matter of not knowing what we want to do or how we want to do it. So that's what I'm going to try to do in connection with that, discuss how it is that we study the Bible, using Titus as kind of a model book. It's short, you can get a view on the whole book, you can read the whole book in about five minutes without straining your brain almost. So you can read the book seven or eight times before we begin, and you may be ahead of us even before we get started. But this evening I want to talk with you continuing about this concept of the reality and expression of Christian love. I tried to emphasize this morning what I think is absolutely foundational, and that is that you must experience love, I like to say, daily yourself. It becomes impossible to take the Lord's words of John thirteen seriously, when he says, men, you'll know you're my disciples because you love one another. It's impossible to take those words seriously if you do not experience love in your own. I have gone through some tricky things with the children. I was a child once myself for about twenty three years. I had a short adolescence and started second childhood early again. I had those tricky experiences with the children. You have to be careful what you say about them, but none of them are here. You've seen some of mine, and they're frightfully normal and have their father between beating his head on the wall and, well, never mind. But whatever the case is, uh, every now and then, see, I, my son would get it in, would get it into his mind that nobody liked him and go off to his room sulkily. Now, there was a time when I worried about that, and I used to follow him off, and he'd lay in the bed weeping, and I would fall down and kneel, and I'd say, listen, your father loves you. I'd get a grump for it. My mother would have hit me with a wet towel about that time, I think, and walked back to her work contentedly. It took me a long time to realize that if people don't want to be loved, they won't be loved. And not wanting to be loved, they don't receive love, and they can't share love. Now, I hate to tell you, but some of us are kind of that way with God. We are downright grouchy with him. And so we forget the reality of forgiveness, we forget the joy of the indwelling Spirit, we have no testimony for the Lord Jesus Christ whatsoever, and we don't really reflect much at all of God's love. Consequently, we don't have much peace or much blessing within ourselves, and it's a large matter that we just are not willing to experience His love towards us. A preacher told me one day of visiting this elderly Christian lady in a home near Philadelphia. It's not one of my stories, so I'm not responsible for it, but I can report it to you like he told it to me. Said he visited her, he said she'd been infirm, she'd had a stroke, and so for the last fourteen years, she'd only been able to move one arm. She just laid in bed and could move one arm. All the things she did normally like to do, she couldn't do, and she laid there, but she was a Christian lady. And he said to her one day, he said, well, aunt, whatever her name was, he said, what do you do with your time all day? Of course, she could turn up one arm and read a little bit and turn on her radio dial, but you know, it's a pretty limited life when you can just move the one arm. He said, what do you do all day? Well, she said, she said, I read, and she said I do a few things, but she said a lot of times, she said, I just lay here and let the Lord love me, she said. A lot of times, she said, I just sit here, lay here, and think how good he's been to me. And she said, then I'm able to pray for others and don't feel sorry for myself and many other things too. Now, that may be too sentimental for you, and it might be a little hard on me, but the point is that you not only need to know Jesus in a saving way, that's where life begins. You need the experience of God's love day by day, living with a sense of forgiveness, living with a joy in the Holy Spirit, living and confessing Christ. And it's mighty hard to share a thing that you haven't experienced, mighty hard to do it. And so I only tell you again, I can't come back that much more often, but the concept is to have an experience of love day by day, in which there's a sense of your really being alive in Christ and thankful for the forgiveness that God gives and all the things that come with that. Now I want to read this evening in First John three and also in First John four. Tomorrow night I want to talk with you for a bit about how it is that love helps us to be helped by others. I'm hoping that my talks will have a practical thrust to them, but what you hope and what you do are sometimes different things, but I'm hoping that's the case. Because, see, I have to learn that if my life is balanced in the knowledge of Christ by love rightly, then a lot of other things go better too. So tomorrow night I want to talk a bit about how it is that love helps us to be in a place where we can help by others. It's complicated, but it's not as complicated tonight as it'll be tomorrow. Just wait and see. But that's what I want to do tomorrow evening. Uh, the concept of how it builds us. Tonight I want to talk about the necessary factors in love. Love being the unselfish seeking of that which promotes the spiritual welfare of others. I want to talk with you tonight about some of the necessary factors in love, and so I will begin reading in First John three at verse eleven. I'll read at the end of the chapter, then I'll go over and read some in First John four. First John three at verse eleven. This is the message that you've heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one and slew his brother. Why did he slay him? Because his own works were evil and his brother's righteous. Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you. We know that we have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. 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. But whoso hath this world's good and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth. And hereby we know that we are of the truth and shall assure our hearts before him. For if our heart condemneth, God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemneth not, then have we confidence toward God, and whatsoever we ask, we receive of him because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight. And this is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of his son Jesus Christ, and love one another as he gave us commandment. And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us by the spirit which he hath given us. And then in chapter four at verse fifteen: Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts without fear, because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made complete in love. But we love him because he first loved us. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he's a liar. For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also. Really, those verses are awfully hard on us if we read them with any type of feeling. The emphasis that the Lord laid down in John thirteen is really carried to a focal point there, and says the apostle, this is what you've heard from the very start. There are not two messages or three, there's one. God is love, and he who loves God loves the other members of God's family. There are some very necessary factors in the reality and expression of Christian love. Christian love being the unselfish seeking of that which is best spiritually for the other party. There are some necessary factors in it, and this evening I want to sketch four of them rather quickly and lightly, although it may seem to you rather longly and heavily. That's kind of the way it goes. I often tell them, well, I never speak very long, but sometimes it seems like a long, long, long time. Heard a fellow one night who talked for an hour and a half, it seemed like about fifteen minutes. My, he was good. What a blessing his message was. When I saw that I sat there for an hour and a half, I couldn't believe it. I don't sit still for baseball or football that long either, but it was a great blessing and a tremendous thing. And I said to my son as I was going out, I said, didn't that seem short? He said, yeah, Dad. He said, talked an hour and a half, it seemed like just about twenty minutes. A great blessing. He said, he said, how come you don't talk like that, Dad? I didn't know what to say at that point, just backed off and wished I'd gone alone. But whatever the case was, I'd like to treat four aspects of it, uh, rather rapidly for you. The first of them is Galen chapter three against the truth of verse twenty three and a number of verses that go with it. And that is the necessary factor in the reality and expression of Christian love is, first of all, to recognize the reality of the brotherhood. Who is a brother? Those who believe on the name of his son, Jesus Christ. There are two commandments given, that we should love one another and that we should believe on him. And the brotherhood is comprised on the basis of those who believe on the name of his son, Jesus Christ. That theme is amplified back in chapter one, Amplified in chapter one when it talks about us walking in the light in verses seven and verses six, walking in the light and having fellowship one with another. Consequently, a brotherhood is not a mere physical thing, but is essentially a spiritual thing. And it's essentially spiritual because, as I said this morning, there is forgiveness of our sins, there's the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, there's the common confession in Jesus Christ. The writer says back in verse eleven of chapter three, this message you've heard from the beginning that you should love one another, and that, of course, is in the sphere of profession, talking about the children of God back in verse ten and so forth. But the emphasis is that you have to recognize the reality of the brotherhood. Now, there are only six in our family. All six belong to my mother and father. There were times when they would have liked to given two or three of them away, but all six belong to them. No one was any more a child than was the other one a child. That's almost a stupid thing to say, but it's a point that I try to tell my children. Some of my children feel left out. It's very easy to feel that the parents love another kid more than they do you. Uh, especially, it's, it's hard to know. I usually felt it. I was the oldest child, I was sure that the girls got a lot more stuff than I did. In fact, if I think about it a minute, I still feel neglected just a little bit. But, you know, uh, that may have been the case. It may have been the case that because I was the first child, I was spoiled. That's what the girl said, and I said because I was the first child, I had tons more responsibility than they did. But that, that doesn't make a lot of difference now. I was equally a member of the family, as were they, and I could not change it. I could have run away from home, it would have been no different. I could have given my mother a nasty, mean time, it would have been no different. It would have been a lot harder on me. But no matter what one does, they are equally... You can't renounce your father and mother in a practical way. Oh, you can renounce them, you can leave them, you can curse them, and many people have done that in this day and age. Sometimes you will break over yourself. Now, that's a poor way to say it, but you'll bend over backwards twice, trying to help somebody that doesn't want to be helped. Sometimes it will be your father and mother you're trying to help. I met a case not long ago where a mother had decided that her son was no longer, he was the heir, I mean, he was the executor of her property. She decided he wasn't treating her honestly every day she called a different attorney and tried to get somebody to sue him. Of course, see, she was having a, a senility problem, and he knew it and in love understood it. But you see, he said, what can I do to help her? Sometimes it's a child, you can't... but the emphasis is that they are still members of that family, and to recognize the reality of the brotherhood is the big thing. It's easy to imagine you're more important to God than somebody else, but you're not in the family. Now, you may have a better gift as far as gifts are live, and you may do a lot more things, but as far as the family, there's only one new birth, and there's only one new creation, and that's what every truly born-again person is in the sight of God in Jesus Christ. There's no room for an inferiority complex in this body, and no room for a superiority one either. Uh, the big test is, have we confessed Jesus Christ, and do we express his love? Uh, folks, that particular point needs a lot more attention than I'm going to give it this evening, but I've thought many times of Abraham and Lot. See, Abraham, Lot was really his nephew, but that doesn't enter in here. A lot caused him no amount of grief. I have a feeling that if you got the history behind Genesis thirteen, before they had their division, in which Abraham said, take whatever you want, and Lot was good enough to take the very best that he could see. Now, in the long run, it wasn't the best socially and whatnot, spiritually, but he looked around and greedily took the best he could see. And Abraham apparently never said one word to him. Lot says, I'll take that. Abraham apparently says, fine, have a good time there. But Abraham, but Lot did nothing but cause him trouble. And yet, when Abraham heard, we're told in Genesis, that he'd been taken prisoner, the words of Genesis are just like this. When Abraham heard that Lot, his brother, was taken captive, see? His brother, his akhi, we say in Hebrew. When he heard that the akhi, his brother, was taken captive, oh, he grabbed everybody he could, put a sword in their hands, and ran all night to catch up to bring him back. Was his brother a troublesome, bothersome, greedy, selfish nephew, but they were of one blood and one group, and in the language of the New Testament, they belong to the same spiritual family. In the New Testament, he's still called just Lot. And when Abraham heard that his brother, he didn't look out and say, well, he's got what he deserves. He recognized the reality of that brotherhood. I don't know how often you've thought about the Peter and Paul relationship in the New Testament. It's really an interesting one, because at Galatia, the Apostle Paul had to rebuke Peter to his face, he says, because he fell after a Galatian problem, and he sinned in leading people astray. Even Barnabas was carried away with it, Paul says. So he stood to Peter, mouth to mouth, face to face, and he said, you are wrong in this thing. Now, it's a tough way to talk to a brother, but I have always been struck by the fact that when you come to the last chapter of second Peter, Peter speaks of Paul and calls him our beloved brother Paul, you see. And the emphasis is that they both, Peter was wrong, but he too recognized the reality of the brotherhood. And Paul mentions once the historic account of it. He doesn't write a chapter in the end of Ephesians telling how he got the best of Peter in a big debate or anything like that. He recognized the problem, dealt with it. Peter recognized the problem and accepted it. To recognize the reality of the brotherhood. A couple years ago, I was going to speak for a baccalaureate service in the high school where a lot of the kids from our assembly go. Up north, we still have them in some schools. They're very optional. If the students want them, they'll do most anything to save riots these days. If they want them, they can have them. If they don't, and they they plan, et cetera, et cetera. Need I say more? Uh, because the, I had been invited to speak, I guess because a lot of our gang, uh, they elect speakers, and they had maybe packed the ballot box, but I've been asked to speak for Baccalaureate. Since it's purely voluntary and held on a Sunday afternoon, nobody has to come. It's held out in the grass, not in the building, and a lot of things like that. Why, in this particular one, there was great freedom to preach the truth. As soon as you go inside the building, in our state anyway, you have to start muffling everything so you don't offend somebody accidentally, but out in the field you can do what you want. So we're sitting out in the field, there was quite a group there, people were doing this, that, and the other thing, and I was sitting feeling nervous, uh, wondering about speaking. I am not, I am a nervous type to begin with, and this was an unusual kind of a thing. So a fella came up to where I was sitting. I, it's hard for me to describe him without accidentally offending you, so just bear with me. I can only tell you, see, that he obviously had neither cut hair nor beard nor mustache for at least seven or eight years, I would say. And all you could see of him facially were his eyes peeping out and the point of his nose, that's all. His eyes kind of twinkled, and his nose had a cheerful smile right in the tip of it, but that's all you could see. He was wearing a strange costume, strange costume, and I didn't know, you know, you just don't know, but he came over to me anyhow and sat down on a bench where I was sitting, and I smiled at him, and I hope he smiled at me, whatever the case was. He didn't say anything, he just sat there. And so after a moment, why, uh, I got up and gave my address. I harassed them with all I could, and then I went and sat down on the bench, and the next thing you knew, the whole thing was over. When it was over, this man said to me, he said, uh, he said, I came to see my sister graduate today. And he said, I wanted to speak to you before you spoke, he said. I wanted to tell you to be sure to tell them about Jesus and how to be saved. But he said, I was afraid you wouldn't want to talk to me, and so he says, I, I didn't say anything. But he said, I'm glad, he said, I'm glad you told them that anyway. And I said to him, I said, are you saved? He said, yes, he said, I really love Jesus. I think he meant it, but he said, I found that a lot of people are half afraid of me. I felt like telling him that I could help him with that, but you don't know what he looked like under that beard. been, He he might might have have looked like some of my family. He might have been better off with a mask on permanently. And, and he said, so he said, a lot of them, he says, he says, I find a lot, so he said, I've been kind of shy about it. And I said to him, I hope I said it honestly. At the time, I certainly felt it firmly. I said, if you are born again, I said, I'm glad to call you brother, I said. Now, I might not be able to work with him. You understand that, don't you? I don't know what all his doctrinal kicks were. There may have been a lot of things that I might not have been able to do, but I think I said it with honesty. I said, if you're born again, I said, I'm glad to call you brother. He said, I'm born again, and he said, I'm glad to call you brother too. Now, I have never seen him since, although I've hardly recognized him. If he changed that appearance, might be here tonight. Never saw him since. But the reality of the brotherhood is something you've got to recognize. You can't stand back and say, well, I'm better than this one or that one. Until the reality of the brotherhood is recognized, it's hard to share brotherly love. I'll tell you, if the Lord had looked down and chosen just the nice ones of us, a lot of you and me would have been left out. A lot of us would be out peddling papers somewhere. I don't mean to be that ludicrous about it, but it's just that simple. Are those who believe on the name of his son, they constitute that group, and you've got to be ready to recognize the reality of the brotherhood. Now, in First John three, the second important factor is that you've got to watch for occasions to show love. Now, that comes out against the Cain and Abel background. Now, Cain had plenty of occasions to show love. Instead, he got a big claw. It's an account that you're perhaps familiar with. Why did he kill his brother in verse twelve? Because his brother did right and he did wrong, the text tells us. When the writer says in verse fifteen that whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding him, what he means by that is, is that no one who is living in a murderous continuing condition is a child of God. Many murderers have been saved. Many have. Many of us who have murdered in our minds have been redeemed. So the writer is not saying that a murderer can't be saved. He's saying that somebody who lives by the principle of hatred and murder obviously can't have the love of God in his heart. So if there's a constant assassination of others, if there's a constant murderous outlook, it's an indication that the individual has never been born again. Now I want to just ramble for a minute here. You have to look at your own soul to know whether you're really trusting Jesus or not. But I'll tell you, there have been a lot of people in my experience who, at one time or another, have held up their hand, signed a card, or prayed for fifteen seconds with a preacher and thought that that saved them. Now, don't misunderstand me. If in that act they were really calling upon Jesus Christ to forgive their sin and redeem their soul, that's, that's right, no question about it. But there are folks who go through the formalism, they go through the mechanics, then they can look back and they can tell you, yeah, I went forward at a meeting, I did this or that, but in all the years since, their lives have been characterized by hatred and strife. And God knows their hearts, but I think what they really need is to be born again. I've labored with a couple cases in the last year that are awfully close to me, of people who could tell you that they knew all the doctrines, believed all the truth, they could tell you that they believed in Jesus, but their lives were just perfectly wicked in almost every way. God knows the heart, but I tell you, I fear for them. Now, if you profess to be a believer, God knows your heart, but if all you feel towards another believer is hatred or superiority, if you have no concept of love, if you have no concept of appreciation for the fact that he's in Christ, now God still knows your heart. You may just have backslidden on that point, but it is not a good sign. Because, says the writer, we know that anybody who continues to live by murderous practices, we know that he's not part of the family of God. Because Jesus did not live that way. The Lord Jesus Christ was not like that. The Holy Spirit is not like that. And you know, it's his spirit, his seed that dwells in us, we're told in First John five. We can't really be like that either. You might have a bad thought. Every now and then you might look at a speaker and say, I wish the, the trap door would open on the floor. Uh, sometimes that's a good thought, I suppose. I mean, you know, uh, because we are weak and sinful, sometimes Christians have actually been known to kill one another, but I'll tell you what they do. They feel the passion of broken-heartedness for it. It's a striking thing. So I don't want you to think there's any legalism involved here, but the emphasis is that you watch for occasions to love, not for occasions to hurt. So you see a brother who's in need, and you reach out and help him. I would like to say that in most of our assembly fellowships, we could get stars in our crown on that point. Many of them we could, many we could. Hear that some brother is down, doesn't have anything to eat. In a lot of circumstances, we'll bombard him with food, with clothes, with shelter, with automobiles. Those are things, and they're awfully important. They're occasions to love. They are awfully important. But I want to tell you, sometimes a brother just needs somebody to talk to him. Sometimes a sister just needs somebody to pour out her heart to. Sometimes somebody just needs somebody to say to him, we love you. Sometimes the needs are not clothes and food and shelter. Sometimes the need is a prayer. Sometimes, and sometimes we know that a brother has a need, and we hope that somebody else will help him. Look for occasions to love. Well, a couple years ago, I think I may have related the account somewhere else. Can't keep, I can hardly keep track of the messages, let alone the stories. But I had a friend who was smitten by cancer in Philadelphia, and the Lord spared his life, and he's had a great testimony, I might say, since, but he was smitten, he was a close friend of mine, and I was moved by it, so I called him on the phone and asked him on the phone, you know, how he was, and we chatted on the phone, and he said to me, he said, will you pray for me? And I said, yes, I certainly will. What I meant was, you know, tomorrow morning. I said, sure I will. A long pause. I said, are you still there? Yeah, he said, I'm waiting for you to pray. Are you going to pray for me? Now, I've got a lot of weaknesses, but I had never prayed for anybody over the telephone. Why would you have to do it, you know, you know? Well, the only reason you pray with people is for the comfort and strength it gives them and the assurance. And so I said, yeah. So I swallowed twice, hoped the operator wouldn't report me for, uh, we or, you know, and just mum- well, pray, pray. I have discovered since that you can call anybody who's sick and pray with them on the telephone. I hope you don't think that's simple or childish, but I can't see everybody that's sick in a thousand years. I'm not very good as a sick visitor anyway, I always get what you've got. I never visit in the maternity ward, I'll tell you that. If you've got the gout, I'll come out with it. Well, I've discovered since, see, that in a moment of pressure, it's no great thing. Last summer, a man told me to a friend, uh, a friend in Philadelphia was in the hospital. He had a particular problem. I, uh, I couldn't see him. There was just no way I could get down. I mean, me seeing him is not the end of all truth, but I felt some... So I called, I called on the phone, got his room number, got his wife, and said I'd like to speak to him, and she said yes, and so we chatted for a minute, and then he could hardly talk, and so he gave me back to his wife, and I said, could we just pray? And she said, yes. And I said, well, we'll just... So she said, wait, she said, I'll get the other telephone in this room, and so Fred can listen too, she said. So we just, it's just a such a simple thing. But, you know, you look for occasions to love. You look for them. Sometimes you'll stumble over them, but you look for them. Yes, if some of the elders come in and say, brother so and so, they don't have a scrap to eat in their house, I'll guarantee you, and it's to a lot of the saints, well, and that's wonderful. But more than once, that isn't the only thing that's needed. You look for occasions to love. Now, I can't really elaborate on that because, uh, the evening gets shorter the longer you go. But when the writer says, if you see your brother have need and withhold your bowels of compassion, verse seventeen, he doesn't really say that there's no dwelling of the love of God in you. He says it's pretty hard to figure out how it can be. So he says the clue to your personal peace and satisfaction is to love in deed and truth as well as in tongue. Now, about the first time that a someone like myself decides that I'll make sure I take advantage of all the occasions to love, I will muff it. I will blow it, I'll make a mistake, because the flesh can't make resolutions like that. But you look for occasions to love. First, you recognize the reality of the brotherhood, and second, you look for occasions where you unselfishly can seek to promote the spiritual welfare of the other party. You look for occasions to love. The third thing that I want to mention is found largely against the background of our asking and receiving in verse twenty two and the attitude of our hearts. I'd like to strain that verse just a little bit. I actually would like to go back to First Corinthians, but again, see, it's a, it's a lo- it's a short night as it is, and we're not going to prolong that. But against the background of verse twenty two, where we are told that when our hearts have confidence toward God, we ask, we receive, we keep, we do. I'd like to say against the background of that, that we not only recognize the reality of the brotherhood and not only look for occasions to love, but we seek to provide occasions for fellowship, whereby we can pray, whereby we can receive, whereby we can honor in God's word. Providing occasions for fellowship. Uh, providing occasions, making them up, if you will. I tell you, I don't have the answer to it, but somehow, when it comes down to fellowship, our lives have been almost ruined. The press of life, is that it? It used to be that there was a slower pace in the South than there was in the North. And when I went to school in Tennessee, it was one of the things I enjoyed the most. In Tennessee, nobody walks fast on Sunday morning. You could almost stand, and the caterpillar would pass you on your way to church in that particular area. See, nobody walks fast on Sunday morning. Nobody even whittled fast. I used to go with a Methodist preacher in Dayton, Tennessee, down the steps of the courthouse, where he witnessed all the fellows sitting on the courthouse early in, on Sunday morning. There were always a lot of them there. He would go down and give them some gospel tracts and ask them to come home and eat with him. Sometimes he'd lead a whole army home, but they sat there, they even whittled slow, and I kind of like that leisurely pace. But, you know, I hate to tell you, but I, I, the last couple times I've been down in Tennessee and the last couple times I've been down here, that leisurely pace seems to be disappearing. Well, I've seen a few lazy characters, but that leisurely pace seems to be dropping off. People running back and forth and driving their cars like they were dog sleds and headed to Nome. Uh, I don't really, I- that's my impression, see. And consequently, that pace often ruins us on occasions for fellowship. Now, Sunday afternoon in our house, we often play games with the kids. Uh, sometimes children don't want to play games. You can't make people play games. I personally hate games, but I play them because I kind of think that we need to provide some type of fellowship for the people who want to play games. When I'm sitting there playing, uh, Dutch, oh, well, you wouldn't know the games anyway. They're all honest games, you know, they're all honest games. We haven't picked up Russian roulette or anything like that yet, but when I'm sitting there playing the game, wishing that I were up in my study and doing a lot of other things, I say to myself, you'll not be charged for this time in eternity. You're providing fellowship for the children. Well, I hope that's the case. But looking for occasions to provide fellowship, occasions with one another. I don't mean by that just meetings. In my own assembly, we have plenty of meetings. We have enough meetings to last for some time to come. But meetings often are not fellowship. Well, I shouldn't say they're not. I mean by that they, they're sometimes a kind of a fast come and go fellowship. This year, in September, uh, the, the brethren in our assembly, many of them at least, did something that they talked about for twenty years and haven't done. They all got together with some inspiring fellow and, and rented a big boat down in the Atlantic Ocean to go out and fish for flounder one day. We're only an hour and a half from the shore, so it's really no big trip, but it just hadn't been done. We've had a couple people converted into our fellowship that have got more spunk to them, and some of us have been there for years, and this fellow said, I think it'd be nice to do outside, so we got the boat. Got the boat. We all went down on a Saturday. We rented the thing for eight hours or whatever it is. A lot of you are fishermen, so I won't bore you with the details. I won't tell you how big the flounder were that I caught or how much I enjoy eating them and how much my kids don't like them. We'll avoid all of that, save it. We got the boat. There were fifty six of us. There was no preaching. Can you believe it? There was no preaching. Now, we did, when we got ready to leave from the chapel to drive to the boat, we did all get in a circle and join hands and pray, ask God that we wouldn't drown on the boat or kill ourselves driving to the shore. But there was no preaching on the boat. There was just fishing, talking, visiting. My, what a fine, fine day. And one or two men had brought with them people that didn't know the Lord. That was possible, see? You could bring anybody you wanted as long as you behaved. And this one man said to me, when we were trying to talk with him spiritually in a private way, he said, you know, he said, if church were always as nice as this, he said, he said, I'd really want to go. We all felt greatly blessed in just being together. Oh, there were some spiritual discussions, but there was no preaching, no big emotional movements, just the fellowship of the day. We also get that occasionally, once a year, by cleaning up the building. Of course, the Pennsylvania Dutch keep the building spotless all the time, but it's a tradition to have a building cleaning day to initiate the Irish and Welsh, like myself, into the ritual and that sort of thing. The building is always spotless, but we've got to have a day to clean it. Probably to make some spots that the janitor can pick up when we're gone. The fellowship of it. To provide occasions for fellowship, it's hard to show love without it. So whatever we ask, we receive, whatever we do, we are honored in. Uh, the emphasis is, see, that, of course, that's the fellowship of prayer, no doubt. But praying together is one of the great fruits of love. If you go back to First Corinthians eleven and First Corinthians fourteen in their proper context, this concept of providing occasions for fellowship is a big thing. And you can have all sorts of things attached with it. Fellowship is not just eating or blowing your trumpet or catching flounders or cleaning the church. It's the enjoyment of one another as individuals, where our love can be shown and manifested for something. When I was a boy, back in those dark ages, uh, we were, well, uh, during my boyhood days, the Second World War broke out. I didn't cause it, it just came. Now I'll tell you a funny thing. We lived on a farm in western Pennsylvania. The rest of my family lived in the city of Pittsburgh and in the coal town south of Pittsburgh. Do you remember, those of you who are my age and upwards, we used to have ration books. You could only buy certain things if you had the stamps. Things like bacon and butter and ham and eggs and all kinds of stuff. You had to have stamps to be able to buy those things. If you didn't have the stamps, you couldn't buy them. But I'd like to tell you something, farmers didn't worry about those stamps. We pumped old Betsy in the morning, we put the cream in the churn, we ate butter every night. I don't say it boastfully, we were poor farmers, but we did it. And when we butchered a pig, we didn't cut for the office of the price, we didn't look for the Washington boys to give them stamps for our pig. Well, suddenly my Pittsburgh relative. My, what good times we had. Honestly, what good times we had. Suddenly we had company almost every week. Good company. What good times we had. When the emergency was over, a lot of times it took months and months till you saw anybody again. And last year, during the Christmas season, we had a big family reunion, which was the first one that we'd had in twenty years. Everybody looked around and said, we used to have such good times. Yeah, we had good times. We needed each other then. We needed each other then. We used to bring my mama their extra sugar coupons and stuff like that, see, and we needed each other then. And because we needed each other then, we loved each other then. And the sad thing in many of the Christian churches today, and in a lot of our homes, is that we really don't need each other anymore. That's why the prayer meeting in our chapel, we might have two hundred and fifty people out on Sunday morning, we'll have ten percent of them at prayer meeting, and that ten percent, sixteen of them will be under twenty. Oh, we're glad for them. We might be very fortunate another night and have thirty. but we don't need each other anymore. Hence, we really have little opportunity to show love to one another anymore. Oh yeah, big emergency comes, and everybody will turn it on. Cheers, waltz, and everything else. That's good. I don't knock that. But that isn't the concept of brotherly love in First John. The concept of brotherly love in First John is our continually seeking that which spiritually improves and blesses the rest of the company. And these are three big factors. One, recognizing the reality of the brotherhood. Two, watching for occasions to serve. And three, providing occasions for fellowship where that love can be real and guaranteed to us. I would only add one final thought, and I won't do it formally, but I'll just add it kind of off the cuff. What you've got to remember in the language of First Corinthians thirteen, is that love doesn't fail. What that means is, is that it doesn't give up. You don't suddenly say, because nobody here responds, or because nobody shows any love to me, I'm quitting. You don't do that. Because love doesn't give up. It continues to love, and it finds its best reward in continuing to seek that which is spiritually right for the other party. That's about all I want to say. First of all, you need to be living in an experience of love. And secondly, we need to note these factors and try to apply them in the course of our lives. Tomorrow night, I want to talk with you about how love helps me to be helped by my brethren, and by the sisters, and by anybody else that wants to help. We'll stay in First John for our readings and, uh, work around some of those things. Let me say this then, closingly. I'm talking about the understanding and application of Christian love. But if you're not born again, you can't really know it for yourself. If you've got one of those hard hearts and you never feel any love or compassion or feeling for the company, maybe you've never been born again. You have to know your own heart. If you have any question about it, I wish you'd speak with me after this service, or with our song leader, or with one of the brethren, anybody nearby, say something to somebody. But it's awfully important to know that you're born again. And then, it's the most natural thing in the world to demonstrate God's love. I think we'll sing a stanza of a hymn, Father Toby, and then close in prayer. Message 434, the practical things that we've been listening to will only manifest in as we hear from more about us. The 23 verses of this hymn. If you're here and you would like to know more about being saved or this love that we have been hearing about, you come up to let us start. The prayer I made once and then he. Save of my urgency more love for I to be, more love to be, more love to see. And shall my native prayer whisper my way? If be the morning light, my heart shall rain. Let there be more of all life to thee. More of to thee. More of to thee. Our Father, we're thankful tonight for the love of God, witness to us in the Lord Jesus, who gave himself for us that we might be saved and be blessed in the knowledge of God's love. Pray, Father, that you'd never allow me to take that so casually, the days would come and go that I wouldn't be ready to praise you and thank you for. And Lord, for our company, we pray that too, that the reality of Christ's life within us might stir us and promote us towards an honest affection, one for another, and then out of that, an affection for the lost, that they might be saved. We believe that the Holy Spirit alone can really search our hearts in these things, Father. And if any of us are carrying a root of bitterness, a grudge, a bad feeling towards some other brother or sister, we pray that the Holy Spirit would make us feel it keenly in our hearts, that we might put that issue to rest, that our prayers and gifts might be more meaningful. And help us understand these factors of love and to be blessed by it. Now we thank you for those that are with us tonight, and we ask your care for us as we go in our way. In the name of the Lord Jesus, we pray. Amen.