The Christian's Love for Christ

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. If you would like to learn more about us, please visit us at our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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Please enjoy the following sermon. The Apostle John brings his readers through somewhat of a spiritual self -assessment, if you can call it that.

And he has been doing this to this end, that we who have believed in the name of the

Son of God might know, that we might have an assurance, that we might be certain that we have eternal life.

Two weeks ago, we looked at the Christians' transformed relationship with sin, that we are no longer those who conceal our sin, but we are those who walk in the light.

We acknowledge our sin. More than that, we confess it to God, and Christ's blood cleanses us from this sin.

Last week, we considered our new attitude concerning Christ's commands, that at one time we had no desire to obey

Christ, but now that we have come to know Him, it is our aim, albeit it is an imperfect aim, it is our aim by His power to keep

His Word, to be conformed to His likeness. And then this week, as we come to verse 7 in chapter 2,

John guides us to the theme of brotherly love, that is the love that Christians have for one another in the church.

And any time I get to preach on this theme of love, of brotherly love in particular,

I must confess that my heart swells with joy at the opportunity.

There is just something about the transformed relationship that a Christian enjoys with the church of Jesus Christ that makes me giddy inside.

It fills me with glee. It energizes me, in fact. And I think this is why.

Some of you, I think, have heard this before. I always feel, I was saying to our brother Sam beforehand,

I always feel a little bit awkward about personal anecdotes, but I feel tolerated.

When the Lord saved me, I was 21 years old, and up until that moment when

He effectually called me, He opened my eyes to behold the beauty of Christ and to believe on Him and His Gospel.

Up until that moment, I lived in complete darkness, in total darkness.

Though I had a very brief encounter with a liberal church leading up to the

Lord saving me, I do not, I'm not exaggerating when I say that I knew nothing of Christ or of His bride, the church.

In my home, Christ's name was never mentioned unless it was uttered as a swear word.

The only, and I use scare quotes, the only church that I attended or had any interaction with for the first 17 years of my life was a

Mormon stake center 10 minutes east of here. And to be clear, that is a place that has no place whatsoever in the true church of the

Lord Jesus Christ. Because I had a rural upbringing and we were isolated in our ungodliness, if I can say it that way, you could have, leading up to about my 21st birthday, given me a

Bible without a cover on it and I would not be able to tell you what book it was.

In a word, I was absolutely lost. And when Christ saved me by His grace,

He did something remarkable in me and something that He gets all the glory for. It's something

I'm sure that many of you can relate with. That He not only drew me to Himself, that He not only gave me a hunger for His word, but He gave me a new spiritual appetite that I did not even know existed in the world.

And that was this. Almost immediately coinciding with the Lord saving me, He gave me this strange desire to want to be with Christ's church.

It was such an unusual thing. I was counting down the minutes until it would be time to assemble with God's people again that I might be with Christ's people.

I went from never listening to a sermon in my entire life to even in a rather unhealthy theologically liberal church, hanging on every word and taking the bone and picking what meat

I could off the bone. Our church did not have a Bible study, but they had a choir.

And so I did what I could and I would go. I joined the choir, though I could not sing.

And with my Bible under my arm, I would look for any and every opportunity to have some kind of substantive conversation with other

Christians. Oh God, help you. If we came across one another during that time in my life,

I would never let you go. I wanted to speak of Christ, of the

God who saved me, of my Father who was in heaven, of the Bible that He had opened up before me.

Now, many of us can relate with this kind of experience, I believe. Maybe you grew up in a

Christian family and at one moment the Lord turned the lights on. Or maybe like me, you grew up completely separate from the knowledge of God.

And I think that many of us, in sharing this experience, have another experience that we have shared.

And it is this. That in those early years, maybe you remember asking yourself something like this.

I was asking myself something like this. Why is there such a coolness and a nonchalance that characterizes the love of many in the church?

Why are there so few in the church who desire to get together, to be together, and not just to talk about sports, but to talk about the glorious and eternal things that are some of the sum and substance of our hope in Christ?

To love one another, to serve one another, or to read scriptures for yourself for the very first time and to see in it, in our

New Testaments especially, a picture of genuine love, of mutual submission, of edification, of generosity, of accountability, of shared devotion, and then to look at what was before you and say, why is there so little of this in the church that I see before me today?

And the common refrain, maybe you've heard this refrain too, or something like this.

You're a brand new Christian. Right now, everything is new. Everything is exciting.

Don't worry. You'll settle down. You'll settle in. You'll grow out of this phase.

And I remember being told that, and it did not bring me any comfort whatsoever.

But it stirred up even a greater anxiety within me that I did not want to grow out of my love for the church, but that I wanted to see my love increase for Christ's church.

I wanted to see the love of the saints, one for another, intensify. I wanted those around me to discover that the church of the

Lord Jesus Christ is the most beautiful, the most lovely institution, if I could call it that.

Most lovely institution that Christ left on this side of heaven.

And in the 19 years that have elapsed since I first made that discovery, when

God himself, by his grace and for his glory, opened my eyes to that truth.

In the 19 years that have elapsed, while I am grateful that God has matured my perspective, and I pray and continue to wait for him to sanctify my perspective still more, very little has changed in my esteem for his church.

And so it brings me great joy. I am giddy, in fact, because I get to push back, looking at this text of scripture, to push back against the predominating

Christian culture that we are surrounded by. The kind of pseudo -Christian ethos that would tell us that we ought to grow out of our love for the church.

And I get to show you from scripture that the normative Christian experience is one of intense and growing love for Christ's bride.

Though it may seem that lawlessness is increasing, the love of many is growing cold, this is not to be the experience of the

Christian. But the life of the true saint of God is characterized by a fervent love for Christ and a love for his people.

And so in the time that we have together today, I want to look, as John puts this theme of brotherly love before us, at some of the qualities of this love.

And I want you, dear saints, to examine, to look into your own hearts, to examine yourself scripturally, and to ask yourself, is this love present, or is it absent in our life?

And I want to, because this is what preaching is, I want to exhort you to pursue an increase in that love.

Oh, that God would enable us to love one another in such a way that the world would know that we are

Christ's disciples. That it would be seen, if in nothing else, just in our love.

And so, I had you turn your Bibles a while ago, to verse 7. We'll read verses 7 and 8, and then we will look at the first quality of Christian love that we find here.

First John, chapter 2, verse 7. Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning.

The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining.

The first quality of Christian love that I want to put before you is this. A specific

Christ -like love. A specific Christ -like love.

You might look at these two verses and say, where do we find that? I want to show you. As John transitions in this section of his letter, he begins by modeling the very type of love, the flavor of love, the nature of love that he is seeking to highlight.

He addresses his readers in verse 7 with what word? He says, beloved. Now that is an interesting thing.

Some might look at this and think, maybe John is virtue signaling here, or maybe he is being cute somehow, but he is about to speak on the theme of love, and so he comes with this word, beloved.

But here we find John using, in fact, one of his favorite terms that he uses to refer to the saints, to the

Christians to whom he is writing. We see him use the word beloved here in chapter 2. If we were to look ahead to chapter 3, we find him using that word twice, beloved.

In chapter 4, we see three more times. And if we were to fast forward to the third letter of John, we find him using that word four more times.

John's language reveals that he truly and consistently loves the church to whom he is writing.

In the words of one observer, I really appreciate this, he said the whole accent of John's writing is love.

It's bleeding through, even as he writes to the church. As John begins, he offers somewhat of an unorthodox introduction to this theme.

In verse 7, he points out that what he is writing is not a new commandment, but a commandment that the people have had from the beginning.

It is a commandment that the church is well acquainted with. And then, yeah, it's kind of a head -scratcher.

As he continues into verse 8, he does something a bit more perplexing, but he adds that this is simultaneously a new commandment.

So what John is bringing is something that is both old and something that is new. And for the casual reader of scripture, as you might read this in your day -to -day reading of scripture, you might be confounded by this.

What is John talking about? How can it be both old and new?

And it appears that what John is doing here is he is demonstrating that this commandment to love one another is, in its larger context, speaking about love,

I should clarify, this commandment is not something novel that he has invented. It is, in fact, something that the church has heard repeatedly since her founding.

This was a command, you will recognize it from the words of Jesus in John chapter 13, in verse 34, where we read our

Lord saying there, a new commandment that I give you, that you love one another.

Just as I love you, you also are to love one another. Commentators have pointed out that this was a commandment that had been habitually repeated to these disciples from the outset of their

Christian lives. That's why he says at the end of verse 7, the old commandment, which, let me say that again, the old commandment is the word that you have heard.

So John is not establishing, we need to get this settled, a test case that is innovative in any way.

Since the beginning of the Christian church, the expectation is that Christians would always, it has been taught, that they would love one another.

And if I could just reflect on that for a moment, if only this truth were understood by the majority of Christians today, this old commandment, to love one another, this would radically alter the church as we know it.

But, it continues. Simultaneously, it is a new commandment.

Because it was not a commandment explicitly rooted in the old covenant law, with the same old covenant parameters, but one established by Christ and informed by his sacrifice.

It was a new commandment because its scope was more precisely defined.

The Christian is to love. We know that we are to love our neighbor as ourself. Here John narrows it in.

The Christian is to love not merely his neighbor in general, but his Christian brother or sister in particular.

And it is not a new commandment because the quality of this love is to be informed by the example of the

Lord Jesus. Again, to go back to John 13 -34, a new commandment I give you, that you love one another just as I have loved you.

You also are to love one another. So the one brother writes, a disciple was to love others not just as he loved himself, but even more in the same measure as Christ loved him, with selfless self -sacrifice even unto death.

Now brethren, as we arrive at just these first two verses, as we grapple with this old and with this new, what we learn is that Christian love, the love to which we have been called, the love that is to mark every true believer who is living in the light, is a

Christian love that is specific and that is costly.

It is a kind of love that is zealously directed at those who belong to Christ. And it is of a quality that far exceeds the kind of casual, commitmentless, indifferent sentimentality that we often see that is rampant in some places in the visible church today.

Brothers, sisters, you do not need to have the same testimony as me.

But no matter how you came to it, you need to be overflowing with love for God's people.

That this is obedience to that old new command. And I put this question directly to you.

Has God implanted in you a genuine love for His church?

A particular affection for His people and a longing to be with them?

Something that is different from your affections that are directed at the world.

Your affections that you experience with your colleagues and your neighbors and your friends and your unbelieving family.

If I can put it this way, has God set apart in your mind the people of God as a special object of your love?

This is one of the marks of authenticity that God stamps on the souls of His people that we cannot help but to love one another.

It comes bathed into us. Beloved, look in the room for a moment.

Look at one another, if you humor me here. I know it's awkward, isn't it? It's always awkward when

I ask you to do this. Christ has sovereignly put each of you in this church.

Frankly, I wonder sometimes why. Why God? Why would you be so kind?

But He has put you here in this church for this moment in time. This is the assembly that God has uniquely appointed for you.

And after Christ, this needs to be clear, after Christ, after your wife or your husband, your spouse, after your immediate family or children that live in your home, there are no others in this world that you are called to love more than these and more than the church abroad.

There is no community on this side of eternity or the other that you are called to love more, to serve with greater fervency, to commit yourself to with a greater consistency.

There is a line and there is a special kind of love that is to be directed to the church.

Galatians 6 .10 Paul writes, so then as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, especially to those who are of the household of faith.

But there's still more. A few weeks ago, I pointed out that I believe, at least in some of us, that our apprehension,

I believe in all of us actually, I'll be honest, that our apprehension of God is likely far too small.

What we conceive God to be, it pales in comparison to who

He actually is. And let me add to that now. Your definition of brotherly love is far too small.

Our love, one for another, is not informed by the angel's love for God.

It is not informed by the most mature Christian in this room and his love for Christ or his love for the church.

Our love, one for another, is informed by the sacrificial, the atoning, the expiating, atoning work of Christ on the cross.

That Christ, who poured out His very blood for His saints, that He says that we are to love one another by this standard.

1 John 3 .16, by this we know love, John writes, that He laid down His life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

Many times, it is true, we have a hard time laying down our afternoon for the brothers.

We have great difficulty suffering the most mild of inconveniences for one another.

But this is not consistent with our calling in Christ. This is my commandment, the

Lord says, that you love one another as I have loved you. I want to exhort you to put away every false notion that you have accumulated that tells you that your relationship with the saints is one of mere convenience.

That your relationship with the saints is meant to be a casual, easygoing kind of thing.

Such an idea is foreign to the Bible. You can spend your life, your whole life, looking for the verse that will teach that.

You will not find that. But instead, Scripture holds out a picture of love that bears burdens, that uplifts one another in prayer, that prioritizes the assembly of God's people, that is expressed as we break bread together in one another's homes.

It is a love that motivates one to sell their property and to give to whoever is in need.

It is a love that says when we send one of our own to another place, you might recall we studied

Philemon in the fall, and Paul writes as he's writing about Onesimus, he says,

I am sending my very heart. This is a quality of love that the world has rarely seen.

And sadly, it is a quality of love that many in the church have never seen. But it's a quality of love that Christ has shown us, that he has made plain for us in his sacrifice on our behalf.

It is the very quality of love that we are to exercise one toward another.

I'm reminded of an example in the life of Tertullian, an early church father.

He was recording a communication that was happening between two pagans that were writing in the second century, and they were speaking to the

Christian climate in second century Carthage, which is in North Africa.

And one of the pagan writers wrote this, and many say this about us.

He says, see, speaking of the Christians, see how they love one another, and how they are ready to die for each other.

May God grant us to love like that. But there's more still.

The second quality of Christian love that we find is this, it is a pure love. In verses 9 through 11, this is what we read.

Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.

Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling.

But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness, and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

A pure love. Here John offers his readers a rather interesting juxtaposition.

You see, he's done once already, he did this in chapter 1 in verses 5 and 6, contrasting darkness and light.

And he tells us the one who hates his brother is in darkness. It is plain for all to see that he does not know

Christ, that he is spiritually blind. If you see someone, you meet someone on the street, or you have a friend who says,

I don't go to church, those people drive me mad. Or I have this conflict with this individual, and I will never trust another church again.

Or I never want to see that person again. You might be able to reasonably deduce that that man or that woman is walking in darkness.

But let's look a little bit more at the context. Because there is still something more

I think that John is getting at. Perhaps John is writing about those secessionists that we heard about a couple of weeks ago.

You remember those were the men and women, we don't know how many, who left the church because of some pre -gnostic heresy that had been invading the church.

We read about them in 1 John 2, verse 19, a familiar verse to us.

They went out from us because they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.

But they went out that it might become plain that they all are not of us. Now perhaps it was this action of departing from the church that John had in mind, we don't know.

Or maybe it was because they openly demonstrated a lack of love for the remaining church.

But John points out that such an attitude towards the church is not merely immature.

It's not merely immature to not love the church. But it is anti -Christian.

At the same time, the one who loves Christ's people, John points out in verse 10, is the one who demonstrates that he truly knows and loves

Christ. Now many readers will come through this passage, and they may gloss over some of these details, but I want you to see something with me.

Here John presents a bifurcation, a dividing line, a fork in the road.

And he points out that there really are only two kinds of people in the church.

Especially as it relates to the Christian's love for the church. It is not a spectrum.

It is not a color wheel. It is a stark contrast between light and darkness.

There are those brethren who love the church, who love one another and walk in the light. And there are those who hate the brethren and stumble in the darkness.

Those two. And those two alone. I think John Stodd, as he comments on this, he aptly describes the scene for us.

He says, love and hatred are set in opposition to each other with no alternative.

Well there is no alternative. He goes, just as we are said to be either in light or in darkness, there is no twilight.

There is no third way. There is no other option. There is not a love for the church, a hatred for the church, and an ambivalence for the church.

There is no place for neutrality in our love for the saints. There is no place for lukewarmness.

You are either hot or cold, light or dark, love or hate. And such a scenario shows us that when

Christ puts his love into the hearts of his people, it is a pure love.

A love that is unmixed. A love that is unbridled and unrestrained.

And if I can be so bold, it is a love that is notably absent in the lives of many professing

Christians today. A love for the church that is white hot.

A love for Christ's people that is willing to forsake almost anything lawful to be with, to love, to serve.

A fear to the love of many in the visible church does not even rival the bond, the shared bond and affection that you might find on a recreational hockey team in our city.

The shared life, the mutual concern, the purity of love that we find in the

New Testament church has been exchanged for online church. Or in scenarios maybe like ours, it has been exchanged for infrequent and spastic church involvement.

Many will clear their schedules. We see this in ourselves. Many will clear their own schedules, all their schedules, to make room for their hobbies.

They will spend and be spent to achieve whatever career ambition it is that they are after.

They will spend countless hours giving this time and this energy to a myriad of other things and then they will give whatever leftovers that remain to Christ and his people if time allows.

How is it, brothers and sisters, how is it that there are unbelievers that you and I know, we could name them, that if we were in a place of need they would give us the shirt off their backs and yet there are others who profess to know

Christ and who are unwilling to give even one hour a year to a widow in distress that is in our midst.

Let me ask you, does this look more like love for the church or does it look more like disdain for the people for whom

Christ died? In the words of one

English evangelist from the 19th century, these words still ring true. He says, love seems in so many hearts to have gone to sleep.

Dear brother, dear sister, where are you on this spectrum or better put in this bifurcation?

Is your love for Christ and his people white hot? Are you eager to be with them, to love them, to serve them, to hold them accountable, to pray for them, to endure all things for the elect, or are you indifferent?

Are you cold? Are you kind of at arm's length from God's people? Yes, I want to be part of the church, just not too much a part of the church, not too close to God's people.

Not that they would truly know me or that I would truly know them, but that certainly I would be counted in their midst.

Friends, if this describes you, repent. This is not a

Christian experience to be cold and casual toward Christ's people.

As we looked at a couple of weeks ago, acknowledge your sin before God. Confess it to him and then look to Christ with the eyes of faith.

There is forgiveness to be found in Christ even for those whose love for the church has grown dull.

And then your brothers and sisters, if I can give you one bit of counsel, if God has put his love, a love for his church in your heart, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness in this area.

There's one of two reasons why we find ourselves in this position. Either it is because we do not know

Christ or we do not know ourselves. I want to believe that for many of us, it's the second one.

That we have a love for Christ and his people and yet we somehow seem to think that these things will just take place by accident.

That a sincere, convicted, devoted love to Christ's people will just materialize out of nowhere.

But a pure and committed love to Christ and his people is not found on the path of least resistance.

It does not come by accident. It comes by realizing that your flesh is disinclined to a pure love for his people and then with this realization to act in defiance of those sinful inclinations that still dwell within you.

To say, I don't always feel like the church is lovely but I know that she is and so then

I will love her with my actions. John Calvin comments on this point and he says this,

I think he's dead on He says love is the one true rule according to which our life is to be formed.

And this ought to be, he writes, the most carefully noticed because all choose rather almost anything else than this one commandment of God.

But this is what we must choose every day with the example of Christ before us.

With Christ's atoning sacrifice always covering our many failures.

Let us love one another with a pure love that seems to stay alert to the opportunities to love the saints.

To commit to prioritizing God's people. To work for the unity of the church.

To live like a true churchman. We heard this a few months ago. To live like a true churchman until you are a true churchman.

Love the church not merely by warm and fuzzy feelings but by obedience rendered to Christ.

By a will prepared to move in your love for him. Peter comments on this, he says, in 1

Peter 1 .22, having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth, for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart.

A pure love. This is what the

Christian is called to. Alexander Stroud comments and I agree wholeheartedly.

He says we must either love or die. The third quality of Christian love that we find is this.

A familial love that safeguards. You can tell here that I'm trying to put a couple ideas together.

In verse 10 we read this. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light and in him there is no cause for stumbling.

It may look here like I'm grasping for straws. I don't think I am. But I want to hone in on two words in verse 10 that I think inform our love one for another.

The words are brother and stumbling. These are things that again in our daily reading of scripture we might be tempted to pass over as we go along.

But have you ever considered that this text might just as well have read something like this.

Whoever loves his fellow Christian abides in the light. That would make perfectly good sense.

But it's not what the text says. It could read whoever loves the saints abides in the light.

But that's not what John writes either. He writes whoever loves his brother.

For those of you who know me as I do my sermon preparation you know that just generally speaking

I can be a bit squirrely but I'll find a thread and I'll grab that thread and I'll just pull it until I unravel the blanket.

Just follow this bunny trail. This word brother and its use in the scriptures.

John loves to use this word brother in his letters. He uses that word brother 18 times in his three letters.

And what's fascinating I believe I'm just going from memory here wasn't planning to say the number but I believe it's

Paul he uses the word brother 136 times in his epistles.

Peter similarly a little bit less but he loves to refer to his brothers as brothers.

For James again it's especially prominent in James. Even our

Lord Jesus in his language. In Matthew chapter 12 in verse 50 you might recall that his brothers and his mother are outside.

The disciples are trying to get his attention. He says for whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.

Or in John chapter 20 after he is crucified after he raises from the dead as he is speaking to Mary outside the tomb he says do not cling to me for I have not yet ascended to the father but go to my brothers and say to them

I am ascending to my father and to your father to my God and to your

God. When we pull all of the extras away from what it means here to to be this church dear friends we are not a club.

We are not a social enterprise. We rejoiced recently that we received our charitable status but do not be mistaken we are not a charitable organization in the strictest of senses or an educational institution.

We are a family. That this is what God has made us and that we are above all things we are

God's family. We have by God's grace been born into the household of God and the union that we share the bond that binds us together.

It is thicker than a family's bloodline. It is thicker than any cord that a man can fashion.

It is impenetrable. It is uncuttable. Can't you see that once we were not a people but now we are if we are in Christ we are

God's people. Once we were foreigners and aliens estranged from one another but now we are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.

Listen to this language. Look at each other again for a second and say to yourself my goodness this describes the person sitting next to me.

It describes me. Members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets

Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone that we are living stones rejected by men.

Let me ask you in a world that is opposed to us if we do not love one another sometimes wonder who will living stones rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious and we are being built up as a spiritual house to a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Brethren when we fail to love one another we are casual in our love for one another.

If we believe somehow that yes we ought to to grow out of of this earnest love for one another we are undercutting our very identity.

This is who God made us to be. We are family and if we are not family then we are nothing.

John Owen many of us appreciate John Owen. He was called the prince of English divines.

He was the chaplain to Oliver Cromwell. He was a man of colossal intellect.

I was going to poke fun at him and then I drew back but now I wish maybe I didn't.

Go and look at the full title of the mortification of sin. Maybe you've read the mortification of sin the

Puritan paperback. Go and look at I'm not even sure how many words it is.

It's about two sentences three sentences perhaps and that is just the title of the book.

He could be very verbose but listen to the simplicity of the words as he speaks about Christ's church about our relationship as brothers and sisters as members of the family of God if I can put it that way.

He said what is the church for? How would you answer that question?

What is the church for? He says there are two great ends and two great duties that God requires of us.

The first end is that his saints together might jointly profess their faith in him and obedience to him and the next great end that we might have a direct exercise of his other great command and the other great duty that is of love to the believers.

What is the end of the church that we would glorify Christ that we would love him that we would obey him and in doing that that we would exhort one another to the same in love as long as it is today and brethren when we love our brothers and sisters as John would put it or as he does put it in the second half of verse 10 there is no cause for stumbling.

It is a safeguard to you when you walk in love toward your brothers towards your sisters when we walk in love one toward another we walk in light and we are kept from great harm and we have seen when we do not walk in love one with another how people seem to go missing how people go astray how people fall away the

Lord in his great wisdom not only designed that we would love one another but that we would benefit greatly from that love for even the preservation of our faith in Christ your saints we have been called to love and do not let anyone ever at any point tell you that you ought to grow out of this love but let me exhort you to grow into this love to more and more to be cautious to be on the ready to look for every opportunity to improve upon that love and I'll close with this perhaps some of you are familiar with the

Puritan era if you know anything about the Puritans you know that I'm a I'll call myself a fan boy

I love the Puritans greatly appreciate them and one of my favorite periods in the

Puritan age if I can call it that is probably one of the Puritans least favorite parts of that time period and that was around the time of the act of uniformity that that was declared in I believe it was 1662 that put thousands of pastors out of their local churches because they refused to to go along with the precepts of the

Church of England the official church of the state and there is just a picture there are pictures after pictures after pictures of what this love looks like in reality and I'll close with just a couple of sketches

Richard Baxter he wrote a book entitled the reformed pastor he lived through this time period he was old he was up in years and endured great difficulty for the sake of the church though I don't believe he was imprisoned and he said every time we look upon our congregations if you'd look one more time every time we look upon our congregations let us believingly remember that they are the purchase of Christ's blood and therefore should be regarded by us with the deepest interest and the most tender affection many of us know about John Bunyan he was arrested for holding conventicles like unpermitted church services in the open air and they put him in prison

I believe it was for 12 years they let the prison door open and they said he could go at any point and I love what he said he said if I am free today

I will preach tomorrow why because he loved Christ if he loved his church if I am free today you will find me with God's people tomorrow seeking their good where Thomas Brooks during the act of uniformity he was pushed out of his pastorate at another point in time he was in London when the bubonic plague hit in 1665 and 1666 it claimed the lives of 100 ,000 people if you think about the pandemonium that happened during COVID not to make too many political statements here in the case of the bubonic plague one in five people were dying and as that was happening two things maybe two things we could take note of that when the bubonic plague came through Europe about 200 years earlier there's actually a scene you can read about it that the

Pope Clement VI there was just a new pope appointed well Pope Clement VI in the 14th century was told that he should stay in his chamber lock himself in and burn fires in the fireplaces so it was raging hot so that no virus could survive there and there in a pure dreadful state of self -preservation he burnt his fires in his chamber until the plague passed what did

Thomas Brooks do but he went from house to house in the churches ministering to the sick and dying loving

Christ's people sacrificially specifically purely because these were his brothers and sisters in Christ and he said in one of his writings a greater hell

I would not wish on any man than to not then to live and to not love the beloved of God this is what we have been called thank you for listening to another sermon from grace fellowship church if you would like to keep up with us you can find us at facebook at grace fellowship church or our instagram at grace church y e g all one word finally you can visit us at our website graceedmonton .ca